Anthropology from Neuroscience Notes

Anthropology means the study of man, anthropos. Man means in this context humans, male and female, young and old. I first encountered anthropology in two forms, the study of human origins and the study of other societies, especially distant ones who had not acquired all the complications and vices of urban industrial society. Stones and bones are the evidence used by paleoanthropologists to study early humans going back millions of years. Archaeologists study the stones, bones and artefacts left by humans in the past 10 thousand years. You might consider sociology to be a division of anthropology that studies contemporary societies at close range.

One of the tools of anthropology is ethnography, descriptions of kinship, language, organization and dynamics of local groups. You could argue that all human studies are studies of human nature and that anthropology should grow to embrace all other disciplines or all disciplines should incorporate anthropology. Since anthropology existed as a department within universities, competing for funds, students and recognition, the discipline has remained a specialty, more or less confined to a limited set of tools and assumptions. European colonization of distant countries led to studies of the local flora and fauna, using descriptive taxonomies, drawings and hand written notes. A similar approach was taken by early anthropologists in their studies of human groups.

Harris reviewed the history of anthropology in his book, The Rise of Anthropological Theory'. Harris considered ecology and demographic dynamics as determinant factors in sociocultural evolution. In his later works, he and others considered the importance of food as a social determinant. In his book, Cannibals and Kings he considered the vices of centralized control of essential natural resources that lead to institutionalized oppression, an inevitable characteristic of imperial states throughout history. His ”cultural materialism” focused on the practical concerns that support survival, on the infrastructures of food production, reproduction, and local group cohesion.

The desire to discover truly innate features of human nature has been a main feature of anthropology and the arguments that prevailed in the 20th century. While ethnographies reveal a remarkably diversity of human expressions, underlying themes emerge that are common to all. My strategy is to use Anthropology resources, selecting the best ideas that are most compatible with 21st century understanding, avoiding polemics and historical debates.

Anthropology involved critically disputatious humans who invested much of their time and energy arguing with each other. Ideas useful in the 21st century idea developed with increasing, multidisciplinary sophistication. You could divide essential ideas into two groups. The first group involves general principles that can be applied in every situation. The second and largest group involves science and technology complete with a growing repertoire of concepts and techniques that promise to make older approaches to understanding human conduct obsolete. One essential idea is that human nature is animal nature, somewhat modified in the past million years.

Another idea implicit in all viable explanations is that the details of human systems change continuously and technologies evolve. The critical disputatious nature of humans does not change. The basic dynamics of competition, copying and conflict do not change. We can now state with confidence that every group organizes around kinship and ad hoc affiliations.

Every group has technologies of tool making, food production and distribution. Every group has hierarchies and rules. Every group has internal conflicts and conflicts with neighboring groups. Every group has methods of resolving conflicts without killing.

When conflict resolution fails, humans kill each other. Killings tend to multiply since humans seek revenge for harm done to members of their local group. We must also recognize that humans are best suited for living in small groups and become dysfunctional in predictable ways when groups get bigger.

Neuroscience Notes by Stephen Gislason