From small-scale cooperative herding groups to nomadic empires – a cross-cultural approach

Project Information

COMPLEXITY

Grant agreement ID: 101043382

DOI

10.3030/101043382

EC signature date 20 October 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 31 December 2027

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 998 859,00

EU contribution

€ 1 998 859,00

Coordinated by

STIFTELSEN NORSK INSTITUTT FOR KULTURMINNEFORSKNING
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COMPLEXITY (From small-scale cooperative herding groups to nomadic empires – a cross-cultural approach)

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2025-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

COMPLEXITY aims to explore how political complexity can evolve from small, cooperative groups. The project challenges the common belief that nomadic empires only formed due to contact with agricultural neighbours. Instead, it investigates how pastoralists, organised in small herding groups, developed into complex societies capable of conquering their neighbours.

The context of this research is rooted in the historical and anthropological study of nomadic societies. Traditionally, nomadic empires have been viewed as "shadow empires" that developed in response to the sophistication of neighbouring sedentary populations. This perspective, however, does not explain how pastoralists transitioned from small, kin-based cooperative herding groups to complex hierarchical groups with the power to conquer their sedentary neighbours. The project seeks to fill this gap by examining cooperative herding groups across different cultures and environments.
The overall objectives of the project are threefold. First, it aims to cross-culturally document the prevalence of cooperative herding groups by reviewing ethnographic material pertaining to nomadic pastoralists. Second, it will investigate how pastoral cooperation is structured by evolutionary factors such as kinship, reciprocity, social network structure, and norms. This will be done through a pluralistic methodology, including experimental economic games, observations, and interviews. Third, the project will combine empirical data with modelling techniques to investigate whether cooperative herding groups can be considered prototypes for more complex organisations.

Furthermore, the project will enhance our understanding of the evolution of political complexity and cooperation in human societies. It will challenge existing theories and provide new perspectives on the development of nomadic empires. The research will also contribute to the broader field of human cooperation by examining the factors that influence cooperation in small-scale societies. This will have implications for understanding the evolution of cooperation in other contexts, such as modern organisations and communities.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Please describe the activities performed and the main achievements, focusing only on technical and scientific aspects (communication and exploitation activities will be mentioned in another section). At the end of your project, please include the outcomes of the action.

COMPLEXITY's progress is divided into three steps. The first step is a systematic literature review of the ethnographic material to document the prevalence of cooperative herding groups cross-culturally. This work is currently being finalised. Based on this work, appropriate field sites in Inner Asia and Africa were also to be selected. One significant achievement has thus been recruiting two PhD students and two postdoctoral candidates to do fieldwork in Mongolia, Cameroon, and Rwanda.

Second, using a pluralistic methodology, e.g. experimental economic games, observations, and interviews, COMPLEXITY will comparatively investigate to what degree pastoral cooperation is structured by evolutionary factors—such as kinship, reciprocity, social network structure, and norms—and explore how cooperation affects pastoral performance and inequality.

The first round of fieldwork in Mongolia was undertaken in 2024. The second round is scheduled to start in May 2025. Planning for fieldwork in Rwanda and Cameroon is well underway.

One paper is currently being written investigating the relationship between cooperation and performance in Mongolia. Additionally, COMPLEXITY aims to be flexible in terms of both field sites and data sources. Thus, a paper focusing on the relationship between cooperation and performance focusing on reindeer husbandry in Norway is currently being written, and a preliminary analysis of pastoralist inequality has now been published using data from reindeer husbandry.

Third, by combining empirical data with modelling techniques, COMPLEXITY investigates whether cooperative herding groups can be considered prototypes for more complex organisations. A simplified model of the evolution of the hierarchies as an outcome of patron-client relationships under varying environmental risks has been developed in Python. This model will be further developed to incorporate additional mechanisms.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Cooperation is essential for nomadic pastoralists, but the extent of these groups has been surprising. The literature review has documented far more groups than expected, providing a systematic description that increases our understanding of patterns of cooperation. Comparing forager cooperation with pastoral cooperation also points to an additional gap in our understanding of cooperation. Pastoralists and foragers cooperate to increase resource extraction efficiency. These are patterns of cooperation that can be explained by direct- and indirect fitness effects on survival and reproduction. Extracting resources through cooperation has immediate individual fitness benefits. However, climate change, mass extinction of the largest animals and overexploitation of renewable resources represent evolutionary novel problems because the problem is not necessarily to increase efficiency but rather to limit the extraction of additional resources. Consider hunting large game: cooperation is necessary to harvest the benefits. However, if the game is endangered, hunters must cooperate and agree not to hunt today to secure a viable game population for future hunting. Evidence of cooperative hunting is ubiquitous; evidence of individuals collaborating to conserve prey experiencing a declining population is almost non-existent. The benefits of cooperative hunting of large prey are immediate. Agreeing not to hunt, however, carries an immediate cost; the benefits are intangible in the short term and might not even be realised by the cooperating individuals. Thus, more work must be done to examine under what conditions cooperation to conserve resources is sustainable for individuals.

Previous studies on pastoral wealth inequalities have been limited by small sample sizes and short time frames. However, a comprehensive study of Saami reindeer husbandry using extensive data from licensed herders in Norway shows that livestock as the main source of wealth does not mitigate wealth inequalities or social differentiation. While the overall inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient and cumulative wealth, decreased, rank differences remained. This indicates that wealth accumulates over time, with high earners able to save and grow their wealth more effectively than low earners. Consequently, livestock inequalities may have underpinned patron-client relationships and contributed to aristocratic power and administrative processes in nomadic societies across the Old World.