Reciprocal Obligations - The Future Oriented Network of Indebtedness

Cultural anthropologists lionel tiger and robin fox view this web of indebtedness as a unique adaptive mechanism. We are human because our ancestors learned to share their food and their skills in an honored network of obligation, he says. For the first time in evolutionary history, one individual could give away any of a variety of resources without actually giving them away. The need to reciprocate had transcended great cultural difference, long distances, acute famine and immediate self interest.