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March 25, 2005
Did Free Trade Help Drive Neanderthal Extinction?
According to a press release from the University of Wyoming, economists Jason Shogren, Richard Horan of the Michigan State University and Erwin Bulte from Tilburg University have concluded that free trade economics contributed to the extinction of Neanderthals.
A formal paper on this appears in the most recent issue of the Journal of Economic Organization and Behavior. I have not had a chance to read the article but it seems on the surface that the claim a little beyond the evidence. Assuming H. sapiens had anything to do with it, economic issues certainly contributed to the Neanderthal extinction. But "free trade" economics seems a little too specific to me. Here is a sample from the news release.
Creating a new kind of caveman economics in their published paper, they argue early modern humans were first to exploit the competitive edge gained from specialization and free trade. With more reliance on free trade, humans increased their activities in culture and technology, while simultaneously out-competing Neanderthals on their joint hunting grounds, the economists say.. . .
(Shogren) says the evidence does not support the concept of division of labor and trade among Neanderthals. While Neanderthals probably cooperated with one another to some extent, the evidence does not support the view that specialization arose from any formal division of labor or that inter- or intra-group trade existed, he says. These practices seem to require all the things that Neanderthals lacked: a more complicated social organization, a degree of innovative behavior, forward planning and the exchange of information, ideas and raw materials.
"Basic economic forces of scarcity and relative costs and benefits have played integral roles in shaping societies throughout recorded human history," Shogren says. "No reason exists today to discount either the presence or potential impact of economics in the pre-historic dawning of humanity."
My problem, without reading the article, is that "free trade" has a rather specific meaning in contemporary economics. It will be abnormally interesting to see how Shogren et al read that concept back some 30 or 40 thousand years. More to come, perhaps Monday, after I get my hands on the article.
Posted by DuaneSmith at March 25, 2005 03:51 PM | Read more on Paleoanthropology |
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