The hunter-gatherers in the study lived in the "Late Holocene (~4000 to 250 BP)", meaning between 2000 BCE to 1825 CE. These people are separated from us by less than 150 generations. I don't believe that humans evolve that fast, so the way you think, feel, ache, and so on also applies to them. Would you leave behind your injured and disabled in their situation (which is speculated to be the result of hunting accidents)?
Anthropology started at a time when people thought civilizations evolved in a straight line from savages to England. But it's hard to pretend that the natives sat around a rock grunting at each other when their e.g. bone-setting techniques were essentially modern, so there's a tradition of "not as benighted as you might have thought" articles.
WHY that point of view still exists is a question every anthro novice asks, and it turns out that cultural evolution is too attractive an idea for some people to let go of.
Go ahead. Invent some new tech that absolutely no one know about or how to do and that isn't based on any known tech. I'm waiting. What's taking so long?
Discovering stuff is hard and harder if you don't think you need it. People kept fire going before they knew how to start fires. If you don't know about the concept of flint or lighting dry stuff with sparks, it is really hard to invent fire starting. Writing isn't as useful if you can just learn what you need to know while growing up. A more complicated world later - as are discoveries slowly started to build up - probably created the need.
But again, those discoveries are hard and they took time. A really long time, apparently.
Evidence of animals doing this exists. Unsure why anyone would be surprised theres evidence of humans doing this.
It's really wild to me how many humans believe their feelings are so different from animals. Most animals have similar incentives and desires, humans just have "better" tools to achieve them.
Grieving orcas have been found to move their dead babies around for many weeks. Chimps will fetch plants like Scutia myrtina, which is toxic in large amounts but acts as a anthelmintics (anti-worm drug), for fellow members of their group when they're sick. Elephants will defend their wounded and even bring food or water to them or help them stand up when they're struggling to.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. You're absolutely right. These types of behaviors can be seen all throughout the animal world. Especially for animals showing degrees of eusociality.
These feelings are also extremely important for the preservation of one's species. No wonder evolution took this approach in multiple occasions, animals tend to get lonely if they aren't kind to one another, leaving themselves open to get killed. The incentive is there to have strength in numbers, and being "emotional" in some ways contributes to further that.
The costs and benefits faced by ancient humans were very, very different. Maybe a different way to frame the question would be "At what probability of additional death, injury, or suffering (to you or other tribe members) would you abandon your injured/disabled?" Humans of that era did not have anything even remotely approaching modern medicine and most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep. A huge portion of ancient peoples energy and time was dedicating to obtaining calories. That means caring for the injured/disabled imposes a huge cost and risk. We can just as easily find examples of ancient peoples murdering or abandoning their injured, disabled, and weak. I don't think it would be right or fair to judge them through a modern lens. Of course they cared for their loved ones and mourned their deaths. But they were faced with much harsher circumstances to which their cultures and beliefs were suited.
It would be helpful to provide some citations and evidence around the claim “ most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep”. There is an increasing amount of evidence that this was not the case.
> most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep
Genuine question: is this something we know from evidence, or an assumption? I vaguely recall having read that comparison between skeletal remains of early farmers and hunter-gatherers indicated that the latter had a better diet, but I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly or how much that observation generalizes.
We actually have a ton of evidence refuting this. The two things anthropologists spend their whole time rejecting in popular sciences is the barter myth and the idea that hunter-gatherer lives are "nasty brutish and short".
The nasty brutish and short idea might have been true about many medieval European peasants but the rest of the world wasn't cramped up with livestock and poverty conditions with poor sanitation. Other people simply didn't face as much disease. There was actually some really interesting work in bioarcheology in 2018 that showed that even extremely long lifespans was not actually that rare.[0] And those who made it to adulthood could generally expect a long life (obviously tons of variation here). In the city of Cholula, Mexico, between 900 and 1531, most people who made it to adulthood lived past the age of 50.[1]
Not to mention the famous "Man the Hunter" symposium where Marshall Sahlins introduced the Original Affluent Society Thesis which has since been largely upheld and reinforced.
Both early farmers and hunter-gatherers regularly endured calorie scarcity. The difference between them along this dimension is minor compared to the difference between either group and us and our calorie security.
you have a point actually. Non-agricultural people had much more varied diets and we have almost zero archeological examples of famines leading to mass deaths of non-agricultural peoples but we have plenty of examples of that happening to agricultural people. Agriculture was, especially initially, a huge step back in food security.
Obviously things have changed a lot since then but some of the risks remain. Cuba is a fascinating case study for what happens when a modern agricultural supply chain can collapse (due to US sanctions). Many many died. But since then there's been a massive focus on locally grown food and even wild tending. I know many people who are into permaculture and alternatives to industrial agriculture who have traveled there to study
This feels like video game analysis. Unit is likely to die, therefore do not spend resources on unit. Leave unit behind.
There is no world in which I would leave a family member or close friend to die in the woods alone, especially if I have no idea what germs are, why people die when they bleed, and am listening to a voice I have heard my whole live cry out in pain. Even if I knew for sure they were going to die, I would sit with them, or move them, or something.
Thought experiment: Would you visit your mother or father in the hospital knowing they were going to die that day? I mean there's nothing you can do, why bother??
It's not about writing off the injured due to their low odds of survival, its about your willingness to lower those odds for your other loved ones, or yourself. How does your thought experiment change when caring for your mother/father means your children might starve?
Ok but for every person who tries to save a stranger from drowning how many other people choose not to? Probably not 0. If I saw a stranger drowning and they were larger than child-sized I probably wouldn't attempt it- apparently its pretty common for the drowning person to panic and use their savior as a raft, drowning them in the process
It's literally a skill issue. The correct way to help a drowning person is to get behind them and then hook your weaker arm around their neck & head while doing backstroke with the other. Having them on their back facing up (and out of the water) dispels the panic reflex. But this obviously requires you to be comfortable int he water and have some prior rescue training.
Why do volunteer firefighters rush into a burning building to try to save children from some family they have never met before? Every day we afforded examples of people sacrificing their personal interests for the benefit of others.
But also, biologists usually use a definition of "altruism" that does not include close kin. Richard Dawkins was explicit about this in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene." Helping someone you are directly related to is not considered altruism.
I think in the premodern era, you never saw strangers (not like we do). You probably had a pretty good idea who everyone was, and probably knew most people pretty well. If that's even partially true, then although nowadays you might drive past a person on the highway, if your cousin or a lifelong trusted acquaintance asked for help you'd give it. It seems that everyone you saw, esp saw injured or sick, was probably someone you've known your whole life.
You're also heavily discounting the fact that you had to live not only with yourself if you did nothing, but the shame/angst of their family who you definitely lived next door to. TFA is about taking care of "their own", not strangers.
Good way to look at it. More broadly, there must have been different groups that practiced different policies with regard to ill and injured. Some of the groups fared better than others. Since most of modern societies do care about their ill and injured, it appears that this policy proved more advantageous. Even if only slightly so.
This is the right question to ask. You can reason your way around things, but occam's razor reigns supreme. Injured people can still do lots of work, as our most important tools were our brains, not our bodies. It's not hard to watch for predators near camp while sitting at the campfire, or to keep an eye on children - even if you can't resolve issues yourself. You could sit around making crafts for the tribe, repairing clothes, and more.
There's just way too much benefit to keeping the injured around. We don't need everyone working at top physical condition... ever.
Not taking care of a formerly productive injured person who might recover would be profoundly stupid, if you have the food for it and some expectation they might be productive again or a superior ability to direct those who might be productive.
But in most all cases it is dependent on available resources sufficient to support another unproductive human. In cases where these resources are not available, plenty of accounts exists of humans making hard choices all through history to today.
Humans are profoundly irrational. These people were alive as well. Just like most people today they did not see the world as an optimization problem.
They took care of the injured because it was the right thing to do, just like we do today. Not because there was some utilitarian value, where you calculate effort spent vs. expected return.
Not taking care of a wise injured person who might recover & help guide others, teach children, care for children, help heal, reveal spiritual teachings, and otherwise be human would be profoundly stupid. Judging who to care for based solely on productivity or ability to direct others would also be profoundly stupid....this strategy sounds like middle-management.
Surely emotions and morale are worth considering as well. Even if someone is unproductive and stupid, but friendly and well-liked, then their death would impact everyone's productivity for some time.
Exactly. Every being has intrinsic value. A pure productivity perspective is rooted in dehumanization and a reductive take on what it means to live/survive/thrive.
I'm somewhat surprised the comments here talk about the difference between "savages" and modern culture, yet no one talks about racism. It is clearly a western civilization thing to regard all other cultures (and species) as culturally and morally inferior. Hence the amazement expressed in the OP:
> Yes, there is some evidence suggesting that interpersonal care was practiced in earlier periods of Patagonia.
As if western civilization has invented interpersonal care.
I really enjoy reading about these group dynamics. Usually people interpret the "it makes sense that people would do this" as meaning "self-interest dominates compassion" but I actually think the meaning is "those groups which did these things survive" and so over time you get these things built-in. "Compassion" isn't something I constructed for myself from rationality. I can do that, but it is a back-formation - an explanation for a behaviour I was already going to do. I'd say it's more of a property of my ancestry than my reason since I had it as a child in more or less the same form as I have it today and I recall my younger brother come back crying after going to help an anthill survive a storm (the ants were unreceptive to this Anti-Ender's assistance). At 4 years or younger he had no capacity for the kind of reason required to reach compassion tabula rasa.
I model mankind as self-similar to man. Allocare makes sense between individuals in the same way that a T-cell 'cares for' other cells in the body. And Lawrence Oates's "I am just going outside and may be some time" seems akin to apoptosis: knowing the cost on the rest of the organism, the individual has programmed escape hatches that preserve the entire operation. It seems natural and adaptive that individuals will attempt to exploit the structures (care for the injured and elderly) that so arise. And counter-adaptations to that form as well.
But evidence that agrees with one's model is usually not as useful as the evidence that disagrees with it and so the thing that I find most interesting is the chap with the massive hip dislocation. That's a debilitating injury or disability and for a tribe on the move it must have been a massive expenditure of resources to bring along this individual. If encountered in childhood, perhaps the net increase in resources is not that high. If encountered in adulthood, perhaps it was a prized member of the community or perhaps the group anticipated recovery.
On the other hand, we do find good reasons to "protect the team". Knowing that you will be cared for means you give more to the operation. The classic "No Man Left Behind!" stance probably has a huge effect on morale.
But why wouldn't they?? Most animals take care of their wounded peers, from ants to elephants, and often defend individuals from predators (not always! but often enough to be on countless documentaries).
This is an extremely natural behavior, not unique to humans or proto-humans, and not driven by interest or strategy. Compassion is innate.
Cruelty and contempt for the weak is a specifically human trait, and not only that, but a very recent one too.
Social care is largely a mammalian trait, but only ever extends to in-group members. And if the pack or herd member is sensed to be the weakest link, it is quite frequent that the pack or herd will abandon them or intentionally sacrifice them.
Humans are unique in that they go through extraordinary lengths to rehabilitate members, sometimes investing years or decades or even caring for humans that could literally not survive on their own or without advanced technology.
Likewise humans will abandon injured members of their party on Everest. They do the same in wartime. Given dire situations, humans also perform this behavior even in the modern era.
>Cruelty and contempt for the weak is a specifically human trait, and not only that, but a very recent one too.
just as there are countless examples of animals helping other animals, there are countless examples of animals abandoning weak young and leaving behind the elderly and infirm. if anything humans are far far more likely to be compassionate towards the physically weak, as physical strength is far far less valuable in human society than in nearly any animal society
This isn't true. Also the book "Sapiens" goes a bit into how cruel ancient humans in the Americas would be to some of the weaker offspring. So it's not 'new' in the sense of last few thousand years either. I think there's been a lot of personalities and cultures over the last 300k years that approach this differently.
I remember reading about tribes in Indonesia who when someone got too old/slow, they'd kill them.
They were living on the edge of existence, and either everyone was on form, or the group didn't survive.
In that context, it was presented as a caring act for the group. A bit different context to the original thread, but an example of why a group may do what outwardly seems a little surprising.
There is the idea sometimes stated that because child mortality was so high in the past parents had kids but avoided loving them - because odds were against the child living past 5 and if you love your kids you then have heartbreak when they die.
Historians disagree with that idea (at least for most cultures?). However I've heard it more than once. This just gives more data to the idea that humans loved each other enough to take care of injured.
Wasn’t child mortality only super high in dense population settings relatively recently? Like if you are a tribe in the middle of nowhere in Northern Europe 20k years ago, for example, you are probably not exposed to much contagious disease. Disease is a network phenomenon, and prior to modern medicine humans had increased network speeds and connectivity massively, but that wasn’t the historical norm, was it?
The "most" part is not true. Some animals take care of wounded peers. Specifically social animals do. Ants, elephants, monkeys, whales are good examples of social animals and they do take care of their wounded peers.
Many animals are solitary. There is nobody to take care of a wounded polar bear, guppy, owl or c. elegans in the wild.
We can't even say that most animals are social. Perhaps by biomass, but definitely not by diversity.
> often enough to be on countless documentaries
That says more about what we humans find interesting and worthy of documenting.
> not driven by interest or strategy. Compassion is innate.
Something can be both innate and strategical. Having the innate drive to help wounded conspecifics can increase the surival of the whole species.
> Cruelty and contempt for the weak is a specifically human trait
Absolutely not. What does that even mean? When a lion takes over a pride they are documented to kill the cubs sired by the prior male. Is that "cruelty and contempt for the weak"? We would sure label as such if they were human males killing a dad and moving in with mom killing her babes. Should I find more examples of "cruelty and contempt for the weak" in the animal kingdom? There are tons. Cruelty and contempt for the weak is not a uniquely human trait.
Citation needed. Here is a paper suggesting that the assistance of injured peers is rarely observed across taxa [1]. From an evolutionary standpoint, this doesn't pass the smell test due to costs to the helper, cheating/freerider problems, low probability of re-encountering the helper/helped (i.e. many species don't repeatedly meet the same animal of their species), and of course, the risk of the injured animal attracing predators.
> "Cruelty and contempt for the weak is a specifically human trait, and not only that, but a very recent one too."
History would suggest otherwise. All of documented human history is lousy with horrific cruelties like genocide, human sacrifice, slavery, war, etc.
This seems relatively common among ancient hunter-gatherer societies. We've been watching Prof. Jiang's excellent "Story of Civilization" course on his Predictive History YT channel[1]. In the 2nd or 3rd video, he mentions that the remains of somebody with a rare form of dwarfism were found as part of an ancient hunter-gather tribe, and they had the same levels of nutrition as the able-bodied members of the tribe.
Maybe "primitive" people were not so primitive after all..
Agreed. There is a background cultural assumption in the Western world that the "state of nature" [1] is one of constant suffering. What I know of anthropology suggests this is bullshit, and the truth is that there have been a huge variety of social structures in our prehistory. "The Dawn of Everything" goes into this.
"The existence of altruism in nature is at first sight puzzling, because altruistic behaviour reduces the likelihood that an individual will reproduce"
We also know that many didn't, depending on their culture and geography. For example some of the remaining isolated hunter gatherer tribes researched in the 1970 killed orphans as they could not afford to feed them
I'd imagine that it those Patagonians had to strictly choose to either feed their healthy people or their injured, the choice would have been easy, as not feeding the healthy would make them become non-useful themselves.
There is a (possibly inaccurate [0]) quote attributed to Margaret Mead, where, when asked about the first signs of civilization, said it was when they found a healed fractured femur.
The trait of caring and providing for other injured or vulnerable members of the group is widespread in the animal kingdom, there is even a name for it, allocare. Since social groups usually form based on family kinship, it can be explained on selfish gene dynamics.
So the argument was always gradual, not that social care is unique to civilization, but that it happens to an extent (such as the very long recovery period and food resources required to heal a femur) that we can arbitrarily call "civilization".
On the other hand, you could stretch that Scotsman in the opposite direction: do we really provide enough care to other people to the point we are different from animals and can claim ourselves truly civilized?
We need only look at the cultures of the Aka, Bayaka, and Mbuti tribes, who all split off from the same tribe 150k years ago & still share many of the same cultural norms oriented around counterdominance, matrifocal care, and singing as a means of protection & decision-making.
Their cultures can show us what it took to survive and thrive in a jungle with numerous large predators. These tribes carry wisdom we can apply in our daily lives.
People are used to thinking that humans were animalistic savages right up until their favored religion or ancient city-state popped up, believing that the hunter-gatherer existence would've been so harsh that there was no room to care for vulnerable members of the group.
Some people like to think that we were brutal or cruel in the ancient past and would have left people to die. (Generally I think the implication is that we should do this again?)
People still think that. They will use violence and men with guns to enforce welfare schemes because they believe without the government people won't help others and therefore their violence is justified.
They're using violence against charities? If you're talking about the Israelis or the US insofar as they support the prevention of aid reaching gaza, sure. Generally it's quite rare I think.
When you talk about "men with guns" in reference to a welfare state, you're really talking about the process of taxation and the taxes being used to create a safety net for people. But it's telling that when you're trying to counter someone talking about the government being used to strip away these things from people through the executive branch and not the legislative branch, you suddenly require there to be real, physical violence before you'll accept the example.
No, I'm saying the opposite of using violence to fund charity would be using violence against charity.
I don't need to see further evidence to believe it's happened, I'm aware it is being used against some charities (Gaza aid organizations for instance). I literally acknowledged such and then you go on some weird tangent about me needing evidence.
Is it ? These hunter gatherers would probably be shocked at how we treat old people in hospitals and retirement houses, despite all our modern "common sense"
the article makes no mention of caring for the old. no doubt almost all hunter gatherers would be incredibly shocked that we put so much effort into keeping our old alive, particularly when it provides so little advantage and they don't even live with us
Many things were common sense,... until they weren't.
On the other hand, it's common sense now, who knew how it was back then? ...except for the researchers researching this... and now us, reading the article.
Look at some wild life videos and you will see animals caring (or attempting to care) for the wounded and sick. Is it fair to extend the concept ( which I'm calling it as common sense knowledge) and infer that humans lived in a similar manner in the past? Some thing similar goes for current hunter gatherers.
And yes before anyone brings up - both animals and humans, both current and past are capable of extreme brutality also under the 'appropriate' circumstances.
The hunter-gatherers in the study lived in the "Late Holocene (~4000 to 250 BP)", meaning between 2000 BCE to 1825 CE. These people are separated from us by less than 150 generations. I don't believe that humans evolve that fast, so the way you think, feel, ache, and so on also applies to them. Would you leave behind your injured and disabled in their situation (which is speculated to be the result of hunting accidents)?
Anthropology started at a time when people thought civilizations evolved in a straight line from savages to England. But it's hard to pretend that the natives sat around a rock grunting at each other when their e.g. bone-setting techniques were essentially modern, so there's a tradition of "not as benighted as you might have thought" articles.
WHY that point of view still exists is a question every anthro novice asks, and it turns out that cultural evolution is too attractive an idea for some people to let go of.
But then why did they spend so much time without writing or with the same level of tech for so long?
Go ahead. Invent some new tech that absolutely no one know about or how to do and that isn't based on any known tech. I'm waiting. What's taking so long?
Discovering stuff is hard and harder if you don't think you need it. People kept fire going before they knew how to start fires. If you don't know about the concept of flint or lighting dry stuff with sparks, it is really hard to invent fire starting. Writing isn't as useful if you can just learn what you need to know while growing up. A more complicated world later - as are discoveries slowly started to build up - probably created the need.
But again, those discoveries are hard and they took time. A really long time, apparently.
check your privilege, you anglos think you are the best culture, you have It so ingrained you dont even notice it
It's really wild to me how many humans believe their feelings are so different from animals. Most animals have similar incentives and desires, humans just have "better" tools to achieve them.
Grieving orcas have been found to move their dead babies around for many weeks. Chimps will fetch plants like Scutia myrtina, which is toxic in large amounts but acts as a anthelmintics (anti-worm drug), for fellow members of their group when they're sick. Elephants will defend their wounded and even bring food or water to them or help them stand up when they're struggling to.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. You're absolutely right. These types of behaviors can be seen all throughout the animal world. Especially for animals showing degrees of eusociality.
These feelings are also extremely important for the preservation of one's species. No wonder evolution took this approach in multiple occasions, animals tend to get lonely if they aren't kind to one another, leaving themselves open to get killed. The incentive is there to have strength in numbers, and being "emotional" in some ways contributes to further that.
The costs and benefits faced by ancient humans were very, very different. Maybe a different way to frame the question would be "At what probability of additional death, injury, or suffering (to you or other tribe members) would you abandon your injured/disabled?" Humans of that era did not have anything even remotely approaching modern medicine and most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep. A huge portion of ancient peoples energy and time was dedicating to obtaining calories. That means caring for the injured/disabled imposes a huge cost and risk. We can just as easily find examples of ancient peoples murdering or abandoning their injured, disabled, and weak. I don't think it would be right or fair to judge them through a modern lens. Of course they cared for their loved ones and mourned their deaths. But they were faced with much harsher circumstances to which their cultures and beliefs were suited.
It would be helpful to provide some citations and evidence around the claim “ most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep”. There is an increasing amount of evidence that this was not the case.
https://medium.com/sapere-aude-incipe/our-distorted-image-of...
> most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep
Genuine question: is this something we know from evidence, or an assumption? I vaguely recall having read that comparison between skeletal remains of early farmers and hunter-gatherers indicated that the latter had a better diet, but I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly or how much that observation generalizes.
We actually have a ton of evidence refuting this. The two things anthropologists spend their whole time rejecting in popular sciences is the barter myth and the idea that hunter-gatherer lives are "nasty brutish and short".
The nasty brutish and short idea might have been true about many medieval European peasants but the rest of the world wasn't cramped up with livestock and poverty conditions with poor sanitation. Other people simply didn't face as much disease. There was actually some really interesting work in bioarcheology in 2018 that showed that even extremely long lifespans was not actually that rare.[0] And those who made it to adulthood could generally expect a long life (obviously tons of variation here). In the city of Cholula, Mexico, between 900 and 1531, most people who made it to adulthood lived past the age of 50.[1]
[0] https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2022/08/conversation-old-age-is-n...
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.22329
Not to mention the famous "Man the Hunter" symposium where Marshall Sahlins introduced the Original Affluent Society Thesis which has since been largely upheld and reinforced.
Both early farmers and hunter-gatherers regularly endured calorie scarcity. The difference between them along this dimension is minor compared to the difference between either group and us and our calorie security.
> most lived at subsistence levels with starvation always at their doorstep
I find this hilarious. Modern civilization has starvation at our doorstep. If the modern supply chains fail, so very many would starve.
Did toilet paper become scarce about 5 years ago? I don't see what protects the population from that for food and water.
you have a point actually. Non-agricultural people had much more varied diets and we have almost zero archeological examples of famines leading to mass deaths of non-agricultural peoples but we have plenty of examples of that happening to agricultural people. Agriculture was, especially initially, a huge step back in food security.
Obviously things have changed a lot since then but some of the risks remain. Cuba is a fascinating case study for what happens when a modern agricultural supply chain can collapse (due to US sanctions). Many many died. But since then there's been a massive focus on locally grown food and even wild tending. I know many people who are into permaculture and alternatives to industrial agriculture who have traveled there to study
This feels like video game analysis. Unit is likely to die, therefore do not spend resources on unit. Leave unit behind.
There is no world in which I would leave a family member or close friend to die in the woods alone, especially if I have no idea what germs are, why people die when they bleed, and am listening to a voice I have heard my whole live cry out in pain. Even if I knew for sure they were going to die, I would sit with them, or move them, or something.
Thought experiment: Would you visit your mother or father in the hospital knowing they were going to die that day? I mean there's nothing you can do, why bother??
It's not about writing off the injured due to their low odds of survival, its about your willingness to lower those odds for your other loved ones, or yourself. How does your thought experiment change when caring for your mother/father means your children might starve?
Look man, modern people die trying to save strangers from drowning. We can just see actual behavior, we don't need bloodless thought experiments
Ok but for every person who tries to save a stranger from drowning how many other people choose not to? Probably not 0. If I saw a stranger drowning and they were larger than child-sized I probably wouldn't attempt it- apparently its pretty common for the drowning person to panic and use their savior as a raft, drowning them in the process
It's literally a skill issue. The correct way to help a drowning person is to get behind them and then hook your weaker arm around their neck & head while doing backstroke with the other. Having them on their back facing up (and out of the water) dispels the panic reflex. But this obviously requires you to be comfortable int he water and have some prior rescue training.
Why do volunteer firefighters rush into a burning building to try to save children from some family they have never met before? Every day we afforded examples of people sacrificing their personal interests for the benefit of others.
But also, biologists usually use a definition of "altruism" that does not include close kin. Richard Dawkins was explicit about this in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene." Helping someone you are directly related to is not considered altruism.
I think in the premodern era, you never saw strangers (not like we do). You probably had a pretty good idea who everyone was, and probably knew most people pretty well. If that's even partially true, then although nowadays you might drive past a person on the highway, if your cousin or a lifelong trusted acquaintance asked for help you'd give it. It seems that everyone you saw, esp saw injured or sick, was probably someone you've known your whole life.
You're also heavily discounting the fact that you had to live not only with yourself if you did nothing, but the shame/angst of their family who you definitely lived next door to. TFA is about taking care of "their own", not strangers.
Good way to look at it. More broadly, there must have been different groups that practiced different policies with regard to ill and injured. Some of the groups fared better than others. Since most of modern societies do care about their ill and injured, it appears that this policy proved more advantageous. Even if only slightly so.
Can you conceive of how caring for the injured might have a benefit in an evolutionary / game theoretical sense?
This is the right question to ask. You can reason your way around things, but occam's razor reigns supreme. Injured people can still do lots of work, as our most important tools were our brains, not our bodies. It's not hard to watch for predators near camp while sitting at the campfire, or to keep an eye on children - even if you can't resolve issues yourself. You could sit around making crafts for the tribe, repairing clothes, and more.
There's just way too much benefit to keeping the injured around. We don't need everyone working at top physical condition... ever.
Not taking care of a formerly productive injured person who might recover would be profoundly stupid, if you have the food for it and some expectation they might be productive again or a superior ability to direct those who might be productive.
Compassion exists and isn't just driven by self-interest or self-preservation.
But in most all cases it is dependent on available resources sufficient to support another unproductive human. In cases where these resources are not available, plenty of accounts exists of humans making hard choices all through history to today.
Sure, but I'm not claiming that. I'm only claiming it'd be stupid not to help people when it's in your self interest.
Compassion exists because it was useful for the fitness of the species, in the species where it exists.
Could have arisen due to it though.
Humans are profoundly irrational. These people were alive as well. Just like most people today they did not see the world as an optimization problem.
They took care of the injured because it was the right thing to do, just like we do today. Not because there was some utilitarian value, where you calculate effort spent vs. expected return.
Not taking care of a wise injured person who might recover & help guide others, teach children, care for children, help heal, reveal spiritual teachings, and otherwise be human would be profoundly stupid. Judging who to care for based solely on productivity or ability to direct others would also be profoundly stupid....this strategy sounds like middle-management.
Surely emotions and morale are worth considering as well. Even if someone is unproductive and stupid, but friendly and well-liked, then their death would impact everyone's productivity for some time.
Exactly. Every being has intrinsic value. A pure productivity perspective is rooted in dehumanization and a reductive take on what it means to live/survive/thrive.
Strawman
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I'm somewhat surprised the comments here talk about the difference between "savages" and modern culture, yet no one talks about racism. It is clearly a western civilization thing to regard all other cultures (and species) as culturally and morally inferior. Hence the amazement expressed in the OP:
> Yes, there is some evidence suggesting that interpersonal care was practiced in earlier periods of Patagonia.
As if western civilization has invented interpersonal care.
I really enjoy reading about these group dynamics. Usually people interpret the "it makes sense that people would do this" as meaning "self-interest dominates compassion" but I actually think the meaning is "those groups which did these things survive" and so over time you get these things built-in. "Compassion" isn't something I constructed for myself from rationality. I can do that, but it is a back-formation - an explanation for a behaviour I was already going to do. I'd say it's more of a property of my ancestry than my reason since I had it as a child in more or less the same form as I have it today and I recall my younger brother come back crying after going to help an anthill survive a storm (the ants were unreceptive to this Anti-Ender's assistance). At 4 years or younger he had no capacity for the kind of reason required to reach compassion tabula rasa.
I model mankind as self-similar to man. Allocare makes sense between individuals in the same way that a T-cell 'cares for' other cells in the body. And Lawrence Oates's "I am just going outside and may be some time" seems akin to apoptosis: knowing the cost on the rest of the organism, the individual has programmed escape hatches that preserve the entire operation. It seems natural and adaptive that individuals will attempt to exploit the structures (care for the injured and elderly) that so arise. And counter-adaptations to that form as well.
But evidence that agrees with one's model is usually not as useful as the evidence that disagrees with it and so the thing that I find most interesting is the chap with the massive hip dislocation. That's a debilitating injury or disability and for a tribe on the move it must have been a massive expenditure of resources to bring along this individual. If encountered in childhood, perhaps the net increase in resources is not that high. If encountered in adulthood, perhaps it was a prized member of the community or perhaps the group anticipated recovery.
On the other hand, we do find good reasons to "protect the team". Knowing that you will be cared for means you give more to the operation. The classic "No Man Left Behind!" stance probably has a huge effect on morale.
But why wouldn't they?? Most animals take care of their wounded peers, from ants to elephants, and often defend individuals from predators (not always! but often enough to be on countless documentaries).
This is an extremely natural behavior, not unique to humans or proto-humans, and not driven by interest or strategy. Compassion is innate.
Cruelty and contempt for the weak is a specifically human trait, and not only that, but a very recent one too.
> Most animals take care of their wounded peers
Not really, no. Herd animals will regularly intentionally abandon wounded or elderly peers during an attack.
Sometimes they will even intentionally knock down slow members to make an easy meal for predators, ensuring their own survival:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ_7GtE529M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqyMw7udKtI
Social care is largely a mammalian trait, but only ever extends to in-group members. And if the pack or herd member is sensed to be the weakest link, it is quite frequent that the pack or herd will abandon them or intentionally sacrifice them.
Humans are unique in that they go through extraordinary lengths to rehabilitate members, sometimes investing years or decades or even caring for humans that could literally not survive on their own or without advanced technology.
Here's a video of a herd of buffalo attacking a whole pride of lions that are on top of a single buffalo, about to devour it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM
There are countless videos of bees fighting off wasps and in many cases killing them.
Likewise humans will abandon injured members of their party on Everest. They do the same in wartime. Given dire situations, humans also perform this behavior even in the modern era.
>Cruelty and contempt for the weak is a specifically human trait, and not only that, but a very recent one too.
just as there are countless examples of animals helping other animals, there are countless examples of animals abandoning weak young and leaving behind the elderly and infirm. if anything humans are far far more likely to be compassionate towards the physically weak, as physical strength is far far less valuable in human society than in nearly any animal society
> Cruelty and contempt for the weak is a specifically human trait
Is this true? I think there are many counter examples. eg birds tossing out offspring from their nest.
This isn't true. Also the book "Sapiens" goes a bit into how cruel ancient humans in the Americas would be to some of the weaker offspring. So it's not 'new' in the sense of last few thousand years either. I think there's been a lot of personalities and cultures over the last 300k years that approach this differently.
If you think human cruelty has emerged only very recently, you desperately need to study up on human history.
Not only that, I'd like to see some citations on "most animals".
I remember reading about tribes in Indonesia who when someone got too old/slow, they'd kill them. They were living on the edge of existence, and either everyone was on form, or the group didn't survive. In that context, it was presented as a caring act for the group. A bit different context to the original thread, but an example of why a group may do what outwardly seems a little surprising.
There is the idea sometimes stated that because child mortality was so high in the past parents had kids but avoided loving them - because odds were against the child living past 5 and if you love your kids you then have heartbreak when they die.
Historians disagree with that idea (at least for most cultures?). However I've heard it more than once. This just gives more data to the idea that humans loved each other enough to take care of injured.
Wasn’t child mortality only super high in dense population settings relatively recently? Like if you are a tribe in the middle of nowhere in Northern Europe 20k years ago, for example, you are probably not exposed to much contagious disease. Disease is a network phenomenon, and prior to modern medicine humans had increased network speeds and connectivity massively, but that wasn’t the historical norm, was it?
> Most animals take care of their wounded peers
The "most" part is not true. Some animals take care of wounded peers. Specifically social animals do. Ants, elephants, monkeys, whales are good examples of social animals and they do take care of their wounded peers.
Many animals are solitary. There is nobody to take care of a wounded polar bear, guppy, owl or c. elegans in the wild.
We can't even say that most animals are social. Perhaps by biomass, but definitely not by diversity.
> often enough to be on countless documentaries
That says more about what we humans find interesting and worthy of documenting.
> not driven by interest or strategy. Compassion is innate.
Something can be both innate and strategical. Having the innate drive to help wounded conspecifics can increase the surival of the whole species.
> Cruelty and contempt for the weak is a specifically human trait
Absolutely not. What does that even mean? When a lion takes over a pride they are documented to kill the cubs sired by the prior male. Is that "cruelty and contempt for the weak"? We would sure label as such if they were human males killing a dad and moving in with mom killing her babes. Should I find more examples of "cruelty and contempt for the weak" in the animal kingdom? There are tons. Cruelty and contempt for the weak is not a uniquely human trait.
> But why wouldn't they??
This is fundamentally the wrong question to ask.
> "Most animals take care of their wounded peers"
Citation needed. Here is a paper suggesting that the assistance of injured peers is rarely observed across taxa [1]. From an evolutionary standpoint, this doesn't pass the smell test due to costs to the helper, cheating/freerider problems, low probability of re-encountering the helper/helped (i.e. many species don't repeatedly meet the same animal of their species), and of course, the risk of the injured animal attracing predators.
> "Cruelty and contempt for the weak is a specifically human trait, and not only that, but a very recent one too."
History would suggest otherwise. All of documented human history is lousy with horrific cruelties like genocide, human sacrifice, slavery, war, etc.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5731505
This seems relatively common among ancient hunter-gatherer societies. We've been watching Prof. Jiang's excellent "Story of Civilization" course on his Predictive History YT channel[1]. In the 2nd or 3rd video, he mentions that the remains of somebody with a rare form of dwarfism were found as part of an ancient hunter-gather tribe, and they had the same levels of nutrition as the able-bodied members of the tribe.
Maybe "primitive" people were not so primitive after all..
[1]The course is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjqf9T59uY0&list=PLREQ8S3NPa...
Agreed. There is a background cultural assumption in the Western world that the "state of nature" [1] is one of constant suffering. What I know of anthropology suggests this is bullshit, and the truth is that there have been a huge variety of social structures in our prehistory. "The Dawn of Everything" goes into this.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature
"The existence of altruism in nature is at first sight puzzling, because altruistic behaviour reduces the likelihood that an individual will reproduce"
More, in the Altruism in Biology Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_(biology)
We also know that many didn't, depending on their culture and geography. For example some of the remaining isolated hunter gatherer tribes researched in the 1970 killed orphans as they could not afford to feed them
Different environment, isn't it?
I'd imagine that it those Patagonians had to strictly choose to either feed their healthy people or their injured, the choice would have been easy, as not feeding the healthy would make them become non-useful themselves.
There is a (possibly inaccurate [0]) quote attributed to Margaret Mead, where, when asked about the first signs of civilization, said it was when they found a healed fractured femur.
[0] https://www.sapiens.org/culture/margaret-mead-femur/
The trait of caring and providing for other injured or vulnerable members of the group is widespread in the animal kingdom, there is even a name for it, allocare. Since social groups usually form based on family kinship, it can be explained on selfish gene dynamics.
So the argument was always gradual, not that social care is unique to civilization, but that it happens to an extent (such as the very long recovery period and food resources required to heal a femur) that we can arbitrarily call "civilization".
On the other hand, you could stretch that Scotsman in the opposite direction: do we really provide enough care to other people to the point we are different from animals and can claim ourselves truly civilized?
Yeah, well, in that case ants are civilized (they probably are).
There was an episode of Cosmos[0], where Neil DeGrasse Tyson makes the case that there are two principal intelligences on Earth: Men and bees.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubE9hjrsHmI
Ants in a colony are so closely related that the colony can be thought of a one individual.
From this perspective ant helping each other is similar to cells in a body working together.
A lot of field studies on chimpanzees also indicate similar behavior (ie taking care of former leaders after they aged out of their prime)
We need only look at the cultures of the Aka, Bayaka, and Mbuti tribes, who all split off from the same tribe 150k years ago & still share many of the same cultural norms oriented around counterdominance, matrifocal care, and singing as a means of protection & decision-making.
Their cultures can show us what it took to survive and thrive in a jungle with numerous large predators. These tribes carry wisdom we can apply in our daily lives.
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Why is news? It's common sense.
Click bait.
Pretty sure what went down in Late Holocene Patagonia isn’t common sense.
What makes you say that?
People are used to thinking that humans were animalistic savages right up until their favored religion or ancient city-state popped up, believing that the hunter-gatherer existence would've been so harsh that there was no room to care for vulnerable members of the group.
Some people like to think that we were brutal or cruel in the ancient past and would have left people to die. (Generally I think the implication is that we should do this again?)
People still think that. They will use violence and men with guns to enforce welfare schemes because they believe without the government people won't help others and therefore their violence is justified.
Except now it’s the complete opposite.
They're using violence against charities? If you're talking about the Israelis or the US insofar as they support the prevention of aid reaching gaza, sure. Generally it's quite rare I think.
When you talk about "men with guns" in reference to a welfare state, you're really talking about the process of taxation and the taxes being used to create a safety net for people. But it's telling that when you're trying to counter someone talking about the government being used to strip away these things from people through the executive branch and not the legislative branch, you suddenly require there to be real, physical violence before you'll accept the example.
No, I'm saying the opposite of using violence to fund charity would be using violence against charity.
I don't need to see further evidence to believe it's happened, I'm aware it is being used against some charities (Gaza aid organizations for instance). I literally acknowledged such and then you go on some weird tangent about me needing evidence.
Is it ? These hunter gatherers would probably be shocked at how we treat old people in hospitals and retirement houses, despite all our modern "common sense"
They’d certainly be shocked at how many old people are there and how they managed to survive so long past their 60-70s
the article makes no mention of caring for the old. no doubt almost all hunter gatherers would be incredibly shocked that we put so much effort into keeping our old alive, particularly when it provides so little advantage and they don't even live with us
Yep and yet the scientific community doesn't just follow "common sense", it tends to base off its findings on evidence.
Now this topic is not just "obvious" it's also factual.
Many things were common sense,... until they weren't.
On the other hand, it's common sense now, who knew how it was back then? ...except for the researchers researching this... and now us, reading the article.
It's one thing to declare it to be "common sense," and quite another to actually know it to be true from physical evidence.
Look at some wild life videos and you will see animals caring (or attempting to care) for the wounded and sick. Is it fair to extend the concept ( which I'm calling it as common sense knowledge) and infer that humans lived in a similar manner in the past? Some thing similar goes for current hunter gatherers.
And yes before anyone brings up - both animals and humans, both current and past are capable of extreme brutality also under the 'appropriate' circumstances.
It is quite reasonable to infer that people did this in the distant past. But this is, again, not the same as proving it with physical evidence.