Chapter 3. A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve
a brief note about evolutionary psychology, some of their “safe” claims, and some of the more controversial ones.
To actually settle this debate, we need to know about the lives of hunter-gatherers, but there is quite a bit of difficulty in trying to find that out.
No written records
Mostly stone artefacts
Although a big part of modern society is based on million of items1, Foragers’ rituals, mental, emotional lives probably was conducted without any physical goods.
You could try to look at modern forager societies, but there is a few drawbacks
- There is no guarantee that they haven’t been affected by modern state.
- Most of the surviving modern forager societies have extreme climate.
- There is a LOT of variation on culture, religion, social structure etc.
The third point, helped by the Cognitive Revolution, tells us maybe there is no one ‘natural’ way to live for Homo Sapiens.
The original affluent society
No domestication yet, except the dog.
No privacy, but no loneliness either.
There were some communication between tribe, but nothing really fancy.
They roam from place to place, searching for food and shelter, most of them moved constantly, but some fishing villages may have been permanent settlement.
There is some evidence that our brains decreased, hunter gatherers had to smarter and more agile in order to survive, after all.
They were healthier, thanks to the varied nutrition, contrast to modern society, where maybe a few dozen species make up our cuisine. There were also less infectious disease, since most of them started from domesticated animals
Example: Aché people, some of their culture seem “barbaric” some of it “ideal”, they are neither angels nor fiends, they are humans
Animism seems pretty common, but that amount of detail is like saying most of modern religion is Theism.
Next, the sociopolitical world; exhibits A: Sungir, Russia. 3 theories, who knows which of them is right, if any. There was something, something not predetermined by genetics, but the detail is pretty much an enigma.
Peace or War?
Anthropological evidence; better than nothing, but problematic. Again, most of the surviving foragers live in extreme climate where density is low and outside contact rare. The only case of large, dense, and independent foragers seemed somewhat aggressive, but it’s unclear how outside influence had a role.
Fossil don’t give clear signs either. Only bones are left, so damage on soft skin is lost, and damaged bones could be an accident or wild animals.
In other words, undamaged bone doesn’t mean peace, and damaged bone doesn’t mean war.
Maybe signs of peace: Portugal and Israel, Maybe signs of conflict: Danube Valley, Jabl Sahaba
Which one is more representative? Who knows?!
The Curtain of Silence
So did they do ‘nothing of importance’? Nope, let’s see some ecological effect they had even before farming took place.
Trkkers visiting the Siberian tundra, the deserts of central Australia and the Amazon rainforest believe that they have entered pristine landscapes, virtually untouched by human hands. But that’s an illusion
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There’s hardly an activity, a belief, or even an emotion that is not mediated by objects of our own devising