David R. Harris
“The farther reaches of human time”: Retrospect on Carl Sauer as prehistorian
1 October 2002
The Geographical Review
526-544
Volume 92, Issue 4
ISSN: 0016-7428
10574 words

As the publishers abstract at:
http://www.amergeog.org/gr/oct02/harris.html

Dear Stepback
I’m not hypothesising. There is no if. I am not denying or asserting that these were/are rationally made social structures, as while your dichotomy is not real your implication that societies are not rationally ‘designed’ is a very good point and very real - the idea that humans can ever be entirely rational or rational in societies is irrational!
You can rest assured that that which is “…wonderful news…” for you, is (in fact) a large body of scientific evidence. It is not something i have made up and not even something I have authored. On this I’m merely providing the message that you missed. As I said Professor Jared Diamond, in non-jargon, provides several substantial reviews of the repeatedly verified evidence on this point amongst much more that he writes, from a US-American perspective on this.
For example
His large & famous books (& associated TV program) “Guns, Germs and Steel” which won the Pulitzer prize, “Collapse”, “The Rise and Fall of the thrid Chimpanzee”, “The worst mistake in the history of the human race”

StepBack - Now if you don’t give any credibility to western science or its examples such as Jared Diamond’s writing, that is another matter altogether, we can discuss a little bit on those terms, by me refering to the bible.

If I was to make what are actually at the level of hypothesees rather than repeatedly verified evidence, they would be for example:
- Homo sapiens may be conditioned in the womb to stratified societies before they are even born - there are drugs in foods that would get to the as yet unborn and
- there is some evidence that social & communication conditions of the parents may in some cases condition the social disposition of the developing yet unborn child. For example the parents being in the midst of brutality or a war.
I use the word “may” above because these are hypothesees or even just thesees.

On Anthropik please read all the many details and evidence cited in Pushing & Pulling into the Neolithic including my post which is the last one there.

Please read:
- Hillman G, Hedges R, Moore A, Colledge, S., and Pettitt, P. (2001)
“New evidence of Lateglacial cereal cultivation at Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates.” Holocene 11 (4): 383-393
and the website Village on the Euphrates.

Also please read Greg Wadley’s (from Melbourne Uni., then in the Zoology Dep’t) current update of his Ethology research (1992-5) web page and even his old, culture-blind & dated paper linked to therein (and here) “The Origins of Agriculture - A biological perspective and a new hypothesis”.

For a most brief introduction to drugs in staple foods’ scientific evidence, here is a small article that appeared in “Acres USA” (so called Sustainable Agriculture newspaper) - January 2004:
“The Opioid Effect”

For Oz (Australia) as specific examples over a whole continent please read:
-firstly for correction of the conventional view information regarding Agriculture J Peter White (2003) “Agriculture: Was Australia a bystander?” and one of many examples of corrections regarding Village living (this example is very recent and yet still repeats the ‘conventional ignorance’ of the Oz public despite so many previous examples being publicised over the years since 1788) is “Vic bushfires uncover ancient Aboriginal stone houses”

- then secondly with this correction in mind regarding Agriculture & Village living, please read page 3 from RMW Dixon (2002) “Australian Languages” Camridge University Press. also at Google Books: Australian Languages
here quoting
”
1
The language situation in Australia
In this volume I attempt to characterise what the indigenous languages of Australia are like, how individual languages have developed their particular structural profiles, and the ways in which the languages are related. A portrait is provided of the Australian linguistic area, which is certainly the longest-established linguistic area in the world.
This first chapter briefly describes relevant aspects of traditional Aboriginal society, the language situation at the time of White invasion and then the prehistory of the continent. A final section deals with the diffusion of cultural traits.
…

1.1 A partial picture
The European invasion of Australia began in 1788 at Sydney Cove but did not extend to every area – to the deserts in the centre, or to parts of Arnhem Land in the north – until the middle of the twentieth century. The information we have on individual languages comes from different periods. By the time the first information was recorded on NBf2, Gurrgoni, from the north coast, for instance, the language of Sydney (O1, Dharuk) had long ceased to be spoken.
Contact with White civilisation has led to the speedy extinction of Australian languages; in almost every instance, there are no longer any children learning the language within one hundred years of first contact (and often much sooner than that). As a result we have no time depth on any language. There are some reasonable grammars of languages of New South Wales from the 1840s and 1850s but these languages are no longer extant. In no case can we examine how the structure of a language has changed over a period of several generations.
Our knowledge of languages from certain parts of the continent is sketchy in the extreme. For instance, there appear to have been three distinct languages spoken around the mouth of the Burdekin River in North Queensland (my group I); we have just one short word list in each. It is very likely that a number of languages have passed into oblivion without a single word being recorded.
We know of about 240 or 250 languages that are or were spoken by the indigenous people of mainland Australia. More than half of these are no longer spoken or remembered (save for perhaps a sprinkling of words used within the English spoken by their tribal descendants). No more than twenty are currently being learnt by children. The remainder have just middle-aged or old speakers; each decade a few more of these languages cease to be spoken or remembered.
We have good or fairly good materials (a reasonable grammar, together with a dictionary or word list) for about ninety-five languages; these are almost all the result of work by professionally trained linguists, beginning in the 1960s. For about fifteen more languages, descriptions are in preparation. For about 110 languages there are grammatical and lexical materials of lower quality. These include: materials from amateurs of an earlier age (who did not have the idea of phoneme, etc.); work by modern-day linguists that is not of the first quality (and cannot be considered reliable); and materials by good linguists working with the last speaker of a language, who only remembered bits of it. For about twenty-five languages – all now extinct – only word lists are available (including, perhaps, a couple of pronouns).
The linguistic picture that emerges is uneven across the continent. For instance, there is no full description of any language from a twelve hundred kilometre stretch of the east coast, from Townsville to south of Brisbane. For only one of the twelve or so languages originally spoken in Victoria is there a reliable, modern description (this is Ta1, Wemba-Wemba). The language of the south-west corner of the continent (including Perth) is known mainly from an amateur grammar of around 1840 and a short account from the 1970s; the information they give is sometimes unclear and inconsistent (in fact, it is not clear that exactly the same language is being described).
It should be borne in mind, in the chapters that follow, that we are working with a partial picture. A grammatical marker that is attested in one or two languages may well have occurred in several others, but these other languages were just not described, or not described in sufficient detail.

1.2 Social organisation and lifestyle
Before the European invasion there were probably around one million Aborigines in Australia, organised into about seven hundred political groups, which are commonly and conveniently referred to (by the Aboriginal people themselves) as tribes. Each had its own territory, system of social organisation, traditional oral literature and laws, song styles, and its own ‘language’ – just like the nations of Europe, but on a smaller scale. Aborigines identify themselves as belonging to a particular tribal group; they typically explain that the members of a tribe are ‘all blooded’, meaning that the normal expectation is to marry within one’s own tribe (also see below).
Tribal boundaries typically (but not invariably) run along a mountain ridge or through a strip of barren country. A territory is often centred on some important water feature(s) and will frequently include a number of different ecological zones, with people moving around according to the season, following the pattern of food availability. Each Aboriginal family group has an association with a particular place, which they have a responsibility to take care of and maintain. Rumsey (1993) suggests that in Australia a language is linked to a tract of land; and a person is linked to a place, and hence to the language of that place. Thus, Jawoyn people are Jawoyn not because they speak Jawoyn, but because they are linked to places with which the Jawoyn language is associated. And THUS they speak Jawoyn.
The Australian Aborigines never developed agriculture [correction is necessary here]. Like almost all hunter-gatherer communities across the world, there is no chief and no set of stratified social classes. Everyone in a tribe [tribe is not even technically correct for this social system - the ‘rhizome approach’ non-technical term is better for example, as in the description in the next words:] has specific social obligations towards everyone else, according to a finely articulated classificatory kinship system.
Aboriginal religion is, in large part, pragmatic. It is believed that ancestral spirits created the country, and the places and foodstuffs in it; knowledge about them is handed down from generation to generation. Religious practice involves understanding the sacred traditions of one’s group, their relationship to the land and to totemic animals and the like, and organising one’s life in the way that tradition demands. There are no gods, before whom one has to be humble, and no praying. Small wonder that Aborigines are said to have been one of the most difficult of the peoples of the world to convert to Christianity.
Related to their religious attitudes, Aborigines have a strong sense of history. They tell stories from the far distant past (see (7) in §1.4 below) and their kinship system distinguishes ancestors from each past generation. These are often organised in a cyclic pattern. For example, the same terms may be used for grandparents and grandchildren, with great-grandparents then being called by the same terms as one’s children, and great-grandchildren by the same terms as one’s parents and their siblings
There is (or was) a classificatory kinship system, with every person in a community related to every other through a series of mathematical-like rules of equivalence. Each Australian community has strict conventions for how one should behave with each class of relatives. Certain classes constitute avoidance relationships – typically, classificatory mother-in-law and classificatory son-in-law. They should not look at each other, nor speak directly to each other. Indeed, in many communities there was a special speech style (sometimes called ‘mother-in-law language’ by bilingual Aborigines) which had to be used in the presence of an avoidance relative. This generally has the same phonology as the everyday language style, and usually the same grammar, but a different form for each of the most common lexemes (in a couple of instances, a different form for EVERY lexeme). See §3.4.
Young men were initiated at puberty. This involved circumcision and subincision over wide bands of territory down the centre of the continent (see map 1.3); and the cutting of cicatrices in some other areas. At this time they also underwent a lengthy period of instruction in traditional wisdom. A few groups had a special ‘initiation language’, which was taught to boys at that time and could only be used among initiated men. Among the Lardil of Mornington Island this employed a totally different phonetic system from the everyday language style (see §3.4).
Each tribe also had a number of song styles with distinctive musical format, accompaniment, scansion, subject-matter, and social role. Songs use some words from the spoken language style but there are often special words that only occur in songs, and also archaic words and other archaic features (see §3.4).
Every Australian tribe appears to have had more-or-less stable relationships with its neighbours. There would be regular trade of manufactured items; and periodic meetings between neighbouring groups to settle disputes by controlled bouts of fighting, to arrange marriages, and to exchange new songs and news. There could be varying degrees of hostility (with resulting fear) and some killings between neighbouring groups, but there are few reports of uncontrolled war and massacre (such as commonly occur in every other continent) in Aboriginal Australia.
A spouse would generally be taken from another group of the same tribe but sometimes from a neighbouring tribe – in the latter case, an exchange marriage in the opposite direction would often also be organised (man for woman, woman for man). Partly as a result of this, and partly because of a sociocultural habit of learning languages, most Aborigines were at least bilingual and many were multilingual – they could speak at least one language besides their own and would often understand several more.

1.3 The languages
The term ‘language’ is used in a number of different ways. One is as a marker of political identity – in this sense, each of the seven hundred or more tribal groups in
…
”

I wish you all well,

Jase (from Oz)

Witness what happened recently in Afghanistan for that one fellow who was found out as having converted from Islam to Christianity. There is really no “rational” independent thinker’s reason for wanting to kill him. There is however a valid herd mentality basis for wanting to keep everyone in the “community” on the same wavelength –even if it means killing a couple of people just to set an example.

A couple of things here. First, a large part of this sort of fundamentalist fervor comes not from the religion itself, but from those in control realizing that they can use people’s beliefs to get them to do what they want. This has been around in Christianity since at least the time of Constantine. Monotheistic religions seem to lend themselves more to it than others, as the concept of one God can be connected very easily to the concept of one ruler and one right way to live. There are other religions, though, where this sort of fundamentalism is practically nonexistant.

Which brings me to my next point, and this is something I actually touched on in the entry above. Members of a group don’t care that other members be like them in every way. They only care about those similarities that are essential to the group. This is why I think groups based on ideas and beliefs tend to have more closed-mindedness. Because by opening your mind to new ideas and new beliefs, you’re compromising what makes the group a group. But groups like herds, packs, tribes–they aren’t based on beliefs. They’re based on a goal. That goal is to make a living. Members of goal-based groups generally don’t care as much about other members’ beliefs (unless they’re totally outlandish). If I work at a widget production company, I could work with somebody that I disagree with on just about everything. If he’s good at making widgets and we work well together, it’s probably not going to be that big of an issue.

We don’t get upset at different thoughts, that’s promoted,but if you get too far from the herd, then we get upset, cus’ maybe the wolves will come…

Hmm, time to stare at the sun again & channel some energy, today has been officially animal metaphor day for me at work & looking at the blogs today.

There are evolutionary advantages to being part of a gang, a tribe, a group, whatever you want to call it. Very few humans do well being “alone”. They “need” other people, much as rational thought might tell you that a person can survive quite well on their own as a hermit in some reclusive area. One evolutionary reason for why being part of a group is advantageous is given here (warning blog whoring).

More importantly, the formation of a long term mother-child bond is fundamental to survival of the species. That is the most primitve form of a tribe. But then due to the many years that it takes for a human child to “grow up”, the basic mother-child group needs a support network around them –i.e., the “Village” that Hillary Clinton talks about in regard to what it takes to raise a child. Now these words like “village”, “town”, “community”, “tribe” don’t sound like “herd”, but they really are that to one extent or another. People in the same “community” tend to adopt a common group think about how the world is. They talk the same talk, they walk the same walk. Some are deeply religous and believe their one diety is supreme and must be acepted by all in the comunity on pain of death for refusing to go along and get along. Witness what happened recently in Afghanistan for that one fellow who was found out as having converted from Islam to Christianity. There is really no “rational” independent thinker’s reason for wanting to kill him. There is however a valid herd mentality basis for wanting to keep everyone in the “community” on the same wavelength –even if it means killing a couple of people just to set an example.

OK. So have it your way. We are not “herd” animals. We are independent transactors like the lone mountain lion, the bear or the moose. But then why get upset when one member thinks slightly differently from another?

However, I would say that step back does seem to be granting that predisposition a little too much weight, while giving too little weight to environmental conditions.

Consider for example why education-over-the-Internet is at best, semi-successful while learning in a classroom full of real people (or library full of studiers) is so much more successful. You may want to call it “misery loves company”, but truth be told it’s “sheep love company”.

It could also be that in a classroom you have an actual person that you can interact with as opposed to words on a screen.

I suspect there are MANY of us here that have NEVER gone along to get along… and that is even in the face of massive social coercion.

I can tell you right now that that is almost certainly not true. Everyone goes along with certain things just for the sake of maintaining the harmony of the group. It may not be anything as abstract as politics or philosophy, and it’s not necessarily a sign of weakness. It’s simply a part of being a member of society.

I gotta take exception to the classification of homo sapiens as a ‘herd mammal’. Certainly I agree that our culture has pushed us in that direction, and in fact, there has been some scientific speculation that homo sapines have become domesticated, that many of our modern characteristics are neotonous and some of our behavior patterns have become more similar to herd species…

But all that aside, there is a distinct difference between ’social’ species and ‘herd’ species and the former is more closely in line with our total behavior.

Yes, we tend toward ‘trendy’ behavior, following the crowd, avoiding anything that will make us ‘different’ from our peer groups. But think about that for a second, because it is a HUGE generalization. The simple fact that there are so many exceptions calls into question the idea that it is a defining characteristic of the species.

Yes, we learn better from persons than from machines or books. and yes, we learn better in a social environment. Because we are social animals.

Consider bees. Quite obviously, the great majority of bees ‘go along to get along’ so to speak. but no one would make the mistake of comparing them with ungulates. so why would you simplify human (or even Great Ape) behavior in such a way?

I suspect there are MANY of us here that have NEVER gone along to get along… and that is even in the face of massive social coercion. So what would be the case in a truly free society?

Janene

There are many instances in which being part of a herd is beneficial rather than hurtful. Consider for example why education-over-the-Internet is at best, semi-successful while learning in a classroom full of real people (or library full of studiers) is so much more successful. You may want to call it “misery loves company”, but truth be told it’s “sheep love company”. The incentive created by “everyone else is doing it” is an enormously powerful one. This is well understood by generals who train an army of raw recruits by making them march in lock step and wear identical uniforms. The hair crewcut, the uniform, the marching; they all reinforce in the brain of each recruit that he is part of an obediant herd. It works, therefore it is.