The EEA

[Greg]

I wonder if we could start a discussion on the topic of the EEA.  We are doing a seminar this semester on certain aspects of the "Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness" and I've invited the students in the seminar to consider joining the forum and getting involved in this venue.  

I think there has been too little cross-fertilization between behavioral biologists and paleoanthropologists on this topic, and both fields stand to gain a great deal with more critical integration of the two.  I know that most paleoanthropologists I've spoken with agree with this, but I'm afraid many of my otherwise very intelligent behavioral biological colleagues seem to give less importance to this than they probably should.  

I've written some strong words on the subject in the description of my seminar, and they can be found on my web site in the "classes" section (click the little web site icon on this poste to go there)

[Ellery Frahm]

Okay -- I'll bite and ask a question to start a discussion:

After hearing Greg Laden's introduction in class and while reading Cosmides & Tooby's evolutionary psychology primer, it struck me how the EEA sounds related to the "niche" discussed in evolution and biology.  This was reinforced by the The Evolutionary Psychology FAQ, in which Hagen states: "The EEA concept is very similar
to the notion of 'niche' in evolutionary biology."

So, perhaps as a starting point, we could discuss the differences between the EEA and a niche because I think that everyone is more familiar with the concept of a niche.  What are the differences?  Hagen states: "The EEA for any specific organism is the set of reproductive problems faced by members of that species over evolutionary time."  

So the EAA is basically selection pressures, right?  On the other hand, a niche is basically something to be exploited, correct?  So is the link simply that organisms in a particular niche have a different set of selection pressures that organisms in another niche?  Or does Hagen simply equal the two because, just as there can be different niches in a locale, there can also be different EEAs in the same area?

Any other interpretations out there?  What do you think?

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Okay -- I'll bite and ask a question to start a discussion:

After hearing Greg Laden's introduction in class and while reading Cosmides & Tooby's evolutionary psychology primer, it struck me how the EEA sounds related to the "niche" discussed in evolution and biology.  This was reinforced by the The Evolutionary Psychology FAQ, in which Hagen states: "The EEA concept is very similar
to the notion of 'niche' in evolutionary biology."

So, perhaps as a starting point, we could discuss the differences between the EEA and a niche because I think that everyone is more familiar with the concept of a niche.  What are the differences?  Hagen states: "The EEA for any specific organism is the set of reproductive problems faced by members of that species over evolutionary time."  

So the EAA is basically selection pressures, right?  On the other hand, a niche is basically something to be exploited, correct?  So is the link simply that organisms in a particular niche have a different set of selection pressures that organisms in another niche?  Or does Hagen simply equal the two because, just as there can be different niches in a locale, there can also be different EEAs in the same area?

Any other interpretations out there?  What do you think?

I think that any productive discussion of the issues you raise will only be arrived at by taking into consideration the very important fact that the human evolutionary trajectory can be viewed as characterized, for well over a million years (and this in contrast to that of many other critters), by a slowly increasing ability to develop what one might call "niche shifting" capabilities and therefore slowly interfering with and/or changing the nature and impact of various selection pressures. I suppose C. Loring Brace would love that!

Jacques Cinq-Mars

[Ellery Frahm]

...I suppose C. Loring Brace would love that!

I know only a bit about Brace -- doesn't his work involve distinguishing between physical traits of humans that were and were not affected by selection pressures and then using that infer links between various population groups?  I guess the "niche shifting" and changing selection pressures would fit well with that.

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

...I suppose C. Loring Brace would love that!

I know only a bit about Brace -- doesn't his work involve distinguishing between physical traits of humans that were and were not affected by selection pressures and then using that infer links between various population groups?

Well, I am certainly not the best person to ask. Especially since C. Loring Brace is actually a member of the Forum. Another possibility would be to bring this up with Greg Laden who, I am sure, will have interesting things to say about Brace's views.

I guess the "niche shifting" and changing selection pressures would fit well with that.

I suppose it would, but not necessarily in the context of a strict Bracean model (again, go directly to the source on this). At any rate, the more I think about it, the more I like this "niche shifting" concept. Obviously, to be really useful (from my own archaeological perspective), it will have to be refined a bit (!) in order to accommodate the nature of human evolutionary changes through a complex and lengthy space/time continuum. Given time, and if I am reminded, I may get back to you on this.

As for the concept of "changing [of] selection pressures", I don't believe that people can really argue against it, that is, at the most general level. Just look at what we have been doing to the world and, by extension to ourselves over the last millennia. On the other hand, and to get back to Brace's views on this, I would say that his model is a bit too (unidirectionally ?) strict for my taste, in that it does not seem to be based on a realistic (?) appreciation of the actual complexity of the numerous and frequently poorly understood cultural factors that form (again, in a space/time perspective) an integral part of the very complex equation we are trying to solve.

I realize this is not very helpful, but it is all I can do for now.

Jacques Cinq-Mars

[Greg Laden]

Going back to the question (by Ellery) of the difference between EEA and “niche:”  Right, it seems that they are essentially the same thing because they are the milieu  of adaptation (the environment of selection).  The difference is in the more derivative and historically important meaning of the term EEA.  Ironically, in its initial use in child psychology, EEA was brought out as a phrase to make the point to psychologists that traits (behavioral) were adaptations, and thus at one time had a niche, an EEA.  Since evolution has more or less stopped on us humans, the EEA was in the past.  The compression and conflation of history, primitivism, modernism, etc. etc. then places the modern (ca 1966, Cambridge Massachusetts) human in direct contrast to the primitive African Bushman or Australian Aborigine (or whatever) living in a state of nature.  


(The  irony is that Evolutionary Psychology as psycylogy that involves evolution adaptea term from anti-evolutionary psychology… this complaint of mine is brand new as far as I can tell, so perhaps someone will chime in and disagree…)

So, the EEA is in a way the niche of the “other.”  We wouldn’t be caught dead living in a niche.  Other animals have niches, but if a niche (or the very idea of living in a niche) becomes outdated, then it becomes an EEA …  sometimes an important part of understanding our “nature” (the part of us that comes from the EEA) and other times a mere quaint curiosity…