Low-cost niche construction can create conditions for subdivided populations

Modern human uniqueness has been defined by a reliance on social learning and hierarchical cooperation networks that result in cumulative cultural evolution. There is archaeological evidence that such social organization emerged through innovations that facilitated exploitation of resources that naturally occur in dense and predictable patches, leading to social regionalization and potentially territorial behavior. However, another way humans can access high-density patches is through transformation of the environment via niche construction. Here, we use an agent-based model to investigate how low-cost niche construction behaviors - those that can be applied without intensifying into dependence on food production - can transform resource distributions over time. We then examine the resulting impact of this on human mobility and social organization. In all scenarios where the cost of disturbance is low, we see positive selection for disturbance behaviors, leading to creation of a locally heterogeneous resource landscape. This results in increased carrying capacity, higher population densities, reduced mobility, and smaller social networks - all factors implicated in the eventual transition to food production. We demonstrate that foragers using even low-cost niche constructing behaviors can produce legacy landscapes with resource distributions that support more local social interactions even without socially imposed boundaries or territory defense of dense and predictable resources.