The inheritance of energy and the evolution of unsustainability

Across contemporary and historical human groups, there is variation in how cultures interact with the environment and this variation is inherited through culture. Some human-environment relationships maximize group fitness relative to other relationships. Thus, there is heritable, fitness-associated variation in human-environment interactions and so human-environment interactions may be understood to be an evolved trait. However, one fitness-maximizing human-environment relationship could be unsustainable resource extraction. Anthroecological theory proposes that human cultures and genotypes have been selected for unsustainability, although several mechanisms have been proposed for how this selection may have worked. Here, I extend anthroecological theory and argue that energy inheritances are critical to understanding the evolution of human unsustainability and the human-environment relationship. I develop an agent-based model to illustrate the hypotheses and find that the ability to pass energy to successive generations has impacts on sustainability. Simulations in which energy cannot be passed to subsequent generations are more stable and sustainable than those that can pass energy to offspring, but simulations in which energy cannot be inherited evolve higher reproductive rates than those with energy inheritance. A significant loss of diversity occurs in the simulations and I tentatively compare this loss to the cultural hegemony associated with historic colonization.

在当代与历史上的人类群体中，不同文化与环境的互动方式存在变异，且该变异通过文化得以传承。相较于其他互动模式，部分人类-环境关系可最大化群体适合度（fitness）。因此，人类-环境互动存在可遗传且与适合度相关的变异，故而人类-环境互动可被视作一种演化性状（evolved trait）。
然而，某种实现适合度最大化的人类-环境关系，可能伴随不可持续的资源开采行为。人类生态理论（anthroecological theory）提出，人类文化与基因型（genotypes）已因不可持续性而被选择，尽管学界已提出多种机制阐释这一选择的运作逻辑。
本文拓展了人类生态理论，主张能量传承（energy inheritances）是理解人类不可持续性演化及人类-环境关系的核心要素。本文构建了基于智能体的模型（agent-based model）以验证相关假说，研究发现，向后代传递能量的能力会对系统可持续性产生显著影响。
相较于可向后代传递能量的模拟场景，无法向后代传递能量的模拟场景更为稳定且可持续；但无法实现能量传承的模拟场景，其种群繁殖率却高于存在能量传承的场景。
模拟过程中出现了显著的多样性损失，本文初步将该多样性损失与历史殖民主义相关的文化霸权进行类比。