The rise of agriculture and civilization has changed humans, but many of these changes are not positive. There were, and are, other ways of being. “How do the real people do it?” In The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending discuss a wide array of genetic changes prompted by the Agricultural Revolution, from changes in skin color to lactose tolerance to reduced physical endurance, enhanced long-term planning, and increased docility. They discuss how the varying history of agriculture and civilization from one group to another creates genetic differences today. Each of these changes illustrate to me the driving reason behind this rapid pace of evolutionary change: that the new institutions set themselves so completely at odds with human nature, have proven so dehumanizing, so impoverished, and so catastrophic, that it takes this sort of break-neck evolutionary pace just to keep them going even for just 10,000 years, an evolutionary blink of an eye. Colin Turnbull quotes a Mbuti pygmy named Moke who said, “The forest is a mother and father to us, and like a father or mother it gives us everything we need — food, clothing, shelter, warmth … and affection.” It seems undeniable… that egalitarian, hunter-gatherer bands represent the normal human experience, and the only evolutionary legacy bequeathed to the human race. Modern hunter-gatherers do not represent “living fossils” of our pre-agricultural past. Calling them “primitive” or “pre-modern” fails to address the fact that they have continued to evolve, change, learn, and grow through the past 10,000 years as much as any other groups. They’ve also been changed by their contact with agricultural, domesticated, and civilized people (though rarely to their benefit). They don’t represent a throw-back, but a divergent path. They don’t show us how humans lived 10,000 years ago, but each one a different way that we might live today if our ancestors had made different choices. deepgreenresistance.org https://medium/@jefgodesky/the-real-people-c14a9ec5c51
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 03:00:01 +0000
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