This seems relatively common among ancient hunter-gatherer societies. We've been watching Prof. Jiang's excellent "Story of Civilization" course on his Predictive History YT channel[1]. In the 2nd or 3rd video, he mentions that the remains of somebody with a rare form of dwarfism were found as part of an ancient hunter-gather tribe, and they had the same levels of nutrition as the able-bodied members of the tribe.
Maybe "primitive" people were not so primitive after all..
Not taking care of a formerly productive injured person who might recover would be profoundly stupid, if you have the food for it and some expectation they might be productive again or a superior ability to direct those who might be productive.
Humans are profoundly irrational. These people were alive as well. Just like most people today they did not see the world as an optimization problem.
They took care of the injured because it was the right thing to do, just like we do today. Not because there was some utilitarian value, where you calculate effort spent vs. expected return.
There is a (possibly inaccurate [0]) quote attributed to Margaret Mead, where, when asked about the first signs of civilization, said it was when they found a healed fractured femur.
But why wouldn't they?? Most animals take care of their wounded peers, from ants to elephants, and often defend individuals from predators (not always! but often enough to be on countless documentaries).
This is an extremely natural behavior, not unique to humans or proto-humans, and not driven by interest or strategy. Compassion is innate.
Cruelty and contempt for the weak is a specifically human trait, and not only that, but a very recent one too.
The hunter-gatherers in the study lived in the "Late Holocene (~4000 to 250 BP)", meaning between 2000 BCE to 1825 CE. These people are separated from us by less than 150 generations. I don't believe that humans evolve that fast, so the way you think, feel, ache, and so on also applies to them. Would you leave behind your injured and disabled in their situation (which is speculated to be the result of hunting accidents)?
Anthropology started at a time when people thought civilizations evolved in a straight line from savages to England. But it's hard to pretend that the natives sat around a rock grunting at each other when their e.g. bone-setting techniques were essentially modern, so there's a tradition of "not as benighted as you might have thought" articles.
WHY that point of view still exists is a question every anthro novice asks, and it turns out that cultural evolution is too attractive an idea for some people to let go of.
Seems crazy to me, given anyone with children that is exposed to multiple languages can easily imagine how complex the language scene must have been in humans that did not write, given how easy and natural it is for little ones to pick up different languages that they speak with different people.
Why is it written BP? These archaeology people / Phys.org really need to cease with that confusing nonsense. BP is supposedly "Before Present" or "Before Physics" modern referring to practical radiocarbon dating with a cutoff date of January 1, 1950. [1] Way too easy to transpose BCE / BC / BP.
It's written like these people were supposedly cave people, yet based on this story's confusing usage, these people were caring for each other after the Spanish and Portuguese colonization of South America up to the 1700's. 4000 BP is the "really Late Holocene" 2050 BCE, 250 BP is 1700 AD. Also, the "late Holocene" goes all the way to Y2K (2000 AD). [2] The Meghalayan is the "the current age or latest geologic age." [3]
The people they talk about are contemporary to the Babylonions who have already absorbed the urban Uruk civilization that started to peak a millenium prior. The difference isn't biology but resource density and climate favorability leading to higher social organization.
We need only look at the cultures of the Aka, Bayaka, and Mbuti tribes, who all split off from the same tribe 150k years ago & still share many of the same cultural norms oriented around counterdominance, matrifocal care, and singing as a means of protection & decision-making.
Their cultures can show us what it took to survive and thrive in a jungle with numerous large predators. These tribes carry wisdom we can apply in our daily lives.
"The existence of altruism in nature is at first sight puzzling, because altruistic behaviour reduces the likelihood that an individual will reproduce"
I really enjoy reading about these group dynamics. Usually people interpret the "it makes sense that people would do this" as meaning "self-interest dominates compassion" but I actually think the meaning is "those groups which did these things survive" and so over time you get these things built-in. "Compassion" isn't something I constructed for myself from rationality. I can do that, but it is a back-formation - an explanation for a behaviour I was already going to do. I'd say it's more of a property of my ancestry than my reason since I had it as a child in more or less the same form as I have it today and I recall my younger brother come back crying after going to help an anthill survive a storm (the ants were unreceptive to this Anti-Ender's assistance). At 4 years or younger he had no capacity for the kind of reason required to reach compassion tabula rasa.
I model mankind as self-similar to man. Allocare makes sense between individuals in the same way that a T-cell 'cares for' other cells in the body. And Lawrence Oates's "I am just going outside and may be some time" seems akin to apoptosis: knowing the cost on the rest of the organism, the individual has programmed escape hatches that preserve the entire operation. It seems natural and adaptive that individuals will attempt to exploit the structures (care for the injured and elderly) that so arise. And counter-adaptations to that form as well.
But evidence that agrees with one's model is usually not as useful as the evidence that disagrees with it and so the thing that I find most interesting is the chap with the massive hip dislocation. That's a debilitating injury or disability and for a tribe on the move it must have been a massive expenditure of resources to bring along this individual. If encountered in childhood, perhaps the net increase in resources is not that high. If encountered in adulthood, perhaps it was a prized member of the community or perhaps the group anticipated recovery.
On the other hand, we do find good reasons to "protect the team". Knowing that you will be cared for means you give more to the operation. The classic "No Man Left Behind!" stance probably has a huge effect on morale.
We also know that many didn't, depending on their culture and geography. For example some of the remaining isolated hunter gatherer tribes researched in the 1970 killed orphans as they could not afford to feed them
I'm somewhat surprised the comments here talk about the difference between "savages" and modern culture, yet no one talks about racism. It is clearly a western civilization thing to regard all other cultures (and species) as culturally and morally inferior. Hence the amazement expressed in the OP:
> Yes, there is some evidence suggesting that interpersonal care was practiced in earlier periods of Patagonia.
As if western civilization has invented interpersonal care.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 38.3 ms ] threadMaybe "primitive" people were not so primitive after all..
[1]The course is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjqf9T59uY0&list=PLREQ8S3NPa...
They took care of the injured because it was the right thing to do, just like we do today. Not because there was some utilitarian value, where you calculate effort spent vs. expected return.
Click bait.
Now this topic is not just "obvious" it's also factual.
[0] https://www.sapiens.org/culture/margaret-mead-femur/
This is an extremely natural behavior, not unique to humans or proto-humans, and not driven by interest or strategy. Compassion is innate.
Cruelty and contempt for the weak is a specifically human trait, and not only that, but a very recent one too.
WHY that point of view still exists is a question every anthro novice asks, and it turns out that cultural evolution is too attractive an idea for some people to let go of.
Seems crazy to me, given anyone with children that is exposed to multiple languages can easily imagine how complex the language scene must have been in humans that did not write, given how easy and natural it is for little ones to pick up different languages that they speak with different people.
[1] WP, Before Present: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present
It's written like these people were supposedly cave people, yet based on this story's confusing usage, these people were caring for each other after the Spanish and Portuguese colonization of South America up to the 1700's. 4000 BP is the "really Late Holocene" 2050 BCE, 250 BP is 1700 AD. Also, the "late Holocene" goes all the way to Y2K (2000 AD). [2] The Meghalayan is the "the current age or latest geologic age." [3]
[2] WP, Holocene Era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene
[3] WP, Meghalayan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghalayan
Really does make me wonder if these people know what they're doing / writing.
Their cultures can show us what it took to survive and thrive in a jungle with numerous large predators. These tribes carry wisdom we can apply in our daily lives.
More, in the Altruism in Biology Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_(biology)
I model mankind as self-similar to man. Allocare makes sense between individuals in the same way that a T-cell 'cares for' other cells in the body. And Lawrence Oates's "I am just going outside and may be some time" seems akin to apoptosis: knowing the cost on the rest of the organism, the individual has programmed escape hatches that preserve the entire operation. It seems natural and adaptive that individuals will attempt to exploit the structures (care for the injured and elderly) that so arise. And counter-adaptations to that form as well.
But evidence that agrees with one's model is usually not as useful as the evidence that disagrees with it and so the thing that I find most interesting is the chap with the massive hip dislocation. That's a debilitating injury or disability and for a tribe on the move it must have been a massive expenditure of resources to bring along this individual. If encountered in childhood, perhaps the net increase in resources is not that high. If encountered in adulthood, perhaps it was a prized member of the community or perhaps the group anticipated recovery.
On the other hand, we do find good reasons to "protect the team". Knowing that you will be cared for means you give more to the operation. The classic "No Man Left Behind!" stance probably has a huge effect on morale.
> Yes, there is some evidence suggesting that interpersonal care was practiced in earlier periods of Patagonia.
As if western civilization has invented interpersonal care.