Is it true that civilization by its nature cuts us off from each other, or does it by its nature require interaction? It seems a bit of a contradictory complaint when also bemoaning the fact that civilization diminishes the ability of an individual to exist independent of anyone else, that it requires interdependency. No question we have social needs and within civilizations we have a wide variety of means to meet them. What I’ll grant is that it is more possible to be socially isolated if one does not choose to engage.
Mate selection as a peacock ritual is not a function of civilization; it is a function of evolution and sexual selection before civilization, before HGs, and well, before peacocks.
Not sure that communing with nature, however much I enjoy a good hike, is a psychological need.
Did HG help more others who are suffering more than we do? Let’s compare. They did pretty good looking out as best as they could (which was not much) for the members of their immediate group of maybe 30 or so individuals. Yeah they had to kill of a few babies but my understanding is that other than that they either all ate enough or none ate enough, and often the latter. Meanwhile when other groups were suffering did they help them? Not too often. More often they skirmished with them when resources got particularly tight. Now today we also do a pretty good job in our immediate extended family units and beyond that civilization has processes to aid and assist others outside of our immediate kinship and clan circles. The level to which modern humans help others who they do not have an immediate kinship/clan relationship with today is in fact vastly vastly greater than was ever even possible or perhaps imaginable in HG times. Dayum, just immunizations alone were one smallish group (and the scale of the planet) doing something that have helped save many millions of lives and prevented many times more of suffering, across the globe, to extremely unrelated individuals.
So on …
I’ll be blunt. I cannot take seriously any bit that includes the claim: “any individual that prizes material possessions as much as the average American does has a malfunctioning brain, and is suffering from a kind of disease” as anything other than something to laugh at. It’s a rant and a poor one.
I will concur with your position that civilization come part and parcel with inequalities and that the magnitude of those inequalities is extremely problematic. Now the question is how to address that problem. No, there never was an ideal noble savage gan eden, and civilization was no mistake. Neither is civilization without major room to improve. Civilization does allow for decreased inequity. We can, by way of further developing civilization and its tools, do better at taking care of each other, increasing our connectedness, and increasing our mutual happiness. Whether or not we choose to develop our civilization in that direction or not is not the fault of civilization. It is on heads what we do with the tools we have.
Why is it that the better fed, physically and psychologically healthier, and more cooperative hunter gatherers were pushed out of the good.land in the first place? Why didn’t they kick the assessment of the starving stunted selfish twisted farmers?
Well, there is of course infant mortality but also the fact that when human groups get too big they tend to split and a new group goes off to do it their way.
You see this still today with a lot of recreational, social groups. Splitters!
Who said they were more cooperative? They needn’t have been as organised as the Indian nations, being able to field large warparties.
I presume the smaller bands of roaming H-G would have difficulty in attacking a fortified village manned by a larger group of people.
Probably there were confrontations but on the whole they would rather have avoided confrontation and just take a different route than they were used to taking.
Thus being pushed back further and further with every new farming community that encroached on their ‘hunting fields’.
And why did they need to split off taking the risks of traveling to parts unknown, when they had such easy access to many kinds of food where they were? What exactly happened as an individual HG group exceeded a certain population density that constrained it?
Do you think that HG groups made a conscious choice that population size not exceeding X is what we want and practiced effective birth control or abstinance, other than by infanticide?
Yes prolonged nursing contributed to typical birth spacing of roughly 3.5 years but why was it a relatively impactful practice on spacing then but is pretty much ineffectual as a birth control practice now? Because it was pretty malnourished women who were often also carrying their three year old children on their backs breastfeeding. Also contributing to keeping population down was the high rate of women dying during and immediately after childbirth, and the fact that during lean times (defined by more population than available resources can support) there were more deaths of young adult males over resources with neighboring groups. But yes, pretty much all of the group became malnourished then and kids and breastfeeding mothers being at most risk most often were then pushed over the edge by parasites and diseases. And more babies, in particular female infants, were killed.
This was not the exception but the rule. Population did not exceed a certain density because exceeding it was self-corrective - people became malnourished and people died. Fantasies of a consistent land-o-plenty not withstanding that was how population size was constrained. There was no magic involved.
You may find this 2006 article of interest. It directly addesses the pre vs post contact issue you raise. (Bolding mine.)
Well Dûh!
We are talking pre-history. There are no records, except what we find in the ground, and all that shows is that the farmers spread at the expense of the H-G.
It is all speculation, including the idea that farming meant an increase in life quality.
OK, but why don’t the hunter gatherers have a fortified village? Why do the farmers have larger groups of people, if farming is such a worse lifestyle? Why exactly are the farmers more organized than the hunter gatherers? Isn’t “more organized” a synonym for “more cooperative”? I thought the hunter gatherers cooperated more?
And let’s be clear, a lot of the “stone age” tribal societies that still existed in the 20th century mostly weren’t hunter gatherers at all, but horticulturalists.
Some speculation is more backed by evidence than other. Yes some of the evidence is archeological, and some is by DNA traces. And in any case, no that is not all it shows.
The evidence is pretty solid that HGs did not avoid early farming communities, by taking other routes or otherwise. They interacted. They got stuff from each other, for example HGs getting pigs. They even, gasp, screwed around together.
Why would this be OK “so long as it doesn’t involve technology”? I mean, given that apparently our OP has a problem with modern folk spending time doing “stuff that’s not directly linked to survival”.
Is jai-alai using a wooden paddle ok, but tennis with a carbon-fiber paddle not ok? Is letting the sun warm your old bones fine, so long as you’re not using sunscreen? I fail to see where is technology a problem there.
I don’t know. He might have a point about society. You are forced into working a job for hours a week, you cannot do anything without money. It seems rather restrictive.
They reference culture as well, how it restricts our freedom and self expression.
The evidence that is solid is that the prevalent haplogroup, from the paleo-lithicum up into the neo-lithicum, namely C1a2, is now nearly completely extinct in Europe.
Yes, so?
That article is about the absolute first farmers, in Asia, it says nothing of the spread through Europe and the rest of Asia.