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Ancient Patagonian hunter-gatherers took care of their injured and disabled
- drewg123 1y agoThis seems relatively common among ancient hunter-gatherer societies. We've been watching Prof. Jiang's excellent "Story of Civilization" course on his Predictive History YT channel[1]. In the 2nd or 3rd video, he mentions that the remains of somebody with a rare form of dwarfism were found as part of an ancient hunter-gather tribe, and they had the same levels of nutrition as the able-bodied members of the tribe. Maybe "primitive" people were not so primitive after all.. [1]The course is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjqf9T59uY0&list=PLREQ8S3NPaQvNTsYrqph8T4hn7KAHb1si https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjqf9T59uY0&list=PLREQ8S3NPa...
- noelwelsh 1y agoAgreed. There is a background cultural assumption in the Western world that the "state of nature" [1] is one of constant suffering. What I know of anthropology suggests this is bullshit, and the truth is that there have been a huge variety of social structures in our prehistory. "The Dawn of Everything" goes into this. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature
- mothballed 1y agoNot taking care of a formerly productive injured person who might recover would be profoundly stupid, if you have the food for it and some expectation they might be productive again or a superior ability to direct those who might be productive.
- crawfordcomeaux 1y agoNot taking care of a wise injured person who might recover & help guide others, teach children, care for children, help heal, reveal spiritual teachings, and otherwise be human would be profoundly stupid. Judging who to care for based solely on productivity or ability to direct others would also be profoundly stupid....this strategy sounds like middle-management.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mothballed 1y agoStrawman
- n4r9 1y agoSurely emotions and morale are worth considering as well. Even if someone is unproductive and stupid, but friendly and well-liked, then their death would impact everyone's productivity for some time.
- crawfordcomeaux 1y agoExactly. Every being has intrinsic value. A pure productivity perspective is rooted in dehumanization and a reductive take on what it means to live/survive/thrive.
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- bambax 1y agoCompassion exists and isn't just driven by self-interest or self-preservation.
- mothballed 1y agoSure, but I'm not claiming that. I'm only claiming it'd be stupid not to help people when it's in your self interest.
- potatototoo99 1y agoCompassion exists because it was useful for the fitness of the species, in the species where it exists.
- asdff 1y agoBut in most all cases it is dependent on available resources sufficient to support another unproductive human. In cases where these resources are not available, plenty of accounts exists of humans making hard choices all through history to today.
- xandrius 1y agoCould have arisen due to it though.
- constantcrying 1y agoHumans are profoundly irrational. These people were alive as well. Just like most people today they did not see the world as an optimization problem. They took care of the injured because it was the right thing to do, just like we do today. Not because there was some utilitarian value, where you calculate effort spent vs. expected return.
- dennis_jeeves2 1y agoWhy is news? It's common sense. Click bait.
- refactor_master 1y agoPretty sure what went down in Late Holocene Patagonia isn’t common sense.
- hetspookjee 1y agoWhat makes you say that?
- dotnet00 1y agoPeople are used to thinking that humans were animalistic savages right up until their favored religion or ancient city-state popped up, believing that the hunter-gatherer existence would've been so harsh that there was no room to care for vulnerable members of the group.
- nemomarx 1y agoSome people like to think that we were brutal or cruel in the ancient past and would have left people to die. (Generally I think the implication is that we should do this again?)
- mothballed 1y agoPeople still think that. They will use violence and men with guns to enforce welfare schemes because they believe without the government people won't help others and therefore their violence is justified.
- hbarka 1y agoExcept now it’s the complete opposite.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoThere is a (possibly inaccurate [0]) quote attributed to Margaret Mead, where, when asked about the first signs of civilization, said it was when they found a healed fractured femur. [0] https://www.sapiens.org/culture/margaret-mead-femur/ https://www.sapiens.org/culture/margaret-mead-femur/
- bambax 1y agoYeah, well, in that case ants are civilized (they probably are).
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoThere was an episode of Cosmos[0], where Neil DeGrasse Tyson makes the case that there are two principal intelligences on Earth: Men and bees. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubE9hjrsHmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubE9hjrsHmI
- BurningFrog 1y agoAnts in a colony are so closely related that the colony can be thought of a one individual. From this perspective ant helping each other is similar to cells in a body working together.
- cornholio 1y agoThe trait of caring and providing for other injured or vulnerable members of the group is widespread in the animal kingdom, there is even a name for it, allocare. Since social groups usually form based on family kinship, it can be explained on selfish gene dynamics. So the argument was always gradual, not that social care is unique to civilization, but that it happens to an extent (such as the very long recovery period and food resources required to heal a femur) that we can arbitrarily call "civilization". On the other hand, you could stretch that Scotsman in the opposite direction: do we really provide enough care to other people to the point we are different from animals and can claim ourselves truly civilized?
- bambax 1y agoBut why wouldn't they?? Most animals take care of their wounded peers, from ants to elephants, and often defend individuals from predators (not always! but often enough to be on countless documentaries). This is an extremely natural behavior, not unique to humans or proto-humans, and not driven by interest or strategy. Compassion is innate. Cruelty and contempt for the weak is a specifically human trait, and not only that, but a very recent one too.
- t1E9mE7JTRjf 1y ago> Cruelty and contempt for the weak is a specifically human trait Is this true? I think there are many counter examples. eg birds tossing out offspring from their nest.
- kittensmittens5 1y agoThis isn't true. Also the book "Sapiens" goes a bit into how cruel ancient humans in the Americas would be to some of the weaker offspring. So it's not 'new' in the sense of last few thousand years either. I think there's been a lot of personalities and cultures over the last 300k years that approach this differently.
- bluGill 1y agoThere is the idea sometimes stated that because child mortality was so high in the past parents had kids but avoided loving them - because odds were against the child living past 5 and if you love your kids you then have heartbreak when they die. Historians disagree with that idea (at least for most cultures?). However I've heard it more than once. This just gives more data to the idea that humans loved each other enough to take care of injured.
- pfannkuchen 1y agoWasn’t child mortality only super high in dense population settings relatively recently? Like if you are a tribe in the middle of nowhere in Northern Europe 20k years ago, for example, you are probably not exposed to much contagious disease. Disease is a network phenomenon, and prior to modern medicine humans had increased network speeds and connectivity massively, but that wasn’t the historical norm, was it?
- pacbard 1y agoThe hunter-gatherers in the study lived in the "Late Holocene (~4000 to 250 BP)", meaning between 2000 BCE to 1825 CE. These people are separated from us by less than 150 generations. I don't believe that humans evolve that fast, so the way you think, feel, ache, and so on also applies to them. Would you leave behind your injured and disabled in their situation (which is speculated to be the result of hunting accidents)?
- staplers 1y agoI don't believe that humans evolve that fast Evidence of animals doing this exists. Unsure why anyone would be surprised theres evidence of humans doing this. It's really wild to me how many humans believe their feelings are so different from animals. Most animals have similar incentives and desires, humans just have "better" tools to achieve them.
- culi 1y agoGrieving orcas have been found to move their dead babies around for many weeks. Chimps will fetch plants like Scutia myrtina, which is toxic in large amounts but acts as a anthelmintics (anti-worm drug), for fellow members of their group when they're sick. Elephants will defend their wounded and even bring food or water to them or help them stand up when they're struggling to. Not sure why you're being downvoted. You're absolutely right. These types of behaviors can be seen all throughout the animal world. Especially for animals showing degrees of eusociality.
- spookie 1y agoThese feelings are also extremely important for the preservation of one's species. No wonder evolution took this approach in multiple occasions, animals tend to get lonely if they aren't kind to one another, leaving themselves open to get killed. The incentive is there to have strength in numbers, and being "emotional" in some ways contributes to further that.
- next_xibalba 1y agoThe costs and benefits faced by ancient humans were very, very different. Maybe a different way to frame the question would be "At what probability of additional death, injury, or suffering (to you or other tribe members) would you abandon your injured/disabled?" Humans of that era did not have anything even remotely approaching modern medicine and most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep. A huge portion of ancient peoples energy and time was dedicating to obtaining calories. That means caring for the injured/disabled imposes a huge cost and risk. We can just as easily find examples of ancient peoples murdering or abandoning their injured, disabled, and weak. I don't think it would be right or fair to judge them through a modern lens. Of course they cared for their loved ones and mourned their deaths. But they were faced with much harsher circumstances to which their cultures and beliefs were suited.
- crawfordcomeaux 1y agoWe need only look at the cultures of the Aka, Bayaka, and Mbuti tribes, who all split off from the same tribe 150k years ago & still share many of the same cultural norms oriented around counterdominance, matrifocal care, and singing as a means of protection & decision-making. Their cultures can show us what it took to survive and thrive in a jungle with numerous large predators. These tribes carry wisdom we can apply in our daily lives.
- sorokod 1y ago"The existence of altruism in nature is at first sight puzzling, because altruistic behaviour reduces the likelihood that an individual will reproduce" More, in the Altruism in Biology Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_(biology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_(biology)
- animanoir 1y ago[dead]
- arjie 1y agoI really enjoy reading about these group dynamics. Usually people interpret the "it makes sense that people would do this" as meaning "self-interest dominates compassion" but I actually think the meaning is "those groups which did these things survive" and so over time you get these things built-in. "Compassion" isn't something I constructed for myself from rationality. I can do that, but it is a back-formation - an explanation for a behaviour I was already going to do. I'd say it's more of a property of my ancestry than my reason since I had it as a child in more or less the same form as I have it today and I recall my younger brother come back crying after going to help an anthill survive a storm (the ants were unreceptive to this Anti-Ender's assistance). At 4 years or younger he had no capacity for the kind of reason required to reach compassion tabula rasa. I model mankind as self-similar to man. Allocare makes sense between individuals in the same way that a T-cell 'cares for' other cells in the body. And Lawrence Oates's "I am just going outside and may be some time" seems akin to apoptosis: knowing the cost on the rest of the organism, the individual has programmed escape hatches that preserve the entire operation. It seems natural and adaptive that individuals will attempt to exploit the structures (care for the injured and elderly) that so arise. And counter-adaptations to that form as well. But evidence that agrees with one's model is usually not as useful as the evidence that disagrees with it and so the thing that I find most interesting is the chap with the massive hip dislocation. That's a debilitating injury or disability and for a tribe on the move it must have been a massive expenditure of resources to bring along this individual. If encountered in childhood, perhaps the net increase in resources is not that high. If encountered in adulthood, perhaps it was a prized member of the community or perhaps the group anticipated recovery. On the other hand, we do find good reasons to "protect the team". Knowing that you will be cared for means you give more to the operation. The classic "No Man Left Behind!" stance probably has a huge effect on morale.
- daedrdev 1y agoWe also know that many didn't, depending on their culture and geography. For example some of the remaining isolated hunter gatherer tribes researched in the 1970 killed orphans as they could not afford to feed them
- xandrius 1y agoDifferent environment, isn't it? I'd imagine that it those Patagonians had to strictly choose to either feed their healthy people or their injured, the choice would have been easy, as not feeding the healthy would make them become non-useful themselves.
- pratik661 1y agoA lot of field studies on chimpanzees also indicate similar behavior (ie taking care of former leaders after they aged out of their prime)
- ciconia 1y agoI'm somewhat surprised the comments here talk about the difference between "savages" and modern culture, yet no one talks about racism. It is clearly a western civilization thing to regard all other cultures (and species) as culturally and morally inferior. Hence the amazement expressed in the OP: > Yes, there is some evidence suggesting that interpersonal care was practiced in earlier periods of Patagonia. As if western civilization has invented interpersonal care.