# Anthro, History, Philosophy Types: Fascinating Article on Bias in the standard view of Civilization **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 12, 2018, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426 "2018-03-12T12:24:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/1 "2018-03-12T12:24:34Z")
I just came across this article on Arts and Letters Daily, which Doper **Exapno Mapcase** turned me onto years ago: [https://www.aldaily.com/](https://www.aldaily.com/) The article is linked here: [How to change the course of human history | Eurozine](https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/) It is entitled: **How to change the course of human history (at least, the part that’s already happened)** and is by David Graeber and David Wengrow, whose bios state that they are UK Econ academics with progressive leanings (One refers to the author as an anarchist). It is a long article - more like a summary of a longer book. Some of it’s assertions: - \*\*Agriculture was not an Event that has led to Inequality. \*\* The correlation between agriculture and both large communities and income inequality is a false connection - they cite archaeological digs that refute this assertion. And the transition to agriculture took thousands of years and coexisted with forms of H/G, so it wasn’t an Event anyway. - **Rousseau’s concept of a Noble Savage is used wrong** - i.e., “things were better when we were egalitarian hunter-gatherers in small tribes” - is cited incorrectly. Rousseau didn’t say it actually existed or that Humans were better off back in the day. He created it as a concept to assert that even if we started over as egalitarian, we would still clump up and distribute wealth unequally. - **Folks like Jared Diamond’s theories about Western Dominance due to guns, germs and steel are based on biased suppositions** - i.e., if non-western groups show income inequality and other symptoms of “civilization” then the better Tech that the West had is not tied to being a more sophisticated civilization due to the factors that Diamond cites. I have to read this article again - single spaced, it prints off to 17 pages!! But I like the _idea_ of challenging how to view civilization and why we may be looking at development from a too-specific lens. Always good to consider other points of view. Whether these authors are coming from some extreme place - I don’t think so, but want to read it again and do a little digging. Anyone else read this? Do the themes seem familiar in academic circles? Have I stumbled into an argument that sounds fresh to me, but is part of the Big Debate about theories in anthropology and history? ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/2 "2018-03-12T13:36:49Z")
I haven’t yet read the full article, but it seems like they start off arguing against a straw man. They make the claim that the basic story believed by most scholars is that we understand the development of agriculture to be the beginning of the fall from some “primordial innocence”. I don’t think that is really a serious position that most scholars hold. I think the old line of life being nasty, brutish, and short is much more in line with current beliefs. If they start by arguing against a straw man, I don’t hold out much hope for the rest of the article. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/3 "2018-03-12T13:45:16Z")
I’ve read some more of the article. It seems like the authors seem to think that “mainstream scholars” are claiming that there used to be an age where things were equal and that this was a good thing. I think they fail to understand was that the reason things were equal was that everyone was equally poor, and that no, that was not a good thing. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/4 "2018-03-12T14:27:59Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > I haven’t yet read the full article, but it seems like they start off arguing against a straw man. They make the claim that the basic story believed by most scholars is that we understand the development of agriculture to be the beginning of the fall from some “primordial innocence”. I don’t think that is really a serious position that most scholars hold. I think the old line of life being nasty, brutish, and short is much more in line with current beliefs. If they start by arguing against a straw man, I don’t hold out much hope for the rest of the article. Thanks. From my non-academic layperson status, I would say that yes, I thought there was a line of prevailing thought tied to the straw man you describe and they lay out in the article. Meaning that as I think about anthro, history, etc. and read books like \*\*Guns, Germs and Steel \*\*and **Sapiens** , I was under the impression that this line of thinking was part of what those authors are commenting on. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/5 "2018-03-12T15:10:16Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > Thanks. From my non-academic layperson status, I would say that yes, I thought there was a line of prevailing thought tied to the straw man you describe and they lay out in the article. Meaning that as I think about anthro, history, etc. and read books like \*\*Guns, Germs and Steel \*\*and **Sapiens** , I was under the impression that this line of thinking was part of what those authors are commenting on. Yes. What I mean is that it seems like the authors of the article didn’t really understand Diamond’s arguments in Guns, Germs, and Steel, and have misrepresented what Diamond actually believes. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/6 "2018-03-12T15:20:37Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > Yes. What I mean is that it seems like the authors of the article didn’t really understand Diamond’s arguments in Guns, Germs, and Steel, and have misrepresented what Diamond actually believes. Okay - - **Specific to GG&S** : can you summarize what is misunderstood? It seems like Diamond’s assertion is that the West got GG&S because they were located/situated in a way that increased innovation in areas like trade, tech and politics in an more-accelerated way vs. other civilizations. So when the West went exploring they came equipped with GG&S, which the others didn’t have. This article seems to suggest (I have to read it harder) that civilizations already existed in very sophisticated ways, so Diamond’s starting port for his theory is incorrect. The West may have ended up with GG&S but it is not due to the step-wise advancement through agriculture, etc. If this is missing key points, I would appreciate hearing. Trying to learn here. **Overall for the article** : again, if their straw man is wrong - mainstream thought is NOT that we have emerged from a Noble Savage state up through Agriculture to complex communities, where can I read to understand what ARE the “leading hypotheses” about how Humans organize and experience the benefits and costs of civilization? Thanks for your comments so far, and here’s hoping others will share their thinking, too. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/7 "2018-03-12T16:33:46Z")
Regarding Diamond and GGS, it seems like the authors disagreement comes at a much earlier point than the time of European dominance. They are talking about why agricultural societies beat out hunter gatherers several thousand years ago, not about why Europeans (temporarily) beat out the rest of the world during the colonial era. It’s the same issue with regard to the whole article. Yes, we did come up form a “savage” hunter gatherer lifestyle to agriculture and everything that followed. My disagreement with the authors is that scholars today don’t hold up the hunter gatherer times as being “noble” in any way. I think most scholars recognize that that time period was not noble at all. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/8 "2018-03-12T19:31:34Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > Regarding Diamond and GGS, it seems like the authors disagreement comes at a much earlier point than the time of European dominance. They are talking about why agricultural societies beat out hunter gatherers several thousand years ago, not about why Europeans (temporarily) beat out the rest of the world during the colonial era. > > It’s the same issue with regard to the whole article. Yes, we did come up form a “savage” hunter gatherer lifestyle to agriculture and everything that followed. My disagreement with the authors is that scholars today don’t hold up the hunter gatherer times as being “noble” in any way. I think most scholars recognize that that time period was not noble at all. Ah - I would very much disagree with the first part. The Euros had an advantage during the colonial era, but Diamond does assert it starts back at the innovation of Agriculture - he focuses on presence of wheatgrass foodstuffs and access to draft animals as part of getting the West a head start. Noble is a philosophical concept from Rousseau, not an anthropological one. The anthro issue would be egalitarianism. Here, the authors would say that agrarian communities were NOT more likely to have scale and income inequality - non-agrarian states had this, too. Is that a commonly-held view? Or is income inequality typically correlated with the emergence of agriculture? ---
**Author:** ![Weedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/weedy/32/301_2.png) [@Weedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weedy)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/9 "2018-03-12T20:06:07Z")
There are a bunch of people on the hard left, anarcho-communist side of things (which is kinda trendy at the moment with some young people) that do think of hunter-gatherer lifestyles in a very idealistic way. Maybe they are the people the authors are arguing with. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/10 "2018-03-12T21:19:39Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > Ah - I would very much disagree with the first part. The Euros had an advantage during the colonial era, but Diamond does assert it starts back at the innovation of Agriculture - he focuses on presence of wheatgrass foodstuffs and access to draft animals as part of getting the West a head start. > > Noble is a philosophical concept from Rousseau, not an anthropological one. The anthro issue would be egalitarianism. Here, the authors would say that agrarian communities were NOT more likely to have scale and income inequality - non-agrarian states had this, too. Is that a commonly-held view? Or is income inequality typically correlated with the emergence of agriculture? The view that I hold (I can’t speak for all scholars but I think many would agree) is that inequality is part of human nature. It becomes more obvious in agrarian societies compared to H-G societies because the agrarian societies have more to go around. Similarly our current post modern world, with all the increases in efficiency of production, has even more to go around, and so the inequality is even more obvious. But the fundamental source of the inequality is due to human nature, not the new fangled farms back in the day or the new fangled factories of the industrial revolution or the new fangled computers and robots of our ongoing information age / computer revolution. In addition I would also suggest that there is not a fundamental problem with inequality. Let the rich be as rich as they can get, as long as those at the very bottom have a basic standard of living. Of corse the problem then arises that those next to the bottom but not quite at the very bottom feel left out when those at the very bottom are provided for but they are expected to provide for themselves. This is one of the major problems that people who are in favor of greater equality have not been able to solve. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/11 "2018-03-12T22:25:25Z")
Okay - I have to reread the article. It feels like it agrees with what you are saying. Inequality is part of human nature so looking at various “advances” isn’t the point. Would you say that scholars like Diamond agree with that and the article is framing them incorrectly? ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/12 "2018-03-13T12:28:52Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > Okay - I have to reread the article. It feels like it agrees with what you are saying. Inequality is part of human nature so looking at various “advances” isn’t the point. > > Would you say that scholars like Diamond agree with that and the article is framing them incorrectly? I think Diamond would say that inequality is due to the advantages people in one location have over the advantages people in another location have (climate, plants and animals available for domestication, minerals, etc.). But when Diamond argues that, he means that the larger group inequalities are due to those particular local factors rather than being due to Europeans being white and Africans being black, etc. Of course the underlying reason for that is that it’s human nature to take advantage of whatever benefits your environment gives you. The benefits (on the whole) of living in an agricultural society outweigh the benefits of living in a hunter gatherer society, which is why agricultural societies survived and hunter gatherer societies didn’t (except in places where the environment was to inhospitable for agriculture). ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/13 "2018-03-13T13:14:09Z")
It’s long been acknowledged that the first known agricultural settlements (Çatalhöyük, for instance) don’t show evidence of social stratification, so “Agriculture was not an Event that has led to Inequality” would be a strawman argument. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/14 "2018-03-13T15:02:05Z")
This is all good. I look forward to grabbing more time to read the article - I have to focus on that pesky work stuff. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/15 "2018-03-13T16:11:50Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > It’s long been acknowledged that the first known agricultural settlements (Çatalhöyük, for instance) don’t show evidence of social stratification, so “Agriculture was not an Event that has led to Inequality” would be a strawman argument. It’s not a strawman argument because many people are currently arguing and writing books to the effect that agriculture was the cause of inequality. In fact, many people - including scientists and anthropologists who should know better - take this for granted in books and scientific papers. Google [agricultural revolution inequality](https://www.google.com/search?q=agricultural+revolution+inequality) and glance through a few links. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/16 "2018-03-13T16:19:59Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > It’s not a strawman argument because many people are currently arguing and writing books to the effect that agriculture was the cause of inequality. > > In fact, many people - including scientists and anthropologists who should know better - take this for granted in books and scientific papers. > > Google [agricultural revolution inequality](https://www.google.com/search?q=agricultural+revolution+inequality) and glance through a few links. Yes!! That is what I am noodling about! ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/17 "2018-03-13T16:29:11Z")
Also see Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott which became a best seller last year. Read some of the reviews. TL;DR: Agriculture bad, ‘barbarians’ good. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/18 "2018-03-13T16:35:14Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > It’s not a strawman argument because many people are currently arguing and writing books to the effect that agriculture was the cause of inequality. > > In fact, many people - including scientists and anthropologists who should know better - take this for granted in books and scientific papers. > > Google [agricultural revolution inequality](https://www.google.com/search?q=agricultural+revolution+inequality) and glance through a few links. Interesting. I didn’t realize people still make that argument. It seems like it should be obvious (to me it seems that way at least) that the reason hunter gatherer societies seemed egalitarian was because they didn’t have a whole bunch of extra stuff laying around to distribute, equally or unequally. I’m guessing that they didn’t worry about trying to make everybody equal and instead just did what worked best. If John was the best hunter, he got the best spear. If Tom was the best cook, he would be assigned to cook the meat when John returned with the days kill. I doubt they worried about things like making sure that everyone got their fair turn at having the best spear or getting to cook the meat or whatever else they did have to distribute. They did what worked best for their survival, or they wouldn’t survive. Often that would mean abandoning the hunter gatherer lifestyle and adopting agriculture when that became practical. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/19 "2018-03-13T16:43:24Z")
I have read GG&S but not the other things. What I am not sure about in terms of the OP, is why both can’t be true. If agriculture ‘led’ to inequality, why wasn’t it a situation in which an innate quality of human beings was presented with an opportunity to express itself which was not previously present? Or am I misunderstanding the question? ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426/20 "2018-03-13T17:11:18Z")
The article mentioned by the OP is well worth reading. I read it myself a few days ago, and passed it on to some people I thought would be interested. **It presents evidence that the idea that there were only small isolated groups of hunter-gatherers before agriculture and cities is plain wrong.** There were large social groupings for at least part of the year, with wealthy rulers and a fairly complex - and unequal - social structure. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anthro-history-philosophy-types-fascinating-article-on-bias-in-the-standard-view-of-civilization/810426.md?page=2)