The Geography of Resources, Conflict, and Territory in Hominins

In this paper we explore how hominin behavior responds to the distribution of resources in territorial conflict. We develop an economic model to organize the findings of primatologists, isolating how resource skew and variance affect territorial ranges, as well as how they interact with unequal appropriation abilities. Testing the predictions for humans in a controlled laboratory experiment, we find that observed behavior clusters around the equilibrium predictions and all comparative statics have the predicted sign. We also find that equally strong appropriators choose more exclusive and less overlapping ranges than predicted with symmetric resources, and weaker appropriators choose more engulfed ranges than predicted with skewed resources