This is fascinating, Peter. One part that particularly stood out for me personally is the idea that human beings are not necessarily egalitarian by nature. I'm guilty of subscribing to that rosy view, but it actually makes so much sense that hunter-gatherers would have had to cultivate that characteristic, just like all the other characteristics that make teamwork, and thus survival, possible. We are blank slates when we arrive, ready to learn whatever our community values. Thanks so much for your clear, compelling explanations and insights!
As you say, we can't return to the hunter gatherer way of life (and perhaps wouldn't want to), but we can learn from them.
Along these lines, I wonder how long it took for Neolithic and even later hunter/farmers in, say, Mesopotamia, to give up their egalitarian ways, and to become more of an "ownership" society, separated into nobles and peasants (or slaves)?
I am guessing that there was an interim period when they used farming and animal husbandry to supplement their food availability, even had some diversification of labor allowing some people to make a living as merchants or artisans, yet perhaps still had hunting and gathering available as a safety valve, allowing them to just say no to becoming someone else's servant.
Freedom, after all, means having real choices, among things worth having - and that's what we want for ourselves now.
I'm having trouble with the distinction between "fierceness" and "playfulness." I don't automatically think of games of make-believe as fierce, but they certainly can be. A major theme of Trump rallies is imaginative/comedic/playful mockery of elites who are said to be putting on airs. Isn't playfulness sometimes a vehicle for fierceness? Can't play even progress beyond fierceness into full-blown malignancy? Here's a little snip from Wikipedia:
"...the standard format of the Roman games: animal entertainments in the morning session, followed by the executions of criminals around midday, with the afternoon session reserved for gladiatorial combats and recreations of famous battles. The animal entertainments, which featured creatures from throughout the Roman Empire, included extravagant hunts and fights between different species. Animals also played a role in some executions which were staged as recreations of myths and historical events."
On the other side of the aisle, shouldn't we think of FDR's Madison Square Garden speech as a display of playfully fierce egalitarianism? A type of play that hunter-gatherers would instantly recognize and embrace?
"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master."
Hey, I was wondering if the egalitarian nature of hunter gatherers is just a feature of contemporary hunter gatherers and may not reflect the actual practices of our ancestors? I imagine that in order to make mportant decisions you would need to have people in charge. Maybe I misread the post.
As I understand it, the prevalence of egalitarian practices among many different hunter gatherer bands in geographically distant areas in the present is what suggests that there were selection pressures operating to select for the survival of such bands in the past. Also, the group decision making among bands of the present demonstrates that decisions can indeed be made in the absence of "leaders".
I might go so far as to lend my own interpretation of what makes this work. Besides having the attractive quality of fairness, this kind of egalitarianism promoted personal agency. These members achieve solidarity through active participation, and secure group agreement through mutual respect. In a hierarchical society, most members lack agency, remain passive, waiting to be directed. In that context group solidarity can only be achieved by someone willing and able to give orders (and to enforce them).
I get the bit about people lacking agency in a hierarchy but just to provide a counterpoint to the part about natural selection.
If the hunter gatherers with strong hierarchies moved up to build civilisations then wouldn't that mean that they were more effective than the egalitarian hunters?
I am not well versed in anthropology so don't really have a strong opinion either way.
Speculating, but here I think we need to distinguish between leadership by highly charismatic individuals, and hierarchical authority in the sense of "Do what I say or else". Such authority needs an enforcement mechanism - a private army or gang - and this would not seem to be possible among bands of less than a hundred (which is why I think size of the community is a factor).
Also, in episodes 2 and 3 of the Great Courses program "Ancient Mesopotamia", Amanda Podany describes how Natufian villagers took a fairly long time to transition from being settled hunter-gatherer communities of about a hundred who supplemented their diet with wild harvested wheat, to deliberate planting, to domesticating sheep and goats, and did not invent pottery for quite some time, which began to make it possible to store large amounts of grain and thus accumulate wealth (as well as to necessitate protection from bandits). I don't know what evidence there is for how egalitarian these societies were when they began, but at any rate the Natufians were fairly recent, and so I'd expect their behavior to reflect, at least at the beginning, the egalitarian style of hunter gatherer bands elsewhere.
Of course evolution is the outcome of variety plus selection, so given the possibility of variety I would not rule out the possibility of some bands having arrived at more hierarchical societies. Still, I can't see how that would have proved helpful at discovering how to farm. But the emergence of larger communities now both with accumulated wealth and a dependence on agriculture would seem to lead almost inevitably to hierarchy.
Hi Peter, I’m curious how if hunter gatherers either formally select or just intuitively trust in specific people within their band to provide a service or be the one with the most knowledge on a given topic arent at least *temporarily* hierarchical? ex: lead hunters, or medicine people.
Today, when you see groups of men work together to achieve a shared goal you can generally see a fluid hierarchy. I've seen it in my work hundreds of times. The hierarchy changes based on the competence of the topic at hand, it is fascinating to observe it. Bullying and ostracizing are also used in these groups for people that do not understand how the hierarchy works. This might be dominating but it is just as much for snitching and claiming victim hood; it is anything that makes the group less effective. This is a major issue when women enter male groups and significantly change these dynamics since women tend to operate quite differently in groups. It is hard to imagine this did not happen exactly the same in hunter gatherer societies?
However, to make the fluid hierarchy work it is necessary to process a lot of detailed information of each individual member. Empathy, the need to protect the weaker, sense of fairness, our shared genes, all play a role. When the task at hand increases in scale, this information is just no longer available in sufficient detail, it becomes contradictory, and it would change too fast. The only solution is to create a fixed hierarchy of groups to remain effective. However, within each of these groups I generally see the same dynamics.
It seems a devil's choice, there is a reason hunter gather's societies live in the dirt and we have indoor plumbing.
Apparently the effect of being a member of a shared playgroup is to treat people with valuable ideas or skills as having valuable ideas or skills, but not as better people, certainly not as superior people, and thus to prevent "followership".
I think its an interesting question how far an egalitarian society might have been able to make use of technology while maintaining a mostly egalitarian mindset. I am guessing that besides the accumulation of private wealth leading to the creation of a separate group of "noble families", a critical factor was the size of the communities, as they grew from small bands to small villages to towns and then finally cities.
Jared Diamond describes the crucial differences that community sizes make in his book 'The World Until Yesterday' that I seem to have lent out, so I can only recall from memory his view that, as a community grows in size, the creation of some kind of governing state becomes inevitable. I think the break point is in the hundreds. After a community increases in size beyond that, it requires or appears to require an entity that we call 'state', ostensibly for administrative purposes, but in the course of time for all kinds of other purposes. Is that why egalitarian societies necessarily transmute into non-egalitarian ones?
What I find fascinating about this view is the idea that the 'state' somehow becomes an 'interested party' in its own right, and eventually demands powers, privileges and allegiance that often run counter to the needs, views and preferences of individual members of the society. So it has to expend a great deal of time and energy convincing the individuals to live and act in ways that can be very detrimental to them (to the point of encouraging them to sacrifice their lives to defend the tribe, clan, nation, empire etc.).
This is fascinating, Peter. One part that particularly stood out for me personally is the idea that human beings are not necessarily egalitarian by nature. I'm guilty of subscribing to that rosy view, but it actually makes so much sense that hunter-gatherers would have had to cultivate that characteristic, just like all the other characteristics that make teamwork, and thus survival, possible. We are blank slates when we arrive, ready to learn whatever our community values. Thanks so much for your clear, compelling explanations and insights!
As you say, we can't return to the hunter gatherer way of life (and perhaps wouldn't want to), but we can learn from them.
Along these lines, I wonder how long it took for Neolithic and even later hunter/farmers in, say, Mesopotamia, to give up their egalitarian ways, and to become more of an "ownership" society, separated into nobles and peasants (or slaves)?
I am guessing that there was an interim period when they used farming and animal husbandry to supplement their food availability, even had some diversification of labor allowing some people to make a living as merchants or artisans, yet perhaps still had hunting and gathering available as a safety valve, allowing them to just say no to becoming someone else's servant.
Freedom, after all, means having real choices, among things worth having - and that's what we want for ourselves now.
I'm having trouble with the distinction between "fierceness" and "playfulness." I don't automatically think of games of make-believe as fierce, but they certainly can be. A major theme of Trump rallies is imaginative/comedic/playful mockery of elites who are said to be putting on airs. Isn't playfulness sometimes a vehicle for fierceness? Can't play even progress beyond fierceness into full-blown malignancy? Here's a little snip from Wikipedia:
"...the standard format of the Roman games: animal entertainments in the morning session, followed by the executions of criminals around midday, with the afternoon session reserved for gladiatorial combats and recreations of famous battles. The animal entertainments, which featured creatures from throughout the Roman Empire, included extravagant hunts and fights between different species. Animals also played a role in some executions which were staged as recreations of myths and historical events."
On the other side of the aisle, shouldn't we think of FDR's Madison Square Garden speech as a display of playfully fierce egalitarianism? A type of play that hunter-gatherers would instantly recognize and embrace?
"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master."
Hey, I was wondering if the egalitarian nature of hunter gatherers is just a feature of contemporary hunter gatherers and may not reflect the actual practices of our ancestors? I imagine that in order to make mportant decisions you would need to have people in charge. Maybe I misread the post.
As I understand it, the prevalence of egalitarian practices among many different hunter gatherer bands in geographically distant areas in the present is what suggests that there were selection pressures operating to select for the survival of such bands in the past. Also, the group decision making among bands of the present demonstrates that decisions can indeed be made in the absence of "leaders".
I might go so far as to lend my own interpretation of what makes this work. Besides having the attractive quality of fairness, this kind of egalitarianism promoted personal agency. These members achieve solidarity through active participation, and secure group agreement through mutual respect. In a hierarchical society, most members lack agency, remain passive, waiting to be directed. In that context group solidarity can only be achieved by someone willing and able to give orders (and to enforce them).
I get the bit about people lacking agency in a hierarchy but just to provide a counterpoint to the part about natural selection.
If the hunter gatherers with strong hierarchies moved up to build civilisations then wouldn't that mean that they were more effective than the egalitarian hunters?
I am not well versed in anthropology so don't really have a strong opinion either way.
Speculating, but here I think we need to distinguish between leadership by highly charismatic individuals, and hierarchical authority in the sense of "Do what I say or else". Such authority needs an enforcement mechanism - a private army or gang - and this would not seem to be possible among bands of less than a hundred (which is why I think size of the community is a factor).
Also, in episodes 2 and 3 of the Great Courses program "Ancient Mesopotamia", Amanda Podany describes how Natufian villagers took a fairly long time to transition from being settled hunter-gatherer communities of about a hundred who supplemented their diet with wild harvested wheat, to deliberate planting, to domesticating sheep and goats, and did not invent pottery for quite some time, which began to make it possible to store large amounts of grain and thus accumulate wealth (as well as to necessitate protection from bandits). I don't know what evidence there is for how egalitarian these societies were when they began, but at any rate the Natufians were fairly recent, and so I'd expect their behavior to reflect, at least at the beginning, the egalitarian style of hunter gatherer bands elsewhere.
Of course evolution is the outcome of variety plus selection, so given the possibility of variety I would not rule out the possibility of some bands having arrived at more hierarchical societies. Still, I can't see how that would have proved helpful at discovering how to farm. But the emergence of larger communities now both with accumulated wealth and a dependence on agriculture would seem to lead almost inevitably to hierarchy.
Hi Peter, I’m curious how if hunter gatherers either formally select or just intuitively trust in specific people within their band to provide a service or be the one with the most knowledge on a given topic arent at least *temporarily* hierarchical? ex: lead hunters, or medicine people.
Today, when you see groups of men work together to achieve a shared goal you can generally see a fluid hierarchy. I've seen it in my work hundreds of times. The hierarchy changes based on the competence of the topic at hand, it is fascinating to observe it. Bullying and ostracizing are also used in these groups for people that do not understand how the hierarchy works. This might be dominating but it is just as much for snitching and claiming victim hood; it is anything that makes the group less effective. This is a major issue when women enter male groups and significantly change these dynamics since women tend to operate quite differently in groups. It is hard to imagine this did not happen exactly the same in hunter gatherer societies?
However, to make the fluid hierarchy work it is necessary to process a lot of detailed information of each individual member. Empathy, the need to protect the weaker, sense of fairness, our shared genes, all play a role. When the task at hand increases in scale, this information is just no longer available in sufficient detail, it becomes contradictory, and it would change too fast. The only solution is to create a fixed hierarchy of groups to remain effective. However, within each of these groups I generally see the same dynamics.
It seems a devil's choice, there is a reason hunter gather's societies live in the dirt and we have indoor plumbing.
Apparently the effect of being a member of a shared playgroup is to treat people with valuable ideas or skills as having valuable ideas or skills, but not as better people, certainly not as superior people, and thus to prevent "followership".
I think its an interesting question how far an egalitarian society might have been able to make use of technology while maintaining a mostly egalitarian mindset. I am guessing that besides the accumulation of private wealth leading to the creation of a separate group of "noble families", a critical factor was the size of the communities, as they grew from small bands to small villages to towns and then finally cities.
Jared Diamond describes the crucial differences that community sizes make in his book 'The World Until Yesterday' that I seem to have lent out, so I can only recall from memory his view that, as a community grows in size, the creation of some kind of governing state becomes inevitable. I think the break point is in the hundreds. After a community increases in size beyond that, it requires or appears to require an entity that we call 'state', ostensibly for administrative purposes, but in the course of time for all kinds of other purposes. Is that why egalitarian societies necessarily transmute into non-egalitarian ones?
What I find fascinating about this view is the idea that the 'state' somehow becomes an 'interested party' in its own right, and eventually demands powers, privileges and allegiance that often run counter to the needs, views and preferences of individual members of the society. So it has to expend a great deal of time and energy convincing the individuals to live and act in ways that can be very detrimental to them (to the point of encouraging them to sacrifice their lives to defend the tribe, clan, nation, empire etc.).