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Nutritional Anthropology The
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DEADLY
HARVEST Between Our Health & Our Food GEOFF BOND |
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8.
The Savanna Model Lifestyle We have seen how our ancient environment conditioned our
bodies—and our very natures—for life on the savannas of east Africa.
We called this lifestyle the “Savanna Model” and outlined how our
ancient ancestors fed themselves for thousands of generations. Now, we
look at aspects of the Savanna Model lifestyle: physical activity,
social well-being, and living arrangements. Our modern lives, in all
their aspects, are at variance with the way nature designed us for life.
The Bond Effect is learning to live in harmony with the way nature
intended. This manner of looking at who we really are elegantly resolves
many enigmatic lifestyle questions. It cuts through much humbug to
reveal fundamental, if uncomfortable, truths. PHYSICAL ACTIVITY A typical African Pleistocene group would camp in one place for a
few days and then move on to make another camp 10 to 20 miles away. They
carried very little with them, but they still had to walk all the way.
They moved, not for the fun of it, but because they had to. The terrain
was open, savanna-type grassland. While camped each day, the group would split up to forage for food.
The women, children, and old men went off in one party, foraging for
roots, fruits, tubers, berries, and easily caught bugs and animals. This
party on average covered about 5 miles, they leisurely walked and rested
from time to time, and after about 4–5 hours they were done. It is
estimated that the average adult female energy expenditure on physical
activity was 600 kilocalories (kcal) per day. This compares to 230 kcal
for today’s sedentary female office worker. The able-bodied men went off chiefly looking for small game, but
would Page 187 Above Page 188 Below There are therefore two patterns, one for each gender. Females
would pass their lives exercising to a moderate extent and with low
intensity. Males started their lives with the female pattern, graduated
to the male pattern (vigorous and more sustained physical activity) for
most of their lives, and then tapered off to lesser levels again in old
age. Exercise and Your Health • Bone Demineralization and Fractures. The absence of exercise is
one of the factors that undermines bone health. Regular physical
activity improves bone structure, volume, and its resistance to
fracture. Elderly women can benefit from as little as one hour per week
of low-intensity activity—a 42% lower risk of hip fracture and 33%
lower risk of vertebra fracture. [1]. The rhythmic jolting
associated with walking or jogging excites the bone-building cells
(osteoblasts) into raising their tempo. In young people, the
bone-builders work faster than the bone-strippers (osteoclasts) and
their bone mass increases. Even in older people, the bone-builders will
work harder and maintain pace with the bone-strippers. • Syndrome X. Syndrome X is a metabolic disorder that represents a cocktail of
“diseases of civilization” that occur simultaneously. The main
conditions are high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, obesity,
high cholesterol, and diabetes. They all have a common link—high
insulin levels. Low exercise levels mean that more insulin has to be
secreted to handle a given glucose load. The result is more insulin
floating around creating mischief. Exercise is essential to maintaining
optimum resistance to diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and heart
disease. Page
188 Above Page
189 Below The Process of Bone Remodeling • Lymphatic Circulation. As handmaiden to blood circulation, we have a
secondary system of circulation known as the lymphatic system. This is
responsible, in part, for transporting the products of digestion to
other parts of the body, bringing immune system cells to parts of the
body under attack, and flushing away debris and toxic matter. Unlike the
blood, which is pumped around the body by the heart, the lymphatic
system does not have a pump of its own. It relies on the general flexing
of muscles to do the job. Lack of physical activity means sluggish
lymphatic circulation and a host of potential maladies. • Longevity. Studies on identical twins conducted over many years have
demonstrated what many people have long suspected—that physically fit
people live longer. In one study, it was found that in any given period,
sedentary people were 1.3 times as likely to die as the “occasional”
exercisers and nearly twice as likely to die as the “conditioning”
exercisers. The figures were the same The
Savanna Model Lifestyle 189 Above Page
190 Below for both men and women. The use of twins, often brought up apart,
was particularly useful: it meant that genetic factors could be
eliminated as possible reasons. [2]. We do not know the effect on longevity if we raised our physical
activity to the level of our prehistoric ancestors, but it would no
doubt be further improved. • Stress, Depression, and Mood. Physical exercise has a beneficial effect on a
whole range of hormones that regulate mood. Exercise restores the way
the brain chemical serotonin functions, helping to lift depression.
Physical activity puts a brake on the production of stress hormones
(such as cortisol and adrenaline), which calms feelings of panic and
stress and reduces damaging insulin production. Finally, endurance
athletes can reach a “high,” where their bodies are producing
morphine-like substances, giving them a tremendous feeling of
well-being. Physical activity is not an option but a necessity. Our bodies
are shaped by our ancestral environment and their proper functioning
relies on a particular kind and amount of exercise. Without it, the rest
of the body’s systems cannot work properly. SOCIAL WELL-BEING AND THE IDEA OF HUMAN NATURE Bear in mind that we are talking about the deep undercurrents in human nature. The purpose of the rest of this chapter is to make you aware of our deeply buried instincts. You will see how our choices, often made with the best of intentions, sometimes run counter to these savanna-bred instincts. However, bear in mind that all social interactions are highly complicated affairs: we are constantly balancing a Pandora’s box of conflicting desires, postponed gratification, calculation, and social conformity. The insights in this chapter will help you make better choices within the framework of this rich and challenging context. The social sciences deal with the social and cultural aspects of human behavior. Regrettably, these sciences were hijacked in the early part of the 20th century by academic theorists such as the German-born American anthropologist Franz Boas. They built on the romantic notions of the 18th-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who asserted, without any evidence, that man is good by nature but has been corrupted by society and civilization. If only, stated Rousseau, we could return to the state of the “Noble Savage,” we would Page
190 Above Deadly Harvest Page 191 Below
all live happily ever after.
Boas went further and asserted that humans have no inherited instincts,
abilities, or feelings. He declared that all humans are born as a
“blank slate” and behavior is purely the result of social and
cultural conditioning. Thus, we are all born with identical potentials
to become anything. In other words, there is no such thing as “human
nature.” We now know that this is quite wrong: humans inherit, with their
genes, very deeply programmed desires, feelings, and instincts. They
cannot be “conditioned” out of existence. But the social sciences
are still riddled with false notions. In consequence, we are under
pressure to change our behaviors in ways that social theorists consider
desirable. Often, these pressures cut across our savanna-bred natures,
causing distress, unhappiness, and ultimately mental illness. Social engineers wanted to believe that human behavior is
“infinitely malleable.” If necessary, they faked scientific studies
to fit their prejudices. The most celebrated case was that of Margaret
Mead. An anthropological student of Franz Boas, Mead became famous for
her doctoral research in 1925 that allegedly showed that Samoa is a
paradise in which sex is unrestricted; where jealousy, rape, and
adolescent adjustment problems are unknown. But none of it was true.
Mead never learned the Samoan language and she interviewed only two
schoolgirls who, only in their old age, admitted that they had deceived
her for their own amusement. [3]. She wrote a book about her “research” entitled
Coming of Age in Samoa. It became a best-seller and
required reading as “a classic of universal truths” in university
courses. In the book, Mead claimed that adolescent behavior in humans
could be explained only in terms of the social environment. Human
nature, she declared, was “the rawest most undifferentiated of raw
material.” It wasn’t until 70 years later, when anthropologist Derek
Freeman unearthed the truth about Mead’s sloppy studies, that her
theories were finally debunked.4 In the meantime, Western
thinking—and societies—have been distorted for several generations.
We now know that deep-seated urges and instincts underlie and direct
human behavior. Anthropologists and other researchers have studied the huge range
of different cultures around the world. From these studies, they have
teased out the characteristics that are common to all human cultures;
they call them “human universal values.”[5]. In other words, they are features that are hardwired into human
behavior and not affected by cultural conditioning. We will now examine
the main features and show how the San shape up to these features, then
we will see how they compare with common practice in our Western
culture. This will throw into relief any discord with our savanna-bred
natures. Every normal human on this planet has fundamental feelings of
pain, fear, happiness, and physical attraction. These are emotions that
manipulate our bodies for basic survival and reproduction. Indeed, it is
difficult to imagine how any The
Savanna Model Lifestyle 191Above Page
192 Below species can survive if it does not have a similar impulse system
to signal when, for example, to fight for vital space, to flee from
danger, or to mate. Hardwired Behavior Humans’ hardwired instructions are the first level reflexes,
which occur subconsciously. Typical examples are blinking, swallowing,
and the knee-jerk. Others invoke emotions, which have an evolutionary
and survival purpose—to make the brain give instructions to the body.
A clear example is when a lion attacks. Our body’s sensors, chiefly
the eyes and ears, send signals to the brain. The brain speeds up the
heart and puts the muscles in overdrive. We feel this cascade of
activity as fear. All this happens subconsciously—it is an automatic,
hardwired reflex. Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at the University of Iowa
College of Medicine, specializes in finding out how the brain detects
emotion and feeling. The brain is receiving billions of reports every
second from every cell in the body. The brain then integrates these
reports and we perceive the result as an emotion. [6]. “Background” emotions
work at a subconscious level and only surface to our consciousness
vaguely: we can feel “under the weather” or we can have an
instinctive dislike of someone. “Primary” emotions are basic ones
such as fear, sadness, and happiness. Yet another category concerns
“social” emotions, which evolved to make us behave in appropriate
ways in society and in personal relationships. They are genetically
programmed feelings such as conscience, self-respect, remorse, empathy,
shame, humility, dignity, rejection, humiliation, moral outrage, sorrow,
mourning, and jealousy. When we talk about “programming,” “hardwiring,” and
“genetically programmed emotions,” where do these features come
from? The answer, quite simply, is in our genes. In the words of
evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, genes “are the replicators and
we are their survival machines.”[7]. Down through the eons, genes
in bodies that failed to reproduce died out. We are all carriers of
genes that succeeded in getting into the next generation—millions of
times over. To do that, they had to make sure that the bodies they found
themselves in were fit for survival. In this regard, we still inhabit
bodies honed to perfection for successful gene transmission in the
savannas of east Africa. 192
Deadly Harvest Above 193
Below Genes can aid their reproduction more subtly too, by helping
copies of themselves that are in other bodies. They manipulate the body
they are in to help other bodies survive if they are likely to contain
copies of themselves. We perceived this manipulation as instincts,
emotions, and feelings. Human mothers feel more like risking their lives
to save their own baby than they do for an unknown person; it is a
phenomenon that we call, quite naturally and innocently, maternal
instinct. Instincts, Emotions, and Feelings For example, humans are programmed with instructions that say,
“If you see tasty food, eat it until it is all gone.” This worked
fine in our ancestral homeland as food was not abundant, was largely
bland in flavor, and required work to obtain. Today, that hardwired
instruction is self-defeating. Food is abundant, food companies are
experts at making it appealing and tasty, and we have lost the link
between obtaining food and the work required to get it. Our emotions are
crying out “eat”! Humans, as well as many other creatures, have mechanisms that can
override the hardwiring. We can still choose to not eat even if the food
is there, even if we are hungry or if the food is tasty. But this
requires two things: the recognition that there is a good reason to
override our instinct and the exercise of willpower to carry it out.
This process is unpleasant and stressful. The culture we grow up in provides the “reason” to override
our instincts. It imposes a set of behavioral values that are commonly
accepted by society, often strongly bound up with religious doctrines
that have developed over centuries. Frequently, cultures impose
behavioral patterns that are quite at variance with human nature. Taboo is from a Polynesian word (tapu) that means a prohibition
imposed by social custom against a particular behavior. Humans seem to
be hardwired to adopt taboos in general. However, the nature of the taboo can be whatever
the culture programs into the brain circuits. For example, to Western
culture, cannibalism is taboo, whereas it was common practice in many
peoples from the Polynesians to the Aztecs. Taboo, and especially its
breaking, arouse incredibly deep, visceral emotions. There are many
taboos that seem to be common to all cultures; they are “human
universal values.” An example is the taboo against incest, which is
the result of imprinting, a device by which our genes maximize their
survival into the next generation. Taboos that have arisen for this
reason are good for well-being; most others are not necessarily so. We
must, therefore, make fundamental distinctions among those The
Savanna Model Lifestyle 193 Above Page
194 Below notions that come to us because of our hardwiring, those
imprinted at an early age, and those that are programmed into us as
“ideas.” Ideas and Indoctrination The Vienna-based founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, had a
remarkable nephew, Edward Bernays, whose family migrated to America when
he was a baby. In 1919, Bernays opened a marketing agency in New York.
He offered techniques using Freud’s psychological principles to
“influence people to buy products they don’t need or want.”
Bernays coined the term public relations for this technique. Bernays
used these psycho-techniques with remarkable success; for example, in
the 1920s, to persuade women that it is acceptable to smoke in public.
His delighted client, the American Tobacco Company, saw cigarette sales
soar. Bernays “engineered” public opinion in many other celebrated
cases, including the idea that bacon is a breakfast food. We have all been indoctrinated from the earliest age: by our family, schools, health professionals, sociologists, our cultural belief system, and much else. In matters to do with food, for example, we are under constant, sophisticated, and persuasive assault by the food industry. For generations, they have provided, free of charge, attractive yet self-serving propaganda in the form of educational materials to schools. They take charge of food supplies in schools, hospitals, and other institutions. Various lobbies, including dairy, snack-food, sugar, fast-food, processed food, and cattlemen, deploy the most sophisticated psychological techniques to seduce us into buying their products. We have the challenge of understanding how our minds are being manipulated. When we have done that, then we have the next mental challenge— changing our habits. LIVING ARRANGEMENTS 194
Above Deadly Harvest 195
Below quietly and doing tasks by the firelight. Sleep would come around
9:30 P.M. and they would wake up with the sun. The creatures from whom we are descended, Homo erectus, discovered fire at least one
million years ago. We can imagine the nights with strange unknown
rustlings in the dark; the campfire must have been a great comfort. We
all feel, even today, the fascination of a fire: gazing reflectively
into the flames is a pleasure deeply anchored in our psyches. Campfires
constitute a flickering island of reassurance going back to the
beginning of human existence. This is our naturally adapted prelude to
sleep. Up until the beginning of the 20th century, populations, even in the West, did not have the luxury of much light after dark. They just had flickering whale-oil lamps and beef-fat candles; people still followed ancient ancestral sleep rhythms. Since 1900, light at night gradually became more common, first with gas lighting and then with electric light. The net result is that we do not prepare our brains for sleep in the way nature envisaged. Today, the average American sleeps two hours fewer than in the 1960s. He or she certainly sleeps less—and less well—than the ideal for which our naturally adapted sleeping pattern has programmed us. Some of the consequences are predictable: loss of concentration, lowered resistance to stress, and a depressed immune system. An unexpected consequence is that sleep deprivation reduces appetite-suppressing hormones such as leptin and it increases hunger-inducing hormones such as ghrelin—the less we sleep, the more we overeat Sunlight as Human Food Years ago, we never used to worry about how much sun we got.
Parents would even urge their children to play outside and “make some
vitamin D.” This was a key insight: sunlight is an essential piece of
nutrition for humans. The scares over sunburn-induced skin cancers have
caused a hysterical overreaction. The modern denial of sunshine has led
to a surge of diseases that are connected to sunlight deficiency,
including cancers, rickets, and depression. Cancer researcher E.M. John found that cancers are much more
prevalent in the northern cities of the U.S. than in the southern rural
states. In particular, the risk of breast cancer is increased by three
times. [9]. Researcher William Grant
estimates the yearly toll from cancers caused by lack of sunshine at
100,000 cases and 40,000 deaths; this is four times the mortality from
skin cancer. [10]. The vitamin D deficiency
disease, rickets, thought to be vanquished long ago, is resurging in
cities. We all need to get adequate sunshine; just be sensible and avoid
burning. The
Savanna Model Lifestyle 195 Above Page
196 Below Population Density Researcher John Calhoun published a pioneering animal study 40
years ago and found that crowded female rats had low fertility rates and
high rates of miscarriage and death in childbirth; they also had poor
nesting and poor parenting behaviors. Male rats had high rates of sexual
deviation, homosexuality, aggression, violence, cannibalism,
pathological depression, and withdrawal. There were high rates of social
disorientation, infanticide, and infant mortality. Calhoun finished his
report with the observation that we might advance our understanding
“about analogous problems confronting the human species.” [11]. Does this have the ring of truth to it? Today’s high population
densities have put us on a treadmill requiring industrialized, intensive
forms of society. Many of us are worn down by congestion, crowds, and
lack of time to even think. We dream of lives in closer contact with
natural surroundings. There is no doubt that our mentalities are best
adapted to much lower population densities. TERRITORIALITY Each band had its vital space or territory of some 200 square
miles. We use the term vital space deliberately: this territory provided everything vital for
survival, especially food. But it was also the land where their gods,
heroes, and spirits dwelt, where their dearest dead were laid. Even
though they were nomadic within this territory, every nook and cranny of
it was familiar to them—it was “theirs” and the feeling of
ownership is desperately important. In contrast, should they venture
onto adjacent territory, they would feel uncomfortable and out of place
because they were trespassers. The band had to hang together for
survival and to protect their vital space from adjacent bands. This
pattern of existence has molded deep characteristics into the human
psyche. 196
Deadly Harvest Above 197
Below In particular, band members strongly identify with, and give
their loyalty to, their own band. In other words, humans have a strong
genetic predisposition to identify with their own “in-group” and to
be suspicious of “out-groups.” The need to have a feeling of
“belonging” to a group is a human universal value. In-Group, Out-Group Genes, Relationships, and Conflict We all possess genes that work
to help copies of themselves lying in other bodies. Of course, we
cannot know precisely which bodies contain copies of our genes.
Trivers insight was to see that creatures help other members of their
species in proportion to their degree of relatedness. In this way, a
child gets 50% of his or her genes from the mother and 50% from the
father. A mother has 50% of her genes in each child, and 25% with each
grandchild. By the same token, a child shares 50% of his or her genes
with siblings and 25% with maternal aunts and uncles. In the forager society,
everyone was related to one another in some way, so there would be
“gene pressure” to help and cooperate with each other and to
refrain from feuding with and killing each other. [16]. Even in modern societies, the more closely people are genetically
related, the more likely they are to come to one another’s aid,
especially in life-or-death situations—”blood is thicker than
water.” Genetic relatedness feeds directly into in-group/out-group
conflict: such conflicts are really battles between gene groups
manipulating their host bodies for supremacy in the struggle for life.
Page
198 Below Humans are not the only creatures to be hostile to out-group members. Male chimpanzees patrol the borders of their territory, and if they find a strange male, they kill him. [17]. According to Frans de Waal, a leading authority on the social intelligence of apes, “Sometimes a small group of chimpanzee males stealthily enters a neighboring territory to overwhelm a single male that they viciously beat and leave to die.” [18]. Likewise, if a lone chimpanzee becomes aware of out-group males intruding on his territory, he becomes worried and his hair stands on end. [19]. Buried in these accounts is the assumption that out-group
hostility is a male phenomenon. However, females had every reason to
fear strangers too: they could be raped, abducted, or murdered, and the
same fate could happen to their children. Women who allowed that to
happen did not pass on their genes to the next generation. Women who
survived are therefore those programmed with successful survival
responses. A landmark study led by Shelley Taylor shows that women respond
to extreme danger with a cascade of brain chemicals, including one
called oxytocin. These hormones drive women to tend children and gather
with other women. Dr. Taylor dubs this the “tend and befriend”
response. [20]. This is in opposition to the
men’s “fight-or-flight” response. It is interesting to reflect
that, in an emergency on the African savanna, the women were programmed
to round up the kids and get everyone into a huddle, while the men,
pumped up on testosterone and adrenaline, battled off the danger. We all, therefore, are deeply programmed to mistrust strangers.
However, with the rise of farming and the concentration of multitudes of
humans into cities, how is this mistrust managed? In the words of Jared
Diamond, “People had to learn, for the first time in history, how to
encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them.” [21]. Every person in the world has to learn how to
manage relationships with strangers. This is a process of indoctrination
designed to paper a veneer of “civilized” behavior over innate,
mistrustful insecurities. Society manages this at two levels: as
individuals, we are taught to suppress our natural tendencies and become
self-effacing. We avoid eye contact, we stoop our shoulders, we look at
the ground, we scurry along with small steps, we avoid confrontation, we
are taught “courtesy” and polite manners. At the level of the
state—through institutions such as the police, military, and the legal
system—it alone enacts laws and it is the final arbiter in the
settlement of disputes. Social idealists add a third pressure: the
theory that humans ought to want to live in “diverse” communities. Here we see a number of divergences from our naturally adapted instincts. Our human natures are telling us that we are most comfortable when we are living and working with people “like us”; that we need to “belong” to a group, give it our loyalty, and reject outsiders; that we should take personal responsibility for protecting our in-group, and its territory, from out-groups; and that 198
Deadly Harvest Above 199
Below males have different reactions to females when danger threatens.
However, all these deep instincts are frustrated by modern living
arrangements. From these insights, we can predict that multicultural societies
are likely to be more neurotic and stressful. By suppressing, even
denigrating, normal roles for male aggression, societies will suffer
increased levels of unorthodox activity: violence, hooliganism, gang
warfare, and criminality. The frontier defenses of Western countries,
protected with razor wire, harsh deserts, and armed patrols, are an open
invitation to a Third-World youth to test his mettle. It is normal for
the defenders to feel viscerally opposed to the invasion of their
in-group territory by such outsiders. We have given the impression that each forager band operates in
hostile isolation from its neighbors, but this is not entirely true.
Neighboring bands also needed to cooperate at many levels. Wives would
almost always be brought in from an out-group. Potential husbands from
one group had to visit the other group to find mates and negotiate
terms. There would be exchanges of gifts and other obligations. Everyone
thus had uncles, aunts, cousins, and other family members in nearby
bands whom they would visit on occasion. In extreme situations, such as
those of the San who live in a particularly hostile natural environment,
bands contracted understandings for emergency access to resources,
notably water, in times of distress. The “natural” size of an in-group is therefore the extended
family as denoted by the forager band. With the rise of agriculture and
the concentration of populations into larger units such as towns and
cities, the size of the in-group had to increase. This was not always
easy—somehow people had to sink their differences and invest their
loyalty into a grouping that included other extended families. The rise
of a charismatic leader who inspired everyone’s loyalty was part of
the answer. Another part of the answer is provided by the need to
cooperate to fight off an external threat. As George Washington said to his fractious and jealous
state-loyal armies, “Either we hang together or we shall surely hang
apart.” The Normans welded together the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of
England by deploying another, long-term strategy—that of instilling a
sense of national patriotism. They used the tools of pageantry, flags
and foreign wars. In this way, one of the earliest nation states was
born. It grouped together peoples who had the same language, culture,
and religion and gave them a national identity. This, it seems, is about
as good as it gets. Political entities that group together peoples of different
languages, religions, or sharp cultural differences are inherently
unstable. We see this all over the modern world. Yugoslavia and Somalia
broke up in bloody conflict. Rwanda, Congo, and Sudan suffered genocidal
massacres of one ethnic community by another. In yet others, low-level
conflict continues like a running sore: India (religious conflict), Sri
Lanka (out-group Tamil settlers against indigenous peoples), The
Savanna Model Lifestyle 199 Above Page
200 Below Chechnya (indigenous peoples against out-group Russian
occupiers), Northern Ireland (indigenous Irish against out-group
occupiers), Spain (Indigenous Basques against out-group occupiers), and
Palestine/Israel (indigenous people against out-group occupiers). We
draw the uncomfortable conclusion that the notion of a multicultural
society is a contradiction in terms. Warfare At the time Churchill wrote that (1925), the world was still
reeling from the carnage of World War I. It had been so traumatic that
politicians (but not Churchill) billed it as “the war to end all
wars.” Churchill had a layman’s pragmatic and unromantic opinion of
human nature. Meanwhile, the experts—social anthropologists— were
turning their misty eyes to the ideal of the Noble Savage. They thought
that warfare was the result of bad upbringing. So, is there any truth in the idea that humans are naturally
warlike? We have the archaeological remains of Stone Age battlefields
and everywhere we look are signs of humans killing humans in murderous
conflicts. The American anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon extensively
studied the Yanomamo, a tribe of the Amazon rainforest, for over 30
years and he estimated that 30% of males died violent deaths from
warfare. Our model forager tribe, the San, frequently warred with
neighboring groups: they had a murder rate greater than America’s
inner cities. In one account, one band avenged a killing by sneaking
into the killer’s camp and murdering every man, woman, and child as
they slept. [22]. The Australian Aborigines had
a similar pattern—jealousies, vendettas, and revenge killings were
frequent features of aboriginal life. Neighboring camps would be raided
and bitter fights would be fought to the death. American anthropologist
W. Lloyd Warner lived among the Aborigines of Arnhem Land from 1909 to
1929. He estimated that 200 men died in organized warfare during that
period. [23]. The total population was only
3,000, so this was a colossal rate of casualties. Archaeologist Lawrence Keeley has summarized the proportion of
male deaths caused by war, even today, in a number of primal societies.
[24]. The proudly independent
Jivaro tribe in Peru is notorious for their use of poison-dart
blow-pipes and head-hunting. Keeley estimates that some 60% of Jivaro
males die in battle. Half a world away, the Mae Enga of the New Guinea
highlands lose 35% of males in murderous conflicts. In contrast,
European and American male battlefield deaths in the 20th century (which included two world wars) averaged less than 1% per
year. 200
Deadly Harvest Above 201
Below It seems, then, that for most of human evolutionary history,
human males have been involved in bloody conflict. There are a few other
species that also do this—chimpanzees, gorillas, and wolves are
examples. A common thread is this: the killing is of “them,” the
out-group. The fact that there are indeed other species that seek to
exterminate their own kind, albeit from an out-group, forces us to
recognize the possibility that this trait is, in some way,
evolutionarily advantageous. Richard Wrangham, professor of anthropology
at Harvard University, says that evolution favored humans and chimps who
warred because “this makes grisly sense in terms of natural
selection.” Successful males, the ones that survive, enjoy high status
among other males. High-status males are strongly attractive to females
and have more matings, so they generate more offspring. The genes
sitting in successful warriors become more common, while the genes in
wimps don’t get into the next generation in the same numbers. We are
all descended, on average, from males who were better-than-average
murderous warriors. A second consequence of early male death in battle is highly
important yet little remarked: adult males were in a minority. Females
sometimes outnumbered them by two to one. Most men had at least one
“wife” and many had two or more. There was competition among women
to “get a man.” Warfare, then, was a way for males to get rid of
some of the competition. Genes in males who promoted warfare and who
were successful warriors spread throughout the population. We cannot hope to deal with modern conflict if we do not
recognize the hardwiring in young males that drives them to risky
activities and violence. Of course, the violence is only a means to an
end. It leads to high status, which is an important staging post on the
way to the end. However, the only end that counts is getting the genes
into the next generation. WORKING PATTERNS The men, meanwhile, would go off in ones and twos on their
hunting trips. Stealth was of the essence and so talking was kept to a
strict minimum, just enough to convey facts about their quarry. Often,
communication was simple signs. The men would follow prey along all
kinds of unpredictable paths. The prey decided “where to go” and the
men had to somehow keep track of where they were. The
Savanna Model Lifestyle 201 Above Page
202 Below Laurens van der Post describes how he followed a band of Bushmen
while they chased an eland for several days: “The trail twisted and
turned so much that I had no idea where we were or in which direction
our camp lay. But Nxou [chief hunter] and his companions had no doubt.
That was one of the many impressive things about them. They were always
centered. They knew, without conscious effort, where their home was, as
we have seen proved on many other more than baffling occasions.” [25]. He should not have been so surprised. Many studies have shown
that men today still have remarkable powers of “way-finding”
compared to women. [26]. The men had a fine eye for the signs of suitable quarry—they
were expert trackers. When they hunted down a quarry, the result was
brutal: it was bludgeoned or stabbed to death. The spoils were hacked up
as necessary and carried back to the camp. The men’s occupation was
largely competitive and their status with other males depended on their
success. On return to the camp, each hunter would distribute the spoils in
a particular way: his wives and children received the largest part and
other portions were distributed to more remote relatives and people who
were owed debts. The actual details might vary with circumstance and
from tribe to tribe. However, there is one aspect that is a human
universal value and of fundamental importance: wives, and sometimes
other recipients, would receive more than they could consume, so they
would have a surplus they could use to endow gifts and return favors.
The wives and the rest of the man’s entourage would therefore derive
status from the exploits of “their” man. The women could easily collect enough food to feed the whole
family. However, a woman is vulnerable to someone stealing that food.
Higher-status women and other men were lying in wait to bully and
browbeat that woman out of her hard-won resources. The reason that this
rarely happened is simple: she had “her man” who would protect her
against any aggression. In chapter 1, we asked “Why would a woman need
a man?” Here, we have most of the answer: without a man committed to
her physical protection, the chances that she and her children would
survive were reduced. On average, women who were not driven to seek a
male bodyguard were less likely to get their genes into the next
generation. | ||
