Religions > Atheism > Anthropological cover-ups & a possible genetic predisposition to warfare?
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Immortalist" |
| Date: |
26 Feb 2007 12:58:15 PM |
| Object: |
Anthropological cover-ups & a possible genetic predisposition to warfare? |
The Noble Savage is French Toast - James Lewis
....Nicholas Wade presents compelling evidence that humans appear to be
genetically predisposed to warfare. Among ancient hunter-gatherers,
"incessant warfare" was the norm, just as it is today among the Stone
Age tribes of New Guinea and South America. Humans have a long history
of cannibalism, so much that we carry genes to guard against the toxic
consequences of eating human flesh (similar to Mad Cow prion disease).
Modern humans are less aggressive than our ancestors were. The very
fact that we can live in mass societies at reasonable peace with each
other is an extraordinary advance.
Anthropologists have long tried to close their minds to the plentiful
evidence for murderous tribal warfare. When they encountered tribal
wars, they pointed out that not many people seemed to get killed in
any fight --- forgetting that raiding one's neighbors is often a
weekly sporting event, like Monday Night Football. So war death rates
go to thirty percent over a lifetime, not counting injuries, rapes and
ethnic cleansings. And it turns out that even the "peaceful" peoples,
like Bushmen, boast of their human kills. They justify killing by
explaining that they just get really mad.
Anthropologists have become famous by writing that cannibalism was
just a slanderous lie invented by the West. It all fit the neo-racist
myth of the White Man's Guilt --- as at Duke University. Such people
peddle the myths of the peaceful Hopis and Bushmen, the Gandhi-esque
Hindus, Buddhists and Sufis, and all the morally superior non-White
cultures. (They somehow forget that Gandhi's independence movement led
straight to four million ethnic killings during the Partition of
1948).
Politically Correct history is nonsense, as ordinary people have known
for a long time. But it is important to set the record straight.
Understanding the human proclivity to violence places American
history, for example, in a more accurate context. Maybe the Indian
Wars against white settlers were not really so one-sided. Maybe the
population pressures that drove Europeans to come to America made
perfectly good sense, given widespread misery and persecution in the
Old World. Maybe the Mayans and Aztecs were not exactly peace-loving.
Maybe American civilization even stopped warlike indigenous tribes
from continuing to kill each other and from raping the women of
conquered tribes.
Acknowledging human violence is not the same as excusing it. Just the
opposite --- precisely because we have the capacity to destroy, we
must be taught to act morally. That is the basic view of Western
Civilization going back to the Code of Hammurabi. Civilized armed
forces like the United States insist on high levels of restraint in
their warfighters, even in the face of direct personal danger. But the
civilized world is constantly faced with aggressive enemies willing to
kill and die for some bizarre cause, from the heavenly glory of the
Emperor to some Mullah's weird obsession with hanging sixteen year old
girls who fall in love. Not to mention yet another Marxist scam to
create a perfectly egalitarian paradise on earth, as is underway in
Venezuela today.
Weird, aggressive regimes are hardly unusual in history. Germany and
Japan were merciless, power hungry nations seven decades ago. Their
soldiers were ordered to suppress any feelings of sympathy while
killing innocent civilians. Those nations engaged in unprovoked
genocides and endless cruelties, just as jihadis do today. It is vital
to understand that, and to grasp that the democratic Anglo-American
response was truly defensive, as it is today. We represent
civilization against primitive savagery. Pacifists only talk about
being civilized; nations that defend against primitive savages
actually do something about it. That makes all the difference.
One of the oddities of the Left is its constant sabotage of defensive
warfare, even when the facts are as plain as the assault on the Twin
Towers on 9/11. Today Europe is going through yet another revisionist
version of its own bloody history, trying to deny the undeniable facts
of the 20th century. Big German media like Stern and Der Spiegel
loudly equate the American overthrow of Saddam Hussein with the war
against Hitler. That version of history involves not just one but two
Big Lies -- One, that Saddam was an innocent victim of American
aggression; and Two, that Hitler was, too. It's too weird for words.
Let's hope they get over it - because if they don't, they could be
setting the stage for yet another imperial adventure.
Telling the truth about human nature, about the need for rational
defense, the crying need for courage and honesty in the face of lies
and propaganda, is therefore very, very important. In this book, a
famously leftist New York Times staffer is telling it like it is. For
Nicholas Wade, the Noble Savage of socialist fantasy has been exposed
as a delusion.
It is a sufficiently rare event to celebrate.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/01/the_noble_savage_is_french_toa.html
Scientists are using DNA analysis to understand our prehistory: the
evolution of humans; their relation to the Neanderthals, who populated
Europe and the Near East; and Homo erectus, who roamed the steppes of
Asia. Most importantly, geneticists can trace the movements of a
little band of human ancestors, numbering perhaps no more than 150,
who crossed the Red Sea from east Africa about 50,000 years ago.
Within a few thousand years, their descendents, Homo sapiens, became
masters of all they surveyed, the other humanoid species having become
extinct.
....this DNA analysis shows that evolution isn't restricted to the
distant past: Iceland has been settled for only 1,000 years, but the
inhabitants have already developed distinctive genetic traits. Wade
expands his survey to cover the development of language and the
domestication of man's best friend. And while "race" is often a dirty
word in science, one of the book's best chapters shows how racial
differences can be marked genetically and why this is important, not
least for the treatment of diseases. ...DNA analysis is rewriting the
history of mankind.
Before the Dawn: Recovering the
Lost History of Our Ancestors
by Nicholas Wade
http://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancestors/dp/014303832X/sr=8-1/
http://bensbookblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/before-dawn-by-nicholas-wade.html
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Anthropological cover-ups & a possible genetic predisposition to warfare? |
27 Feb 2007 12:03:56 PM |
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Politically Correct history is nonsense, as ordinary people have known
for a long time. But it is important to set the record straight.
Understanding the human proclivity to violence places American
history, for example, in a more accurate context. Maybe the Indian
Wars against white settlers were not really so one-sided. Maybe the
population pressures that drove Europeans to come to America made
perfectly good sense, given widespread misery and persecution in the
Old World. Maybe the Mayans and Aztecs were not exactly peace-loving.
Maybe American civilization even stopped warlike indigenous tribes
from continuing to kill each other and from raping the women of
conquered tribes.
The Mayans and the Aztecs were large colonialist empires that treated
smaller and less powerful Indian groups much as the Europeans would.
But these two groups are hardly representative of Native American
Groups who did not practice such things in general. Of course we can
look back and judge the behavior of incoming Europeans, most of whom,
and especially the most violent and damaging of whom, did not come
because of persecution but for economic reasons. To the farmer who
set up on a small piece of land we can have one reaction. To the
wheelers adn dealers who used genocidal practices to make more money
than they knew what to do with we can and do have another reaction.
It is very good for a country to formally and via debate come to judge
old practices. So they are not repeated. So whatever remains of the
original cultures that were nearly wiped out gets a REAL AND HONEST
response from the dominant powers. That's just plain polite, even
rational.
To say we have violent genes adn then say we cannot judge the past is
foolish. The same arguement can be used against judging the present.
It could be used in defense of terrorists, continued colonization,
dicatorships that use violent oppression, and subterfuge that claims
high moral ground while simply contributing to the violence out
there. Manifest Destiny is not dead.
.
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| User: "Immortalist" |
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| Title: Re: Anthropological cover-ups & a possible genetic predisposition to warfare? |
27 Feb 2007 10:57:57 PM |
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On Feb 27, 10:03 am, wrote:
Politically Correct history is nonsense, as ordinary people have known
for a long time. But it is important to set the record straight.
Understanding the human proclivity to violence places American
history, for example, in a more accurate context. Maybe the Indian
Wars against white settlers were not really so one-sided. Maybe the
population pressures that drove Europeans to come to America made
perfectly good sense, given widespread misery and persecution in the
Old World. Maybe the Mayans and Aztecs were not exactly peace-loving.
Maybe American civilization even stopped warlike indigenous tribes
from continuing to kill each other and from raping the women of
conquered tribes.
The Mayans and the Aztecs were large colonialist empires that treated
smaller and less powerful Indian groups much as the Europeans would.
But these two groups are hardly representative of Native American
Groups who did not practice such things in general. Of course we can
look back and judge the behavior of incoming Europeans, most of whom,
and especially the most violent and damaging of whom, did not come
because of persecution but for economic reasons. To the farmer who
set up on a small piece of land we can have one reaction. To the
wheelers adn dealers who used genocidal practices to make more money
than they knew what to do with we can and do have another reaction.
It is very good for a country to formally and via debate come to judge
old practices. So they are not repeated. So whatever remains of the
original cultures that were nearly wiped out gets a REAL AND HONEST
response from the dominant powers. That's just plain polite, even
rational.
To say we have violent genes adn then say we cannot judge the past is
foolish. The same arguement can be used against judging the present.
It could be used in defense of terrorists, continued colonization,
dicatorships that use violent oppression, and subterfuge that claims
high moral ground while simply contributing to the violence out
there. Manifest Destiny is not dead.
I thought that it was political correctness that trended towards
censoring the real stroy, for the sake of some other interest, a sort
of "science by other means." Below I will present an argument, so as
not to appear to be "shifting the burden of proof" fallaciously onto
you, for that would be unfair. Please show contrary evidence to this
expanded version of the thesis I am presenting;
In War Before Civilization, Lawrence H. Keeley conducts an
investigation of the archaeological evidence for prehistoric violence,
including murder and massacre as well as war. He also looks at
nonstate societies of more recent times - where we can name the tribes
and peoples - and their propensity for warfare with surprisingly
deadly cumulative effects.
This investigation is necessary and timely. Keeley's clear analysis
counters much recent popular history and other writing which takes for
granted that mankind lived in some Golden Age of Peace before
civilizations arose and began to make war. This peace of the
primitives is a very old myth. Our desire for peace is natural, but we
should not use erroneous history to slur our hard-built civilization
while giving a false pedigree to human peacefulness. But this is
prehistory, you say? Certainly, and that's what the archaeological and
ethnographical evidence can clarify for us.
Here's one of Keeley's examples from pre-Columbian North America:
"Contrary to Brian Ferguson's claim that such [inter-tribal]
slaughters were a consequence of contact with modern European or other
civilizations, archaeology yields evidence of prehistoric massacres
more severe than any recounted in ethnography. For example, at Crow
Creek in South Dakota, archaeologists found a mass grave containing
the remains of more than 500 men, women, and children who had been
slaughtered, scalped, and mutilated during an attack on their village
a century and a half before Columbus's arrival (ca. A.D. 1325).
"The attack seems to have occurred just when the village's
fortifications were being rebuilt. All the houses were burned, and
most of the inhabitants were murdered. This death toll represented
more than 60 percent of the village's population, estimated from the
number of houses to have been about 800. The survivors appear to have
been primarily young women, as their skeletons are underrepresented
among the bones; if so, they were probably taken away as captives.
Certainly, the site was deserted for some time after the attack
because the bodies evidently remained exposed to scavenging animals
for a few weeks before burial. In other words, this whole village was
annihilated in a single attack and never reoccupied."
Keeley discusses in several places the importance of fortification in
prehistory. Neolithic villagers did not build ditches backed with
palisades as symbolic structures for ritual or status, as asserted by
writers referencing their own wish-fulfillment rather than
archaeology. These barriers were built by the inhabitants out of fear
for their lives, and this too often was justified:
"A far different impression is conveyed by the reports of the
archaeologists who have conducted extensive excavations of some of
these enclosures. At several camps, the distribution of thousands of
flint arrowheads, concentrated along the palisade and especially at
the gates [Keeley gives a diagram of arrowheads at a Neolithic
causewayed camp in England], provides clear evidence that they "had
quite obviously been defended against archery attack" ... Moreover,
the total destruction by fire of some of these camps seems to have
been contemporaneous with the archery attacks.
"At one such site, intact skeletons of two young adult males were
found at the bottom of the ditches, buried beneath the burned rubble
of the collapsed palisade-rampart. In one poignant instance, the young
man had been shot in the back by a flint-tipped arrow and was carrying
an infant in his arms who had been "crushed beneath him when he fell."
Whatever ritual or symbolic functions the enclosures might have had,
they were obviously fortifications, some of which were attacked and
stormed."
http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Keeley/War-Before-Civilization.html
THE belief that, before Western contact shattered their traditional
ways of life, "primitive" peoples lived in remarkable harmony is not
only the stuff that Hollywood movies are made of (Dances with Wolves
comes to mind), it is a taken-for-granted underpinning of much
scholarly discourse as well. Anthropologists, those academic sorts who
know most about people in the world's "small-scale" societies (it is
not done to refer to them as "primitive"), no longer call them "noble
savages," as Rousseau had it, but they very often attribute all the
nastiness that may exist in their lives to the disruptive influences
of Western ideas, economic changes, and political domination.
Kirkpatrick Sale answered criticism of his recent book The Conquest of
Paradise (about the European conquest of the native peoples of
America) by vigorously defending his claim that, compared to the
cultures of Europe, the native cultures of preconquest America were
much more "harmonious, peaceful, benign, and content."
Some may have been, but, as archaeologist Lawrence H. Keeley
convincingly demonstrates in War before Civilization, many were
anything but benign and peaceful. It has long been known, for example,
that many tribes of South America's tropical forest engaged in
frequent and horrific warfare, but some scholars have attributed their
addiction to violence to baneful Western influences. Keeley produces
evidence of frequent deadly raids and occasional wholesale massacres
over much of prehistoric North America, arguing that this
archaeological evidence indicates that these massacres were not only
prior to Western contact, but also more severe than anything reported
in the ethnographic record for the region. For example, at a place
called Crow Creek in South Dakota, archaeologists found a mass grave
with the skeletons of over five hundred men, women, and children who
had been killed, scalped, and mutilated -- around 1325 A.D., a century
and a half before Columbus. Only young women, whose bodies were not
found in the grave, appear to have survived, probably as captives. Of
course, the Aztecs were predatory warriors long before Cortes landed.
Keeley points out that because archaeologists have had "a pervasive
bias against the possibility of prehistoric warfare," they have
"pacified the past," choosing to ignore evidence of mass warfare --
large numbers of skeletons with arrowheads embedded in their spines or
skulls, or with their skulls split open. In fact, archaeological
textbooks frequently omit any mention of warfare until the rise of
urban centers, even though there is clear evidence of warfare during
the early Neolithic period, long before civilization could be said to
have corrupted people's natural harmony. One half of the people found
in a Nubian cemetery dating to as early as 12,000 years ago had died
of violence.
Keeley also lays to rest the widespread belief among anthropologists
that "primitive" warfare was ritualized, typically ineffective, and
rarely deadly. He demonstrates that not only was warfare more common
in small-scale societies than it has been among "civilized" nation
states, it involved a greater percentage of the population, and the
numbers killed were proportionately higher as well. In point of fact,
truly peaceful small-scale societies were rare. Even the so-called
"harmless people" like the Sau (or Bushmen) of the Kalahari Desert in
Southern Africa have had a long history of warfare against their
neighbors.
This tells us something basic about the human inclination to violence
and evil: it was not created by civilization but existed from the
start. In Dark Nature, biologist-naturalist Lyall Watson takes a
broader perspective on human nature by examining what he calls the
natural history of evil. With admirable judgment and superb
craftsmanship, Watson ranges widely over such topics as the nature of
ecology, genetic fitness, the selfish and deceptive behavior of
gorillas, the premeditated violence of chimpanzees, and the altruism
of false killer whales whom he observed trying to save not only one of
their own who was having trouble breathing but Watson as well when
they took his noisy snorkel to be evidence of distress. He also
examines so-called evil in human societies, including his own
experiences with the Asmat of Irian Indonesian New Guinea who are
inveterate cannibals.
Watson's definition of evil is less satisfying than his many examples.
Deeply troubled by the human horror in Rwanda and Bosnia as well as by
a murder in Britain by two 10-year-olds who brutally and remorselessly
beat a 2-year-old to death and then left his body on a railroad track
to be cut in two, he searches for a definition of evil that will have
universal applicability. His answer lies in an ecological vision of
life in which human acts become consistently or deliberately evil when
the ecosystem is disordered, population imbalances occur, and stable
associations are disrupted or impoverished. From my perspective, these
principles are anything but "simple," as Watson believes them to be,
but his vision of human nature is crystal clear: "There is an
inherited, genetically related system that is unrelentingly selfish,
ruthless, and cruel."
Although Watson acknowledges the beauty of much of nature, and
obviously loves many of its creatures, he has no illusions about its
inherent goodness. "Nature," he says, "is morally bankrupt and stands
condemned." Pointing to the utter selfishness of genetic evolution, he
concludes that it is not enough to characterize the physical universe
as indifferent; the biological world requires an even stronger term.
He chooses "evil." As a source of human evil, he calls attention to
our divided nature. Watson acknowledges that there are monsters among
us, fiends and psychopaths, but it is the banality of evil, the fact
that we are all capable of monstrous acts, that worries him most.
However, telling us that we are moral creatures in an immoral world,
he offers the hope that our capacity to make moral choices gives us a
chance to hold "our dark nature at bay long enough to give evolution
the nudge it needs in the right direction."
There are no revelations in Watson's beautifully written book. The
story he tells is not new. But it is told with such persuasiveness
that devotees of the myth of primitive harmony or true believers in
the inherent goodness of humankind should be hard-pressed to reject
it. Likewise, Keeley is not the first to assert the ubiquity and
savagery of warfare, but his is by far the most detailed and powerful
demonstration of that assertion. Four years ago I wrote Sick
Societies, a book with the subtitle The Myth of Primitive Harmony,
which pointed to human nature as one source of human maladaptation. I
very much wish I had had both of these books in hand when I was
writing it.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n16_v48/ai_18614114
Military skills are probably underappreciated as a biological
phenomenon, but in their own way are just as remarkable a human
adaptation as is the artistic ability of the Upper Paleolithic cave
painters. Warfare of the human kind has many levels of complexity and
at its highest is an integral component of statecraft. At the lower
end of the scale, however, it overlaps closely in both tactics and
goals with the chimpanzee variety...
....A propensity for warfare is prominent among the suite of behaviors
that people and chimpanzees have inherited from their joint ancestor.
The savagery of wars between modern states has produced unparalleled
carnage. Yet the common impression that primitive peoples, by
comparison, were peaceful and their occasional fighting of no serious
consequence is incorrect.
Warfare between pre-state societies was incessant, merciless, and
conducted with the general purpose, often achieved, of annihilating
the opponent. As far as human nature is concerned, people of early
societies seem to have been considerably more warlike than are people
today. In fact, over the course of the last 50,000 years, the human
propensity for warfare has probably been considerably attenuated.
Before the Dawn: Recovering the
Lost History of Our Ancestors
by Nicholas Wade
http://www.amazon.com:80/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancestors/dp/014303832X/sr=8-1/
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| User: "tg" |
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| Title: Re: Anthropological cover-ups & a possible genetic predisposition to warfare? |
28 Feb 2007 06:30:53 AM |
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On Feb 27, 11:57 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Feb 27, 10:03 am, wrote:
Politically Correct history is nonsense, as ordinary people have known
for a long time. But it is important to set the record straight.
Understanding the human proclivity to violence places American
history, for example, in a more accurate context. Maybe the Indian
Wars against white settlers were not really so one-sided. Maybe the
population pressures that drove Europeans to come to America made
perfectly good sense, given widespread misery and persecution in the
Old World. Maybe the Mayans and Aztecs were not exactly peace-loving.
Maybe American civilization even stopped warlike indigenous tribes
from continuing to kill each other and from raping the women of
conquered tribes.
The Mayans and the Aztecs were large colonialist empires that treated
smaller and less powerful Indian groups much as the Europeans would.
But these two groups are hardly representative of Native American
Groups who did not practice such things in general. Of course we can
look back and judge the behavior of incoming Europeans, most of whom,
and especially the most violent and damaging of whom, did not come
because of persecution but for economic reasons. To the farmer who
set up on a small piece of land we can have one reaction. To the
wheelers adn dealers who used genocidal practices to make more money
than they knew what to do with we can and do have another reaction.
It is very good for a country to formally and via debate come to judge
old practices. So they are not repeated. So whatever remains of the
original cultures that were nearly wiped out gets a REAL AND HONEST
response from the dominant powers. That's just plain polite, even
rational.
To say we have violent genes adn then say we cannot judge the past is
foolish. The same arguement can be used against judging the present.
It could be used in defense of terrorists, continued colonization,
dicatorships that use violent oppression, and subterfuge that claims
high moral ground while simply contributing to the violence out
there. Manifest Destiny is not dead.
I thought that it was political correctness that trended towards
censoring the real stroy, for the sake of some other interest, a sort
of "science by other means." Below I will present an argument, so as
not to appear to be "shifting the burden of proof" fallaciously onto
you, for that would be unfair. Please show contrary evidence to this
expanded version of the thesis I am presenting;
Not necessary, since the evidence presented is actually evidence for
the claim that civilization (or the economic conditions associated
with or precedent to civilization) is strongly correlated with
warfare, as opposed to 'ritual warfare' as practiced by other groups.
The examples given involve slaughters of people *in cities*. The
author is engaging in a false equation of pre-historic with
uncivilized, and it is clearly with propagandistic intent.
-tg
In War Before Civilization, Lawrence H. Keeley conducts an
investigation of the archaeological evidence for prehistoric violence,
including murder and massacre as well as war. He also looks at
nonstate societies of more recent times - where we can name the tribes
and peoples - and their propensity for warfare with surprisingly
deadly cumulative effects.
This investigation is necessary and timely. Keeley's clear analysis
counters much recent popular history and other writing which takes for
granted that mankind lived in some Golden Age of Peace before
civilizations arose and began to make war. This peace of the
primitives is a very old myth. Our desire for peace is natural, but we
should not use erroneous history to slur our hard-built civilization
while giving a false pedigree to human peacefulness. But this is
prehistory, you say? Certainly, and that's what the archaeological and
ethnographical evidence can clarify for us.
Here's one of Keeley's examples from pre-Columbian North America:
"Contrary to Brian Ferguson's claim that such [inter-tribal]
slaughters were a consequence of contact with modern European or other
civilizations, archaeology yields evidence of prehistoric massacres
more severe than any recounted in ethnography. For example, at Crow
Creek in South Dakota, archaeologists found a mass grave containing
the remains of more than 500 men, women, and children who had been
slaughtered, scalped, and mutilated during an attack on their village
a century and a half before Columbus's arrival (ca. A.D. 1325).
"The attack seems to have occurred just when the village's
fortifications were being rebuilt. All the houses were burned, and
most of the inhabitants were murdered. This death toll represented
more than 60 percent of the village's population, estimated from the
number of houses to have been about 800. The survivors appear to have
been primarily young women, as their skeletons are underrepresented
among the bones; if so, they were probably taken away as captives.
Certainly, the site was deserted for some time after the attack
because the bodies evidently remained exposed to scavenging animals
for a few weeks before burial. In other words, this whole village was
annihilated in a single attack and never reoccupied."
Keeley discusses in several places the importance of fortification in
prehistory. Neolithic villagers did not build ditches backed with
palisades as symbolic structures for ritual or status, as asserted by
writers referencing their own wish-fulfillment rather than
archaeology. These barriers were built by the inhabitants out of fear
for their lives, and this too often was justified:
"A far different impression is conveyed by the reports of the
archaeologists who have conducted extensive excavations of some of
these enclosures. At several camps, the distribution of thousands of
flint arrowheads, concentrated along the palisade and especially at
the gates [Keeley gives a diagram of arrowheads at a Neolithic
causewayed camp in England], provides clear evidence that they "had
quite obviously been defended against archery attack" ... Moreover,
the total destruction by fire of some of these camps seems to have
been contemporaneous with the archery attacks.
"At one such site, intact skeletons of two young adult males were
found at the bottom of the ditches, buried beneath the burned rubble
of the collapsed palisade-rampart. In one poignant instance, the young
man had been shot in the back by a flint-tipped arrow and was carrying
an infant in his arms who had been "crushed beneath him when he fell."
Whatever ritual or symbolic functions the enclosures might have had,
they were obviously fortifications, some of which were attacked and
stormed."
http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Keeley/War-Before-Civilization.html
THE belief that, before Western contact shattered their traditional
ways of life, "primitive" peoples lived in remarkable harmony is not
only the stuff that Hollywood movies are made of (Dances with Wolves
comes to mind), it is a taken-for-granted underpinning of much
scholarly discourse as well. Anthropologists, those academic sorts who
know most about people in the world's "small-scale" societies (it is
not done to refer to them as "primitive"), no longer call them "noble
savages," as Rousseau had it, but they very often attribute all the
nastiness that may exist in their lives to the disruptive influences
of Western ideas, economic changes, and political domination.
Kirkpatrick Sale answered criticism of his recent book The Conquest of
Paradise (about the European conquest of the native peoples of
America) by vigorously defending his claim that, compared to the
cultures of Europe, the native cultures of preconquest America were
much more "harmonious, peaceful, benign, and content."
Some may have been, but, as archaeologist Lawrence H. Keeley
convincingly demonstrates in War before Civilization, many were
anything but benign and peaceful. It has long been known, for example,
that many tribes of South America's tropical forest engaged in
frequent and horrific warfare, but some scholars have attributed their
addiction to violence to baneful Western influences. Keeley produces
evidence of frequent deadly raids and occasional wholesale massacres
over much of prehistoric North America, arguing that this
archaeological evidence indicates that these massacres were not only
prior to Western contact, but also more severe than anything reported
in the ethnographic record for the region. For example, at a place
called Crow Creek in South Dakota, archaeologists found a mass grave
with the skeletons of over five hundred men, women, and children who
had been killed, scalped, and mutilated -- around 1325 A.D., a century
and a half before Columbus. Only young women, whose bodies were not
found in the grave, appear to have survived, probably as captives. Of
course, the Aztecs were predatory warriors long before Cortes landed.
Keeley points out that because archaeologists have had "a pervasive
bias against the possibility of prehistoric warfare," they have
"pacified the past," choosing to ignore evidence of mass warfare --
large numbers of skeletons with arrowheads embedded in their spines or
skulls, or with their skulls split open. In fact, archaeological
textbooks frequently omit any mention of warfare until the rise of
urban centers, even though there is clear evidence of warfare during
the early Neolithic period, long before civilization could be said to
have corrupted people's natural harmony. One half of the people found
in a Nubian cemetery dating to as early as 12,000 years ago had died
of violence.
Keeley also lays to rest the widespread belief among anthropologists
that "primitive" warfare was ritualized, typically ineffective, and
rarely deadly. He demonstrates that not only was warfare more common
in small-scale societies than it has been among "civilized" nation
states, it involved a greater percentage of the population, and the
numbers killed were proportionately higher as well. In point of fact,
truly peaceful small-scale societies were rare. Even the so-called
"harmless people" like the Sau (or Bushmen) of the Kalahari Desert in
Southern Africa have had a long history of warfare against their
neighbors.
This tells us something basic about the human inclination to violence
and evil: it was not created by civilization but existed from the
start. In Dark Nature, ...
read more =BB
.
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| User: "Immortalist" |
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| Title: Re: Anthropological cover-ups & a possible genetic predisposition to warfare? |
28 Feb 2007 08:14:13 PM |
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On Feb 28, 4:30 am, "tg" <tgdenn...@earthlink.net> wrote:
On Feb 27, 11:57 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Feb 27, 10:03 am, wrote:
Politically Correct history is nonsense, as ordinary people have known
for a long time. But it is important to set the record straight.
Understanding the human proclivity to violence places American
history, for example, in a more accurate context. Maybe the Indian
Wars against white settlers were not really so one-sided. Maybe the
population pressures that drove Europeans to come to America made
perfectly good sense, given widespread misery and persecution in the
Old World. Maybe the Mayans and Aztecs were not exactly peace-loving.
Maybe American civilization even stopped warlike indigenous tribes
from continuing to kill each other and from raping the women of
conquered tribes.
The Mayans and the Aztecs were large colonialist empires that treated
smaller and less powerful Indian groups much as the Europeans would.
But these two groups are hardly representative of Native American
Groups who did not practice such things in general. Of course we can
look back and judge the behavior of incoming Europeans, most of whom,
and especially the most violent and damaging of whom, did not come
because of persecution but for economic reasons. To the farmer who
set up on a small piece of land we can have one reaction. To the
wheelers adn dealers who used genocidal practices to make more money
than they knew what to do with we can and do have another reaction.
It is very good for a country to formally and via debate come to judge
old practices. So they are not repeated. So whatever remains of the
original cultures that were nearly wiped out gets a REAL AND HONEST
response from the dominant powers. That's just plain polite, even
rational.
To say we have violent genes adn then say we cannot judge the past is
foolish. The same arguement can be used against judging the present.
It could be used in defense of terrorists, continued colonization,
dicatorships that use violent oppression, and subterfuge that claims
high moral ground while simply contributing to the violence out
there. Manifest Destiny is not dead.
I thought that it was political correctness that trended towards
censoring the real stroy, for the sake of some other interest, a sort
of "science by other means." Below I will present an argument, so as
not to appear to be "shifting the burden of proof" fallaciously onto
you, for that would be unfair. Please show contrary evidence to this
expanded version of the thesis I am presenting;
Not necessary, since the evidence presented is actually evidence for
the claim that civilization (or the economic conditions associated
with or precedent to civilization) is strongly correlated with
warfare, as opposed to 'ritual warfare' as practiced by other groups.
Please explain the distinction between "warfare" and "ritual warfare"
more with examples. Your position is not clear enough to agree or
contend with.
The examples given involve slaughters of people *in cities*. The
author is engaging in a false equation of pre-historic with
uncivilized, and it is clearly with propagandistic intent.
Do you mean the stuff above your remark or below it. If above I
probably agree since it was a reader reviewing some books, but if
below are you saying that all paces where fortifications are found
were cities and never ad hoc, move the stones in a few hours, which
hunter gatherers could do? Or please point out where you interpret
this as happening only in cities, from the text I provided below.
Do these three ideas exhaust the possibilities?
HYPOTHESIS 1: Cultural traditions of warfare in primitive societies
evolved independently of the ability of human beings to survive and
reproduce. People fight wars for various and sundry cultural reasons
which have no consistent relation to genetic fitness, that is, to the
survival and reproductive success of the individual and his close kin.
Primitive war is not well explained by the principles of socio-
biology; it is better understood as a purely cultural phenomenon, the
product of social organization and political arrangements which
themselves have nothing to do with fitness.
HYPOTHESIS 2: Cultural traditions of primitive warfare evolved by
selective retention of traits that increase the inclusive genetic
fitness of human beings. People fight wars when they and their closest
relatives stand to gain long-term reproductive success, in competition
both with other tribes and with other members of their own tribe.
Despite appearances to the contrary, warfare may be just one example
of the rule that cultural practices are generally adaptive in a
Darwinian sense.
HYPOTHESIS 3: Cultural traditions of primitive warfare evolved by a
process of group selection that favored the self-sacrificing
tendencies of some warriors. The warriors fight battles for the good
of the group and do not therefore expect net benefits for themselves
and their immediate kin. The tribe that prevailed was able to expand
by increasing the absolute number of its altruistic warriors, even
though this genetic type declined relative to the other members of the
tribe during episodes of warfare. The proneness toward violent
aggression is a good example that cultural practices are directed to
some extent by genetic traits favoring entire groups while disfavoring
the individual members that display them.
On Human Nature - Edward O. Wilson 1978
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067463442X/
-tg
In War Before Civilization, Lawrence H. Keeley conducts an
investigation of the archaeological evidence for prehistoric violence,
including murder and massacre as well as war. He also looks at
nonstate societies of more recent times - where we can name the tribes
and peoples - and their propensity for warfare with surprisingly
deadly cumulative effects.
This investigation is necessary and timely. Keeley's clear analysis
counters much recent popular history and other writing which takes for
granted that mankind lived in some Golden Age of Peace before
civilizations arose and began to make war. This peace of the
primitives is a very old myth. Our desire for peace is natural, but we
should not use erroneous history to slur our hard-built civilization
while giving a false pedigree to human peacefulness. But this is
prehistory, you say? Certainly, and that's what the archaeological and
ethnographical evidence can clarify for us.
Here's one of Keeley's examples from pre-Columbian North America:
"Contrary to Brian Ferguson's claim that such [inter-tribal]
slaughters were a consequence of contact with modern European or other
civilizations, archaeology yields evidence of prehistoric massacres
more severe than any recounted in ethnography. For example, at Crow
Creek in South Dakota, archaeologists found a mass grave containing
the remains of more than 500 men, women, and children who had been
slaughtered, scalped, and mutilated during an attack on their village
a century and a half before Columbus's arrival (ca. A.D. 1325).
"The attack seems to have occurred just when the village's
fortifications were being rebuilt. All the houses were burned, and
most of the inhabitants were murdered. This death toll represented
more than 60 percent of the village's population, estimated from the
number of houses to have been about 800. The survivors appear to have
been primarily young women, as their skeletons are underrepresented
among the bones; if so, they were probably taken away as captives.
Certainly, the site was deserted for some time after the attack
because the bodies evidently remained exposed to scavenging animals
for a few weeks before burial. In other words, this whole village was
annihilated in a single attack and never reoccupied."
Keeley discusses in several places the importance of fortification in
prehistory. Neolithic villagers did not build ditches backed with
palisades as symbolic structures for ritual or status, as asserted by
writers referencing their own wish-fulfillment rather than
archaeology. These barriers were built by the inhabitants out of fear
for their lives, and this too often was justified:
"A far different impression is conveyed by the reports of the
archaeologists who have conducted extensive excavations of some of
these enclosures. At several camps, the distribution of thousands of
flint arrowheads, concentrated along the palisade and especially at
the gates [Keeley gives a diagram of arrowheads at a Neolithic
causewayed camp in England], provides clear evidence that they "had
quite obviously been defended against archery attack" ... Moreover,
the total destruction by fire of some of these camps seems to have
been contemporaneous with the archery attacks.
"At one such site, intact skeletons of two young adult males were
found at the bottom of the ditches, buried beneath the burned rubble
of the collapsed palisade-rampart. In one poignant instance, the young
man had been shot in the back by a flint-tipped arrow and was carrying
an infant in his arms who had been "crushed beneath him when he fell."
Whatever ritual or symbolic functions the enclosures might have had,
they were obviously fortifications, some of which were attacked and
stormed."
http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Keeley/War-Before-Civilization.html
THE belief that, before Western contact shattered their traditional
ways of life, "primitive" peoples lived in remarkable harmony is not
only the stuff that Hollywood movies are made of (Dances with Wolves
comes to mind), it is a taken-for-granted underpinning of much
scholarly discourse as well. Anthropologists, those academic sorts who
know most about people in the world's "small-scale" societies (it is
not done to refer to them as "primitive"), no longer call them "noble
savages," as Rousseau had it, but they very often attribute all the
nastiness that may exist in their lives to the disruptive influences
of Western ideas, economic changes, and political domination.
Kirkpatrick Sale answered criticism of his recent book The Conquest of
Paradise (about the European conquest of the native peoples of
America) by vigorously defending his claim that, compared to the
cultures of Europe, the native cultures of preconquest America were
much more "harmonious, peaceful, benign, and content."
Some may have been, but, as archaeologist Lawrence H. Keeley
convincingly demonstrates in War before Civilization, many were
anything but benign and peaceful. It has long been known, for example,
that many tribes of South America's tropical forest engaged in
frequent and horrific warfare, but some scholars have attributed their
addiction to violence to baneful Western influences. Keeley produces
evidence of frequent deadly raids and occasional wholesale massacres
over much of prehistoric North America, arguing that this
archaeological evidence indicates that these massacres were not only
prior to Western contact, but also more severe than anything reported
in the ethnographic record for the region. For example, at a place
called Crow Creek in South Dakota, archaeologists found a mass grave
with the skeletons of over five hundred men, women, and children who
had been killed, scalped, and mutilated -- around 1325 A.D., a century
and a half before Columbus. Only young women, whose bodies were not
found in the grave, appear to have survived, probably as captives. Of
course, the Aztecs were predatory warriors long before Cortes landed.
Keeley points out that because archaeologists have had "a pervasive
bias against the possibility of prehistoric warfare," they have
"pacified the past," choosing to ignore evidence of mass warfare --
large numbers of skeletons with arrowheads embedded in their spines or
skulls, or with their skulls split open. In fact, archaeological
textbooks frequently omit any mention of warfare until the rise of
urban centers, even though there is clear evidence of warfare during
the early Neolithic period, long before civilization could be said to
have corrupted people's natural harmony. One half of the people found
in a Nubian cemetery dating to as
...
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| User: "Day Brown" |
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| Title: Re: Anthropological cover-ups & a possible genetic predisposition to warfare? |
01 Mar 2007 12:44:53 AM |
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"The Blank Slate" by Pinker, and "Constant Battles" by LeBlanc, and
indirectly Jared Diamon's latest "Collapse" all demolish the myth of
the "peaceful savage". Sure there is ritual warfare. But as LeBlanc
outlines most clearly, this breaks down from time to time in total
genocide. What Joshua did to the land of Caanan, was not new.
What passes for civilization developed logistics to mvoe large armies,
but Mallory, for one, notes that before the late bronze age the
evidence for large organized warfare is scant.
I have Hodder, "The Leopard's Tale", on his and Mellaart's work at
Chatal Hoyuk up to 2004. He often mentions obsidian shards and
workspaces. From other sources, what I think was going on was that the
city was a *manufacturing* center. He wonders some at how so many
people were supported in this one location, and how far they had to
travel to manage their crops and livestock. Since Caucasoid, Alpine,
and Semite skulls have all been found, its reasonable to think that
some of these strangers came and... went with trade goods.
He mentions how often the houses were setup in situ, rebuilt time and
again. It looks to me like a family business. The numerous shrines
suggest there were religious pilgramages there as well. "The Substance
of Civilization" by Sass, IIRC, was the source that calcuated
agrarian transhumesence needed only *.02%* of the territory needed to
support hunter gather tribes. And when you pack 3000 to 8000 people in
a town, no way was a tribe, that at best, had 75 warriors, was going
to attack it.
thus Hodder makes no mention of any signs of warfare whatever. I wish
he'd talk more about what he *didnt* find. But others have noticed
this, and traced the culture that left Chatal Hoyuk during a period of
chronic droubht in the late 7th mil to show up in SE Europe. With the
same pottery and the same numerous obese females. Altho, in time, the
figures become more elegantly rendered and loose weight.
This is the mythic Golden Age of Peace. 8000-4000 BCE. Warfare just
didnt pay. The logistics to move an army large enough to take on a
town of thousands had not been worked out... until, as Mallory says,
the late bronze age.
This had an effect on the gene pool. There are two ways to control the
behavior of men: sex or violence. Pick one. Since violence was not an
option, and the genetic instinct to maximize diversity was still
strong, the fat bitches organized "fertility rites", which remained
well documented into even the Roman era. They didnt need agressive
warriors, so they didnt put up with their grouchyness in the morning,
and they didnt use them to sire the next generation. Lets not forget
that they lived in communal housing, trying to get along thru the
winter. Warriors have a real hard time with cabin fever. The low
activity level becomes intolerable because of the low seratonin and
dopamine levels. They need more stimulation; its why so many of them
now become meth heads.
But in the tropics, this was no problem; the weather permitted warfare
and hunting all year around. So yes, some gene pools are more disposed
to violence. BTW: what is the violent assault level among the Inuit
like? It may be higher than along the temperate zones because they
worked out the clothing technology and sled dogs to move over ice to
go hunting at any time. The Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and Europeans
didnt get that worked out so well, and tended to stay in more during
winter.
The rules of ritualized warfare, chivalry, was worked out more
rigorously. The Samuri were even able to effectively ban the use of
fire arms in battle for 200 years, a token of integrity that goes
unmatched.
.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Anthropological cover-ups & a possible genetic predisposition to warfare? |
01 Mar 2007 01:23:59 PM |
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On Feb 28, 10:44 pm, "Day Brown" <daybr...@hughes.net> wrote:
"The Blank Slate" by Pinker, and "Constant Battles" by LeBlanc, and
indirectly Jared Diamon's latest "Collapse" all demolish the myth of
the "peaceful savage". Sure there is ritual warfare. But as LeBlanc
outlines most clearly, this breaks down from time to time in total
genocide. What Joshua did to the land of Caanan, was not new.
What passes for civilization developed logistics to mvoe large armies,
but Mallory, for one, notes that before the late bronze age the
evidence for large organized warfare is scant.
I have Hodder, "The Leopard's Tale", on his and Mellaart's work at
Chatal Hoyuk up to 2004. He often mentions obsidian shards and
workspaces. From other sources, what I think was going on was that the
city was a *manufacturing* center. He wonders some at how so many
people were supported in this one location, and how far they had to
travel to manage their crops and livestock. Since Caucasoid, Alpine,
and Semite skulls have all been found, its reasonable to think that
some of these strangers came and... went with trade goods.
He mentions how often the houses were setup in situ, rebuilt time and
again. It looks to me like a family business. The numerous shrines
suggest there were religious pilgramages there as well. "The Substance
of Civilization" by Sass, IIRC, was the source that calcuated
agrarian transhumesence needed only *.02%* of the territory needed to
support hunter gather tribes. And when you pack 3000 to 8000 people in
a town, no way was a tribe, that at best, had 75 warriors, was going
to attack it.
thus Hodder makes no mention of any signs of warfare whatever. I wish
he'd talk more about what he *didnt* find. But others have noticed
this, and traced the culture that left Chatal Hoyuk during a period of
chronic droubht in the late 7th mil to show up in SE Europe. With the
same pottery and the same numerous obese females. Altho, in time, the
figures become more elegantly rendered and loose weight.
This is the mythic Golden Age of Peace. 8000-4000 BCE. Warfare just
didnt pay. The logistics to move an army large enough to take on a
town of thousands had not been worked out... until, as Mallory says,
the late bronze age.
This had an effect on the gene pool. There are two ways to control the
behavior of men: sex or violence. Pick one. Since violence was not an
option, and the genetic instinct to maximize diversity was still
strong, the fat bitches organized "fertility rites", which remained
well documented into even the Roman era. They didnt need agressive
warriors, so they didnt put up with their grouchyness in the morning,
and they didnt use them to sire the next generation. Lets not forget
that they lived in communal housing, trying to get along thru the
winter. Warriors have a real hard time with cabin fever. The low
activity level becomes intolerable because of the low seratonin and
dopamine levels. They need more stimulation; its why so many of them
now become meth heads.
Wade says something about the evolution of capacities for "reciprical
altruism" or the evolution of trust, of strangers beyond the family,
and this brought about the "free-rider" problem, noted in game theory,
which led to the evolution of religious capacities for commitment,
sacrifice & punishment, rituals of trust-detection. This cause
gracialization or the shrinking of parts of the skull and different
uses of Oxytocin and Vasopressin which then had some influence upon
"the privatisation of sex" and light polygamy and monogamy, which
reduced the pressure for overly aggressive individuals in the gene
pool. So Wade might agree with you on the direction evolution was an
is driving us. The most violent primates have males that are much
larger than females and the most peaceful with males and females being
closer in size. When humans are compared to these others we have been
moving towards a more equal size.
Thats a summary of about 20 pages in the book by Wade, so I couldn't
paste it all in here, but I could elaborate on any of these points,
with some supports from the book.
Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
by Nicholas Wade
http://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancestors/dp/014303832X/sr=8-1/qid=1169175743/ref=sr_1_1/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedomorphism
Reanimater here, todays google posting broadband is used up for me,
see ya tommorrow.
But in the tropics, this was no problem; the weather permitted warfare
and hunting all year around. So yes, some gene pools are more disposed
to violence. BTW: what is the violent assault level among the Inuit
like? It may be higher than along the temperate zones because they
worked out the clothing technology and sled dogs to move over ice to
go hunting at any time. The Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and Europeans
didnt get that worked out so well, and tended to stay in more during
winter.
The rules of ritualized warfare, chivalry, was worked out more
rigorously. The Samuri were even able to effectively ban the use of
fire arms in battle for 200 years, a token of integrity that goes
unmatched.
.
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| User: "tg" |
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| Title: Re: Anthropological cover-ups & a possible genetic predisposition to warfare? |
01 Mar 2007 06:15:46 AM |
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On Feb 28, 9:14 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Feb 28, 4:30 am, "tg" <tgdenn...@earthlink.net> wrote:
On Feb 27, 11:57 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Feb 27, 10:03 am, wrote:
I thought that it was political correctness that trended towards
censoring the real stroy, for the sake of some other interest, a sort
of "science by other means." Below I will present an argument, so as
not to appear to be "shifting the burden of proof" fallaciously onto
you, for that would be unfair. Please show contrary evidence to this
expanded version of the thesis I am presenting;
Not necessary, since the evidence presented is actually evidence for
the claim that civilization (or the economic conditions associated
with or precedent to civilization) is strongly correlated with
warfare, as opposed to 'ritual warfare' as practiced by other groups.
Please explain the distinction between "warfare" and "ritual warfare"
more with examples. Your position is not clear enough to agree or
contend with.
The examples given involve slaughters of people *in cities*. The
author is engaging in a false equation of pre-historic with
uncivilized, and it is clearly with propagandistic intent.
Do you mean the stuff above your remark or below it. If above I
probably agree since it was a reader reviewing some books, but if
below are you saying that all paces where fortifications are found
were cities and never ad hoc, move the stones in a few hours, which
hunter gatherers could do?
Buiilding fortifications overnight (usually out of wood, not stone)
was something the Roman legions did. It is not even a remote
possibility for 'hunter-gatherers' with stone tools.
As to the options below: There is a genetic benefit to ritualized
warfare, which is to expand the gene pool for relatively isolated
groups. But as with 'civilized warfare', to argue that there is a
heritable component beyond the presence of testosterone-fueled
individual aggressiveness is ludicrous. Complex social behaviors like
this are not genetically encoded.
Ritualized v civilized warfare: When resources are abundant, there is
no advantage to the group economically to engage in slaughtering
neighbors. it is sufficient to establish some territorial bounds in
the same way that individual hunting animals mark and defend their
territory. Death happens rarely and not by intent.
-tg
Or please point out where you interpret
this as happening only in cities, from the text I provided below.
Do these three ideas exhaust the possibilities?
HYPOTHESIS 1: Cultural traditions of warfare in primitive societies
evolved independently of the ability of human beings to survive and
reproduce. People fight wars for various and sundry cultural reasons
which have no consistent relation to genetic fitness, that is, to the
survival and reproductive success of the individual and his close kin.
Primitive war is not well explained by the principles of socio-
biology; it is better understood as a purely cultural phenomenon, the
product of social organization and political arrangements which
themselves have nothing to do with fitness.
HYPOTHESIS 2: Cultural traditions of primitive warfare evolved by
selective retention of traits that increase the inclusive genetic
fitness of human beings. People fight wars when they and their closest
relatives stand to gain long-term reproductive success, in competition
both with other tribes and with other members of their own tribe.
Despite appearances to the contrary, warfare may be just one example
of the rule that cultural practices are generally adaptive in a
Darwinian sense.
HYPOTHESIS 3: Cultural traditions of primitive warfare evolved by a
process of group selection that favored the self-sacrificing
tendencies of some warriors. The warriors fight battles for the good
of the group and do not therefore expect net benefits for themselves
and their immediate kin. The tribe that prevailed was able to expand
by increasing the absolute number of its altruistic warriors, even
though this genetic type declined relative to the other members of the
tribe during episodes of warfare. The proneness toward violent
aggression is a good example that cultural practices are directed to
some extent by genetic traits favoring entire groups while disfavoring
the individual members that display them.
On Human Nature - Edward O. Wilson 1978http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067463442X/
-tg
.
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| User: "Immortalist" |
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| Title: Re: Anthropological cover-ups & a possible genetic predisposition to warfare? |
01 Mar 2007 12:59:58 PM |
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On Mar 1, 4:15 am, "tg" <tgdenn...@earthlink.net> wrote:
On Feb 28, 9:14 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Feb 28, 4:30 am, "tg" <tgdenn...@earthlink.net> wrote:
On Feb 27, 11:57 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Feb 27, 10:03 am, wrote:
I thought that it was political correctness that trended towards
censoring the real stroy, for the sake of some other interest, a sort
of "science by other means." Below I will present an argument, so as
not to appear to be "shifting the burden of proof" fallaciously onto
you, for that would be unfair. Please show contrary evidence to this
expanded version of the thesis I am presenting;
Not necessary, since the evidence presented is actually evidence for
the claim that civilization (or the economic conditions associated
with or precedent to civilization) is strongly correlated with
warfare, as opposed to 'ritual warfare' as practiced by other groups.
Please explain the distinction between "warfare" and "ritual warfare"
more with examples. Your position is not clear enough to agree or
contend with.
The examples given involve slaughters of people *in cities*. The
author is engaging in a false equation of pre-historic with
uncivilized, and it is clearly with propagandistic intent.
Do you mean the stuff above your remark or below it. If above I
probably agree since it was a reader reviewing some books, but if
below are you saying that all paces where fortifications are found
were cities and never ad hoc, move the stones in a few hours, which
hunter gatherers could do?
Buiilding fortifications overnight (usually out of wood, not stone)
was something the Roman legions did. It is not even a remote
possibility for 'hunter-gatherers' with stone tools.
The fortifications mentioned appear to be piles of stones made
quickly. Are you saying humans are not related to hunter-gatherers?
As to the options below: There is a genetic benefit to ritualized
warfare, which is to expand the gene pool for relatively isolated
groups. But as with 'civilized warfare', to argue that there is a
heritable component beyond the presence of testosterone-fueled
individual aggressiveness is ludicrous. Complex social behaviors like
this are not genetically encoded.
Are you saying that over hundreds of generations that there is
absolutely no selction of particular individuals that were better at
"testosterone-fueled individual agressiveness?" How would you defend
that theory while allowing that capacities influenced by testosterone
evolved?
Ritualized v civilized warfare: When resources are abundant, there is
no advantage to the group economically to engage in slaughtering
neighbors. it is sufficient to establish some territorial bounds in
the same way that individual hunting animals mark and defend their
territory. Death happens rarely and not by intent.
Maybe thats why most of our instincts are "imprintable" for strength
or weakness. Like learning a particular language accent that stays
with you your entire life, maybe other drives are imprinted to the
local environment so that a peacefull child raised in one environment
could have tuned his instincts to be a violent warrior, depending upon
the particular influences at particular ages?
-tg
Or please point out where you interpret
this as happening only in cities, from the text I provided below.
Do these three ideas exhaust the possibilities?
HYPOTHESIS 1: Cultural traditions of warfare in primitive societies
evolved independently of the ability of human beings to survive and
reproduce. People fight wars for various and sundry cultural reasons
which have no consistent relation to genetic fitness, that is, to the
survival and reproductive success of the individual and his close kin.
Primitive war is not well explained by the principles of socio-
biology; it is better understood as a purely cultural phenomenon, the
product of social organization and political arrangements which
themselves have nothing to do with fitness.
HYPOTHESIS 2: Cultural traditions of primitive warfare evolved by
selective retention of traits that increase the inclusive genetic
fitness of human beings. People fight wars when they and their closest
relatives stand to gain long-term reproductive success, in competition
both with other tribes and with other members of their own tribe.
Despite appearances to the contrary, warfare may be just one example
of the rule that cultural practices are generally adaptive in a
Darwinian sense.
HYPOTHESIS 3: Cultural traditions of primitive warfare evolved by a
process of group selection that favored the self-sacrificing
tendencies of some warriors. The warriors fight battles for the good
of the group and do not therefore expect net benefits for themselves
and their immediate kin. The tribe that prevailed was able to expand
by increasing the absolute number of its altruistic warriors, even
though this genetic type declined relative to the other members of the
tribe during episodes of warfare. The proneness toward violent
aggression is a good example that cultural practices are directed to
some extent by genetic traits favoring entire groups while disfavoring
the individual members that display them.
On Human Nature - Edward O. Wilson 1978http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067463442X/
-tg- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
.
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| User: "tg" |
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| Title: Re: Anthropological cover-ups & a possible genetic predisposition to warfare? |
01 Mar 2007 04:54:08 PM |
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On Mar 1, 1:59 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Mar 1, 4:15 am, "tg" <tgdenn...@earthlink.net> wrote:
On Feb 28, 9:14 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Feb 28, 4:30 am, "tg" <tgdenn...@earthlink.net> wrote:
On Feb 27, 11:57 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Feb 27, 10:03 am, wrote:
I thought that it was political correctness that trended towards
censoring the real stroy, for the sake of some other interest, a sort
of "science by other means." Below I will present an argument, so as
not to appear to be "shifting the burden of proof" fallaciously onto
you, for that would be unfair. Please show contrary evidence to this
expanded version of the thesis I am presenting;
Not necessary, since the evidence presented is actually evidence for
the claim that civilization (or the economic conditions associated
with or precedent to civilization) is strongly correlated with
warfare, as opposed to 'ritual warfare' as practiced by other groups.
Please explain the distinction between "warfare" and "ritual warfare"
more with examples. Your position is not clear enough to agree or
contend with.
The examples given involve slaughters of people *in cities*. The
author is engaging in a false equation of pre-historic with
uncivilized, and it is clearly with propagandistic intent.
Do you mean the stuff above your remark or below it. If above I
probably agree since it was a reader reviewing some books, but if
below are you saying that all paces where fortifications are found
were cities and never ad hoc, move the stones in a few hours, which
hunter gatherers could do?
Buiilding fortifications overnight (usually out of wood, not stone)
was something the Roman legions did. It is not even a remote
possibility for 'hunter-gatherers' with stone tools.
The fortifications mentioned appear to be piles of stones made
quickly. Are you saying humans are not related to hunter-gatherers?
I read through twice and I can't find what you are talking about.
Palisade/ditch is pretty standard and the palisade is made with wood.
But you don't build even that overnight unless, as I said, you are
organized and equipped like a Roman legion. What I read said that they
were re-building something that had been damaged, so it was obviously
a more permanent structure. Please re-quote the section you are
talking about.
As to the options below: There is a genetic benefit to ritualized
warfare, which is to expand the gene pool for relatively isolated
groups. But as with 'civilized warfare', to argue that there is a
heritable component beyond the presence of testosterone-fueled
individual aggressiveness is ludicrous. Complex social behaviors like
this are not genetically encoded.
Are you saying that over hundreds of generations that there is
absolutely no selction of particular individuals that were better at
"testosterone-fueled individual agressiveness?" How would you defend
that theory while allowing that capacities influenced by testosterone
evolved?
This has nothing to do with different types of warfare---take a
teenage male any time in the last 200K years and you will surely have
enough hormones to turn him into a soldier. Warfare doesn't even
necessarily select for the most aggressive individual---remember, a
good soldier's job isn't to die for his country, it is to make the
other poor ***** die for *his* country.
Ritualized v civilized warfare: When resources are abundant, there is
no advantage to the group economically to engage in slaughtering
neighbors. it is sufficient to establish some territorial bounds in
the same way that individual hunting animals mark and defend their
territory. Death happens rarely and not by intent.
Maybe thats why most of our instincts are "imprintable" for strength
or weakness. Like learning a particular language accent that stays
with you your entire life, maybe other drives are imprinted to the
local environment so that a peacefull child raised in one environment
could have tuned his instincts to be a violent warrior, depending upon
the particular influences at particular ages?
Of course. And it isn't even a hard 'imprinted', since we can go from
peaceful to violent and back again over a short period of time. People
spend most of their time not fighting, so we have to have the range of
behavior available and controllable. Simply good systems design.
-tg
-tg
Or please point out where you interpret
this as happening only in cities, from the text I provided below.
Do these three ideas exhaust the possibilities?
HYPOTHESIS 1: Cultural traditions of warfare in primitive societies
evolved independently of the ability of human beings to survive and
reproduce. People fight wars for various and sundry cultural reasons
which have no consistent relation to genetic fitness, that is, to the
survival and reproductive success of the individual and his close kin.
Primitive war is not well explained by the principles of socio-
biology; it is better understood as a purely cultural phenomenon, the
product of social organization and political arrangements which
themselves have nothing to do with fitness.
HYPOTHESIS 2: Cultural traditions of primitive warfare evolved by
selective retention of traits that increase the inclusive genetic
fitness of human beings. People fight wars when they and their closest
relatives stand to gain long-term reproductive success, in competition
both with other tribes and with other members of their own tribe.
Despite appearances to the contrary, warfare may be just one example
of the rule that cultural practices are generally adaptive in a
Darwinian sense.
HYPOTHESIS 3: Cultural traditions of primitive warfare evolved by a
process of group selection that favored the self-sacrificing
tendencies of some warriors. The warriors fight battles for the good
of the group and do not therefore expect net benefits for themselves
and their immediate kin. The tribe that prevailed was able to expand
by increasing the absolute number of its altruistic warriors, even
though this genetic type declined relative to the other members of the
tribe during episodes of warfare. The proneness toward violent
aggression is a good example that cultural practices are directed to
some extent by genetic traits favoring entire groups while disfavoring
the individual members that display them.
On Human Nature - Edward O. Wilson 1978http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067463442X/
-tg- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
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| User: "Immortalist" |
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| Title: Re: Anthropological cover-ups & a possible genetic predisposition to warfare? |
03 Mar 2007 01:56:01 AM |
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On Mar 1, 2:54 pm, "tg" <tgdenn...@earthlink.net> wrote:
On Mar 1, 1:59 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Mar 1, 4:15 am, "tg" <tgdenn...@earthlink.net> wrote:
On Feb 28, 9:14 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Feb 28, 4:30 am, "tg" <tgdenn...@earthlink.net> wrote:
On Feb 27, 11:57 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Feb 27, 10:03 am, wrote:
I thought that it was political correctness that trended towards
censoring the real stroy, for the sake of some other interest, a sort
of "science by other means." Below I will present an argument, so as
not to appear to be "shifting the burden of proof" fallaciously onto
you, for that would be unfair. Please show contrary evidence to this
expanded version of the thesis I am presenting;
Not necessary, since the evidence presented is actually evidence for
the claim that civilization (or the economic conditions associated
with or precedent to civilization) is strongly correlated with
warfare, as opposed to 'ritual warfare' as practiced by other groups.
Please explain the distinction between "warfare" and "ritual warfare"
more with examples. Your position is not clear enough to agree or
contend with.
The examples given involve slaughters of people *in cities*. The
author is engaging in a false equation of pre-historic with
uncivilized, and it is clearly with propagandistic intent.
Do you mean the stuff above your remark or below it. If above I
probably agree since it was a reader reviewing some books, but if
below are you saying that all paces where fortifications are found
were cities and never ad hoc, move the stones in a few hours, which
hunter gatherers could do?
Buiilding fortifications overnight (usually out of wood, not stone)
was something the Roman legions did. It is not even a remote
possibility for 'hunter-gatherers' with stone tools.
The fortifications mentioned appear to be piles of stones made
quickly. Are you saying humans are not related to hunter-gatherers?
I read through twice and I can't find what you are talking about.
Palisade/ditch is pretty standard and the palisade is made with wood.
But you don't build even that overnight unless, as I said, you are
organized and equipped like a Roman legion. What I read said that they
were re-building something that had been damaged, so it was obviously
a more permanent structure. Please re-quote the section you are
talking about.
Thanx for pointing that out, I was probably confusing "fortification"
in the first paragraph below with "large stones" in the second. I
should pay more attention sometimes, but thats the plight of a
generalist. I really enjoy learning how to debate these subjects.
--------------------
Keeley suggests that warfare and conquest fell out of favor as
subjects of academic study after Europeans' experiences of the Nazis,
who treated them, also in the name of might makes right, as badly as
they were accustomed to treating their colonial subjects. Be that as
it may, there does seem a certain reluctance among archaeologists to
recognize the full extent of ancient warfare. Keeley reports that his
grant application to study a nine-foot-deep Neolithic ditch and
palisade was rejected until he changed his description of the
structure from ("fortification") to "enclosure." Most archaeologists,
says LeBlanc, ignored the fortifications around Mayan cities and
viewed the Mayan elite as peaceful priests. But over the last 20 years
Mayan records have been deciphered. Contrary to archaeologists'
wishful thinking, they show the allegedly peaceful elite was heavily
into war, conquest and the sanguinary sacrifice of beaten opponents.
Archaeologists have described caches of (large round stones) as being
designed for use in boiling water, ignoring the commonsense
possibility that they were slingshots. When spears, swords, shields,
parts of a chariot and a male corpse dressed in armor emerged from a
burial, archaeologists asserted that these were status symbols and
not, heaven forbid, weapons for actual military use. The large number
of copper and bronze axes found in Late Neolithic and Bronze Age
burials were held to be not battle axes but a form of money. The
spectacularly intact 5,000-year-old man discovered in a melting
glacier in 1991, named Otzi by researchers, carried just such a copper
axe. He was found, Keeley writes dryly, "with one of these moneys
mischievously hafted as an ax. He also had with him a dagger, a bow,
and some arrows; presumably these were his small change."
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.philosophy/msg/0f2108056410176a?
As to the options below: There is a genetic benefit to ritualized
warfare, which is to expand the gene pool for relatively isolated
groups. But as with 'civilized warfare', to argue that there is a
heritable component beyond the presence of testosterone-fueled
individual aggressiveness is ludicrous. Complex social behaviors like
this are not genetically encoded.
Are you saying that over hundreds of generations that there is
absolutely no selction of particular individuals that were better at
"testosterone-fueled individual agressiveness?" How would you defend
that theory while allowing that capacities influenced by testosterone
evolved?
This has nothing to do with different types of warfare---take a
teenage male any time in the last 200K years and you will surely have
enough hormones to turn him into a soldier. Warfare doesn't even
necessarily select for the most aggressive individual---remember, a
good soldier's job isn't to die for his country, it is to make the
other poor ***** die for *his* country.
So your saying that the presence of warfare over many hundreds of
generations lead to no selection of those better or worse at it. There
is a place for neutral mutations, which evolve this way and that. So
we could have very war like individuals popping into the gene pool
occaisionally and then disappearing. Its possible that selection could
not alter the gen frequencies of such individuals, but that theory is
harder to believe in light of cultural selection, sexual selection and
whatever selection based on the presence of some sustained pattern of
activity over many millennium.
Ritualized v civilized warfare: When resources are abundant, there is
no advantage to the group economically to engage in slaughtering
neighbors. it is sufficient to establish some territorial bounds in
the same way that individual hunting animals mark and defend their
territory. Death happens rarely and not by intent.
Maybe thats why most of our instincts are "imprintable" for strength
or weakness. Like learning a particular language accent that stays
with you your entire life, maybe other drives are imprinted to the
local environment so that a peacefull child raised in one environment
could have tuned his instincts to be a violent warrior, depending upon
the particular influences at particular ages?
Of course. And it isn't even a hard 'imprinted', since we can go from
peaceful to violent and back again over a short period of time. People
spend most of their time not fighting, so we have to have the range of
behavior available and controllable. Simply good systems design.
We call them the formative years and it is pretty well established
that many permanent changes take place in youth. This doesn't negate
the possibility that we can learn other things to counteract these
imprintings. But like with language accent, imprinted in particular
places in the brain, and how later in life we can learn other
languages and accents but if we don't practice them we revert back to
our original imprinting.
Imprinting (psychology)
Imprinting is the term used in psychology and ethology to describe any
kind of phase-sensitive learning (learning occurring at a particular
age or a particular life stage) that is rapid and apparently
independent of the consequences of behavior. It was first used to
describe situations in which an animal or person learns the
characteristics of some stimulus, which is therefore said to be
"imprinted" onto the subject.
Filial imprinting
Konrad Z. Lorenz being followed by his imprinted geeseThe best known
form of imprinting is filial imprinting, in which a young animal
learns the characteristics of its parent. It is most obvious in
nidifugous birds, who imprint on their parents and then follow them
around. It was first reported in domestic chickens, by the 19th
century amateur biologist Douglas Spalding. It was rediscovered by the
early ethologist Oskar Heinroth, and studied extensively and
popularised by his disciple Konrad Lorenz working with greylag geese.
Lorenz demonstrated how incubator-hatched geese would imprint on the
first suitable moving stimulus they saw within what he called a
"critical period" of about 36 hours shortly after hatching. Most
famously, the goslings would imprint on Lorenz himself (more
specifically, on his wading boots), and he is often depicted being
followed by a gaggle of geese who had imprinted on him. Filial
imprinting is not restricted to animals that are able to follow their
parents, however; in child development the term is used to refer to
the process by which a baby learns who its mother and father are. The
process is recognised as beginning in the womb, when the unborn baby
starts to recognise its parents' voices (Kissilevsky et al, 2003).
The filial imprinting of birds was a primary technique used to create
the movie Le Peuple Migrateur, which contains a great deal of footage
of migratory birds in flight. The birds imprinted on handlers, who
wore yellow jackets and honked horns constantly. The birds were then
trained to fly along with a variety of aircraft, primarily
ultralights.
The Italian hang-glider pilot Angelo d'Arrigo extended this technique.
D'Arrigo noted that the flight of a non-motorised hang-glider is very
similar to the flight patterns of migratory birds: both use updrafts
of hot air (thermal currents) to gain altitude which then permits
soaring flight over distance. He used this fact to enable the re-
introduction into the wild of threatened species of raptors.
Birds which are hatched in captivity have no mentor birds to teach
them their traditional migratory routes. D'Arrigo had one solution to
this problem. The chicks hatched under the wing of his glider, and
imprinted on him. Subsequently, he taught the fledglings to fly and to
hunt. The young birds followed him not only on the ground (as with
Lorenz) but also in the air as he took the path of various migratory
routes. He flew across the Sahara and over the Mediterranean Sea to
Sicily with eagles, from Siberia to Iran (5,500 km) with a flock of
Siberian cranes, and over Everest with Nepalese eagles. In 2006, he
worked with a condor in South America.
In a similar project, orphaned Canada Geese were trained to their
normal migration route by the Canadian ultralight enthusiast Bill
Lishman, as shown in the fact based movie drama Fly Away Home.
Sexual imprinting
Sexual imprinting is the process by which a young animal learns the
characteristics of a desirable mate. For example, male zebra finches
appear to prefer mates with the appearance of the female bird that
rears them, rather than mates of their own type (Immelmann, 1972).
Sexual imprinting on inanimate objects is a popular theory concerning
the development of sexual fetishism. For example, according to this
theory, imprinting on shoes or boots (as with Lorenz' geese) would be
the cause of shoe fetishism.
Westermarck effect
Reverse sexual imprinting is also seen: when two people live in close
domestic proximity during the first few years in the life of either
one, both are desensitized to later close sexual attraction and
bonding. This phenomenon, known as the Westermarck effect, was
discovered by anthropologist Edvard Westermarck. The Westermarck
effect has since been observed in many places and cultures, including
in the Israeli kibbutz system, and the Shim-pua marriage customs of
Taiwan, as well as in biological-related families.
In the case of the Israeli kibbutz farms, these children grew up in a
common children's house, away from their parents. They spent the
entire day and night together. This resulted in a generation that was
not interested in the opposite sex within their class. It is an
extreme example of grouping since the adults were also removed from
the environment.
When this does not occur, for example where a brother and sister are
brought up not knowing about one another, they may find one another
highly sexually attractive when they meet as adults: a phenomenon
known as genetic sexual attraction. This observation is consistent
with the theory that the Westermarck effect evolved to suppress
inbreeding.
Westermarck and Freud
Freud argued that members of the same family naturally lust for one
another, making it necessary for societies to create incest taboos,
but Westermarck argued the reverse, that the taboos themselves arise
naturally as products of a simple inherited epigenetic response.
Subsequent research over the years supports Westermarck's observations
and interpretation. But still psychoanalysts do agree with and support
the Freudian concept. One argument used to support their stance is
that such taboos would be meaningless if there were no desire to
perform the acts in question.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_%28psychology%29
-tg
-tg
Or please point out where you interpret
this as happening only in cities, from the text I provided below.
Do these three ideas exhaust the possibilities?
HYPOTHESIS 1: Cultural traditions of warfare in primitive societies
evolved independently of the ability of human beings to survive and
reproduce. People fight wars for various and sundry cultural reasons
which have no consistent relation to genetic fitness, that is, to the
survival and reproductive success of the individual and his close kin.
Primitive war is not well explained by the principles of socio-
biology; it is better understood as a purely cultural phenomenon, the
product of social organization and political arrangements which
themselves have nothing to do with fitness.
HYPOTHESIS 2: Cultural traditions of primitive warfare evolved by
selective retention of traits that increase the inclusive genetic
fitness of human beings. People fight wars when they and their closest
relatives stand to gain long-term reproductive success, in competition
both with other tribes and with other members of their own tribe.
Despite appearances to the contrary, warfare may be just one example
of the rule that cultural practices are generally adaptive in a
Darwinian sense.
HYPOTHESIS 3: Cultural traditions of primitive warfare evolved by a
process of group selection that favored the self-sacrificing
tendencies of some warriors. The warriors fight battles for the good
of the group and do not therefore expect net benefits for themselves
and their immediate kin. The tribe that prevailed was able to expand
by increasing the absolute number of its altruistic warriors, even
though this genetic type declined relative to the other members of the
tribe during episodes of warfare. The proneness toward violent
aggression is a good example that cultural practices are directed to
some extent by genetic traits favoring entire groups while disfavoring
the individual members that display them.
On Human Nature - Edward O. Wilson 1978http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067463442X/
-tg- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
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| User: "Immortalist" |
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| Title: Re: Anthropological cover-ups & a possible genetic predisposition to warfare? |
03 Mar 2007 02:05:09 AM |
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Dig this permanent imprinting where at a particular age you develop a
discust at having sex with those around for the first six years of
life. Incest is an instinct but it is permanantly imprinted by the
environment. Some people can develop habits & thought processes that
ignore the digust and have sex with their siblings and parents, can
you?
Incest taboos are among the universals of human social behavior. The
avoidance of sexual intercourse between brothers and sisters and
between parents and their offspring is everywhere achieved by cultural
sanctions. But at least in the case of the brother-sister taboo, there
exists a far deeper, less rational form of enforcement: a sexual
aversion automatically develops between persons who have lived
together when one or all grew to the age of six. Studies in Israeli
kibbutzim, the most thorough of which was conducted by Joseph Shepher
of the University of Haifa, have shown that the aversion among people
of the same age is not dependent on an actual blood relationship.
Among 2,769 marriages recorded, none was between members of the same
kibbutz peer group who had been together since birth. There was not
even a single recorded instance of heterosexual activity, despite the
fact that the kibbutzim adults were not opposed to it. Where incest of
any form does occur at low frequencies in less closed societies, it is
ordinarily a source of shame and recrimination. In general, mother-son
intercourse is the most offensive, brother-sister intercourse somewhat
less and father-daughter intercourse the least offensive. But all
forms are usually proscribed. In the United States at the present
time, one of the forms of pornography considered most shocking is the
depiction of intercourse between fathers and their immature daughters.
What advantage do the incest taboos confer? A favored explanation
among anthropologists is that the taboos preserve the integrity of the
family by avoiding the confusion in roles that would result from
incestuous sex. Another, originated by Edward Tylor and built into a
whole anthropological theory by Claude Levi-Strauss in his seminal Les
Structures Elementaires de la Parente, is that it facilitates the
exchange of women during bargaining between social groups. Sisters and
daughters, in this view, are not used for mating but to gain power.
In contrast, the prevailing sociobiological explanation regards family
integration and bridal bargaining as by-products or at most as
secondary contributing factors. It identifies a deeper, more urgent
cause, the heavy physiological penalty imposed by inbreeding. Several
studies by human geneticists have demonstrated that even a moderate
amount of inbreeding results in children who are diminished in overall
body size, muscular coordination, and academic performance. More than
one hundred recessive genes have been discovered that cause hereditary
disease in the undiluted, homozygous state, a condition vastly
enhanced by inbreeding. One analysis of American and French
populations produced the estimate that each person carries an average
of four lethal gene equivalents: either four genes that cause death
outright when in the homozygous state, eight genes that cause death in
fifty percent of homozygotes, or other, arithmetically equivalent
combinations of lethal and debilitating effects. These high numbers,
which are typical of animal species, mean that inbreeding carries a
deadly risk. Among 161 children born to Czechoslovakian women who had
sexual relations with their fathers, brothers, or sons, fifteen were
stillborn or died within the first year of life, and more than 40
percent suffered from various physical and mental defects, including
severe mental retardation, dwarfism, heart and brain deformities, deaf-
mutism, enlargement of the colon, and urinary-tract abnormalities. In
contrast, a group of ninety-five children born to the same women
through nonincestuous relations were on the average as normal as the
population at large. Five died during the first year of life, none had
serious mental deficiencies, and only five others had apparent
physical abnormalities.
The manifestations of inbreeding pathology constitute natural
selection in an intense and unambiguous form. The elementary theory of
population genetics predicts that any behavioral tendency to avoid
incest, however slight or devious, would long ago have spread through
human populations. So powerful is the advantage of outbreeding that it
can be expected to have carried cultural evolution along with it.
Family integrity and leverage during political bargaining may indeed
be felicitous results of outbreeding, but they are more likely to be
devices of convenience, secondary cultural adaptations that made use
of the inevitability of outbreeding for direct biological reasons.
Of the thousands of societies that have existed through human history,
only several of the most recent have possessed any knowledge of
genetics. Very few opportunities presented themselves to make rational
calculations of the destructive effects of inbreeding. Tribal councils
do not compute gene frequencies and mutational loads. The automatic
exclusion of sexual bonding between individuals who have previously
formed certain other kinds of relationships - the "gut feeling" that
promotes the ritual sanctions against incest - is largely unconscious
and irrational. Bond exclusion of the kind displayed by the Israeli
children is an example of what biologists call a proximate (near)
cause; in this instance, the direct psychological exclusion is the
proximate cause of the incest taboo. The ultimate cause suggested by
the biological hypothesis is the loss of genetic fitness that results
from incest. It is | | | | | | | | | |
