BOEHM

Question

Since apes display a significant degree of despotism, as do most sedentary agricultural societies, how can it be that nomadic foraging societies with little or no food storage abilities are (were) highly egalitarian? If there are innate human tendencies to dominance and submission, how can the trajectory of political hierarchy in the line going from ancestral Pan to us have dipped forming the middle part of a U-shape?

Answer

Because fear of domination generated a collective commitment to dominate upstarts and would-be dominators. The guiding maxim is: Dominate if possible, but by all means avoid being dominated. Hence, a hierarchical nature need not support political hierarchy. Egalitarianism is the result of reverse dominance of the weak over the strong.

Note the similarity with Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals.

The Egalitarian Ethos

Although all cultures share negative values proscribing killing, seriously deceptive lying or theft, and positive ones prescribing altruism and cooperation, the political values of egalitarian societies create an ethos that is antiauthoritarian, fosters mutual respect, is often anticompetitive, and favors material equality. Differences in individual skill are recognized but minimized at the political level, at times with elaborate meat-sharing practices and self-mocking.

Hence, although leaders, either temporary or long term, are typically successful individuals with forceful personalities, nevertheless they are expected to be generous, unselfish, non bossy, and modest. A leader is supposed to be a primus inter pares.

Antiauthoritarian sanctions are wide ranging:

· cool greetings, criticism and ridicule (importance of gossiping)

· overtly disobeying leaders who try to command

· ostracism

· desertion (the group leaving the bossy leader)

· expulsion

· execution

Such sanctions are made possible both by:

· the mode of production (nobody personally controls local resources)

· the ability to kill easily by the use of weapons so that the group can kill the deviant with little danger to any of its members

NOTE: the ability to kill and the absence of strong leadership makes the homicide rate as high as in some Us inner cities; typically murder is the result of adultery or revenge.

The transition from hierarchical (ancestral Pan or, possibly, ancient human) to egalitarian society was made possible by cognitive preadaptations . One was probably already present in the common ancestor to the four hominids, namely:

· Political intelligence, allowing assessment of complex power relations, and therefore permitting the formation of relatively stable political alliances. Note that both chimps and bonobos engage in sophisticated power coalitions.

However, other traits were necessary which appeared in some degree probably only with Homo erectus (1.5m years ago), and almost certainly fully with anatomically modern humans (.2m years ago):

· Actuarial intelligence, allowing the rough assessment the statistical results of social actions, as in meat sharing as a form of variance reduction, and in the proscription of bullying as a way to avoid despotism

· A language capable of :

o transmitting precise and detailed communication with displacement. Such ability is present in humans but in a very limited way in other hominoids, including chimps. The role of gossiping.

o allowing the production of a formalized behavioral code, a morality.

Once appeared, egalitarianism may have activated rapid cultural transmission, as subordinate members of bands would note its advantages. This was probably facilitated by the climactic variations of the late Pleistocene (from 132,000 to 72,000 years ago), which forced migrations and therefore contacts among groups.

Once egalitarianism was in place there was probably a strong selective pressure favoring genes for altruism and disfavoring genes for antisocial aggressive behavior, a form of gene-culture evolution.