Literacy and Patriarchy

[TimG]

So, obviously after there were more than a few million people in the world (50 to 100 million upper limit), population densities started getting too large in many areas to live just off hunting and gathering alone.

Which means you agree with my point.

BTW, whenever a new technology is introduced it takes some time before the benefits become clearly obvious. In the 80s computers were not always better than the old paper processes. It took until the 2000s before the advantages of computers completely surpassed the old ways. The same was likely true of agriculture where location and plant availability caused great variations in the viability of the technique. But today, there is no doubt that agriculture is far superior to hunting a means to feed and maintain a healthy population.

Okay, here's a brief description of the phenomena called Status Leveling:

I don't see any evolutionary advantage conferred on a society that adopted such beliefs. I can see that such a system could emerge in some cases but there is not reason to believe it is required by all hunter gathers. Edited February 19, 2015 by TimG

[cybercoma]

All true. Still, would you rather live to 60 running from a pterodactyl or live to 50 sitting on a tree stump and watching chickens fornicate ?

Also - why is nobody challenging my "humans among the dinosaurs" references ?

Because we know you're being funny?

[Michael Hardner]

Because we know you're being funny?

Aw shucks...

[WIP]

Which means you agree with my point.

My point was never that we should all go out and live in the forest! That was something some hippies tried back in the 60's, although most of them failed for a variety of reasons.

My point is borrowed from some scientists like: Frans de Waal, Christopher Ryan, Douglas Fry, Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett - who've come from a variety of scientific fields: archaeology, anthropology, primatology, psychology, epidemiology etc., and have independently arrived at a conclusion that the answers to how we live today should be largely determined by how we are most suited to live....and if we spent the vast amount of time developing into modern humans and then living as modern humans in small hunter-gatherer family groups that migrated throughout and then out of Africa at least twice in human history....then the ideal society is going to be as closely matching our paleo-ancestors as possible!

What can we learn from early human societies based on scant and unevenly distributed archaeological evidence? And what can the more modern surviving hunter-gatherer bands tell us about basic human nature?

The weight of evidence leads to a set of conclusions that: we are NOT violent by nature, regardless of what war fans and war profiteers try to say about paleo-history. We began in very close-knit cooperative and egalitarian family groups that are likely impossible to duplicate under modern conditions. Marx&Engels proposed communes for rural life, after reading the work of early anthropologist - Louis Henry Morgan, but the communes that were attempted by practical Marxist leaders like Lenin and Mao achieved less than spectacular results! No doubt because they were forcing unrelated people together to live on communes, but making the institution involuntary was a bad start to begin with!

The epidemiological work of Wilkinson and Pickett, who produced exhaustive statistical analysis from around the world showing how the levels of economic inequality correlate with a whole laundry list of physical, psychological and social ills (The Spirit Level), should tell us that promoting equality and diminishing inequalities should be a high priority for any movement hoping for a better tomorrow. The other task would be to stop growth-dependent economic policies, and reduce product demand....for ecological reasons and better resource management...which will become very important concerns in the coming years, and are problems that present day consumer demand-driven industrial capitalism has no answers for, and will just exhaust everything available and self-destruct.

BTW, whenever a new technology is introduced it takes some time before the benefits become clearly obvious. In the 80s computers were not always better than the old paper processes. It took until the 2000s before the advantages of computers completely surpassed the old ways. The same was likely true of agriculture where location and plant availability caused great variations in the viability of the

technique. But today, there is no doubt that agriculture is far superior to hunting a means to feed and maintain a healthy population.

Have you noticed that energy systems haven't followed the rules of Moore's Law (exponential improvements...I forget the details) because the improvements in computer processing were achieved without any needs for increased energy. The problem with techno-believers is that they still think Moore's Law applies to all technologies....and if that were true, I'd be stepping out and getting in my flying car this afternoon.

In agriculture - we have twice the productive land capacity on average compared to about 50 years ago; but these improvements have come at a high price: irreversible topsoil erosion, depletion of available irrigation sources, overuse of oil-based fertilizers that have upset the nitrogen cycle, turning rivers and seashores into dead zones.....the so called green revolution hybrids that were given all the credit for improving food yields, helped somewhat; but the main green revolution seed developer - Norman Borlaug, warned world leaders half a century ago that the revolution should only be considered a temporary stopgap to alleviate famines and food shortages in poorer countries/ not a permanent fix! And that was when the world had half as many people as today. So, obviously nobody heeded his warnings to plan ahead and bring populations and food demands under control. It will be much harder to prevent famines and a whole variety of unexpected catastrophes in the future because of this failure to look ahead more than a few years.

I don't see any evolutionary advantage conferred on a society that adopted such beliefs. I can see that such a system could emerge in some cases but there is not reason to believe it is required by all hunter gathers.

That phenomena described as 'status leveling' has been pretty universal in hunter-gatherer societies, so if you put such high credence on evolutionary forces, you have to find an alternative explanation for why such a cultural adaptation would become so widespread. I think the explanation that group cohesion was supremely important, is the most obvious answer. In later societies that could store food and have surpluses, perhaps a lot more variation could develop in social organization. We do see that in the early city-states, where some like Sumer, are patriarchal and highly hierarchical, while the Indus Vally cities present signs of promoting uniformity...the near identical mud-brick houses in early Mohenjo-Daro being an obvious example of how almost identical environments could create cities with very different organizational structures and apparent social values.

Edited February 20, 2015 by WIP

[TimG]

the ideal society is going to be as closely matching our paleo-ancestors as possible!

The ideal society is the one that maximizes the health and welfare of the humans living. At this point in time that goal requires a society that invests heavily in technology because that is the only way to feed and shelter the population that exists today. This means historical analogs are quite useless.

We began in very close-knit cooperative and egalitarian family groups that are likely impossible to duplicate under modern conditions.

Humans are tribal. They co-operate with members of their tribe but fight with members outside of their tribe. That was true 100,000 years ago and it is true today. The only difference is technology has made it possible to expand the size of the "tribe" which a human feels they belong, however, the tribes still exist and will always exist because that is human nature. A good system is one that minimizes the harm caused by conflict between tribes. A bad system is one that pretends that tribes don't exist or should be eliminated. Capitalism and international trade are one way to limit those harms by trading military conflict for economic conflicts.

that promoting equality and diminishing inequalities should be a high priority for any movement hoping for a better tomorrow.

A pollyannish view that denies the nature of humans. The fact that isolated tribal groups had little inter-tribe conflict is not evidence that mass societies of humans can be built along the same lines.

The rules that work for small groups simply do not apply to large groups and if you are not proposing mass exterminations we need a social philosophy that works for large groups. Rule based competition has proven to be effective but competition implies there must always be winners and losers. What we need are ways to level the playing field so everyone has a chance of winning. We do not/should not try to eliminate the distinction between winners and losers.

Edited February 21, 2015 by TimG

[WIP]

The ideal society is the one that maximizes the health and welfare of the humans living. At this point in time that goal requires a society that invests heavily in technology because that is the only way to feed and shelter the population that exists today. This means historical analogs are quite useless.

I haven't mentioned technology issues here because it has little to do with the core subject, but my primary objection with the way new technologies, green technology solutions and similar TED Talk buzzwords are tossed in the air as solutions to our problems, is that a belief that there are future technological solutions to problems waiting out there or somewhere in the future, is that it is a faith-based belief to begin with! On another topic, it is the one thing I find highly ironic about the new atheist/humanist movement: a faith, yes FAITH that can't be substantiated in evidence, that technology paves the way for a better and brighter tomorrow. But, techno-faith is so omnipresent in modern culture, that techno-optimism is part of almost every religion...regardless of how fundamentalist, and every social movement....including environment and economic issues.

So, technology faith tells us that new machines will take our problems away...until we make a careful analysis of the progress of technology and realize that new technologies carry a lot of unexpected baggage with them......new, usually unexpected problems that often require the invention of "counter-technologies" to fix. While the counter-technological solutions often lead to further problems etc. About five years ago, I came across a book by Michael & Joyce Huesemann, after hearing an internet radio interview they did: Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won't Save Us or the Environment. And it struck me that this was the first time I had heard any real criticism of the common faith-based assumption that technology will save us all. The truth seems more likely that - until we take a skeptical look at technology and demand that new tech is thoroughly tested before being applied, we will follow the technology genie till the end! From the book:

“We live in a highly complex and dynamic world where, according to Barry Commoner’s amusing but insightful first law of ecology, ‘Everything is Connected to Everything Else.’ Although we may perceive the natural environment as consisting of many different and isolated components and processes, these are all derivatives of the same cosmos, interrelated and linked together through mutual cause and effect. Science, of course, has been very successful in elucidating some of these causal relationships, but, as will be discussed below, only a subset of the totality of such relationships. The fact that ‘all is connected to all’ has profound implications for the application of technology, particularly with respect to unintended consequences.” (p. 3)

“Because the negative consequences of science and technology often occur in unanticipated forms and in distant locations, and sometimes after significant time intervals, they are often not perceived as related to their causes. Nevertheless, technology will necessarily produce both positive and negative effects. This character of technology creates a serious intellectual challenge for technological optimists who exclusively focus on the positive aspects of technology while ignoring the, often enormous, negatives.”

The book also notes the energy-dependence of new technologies....something that is going to be a huge problem in the coming years if no new cheap sources of clean energy are developed.

Humans are tribal. They co-operate with members of their tribe but fight with members outside of their tribe. That was true 100,000 years ago and it is true today.

NO it isn't! Just repeating it over and over and over doesn't make it true! The claim that violence and warfare is part of basic human nature is used by everyone...including Barack Obama at his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech (if that wasn't a tip-off of his future plans!) to justify today's violence and warfare! There are a lot of people in the war business today, and the war lobby has a huge stake in promoting the use of warfare as foreign policy and the use of violence at home to maintain control, so they keep on re-inventing the past no matter how many times claims of prehistoric warfare are knocked down under careful outside investigation. And, they have loads of willing accomplices in re-inventing the past as something barbaric and relatively sub-human...because it's the only way now to try to create a future that looks better than the past!

The archaeologists and anthropologists (and there are loads of them) who believe in a Hobbesian theory of the past, keep sifting through archaeological digs, looking for something that is more than 8000 years old that could be interpreted as a sign of warfare and violence; and every damn time they find even the smallest shard of evidence to justify the claim, it's on the front page of Time magazine, Discover, the science websites etc.! While at the same time they avoid commentary on facts that don't fit the claim, such as the most ancient city in Anatolia - Catalhoyuk, gathered together several thousand people for almost two thousand years up till less than 8000 years ago, and yet this city never had a wall constructed around its perimeter in all that time, nor have archaeologists found any weapons specifically designed for warfare/ rather than hunting! Why? If violence is primeval, an unorganized gathering together of large numbers of Natufians, building mud-brick houses in chaotic-looking undesigned city (something more akin to a refugee camp) would surely have left lots of evidence for warfare and violence, if it was happening at that time. Instead, the pro-war researchers highlight the end period of Catalhoyuk (just as they do with Mohenjo-Daro on the Indus River) when a period of chaos of some sorts, led to the destruction of the cities and mass slaughter, as their evidence that hunter-gatherers were really violent by nature.

It's not a pleasant thought that our best days may have passed us by long ago....as the longing myths of primeval paradise like the Garden of Eden apparently tell us; but if that's how it's happened, we either accept it, or live in delusion that it is natural for the human race to be violent, narcissistic, and ruthlessly hierarchical.

The only difference is technology has made it possible to expand the size of the "tribe" which a human feels they belong,

Actually, it hasn't! I've heard more than one sociologist comment that the most people we can carry on a personal relationship with is still 200....long believed to be the upper limit in size of a hunter-gatherer community. You can have thousands of facebook friends, but those are friends in name only. The likely reason why we developed organized religion that codified beliefs and set them apart from daily life, is because of the need to bind large numbers of people together for common purpose. Same goes for nationalistic ideologies! What does it mean to be patriotic? My nation is for a bunch of muddled, undefined reasons superior to those other countries?

Same idiocy is found in big league sports....which I haven't taken seriously since I turned 13 and discovered girls! A hockey team or a football team owned by some corporation or billionaire, which has players gathered from who knows where, represents my city! And I'm supposed to fork out thousands of dollars every year on seasons tickets to watch other people playing a game? Not that I don't watch a few games every now and then, but I'm not going to paint my face blue or believe that my town will be different the next day if "our" team wins the series! The whole topic of sports fandom is another example of irrational behaviour that should be explored in greater detail, especially nowadays since it has become so profitable for a few owners.

But, all of these idiotic manifestations of tribalism are created to make modern life acceptable. The major religions of the world tried to develop an understanding of universalism, but any real attempts at universal brotherhood and sisterhood are stymied by real life objectives of empire builders who want to fight for all of the pieces on the board!

however, the tribes still exist and will always exist because that is human nature. A good system is one that minimizes the harm caused by conflict between tribes. A bad system is one that pretends that tribes don't exist or should be eliminated. Capitalism and international trade are one way to limit those harms by trading military conflict for economic conflicts.

And how is that working? Do you see any signs that capitalism and the trend towards corporate globalization (the only global movement that works) has reduced warfare, inequality, environmental destruction etc.?

In fact, the exact opposite has happened! Capitalism and it's trajectory towards monopolistic ownership of wealth and productivity, has created more wars, more civil wars, more undeclared/unlawful wars, while a handful have become filthy rich...with a few of their hangers-on swimming in their wake and gaining also...with the vast majority mired in worse poverty in the new slave-industrial cities than they were when they scratched out a simple living as itinerant farmers! And even on the environment, we have discovered that since the age of globalization and so called free trade, the increased specialization of world economies has dramatically increased cargo transport over the oceans and overland, so globalization...even without the consumerist pressures it puts on economies to continually increase production, is still an environmental disaster that is playing a part in the exponential increases in Co2 levels in our time.

Rule based competition has proven to be effective but competition implies there must always be winners and losers. What we need are ways to level the playing field so everyone has a chance of winning. We do not/should not try to eliminate the distinction between winners and losers.

Yes, we should eliminate this winners-and-losers crap before we're all fighting to protect whatever we got! We live in a crowded world with diminishing returns...because of environmental failure and resource declines. So, all of this competition crap has to be ended or even those who consider themselves "winners" will find that they are perpetually at risk by everyone who will become more willing to take what they've got by force!

I discovered many years ago that the "winners" in poor third world nations were spending thousands of dollars a year to send their children to expensive private schools in the U.S., Canada and Europe, not so much for better education as it was to avoid the risk of having to pay even more money to kidnappers holding their children for ransom. Our undeserved rich, who think they are better than everyone else....even if they were born in wealth and privilege, have come up at a time when the general increases in wealth in western nations was increasing rapidly, and the wealth was being distributed throughout....until 25 or 30 years ago! Since that time, income and wealth has become increasingly stratified along class lines, and upward mobility has declined precipitously as higher education becomes more and more the privilege of the minority who can afford it.

So, what does our future hold? The billionaires already have security licensed to carry automatic weapons, so it's probably not that far till they equip their limo's with flamethrowers along the undercarriage and similar protection devices like the rich use in South Africa.

There are a lot of reasons why we should be transitioning towards a much more equal world, but I'm not sure what the odds are of ever getting there, because the siren song of greed is still being heard by the majority of people.

[TimG]

I haven't mentioned technology issues here because it has little to do with the core subject, but my primary objection with the way new technologies, green technology solutions and similar TED Talk buzzwords are tossed in the air as solutions to our problems, is that a belief that there are future technological solutions to problems waiting out there or somewhere in the future

I was simply stating a self-evident truth: that if a solution exists it will require the development and deployment of more and more technology. This is not a question of faith. It is a question of necessity. It is rather pointless to rail about the fact that all technology has negative side effects when we have no choice but to use it.

NO it isn't! Just repeating it over and over and over doesn't make it true! The claim that violence and warfare is part of basic human nature is used by everyone...including Barack Obama at his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech (if that wasn't a tip-off of his future plans!) to justify today's violence and warfare!

Humans are driven to survive. If they can survive without resorting to violence they will. If violence is required for survival they will use it. In the past isolated tribes did not compete for resources so there was no need for violence. Now there are too many people and too few resources. This means violence is inevitable and we can only seek to manage it.

Why? If violence is primeval, an unorganized gathering together of large numbers of ...

Given limited data it is possible to select data that will support whatever narrative a researcher wants to construct. I don't see the point of arguing about such things when we have more relevant data from societies today. Specifically, violence can be limited when we build social structures that foster a sense of trust among members. The are different ways to create these social structures but the most successful structures include the rule of law, free markets, meritocracy, democracy and some level of income redistribution. The most destructive are those that use religious belief or nationalism to create a sense of 'tribe loyalty' which may reduce conflict within the tribe but greatly increase the likelihood of violent conflict with other tribes.

Actually, it hasn't! I've heard more than one sociologist comment that the most people we can carry on a personal relationship with is still 200.

Being part of a tribe does not require a personal relationship with everyone in the tribe. The point of the tribe is to create a community that leads to altruism and sharing of resources.

And how is that working? Do you see any signs that capitalism and the trend towards corporate globalization (the only global movement that works) has reduced warfare, inequality, environmental destruction etc.?

For the most part it is working quite well. Fewer people are living in poverty and enjoying peace than at any time in the past. Conflicts between major powers have all but ended despite Russia's and China's attempts to restart them. This is not to say there are no problems but you are wrong to say that the world today is worse than in the past.

Yes, we should eliminate this winners-and-losers crap before we're all fighting to protect whatever we got! We live in a crowded world with diminishing returns...because of environmental failure and resource declines. So, all of this competition crap has to be ended or even those who consider themselves "winners" will find that they are perpetually at risk by everyone who will become more willing to take what they've got by force!

Every mass society from the dawn of time has created a hierarchy where the people at the top enjoy more material comforts than the people at the bottom. Even societies like the USSR which nominally claimed to eliminate these hierarchies perpetuated them with communist party politics. So no matter what your rhetoric you are not really arguing for equality. You are arguing that people that you believe are "deserving" should reap the benefits instead of the "undeserving" rich today.

My position is we need to ensure equality of opportunity within a rules base system that allows people to keep wealth they earn by following the rules. I realize that goal is difficult to achieve because family has a huge effect on the opportunities available to any one individual. But a society built around these objectives will be much fairer in the long run than a society where one's opportunities depends on a inner circle of "enforcers" who take wealth earned by others under the guise of "equality" and hoard it for themselves.

Edited February 22, 2015 by TimG

[Michael Hardner]

Some comments:

I'm finding it hard to understand how to reconcile these two statements:

Humans are tribal. They co-operate with members of their tribe but fight with members outside of their tribe. That was true 100,000 years ago and it is true today. The only difference is technology has made it possible to expand the size of the "tribe" which a human feels they belong, however, the tribes still exist and will always exist because that is human nature.

And this:

The rules that work for small groups simply do not apply to large groups and if you are not proposing mass exterminations we need a social philosophy that works for large groups.

You seem to be saying the truths about tribal living still apply, only to larger groups... but they you say that some rules don't apply to large groups.

Which truths/rules DO scale up and which ones don't ?

..............................

We do not/should not try to eliminate the distinction between winners and losers.

It would be impossible to eliminate the distinction. People are born unequal, so inequality will always be with us. If one member of the tribe tried to hoard all assets as his 'personal property' then there would have been a 'leveling process' whereby the hoarder would first be 'leveled' by the tribe, whereupon the distribution of wealth would have been leveled.

They probably wouldn't have thought too much about that one.

..............................

But... this:

A pollyannish view that denies the nature of humans.

I'm observing a conversation between somebody (WIP) who has a vast knowledge of a topic, and another person (TimG) who is tossing out questions and making suggestions. This is not, however, a conversation between two individuals with an equal amount of expertise. Thus calling a view "pollyannish", while not at all an insult and not in the domain of the facilitator, strikes me as being unpoised at best, and insecure at worst. That's just my observation, as you may have noticed that I'm now putting myself in the role of student in this conversation - from both of you.

[Michael Hardner]

But, techno-faith is so omnipresent in modern culture, that techno-optimism is part of almost every religion...regardless of how fundamentalist, and every social movement....including environment and economic issues.

Astute, as usual. Such a great thread, so much to learn. I can barely get through one or two posts over a lunch hour !

[Michael Hardner]

NO it isn't! Just repeating it over and over and over doesn't make it true! The claim that violence and warfare is part of basic human nature is used by everyone...including Barack Obama at his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech (if that wasn't a tip-off of his future plans!) to justify today's violence and warfare! There are a lot of people in the war business today, and the war lobby has a huge stake in promoting the use of warfare as foreign policy and the use of violence at home to maintain control, so they keep on re-inventing the past no matter how many times claims of prehistoric warfare are knocked down under careful outside investigation. And, they have loads of willing accomplices in re-inventing the past as something barbaric and relatively sub-human...because it's the only way now to try to create a future that looks better than the past!

The archaeologists and anthropologists (and there are loads of them) who believe in a Hobbesian theory of the past, keep sifting through archaeological digs, looking for something that is more than 8000 years old that could be interpreted as a sign of warfare and violence; and every damn time they find even the smallest shard of evidence to justify the claim, it's on the front page of Time magazine, Discover, the science websites etc.! While at the same time they avoid commentary on facts that don't fit the claim, such as the most ancient city in Anatolia - Catalhoyuk, gathered together several thousand people for almost two thousand years up till less than 8000 years ago, and yet this city never had a wall constructed around its perimeter in all that time, nor have archaeologists found any weapons specifically designed for warfare/ rather than hunting! Why? If violence is primeval, an unorganized gathering together of large numbers of Natufians, building mud-brick houses in chaotic-looking undesigned city (something more akin to a refugee camp) would surely have left lots of evidence for warfare and violence, if it was happening at that time. Instead, the pro-war researchers highlight the end period of Catalhoyuk (just as they do with Mohenjo-Daro on the Indus River) when a period of chaos of some sorts, led to the destruction of the cities and mass slaughter, as their evidence that hunter-gatherers were really violent by nature.

It's not a pleasant thought that our best days may have passed us by long ago....as the longing myths of primeval paradise like the Garden of Eden apparently tell us; but if that's how it's happened, we either accept it, or live in delusion that it is natural for the human race to be violent, narcissistic, and ruthlessly hierarchical.

Now I'm regretting what I posted about your knowledge of the subject matter, and leaning towards reading TimG's take on all of this a little more. What you're posting sounds too much like romanticizing of the past to me.

If the advanced builders of Catalhoyuk weren't warlike, then who defeated them ? A more advanced people ?

War and violence is part of tribal life - I think it's even in Diamond's book Guns, Germs & Steel. Why discount that ? Or is that what you're doing ?

Even if life wasn't MORE violent, isn't there something to be said for a 'civilized' society, ie. the Sumerians and Babylonians WROTE DOWN laws that were universal and forbade murder and so on ? Violence wasn't necessarily a crime before that, no ?

[Michael Hardner]

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/130214/west-papua-new-guinea-jared-diamond

Apparently Jared Diamond's statements about the Paupuans have ruffled their feathers.... which I assume is a costume that they wear when reviewing cultural analyses of their peoples....

[Michael Hardner]

But, as I said, Jared Diamond did posit that there is/was a 'cycle of violence' with preliterate peoples in that way...

[TimG]

Which truths/rules DO scale up and which ones don't ?

By observation. Humans today are very tribal and tend to be more willing to extend altruism and share resources with people that are part of their tribe. However, these tribes are sharing the same living space with other tribes which did not happen in the past when hunter gather groups interacted infrequently. This adds tensions to societies today that must be managed and precludes some types of social organizations.

Thus calling a view "pollyannish", while not at all an insult and not in the domain of the facilitator, strikes me as being unpoised at best, and insecure at worst. That's just my observation, as you may have noticed that I'm now putting myself in the role of student in this conversation - from both of you.

WIP does appear to have a lot of knowledge of literature on prehistoric cultures, however, that does not make his attempts to apply analogies from the past to world today any more informed than my own. The comment that I replied was in response to WIP stating his opinion on what type of society we should have today and I stand my characterization.

[Michael Hardner]

WIP does appear to have a lot of knowledge of literature on prehistoric cultures, however, that does not make his attempts to apply analogies from the past to world today any more informed than my own.

Well, I'd say they're more informed but maybe not any more correct.

The comment that I replied was in response to WIP stating his opinion on what type of society we should have today and I stand my characterization.

"should" isn't really part of it IMO. But ok...

[WIP]

Now I'm regretting what I posted about your knowledge of the subject matter, and leaning towards reading TimG's take on all of this a little more.

So be it! I post what I believe to be honest and important/ not to tickle people's ears or tell them what they want to hear!

What you're posting sounds too much like romanticizing of the past to me.

If the advanced builders of Catalhoyuk weren't warlike, then who defeated them ? A more advanced people ?

How many cities do we have today that are 2000 years old? It is widely noted that something cataclysmic happened about 7 to 8000 years ago, that caused wide upheavals in early societies. There are periodic times of cataclysm where a lot of civilizations are unable to cope with and collapse...so why would you expect anything different from the earliest large village settlements?

The basic facts are that: it was something built, or just grew together, a long time ago resembling a city...since we have no way of knowing if it even had any organizational structure, which later cities built along river valleys had. But, no walls, no fortifications, no signs among the bodies exhumed that there was any mass killings or organized violence...that should tell us something..but it is not what a lot of people want to hear! And the problem in evaluating anthropology is that so much depends on how evidence is interpreted after it is acquired. This is one of the major objections in ch. 7 of a large volume edited by anthropologist Douglas Fry: War, Peace and Human Nature. In ch.7, contributor Brian Ferguson goes over the anthropological evidence of primeval war contained in Stephen Pinker's popular book: Our Better Angels, and finds many of Pinker's 21 examples of prehistoric warfare include mis-categorized archaeological remains and even at least two duplications of the same evidence by different authors. This is the problem when an expert in one field steps into a completely different realm he has no basic grounding in, and just takes the advice of one or two experts...who were already in agreement with Pinker on violence in the past. From the conclusion of chapter 7:

Is this sample representative of war death rates among prehistoric populations? Hardly. It is a selective compilation of highly unusual cases, grossly distorting war's antiquity and lethality. The elaborate castle of evolutionary and other theorizing that rises on this sample is built upon sand. Is there an alternative way of assessing the presence of war in prehistory, and of evaluating whether making war is the expectable expression of evolved tendencies to kill? Yes. Is there archaeological evidence indicating war was absent in entire prehistoric war mortality is demonstrated in ch.11, which surveys all Europe and that is done, with careful attention and vagaries of evidence, an entirely different story unfolds. War does not go forever backwards in time. It had a beginning. We are not hardwired for war. We learn it.

Ferguson points out that a general, overall view of prehistory would provide a more accurate assessment of the distant past than taking snapshots in time of the examples of large scale violence. Warfare is not a constant even in recorded history, and the recent evidence from early written works that display possible descriptions of PTSD in ancient warriors, indicates that most of us have a hardwired aversion to this sort of violence and become psychologically unbalanced when exposed to it.

That last line is the crux of this issue on the normalization of war and violence in our time. Violence and warfare are learned behaviours, not something that we do naturally for no reason! Times in the past where there are examples of great violent upheavals, we find other correlating factors with climate change and food shortages....something to keep in mind for the times ahead!

War and violence is part of tribal life - I think it's even in Diamond's book Guns, Germs & Steel. Why discount that ? Or is that what you're doing ?

Even if life wasn't MORE violent, isn't there something to be said for a 'civilized' society, ie. the Sumerians and Babylonians WROTE DOWN laws that were universal and forbade murder and so on ? Violence wasn't necessarily a crime before that, no ?

Already covered above, but once again: war and violence are learned human behaviours that arise during times of stress. In the distant past, when people could not claim land or acquire possessions to fight over, violence was generally much less than in more modern times.

And before I forget, I hate seeing Jared Diamond trotted out over and over again as the supreme expert on all things anthropology. Fact is that his career contains a number of mistakes...even ones he refused to retract when evidence has come in against them - such as his famous book: Collapse - about his theory of how civilizations rise and fall, omits evidence from botanists and other scientists that overturned the long-held theory of a large civilization on East Island consuming all the trees for monument building and then cannabalizing themselves to extinction. The trees started dying out much earlier from diseases and rat infestations from the ships of early explorers, and Easter Island did not grow as large/ nor collapse as greatly as the mythologized disaster scenario portrays it. But Diamond had a book to write...and he didn't want to make any changes to it before sending it off for publishing. So, let's just say he's done some sloppy work himself to be regarded as an unquestioned authority.

The Papuans issue is very valid if you want to read it. They, like all remaining hunter-gatherers in the world, are being forced out of the forests by often brutal governments and commercial exploiters of the land. Diamond's descriptions of them are usually sympathetic, but extremely patronizing, indicating that he doesn't really consider them to be on the level of what he calls "the moderns."

[Michael Hardner]

So be it! I post what I believe to be honest and important/ not to tickle people's ears or tell them what they want to hear!

So be it. Your take on aboriginal living though seems to be conveniently inoffensive, whereas Diamond instead judiciously chose to offend an aboriginal people with the least amount of North American media savvy.

I'll read the rest of your post later on.

[WIP]

So be it. Your take on aboriginal living though seems to be conveniently inoffensive, whereas Diamond instead judiciously chose to offend an aboriginal people with the least amount of North American media savvy.

I'll read the rest of your post later on.

They're not the only ones who are tired of Jared Diamond propagating the theme of the"Myth of the Savage," as John Horgan does here in this Scientific American article.

Christopher Ryan, a psychologist who designs experiments for anthropological fieldwork, and has been in the field meeting Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribes himself, has also complained about Diamond continuing to reference the work of long-discredited French anthropologist - Napolean Chagnon. I don't have time to look it up right now,, but Chagnon's work with the Yanomamo tribes of southern Venezuela made him a star 30 or 40 years ago, when he produced a documentary about how the Yanomami were savage killers for no good reason...since they had plenty of food etc.. As it turned out, Chagnon staged the fighting that led to a number of deaths by distributing gifts, including metal knives and hand-axes to some of the tribesmen.....and then he filmed the chaos that ensued....something that should have brought criminal charges down on him. And certainly something that makes Diamond contemptible for continuing to reference Chagnon's work!

Right now, I am about halfway through the long volume on history of warfare compiled by Douglas Fry...I mentioned earlier. I'm on a chapter dealing with studies from North American anthropology, and I'm surprised how much new research and answers are available compared to when I took a nightschool class on native history over 30 years ago. In brief, the aboriginal societies of the Americas provide opportunities to study a range of culture that was not available in the Old World after large empires became established 3 to 4 thousand years ago, and started obliterating pre-existing cultures.

In North America, we find the same trend as the Old World, thousands of years ago, where agriculture slowly developed from hunter-gatherers scattering seeds and the settling in permanent locations once population sizes grew large. In North America, there was an interesting cycle as populations rapidly increase, and a transition to permanent settlement, but followed by periods of population die-off, likely because of violence and long, persistent droughts. After population collapse, many of these groups return to their former hunter-gatherer lifestyles until population pressures increase again, to make permanent settlement farming essential....which is where things were in the Eastern Woodlands when the first Europeans were arriving.

So, the takeaway seems to be that farming is never a first option and a desired goal anywhere in the world...civilization or not! Just as in the Old World, New World empires like the Aztecs, Incas, Toltecs, and others had to enslave foreign tribes to work the fields to provide the quantity of food needed to maintain their city states.

The summary again is that violence is not something that is part of human nature....something genetically predestined even for more aggressive males. The new world hunter-gatherers had a variety of conflict resolution strategies to prevent violence from escalating, and tribes would separate and even move to less desired locations than to go to war over a particular area. This does not change until population pressures reach a critical mass, where some groups will raid other settlements for food and other valuables. So, war is learned behaviour...just as patriarchal family structures are.....if we ever get back to the topic!

[TimG]

This does not change until population pressures reach a critical mass, where some groups will raid other settlements for food and other valuables. So, war is learned behaviors...just as patriarchal family structures are.....if we ever get back to the topic!

No one has been arguing that cultural behaviors are genetic. What is being argued are behaviors are functions of the environment and specific behaviors are evolutionary adaptations to specific environments. Specifically, prior to mass communication, patriarchal societies had an evolutionary advantage when survival required competition with other groups of humans for access to limited resources. And societies that adapted agriculture had a long term evolutionary advantage over societies that remained hunter gatherers.

Note that an evolutionary advantage for a society does not means that life is better for every individual member. In the extreme case, a society where some members will sacrifice themselves to protect others will have an advantage despite that some members did not survive at all.

Edited February 24, 2015 by TimG

[Michael Hardner]

The summary again is that violence is not something that is part of human nature....something genetically predestined even for more aggressive males.

This sentence just seems to pop into your post without any support from what comes before it ?

Of course there was a good amount, if not constant, war and brutal torture of innocents, too, committed by the new world hunter-gatherers.

[Michael Hardner]

Specifically, prior to mass communication, patriarchal societies had an evolutionary advantage when survival required competition with other groups of humans for access to limited resources.

Something that hasn't been pointed out yet: I don't know if evolutionary advantages would necessarily have emerged between patriarchal and egalitarian civilizations in the brief period of human history between cities emerging and mass communications - maybe 3000 to 6000 years ?

Also - we haven't established a reason why Egypt was the exception to the patriarchal rule, but simply that it was... I think.

[TimG]

Also - we haven't established a reason why Egypt was the exception to the patriarchal rule, but simply that it was... I think.

Dyer claims that Egypt was egalitarian as long as the desert protected it from external threats. Once invaders arrived it became patriarchal. This is consistent with other data that shows isolated hunter-gathers groups maintaining egalitarianism.

As for time frame: social evolution can happen must faster than biological evolution. The simple fact that patriarchal societies took over the global is evidence of an evolutionary advantage. We no longer need patriarchy but there are likely many reasons for that starting with technology that has reduced the need to compete for resources.

[Michael Hardner]

Dyer claims that Egypt was egalitarian as long as the desert protected it from external threats. Once invaders arrived it became patriarchal. This is consistent with other data that shows isolated hunter-gathers groups maintaining egalitarianism.

Ok... makes sense. But what about keeping the egalitarianism after the arrival of writing/cities ?

As for time frame: social evolution can happen must faster than biological evolution.

Social evolution ? What is ?

[TimG]

Social evolution ? What is ?

The evolution of societies. This entire thread is about the switch from hunter gathers to agricultural societies to modern societies. The process where certain social traits emerged and came to dominate all societies is not random. It see the process as a 'survival of the fittest' exercise.

[Bonam]

As for time frame: social evolution can happen must faster than biological evolution. The simple fact that patriarchal societies took over the global is evidence of an evolutionary advantage. We no longer need patriarchy but there are likely many reasons for that starting with technology that has reduced the need to compete for resources.

Patriarchal societies are still taking over the globe. Patriarchal cultures continue to have far more children than ones that are in various stages of forsaking patriarchy, and mass migration of people from patriarchal cultures into the rest of the world suggests that the Western experiment in modern egalitarianism will likely be wiped out within a relatively short time period, as the Western cultures that gave rise to it become minorities everywhere (as they already are on a worldwide scale). The present day mass migration differs from past mass migrations that replaced one culture with another only in that it is proceeding more quickly and with less resistance.

[TimG]

Patriarchal societies are still taking over the globe. Patriarchal cultures continue to have far more children than ones that are in various stages of forsaking patriarchy, and mass migration of people from patriarchal cultures into the rest of the world suggests that the Western experiment in modern egalitarianism will likely be wiped out within a relatively short time period, as the Western cultures that gave rise to it become minorities everywhere (as they already are on a worldwide scale).

This is an ongoing experiment. I am not convinced western societies are doomed but I don't disagree with your assessment of the risk.