Studies have shown that the hunter-gatherers cooperated and did not compete. The competition started with agriculture
By: Steve Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Leeds Beckett University
There has long been a general assumption that humans are inherently selfish. We are apparently cruel, with strong urges to compete against each other for resources and to accumulate power and possessions.
If we are nice to each other, it is usually because we have ulterior motives. If we are good, it is only because we have managed to control and overcome our innate selfishness and cruelty.
This bleak view of human nature is closely associated with the science writer Richard Dawkins, whose book The Selfish Garden became popular because it fitted so well (and helped justify) the ethos of competition between people in late 20th century societies.
Like many others, Dawkins justifies his views by referring to the field of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology suggests that human traits of our time developed in the prehistoric period, during what has been called the "Evolutionary Adaptation Environment".
This period is generally seen as a time of intense competition, when life was a kind of Roman gladiatorial combat where only the traits that gave people a survival advantage were selected and all others fell by the wayside. Because people's survival depended on access to resources – rivers, forests and animals – there was bound to be competition and conflict between rival groups, leading to the development of traits such as racism and warfare.
It seems reasonable. But in fact the assumption it is based on - that prehistoric life was a desperate struggle for survival - is false.
prehistoric abundance
It is important to remember that in prehistoric times, the world was very sparsely populated. So it is likely that there was an abundance of resources for hunter-gatherer groups.
According to some estimates, about 15,000 years ago the population of Europe was only 29,000 inhabitants, and the entire world population was less than half a million. With such small population densities, it is unlikely that prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups would have had to compete with each other or would have developed cruelty and competitiveness, or gone to war.
Indeed, many anthropologists now agree that war is a late development in human history, stemming from the first agricultural settlements.
contemporary evidence
There is also significant evidence from contemporary hunter-gatherer groups living similarly to prehistoric humans. One of the prominent characteristics of such groups is their equality.
As the anthropologist Bruce Knouft has commented, hunter-gatherers are characterized by "extreme political and sexual equality". People in such groups do not accumulate their own property. They have a moral obligation to share everything. They also have methods of maintaining equality by not having class differences.
The Kong of South Africa, for example, exchange arrows between themselves before going hunting and when an animal is killed, the credit does not go to the person who shot the arrow, but to the person to whom the arrow belongs. If a person becomes too domineering or too arrogant, the other members of the group ostracize him.
Usually in such groups, men have no authority over women. Women usually choose their marriage partners, decide what work they want to do and choose when to work. If a marriage breaks up, they have custody of their children.
Many anthropologists agree that such egalitarian societies were normal until a few thousand years ago, when population growth led to the development of agriculture and a settled lifestyle.
altruism and equality
This suggests that there is no reason to assume that traits such as racism, warfare and male dominance should have been selected for by evolution - as they would have been of little use to us. People who behaved selfishly and cruelly would be less likely to survive, as they would be ostracized from their groups.
It was more reasonable then to see qualities such as cooperation, equality, altruism and peace as natural to humans. These were the features that were common in human life for tens of thousands of years. So apparently these traits are still strong in us now.
Of course, you may argue that if this is the case, why do humans today often act so selfishly and ruthlessly? Why are these negative traits so normal in many cultures? Perhaps these traits should be seen as the result of environmental and psychological factors.
Studies have repeatedly shown that when primates' natural habitats are disturbed, they tend to become more violent and hierarchical. So maybe the same thing happened to us, since we gave up the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
In my book The Fall, I suggest that the end of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and the beginning of agriculture was related to a psychological change that occurred in certain groups of people. There was a new sense of individuality and separateness, which led to a new selfishness, and ultimately to hierarchical, patriarchal, and warlike societies.
In any case, these negative traits seem to have evolved so recently that it does not seem realistic to explain them in adaptive or evolutionary terms. That is, the "good" side of our nature is much more rooted than the "bad" side.
For an article in The Conversation
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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Low level of responses ??♂️
Another progressive article from the "scientific" manufacturer. Aren't you tired of pushing your dark beliefs into every hole?….
The reason vegans are such animals
To the best of my recollection of the book, the claim is that the "selfish garden" is not the person carrying it. We are a tool in the service of the gardens. If it serves them that we will be nice, we will be the nicest in the world. It is a common mistake to confuse human selfishness (or any other complex animal) with the selfishness of genes. Even the genes of bees are selfish.
It is enough to name a number of groups such as the native tribes of North America as well as quite a few African and East Asian tribes to see that even in non-agricultural cultures there is violence between tribes and between groups.
The attempt to always present the hunters and cats in a romantic light and us moderns in a dark light is not scientific, but stems from an inner belief of the "researcher".
Obviously, when there is less population there is less friction, but in practice we do not have sufficient knowledge about the degree of violence before agriculture because we do not have sufficient knowledge about these groups in general. There are no cemeteries, almost no skeletons, almost no evidence.
If we want to rely on anthropology, we can see that violence also exists in friction between groups, just as it exists in other primates.
There are no classes and maybe there is no high regard for property, but there is violence and even violence against women in some tribes. The very act of excommunicating those who deviated from the tribe's rules shows that even in non-violent tribes this stems from social regulation and is not 100% natural for a person.
All the qualities are present in a person, in each one to a slightly different degree. The family and the society and the pressures in which we grow up are the ones that shape us and encourage us to emphasize certain qualities and suppress others. This is true of non-agricultural groups just as it is true of the crowded and naturally disturbed modern world.
Acknowledging that in a certain period of time called hunter-gatherers there were signs of cooperation and reciprocity does not contradict the fact that humans are selfish by nature.
External conditions and a desire to accept in an undeveloped degree allowed them to live their lives in this way.