Re: Hierarchy In the Forest

OK, I would really rather discuss Palestine, but the list doesn't seem
interested.

Boehm uses ethological research on the great apes as a proxy for human
ancestors.  He focuses on chimps, and argues (p. 13) that chimps, like
humans, are tool-using generalists who adapted to cope with a wide variety
of environments, while bonobos are not extreme generalists.  He sees this
as evidence that bonobos have diverged more from the Common Ancestor than
either humans or chimps.

Boehm uses Vehrencamp's spectrum, which ranges from egalitarian to
despotic, and assesses the great apes.  He concludes (p. 146) that chimps
and gorillas are highly despotic, although with different structures:  
gorillas form harems.  Bonobos are less despotic, but still on the
despotic end of the continuum.  Humans appear to exhibit a wide range of
behavior, but Boehm's argument is that foragers must actively suppress the
tendency toward despotism.  Of course primitive kingdoms and many modern
states are, as he puts it "far more despotic than any ape" (p. 147).

Boehm's argument, again in brief, is that there is certainly an innate
tendency toward hierarchy, but that among hunter & gatherers what tends to
prevail is a *reverse dominance hierarchy* where the majority vigilantly
suppresses persistent attempts by dominant males to subjugate others,
including by conspiring to assassinate them if need be.  So what appears
to be egalitarianism is actually an inverted dominance hierarchy!

In other words, there is not an innate egalitarianism, which became the
orthodox view among cultural anthropologists, neither is there a tabula
rasa, but rather there is a tendency toward a social dominance hierarchy.  
Fortunately, according to Boehm, there is also a counter-tendency toward
egalitarianism, which may have been selected for and thus also be partly
genetic, as a result of the more than 1000 generations of foraging bands.

RH