Pen & Sword Archaeology 2020
Reviewed by Alan Dearing
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The argument about whether humans are naturally peaceable and caring (good) or violent and self serving (bad) has exercised the best minds since Darwin published his great work. As scientific knowledge has increased we have more clues that help us decide whether evolution would favour co-operation or individualistic competition.
This book is an attempt to refresh the debate. It uses the most up to date information from archaeology, primatology, anthropology, psychology and physiology.
Penny Spikins is an archaeology Professor at York University. She believes that the dreadful conflicts of the 20th century have coloured our view of human nature, resulting in papers that have portrayed early humans as characteristically violent. There is, she recognises, evidence of violence in prehistoric humans, and even of cannibalism, but causes for these events are also indicated, one of which is resource restriction due to climate change.
Our genetic description is nearly identical to that of Chimpanzees and other great apes, so it is easy to believe that the violence and impetuous emotionality of those animals excuses bad behaviour in ourselves. Penny discovered that our evolutionary path became very different when we moved into larger bands living on savannah, an environment with an increased risk to feeble humans of predation. We survived by developing collaborative social skills, and the brain power to interpret signals in an increasingly complex human society. Our brains are 3 times larger than chimps and we have 100 times the neurones used to recognise and restrain emotions. It would, though be wrong to write off our nearest species – Penny’s even handed account says that they have a notion of fairness, and the latest GreenSpirit Good News mentions their empathic healing behaviour, and, after all they are not the species that is self destructive.
Penny wonders how we know who to trust – some people might feign a caring nature for social gain. She finds a significant part of the answer in an inclination to care for material objects, within healthy psychological limits. We take our clues of moral trustworthiness from overall behaviour. A tendency for neatness and material preservation is one indication of a genuinely sound disposition. Penny believes that this trait is highly significant, and in a chapter entitled Small Things Forgotten, she provides examples of our innate desire to put things right and keep things good. This instinct might be demonstrated towards a coddled Teddy Bear or a small wayward robot.
The bones of early hominids show healed breakages and the signs of disease that would have required periods of restful recovery or permanent disability. The survival of people with long term illness shows that they were cared for, perhaps for the rest of their lives. People muddled along as best they could. Disability was normal.
Penny takes a lot from studies of the modern remnants of hunter-gatherer societies. They have lives of almost no significant violence. They teach children tolerance, respect for others, and the self restraint needed to share food and material goods. Children are in contact with parents much more, and cry less. They are not expected to accumulate extensive technical knowledge but to develop emotional awareness. People give to others spontaneously, with no consideration for general economic consequences. Everyone in these small groups is secure in the knowledge that others will reciprocate.
A Yanomani Indian shaman described the lives of Western city dwellers as sad because of our euphoria of merchandise, and as though in confirmation, an Australian aboriginal gives a account of his daily appreciation of his natural surroundings in which he is fully attentive and serene. It is a co-creation of worldly experience.
The last chapter of this exploration describes an 1830’s experiment where hunter gatherers from Tierra Del Fuego were brought back to Britain in an attempt to civilise them and then return them as ambassadors to their backward societies. It seemed to work, but as soon as the trip back to South America was made, the amended individual reverted to his previous existence and refused offers to make the journey back to civilisation.
As I was writing my review of this book, there was a friendly debate between a top soldier and a CND supporter. The military man opened with a quote from 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes:- the nature of men is competitive nasty brutish and short’, with, apparently, no role for co-operation. Hobbes actually said that this supposed state of nature would emerge amidst scarcity. Some archaeological evidence cited in Penny’s book seems to bear this out, but there is also the modern finding that in hard times, people muck in together. There is a perfectly rational evolved drive to kindness and compassion and good archaeological evidence to back this up. If we assume the worst in human nature it will become a self fulfilling prophecy.
We are inclined to see what we believe. If we are in a positive frame of mind, what we see in our world tends to fall into a welcoming world of sunny dispositions, but when we cannot find that happy place, we also have our evolved capacity for mindful awareness of our grumpy moods and the self control to smooth things out.
Penny devotes a whole chapter to a latent dark side of human nature but she refers to two studies of the attitudes of wartime soldiers who avoided killing or even to open fire when they could get away with it. It is, she says the stripping away of our evolved characteristics that is the problem. This can be done either through intensive psychological training or by overhyped societal pressure to strive achieve and avoid inferiority.
It was the soldier who left me with a glimmer of hope for movement out of our present carelessly engendered predicament. He was all for a national debate over defence spending, and even for nationalisation of the direction of armed forces development. Can we devolve possessive anger back to our 1.8 million years of a real state of human nature or are we too comfortable for ‘boots on the ground’ compassion? Can we sustain that care and also keep our warm homes and the security that modern medical science and food supply systems provides? That would be quite something.