Evolutionary psychology is a powerful set of ideas, from which I’ve drawn great insight over the last decade or so. But like most of its fans, I didn’t realize I was missing half of the story. You see, academic anthropology departments have long been split into two warring camps: physical vs. cultural anthropology.
Of course none of this takes away from the fact that agricultural societies where wealth (eg. cattle, grain) could be stored, allowed a quantum leap in the size and degree of hierarchy.
I have not read the book but I am quite sceptical given my own studies of cultural anthropology. Male reproduction rates were very skewed and often statistically positively associated with violence.
As one example, Australian aboriginal societies were mostly polygamous and the (young) women were farmed out to the "elders" based on political deals. This was enforced by the often fatal spearing of young males in the thigh if they had liaisons with the young women, and the young women also suffered retribution. However in some cases older men would have young men as allies and would "turn a blind eye" to such liaisons in return for other support which they provided. These societies were far more complex than you might expect.
I actually met a man who had been speared in such a situation years ago.
This is one reason why, when the white man arrived, the first to assimilate were the young males, who often had little to lose by abandoning the traditional society.
But I will read the book and see what evidence he offers. Hopefully it will not be another example of the "mythical golden age of hippie hunter-gatherers" genre of wishful thinking.
Reports of the gentle peace-loving bonobos also appear to be much exaggerated.
The !Kung were/are an interesting and somewhat unique situation. Being in possession of lethal but slow acting poison arrows, any lethal violence basically amounted to mutually assured destruction and thus died out.
The change to hierarchical political power of class society comes about with the establishment of a change in the mode production and exchange from hunter/gatherer to agricultural/animal husbandry. With that, comes individual ownership of collectively produced wealth (owning tools, land and animals like sheep and cows) which leads to 'debt' of some to the others and the exchange of labour time to pay off the debt. This is the point where women and children become property of males in monogamous and polygamous families i.e. patriarchy. The origins of chattel slavery are to be found here as well. These forms of ownership of wealth by the few gives rise to the need for a political State to protect the few from the many. The old forms of classless family structure break down and with them, the tribe.
Robin, do you think reading Hierarchy in the Forest will help get more accurate at predicting who will be the next target of political coalitions united by egalitarian ideology?
The basic theory you have outlined seems to have been able correctly to predict that when a polity in the Western world comes to be dominated by the faction more in love with egalitarianism, white males will be targeted.
I expect another factor is economics. Hunting & gathering don't allow for the accumulation of resources, whereas agriculture does, which allows for much greater resource inequality, thus more heirarchy.
I forgot to mention, Robin and I are in a band hunting mastadons and reindeer on the upper reaches of the Rhine, 30,000 BP. Or whatever. Maybe that area was under ice at that particular time, but y'all know what I mean.
What is equality exactly, and what is hierarchy? I worry that some less-biological thinkers might use the terms differently from how I would use them.
A radical biological definition would be that equal individuals must have equal fitness. This definition is not perfect in practice. Suppose Robin and I are both 30-year-olds who are virtually identical for all important variables, ie we don't look alike but are equally good-looking. We have the same fitness. Now if Robin contracts tuberculosis (which may or may not precede agriculture) or tapeworms, and I don't, we no longer have equal fitness, yet he can't force me through dominance or violence to take some of his tuberculousness and give him some of my non-tuberculousness. Therefore, maybe we are still equal in a slightly modified sense.
OK, back to neither of us having any infections. Suppose we treat each other as equals in every way, and pool all new resources and new costs, such that our fitnesses remain equal. But there is one exception, Robin is married to Charlize Theron (aged 26 at the time in question), while my girl hails from the 30th percentile. How could I let this happen? Maybe Robin just has 7% greater musculature and 20% better agility, so he can always defeat me physically, but that is our only other inequality. You see my point? I would think this kind of inequality would be pervasive in forager groups alleged to be non-hierarchical. (And I am assuming that female beauty is fitness-correlated, though direct evidence for this is so far somewhat limited.) My fear is that a not-so-biological anthropologist might still think we are equal, and I might read him and accept his thinking, when in fact he is mis-defining equality, according to me. Obviously, none of us considers all members of the opposite sex to be remotely equal; it is not anywhere near a matter of indifference who we get for a mate.
Right, Jason, in general, classic evolutionary psychologists, such as anthropologist John Tooby, tend to come out of the humanistic cultural anthropology subfield rather than out of the bones-and-genes physical anthropology subfield.
Henry Harpending is a rare cross-field anthropologist who spent 42 months in the field with hunter-gatherers in Africa and also learned the gene stuff.
Another way to think about it is using Edward O. Wilson's consilience framework. Wilson and William D. Hamilton came up to studying humans from biology, while Tooby, Cosmides, Pinker and so forth came down from the human sciences such as cultural anthropology, psychology, and linguistics.
"Yes, it made political sense for evo psych folks to rely more on data from physical anthro folks who approved of their work, and to neglect the data of the cultural anthro folks hostile to their work. But it doesn’t make scientific sense."
I'm confused, because this assertion is nearly the opposite of the quote you preceded it with. It is also false. Cultural anthropology is a fundamental element of sociobiology, and sociobiologists are well-versed in cultural anthropology (e.g. Steven Goldberg, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy) and/or are important contributors to the discipline (e.g. Napoleon Chagnon, Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Pierre van den Berghe, Pascal Boyer)..
It sounds like hierarchies may be a function of the size of the group:
Small groups can effectively band together and counter a would be strong man. As the groups grow larger, the barriers to effective cooperation rise and strong men are able to assert dominance. The overall group gets too large and different groups begin to effectively check each other limiting the power of strong men again.
Attempting to make generalizations on human nature based on hunter gatherers can be quite risky.
Steve, yes we have evolved both genetically and culturally over the last 10,000 years, but it is important to understand where we came from, including that orneriness.
a book that has greatly influenced my thinking over the last few months.
Maybe that's why I've noticed you writing "Our ancestors in their bands behaved like X" recently, I was just skipping any posts that had that kind of thing because I wasn't aware you had any sources for their behavior.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... says anthropologists are usually classified as falling into five "fields"; Biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, social anthropologyand archaeology. In the US it says social anthropology and cultural anthropology are synonyms.
Of course none of this takes away from the fact that agricultural societies where wealth (eg. cattle, grain) could be stored, allowed a quantum leap in the size and degree of hierarchy.
I have not read the book but I am quite sceptical given my own studies of cultural anthropology. Male reproduction rates were very skewed and often statistically positively associated with violence.
As one example, Australian aboriginal societies were mostly polygamous and the (young) women were farmed out to the "elders" based on political deals. This was enforced by the often fatal spearing of young males in the thigh if they had liaisons with the young women, and the young women also suffered retribution. However in some cases older men would have young men as allies and would "turn a blind eye" to such liaisons in return for other support which they provided. These societies were far more complex than you might expect.
I actually met a man who had been speared in such a situation years ago.
This is one reason why, when the white man arrived, the first to assimilate were the young males, who often had little to lose by abandoning the traditional society.
But I will read the book and see what evidence he offers. Hopefully it will not be another example of the "mythical golden age of hippie hunter-gatherers" genre of wishful thinking.
Reports of the gentle peace-loving bonobos also appear to be much exaggerated.
The !Kung were/are an interesting and somewhat unique situation. Being in possession of lethal but slow acting poison arrows, any lethal violence basically amounted to mutually assured destruction and thus died out.
The change to hierarchical political power of class society comes about with the establishment of a change in the mode production and exchange from hunter/gatherer to agricultural/animal husbandry. With that, comes individual ownership of collectively produced wealth (owning tools, land and animals like sheep and cows) which leads to 'debt' of some to the others and the exchange of labour time to pay off the debt. This is the point where women and children become property of males in monogamous and polygamous families i.e. patriarchy. The origins of chattel slavery are to be found here as well. These forms of ownership of wealth by the few gives rise to the need for a political State to protect the few from the many. The old forms of classless family structure break down and with them, the tribe.
(Continuation of my previous comment directly above.)
In other words, could reading Hierarchy help me predict which white males will be targeted or who else besides white males will be targeted?
Alternatively, might it help me get better at identifying which individuals will be most motivated to do the targeting?
As long as I continue to live in coastal California, I would tend to benefit from improvement in such skills.
Robin, do you think reading Hierarchy in the Forest will help get more accurate at predicting who will be the next target of political coalitions united by egalitarian ideology?
The basic theory you have outlined seems to have been able correctly to predict that when a polity in the Western world comes to be dominated by the faction more in love with egalitarianism, white males will be targeted.
I expect another factor is economics. Hunting & gathering don't allow for the accumulation of resources, whereas agriculture does, which allows for much greater resource inequality, thus more heirarchy.
I forgot to mention, Robin and I are in a band hunting mastadons and reindeer on the upper reaches of the Rhine, 30,000 BP. Or whatever. Maybe that area was under ice at that particular time, but y'all know what I mean.
What is equality exactly, and what is hierarchy? I worry that some less-biological thinkers might use the terms differently from how I would use them.
A radical biological definition would be that equal individuals must have equal fitness. This definition is not perfect in practice. Suppose Robin and I are both 30-year-olds who are virtually identical for all important variables, ie we don't look alike but are equally good-looking. We have the same fitness. Now if Robin contracts tuberculosis (which may or may not precede agriculture) or tapeworms, and I don't, we no longer have equal fitness, yet he can't force me through dominance or violence to take some of his tuberculousness and give him some of my non-tuberculousness. Therefore, maybe we are still equal in a slightly modified sense.
OK, back to neither of us having any infections. Suppose we treat each other as equals in every way, and pool all new resources and new costs, such that our fitnesses remain equal. But there is one exception, Robin is married to Charlize Theron (aged 26 at the time in question), while my girl hails from the 30th percentile. How could I let this happen? Maybe Robin just has 7% greater musculature and 20% better agility, so he can always defeat me physically, but that is our only other inequality. You see my point? I would think this kind of inequality would be pervasive in forager groups alleged to be non-hierarchical. (And I am assuming that female beauty is fitness-correlated, though direct evidence for this is so far somewhat limited.) My fear is that a not-so-biological anthropologist might still think we are equal, and I might read him and accept his thinking, when in fact he is mis-defining equality, according to me. Obviously, none of us considers all members of the opposite sex to be remotely equal; it is not anywhere near a matter of indifference who we get for a mate.
Right, Jason, in general, classic evolutionary psychologists, such as anthropologist John Tooby, tend to come out of the humanistic cultural anthropology subfield rather than out of the bones-and-genes physical anthropology subfield.
Henry Harpending is a rare cross-field anthropologist who spent 42 months in the field with hunter-gatherers in Africa and also learned the gene stuff.
Another way to think about it is using Edward O. Wilson's consilience framework. Wilson and William D. Hamilton came up to studying humans from biology, while Tooby, Cosmides, Pinker and so forth came down from the human sciences such as cultural anthropology, psychology, and linguistics.
"Yes, it made political sense for evo psych folks to rely more on data from physical anthro folks who approved of their work, and to neglect the data of the cultural anthro folks hostile to their work. But it doesn’t make scientific sense."
I'm confused, because this assertion is nearly the opposite of the quote you preceded it with. It is also false. Cultural anthropology is a fundamental element of sociobiology, and sociobiologists are well-versed in cultural anthropology (e.g. Steven Goldberg, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy) and/or are important contributors to the discipline (e.g. Napoleon Chagnon, Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Pierre van den Berghe, Pascal Boyer)..
A test of this is to see how hunter gathers adapt when assimilated into a large population.
It sounds like hierarchies may be a function of the size of the group:
Small groups can effectively band together and counter a would be strong man. As the groups grow larger, the barriers to effective cooperation rise and strong men are able to assert dominance. The overall group gets too large and different groups begin to effectively check each other limiting the power of strong men again.
Attempting to make generalizations on human nature based on hunter gatherers can be quite risky.
Steve, yes we have evolved both genetically and culturally over the last 10,000 years, but it is important to understand where we came from, including that orneriness.
Great post, and good job keeping ideological capture from warping your analysis, imo.
a book that has greatly influenced my thinking over the last few months.
Maybe that's why I've noticed you writing "Our ancestors in their bands behaved like X" recently, I was just skipping any posts that had that kind of thing because I wasn't aware you had any sources for their behavior.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... says anthropologists are usually classified as falling into five "fields"; Biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, social anthropologyand archaeology. In the US it says social anthropology and cultural anthropology are synonyms.