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What exactly did you find good about the article? Sounds like the author just over extended observations from one tribe to all of human history. Maybe it’s true
by ramraj07 4y ago
What exactly did you find good about the article? Sounds like the author just over extended observations from one tribe to all of human history. Maybe it’s true but it sure as hell ain’t substantiated. So we invented tools discovered fire and then just went back to dragging women by their hair to caves for 500K years? Or maybe there’s more nuance in it.
- me-vs-cat 4y ago> invented tools discovered fire then just went back to dragging women There is no "went back". That never stopped, and still continues today.
- edgyquant 4y ago> ere is no "went back". That never stopped, and still continues today. Rather there is no reason to believe this ever happened. It’s a joke and one that people now toss around as an anthropological truth. Sort of like prostitution being the oldest profession. https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/08/08/caveman-courtship/ https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/08/08/caveman-cou...
- me-vs-cat 4y agoDid you believe I meant that it literally continues today in the caves we all live in, or could this joke be a metaphor for the basic drive to reproduce even at the expense of other concerns?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- revelio 4y ago>> observations from one tribe The article claims otherwise: As time went by, evidence for Chagnon's claims became too overwhelming to ignore for most anthropologists. Numerous other anthropologists came to the same conclusions as Chagnon, both before and after his work. From Australia to Papua New Guinea to South America, the same phenomenon has been observed: Men kill each other at high rates in conflicts that center around the distribution of women.
- Seattle3503 4y agoObserving the same phenomenon in multiple tribes doesn't imply it happened everywhere all the time. The question the author originally tries to answer is why no large society developed anywhere for hundreds of thousands of years.
- scotty79 4y agoIt might be if the phenomenon is a result of perfectly reasonable competitive behaviors in a given previously fairly common ecology. When you consider pre-medieval eastern Europe is basically the same as this primitive dynamics plus a technology to build a wall and ability to temporarily plant some seeds and harvest them outside in between the raids. Third part of musings of this author gives failry clear path from that dynamic into modern times as new technologies and population densities demanded more and more men to be cast out of warrior role into subservient worker role.
- jvb1000 4y agoAs others have pointed out, the issue with observations about prehistoric life have been generalized from a small sample size.
- ramraj07 4y agoConsider for a second that tribes that stuck to weird cultures like that are the ones that remained insular. It takes a lot of effort culturally to resist the creep of modern civilization. Are you saying every human is innately programmed to look at other humans live a life of great technical prowess and say “nah, I’ll stick to my arrows?” Or is it possible that only particular cultural attitudes make you stick to your “guns” so to speak.
- revelio 4y agoDoes it take a lot of effort? The article claims this particular tribe only had "first contact" with western civilization in the 50s or 60s or so.