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Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael) wrote about this sort of thing in a non-scientific sort of way. More from a philosophy standpoint. But anyway one point he mak

Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael) wrote about this sort of thing in a non-scientific sort of way. More from a philosophy standpoint. But anyway one point he makes that really stuck with me, is that in a hunter gatherer society, you might get a tribe leader or chief or something. But if you dont like what they're doing, you can just leave and be a hunter gatherer somewhere else. No one is depending on any centralised place for food. So you can get complex social structures if thats what everyone wants, but hierarchies are difficult to maintain by force. People will just quit if they dont like it. Whereas in an agricultural society, you get specialisation of skills which helps towards the sort of thing we now think of as 'progress' but you can also have hierarchies enforced by force because someone or some subgroup ends up in charge of the food and can lock it away, and peoples option to just leave and go and fend for themselves is less feasible and so they get stuck being subjects of some ruler. TLDR: You dont have to think of hunter gatherer societies as simple or backward. But they are less likely to have deep hierarchies and specialisation

fckgnad 4y ago
No I don't think this is true. Hierarchies are heavily part of human behavior. The concept of leaders and rank is so ingrained in behavior it's hard to think it didn't exist even in hunter and gatherer societies. Right now we have enough wealth such that everyone can live comfortably. But a lot of people still fight tooth and nail in the rat race all for what? For wealth partly but mostly for Rank. The higher your rank the better it's a huge driving force emotionally... especially for men. Desire for high rank is an inborn biological instinct. This is confirmed in psychology across all cultures. All men are emotionally more satisfied the higher their rank. For women it's also a huge driving force for mate selection. Women marry up. They have a strong desire to marry the highest ranking man. I would imagine in hunter and gather societies rank is maintained by two things. Brute force and social proof. Bigger men have more brute force to maintain leadership (hence why a lot of women are attracted to height) and social proof and respect insures that other men trust you and are more likely to listen to you. That being said coercion to build things like pyramids or grand multi-year projects of vast scale requires someone to own wealth. This type of serfdom like heirarchy is much stronger then the hierarchies that existed in hunterer gatherer societies. Definitely more stable since wages and survival required someone to stay at their hierarchical post. Either way hierarchies DID exist in hunter gatherer societies. It's just the tribe leader doesn't have enough power to coerce all men into building a pyramid. That being said I believe the article is disputing this part of what I'm saying but I don't think hierarchies are disputed.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  Hierarchies are not, in fact, "heavily part of human behavior". They appear in certain circumstances, and dissipate when the circumstances do. G&W point out that we are brainwashed otherwise. I see it as a case of learned helplessness. It is deeply evident that big construction projects have often not required hierarchy beyond deference to an architect. The architect need have no coercive authority over anybody for this to work.
  - goatlover 4y ago
    Our ape cousins are hierarchical. Are there example of human tribes that have no hierarchy?
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      There have been myriad societies that consciously chose to dispense with hierarchy, others where hierarchy applied only to one sphere (e.g. religion) and nowhere else, ones where different hierarchies applied in different spheres, and many where hierarchy comes and goes, with no continuity with previous hierarchies. To be human is to have the power to consciously choose behavior.
      - fckgnad 4y ago
        I think those societies are rare and observations of those societies are inaccurate. There must be hierarchies in those societies, it's just misreported. More evidence of the relationship between hierarchy and biology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXxKBiidbeo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXxKBiidbeo Serotonin is the biological chemical that is linked with hierarchy in biology and we are awashed in it.
        mcswell 4y ago
        This sort of argument--that those reports must be inaccurate, because--well, I'm not sure why you you think these reports are inaccurate, except that you think they must be. And that's not a reason. I'm also pretty sure any linkage of serotonin to hierarchy is unproven.
moloch-hai 4y ago
You miss the point. Yes, hunter/gatherer societies routinely lack hierarchies. But settled populations, throughout prehistory and history, have very often also lacked hierarchies, including in places historians insisted otherwise. And, hunter-gatherer societies have sometimes had hierarchies despite the apparent impossibility.
AlotOfReading 4y ago
That's a very traditional argument in anthropology and it parallels arguments by people like Boehm. The problem is that studies have repeatedly emphasized just how much more successful we are as social organisms and that resources are not evenly distributed across the landscape. If you go look at modern foragers, what happens is exactly the opposite: if someone start acting like a jerk/despot, people stop sharing resources and make the jerk go fuck off in the forest until they're willing to be more cooperative.
- didntreadarticl 4y ago
  Interesting, thanks

fckgnad 4y ago

No I don't think this is true. Hierarchies are heavily part of human behavior. The concept of leaders and rank is so ingrained in behavior it's hard to think it didn't exist even in hunter and gatherer societies. Right now we have enough wealth such that everyone can live comfortably. But a lot of people still fight tooth and nail in the rat race all for what? For wealth partly but mostly for Rank. The higher your rank the better it's a huge driving force emotionally... especially for men. Desire for high rank is an inborn biological instinct. This is confirmed in psychology across all cultures. All men are emotionally more satisfied the higher their rank. For women it's also a huge driving force for mate selection. Women marry up. They have a strong desire to marry the highest ranking man. I would imagine in hunter and gather societies rank is maintained by two things. Brute force and social proof. Bigger men have more brute force to maintain leadership (hence why a lot of women are attracted to height) and social proof and respect insures that other men trust you and are more likely to listen to you. That being said coercion to build things like pyramids or grand multi-year projects of vast scale requires someone to own wealth. This type of serfdom like heirarchy is much stronger then the hierarchies that existed in hunterer gatherer societies. Definitely more stable since wages and survival required someone to stay at their hierarchical post. Either way hierarchies DID exist in hunter gatherer societies. It's just the tribe leader doesn't have enough power to coerce all men into building a pyramid. That being said I believe the article is disputing this part of what I'm saying but I don't think hierarchies are disputed.

moloch-hai 4y ago
Hierarchies are not, in fact, "heavily part of human behavior". They appear in certain circumstances, and dissipate when the circumstances do. G&W point out that we are brainwashed otherwise. I see it as a case of learned helplessness. It is deeply evident that big construction projects have often not required hierarchy beyond deference to an architect. The architect need have no coercive authority over anybody for this to work.
- goatlover 4y ago
  Our ape cousins are hierarchical. Are there example of human tribes that have no hierarchy?
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    There have been myriad societies that consciously chose to dispense with hierarchy, others where hierarchy applied only to one sphere (e.g. religion) and nowhere else, ones where different hierarchies applied in different spheres, and many where hierarchy comes and goes, with no continuity with previous hierarchies. To be human is to have the power to consciously choose behavior.
    - fckgnad 4y ago
      I think those societies are rare and observations of those societies are inaccurate. There must be hierarchies in those societies, it's just misreported. More evidence of the relationship between hierarchy and biology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXxKBiidbeo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXxKBiidbeo Serotonin is the biological chemical that is linked with hierarchy in biology and we are awashed in it.
      - mcswell 4y ago
        This sort of argument--that those reports must be inaccurate, because--well, I'm not sure why you you think these reports are inaccurate, except that you think they must be. And that's not a reason. I'm also pretty sure any linkage of serotonin to hierarchy is unproven.

moloch-hai 4y ago

You miss the point. Yes, hunter/gatherer societies routinely lack hierarchies. But settled populations, throughout prehistory and history, have very often also lacked hierarchies, including in places historians insisted otherwise. And, hunter-gatherer societies have sometimes had hierarchies despite the apparent impossibility.

AlotOfReading 4y ago

That's a very traditional argument in anthropology and it parallels arguments by people like Boehm. The problem is that studies have repeatedly emphasized just how much more successful we are as social organisms and that resources are not evenly distributed across the landscape. If you go look at modern foragers, what happens is exactly the opposite: if someone start acting like a jerk/despot, people stop sharing resources and make the jerk go fuck off in the forest until they're willing to be more cooperative.

didntreadarticl 4y ago
Interesting, thanks