Countering myth of civilized progression - Shepard essay #3

I'll be summarizing Paul Shepards essay On the Significance of Being Shaped by the Past. He starts by summarizing the pedestrian view of the birth of civilization as a beneficial progression. This view states that the Ag. Rev. allowed people to give up impovershed nomadic existence lived at the mercy of the elements for the security, health, and plentitude of sedentary farming life. This made civilization possible with its art, spirituality, and political rights. Shepard knows this is a myth, that the majority who underwent the Neolithic revolution found a less healthy, less free existence. We can't see this because history (the written kind) was recorded by the powerfull for their own benefit. He will dispel this myth by explaining what the hunter/gatherer life was really like, and how the transition to Ag took place and its detrimental effects.



According to the standard view, Ag allowed greater food production which lead to pop. increase, the populations of pre-ag people being limited by their lower production. However, the envirnoment of modern hunter/gatherers can support more than the number maintaned by the group. This corresponds with a similar phenomenon in large predators, who have replacement rates tuned to the worst food years. These people are not on the verge of starvation, but have a diet of diverse plants and animals that take little labor to obtain. We are omnivores, but we have the psychology and group behavior of carnivores, as we are the only omnivores who perform group hunts of large game. (Shepard, 110-113)

Since pre-ag humans had small stable social groupings, their populations were limited by birth rates, not death rates. The higher infant mortality of these groups had an evolutionary purpose, they remove incompatible genes. Small family size is encouraged by the fact that the 1st born have higher IQs and that the chance of miscarriage increases with succesive births. Human-induced controls also existed; infanticide, abortion, contraception, and an awareness of the menstrual cycle. The mythology of Ag. people reverses this natural limiting of family size, Farmers want more farm hands, proto-states need slaves and soldiers, fecundity is seen as a blessing. From this Shepard concludes "....the connection between the first farming and the burst of population probably lies in the alteratino of the birth rate" (Shepard, 116)

Hunter/gatherers living in small, geographically isolated groups had less infection from disease and parisites. As the human population has gone up, the number of human disease has as well. This is not only because of increased density, but because of the alteration and homogenization of the environment (More swamps in cleared ag. land, more malaria). The habitat of the hunter/gatherer was more diverse with more organisms, bacteria, and diseases competing with each other, and with more natural adaptation serving as a balance to these afflictions. Psychologically, the human mind is adapted to the same small group size, and will malfunction when placed in a higher density. Expieriments with rabbits and mice show that overcrowding leads to "....failure of maternal behavior, increased gender-role confusion, and widespread social withdrawl....". (Shepard, 119) Studies of primate groups in captivity show a breakdown of social organization and immunity to disease.

Individuality is detrimental to group functioning. Humans use the adaptation of learning of cultural and conventional behavior to get around this barrier to individuality, using culture to protect the group from "...the disrupting effects of individual variation." (Shepard, 122) This adaptation allows for greater genetic diversity, polymorphism. "Human individuality and rarity were achieved because essential social activities could be coordinated in small groups of very different persons through a common system of beliefs and values" (Shepard, 123) The conservative cultures that evolved to unify polymorphic populations were disrupted when agricultural was introduced. We now idolized cultural change and individual genius, which used to be discouraged.

Shepard identifies two styles of human species-specific population density. The first is the band of about 25 individuals, the second the tribal network of bands, which numbered from a few hundred to fifteen hundred. These systems evolved for group equilibrium and pyschological health. These small groups have a far greater rate of evolutionary change than larger groups, and may have came about through different evolutionary pressures. 25 may be the number of people that could be fed off a large mammal, or to provide the number of adults needed to kill one. It may be the number that could be supported by the environment surrounding a camp.
Tribes were needed to prevent inbreeding, to replace lost members, and allow the rise of unique leaders. These arrangements came about through evolution, no wonder people living in modern nation states feel so out of place, alienated, unhealthy and unsatisfied.