7 ms·

The current "Out of Africa" is really not the same as what you might have learned 2-3 decades ago, despite the branding. David Reich is probably the leading res

by themgt 2y ago

The current "Out of Africa" is really not the same as what you might have learned 2-3 decades ago, despite the branding. David Reich is probably the leading researcher in this field and his description of our best guesses is highly nuanced and open to new data. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj6skZIxPuI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj6skZIxPuI https://www.razibkhan.com/p/out-of-africas-midlife-crisis https://www.razibkhan.com/p/out-of-africas-midlife-crisis

AndrewKemendo 2y ago
[flagged]
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > most advanced While I agree with your assessment from my subjective (european) perspective, this is inherently a value judgement and has no place in discussing genepools. > less evolved humans This is just a straight-up nonsensical concept. > human genetic evolution peaked this is also a nonsensical concept
- ch4s3 2y ago
  This is complete nonsense. > they have better overall baseline health indicators, sustainable living practices etc… This is a totally ridiculous claim and not supported by any evidence. > So humans left Africa, interbred with neandertal, created a less socialized, more sociopathic hybrid This is one of the more stunningly racist things I've seen on here in quite some time. It's scarcely worth trying to point out that this is a completely baseless claim.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    Oh come on we get barely disguised european scientific racism on HN all the time. Let us have a little hotep shit every once in a while.
    - ch4s3 2y ago
      I'd really rather have neither. Or the third kind that seems to be popping up recently.
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    > This is a totally ridiculous claim and not supported by any evidence. This is not really a new claim at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism Unsurprisingly it's been subjected to heavy criticism for many reasons.
    - ch4s3 2y ago
      Yeah, using a small number of geographically locked groups of modern foragers to project backwards in time to before agriculture is a fools errand. As interesting in as the Hadza are, it's impossible to really know what their lives looked like before the Bantu expansion, let alone later developments.
      - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
        > As interesting in as the Hadza are, it's impossible to really know what their lives looked like before the Bantu expansion, let alone later developments. As much as I agree with this, there are better models than the Hadza where we have better records of (plausibly) pre-colonial culture and behavior—the san people, the aboriginals of Australia, many of the peoples of Papua New Guinea, etc. The evidence for this is that language seems to encode a lot of culture, and though many of the languages are rapidly vanishing we've documented many of them. (Think about how northern north-american languages have so many distinct words for "snow", for a particularly famous example, showing how language embeds the cultural relevance of snow and ice.) For instance, looking at just the art in the Australian record there's strong evidence for the emergence of very limited social stratification. This, in my opinion, gives significant evidence to the idea of some sort of pre-marxist "primitive" communism (I wish we had better terms as there are good reasons to reject "primitive" but I'm explicitly trying to quote marx here). Granted, the christians have done their best to "convert" away cultural evidence of many pre-christian beliefs, to an unfortunately devastating effect on our understanding of pre-colonial cultures all around the world, so the extent to which pre-colonial neolithic cultures were egalitarian and communal and non-hierarchical will likely be difficult to understand fully. ...but even just through "traditional" western anthropology, we've long assumed that social stratification arose at the same time as sedentary agriculture. What would be the point without hoarded resources to distribute? And figures such as the nebulous "shaman" associated with animist cultures still divide anthropologists as to whether or not they qualify as social stratification—in many cases, this seems to result in less use of resources than others in the community, or usage of distinct resources. (and you also have cultures like the pre-colonial Hawai'i peoples that had such a ridiculous level of stratification and gendered use of resources that modern students often have difficulty believing the record—these trivially contradict the primitive communist narrative. But I say don't throw the baby out with the bath water!)

by themgt 2y ago

AndrewKemendo 2y ago

[flagged]

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> most advanced While I agree with your assessment from my subjective (european) perspective, this is inherently a value judgement and has no place in discussing genepools. > less evolved humans This is just a straight-up nonsensical concept. > human genetic evolution peaked this is also a nonsensical concept
ch4s3 2y ago
This is complete nonsense. > they have better overall baseline health indicators, sustainable living practices etc… This is a totally ridiculous claim and not supported by any evidence. > So humans left Africa, interbred with neandertal, created a less socialized, more sociopathic hybrid This is one of the more stunningly racist things I've seen on here in quite some time. It's scarcely worth trying to point out that this is a completely baseless claim.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  Oh come on we get barely disguised european scientific racism on HN all the time. Let us have a little hotep shit every once in a while.
  - ch4s3 2y ago
    I'd really rather have neither. Or the third kind that seems to be popping up recently.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > This is a totally ridiculous claim and not supported by any evidence. This is not really a new claim at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism Unsurprisingly it's been subjected to heavy criticism for many reasons.
  - ch4s3 2y ago
    Yeah, using a small number of geographically locked groups of modern foragers to project backwards in time to before agriculture is a fools errand. As interesting in as the Hadza are, it's impossible to really know what their lives looked like before the Bantu expansion, let alone later developments.
    - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
      > As interesting in as the Hadza are, it's impossible to really know what their lives looked like before the Bantu expansion, let alone later developments. As much as I agree with this, there are better models than the Hadza where we have better records of (plausibly) pre-colonial culture and behavior—the san people, the aboriginals of Australia, many of the peoples of Papua New Guinea, etc. The evidence for this is that language seems to encode a lot of culture, and though many of the languages are rapidly vanishing we've documented many of them. (Think about how northern north-american languages have so many distinct words for "snow", for a particularly famous example, showing how language embeds the cultural relevance of snow and ice.) For instance, looking at just the art in the Australian record there's strong evidence for the emergence of very limited social stratification. This, in my opinion, gives significant evidence to the idea of some sort of pre-marxist "primitive" communism (I wish we had better terms as there are good reasons to reject "primitive" but I'm explicitly trying to quote marx here). Granted, the christians have done their best to "convert" away cultural evidence of many pre-christian beliefs, to an unfortunately devastating effect on our understanding of pre-colonial cultures all around the world, so the extent to which pre-colonial neolithic cultures were egalitarian and communal and non-hierarchical will likely be difficult to understand fully. ...but even just through "traditional" western anthropology, we've long assumed that social stratification arose at the same time as sedentary agriculture. What would be the point without hoarded resources to distribute? And figures such as the nebulous "shaman" associated with animist cultures still divide anthropologists as to whether or not they qualify as social stratification—in many cases, this seems to result in less use of resources than others in the community, or usage of distinct resources. (and you also have cultures like the pre-colonial Hawai'i peoples that had such a ridiculous level of stratification and gendered use of resources that modern students often have difficulty believing the record—these trivially contradict the primitive communist narrative. But I say don't throw the baby out with the bath water!)