"First, the work referenced by my colleagues and I is about kinship intensity, only one element of which involves cousin marriage. It's quite possible to have low rate of cousin marriage but high kinship intensity. This is a fundamental misreading."
Is is "quite possible" or is it a "fundamental misreading"?
He means: "It is a fundamental misreading of the article published in Nature (Schulz et al., 2019) to think that kinship intensity decreased among Western Europeans because of a decrease in cousin marriage. In fact, it's quite possible to have a low rate of cousin marriage even though kinship intensity is high."
Likely even older because what your potted societal profile describes is found in egalitarian H&G life in bands (including non-related kin). What you describe is then an potentially available substrate of worlding. As such it is then a substrate that "cultural evolution" diverges from (continually). If we accept the ideas of the egalitarian revolution of the paleolithic, as a deeply human feature or option, and so, as a continually available strange attractor, defines our success as Homo sp. generally. Individual focus is always an option. (admittedly WEIRDness is a suite of features).
Narcissistic baboons don't like this of course.
Also, might be better to call it history rather than "cultural evolution". That word evolution is too loaded. Repeating it mantra like is perhaps too defensive. (And if we can accept societies as 'records' of themselves in a taphonomical like study then history is a good term.)
What makes WEIRD weird is creating a "social institution" of the individual (in recent historical times). This is also a divergence from the substrate, but this time doubling-down on the feature of individual-ness that is otherwise assumed in an egalitarian perspective, and so not necessarily celebrated in a society's 'high' or professed culture. I.E. you can be egalitarian (behave egalitarian-ly or expect it) without the notice of the 'individual' as part of a group's worlding of selves (kulcha).
(Of course if one has authoritarian impulses this egalitarian option can be felt as an attack on one's freedom to punch down or enslave others).
(Also as I am travelling) I cannot find a recent DNA paper that posits (from memory) Germanic speakers' (indo-hybridty's) origin near the Gulf of Bothnia (that coastal area of what is now Finland & Russia, including where Swedes moved into later and which Finns 'never really moved into'). Then they stayed coastal, exploited fish and seals through the Baltic. BTW the word soul is the word seal. Totemic? (and makes much more sense of Gotland as a seaway heartland) All well prior to the Nordic Bronze age.
There were no Germanic-speakers in the Late Mesolithic. At that time, the people around the North Sea and the Baltic spoke an early form of Uralic. I've read papers that argue that proto-Germanic was an outcome of Uralic-speakers learning to speak Indo-European as a second language.
Again, this is really just a hunch on my part. If WEIRD people originated around the North Sea and the Baltic, a weird cultural environment must have existed there at some point in the past. The culture of Late Mesolithic fisher-sealers is the only one that comes to mind.
The Late Mesolithic people of the North/Baltic Seas were WHG-EHG people who spoke unknown extinct languages. Recent work has proven Uralic is a recent arrival to that part of the world ( 3,000) years, bringing in neo-Siberian ancestry. I think the focus on the sea "highway" is right - the northern Chinese/Mongolian region where East Asians originated is colder than Northern Europe, so the difference is the ocean environment. Perhaps the closest eco-niche parallel would've been the area of North Japan/Kuriles/Kamchatka, where the Ainu used to be dominant, though of course they don't seem to have developed WEIRD traits.
Hunter Gatherers and Paleolithic Humans in general were NOT egalitarian in any sense of the term at all. That's just utopian myth inspired by the myth the Noble Savage and other ideas from the Enlightenment.
In terms of how HGs view and treat members of their own tribe and outsiders they're actually significantly LESS egalitarian than most other Human cultures
Yes perhaps the weak form is put forward more firmly than is wise, however Homo species are much more egalitarian than other species of primate (especially when compared to baboons) and this is the main point and scale (for me) of the thinking about egalitarian-ish aspects of social life.
Also we are not talking about individuality per se (especially not the "social institution of the individual" as we see in WEIRD societies) but the availability of 'egalitarian' social structures, or at least personal moves of an more individualist bearing, as evidence for a greater evolutionary suite of structures available for individuals to pick and choose from (if, where and when this is possible) in a Genus based on social learning and thus inter-group competition for individuals. Another term would be useful -- denatured hierarchist???? de-dominated dominion??? Fashioners and Posers??
This paragraph is confusing:
"First, the work referenced by my colleagues and I is about kinship intensity, only one element of which involves cousin marriage. It's quite possible to have low rate of cousin marriage but high kinship intensity. This is a fundamental misreading."
Is is "quite possible" or is it a "fundamental misreading"?
He means: "It is a fundamental misreading of the article published in Nature (Schulz et al., 2019) to think that kinship intensity decreased among Western Europeans because of a decrease in cousin marriage. In fact, it's quite possible to have a low rate of cousin marriage even though kinship intensity is high."
Gracias.
Likely even older because what your potted societal profile describes is found in egalitarian H&G life in bands (including non-related kin). What you describe is then an potentially available substrate of worlding. As such it is then a substrate that "cultural evolution" diverges from (continually). If we accept the ideas of the egalitarian revolution of the paleolithic, as a deeply human feature or option, and so, as a continually available strange attractor, defines our success as Homo sp. generally. Individual focus is always an option. (admittedly WEIRDness is a suite of features).
Narcissistic baboons don't like this of course.
Also, might be better to call it history rather than "cultural evolution". That word evolution is too loaded. Repeating it mantra like is perhaps too defensive. (And if we can accept societies as 'records' of themselves in a taphonomical like study then history is a good term.)
What makes WEIRD weird is creating a "social institution" of the individual (in recent historical times). This is also a divergence from the substrate, but this time doubling-down on the feature of individual-ness that is otherwise assumed in an egalitarian perspective, and so not necessarily celebrated in a society's 'high' or professed culture. I.E. you can be egalitarian (behave egalitarian-ly or expect it) without the notice of the 'individual' as part of a group's worlding of selves (kulcha).
(Of course if one has authoritarian impulses this egalitarian option can be felt as an attack on one's freedom to punch down or enslave others).
https://whyweshould.substack.com/p/reading-joseph-henrich-two-social
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(Also as I am travelling) I cannot find a recent DNA paper that posits (from memory) Germanic speakers' (indo-hybridty's) origin near the Gulf of Bothnia (that coastal area of what is now Finland & Russia, including where Swedes moved into later and which Finns 'never really moved into'). Then they stayed coastal, exploited fish and seals through the Baltic. BTW the word soul is the word seal. Totemic? (and makes much more sense of Gotland as a seaway heartland) All well prior to the Nordic Bronze age.
There were no Germanic-speakers in the Late Mesolithic. At that time, the people around the North Sea and the Baltic spoke an early form of Uralic. I've read papers that argue that proto-Germanic was an outcome of Uralic-speakers learning to speak Indo-European as a second language.
Again, this is really just a hunch on my part. If WEIRD people originated around the North Sea and the Baltic, a weird cultural environment must have existed there at some point in the past. The culture of Late Mesolithic fisher-sealers is the only one that comes to mind.
The Late Mesolithic people of the North/Baltic Seas were WHG-EHG people who spoke unknown extinct languages. Recent work has proven Uralic is a recent arrival to that part of the world ( 3,000) years, bringing in neo-Siberian ancestry. I think the focus on the sea "highway" is right - the northern Chinese/Mongolian region where East Asians originated is colder than Northern Europe, so the difference is the ocean environment. Perhaps the closest eco-niche parallel would've been the area of North Japan/Kuriles/Kamchatka, where the Ainu used to be dominant, though of course they don't seem to have developed WEIRD traits.
I agree ---- pre-proto-hybridity population
Hunter Gatherers and Paleolithic Humans in general were NOT egalitarian in any sense of the term at all. That's just utopian myth inspired by the myth the Noble Savage and other ideas from the Enlightenment.
In terms of how HGs view and treat members of their own tribe and outsiders they're actually significantly LESS egalitarian than most other Human cultures
Yes perhaps the weak form is put forward more firmly than is wise, however Homo species are much more egalitarian than other species of primate (especially when compared to baboons) and this is the main point and scale (for me) of the thinking about egalitarian-ish aspects of social life.
Also we are not talking about individuality per se (especially not the "social institution of the individual" as we see in WEIRD societies) but the availability of 'egalitarian' social structures, or at least personal moves of an more individualist bearing, as evidence for a greater evolutionary suite of structures available for individuals to pick and choose from (if, where and when this is possible) in a Genus based on social learning and thus inter-group competition for individuals. Another term would be useful -- denatured hierarchist???? de-dominated dominion??? Fashioners and Posers??