The world until yesterday
Overview: Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday-in evolutionary time-when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions. The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years-a past that has mostly vanished-and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today. This is Jared Diamond's most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn't romanticize traditional societies-after all, we are shocked by some of their practices-but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us.
Stats for nerds
11recommend
27mentions
23people
2013–2025years
52% recommend48% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I recommend Jared Diamond's 'The World Until Yesterday' ('Guns, Germs and Steel' also covers some related topics), or Frans de Waal's 'The Bonobo and the Atheist'.
In general I think there's broad agreement that in bands and small tribes of up to a few hundred people there's basically no hierarchy. Even when a chief emerges, he/she doesn't have a lot of power over others - they're more like mediators, they alleviate conflict etc.
I think you're making a mistake that I've seen often (Steven Pinker does smth similar), namely assuming that hunter-gatherers behaved like settled societies. They didn't. Most of the increase in violence comes after the agriculture revolution and the development of large settlements. For most of our history we roamed the land in small packs that rarely interacted with outsiders.
This is not to say that hunter-gatherers lived in heavenly harmony, just that they mostly lived in collaborative equality. They were also strongly independent (note that independence/individualism and collaboration do not exclude each other. Individualism however is not the same as selfishness, collaboration is not the same as collectivism).
- I don't think attitudes to infant care translate in any way to how older kids or teenagers are treated in different cultures. I'm not a parent, but I was a child and teenager at some point, so I can say from personal experience that parents who are extremely present at a young age can actually give you more leeway later in life.
On a more general note, I can recommend Jared Diamond's 'The World Until Yesterday' - it covers similar topics to the bbc article and more.
- You may enjoy reading "The World Until Yesterday" by Jared Diamond.
- - Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari - I really liked his views on transformation of happiness throughout history.
- Babi Yar (full version) by Anatoly Kuznetsov - after my discovery that the version I've read earlier was heavily censored.
- The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
- Collapse and The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond
- "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" is a great book and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in human evolution or general diet. This article however, is sophomoric.
Anyone interested in the origins of human society and violence should also read "The World Until Yesterday" by Jared Diamond, "The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl, "Tribe" by Sebastian by Junger and " Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland".
One problem with TFA, male Bonobos exist and do not act like male Chimps. Why? Furthermore, human females are not that different from human males. How might this change the pretext of the article? Human males and females are more alike than different, except on the fringes where a tiny percentage of males are much more violent (think of the most violent criminals). Do male humans tolerate the most violent males? Also, do "alpha" males chimps, stay alpha for very long if they wield too much violence? Must alpha male chimps maintain the support of the females? Do some research. See for yourself.
Also, what is the meaning of alpha in this article? The "arch-reactive aggressor"? In humans? So are alphas the most violent or the most respected? Could the alpha not be the most violent but instead have the respect of the most violent? How might that happen? Executioners? Try again.
To add personal anecdote: Most of us live in such relatively peaceful environments that we've completely lost touch with how the power dynamics of physical violence work in humans. We have mostly a school-yard version of reality. A society where "words" are violence further obscures the mechanics of physical violence.
Truly dealing in violence, absent of any law or government, is like eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Once you taste it your eyes are opened to a whole world right within ours which no one understands. We in the west live in a total bubble, so much so that we don't understand simple danger. The typical "active shooter" drill is basic evidence of this fact. It's a ridiculous and dangerous model in the face of true unencumbered violence. It is designed to keep schools from getting sued, not keeping children alive. You didn't know that because you've never had to kick in a door and kill as many people as possible (sickening I know).
Furthermore, once you understand violence truly, living in modern western society is like being an extraterrestrial in human skin. It is completely bizarre. This article is candy for those in the bubble.
- ..a remote Indian island, North Sentinel, that I learned all about after it was mentioned on HN a couple of weeks ago. Small world!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island
..which led to reading about other "uncontacted peoples", a fascinating and sad story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples
edit: Oh, it was 8 days ago. I submitted this[1] ripping yarn about an American with an anthropologist father and Yanomami mother returning to South America to find his mother after 20 years. I'd read his father's book about his life, work and marriage years ago.
Bob Connolly & Robin Anderson's amazing Highlands Trilogy[2] is about a mixed-race man trying to run a coffee plantation while living between western society and his New Guinea tribe. His father was the first white man to contact the tribe.
Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday[3] brought home for me what human life was like until very recently. You couldn't travel far in any direction without the tribe next door trying to kill you.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18438586
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Contact_(1983_film)#The_...
