Polyamory Study

[River]

However, the concept of individual equality is an extremely "modern" notion.

I think I have made a case for human equality as something very much pre-modern. If we take pre-history and history together (with "history" referring to the accurate story / record of civilized people) we will see a pattern which begins with humans living in fundamental equality (a.k.a., egalitarianism) throughout prehistory (synonymous with pre-civilizational) and continuing until civilization shows up. Then comes what we call "history," which is the record of civilized peoples, which have always had hierarchy/rank as fundamental to their societies. Only THEN does the particularly modern political notion of political equality emerge in history -- and very recently, indeed.

No civilized people I know of have lived in truly egalitarian ways, so the notion of political equality, so far, has been a terrible, terrible flop -- for it has done little or nothing to create conditions of egalitarianism or social equality.

The failure of civilized people to return to natural human relations (egalitarian ways) does not count as evidence against my claim that it is perfectly possible for humans to live without rank and hierarchy -- as the evidence shows we generally have prior to civilization (which is basically defined by hierarchy and rank).

"We citizens of a modern democracy claim to believe in equality, but our sense of equality is not even close that of hunter-gatherers. The hunter-gatherer version of equality meant that each person was equally entitled to food, regardless of his or her ability to find or capture it; so food was shared. It meant that nobody had more wealth than anyone else; so all material goods were shared. It meant that nobody had the right to tell others what to do; so each person made his or her own decisions. It meant that even parents didn't have the right to order their children around; hence the non-directive childrearing methods that I have discussed in previous posts. It meant that group decisions had to be made by consensus; hence no boss, "big man," or chief." https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...r-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways

 

[FallenAngelina]

I think I have made a case for human equality as something very much pre-modern. If we take pre-history and history together (with "history" referring to the accurate story / record of civilized people) we will see a pattern which begins with humans living in fundamental equality (a.k.a., egalitarianism) throughout prehistory (synonymous with pre-civilizational) and continuing until civilization shows up.

This is utterly preposterous and difficult to prove one way or another. If there is no record of the civilization, how could you possibly say that the humans had no concept of hierarchy? All primates live with a very discernible social order. What could possibly lead anyone to believe that prehistoric man lived with no social ranking whatsoever?

....Ample sources draw out this thesis.

There are "ample sources" that deny the Holocaust and disprove evolution, but those "sources" do not change actual history.

 

[River]

This is utterly preposterous and difficult to prove one way or another. If there is no record of the civilization, how could you possibly say that the humans had no concept of hierarchy? All primates live with a very discernible social order. What could possibly lead anyone to believe that prehistoric man lived with no social ranking whatsoever?

There are "ample sources" that deny the Holocaust and disprove evolution, but those "sources" do not change actual history.

You know, it's funny. You popped up with very dismissive words about how I should read history, then you get schooled just a little about how history and prehistory are continuous in certain important ways, and about current anthropological theory, and now you say what you've just said above, as if you were Thomas Hobbes himself. You even fall as low as to mention Holocaust deniers. Sheesh. Look who needs to read some anthropology

What you call "utterly preposterous" (the notion that various non-civilized people--ancient and modern--have generally lived outside of hierarchical social arrangements) is in fact now generally accepted by the whole damn field of anthropology. Have you heard of anthropology? You may want to do some reading. You can leave dear old Mr. Hobbes out of it. He knew nothing of anthropology.

 

[River]

If there is no record of the civilization, how could you possibly say that the humans had no concept of hierarchy?

It just so happens that very much of what folks call "history" is based on a written record; and it just so happens that writing and "history" (and civilization) arose around the same time period.

But anthropological knowledge is not limited to "history". There's a whole field called archaeology, which gives us lots of evidence of how people lived in pre-history. And there are also whatever written evidences from social and cultural anthropology -- which date both before and after that (as named) "utterly preposterous" field of knowledge came into existence. (Named as such, it dates from the Renaissance--, but how old the field is depends on where you prefer to draw a line concerning when humans started talking about humans and "human nature" ... thousands of years ago in "history" ... and much longer in pre-history.

All primates live with a very discernible social order.

By "order" you seem here to be meaning "hierarchy" or "rank". Right? Well, you'd have to explore the body of evidence to decide what that evidence suggests, would you not? You don't think you can get a pass for quoting Mr. Hobbes, do you?

What could possibly lead anyone to believe that prehistoric man lived with no social ranking whatsoever?"

"Whatsoever" is an unfair hurdle. You might say, "Why would anyone think there is no heat 'whatsoever' in deep space?" But there is some heat in deep space, as any astrophysicist will tell you. "Whatsoever," can only be used misleadingly here. What the anthropological evidence suggests is a social world in which the majority of "prehistoric" "man" is now considered by the field of anthropology to have dwelled within societies with vastly, vastly less rank or hierarchy than civililized peoples have. The difference is so extraordinary in degree that these pre-historical (and modern 'primitive') societies are commonly regarded by anthropologists as "egalitarian".

Again, turning to Thomas Hobbes will not help your case. You're going to have to examine actual ("preposterous") evidence.

________________________________

You may begin to explore the preposterously voluminous evidence here and here and here. There are ten thousand more mountains of such evidence to be found in any public library, especially those antiquated libraries which serve researchers.

 

[kdt26417]

Aren't there a few pockets of prehistoric humans still extant? If so, maybe we can observe their behavior and hypothesize that similar behavior occurred in most or all prehistoric humans.

 

[River]

Aren't there a few pockets of prehistoric humans still extant? If so, maybe we can observe their behavior and hypothesize that similar behavior occurred in most or all prehistoric humans.

I think I'd prefer to think of them as "non-civilized," rather than "pre-historic," as they share our moment in time and are in the most salient sense our contemporary humans.

My understanding is that truly "primitive"(overwhelmingly outside of the civilizational systems) people are now pretty much a thing of the past. Some "primitive" tribal people do continue to exist, but overwhelmingly, now, they are influenced by "modern people" in such ways that it is difficult any longer to think of them as representatives of how it likely was for non-civilized people of the distant past. One only has to look at various old issues of National Geographic, where "primitive" people are wearing modern t-shirts and using colorful plastic buckets to imagine why.

That said, there seems to be some solid twentieth century anthropological evidence for the thesis I've been advocating here: that non-civilized people were generally egalitarian (non-hierarchical) in their social relations.

It's important to keep in mind that anthropology is not a simple and easy science with which we could determine certain or absolute knowledge on this question. Few sciences allow for such a form of knowledge, actually. It's not like we have a sack of potatoes and all we have to do is weigh it on several different scales to see if in fact it is ten pounds, as advertised.

Edit:

But early human societies, such as the quintessential hunter-gatherer society, is generalized as being egalitarian. Prior to the agricultural revolution, hunting and gathering is thought to have been the only subsistence strategy deployed by early human cultures. Studying modern day hunter gatherers, ethnographers have noted that such societies distribute dominance much more equally and thus tend to be non hierarchical. Leaders are comparatively weaker than their subordinates which reverses the pyramid of power.

- http://anthropology.net/2008/10/09/modeling-the-egalitarian-revolution/

Comment:

That last sentence in this quote perplexes me for its apparent contradiction. I.e., How does one have "subordinates" which are weaker than oneself as a "leader"? Perhaps this sort of confusion arises out of the pervasive notion that all human relationships must be sorted into ranking? (Which I obviously doubt)

 

[River]

Aren't there a few pockets of prehistoric humans still extant? If so, maybe we can observe their behavior and hypothesize that similar behavior occurred in most or all prehistoric humans.

".... I was thinking about this when I read Sex at Dawn, the book on prehistoric society and sexuality by psychologist Christopher Ryan and psychiatrist Cacilda Jetha. They cite several anthropologists whose conclusions about prehistoric life jibe with my own, above, and how agriculture changed the way we live: “Farmers, afraid of the wild, set out to destroy it.”

They explain how it is in our species’ best interest to be cooperative. Human remains older than 10,000 years show almost no evidence, they say, of violence or injury, especially the types of injury that result from conflict. They also dismiss many of the arguments about prehistoric human behaviour extrapolated from the study of today’s indigenous peoples, explaining that there are no gatherer-hunter cultures left on the planet whose ways of life have not changed drastically as a result of contact with the dominant civilization culture. We are all civilized, now."

http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2011/07/26/dreaming-of-prehistory/

The bold, underlined text at the end may or may not be true about this very moment in history. I would speculate that it was much less true in the early to mid twentieth century, which period provided much of the more recent anthropological evidence for how hunter-gatherers live / have lived (in recent centuries, at least).