The role of biology in the explanation of history occupies historians of a breed that until now has been rare - biohistorians. But they also agree that the new science must be used carefully
Emily Eakin, New York Times
A meeting between Cortes and the Aztecs. Shows status like the chimpanzees
Evolutionary biology has become the academic equivalent of the "Starbucks" and "Gap" chains. Neo-Darwinist explanations are offered for everything - from the artist's creativity to morality and rape. It seems that there is no academic department that is not equipped with a theoretician who is captivated by the magic of biology. Except for the history departments.
Until recently, historians were almost the only ones who did not succumb to the conquest of the science of innate traits, survival strategies and biological imperatives. All biological explanations, from the social Darwinists of the late 19th century, who turned to evolution to justify nationalism, war and poverty, to later thinkers, such as Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, whose book The Bell Curve (1994) linked intelligence to race and genes, were presented by them as simplistic and biased.
As Robert McAlwain, a historian at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, put it at one of the sessions of the annual conference of the "American Historical Association" last month - "the connection of biology with history has no respectable pedigree". However, he is moving in this direction. McElwain was one of the main organizers of the panel on biohistory that was included in the conference and was the first of its kind.
"Historians can no longer afford to ignore established scientific findings just because certain researchers have misused this type of research," McElvain said. "Until now, what we usually had was evolutionary science without the historical perspective, and history without the evolutionary perspective. Now we have to try to link the neo-Darwinist evolutionary biology with history".
Biohistory is still in its infancy and its practitioners are a small minority. Among the first efforts are "The Creation of the Sacred: Traces of Biology in Early Religions" (Harvard University Press, 1996) by Walter Burkert, a historian specializing in classical studies, and "Cruelty and Generosity: Human Ethology, Culture and the Birth of Mexico" (1996 Greenwood Press ) by Abel Alves, researcher of the Spanish Empire.
Noting that some form of religion exists in all human societies, Burkert proposes a thesis according to which basic religious rituals, such as animal sacrifice and communal eating, originate in the survival strategies of primitive man and his great ape relatives.
Alves turned to biology when he studied the eating habits of the Aztecs and the Spanish during the conquest of Mexico in the 16th century. "I found that both groups had a tendency to establish food hierarchies - the Spanish said that corn was only suitable for donkeys, for example - and both were characterized by eating together," he said. "This motivated me to look for universal laws. I found that these things were also true for the chimpanzee culture."
In his book Alves applies a biological analysis to a wide range of behaviors, both of the Spaniards and of their victims, including cruelty, xenophobia and curiosity. From this point of view, a diplomatic meeting between Hernando Cortés and the Aztec ambassadors is interpreted less as a competition for a display of intelligence and more as a display of ape-style status. Alves compares Cortes' decision to have his men arrive at the meeting on horseback and to ring their bells to the behavior of Mike, a chimpanzee studied by chimpanzee Jane Goodall in Tanzania, who achieved male dominance by banging on empty oil cans and scaring the other males.
McAlwain, who studies America in the 20th century, turned to science when he studied the election campaign of American presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 and especially his appeal to traditional values. "I began to see how certain values were perceived as masculine - aggression, competitiveness - and others were perceived as feminine - for example, compassion and cooperation - and I wondered if what shaped them was innate," said McElvain. He delved into the history of human evolution and became convinced that the answer was complex enough to warrant an entire book. In "The Seed of Eve: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History" (McGraw-Hill Publishing, 2000), McCalwain claims that the biological differences between the sexes were originally less significant than the stereotypes suggest today, of strong men and weak women.
In early hunter-gatherer societies, he writes, power was divided between men and women more or less equally. The men hunted, the women gathered. The work of both sexes was essential for the survival of the group. That's when agriculture was invented, a development McVain credits to women. When they were no longer needed as hunters, the men suddenly found themselves - around 8000 BC - unemployed. According to McAlwain, the legacy of this prehistoric imbalance between the sexes is what evolutionary biologists call a "maladaptive strategy", and what feminists call patriarchy: the aggressive hunting behavior of the males, now aimed at other men (for example in war), and especially at the women . The thousands of years of male control and the subjugation of women should be seen as the men's attempt to compensate for the loss of the roles that evolution gave them and from which they were deprived by a historical accident.
Like the other biohistorians, McAlwain often cites the work of Wilson, a renowned Harvard scientist. He invited Wilson to speak at a Biohistorical Association panel, and the latter spoke about human traits considered universal, such as habitat preference. (People from different backgrounds prefer a high place, surrounded by open space, near a large water source). "This is apparently a remnant of our evolution, which took place mostly in the African savanna," he said.
Answers to the questions of how evolutionary science will change the interpretation of the reasons for the North's victory in the American Civil War, for example, were not given. "The historian can know very little about it. Actually, it's a bit circular. You take the data from history and say it can be explained by conditions that existed in prehistory? I'm not sure I understand it," said an embarrassed listener in the audience.
Other historians have similar reservations. "Where's the evidence?" asked Joan Valch Scott, a historian at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. "These explanations, which reduce history to biology, eliminate the need for careful reading. You find yourself with claims like: men go to war, there is an innate aggression in all humans, especially men, and humanity is stuck with a lot of strategy behaviors that guarantee loss. All of this is driven by a fantasy of absolute knowledge, by the urge to build a theory that unifies everything."
In the eyes of the new wave of biohistorians, such skepticism is out of place. "The biology that can play a useful role in history is quite limited, but important nonetheless," McAlwain said. "It is clear to me that there are innate tendencies that can be controlled. But they must not be ignored."
Bobby Lu, a professor of ecology at the University of Michigan, said that the dialogue between the two disciplines is only at its beginning: "At one end of the biological continuum there are the universal questions about the meaning of being human, and at one end of the historical continuum there is the question of how the deformity in Talleyrand's foot changed the the course of history. But there is a lot of overlap in the middle."
(Originally published on 10.2)
{Appeared in Haaretz newspaper, 20/2/2001{
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