Anthro, History, Philosophy Types: Fascinating Article on Bias in the standard view of Civilization

[WordMan]

@GreenWyvern

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.

I knew I liked you.

[FlikTheBlue]

@Ulfreida

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?

I think it’s a pushback against the idea that agriculture caused the inequality. What agriculture brought was an increase in wealth, and each additional advance in technology increased that wealth. It’s not the increase in wealth that caused the inequality, it’s the natural human tendency to not distribute everything equally that instead gets magnified by each additional increase in wealth. I think that unless we can change human nature, we will never achieve equality unless we lose our collective wealth and return to the situation where everyone was equally poor (and yes, I think that would be a bad thing).

[Lemur866]

@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.

This is completely wrong. It’s not “Europe” that had a geographic advantage, it’s “Eurasia”, including India and North Africa. It’s not that Europe happened to have wheat, because wheat comes from the fertile crescent, not Europe. The point is that crops, animals, germs, and technology slosh back and forth over the whole of Eurasia. You know how every other invention is credited to “ancient China”? Well, it’s the truth. Same with the fabled “riches of the Orient”. Even in Roman times the eastern half of the empire was richer and more productive than the western half.

So Europeans in 1492 didn’t have a technological or military or economic or infectious advantage over the Ottoman Empire, India, or China, in fact the reverse was true. Europeans DID have an overwhelming advantage over the Americas. And so would have the Indians, or the Ottomans, or the Chinese, if they had sailed over to the Americas to conquer them. At the time the Spaniards are romping over the Americas conquering everything in sight, the Ottomans are grinding their way through Europe up the Balkans.

So Europeans also had a huge technological/military/economic advantage over sub-Saharan Africa, but attempts at conquest or colonization of Africa met with disaster because of tropical diseases. The same factor that caused the depopulation of the Americas worked in the opposite way in Africa. Africa didn’t get colonized until hundreds of years later.

[GreenWyvern]

@Lemur866

So Europeans also had a huge technological/military/economic advantage over sub-Saharan Africa, but attempts at conquest or colonization of Africa met with disaster because of tropical diseases. The same factor that caused the depopulation of the Americas worked in the opposite way in Africa. Africa didn’t get colonized until hundreds of years later.

Can you give any examples of European attempts at conquest or colonization of Africa that met with disaster because of tropical diseases, to support your theory?

Did Europeans suffer any worse from tropical diseases in Africa than in India or South America, or South-East Asia?

[MrDibble]

@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 and glance through a few links.

I’m not seeing any recent archaeological or anthropology papers in that googledump, so perhaps you can link directly to one or two that stood out from your own search? I’m seeing a lot of pop sci (including many references to Diamond’s “Worst Mistake” article), some sociology stuff, quite a bit on the rise of gender inequality, and a lot about the much more recent Green revolution, so maybe add the word “neolithic” to narrow the search.

But that’s not really pertinent - I’m not saying “many people” aren’t still making the argument, I’m saying the people who do the actual work in the field aren’t making it, AFAIK.The authors acknowledge this, but then still manage to blame the same people whose evidence they cite because the pop-sci authors haven’t caught up yet. Their problem is with pop-sci, then, not with the actual research, but apparently it’s the fault of the hard disciplines for being “strangely reluctant to announce their findings to the public – or even scholars in other disciplines – let alone reflect on the larger political implications” (gotta love that bit of mindreading as to the mindset of the researchers for not doing political interpretation, there)

[Alessan]

@GreenWyvern

Can you give any examples of European attempts at conquest or colonization of Africa that met with disaster because of tropical diseases, to support your theory?

Did Europeans suffer any worse from tropical diseases in Africa than in India or South America, or South-East Asia?

I can’t give you examples myself, but the theory behind this (as per Diamond) is that because humanity evolved in Africa, Africa, in turn, evolved to kill humans. Homo Sapiens simply hasn’t been in the rest of the world long enough for that many local diseases to develop. Africa is our natural habitat, which is why Africa has so many of our natural predators, including diseases.

[WordMan]

@MrDibble

But that’s not really pertinent - I’m not saying “many people” aren’t still making the argument, I’m saying the people who do the actual work in the field aren’t making it, AFAIK.The authors acknowledge this, but then still manage to blame the same people whose evidence they cite because the pop-sci authors haven’t caught up yet. Their problem is with pop-sci, then, not with the actual research, but apparently it’s the fault of the hard disciplines for being “strangely reluctant to announce their findings to the public – or even scholars in other disciplines – let alone reflect on the larger political implications” (gotta love that bit of mindreading as to the mindset of the researchers for not doing political interpretation, there)

a-HA!!!

I knew it!! You Scientist Types are conspiring to keep the good stuff from us civilians. You bastards!

Seriously, I think that is the thing I am picking at. The article sets up the assertion that Agriculture –> Inequality is an active scholarly position. In the OP I am trying to check on that, as well as the topics the article discusses within its setup.

Your paragraph quoted above is more layered than that: it says that Pop-Sci is where this correlation is still more prevalent, but scholarly science has not done a lot to modify the public’s grasp, and some even encourage the correlation.

Perhaps this is why the article in the OP got my attention when I first scanned it and ended up starting this thread. It seemed to challenge (what I am now realizing is) the Pop-Sci status quo - certainly the one that I, faithful Science-Reading Civilian, have vaguely in my head after reading bits of anthro, economics, history/sociology, a bit of Piketty, etc.

Argh. It sounds like the politics of inequality as a wedge issue outweigh the ability to help the public understand, as Flik has been asserting all thread, the basic Human Nature driving inequality.

(I ***knew ***it!!)

[GreenWyvern]

@Alessan

I can’t give you examples myself, but the theory behind this (as per Diamond) is that because humanity evolved in Africa, Africa, in turn, evolved to kill humans. Homo Sapiens simply hasn’t been in the rest of the world long enough for that many local diseases to develop. Africa is our natural habitat, which is why Africa has so many of our natural predators, including diseases.

Diamond is wrong about that, and a lot else. It doesn’t even make much sense.

It’s what I would call a ‘scientific fairytale’. It’s a narrative made up with no supporting evidence (or only highly selective evidence) to support a personal point of view. Or just to say something sensational to sell books.

[GreenWyvern]

@MrDibble

But that’s not really pertinent - I’m not saying “many people” aren’t still making the argument, I’m saying the people who do the actual work in the field aren’t making it, AFAIK.The authors acknowledge this, but then still manage to blame the same people whose evidence they cite because the pop-sci authors haven’t caught up yet. Their problem is with pop-sci, then, not with the actual research, but apparently it’s the fault of the hard disciplines for being “strangely reluctant to announce their findings to the public – or even scholars in other disciplines – let alone reflect on the larger political implications” (gotta love that bit of mindreading as to the mindset of the researchers for not doing political interpretation, there)

The thing is, there are real political implications. Inequality is a major issue in the world today, and it matters how people think of it. It matters what they think the cause is. It makes a difference to the way that economists and politicians, and and the general public think. So researchers do have a responsibility to get the facts out, and to counter inaccurate pop-science.

There’s one ivory-tower school of thought among researchers and professionals that ‘we just publish papers in journals, it’s not up to us what people do with our scholarship’. But they are in a minority today.

This applies to other fields. Alt-right and neo-Nazi groups are very much into medieval European history, with the idea that medieval Europe was lily white, that people thought in terms of race, and fought and conquered other races. This is not supported by the facts, and many medieval historians feel a responsibility to counter that narrative to the public.

Last year, the BBC ran a children’s history series which showed black Romans in Britain. There was a huge outcry from rightwingers about ‘politically correct nonsense’, and when Mary Beard stepped into the controversy to say that actually there were black Romans in Britain, she experienced an avalanche of attacks on social media.

History and social history does have political implications, just as the hard sciences have implications for technology in society. I don’t think academics can ignore that responsibility.

[Alessan]

@GreenWyvern

Diamond is wrong about that, and a lot else. It doesn’t even make much sense.

Really? Because it makes sense to me as a layman.

Homo Sapiens has been outside of Africa for what, 100,000 years? That’s nothing. We’re basically still an invasive species. It seems logical to me that fewer predators have evolved to prey on us in the outside world than in our natural habitat.

[GreenWyvern]

@Alessan

Really? Because it makes sense to me as a layman.

Homo Sapiens has been outside of Africa for what, 100,000 years? That’s nothing. We’re basically still an invasive species. It seems logical to me that fewer predators have evolved to prey on us in the outside world than in our natural habitat.

Just because something may seem logical, that doesn’t mean it’s true.

Would you say the Amazon rainforests or the forests of south-east Asia are less dangerous to people than the forests of Africa, in terms of diseases and predators?

Did South American anacondas have to evolve specially to be dangerous to humans? Are polar bears not dangerous to humans because they have only been near humans for a few thousand years? Are Australian funnel web spiders not poisonous to human beings?

[MrDibble]

@GreenWyvern

The thing is, there are real political implications. Inequality is a major issue in the world today, and it matters how people think of it. It matters what they think the cause is. It makes a difference to the way that economists and politicians, and and the general public think. So researchers do have a responsibility to get the facts out, and to counter inaccurate pop-science.

IMO, there’s a difference between “getting the facts out” and “political interpretation”

I’m not saying scientists can’t do the latter. But (again IMO) you can’t make it a requirement of the job. Some scientists only want to do the research part. Or don’t feel qualified to make the interpretations.

There’s one ivory-tower school of thought among researchers and professionals that ‘we just publish papers in journals, it’s not up to us what people do with our scholarship’. But they are in a minority today.

I’m not saying that scientists *only *should stick to journal science, and misuse of research by pop sci authors is bad. But that’s much more the fault of the misusers, not the misused.

This applies to other fields. Alt-right and neo-Nazi groups are very much into medieval European history, with the idea that medieval Europe was lily white, that people thought in terms of race, and fought and conquered other races. This is not supported by the facts, and many medieval historians feel a responsibility to counter that narrative to the public.

Kudos to them. But I’m not going to fault some guy who just wants to dig up Roman villas in Somersetshire and leave it at that.

[WordMan]

If I come out of this article and thread with a bit more nuance to my layperson’s view, then I will take it.

My antenna are now up for:

• References to/dependencies on An Agricultural Event and how it fits into the overall topic being presented.

• Discussions of Inequality and its bases - is it treated as its own Human Impulse, or is it explicitly tied to innovations that the evidence doesn’t bear out? And: do proposed changes to inequality attempt to hobble innovation, or do they attempt to respond to the Inequality Impulse?

• Rousseau’s concept of the Noble Savage. I need to understand his intent more, rather than rely on second-hand dismissals of it. If he was merely creating a strawman concept to point out how Humans would never remain that way due to our Inequality Impulse, that is very different vs. Rousseau saying we must aspire to that NS state.

Good stuff, as far as I can tell. Thanks.