I don’t understand why you’d restrict yourself to “nomadic foragers” as opposed to the more general class of “hunter gatherer” who may or may not be nomadic. Is there a reason one is more important than the other?
Agriculture didn’t develop until ~8000 B.C. Prior to that point, there were no sedentary hunter-gatherers; mobility offered flexibility, and there was no reason at all to stay in one place.
So if we’re talking about human evolution, which took place almost entirely before that point, sedentary hunter-gatherers aren’t an accurate model of the conditions that shaped our development.
An appeal to nature based on nomads is probably going to be a little more egalitarian and pleasant :-)
I resent the implication that I am making an appeal to nature. However egalitarian and pleasant our nomadic ancestors’ lives may have been, I have no desire to imitate them. The best that evolutionary psychology can do is identify certain biological predilections; it cannot and should not attempt to justify them.
In additioned to teageegeepea’s points, the Mbuti (who were in the original link I provided that was criticized for having no “nomadic foragers”) have villages but no farming. Women help with the hunting and men help with the kids.
Despite being sedentary, anthropologists attribute their balanced sex roles to the fact that women traditionally build the huts, and have something kind of like property rights over them. They have a little bit of polygamy, but it is rare. (Also, they are sometimes treated horribly by political neighbors to the point of being hunted as food. It seems messed up to mention them as “examples for science” without also mentioning their actual interests as human beings.)
I resent the implication that I am making an appeal to nature. However egalitarian and pleasant our nomadic ancestors’ lives may have been, I have no desire to imitate them. The best that evolutionary psychology can do is identify certain biological predilections; it cannot and should not attempt to justify them.
“Appeal to nature” is a named fallacy because is super super common, and I didn’t even say you were committing it, I said “there would be incentives” to use certain evidence if anyone was going to. Even if you’re not committing the bias, lots of the people you’re reading probably do. When I notice “low hanging fallacy fruit” its seems useful to call it out so as to note the possible influence on everyone who reads it… it’s like verbally pointing out poison oak when you’re hiking, just to be safe.
Please slow down on the resentment! Seriously, you even quoted my smiley but got defensive anyway!
I’m not trying to insult you. I’m trying to figure out where you’re coming from and help you see where I’m coming from, so we can both get a better handle on the truth while trying to ensure that our writing has good epistemic effects on the audience at the same time :-)
In additioned to teageegeepea’s points, the Mbuti (who were in the original link I provided that was criticized for having no “nomadic foragers”) have villages but no farming. Women help with the hunting and men help with the kids.
They also engage in trade with nearby agricultural tribes for all kinds of stuff. And once you have stuff, you need a place to put it. And then you start to make a big deal about how it’s your stuff and not anyone else’s, and then you’re not living in the kind of egalitarian forager band that defined the evolutionary environment.
Please slow down on the resentment! Seriously, you even quoted my smiley but got defensive anyway!
I’m resentful of smilies :D (Disclaimer: this is a self-deprecating joke about my own grumpiness.)
According to Jane Jacobs, cities preceded agriculture. In “Before the Dawn” Wade seems to agree with that theory, as there is evidence that people lived in settled areas for a surprisingly long time without becoming agriculturalists. I was surprised how late agriculture emerged in Japan.
A notable example of a group of sedentary hunter-gatherers that American readers may have heard about it middle school are the native americans of the northwest, who relied on the large amounts of available salmon nearby and had “potlatches” featuring the conspicuous destruction of expensive goods.
Jane Jacobs is an urban planner and an economist. While that does not mean that she is wrong, I am not terribly inclined to believe her theory in the absence of any sort of evidence; so far as I can tell, the only justification she offers is a thought experiment. Absent something convincing one way or the other, I’m inclined to consider which came first an open question.
Wikipedia cites Japan as having some form of primitive agriculture contemporaneously with the earliest settlements, but its reliability is, as ever, uncertain.
I’m not sure how fishing fits into all of this; it may be an important exception to the general trend.
In any case, unless settlements preceded agriculture by more than a couple millenia (which Jacobs doesn’t seem to claim), anatomically modern humans were still nomads for 95% of their history and nomadic foragers are still our best model of the evolutionary environment.
Jane Jacobs was a writer and activist who did a lot to oppose urban renewal. I suppose you could argue that there were some sorts of urban planning she liked (mixed use, pedestrian-friendly) but on the whole, she supported bottom-up social networks.
My “Jane Jacobs” link was to Overcoming Bias, where it was suggested (by someone other than Jacobs) that sedentary communities preceded agriculture by up to 3000 years, which I suppose would fit your “couple millenia).
Your Jomon link said that their pottery is evidence of sedentary living and described its origin as Mesolithic, or “Middle Stone Age” and preceding the Neolithic of agriculture. It also said they were hunter-gatherers and fishermen. It describes them as having “some of the highest densities known for foraging populations”, though noting that Pacific Americans were similarly high.
When humans left Africa they seem to have hugged the southeast coastline. We can expect that they had boats since they were able to reach Australia and the polynesian islands. So I think fishing was pretty important. Cavalli-Sforza writes of pre-Jomon Japan “A major source of food in those pre-agricultural times came from fishing, then as now, and this would have limited for ecological reasons the area of expansion to the coastline”.
Agriculture didn’t develop until ~8000 B.C. Prior to that point, there were no sedentary hunter-gatherers; mobility offered flexibility, and there was no reason at all to stay in one place.
So if we’re talking about human evolution, which took place almost entirely before that point, sedentary hunter-gatherers aren’t an accurate model of the conditions that shaped our development.
I resent the implication that I am making an appeal to nature. However egalitarian and pleasant our nomadic ancestors’ lives may have been, I have no desire to imitate them. The best that evolutionary psychology can do is identify certain biological predilections; it cannot and should not attempt to justify them.
In additioned to teageegeepea’s points, the Mbuti (who were in the original link I provided that was criticized for having no “nomadic foragers”) have villages but no farming. Women help with the hunting and men help with the kids.
Despite being sedentary, anthropologists attribute their balanced sex roles to the fact that women traditionally build the huts, and have something kind of like property rights over them. They have a little bit of polygamy, but it is rare. (Also, they are sometimes treated horribly by political neighbors to the point of being hunted as food. It seems messed up to mention them as “examples for science” without also mentioning their actual interests as human beings.)
“Appeal to nature” is a named fallacy because is super super common, and I didn’t even say you were committing it, I said “there would be incentives” to use certain evidence if anyone was going to. Even if you’re not committing the bias, lots of the people you’re reading probably do. When I notice “low hanging fallacy fruit” its seems useful to call it out so as to note the possible influence on everyone who reads it… it’s like verbally pointing out poison oak when you’re hiking, just to be safe.
Please slow down on the resentment! Seriously, you even quoted my smiley but got defensive anyway!
I’m not trying to insult you. I’m trying to figure out where you’re coming from and help you see where I’m coming from, so we can both get a better handle on the truth while trying to ensure that our writing has good epistemic effects on the audience at the same time :-)
They also engage in trade with nearby agricultural tribes for all kinds of stuff. And once you have stuff, you need a place to put it. And then you start to make a big deal about how it’s your stuff and not anyone else’s, and then you’re not living in the kind of egalitarian forager band that defined the evolutionary environment.
I’m resentful of smilies :D (Disclaimer: this is a self-deprecating joke about my own grumpiness.)
According to Jane Jacobs, cities preceded agriculture. In “Before the Dawn” Wade seems to agree with that theory, as there is evidence that people lived in settled areas for a surprisingly long time without becoming agriculturalists. I was surprised how late agriculture emerged in Japan.
A notable example of a group of sedentary hunter-gatherers that American readers may have heard about it middle school are the native americans of the northwest, who relied on the large amounts of available salmon nearby and had “potlatches” featuring the conspicuous destruction of expensive goods.
Jane Jacobs is an urban planner and an economist. While that does not mean that she is wrong, I am not terribly inclined to believe her theory in the absence of any sort of evidence; so far as I can tell, the only justification she offers is a thought experiment. Absent something convincing one way or the other, I’m inclined to consider which came first an open question.
Wikipedia cites Japan as having some form of primitive agriculture contemporaneously with the earliest settlements, but its reliability is, as ever, uncertain.
I’m not sure how fishing fits into all of this; it may be an important exception to the general trend.
In any case, unless settlements preceded agriculture by more than a couple millenia (which Jacobs doesn’t seem to claim), anatomically modern humans were still nomads for 95% of their history and nomadic foragers are still our best model of the evolutionary environment.
Jane Jacobs was a writer and activist who did a lot to oppose urban renewal. I suppose you could argue that there were some sorts of urban planning she liked (mixed use, pedestrian-friendly) but on the whole, she supported bottom-up social networks.
My “Jane Jacobs” link was to Overcoming Bias, where it was suggested (by someone other than Jacobs) that sedentary communities preceded agriculture by up to 3000 years, which I suppose would fit your “couple millenia).
Your Jomon link said that their pottery is evidence of sedentary living and described its origin as Mesolithic, or “Middle Stone Age” and preceding the Neolithic of agriculture. It also said they were hunter-gatherers and fishermen. It describes them as having “some of the highest densities known for foraging populations”, though noting that Pacific Americans were similarly high.
When humans left Africa they seem to have hugged the southeast coastline. We can expect that they had boats since they were able to reach Australia and the polynesian islands. So I think fishing was pretty important. Cavalli-Sforza writes of pre-Jomon Japan “A major source of food in those pre-agricultural times came from fishing, then as now, and this would have limited for ecological reasons the area of expansion to the coastline”.