Michelle:

"I'll take civilization, thanks!"

The problem with that is that choosing "civilization" is far more likely to land you in misery and slavery, based on deep religious and cultural misogyny, than choosing hunter-foragers.  Even today, much more of "civilization" is like Saudi Arabia or sub-Saharan Africa than like Denmark…and it gets worse the farther back in time you go.  Ask yourself what rights you would have had in the Roman empire, let alone the Hittites or Akkadians.

So what you're really saying is "I choose where I am, right here, right now," which I absolutely agree is the best time for women in civilization, ever!  But it's not clear to me that this utterly atypical and vanishingly rare arrangement is the inevitable endpoint of "civilization"…

…or that it's even stable in the long term.  Depending on an overwhelmingly male-dominated power structure to enforce women's rights doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

somachristou:

Yes, I know it's Old Testament…but I can never keep straight what part of the Word of God is to be taken literally, what part is to be taken metaphorically, and what part is superseded by what mutually contradictory other part.

Just watching religious people argue over it makes my head hurt…and the arguments can never end, because there are no underlying facts to allow a rational decision to be made one way or the other.

Tess:

Exactly!  That's the sort of thinking I'm trying to promote.  When we see a modern behavior that seems strange or wrong, we should ask ourselves "Could this be the result of a behavioral adaptation to the hunting-foraging existence we are no longer leading?"

No, it's not a universal solution: but when our lives are so wildly different from our evolutionary context, it's always an important question to ask.

And you are correct: most of the worst Islam-bashers are part of a religion that featured the Crusades, the Conquistadores, and the Dark Ages.  I don't find it productive to argue which monotheistic, patriarchal religion is "better" for women, or anyone else.

Franco:

I'm intrigued enough to want to read it.  So far it looks a lot like Richard Wrangham: entertaining speculation ranging from totally plausible to utter bosh.

Peggy:

Those observations aren't new to Dr. Hanson, but he summarizes them very well.  The classic essay on the subject is, of course, Jared Diamond's "The Worst Mistake In Human History", though it spends more time on diet and physical health.

Thank you for your support!  A growing number of people are realizing, as they achieve great health and fitness by changing their diets, that evolutionary discordance is very real.  One of my goals is to bring that understanding beyond simple diet and exercise, to encompass our entire way of "civilized" life, and how we might improve it.  I'm glad to see that you share that goal.

JS

Whew!  I'm caught up.  Special thanks to all of you for a stimulating and productive dialogue!  (And please feel free to keep going.)  I'm proud of my regular readers and commenters for helping make gnolls.org such a great place.

Also note that these comments are actually threads in the forum, that posting as a registered user means the website you enter will actually show up as a link -- and that there is another forum devoted specifically to talking about The Gnoll Credo, should you be inclined to do so.

Anders:

Note that I haven't read it yet, which is why I say "So far it looks like..."

The biggest problem I see is that the current genetic analysis says that there was gene flow between Neandertals and Eurasians (and even New Guineans!), but not between Neandertals and Africans.  This shoots a big hole in the idea that the Shul-Qafzeh humanoids were ancestral to the entire human population, as required by NP theory. 

However, the ideas that Neandertals didn't just look like a burly version of the Geico caveman, and could have preyed on Homo sapiens in the Middle East (possibly preventing our expansion until after we figured out how to defeat them), seem to be supported by the evidence.

Like I said, I'm intrigued enough to read it.

Franco:

You can summarize Demonic Males with "we're violent, just like chimps".  The problem I have with it is that he regularly uses primitive agriculturalists (e.g. the Yanomamo, New Guinea highlanders) as examples of why hunter-foragers were violent, meanwhile ignoring true hunter-foragers like the Hadza -- which is disingenuous.  But there is interesting reasoning behind, for instance, why bonobos are more peaceful than chimps, and the origins of violence in the social system of various primates.

Catching Fire sounds like a great theory until you realize that he's assuming that fire was universally domesticated ~1.6 MYA, the evidence for which is -- to put it politely -- not widely accepted.  There are a lot of other factual and speculative bobbles in there, which I'll inventory if I ever get around to reviewing it.  But his speculations on the origins of sex roles via cooking are very interesting.

JS

Adrian:

I'm honored: thank you.

It's taken many years of thinking and living to cut through the fog.  Most philosophies and simple solutions come down to "If everyone would just do X we'd all be fine."  And everyone spends all their time trying unsuccessfully to get other people to conform to their own ideals.

Meanwhile, few stop and think: why is it that every successful "civilized" society is either broken or disintegrates under its own weight?  And why do none of these supposedly inevitable, eternal institutions (governments) usually last more than a few decades -- a few hundred years at the outside?

Andrea Reina:

"What if everything were BACKWARDS?" is a great rhetorical device, but often that's all it is...just a shocking statement that doesn't withstand scrutiny.  

In this case, though, it's quite true.  

TGC explores these issues in detail, and I'm sure you'll find it fascinating.

JS

Sofie:

The evidence gets more and more tenuous as you go back: the Confederacy most likely didn't exist then.  But even if it's true, it's still a tiny exception to the male-dominated rule.

Franco:

That's an interesting article, and I agree that whatever reverence was given was most likely a pre-agricultural survival.

Eddie:

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!  Read it whenever you're moved to: TGC is both short and intense, and best given some mental and physical space.

Juan:

Is Wrangham really a vegetarian?  Well, that explains everything, then.  The more I re-read "Catching Fire" the more things I found that either don't make sense, are cherry-picked from among a lot of disputed data, or are simply wrong.  I can believe some of the behavioral speculations -- but on the accepted timescale, not on the 1.6MYA schedule he apparently believes.  Among the many objections is that tubers don't have the DHA required to build big brains.

Veg*anism is religious in origin, and in practice, it's a religious belief system that requires the same sort of faith.  I find I have to tiptoe around issues with veg*ans just as I must around religious believers.

Like I said, Vendramini is on my schedule to read.

JS