The evolution of agriculture is responsible for the development of property rights

Current Biology has published an article that puts forward the theory, with convincing evidence, that the evolution of homo sapiens from foragers/hunter-gatherers to agricultural based civilizations is the main factor in the development of what we now look at as Property Rights:

"To test this hypothesis, Bowles and Choi developed a model that incorporates population dynamics, climate variability, different approaches to food provision, and different approaches to property sharing. Model runs showed that overall the transition to farming is an unlikely one and only succeeds under a small range of conditions. In all successful simulated transitions, the model showed that the property rights among farming populations co-evolved with the introduction of farming methods."

Read the entire fascinating article here at CURRENT BIOLOGY

In case you were wondering how idiotic Anthropology at the University of Toronto has become...

They are having a Salon evening on the subject of "Techno science"

Sounds innocuous enough, eh?

Think again:

Through critical itineraries, the Salon will bring postcolonial studies, indigenous studies, critical race studies, and feminist and queer studies to bear on the ways we follow and tell stories about technoscience.

We aspire to provoke interventions into our analytic, narrative, and political habits, to spark scholarship that is accountable to multiple histories and contemporary urgencies, and to rethink the relationships among diversely situated human and nonhuman actors. While recognizing how technoscience is deeply implicated in violence, colonialism and capitalism, how might we also attend to the non-hegemonic possibilities, alters, and elsewheres that are within technoscience? Read our provocation at http://technosalon.wordpress.com/provocation/