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Historical change and evolutionary theory: From hunter-gatherer bands to states and empires

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Roger D. Masters
Roger D. Masters*
Affiliation:
Department of Government, HB6108, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755 Roger.D.Masters@DARTMOUTH.EDU
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Abstract

Despite advances in fields like genetics, evolutionary psychology, and human behavior and evolution — which generally focus on individual or small group behavior from a biological perspective — evolutionary biology has made little impact on studies of political change and social history. Theories of natural selection often seem inapplicable to human history because our social behavior is embedded in language (which makes possible the concepts of time and social identity on which what we call “history” depends). Peter Coming's Holistic Darwinism reconceptualizes evolutionary biology, making it possible to go beyond the barriers separating the social and natural sciences. Corning focuses on two primary processes: “synergy” (complex multivariate interactions at multiple levels between a species and its environment) and “cybernetics” (the information systems permitting communication between individuals and groups over time). Combining this frame of reference with inclusive fitness theory, it is possible to answer the most important (and puzzling) question in human history: How did a species that lived for millennia in hunter-gatherer bands form centralized states governing large populations of non-kin (including multi-ethnic empires as well as modern nation-states)? The fragility and contemporary ethnic violence in Kenya and the Congo should suffice as evidence that these issues need to be taken seriously. To explain the rise and fall of states as well as changes in human laws and customs — the core of historical research — it is essential to show how the provision of collective goods can overcome the challenge of self-interest and free-riding in some instances, yet fail to do so in others. To this end, it is now possible to consider how a state providing public goods can — under circumstances that often include effective leadership — contribute to enhanced inclusive fitness of virtually all its members. Because social behavior needs to adapt to ecology, but ecological systems are constantly transformed by human technology and social behavior, multilevel evolutionary processes can explain two central features of human history: the rise, transformations, and ultimate fall of centralized governments (the “stuff” of history); and the biological uniqueness of Homo sapiens as the mammalian species that colonized — and became top carnivore — in virtually every habitable environment on the earth's surface. Once scholars admit the necessity of linking processes of natural selection with human transformations of the natural world, it will seem anomalous that it has taken so long to integrate Darwinian biology and the social sciences.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , September 2007 , pp. 46 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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36.It is often assumed that the pigment was blown over the hand through a hollow reed. Whether this was done by the individual whose hand was outlined or by another person cannot of course be determined.Google Scholar
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42.A recent report on ethnic violence in Kenya illustrates the danger of escalating vengeance: “A Kikuyu man in Naivasha, wielding a club and roaming the streets yesterday, called for revenge for the recent deaths of Kikuyus in other parts of the country. ‘For every one Kikuyu killed, we shall avenge their killing with three,’ he told The Associated Press.”Sanders, Edmund, “Up to 30 reported killed in Kenyan fighting,” Los Angeles Times, in Valley News, Lebanon, NH, 28 January 2008, p. B1.Google Scholar
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51.Deut. 22:22.Google Scholar
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58.Note that this model of a hunter-gatherer band or other small social group assumes there are dominant individuals in the group whose actions are known before their followers' decisions are made. Olson's “logical” model (above, note 7) ignores facts like this even they are ubiquitous in human social life. While a collection of individuals of roughly equal status who are unknown to each other often approximates the purchasers in the competitive markets of a large industrialized society, it is unrealistic to apply the sociological assumptions of such “rational choice” models to the political decisions of most actual human societies.Google Scholar
59.In Table 2, this is the equivalent of some players perceiving the cost of non-provision of the collective good as minimal (say 25 units instead of 9000 units). In this case, should both players contribute, the public good has a net benefit for each of −50 units (the cost of 75 is only reduced by a benefit of 25). Since each individual will lose 75 units if others don't contribute and the benefit is so much less than the individual contribution, there will be an overwhelming temptation to construct rationalizations confirming the limited utility of the proposed expense. In the modern state (Table 3), an example is provided by some expensive military technologies, such as the anti-missile missile, whose value as a collective good was strongly attacked.Google Scholar
60.This unique institution (HC72 Box 45001, Deep Springs, CA via Dyer, NV 89010-9803) has been described as follows: “Deep Springs is an all-male liberal arts college located on a self-sustaining cattle-ranch and alfalfa farm in California's High Desert. The 27 members of the student body form a close community engaged in an intense educational project delineated by what Deep Springs' founder, L. L. Nunn, termed the “three pillars”: academics, labor, and self-governance. The principle underlying the three pillars is that manual labor and political deliberation are necessary supplements to the liberal arts in the training of future servants to humanity. Students attend for two years (after which most transfer to a four-year institution) and receive a full scholarship valued at over $50,000 per year.”Richter, David, Internet site: http://www.deepsprings.edu/about/index.html.Google Scholar
61.See note 23 above. For the models and data analysis to which this note refers, seeThomas, Mark, et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 19 July 2006 (on line).Google Scholar
62.SeeMann, Charles, 1491. Although the Maya and Inca are obvious states requiring attention, the most striking example is probably the account of the indigenous population of the Amazon basin (ch. 9, pp. 280–311).Google Scholar
63.Ibid., p. 292. Roosevelt, Anna, whose work first challenged earlier views of the ecological limits on agriculture and population in the Amazon, concluded this culture was “‘one of the outstanding indigenous cultural achievements of the New World,’ a powerhouse that lasted for more than a thousand years, had ‘possibly well over 100,000’ inhabitants, and covered thousands of square miles” (ibid.)Google Scholar
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65.Zimbabwe (the former Rhodesia) had highly productive farms that were owned by whites and produced a surplus for export; the crucial practice has been the forcible seizure and redistributing of these farmlands to President Mugabe's political allies (with devastating effects on output). See the Wikipedia entry for Zimbabwe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwe#Currency_Change) and below, note 67.Google Scholar
66.For a fuller analysis of the role of these innate emotional responses to political leaders in modern states, see Masters, The Nature of Politics, esp. part 2.Google Scholar
67.For religious “laws of warfare,” in addition to the passages from the Old Testament and Koran cited in note 39, consider this passage in Deuteronomy: “When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it…. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.” (Deut., 20: 10, 12–14).Google Scholar
68.Masters, William A. and McMillan, Margaret S., “Climate and scale in economic growth,” Journal of Economic Growth, 2001, 6:167–186; Masters, William A., “Climate, agriculture, and economic development,” in Land Quality, Agricultural Productivity, and Food Security, Wiebe, Keith, ed. (Cheltonham: Edward Elgar, 2004), pp. 166–183. Although early civilizations in the Amazon may seem to be an exception, their agricultural productivity was a complex adaptation to an environment ill-suited to agriculture. The poverty of Amazonian soils and resulting need to base agriculture on planting crop trees whose leaves shelter the soil from the physical effects of heavy rains explain why the introduction of the steel axe by European explorers had such devastating the ecological consequences. (See Mann, 1491, ch. 9 — summarized briefly in notes 60–61 above.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
69.For a current summary, seeWikipedia, , Zimbabwe. Apart from hyperinflation (1,000% in 2006), the most telling statistics are average life expectancies of 37 years for men and 34 years for women (in a country with rates of education that are higher than other African societies). See also note 63.Google Scholar
70.Having taught ancient and modern political philosophy in the Ivy League since 1961 and translated as well as analyzed the works of Rousseau (whose concept of the “general will” focuses on the need to make manifest support for collective goods), my response could be attributed to a professional specialization in the study of justice and morality in civilized societies. Even so, scenes like those just described were unheard of fifty years ago. As every thinking adult is well aware, the behavioral standards of our society have been radically transformed since our victory in World War II and the Cold War.Google Scholar
71.E.g., Gross, Daniel, “The U.S. economy faces the guillotine,” [cover story], Newsweek, 4 February 2008, pp. 39–42.Google Scholar
72.Rousseau's fame began with the publication of his prize-winning First Discourse, written in response to the essay contest of 1749 in which the Academy of Dijon asked “Has the restoration of the sciences and arts tended to purify morals” and Jean Jacques replied with a resounding negative: “When there is no effect, there is no cause to seek. But here the effect is certain, the depravity real, and our souls have been corrupted in proportion to the advancement of our Sciences and Arts to perfection. Can it be said that this is a misfortune particular to our age? No, Gentlemen; the evils caused by our vain curiosity are as old as the world. The daily ebb and flow of the Ocean's waters have not been more steadily subject to the course of the Star which gives us light during the night than has the fate of morals and integrity been subject to the advancement of the Sciences and Arts. Virtue has fled as their light dawned on our horizon, and the same phenomenon has been observed in all times and in all places.”Rousseau, Jean Jacques, “Discourse on the sciences and arts,” in Masters, Roger D. and Kelly, Christopher, eds., Collected Writings of Rousseau, vol. 2 (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1992), p. 7.Google Scholar
73.This remark from a personal e-mail is best presented anonymously, not only because its author has not given permission to be identified, but above all because it reflects a concern of a citizen who is not an academic, a journalist, nor public official (i.e., an individual who has no professional experience addressing the public for rhetorical purposes, but who merely expressed a strong emotional concern of the sort that deserves scholarly attention).Google Scholar
74.Weigel, George, “The war against Jihadism: Why can't we call the enemy by its name? We're going to have to in order to win,” Newsweek, 4 February 2008, p. 49.Google Scholar
75.Masters, Roger D., “Entre le meilleur des mondes et le fin de l'état-nation,” Futuribles, February 1998, 228:pp. 51–62.Google Scholar
76.Strayer, , Medieval Origins, p. 5. Note that the same can be said for the value of money issued by any one state (such as the U.S. dollar).Google Scholar
77.Ibid., pp. 6–9.Google Scholar
78.Ibid., p. 3.Google Scholar
79.Corning, , Holistic Darwinism, p. 3.Google Scholar
80.Ridley, , Nature via Nurture (op. cit., n. 23); Masters, , The Nature of Politics (op. cit., n. 7).Google Scholar
81.Masters, Roger D., Beyond Relativism (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1993).Google Scholar
82.Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953, 1965), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar
83.Ibid., p. 8. The wording of another passage on this page has persuaded me that Strauss himself realized that a more comprehensive understanding of recent scientific research on human nature would be absolutely essential for the survival of philosophy: “The fundamental dilemma, in whose grip we are, is caused by the victory of modern natural science. An adequate solution to the problem of natural right cannot be found before this basic problem has been solved.”Google Scholar