Hacker News Reader

Comment by moloch-hai | Hacker News Reader

Hierarchies are not, in fact, "heavily part of human behavior". They appear in certain circumstances, and dissipate when the circumstances do. G&W point out that we are brainwashed otherwise. I see it as a case of learned helplessness.

It is deeply evident that big construction projects have often not required hierarchy beyond deference to an architect. The architect need have no coercive authority over anybody for this to work.

View on HN

Our ape cousins are hierarchical. Are there example of human tribes that have no hierarchy?

The vast majority of modern forager groups are generally considered "egalitarian" and the traditional narrative is that virtually all human societies before the neolithic were relatively egalitarian. That's not to say that they're perfectly egalitarian (it's a spectrum after all), but it's the word you'll find if you open any introductory anthropology textbook that discusses the subject.

Tribes still have leaders, elders, priests and what not. Similar to how apes have alpha males and females with a pecking order. Members of the group have a certain status in the hierarchy, even if resource access is mostly egalitarian. But what happens when you start having a bunch of tribes living nearby on a regular basis? Then you have emergent leadership across tribes. It could be by force or democracy or by whatever means. But human civilization is an emergent phenomenon once you have dense enough populations regularly living in a region.

Those positions don't always exist and even when they do, they'd don't necessarily convey any meaningful benefits of hierarchy. Take the !kung for example [0].

That said, I suspect you'll find that answer unsatisfying. Part of the issue here is that there isn't a single answer to give or a single ivory tower consensus to speak to. If you only want the anthro 101 description you'll find in most textbooks, I already gave it: Modern forager societies are described as "relatively egalitarian". It's not perfect (what simplification for undergrads is?), but it communicates the broad strokes.

If you want a deep, comprehensive dive into the literature, there are dozens of distinct and nuanced perspectives that refine that oversimplified model for particular groups, regions, periods, etc. I have one perspective, DoE advocates another, etc. I'd recommend "Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers" as an introduction to that topic, but really you're going to have to put in a few months of reading to get a good sense of the literature because there ultimately isn't a single framework or even a single set of frameworks that everyone uses. Another good introduction to this question more specifically is Boehm's "Hierarchy in the forest". It's not comprehensive either, but it's sort of a landmark work on the topic.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C7%83Kung_people#Social_struc...

> Aboriginal people had no chiefs or other centralized institutions of social or political control. In various measures, Aboriginal societies exhibited both hierarchical and egalitarian tendencies, but they were classless; an egalitarian ethos predominated, the subordinate status of women notwithstanding.

- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Australian-Aboriginal/Leade...

( FWiW

There are those that would quibble even with "the subordinate status of women notwithstanding" as being laced with an particular European PoV, the later sentence:

> Women were excluded from the core of men’s secret-sacred ritual activities, and areas of privilege were further defined by graded acceptance of youths and adult men as they passed through rites of learning.

doesn't reflect the reflective reality of women's secret-sacred ritual activities and acknowledged privilege in their rites. )

That's interesting, but the article does say there were also evidence in some areas of male leaders. I guess the question is how typical aboriginal social organization without leadership was of pre-historic humans and whether this still led to emergent leadership among denser populations, like what agriculture would end up supporting.

Easily answered - here is a map of Australian Aboriginal language groups [1] - less "tribes" more large extended family groups with central language and common tongue for neighbours around about ... as you can see there are many.

The article acknowledges that a few specific areas (more toward the PNG and Torres Strait) are more hierarchical but the thrust is clear, few exceptions aside, the bulk were not.

> pre-historic humans

Aboriginal social groups have long oral histories and a number maintained upkeep on some of the oldest rock art known on the planet .. and groups such as the Pintupi Nine that made first contact with "modern civilisation" in the mid 1980s are certainly not "pre-historic" as we have video, interviews, their artwork, etc.

> like what agriculture would end up supporting.

Quasi nomadic "hunter gather" groups have a regular circuit and a deep knowledge of the animals and plants in that area which they tend to in decisive knowlege based manner - it's not "agriculture" as European grain harvesters for winter storage may know it, but it is absolutely agriculture in the sense of tending to plants in order to eat from them and use their products (and the animals that rely upon them) in later seasons and years to come.

[1] https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/map_col_high...

(oops - map added!)

Valid. I will say the article states there were still hierarchical tendencies in the societies and leadership is mentioned in that society.

Other then that, How do we know that whether or not Aboriginals in Australia are the norm? Are they the norm or are they the exception. From my perspective the vast majority of societies have hierarchies and by virtue of being the majority it's strong evidence for hierarchies to be the more natural paradigm. Especially when paired with the biological evidence associated with serotonin and hierarchies.

> From my perspective the vast majority of societies

Your perspective as a visitor to many of the 190+ countries across the globe, from speaking to people from many non European language groups, from talking at length online to people with internet connections, .. that experience?

Not from an anthologists perspective. Obviously my perspective is not as in-depth as that. I'm coming from a more general laymans perspective.

If you're saying a more detailed anthropologist perspective can change my viewpoint then I'm open to changing it. However I can't change viewpoint just off of being told that my viewpoint is inaccurate. Even so I think what I say is still true. From both viewpoints it is a fact that the vast majority of modern societies have hierarchies. Is there nuance about this fact that you want to elaborate on?

Also a bit of a branching; Do you know of refutations from the biological and evolutionary perspective? Serotonin and ranking? Primate societies with no hierarchies?

My understanding from listening to anthropologists talk about this sort of thing is that some cultures do not have either fixed leaders or priests. By "fixed leaders", they mean someone who is the recognized leader in most any community operation. Instead, a good hunter may be the leader for a hunting expedition, a good house builder may be the leader when it comes to house building, a good fisherman for a fishing trip, and so forth.

And of course some cultures were so divided that there was no one who spoke for or led the community as a whole. The Waorani and Shuar of Ecuador might have fallen into this situation in the past, possibly less so now.

I have less often heard whether elders are generally recognized as leaders. I suspect that a good hunter is someone who over the course of his life has brought back a lot of meat. That would probably be someone older.

That is the doctrine we are taught, anyway.

You think the existence tribal leaders, elders, priests and alpha males/females are "doctrine"? Because I'm pretty sure those are factual observations. Maybe you mean to argue they are not necessary or always present in humans or apes. Fine, present evidence this is so and the frequency of such exceptions.

Presidents, popes, and dictators-for-life exist, too. That does not mean that every organized group of people needs one. If you want examples, read the book. It is right there.

A 692 page book needs more then "right there" as a reason to plow through it. Just saying.

But what does a doctrine widely taught have anything to do with whether it's true or false? Clearly you think it's false but do you have evidence? Please present evidence if you do. Examples in biology, similar species or specific civilizations function as good evidence.

There have been myriad societies that consciously chose to dispense with hierarchy, others where hierarchy applied only to one sphere (e.g. religion) and nowhere else, ones where different hierarchies applied in different spheres, and many where hierarchy comes and goes, with no continuity with previous hierarchies.

To be human is to have the power to consciously choose behavior.

Almost every single group I've been part of had leaders. They may have been elected by the group, or more often, appointed elsewhere. The ones that don't have leadership tend to be temporary and disorganized. In situations where this is less temporary, leaders often emerge naturally, as that's how humans typically organize themselves.

We have conscious choice, sure, but that doesn't change the fact that we're part of larger systems that we only have some influence over. It also doesn't change the fact that conscious choice is somewhat biologically driven.

First, I suspect that every group you've been part of has been composed of mostly or entirely white people around your age who speak English. The contention of the book, and from what I understand that of many anthropologists and archaeologists, is that this is atypical, or at least not all that typical.

Also, the book makes a point about ephemeral leadership, either leadership (and the corresponding organization) that is seasonal according to the needs of the time of year, or temporary for a particular task (house building, field clearing, hunting...). Which may be what you're saying in the first paragraph about temporary groups, but they're saying this is the normal--or even only--situation in some cultures, and that furthermore it works just fine.

As for biologically driven choices, I suspect the authors would say that the range of choices is far greater than you might think.

Only English speaking white people tend to be hierarchal? What BS is that? Have you ever been to Asia (or most of Europe)? You think Africans, Middle Easterners or South Americans don't have hierarchies? You think only white people tend to select leaders in groups without one? That's ridiculous and simply wrong. And civilization didn't begin in Europe anyway, it was the Middle East, and then cropped up in five or six separate locations across the globe, including the Americas.

> Only English speaking white people tend to be hierarchal?

No. But all your experience in the world is in hierarchies. You have no relevant experience to draw on.

That would apply to the large majority of the people on this planet for the past few thousand years.

The "past few thousand years" is a tiny fraction of the human timeline. And, the overwhelming majority of even the "past few thousand years" is obscured. What remains is a poster example of selection bias: hierarchical organizations depend more on writing, so the written record is of hierarchical societies.

How many of these groups were of people who did not grow up with fixed hierarchies, and so had developed organizational skills that did not rely on one?

A hierarchy is the laziest choice among ways to organize.

Hierarchies are places where one relies on many. That is the point of a hierarchy... so that a few can control and rely on many. It is the most unfair way to organize.

It is thus very, very convenient for the few that people are conditioned from childhood to believe it is the only way to organize, and announce it freely in print.

A child is well aware of the parent-child hierarchy that is more or less universal across all modern cultures. You've been conditioned by this book to follow a fringe belief.

I think those societies are rare and observations of those societies are inaccurate. There must be hierarchies in those societies, it's just misreported.

More evidence of the relationship between hierarchy and biology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXxKBiidbeo

Serotonin is the biological chemical that is linked with hierarchy in biology and we are awashed in it.

This sort of argument--that those reports must be inaccurate, because--well, I'm not sure why you you think these reports are inaccurate, except that you think they must be. And that's not a reason.

I'm also pretty sure any linkage of serotonin to hierarchy is unproven.

>This sort of argument--that those reports must be inaccurate, because--well, I'm not sure why you you think these reports are inaccurate, except that you think they must be. And that's not a reason.

It's happened before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mead and not just with her. It's more prevalent in anthropology then in other sciences.

This is just an educated guess. If you provide actual sources I can verify what the academic community thinks of these reports or findings, and really that's the only best available metric I can go off of.

>I'm also pretty sure any linkage of serotonin to hierarchy is unproven.

Science cannot prove anything. Be very careful with your language. Especially in the social sciences where things are less quantitative... proof is fundamentally impossible. There is only evidence in favor of and evidence against.

Evidence in favor of serotonin and hierarchy: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01378-2 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anna-Ziomkiewicz-2/publ... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09594...

>Hierarchies are not, in fact, "heavily part of human behavior". They appear in certain circumstances, and dissipate when the circumstances do. G&W point out that we are brainwashed otherwise. I see it as a case of learned helplessness.

No. G&W is wrong and misinformed on this matter. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ypVbUBEZHg

I realize Jordan Peterson is controversial but what he talks about here is factual.

Hierarchies are not only observed in modern human societies but in ALL primate societies. From gorillas to chimpanzees. The idea that humans are an exception is very unlikely and categorically False.

Jordan Peterson can choose his examples as cleverly as he likes to advance his biases to uncritical listeners.

Right this is a possibility. More likely though is that he's in a school of thought and you are in another school of thought because Jordan Peterson Clearly isn't the only academic who believes this.

Most schools of thought have valid arguments. I have presented evidence for my school of thought.

If we are being truly unbiased here, you will note you have not presented any evidence to forward your argument. At most you have told me about a person who agrees with you but no real evidence that is in favor of your argument and you have attacked my evidence as false (a statement with also no evidence). If you were truly unbiased and If I was more biased then you then you should have noted this deficiency.

The most unbiased and logical way to rectify this situation involves two possibilities: Present evidence so we can continue the discussion. Or make a statement about how it's not worth your time or some other excuse and the conversation ends with me presenting evidence and you presenting none.

The topic is a book called "The Dawn of Everything". Not reading the book, and then insisting that all the examples presented in the 692-page book do not exist, is not a good look.

What is the point of coming onto this thread other then to see if the book is worth reading or not? It's fair to assume a lot of people on this thread haven't read it.

I never Denied examples didn't exist. I stated your arguments of "you're wrong" prove nothing without evidence. YOU didn't present evidence on this thread; I Did; That's all I said.

I'm sure it's not a "good look" to people who've read the book, but your attitude guarantees that you alienate people on the other side. It is not only a good look to people who believe in the anthropologic status quo, but it's the one look that should matter. I mean are you here just to toot your own horn? This is essentially what I'm seeing from you: "I read the book, you do it too because you're wrong." I came seeking reasons from people like you on why this book should be read.

This book is obviously more of a fringe perspective on anthropology so it does not do you any good at all to project that attitude.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com