In this volume, the authors present an original ethnographic study of five llama herding communities in Ayacucho, Peru. Data on herd dynamics are subjected to computer modeling in an effort to evaluate the roles of biology, symbolic and ritual behavior, ecological adaptation, and practical reason. The book contains the most detailed study of the waytakuy llama marking ceremony yet available. The role of this ceremony in preventing herds from going to extinction is evaluated against anthropological and sociobiological theory. This is an interdisciplinary book will appeal to professional archaeologists, prehistorians, cultural anthropologists, Andeanists, theoretical biologists, evolutionary biologists, and zoologists interested in animal domestication.

In this volume, the authors present an original ethnographic study of five llama herding communities in Ayacucho, Peru. Data on herd dynamics are subjected to computer modeling in an effort to evaluate the roles of biology, symbolic and ritual behavior, ecological adaptation, and practical reason. The book contains the most detailed study of the waytakuy llama marking ceremony yet available. The role of this ceremony in preventing herds from going to extinction is evaluated against anthropological and sociobiological theory. This is an interdisciplinary book will appeal to professional archaeologists, prehistorians, cultural anthropologists, Andeanists, theoretical biologists, evolutionary biologists, and zoologists interested in animal domestication.

The author first introduces the basic framework for cultural algorithms and he then explains the social structure of a cultural system as a mechanism for the distribution of problem-solving information throughout a population. Three different models for social organizations are presented: the homogeneous (nuclear family), heterogeneous (expanded family), and subculture (descent groups) social models. The chapters that follow compare the learning capabilities of these social organizations relative to problems of varying complexity. The book concludes with a discussion of how the results can impact our understanding of social evolution.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Evolutionary Programming, EP 97, held in Indianapolis, IN, USA, in April 1997.
The 36 revised full papers presented were carefully selected for inclusion in the proceedings. The papers are organized in sections on evolutionary methods for modeling and training, alternative frameworks for the computational study of evolutionary social systems, genetic programming: issues and applications, issues in evolutionary optimization, enhanced evolutionary operators, theory and analysis of evolutionary computations, issues in adaptability: theory and practice, and evolution and NP-hard problems.