From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Sun 01 Jun 2003 - 17:25:05 GMT
For the last several years I have been in the situation of a cancer
patient, highly motivated to locate all the research I can about my
"particular condition" and to extend it to a "cure" if possible.
It has led me into writing a somewhat popular article (~15k downloads) that
you can find as the top link using "sex drugs cults" in Google.
As a result of digging into evolutionary psychology I have recently been
thinking about the evolved triggers and memetic mechanisms that lead human
groups into war.
There is a highly supportive article on prehistoric warfare in the
Southwest in the May issue of Discovery Magazine (read after I had done
this draft or I would have quoted from it).
*****
The trigger far all this bloodshed, LeBlanc believes, was the onset of a
mini ice age, a period of global cooling known to have inflicted famines in
Europe. The little ice age came on the heels of 300 years of generally
benign weather known as the medieval warm period. In the American
Southwest, says LeBlanc, beginning in about 900, a warming trend moderated
the usual harsh dryness of the region and brought more rain. Crop yields
increased, and so did the human population. <snip> It was a relatively
peaceful age, says LeBlanc, with little evidence of warfare between 900 and
the late 1200s. Most people lived in undefended sites on valley floors near
their crops and water sources.
"During the medieval warm period it was a great time to be a corn
farmer-and a great time to be a wheat farmer in Europe too;' says LeBlanc.
<snip> This was a good time for everybody, and to and behold, there's
plenty to eat, and warfare declines. Then the warm period ends, and you get
the beginning of the little ice age. <snip> What happened? The population
had grown immensely. In bad times, there just weren't enough resources to
go around. People competed and the best organized survived. It's a classic
pattern that occurs everywhere on Earth:'
LeBlanc estimates that before 1300, at least 20 distinct alliances of
pueblos . . . .[of them] only four groups survive . . . . The others were
wiped out in war, the survivors absorbed by other tribes.
"The fundamental, underlying reason for warfare is competition over scarce
resources," says LeBlanc. <snip> And the only times you have peace are when
there are a lot of resources:"
************
Dr. William Calvin, a sometimes Hacker attendee, has more to say about this
subject in his recent book. "_A Brain for All Seasons_ argues that such
cycles of cool, crash, and burn powered the pump for the enormous increase
in brain size . . . ." You can read it on line, but it is good enough you
probably want hard copy as well.
http://faculty.washington.edu/wcalvin/BrainForAllSeasons/
There is another book I am part way through that is likely to wind up on my
books of major importance list, _Religion Explained_ by Pascal Boyer. The
book is the best account I have seen of the massive advances in cognitive
science made over the past 40-50 years. It has huge implications for a lot
of areas (such as memetics, AI and Artificial Personalities) far beyond
that mentioned in the title. Unfortunately, as you can see from a number
of harsh reviews, it takes a lot of background in evolution and
evolutionary psychology for his exceptionally clear presentation to be
understood.
From a review at http://www.semcoop.com/detail/0465006965 ". . . Perhaps
more puzzling, and just in need of an explanation, is the fact that human
beings have religion in the first place. According to Boyer, it is only
now, with recent contributions of the cognitive and neural sciences and
evolutionary biology to the understanding of the nature and origins of the
human mind, that we are in position to successfully provide such an
explanation. Religion Explained attempts just such an explanation, drawing
on cutting edge research in a variety fields and Boyer's own fieldwork
experience. Religion, Boyer suggests, is a by-product of the way our minds
evolved to negotiate the natural and, more importantly, the social world. .
. . "
Keith Henson
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
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