# Introduction to Paleoanthropology/Evolution Culture



## The concept of progress

**Progress** is defined as a gradual but predictable bettering of the
human condition over time, that is, things are always getting better
over time.

### History of Progressivism

-   Progressivism has been one of the cornerstones of Western historical
    and philosophical thought since ancient Greek times.
-   For most of its history (from the Greek period to the 15th century),
    Progressivism was a purely philosophical or ideological doctrine: in
    the absence of any empirical evidence of improvement in the human
    condition, early progressivists devised imaginary scenarios of human
    history in which they pictured the gradual emergence of enlightened
    present-day institutions out of earlier and ruder institutions. The
    defining characteristics of any primitive society, thus conceived,
    were wholly negative: they were whatever civilization was not.
-   Starting in the late 15th century, ethnographic information about
    living \"primitives,\" especially in the Americas, increased,
    providing the progressivists with empirical confirmation for their
    ideas. Living conditions of these \"primitive peoples\" conformed in
    a general way to the imagined early condition of humankind; they
    were therefore considered as \"fossilized\" survivals from ancient
    times, who had somehow failed to progress.
-   In the 19th century, archaeology also began to provide confirmation:
    evidence of early peoples who had indeed lived without metals,
    agriculture, or permanent dwellings, just as the progressivists had
    always imagined.
-   Out of the conjunction of progressivist theory with ethnographic and
    archaeological researches, the discipline of anthropology was born
    in the latter half of the 19th century. Early anthropologists
    arranged that evidence in orderly progression to provide seemingly
    irrefutable confirmation for what had long been only a philosophical
    doctrine. Progressivism was transformed into a science named
    anthropology; \"Progress\" was renamed \"Social Evolution\" or
    \"Cultural Evolution.\" These ideas drew upon Darwinian evolution
    but incorrectly assigned a directionality and value to evolution.
    Where Darwinian evolution is not about progress, but rather adapting
    to a given environmental condition, social evolution was very much
    about progress, usually conceived in terms of military and economic
    power over other societies.

### Characteristics

Progressivism flourished mainly in optimistic times, that is, times of
scientific advances and expanding imaginations:

-   pre-Socratic Greece
-   the Enlightenment (18th century)
-   the Victorian age (19th century)
-   the generation following World War II

Progressivism has been the doctrine that legitimizes all scientific
discoveries and labels them as \"advances\".

-   All progressivists agree, however, that their age is superior to
    those that preceded it.
-   Human history is perceived with a basic directionality, from worse
    to better.

### What is better?

-   What constitutes \"the better\"? What causes it? How can it be
    measured?
-   Answers to these questions have changed in accordance with the
    ideological preoccupation of different eras, and different
    philosophies:
    -   improved material circumstances
    -   intellectual maturation
    -   aesthetic achievements

### Us vs. Them mentality

The problem with categorizing \"progressive\" judgments must be viewed
in long-term perspective as a struggle between two basically
incompatible cultural systems:

-   in the present, us and the others: states/civilizations vs.
    bands/tribes;
-   in paleoanthropology, us (*Homo sapiens*) and the others (other
    hominid species, e.g. Neandertals, *Homo erectus*).

## Historical background of Western nations

Hunting and gathering was predominant as a way of life for about 7
million years, with agriculture and plant domestication beginning around
10,000 years ago, and life in cities or states has been around for only
the past 5,000 years or so.

Changes, or progress, since the first appearance of urban life and state
organization (5,000 yrs ago):

-   non-state tribal peoples persisted in a dynamic equilibrium or
    symbiotic relationship with states/civilizations
-   states/civilizations developed and remained within their own
    ecological boundaries
-   this situation lasted for thousands of years

This situation shifted 500 years ago:

-   In the 15th century, Europeans began to expand beyond their
    long-established frontiers.
-   For about 250 years (until 1750), the expansion was relatively slow,
    as non-state tribal peoples still seemed secure and successfully
    adapted to their economically \"marginal\" refuges.
-   In the mid-eighteenth century, the industrial revolution launched
    the developing Western nations on an explosive growth in population
    and consumption called \"progress.\"

## The Industrial Revolution

This period marks a major explosion at the scale of humankind:

-   phenomenal increase in population
-   increase in per capita consumption rates
-   totally unparalleled scope
-   these two critical correlates (population and consumption rates) of
    industrialization quickly led to overwhelming pressure on natural
    resources

Very quickly, industrial nations could no longer supply from within
their own boundaries the resources needed to support further growth or
even to maintain current consumption levels.

As a consequence:

-   Industrial revolution led to an unprecedented assault on the
    world\'s relatively stable non-Western tribal peoples and their
    resources.
-   Many of the \"underdeveloped\" resources controlled by the world\'s
    self-sufficient tribal peoples were quickly appropriated by
    outsiders to support their own industrial progress.
-   In the last 200 years, these tribal cultures have virtually
    disappeared or have been completely marginalized.

Increased rates of resource consumption, accompanying industrialization,
have been even more critical than mere population increase:

-   Industrial civilization is a culture of consumption. In this
    respect, it differs most strikingly from tribal cultures.
-   Industrial economies are founded on the principle that consumption
    must be ever expanded.
-   Complex systems of mass marketing and advertising have been
    developed for that specific purpose.
-   Social stratification in industrial societies is based primarily on
    inequalities in material wealth and is both supported and reflected
    by differential access to resources.

Industrial ideological systems and prejudices:

-   place great stress on belief in
    -   continual economic growth
    -   progress
-   measure \"standard of living\" in terms of levels of material
    consumption.

## Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is the belief in the superiority of one\'s own culture. It
is vital to the integrity of any culture, but it can be a threat to the
well-being of other peoples when it becomes the basis for forcing
Western standards upon non-Western tribal cultures.

The impact of modern civilization on tribal peoples is a dominant
research theme in anthropology and social sciences.

Among economic development writers, the consensus is the clearly
ethnocentric view that any contact with superior industrial culture
causes non-Western tribal peoples to voluntarily reject their own
cultures in order to obtain a better life.

In the past, anthropologists also often viewed this contact from the
same ethnocentric premises accepted by government officials, developers,
missionaries, and the general public. But in recent years, there has
been considerable confusion in the enormous culture change literature
regarding the basic question of why tribal cultures seem inevitably to
be acculturated or modernized by industrial civilization.

-   There is therefore a problem to conceptualize the causes of the
    transformation process in simple nonethnocentric terms.
-   This apparent inability may be due to the fact that the analysts are
    members of the culture of consumption that today happens to be the
    dominant world culture type.
-   The most powerful cultures have always assumed a natural right to
    exploit the world\'s resources wherever they find them, regardless
    of the prior claims of indigenous populations.

Arguing for efficiency and survival of the fittest, old-fashioned
colonialists elevated this \"right\" to the level of an ethical and
legal principle that could be invoked to justify the elimination of any
cultures that were not making \"effective\" use of their resources.

This viewpoint has found its way into modern theories of cultural
evolution, expressed as the \"Law of Cultural Dominance\": *any cultural
system which exploits more effectively the energy resources of a given
environment will tend to spread in that environment at the expense of
other less effective (indigenous) systems.*

-   These old attitudes of social Darwinism are deeply embedded in our
    ideological system.
-   They still occur in the professional literature on culture change.

While resource exploitation is clearly the basic cause of the
destruction of tribal peoples, it is important to identify the
underlying ethnocentric attitudes that are often used to justify what
are actually exploitative policies.

Apart from the obvious ethical implications involved here, upon close
inspection all of these theories expounding the greater adaptability,
efficiency, and survival value of the dominant industrial culture prove
to be quite misleading.

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*Of course, as a culture of consumption, industrial\
civilization is uniquely capable of consuming resources at tremendous\
rates, but this certainly does not make it a more effective culture
than\
low-energy tribal cultures, if stability or long-run ecological success
is\
taken as the criterion for \"effectiveness.\"*

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Likewise, we should expect, almost by definition, that members of the
culture of consumption would probably consider another culture\'s
resources to be underexploited and to use this as a justification for
appropriating them.

Among some writers, it is assumed that all people share our desire for
what we define as material wealth, prosperity, and progress and that
others have different cultures only because they have not yet been
exposed to the superior technological alternatives offered by industrial
civilization. Supporters of this view seem to minimize the difficulties
of creating new wants in a culture and at the same time make the
following highly questionable and clearly ethnocentric assumptions:

1.  The materialistic values of industrial civilization are cultural
    universals.
2.  Tribal cultures are unable to satisfy the material needs of their
    peoples.
3.  Industrial goods are, in fact, always superior to their handcrafted
    counterparts.

**Assumption 1 -** Unquestionably, tribal cultures represent a clear
rejection of the materialistic values of industrial civilization, yet
tribal individuals can indeed be made to reject their traditional values
if outside interests create the necessary conditions for this rejection.
The point is that far more is involved here than a mere demonstration of
the superiority of industrial civilization.

**Assumption 2 -** The ethnocentrism of the second assumption is
obvious. Clearly, tribal cultures could not have survived for millions
of years if they did not do a reasonable job of satisfying basic human
needs.

**Assumption 3 -** Regarding the third assumption, there is abundant
evidence that many of the material accoutrements of industrial
civilization may well not be worth their real costs regardless of how
appealing they may seem in the short term.

