You really are a great writer and I thoroughly enjoy your posts. Every post of yours I read encourages me to one day hopefully openly share and explore my own ideas on this medium. Looking forward to more.
What you've written is unobjectionable. You've just run into the same visceral aversion experienced more explosively by Chagnon. People have no trouble rejecting facts and logic if these threaten their most cherished model of how the world and the humans in it to behave rather than the model than accords with evidence. We see this play out every day. Perhaps it's ironic that this rejection on the part of elite opinion (and it is elite opinion) entails a rejection of evidence from evolution and behavior throughout the animal kingdom. You're actually a good and thoughtful writer and the pushback you're getting has nothing to do with the quality of your writing. IMAO.
It is a classic paradox, why did almost nothing change during the 300 000 years before the introduction of agriculture? All evidence point to early humans being anatomically similar to us. They should be just as smart, creative and capable of solving problems as us. Fully capable of inventing all kinds of technologies. Why didn't they?
While small-scale fighting between tribes surely have had an impact, I find it more interesting to go back to first principles and ask ourselves why change happens in the first place. Why do we make inventions? Why do we work to solve problems and change things?
It may seem like a tautology, but the obvious reason is that there are things we are unsatisfied with and want to change.
What if they were just satisfied with how things were?
Thank you for this interesting essay. I agree with your perspective that writing in bite-sized form is a great way to spark interest and conversation, at the risk of incompleteness in terms of documentation. I also agree that this conversation would shed light on the most interesting paths to explore outstanding scholarship and complement the body work -- it's *such* a big world out blah-blah out there. It takes a lot of heart to come out like this in a world of gatekeepers and fragile experts, and I find this inspiring and encouraging. Now I want to read more on the topic, and also to put my own work out there, even if it doesn't feel perfect.
1. Chagnon was a brave man and worthy scientists. Just blind to evidence when claiming the Y. were "well fed": see https://www.regenwald.org/photos/article/wide/xxl/52640430517-6a0d694b0c-k.jpg or any pic of Y. They are small. But not pygmies. Stunted growth. And specific research on Y living in the jungle (not in new habitats with more food - fishing) showed their meat-protein intake is indeed below a Big Mac a day. Thus Marvin Harris had no need to eat his hat. But was most likely right in reversing the "logic" of Chagnon: "If they "just" wanted more girls, they just needed to treat baby girls better and their pregnant wifes better. They do the exact opposite. That IS adaptive because they DO live in a Malthusian trap. 'Hunting in the amazon' 2020 or 1960 or 1820 is a far worse "business model" than it was a few thousand years before." - 2. Constant warfare was a feature in Europe after the Pax Romana ended. Had its downsides, but did assure progress on several fronts. Competition. (Stone age warfare among jungle tribes does not lead to progress further than poisoned arrows.)
Perhaps we in the developed world had returned to pre-Malthusian conditions over the past several decades. Certainly when viewing my own life, I never thought much about obtaining the basic necessities of life; but rather of convincing some woman to be my partner. The difference between the Yanomamö and Western society is that we don't literally use violence to steal women, although "thug game" seems to be a real thing, but try to acquire enough resources to convince a woman that we are the better provider. Unfortunately it seems that as obligatory monogamy fades away; it takes a lot of resources and other attributes to be and stay partnered.
When people live in an environment that they evolved to live in why should they change? The idea of development and progression is the problem here. Their environment provides everything that they need, why create a civilization that would destroy that environment? Civilization is an invention of peoples in environments that do not provide all resources nearby and require long distance trade. This also does not address why civilization did not advance for most of human existence. All humans make war and fight over women to spread their genes in the next generation. The real reason is that civilization and megafauna are not compatible. Agriculture is not possible with megafauna herbivores around. Permanent wooden structures will not survive a megafauna raid. Once humans killed all the megafauna then civilization was possible where it was needed. On continents where megafauna still exist civilization is smaller and less developed. What were we doing for 300,000 years? We were fighting the megafauna and trying not to be hunted by the megafauna predators or killed by megafauna herbivores.
Notice that the resolutely Marxist anthropologist Christophe Darmangeat studies war in "primitive" societies and so far concludes that people do war for many reasons, resources, women, prestige... almost anything goes. Check his book "Justice and Warfare in Aboriginal Australia" and his "Aboriginal Conflicts Database".
Great idea. I've often wondered, how could humanity have taken over a hundred thousand years to graduate from stone tools to agriculture, and then yet more several thousand years to finally approach the level of innovation we're used to today. What were they doing this entire time?
This is more or less the theory behind differential evolution by continent.
Some societies had to compete to feed children, those are the high IQ ones.
Some societies had to compete for women, those are the low IQ ones.
There are many other (important) details to fill in but you get the gist.
What's interesting is civilization itself. The ability to securely store calories allowed certain men to cultivate many many women, often with low status men as slaves. In barbarian societies this took the form of controlling herds of animals, and in "civilized societies" it meant controlling storable and non perishable carbohydrates.
This was a great thought provoking post. A question I have is this: Are the warfare fatality numbers quoted really enough to stabilize a population? Marvin Harris has claimed in "Cannibals and Kings" that population growth is checked only by greatly reducing the number of females. In warring societies, this most likely happens by female infanticide either directly or via neglect as males are favored since they will eventually become warriors. So, is warfare over females really what slowed population growth?
A quick google search turns up research that says Yanomami practice infanticide but that it tends to keep the adult male/female ratio even and the major population control factor is disease.
(I haven't read the third part in this series yet but I'm putting this thought here in case I forget it by the time I have)
Maybe men are too preoccupied fighting over women to pay much attention to farming or develop technology, but what about the women themselves? Why can't they do those things?
"It wasn't the most hard-working, inventive farmer who had the most children, but the fiercest warrior deploying the cleverest tactics."
This sentence is key to why Napoleon Chagnon is hated by anthropologists. If in every generation the hard-working farmer is outcompeted in reproduction by the fierce warrior, eventually you ran out of hard working farmers. Chagnon suggested that being a warrior was hereditarily selected for which means that some populations might be innately more inclined to violence than others, dangerous heresy for blank slatists.
You really are a great writer and I thoroughly enjoy your posts. Every post of yours I read encourages me to one day hopefully openly share and explore my own ideas on this medium. Looking forward to more.
What you've written is unobjectionable. You've just run into the same visceral aversion experienced more explosively by Chagnon. People have no trouble rejecting facts and logic if these threaten their most cherished model of how the world and the humans in it to behave rather than the model than accords with evidence. We see this play out every day. Perhaps it's ironic that this rejection on the part of elite opinion (and it is elite opinion) entails a rejection of evidence from evolution and behavior throughout the animal kingdom. You're actually a good and thoughtful writer and the pushback you're getting has nothing to do with the quality of your writing. IMAO.
It is a classic paradox, why did almost nothing change during the 300 000 years before the introduction of agriculture? All evidence point to early humans being anatomically similar to us. They should be just as smart, creative and capable of solving problems as us. Fully capable of inventing all kinds of technologies. Why didn't they?
While small-scale fighting between tribes surely have had an impact, I find it more interesting to go back to first principles and ask ourselves why change happens in the first place. Why do we make inventions? Why do we work to solve problems and change things?
It may seem like a tautology, but the obvious reason is that there are things we are unsatisfied with and want to change.
What if they were just satisfied with how things were?
Thank you for this interesting essay. I agree with your perspective that writing in bite-sized form is a great way to spark interest and conversation, at the risk of incompleteness in terms of documentation. I also agree that this conversation would shed light on the most interesting paths to explore outstanding scholarship and complement the body work -- it's *such* a big world out blah-blah out there. It takes a lot of heart to come out like this in a world of gatekeepers and fragile experts, and I find this inspiring and encouraging. Now I want to read more on the topic, and also to put my own work out there, even if it doesn't feel perfect.
1. Chagnon was a brave man and worthy scientists. Just blind to evidence when claiming the Y. were "well fed": see https://www.regenwald.org/photos/article/wide/xxl/52640430517-6a0d694b0c-k.jpg or any pic of Y. They are small. But not pygmies. Stunted growth. And specific research on Y living in the jungle (not in new habitats with more food - fishing) showed their meat-protein intake is indeed below a Big Mac a day. Thus Marvin Harris had no need to eat his hat. But was most likely right in reversing the "logic" of Chagnon: "If they "just" wanted more girls, they just needed to treat baby girls better and their pregnant wifes better. They do the exact opposite. That IS adaptive because they DO live in a Malthusian trap. 'Hunting in the amazon' 2020 or 1960 or 1820 is a far worse "business model" than it was a few thousand years before." - 2. Constant warfare was a feature in Europe after the Pax Romana ended. Had its downsides, but did assure progress on several fronts. Competition. (Stone age warfare among jungle tribes does not lead to progress further than poisoned arrows.)
sci-hub helps to get the articles
Perhaps we in the developed world had returned to pre-Malthusian conditions over the past several decades. Certainly when viewing my own life, I never thought much about obtaining the basic necessities of life; but rather of convincing some woman to be my partner. The difference between the Yanomamö and Western society is that we don't literally use violence to steal women, although "thug game" seems to be a real thing, but try to acquire enough resources to convince a woman that we are the better provider. Unfortunately it seems that as obligatory monogamy fades away; it takes a lot of resources and other attributes to be and stay partnered.
I’m finding this a really interesting theory and and keen to hear more. Thanks for writing!
When people live in an environment that they evolved to live in why should they change? The idea of development and progression is the problem here. Their environment provides everything that they need, why create a civilization that would destroy that environment? Civilization is an invention of peoples in environments that do not provide all resources nearby and require long distance trade. This also does not address why civilization did not advance for most of human existence. All humans make war and fight over women to spread their genes in the next generation. The real reason is that civilization and megafauna are not compatible. Agriculture is not possible with megafauna herbivores around. Permanent wooden structures will not survive a megafauna raid. Once humans killed all the megafauna then civilization was possible where it was needed. On continents where megafauna still exist civilization is smaller and less developed. What were we doing for 300,000 years? We were fighting the megafauna and trying not to be hunted by the megafauna predators or killed by megafauna herbivores.
Notice that the resolutely Marxist anthropologist Christophe Darmangeat studies war in "primitive" societies and so far concludes that people do war for many reasons, resources, women, prestige... almost anything goes. Check his book "Justice and Warfare in Aboriginal Australia" and his "Aboriginal Conflicts Database".
Great idea. I've often wondered, how could humanity have taken over a hundred thousand years to graduate from stone tools to agriculture, and then yet more several thousand years to finally approach the level of innovation we're used to today. What were they doing this entire time?
Nice one.
You may enjoy this post as a complement to yours:
https://kvetch.substack.com/p/wife-economics-and-the-domestication
This is more or less the theory behind differential evolution by continent.
Some societies had to compete to feed children, those are the high IQ ones.
Some societies had to compete for women, those are the low IQ ones.
There are many other (important) details to fill in but you get the gist.
What's interesting is civilization itself. The ability to securely store calories allowed certain men to cultivate many many women, often with low status men as slaves. In barbarian societies this took the form of controlling herds of animals, and in "civilized societies" it meant controlling storable and non perishable carbohydrates.
This was a great thought provoking post. A question I have is this: Are the warfare fatality numbers quoted really enough to stabilize a population? Marvin Harris has claimed in "Cannibals and Kings" that population growth is checked only by greatly reducing the number of females. In warring societies, this most likely happens by female infanticide either directly or via neglect as males are favored since they will eventually become warriors. So, is warfare over females really what slowed population growth?
A quick google search turns up research that says Yanomami practice infanticide but that it tends to keep the adult male/female ratio even and the major population control factor is disease.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12334855/
(I haven't read the third part in this series yet but I'm putting this thought here in case I forget it by the time I have)
Maybe men are too preoccupied fighting over women to pay much attention to farming or develop technology, but what about the women themselves? Why can't they do those things?
Are they too preoccupied with childrearing?
"It wasn't the most hard-working, inventive farmer who had the most children, but the fiercest warrior deploying the cleverest tactics."
This sentence is key to why Napoleon Chagnon is hated by anthropologists. If in every generation the hard-working farmer is outcompeted in reproduction by the fierce warrior, eventually you ran out of hard working farmers. Chagnon suggested that being a warrior was hereditarily selected for which means that some populations might be innately more inclined to violence than others, dangerous heresy for blank slatists.