Comment by pacbard 6 hours ago
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)?
I don't believe that humans evolve that fast
It's really wild to me how many humans believe their feelings are so different from animals. Most animals have similar incentives and desires, humans just have "better" tools to achieve them.
The costs and benefits faced by ancient humans were very, very different. Maybe a different way to frame the question would be "At what probability of additional death, injury, or suffering (to you or other tribe members) would you abandon your injured/disabled?" Humans of that era did not have anything even remotely approaching modern medicine and most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep. A huge portion of ancient peoples energy and time was dedicating to obtaining calories. That means caring for the injured/disabled imposes a huge cost and risk. We can just as easily find examples of ancient peoples murdering or abandoning their injured, disabled, and weak. I don't think it would be right or fair to judge them through a modern lens. Of course they cared for their loved ones and mourned their deaths. But they were faced with much harsher circumstances to which their cultures and beliefs were suited.
> most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep
Genuine question: is this something we know from evidence, or an assumption? I vaguely recall having read that comparison between skeletal remains of early farmers and hunter-gatherers indicated that the latter had a better diet, but I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly or how much that observation generalizes.
> most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep
I find this hilarious. Modern civilization has starvation at our doorstep. If the modern supply chains fail, so very many would starve.
Did toilet paper become scarce about 5 years ago? I don't see what protects the population from that for food and water.
It would be helpful to provide some citations and evidence around the claim “ most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep”. There is an increasing amount of evidence that this was not the case.
https://medium.com/sapere-aude-incipe/our-distorted-image-of...
This is the right question to ask. You can reason your way around things, but occam's razor reigns supreme. Injured people can still do lots of work, as our most important tools were our brains, not our bodies. It's not hard to watch for predators near camp while sitting at the campfire, or to keep an eye on children - even if you can't resolve issues yourself. You could sit around making crafts for the tribe, repairing clothes, and more.
There's just way too much benefit to keeping the injured around. We don't need everyone working at top physical condition... ever.
This feels like video game analysis. Unit is likely to die, therefore do not spend resources on unit. Leave unit behind.
There is no world in which I would leave a family member or close friend to die in the woods alone, especially if I have no idea what germs are, why people die when they bleed, and am listening to a voice I have heard my whole live cry out in pain. Even if I knew for sure they were going to die, I would sit with them, or move them, or something.
Thought experiment: Would you visit your mother or father in the hospital knowing they were going to die that day? I mean there's nothing you can do, why bother??
It's not about writing off the injured due to their low odds of survival, its about your willingness to lower those odds for your other loved ones, or yourself. How does your thought experiment change when caring for your mother/father means your children might starve?
Good way to look at it. More broadly, there must have been different groups that practiced different policies with regard to ill and injured. Some of the groups fared better than others. Since most of modern societies do care about their ill and injured, it appears that this policy proved more advantageous. Even if only slightly so.
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.