Understanding Society
Living Together in Larger Groups (Cont.)
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
The claim that large-scale cooperation began only with settled civilization leaves out most of human history. Continuing Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History, Doug points to the Aché of Paraguay, the Hadza of Tanzania, and the monumental structures at Göbekli Tepe. Their example suggests that mobile prehistoric peoples could sustain vast social networks and shared myths — then dismantle their temporary gods and hierarchies more readily than societies do now.
A Note on the Original Text
Doug’s writings are presented as originally written. Spelling, punctuation, and grammatical irregularities have been retained to preserve his words and the integrity of the original record.
ORIGINAL WRITING
The content in this post is based on the book Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman.
“It ignores 95% of human history.
As it happens, our nomadic ancestors had already exceeded that magic threshold of one hundred and fifty friends. Sure, we hunted and gathered in small groups, but groups also regularly swapped members, making us part of an immense network of cross-pollinating Homo puppies. We saw this with with tribes like Ache’ in Paraguay and the Hadza in Tanzania, whose member meet more than a thousand people in the course of their lifetimes.
What’s more, prehistoric people had rich imaginations too. We’ve always spun ingenious myths that we passed down to each other and that greased the wheels of cooperation among multitudes. The world’s earliest temple at Gobekli Tempe in modern day Turkey is a case in point, built through the concerted efforts of thousands.
The only difference was that in prehistory those myths were less stable. In the words of two anthropologists:
Rather than idling in some primordial innocence, until the genie of inequality was somehow uncorked, our prehistoric ancestors seemed to have opened and shut the bottle on a regular basis, confining inequality to ritual costume dramas, constructing gods and kingdoms as they did their monuments, then cheerfully disassembling them once again.