3 ms·

The Yanomami tell us very l little about human life prior to the year zero, so extrapolating to 300k us a bridge too far. However this does back up work done b

The Yanomami tell us very l little about human life prior to the year zero, so extrapolating to 300k us a bridge too far. However this does back up work done by Chris Knight [1] showing that pre-modern societies did in fact organize around fertility rituals and reproduction is the first order game. The lack of “development” however I would attribute to the fact that the Yanomami and other non-private property based societies, continue to have relative abundance of food. Whether this is because wars attrite the population to such an extent that they remain sustainable is not a rigorously made argument IMO but seems at least plausible. This also supports my theory [2] that more complex games for reproduction, pushing people into the violence of property ownership, only comes when a food source is persistently scarce to the point of deprivation that can’t be remedied without private property. They seem to be able to prevent monopolists from monopolizing these open hunting grounds, which then in turn does not pressure them to an extent that they need to develop monopoly over resources. http://www.chrisknight.co.uk/category/origins_of_culture/ http://www.chrisknight.co.uk/category/origins_of_culture/ https://kemendo.com/Myth-of-Scarcity.html https://kemendo.com/Myth-of-Scarcity.html

phkahler 4y ago
>> The lack of “development” however I would attribute to the fact that the Yanomami and other non-private property based societies, continue to have relative abundance of food. That was covered. The women can feed the children on their own, so the men fight over women not resources.
- AndrewKemendo 4y ago
  Yes perhaps poorly directly attributed on my part but I’m stressing that specific point
- yanderekko 4y ago
  >The women can feed the children on their own, so the men fight over women not resources. Notably the causality runs in both directions here - the fighting over women is what prevents the population from falling into a Malthusian trap. The next time someone tells you that pre-agricultural populations only spent 10 hours a week on work and the rest on leisure or whatever, you should reply asking what percentage of those populations died do to homicide. The answer might be revealing.
  - AndrewKemendo 4y ago
    You wouldn't get a coherent answer because again, this article tells us nothing about the average pre-historic human life. It only tells us about the Yanomami, we can't extrapolate from before they were around
brabel 4y ago
> The Yanomami tell us very l little about human life prior to the year zero, so extrapolating to 300k us a bridge too far. Did you miss the fact that the same pattern was observed in multiple societies, by multiple researchers, in places as far as Australia and Papua New Ghinea?
- AndrewKemendo 4y ago
  Look at the time periods studied. They don't go back that far

phkahler 4y ago

>> The lack of “development” however I would attribute to the fact that the Yanomami and other non-private property based societies, continue to have relative abundance of food. That was covered. The women can feed the children on their own, so the men fight over women not resources.

AndrewKemendo 4y ago
Yes perhaps poorly directly attributed on my part but I’m stressing that specific point
yanderekko 4y ago
>The women can feed the children on their own, so the men fight over women not resources. Notably the causality runs in both directions here - the fighting over women is what prevents the population from falling into a Malthusian trap. The next time someone tells you that pre-agricultural populations only spent 10 hours a week on work and the rest on leisure or whatever, you should reply asking what percentage of those populations died do to homicide. The answer might be revealing.
- AndrewKemendo 4y ago
  You wouldn't get a coherent answer because again, this article tells us nothing about the average pre-historic human life. It only tells us about the Yanomami, we can't extrapolate from before they were around

brabel 4y ago

> The Yanomami tell us very l little about human life prior to the year zero, so extrapolating to 300k us a bridge too far. Did you miss the fact that the same pattern was observed in multiple societies, by multiple researchers, in places as far as Australia and Papua New Ghinea?

AndrewKemendo 4y ago
Look at the time periods studied. They don't go back that far