manvir singh Profile picture
Jul 20, 2022 12 tweets 6 min read Read on X
Just accepted @EvolHumBehav: @HSB_Lab & I argue for social diversity during the Late Pleistocene w/ bigger groups, more hierarchy, etc. Preprint & summary in this older 🧵, so I’ll focus on how our argument differs from @DavidWengrow's #TheDawnOfEverything
Like @DavidGraeber & @DavidWengrow, we argue that the classic story (small, mobile, egalitarian bands before agriculture) needs a facelift. We point to some similar evidence (e.g., social flexibility & diversity among Holocene hunter-gatherers). Yet there are 4 major differences:
(1) We draw on (& embrace) behavioral ecology, which analyzes behavior using an evolutionary & ecological lens. In contrast to G&W, we argue that ecology shapes societies, w/ dense, reliable (esp. aquatic) resources more often sustaining larger, sedentary, stratified groups.
This is corroborated by comparative studies. See the plot (left) by Marlowe (2005): Across 340 forager societies, more fish means fewer moves/year. Or look at Codding & Smith (2020) (right): Across 89 Pacific Coast foragers, more aquatic resources predicts more hierarchy.
(2) We dwell on Africa. There are few direct signs of social diversity in Africa during the Late Pleistocene (~130k-12k yrs ago). So we turn to ecology. We synthesize research showing that ppl subsisted on resources (esp. coastal) that tend to sustain big groups, hierarchy, etc.
In fact, I'd argue it's hard to reconstruct Pleistocene societies w/o turning to diet & ecology. The basic problem is inferring past societies using recent analogues—yet how do we know which analogues to use? Behavioral ecology provides an empirically-informed framework.
(3) We argue there are implications for our evolved psychology. We conclude that human minds are not exclusively adapted for living in small, mobile, egalitarian bands. Rather, our psychology is much more flexible, equipped to traverse a much broader set of social circumstances.
Admittedly, G&W don't seem interested in implications for evolutionary understandings of behavior. Given how much the 'nomadic-egalitarian model' has impacted evolutionary anthro & evolutionary psych, however, we think that there's a lot of room for reconsideration here.
(4) G&W conclude that most of human history was characterized by 3 freedoms: freedom to move, freedom to disobey, & freedom to reconfigure social relationships. Presumably, these freedoms have largely disappeared. But there's little we've come across to suggest this narrative.
If anything, I wonder whether the story about the three freedoms replaces one 'noble savage' myth (nomadic-egalitarian) with another (über-free). But I look forward to empirical research that more systematically evaluates the claim.
Differences aside, our aims are similar: using archaeology + ethnography to question common assumptions about deep history & build better models. And regardless, G&W are forcing social scientists to contend w/ social diversity & flexibility in a way few big-picture thinkers have.
Again, here's the preprint (no paywall): ecoevorxiv.org/vusye/

And here's an older thread summarizing the paper. The manuscript has evolved in the last year, but the basic points are largely the same:

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More from @mnvrsngh

May 20
Today is publication day for my book, Shamanism: The Timeless Religion. To celebrate, here are some of my striking clips of shamanic rituals that I came across while working on the book:Image
Across these videos, you'll see the core features of shamanism. Specialists enter altered states, engage w/ unseen forces, & deliver services like healing & divination. But you'll also see incredible diversity. Shamanism is near universal yet its expressions are endlessly varied. Image
1. Demnime, a Nganasan shaman of the Russian Far North, drums in a ceremony to journey to another world. This was filmed in 1977 but wasn't released in full until two decades later.

From "The Shaman" by Lennart Meri (1997)
Read 14 tweets
May 1
People often claim that psychedelics have been used globally, for millennia, & in contexts of psychological healing.

In today's @Guardian Long Read, I show what these stories get wrong & why the reality is far more interesting.

Excerpted from Shamanism: The Timeless ReligionImage
Key points:
1. Reliable evidence of early psychedelic use is limited to a small set of cultures in the Rio Grande region (modern-day border b/w US & Mexico) & southward. There's no strong evidence of classic psychedelic use outside the Americas [though see note @ end]. Image
2. Even if we expand our discussion to hallucinogens more broadly, traditional use is still rare. Direct evidence for the consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms, for example, is confined to Mesoamerica and parts of northern Eurasia [again, see note]. Image
Read 13 tweets
Apr 29
Are dancing and infant-directed song (incl. lullabies) human universals? Like many people, I've long thought so.

But in a new paper in @CurrentBiology, Kim Hill & I report that the Northern Aché (Paraguay) lacked both behaviors, likely losing them during cultural declines. Image
Our paper is based on >10 years of fieldwork(!) conducted by Hill b/w 1977 & 2020. He's fluent in the Aché language, has amassed thousands of hours of behavioral observation, and has recorded & translated music. But he's never observed the Northern Aché dance or sing to infants. Image
Based on converging lines of evidence, we suggest that the Aché's ancestors experienced a series of population bottlenecks. Early on, this resulted in the disappearance of infant-directed song, as well as shamanism, horticulture, canoe-making, and corporate groups (e.g., clans). Image
Read 6 tweets
Dec 28, 2024
About whether "Indian" & "Western/American" culture are compatible: Ppl seem to forget that Indians have been here since the 1800s. They've melded w/ other groups & helped shape this country's cultural landscape. Take, for example, the Punjabi Mexican Americans of California. 🧵 Image
You may have seen this video, which went viral a couple weeks ago. What's great about these guys is not how unusual they are but how they express a cultural amalgam that goes back more than a century.
With few exceptions, Indians started to come to the U.S. in the late 1800s. Between 1899 & 1914, ~6,800 Indians came to the Western US, most of them Sikhs from Punjab who had worked for the British as police or soldiers. Many arrived in CA's valleys & worked in agriculture. Image
Read 13 tweets
Sep 18, 2023
I've seen debate on here lately about Black Africans in the Greco-Roman world.

The best book on the topic is probably Frank Snowden Jr.'s "Blacks in Antiquity". Here's a recap of what he found: Image
Snowden Jr. focused on the period from ~600 BC to 400 AD. Greeks & Romans were clearly familiar with Black Africans, who they called "Ethiopians". They interacted most with the people of Nubia (then, the Kingdom of Kush, whose capital was Meroë for most of this period). Image
There are many indications of familiarity w/ Black Africans. Take artwork. Snowden Jr. argued that Greek & especially Roman artisans knew Black Africans intimately enough that they realistically depicted their features (rather than producing caricatures). Here are some examples:
Image
Image
Read 12 tweets
Jul 24, 2023
Advocates of Paleo-inspired carnivore diets (e.g., @PaulSaladinoMD @SBakerMD) often point to the Inuit as having a traditionally carnivorous diet. Yet there are at least five problems with using the Inuit as the quintessential ancestral carnivores: Image
1. The Inuit lifestyle is relatively new. Human migrations into the Arctic occurred just a couple thousand years ago. If the idea is to return to an ancestral diet, they are arguably a less appropriate model than early agricultural populations who lived thousands of years before. Image
2. Inuit people ate plants. For example, in their intensive study of a Baffin Island community's diet in the 1980s, Kuhlein & Soueida found Inuit people eating kelp, berries, sorrel, & willow: https://t.co/MO9T8XA2xGsciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Image
Read 10 tweets

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