Quote:
|
Originally Posted by abaya
I'm well aware of that, Ustwo, and I also agree with it heartily. I think that idea is just as naive as it is arrogant to think that only industrial societies have evolved to be non-violent.
Highthief, thanks. However respectable he may be, Nicholas Wade is a science reporter, not an anthropologist. When I asked for a source, I was looking for peer-reviewed work that showed quantitative evidence of violent activities from society to society, controlling for socio-economic levels and population size. If you could show me a study like that, I might be more convinced.
Thing is, the problem is not that I think all hunter-gatherer societies are singing kumbaya and waving flowers around peacefully... quite the contrary. I'm well aware of scale of violence in many of those types of societies, that's nothing new. You're right about Richard Borshay Lee and the !Kung--and while I tend to agree with the materalist approach of the book you mention by Johnson & Earle, Marvin Harris' ideas--the source of materialist theory--just can't be used to explain every aspect of cultural evolution.
To make an all-encompassing statement that industralized societies are more peace-loving and less violent than hunter-gatherers is rather absurd. Have you lived among hunter-gatherers? I have. We're ALL capable of being violent assholes, depending on our circumstances... not because we're more "evolved." Let's put you in the middle of the 9th Ward or the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina and see how peace-loving you manage to be.
I was also reading along with your Wade quote, and came to the last sentence: "the different set of intellectual capacities that is rewarded by the institution of property."... what do you take from that? What does the institution of property have to do with intelligence? Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but tell me what you got from that.
Yeah, yeah, the famously violent Yanomamo. That's anthropology 101, no need to bring them up.
Does it occur to you WHY the "average" guy--who happens to own a computer, and have the time to sit in front of it, rather than trying to get the next meal from the Savannah--MIGHT be less violent than someone who isn't sure of where their next meal is coming from? Come on, you can come up with a better argument/example than that.
|
Abaya,
I provided you with quotes from Wade - a scientist and graduate of Cambridge although not an anthropologist - his expertise is more noted in genetics but I don't think that invalidates his work (which is endorsed by Edward Wilson and Lionel Tiger, noted anthropologists), Lawrence Keeley (prof of Anthropology at University of Illinois), and Allan Johnson and Timoty Earle, anthropologists and authors of anthro textbooks. I think you can ignore the line that is confounding you as in this passage he is linking several things together.
You cannot dismiss the Yanomami just because it is "Anthro 101" - you have to refute the argument with your own evidence, not simply wish it away as being too basic. How about your own evidence (without resorting to Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, perhaps?) to refute my position?
Even Jared Diamond, that great defender of the "noble savage", admits the New Guinea tribes have a great history of violence. Now he takes an opposite approach and suggests because New Guineans have to survive by their wits they are in fact more intelligent than "civilized" people.
The approach I endorse, to come back to your question, is that people whose ancestry is attached to advanced nation states have indeed evolved to become more cooperative, to be able to deal with more complex societies, laws and day to day living. Those who in our deep past could not handle living in close proximity to their fellows got banished or killed or were generally less successful in propagating their lines. Whereas the people able to adapt peacefully to complex social rules generally propogated and delivered their genetic predispositions for advanced social intelligence to their progeny. Just as we have deliberately domesticated wolves and turned them into dogs, and aurochs and turned them into cows, so have we domesticated ourselves (albeit not deliberately) with a resultant genetic shift in our society.
Their are exceptions of course - Genghis Khan famously fathered hundreds if not thousands of children so that today 8% of Asians may carry his genes. But even then, though he was a violent so and so, there's no doubting his intelligence and ability to administer a complex empire.
It's interesting - earlier in the thread the issue of the Ashnekazi Jews was brought up and how they have scored higher on intelligence testing. I was not sold on their innate intellegence at the time, but the more I consider the matter, the more I think I agree that due to the occupations Jews were forced into in Europe in the Middle Ages, the greater their average intelligence became, as those successful at finance and similar occupations, were more genetically successful.
Just skimming the net and found this article from the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/displaystor...ry_id=10278703
Quote:
Several archaeologists and anthropologists now argue that violence was much more pervasive in hunter-gatherer society than in more recent eras. From the !Kung in the Kalahari to the Inuit in the Arctic and the aborigines in Australia, two-thirds of modern hunter-gatherers are in a state of almost constant tribal warfare, and nearly 90% go to war at least once a year. War is a big word for dawn raids, skirmishes and lots of posturing, but death rates are high—usually around 25-30% of adult males die from homicide. The warfare death rate of 0.5% of the population per year that Lawrence Keeley of the University of Illinois calculates as typical of hunter-gatherer societies would equate to 2 billion people dying during the 20th century.
At first, anthropologists were inclined to think this a modern pathology. But it is increasingly looking as if it is the natural state. Richard Wrangham of Harvard University says that chimpanzees and human beings are the only animals in which males engage in co-operative and systematic homicidal raids. The death rate is similar in the two species. Steven LeBlanc, also of Harvard, says Rousseauian wishful thinking has led academics to overlook evidence of constant violence.
|
Kim Hill reports in the
Journal of Human Evolution in 2007 that
Quote:
|
[v]iolence is the major cause of death among the precontact Ache (55% of all deaths) and very important among the Hiwi (30% of all deaths) ...
|
Hill K, Hurtado AM, Walker RS. 2007. High adult mortality among Hiwi hunter-gatherers: implications for human evolution. J Hum Evol 52:443-454.