Read any his­to­ry book, and chances are you’ll encounter pre­sump­tions, explic­it or implic­it, about some­thing called “cul­tur­al evo­lu­tion”. His­to­ri­ans have long felt that his­tor­i­cal events were tak­ing place with­in the frame­work of some kind of process or process­es which should be described using ter­mi­nol­o­gy bor­rowed from the bio­log­i­cal sci­ences. Soci­eties, we are told, “evolve” in the same sense that equ­us “evolved’ from eohip­pus. 

But soci­eties are not bio­log­i­cal organ­isms, and they are not species. More­over, the term “soci­ety” does not cor­re­spond to any real thing with which either organ­ism or species form cred­i­ble analo­gies. Organ­ic evo­lu­tion is not an apt, or rel­e­vant anal­o­gy to apply to human cul­tures. Those who seek to describe human his­to­ry as a par­al­lel to bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion are pro­found­ly mis­un­der­stand­ing both.

A species is defined, bio­log­i­cal­ly, as the sum total of indi­vid­ual organ­isms which are suf­fi­cient­ly close, genet­i­cal­ly, to be able to suc­cess­ful­ly repro­duce. While there may be prac­ti­cal dif­fi­cul­ties in deter­min­ing how and where this lim­it­ing fac­tor applies in giv­en cas­es (these are called “species prob­lems” in biol­o­gy), all cas­es are ulti­mate­ly sup­posed to be deter­mined by the same test, in the same frame of ref­er­ence. In this sense, “species” is a rea­son­ably objec­tive and con­sis­tent con­cept in biol­o­gy. When we say that Odobe­nus ros­marus [Wal­rus] is a species and that Acer sac­cha­rum [Sug­ar Maple] is a species, we are defin­ing each by the same standards.

The terms “soci­ety” and “cul­ture”, how­ev­er, are not defined by any reg­u­lar and con­sis­tent prin­ci­ple. They do not refer to any­thing that is agreed upon by his­to­ri­ans, and when his­to­ri­ans talk about “cul­tur­al evo­lu­tion”, they could be refer­ring to almost any arbi­trary con­glom­er­a­tion of indi­vid­ual human beings, rei­fied into a hypo­thet­i­cal iden­ti­ty. They may be apply­ing their hypo­thet­i­cal tem­plate to who­ev­er hap­pens to be in some arbi­trar­i­ly defined geo­graph­i­cal area, or to some peo­ple who speak the same lan­guage, or to peo­ple who are sub­ject to a par­tic­u­lar set of laws, or to peo­ple who are relat­ed by puta­tive kin­ship, or who are mobile but trav­el­ing togeth­er, or any neb­u­lous assem­bly of these ele­ments. There is no agreed upon prin­ci­ple defin­ing a soci­ety or a cul­ture. The sub­di­vi­sions of the human race being dis­cussed are not made by any coher­ent prin­ci­ple, and there is no con­sis­tent test or val­ue involved. This alone makes talk­ing about “cul­tur­al evo­lu­tion” noth­ing more than a vague anal­o­gy to bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion, and a dubi­ous one, at that. Read more »

I’ve been asked to explain exact­ly what I think hap­pened dur­ing the peri­od when agri­cul­ture was intro­duced to Europe, and how it dif­fers from the cur­rent con­sen­sus among pre­his­to­ri­ans. First of all, let me make it clear that I’m propos­ing a mod­i­fi­ca­tion of that con­sen­sus, not a rad­i­cal alter­ation of it. I think that the cur­rent­ly most accept­ed views are ham­pered by a num­ber of fac­tors: 1) an over-reac­tion to the pre­vi­ous generation’s reliance on hypo­thet­i­cal migra­tions, result­ing in a pref­er­ence for sta­t­ic mod­els of human behav­iour, 2) a fail­ure to prof­it from use­ful com­par­isons with the his­to­ry and anthro­pol­o­gy of the New World, 3) the per­va­sive influ­ence of invalid notions of eco­nom­ics and social evo­lu­tion, inher­it­ed and uncrit­i­cal­ly absorbed from 19th cen­tu­ry thinkers.

The dom­i­nant school, today, of inter­pret­ing the Neolith­ic arose in reac­tion to ear­li­er schools of thought, which viewed pre­his­to­ry as a series of migra­tions and inva­sions of eth­nic groups, each one held to account for some dif­fer­ence in mate­r­i­al cul­ture. Lan­guage and eth­nic­i­ty were, with only per­func­to­ry reser­va­tions, assumed to be con­gru­ent. The spread of agri­cul­ture in Europe and the spread of Indo-Euro­pean lan­guages were assumed to be dif­fer­ent events, tak­ing place at dif­fer­ent times. It was assumed that agri­cul­ture spread into Europe, from its ori­gins in the Mid­dle East, start­ing some­time around the sixth mil­len­ni­um BC. Much lat­er, Indo-Euro­pean tribes of con­querors, empow­ered by their domes­ti­ca­tion of the horse, swept across Europe (as well as Iran, Cen­tral Asia, and India) impos­ing their lan­guage, reli­gion, and social struc­ture on every­one in their path. The “orig­i­nal home­land” of the Indo-Euro­peans, these puta­tive con­querors, was thought to be some­where in the present Ukraine, and much effort was made to deter­mine this loca­tion by exam­in­ing the var­i­ous Indo-Euro­pean lan­guages. Thus, the orig­i­nal farm­ers of Europe were held to be non-Indo-Euro­pean-speak­ing natives, sub­se­quent­ly over­pow­ered by an Indo-Euro­pean élite, who imposed their lan­guage on all but a few iso­lat­ed groups — the Basques, the Finno-Ugri­an peo­ples of the North, and the Etr­uscans. The most elo­quent cham­pi­on of this mod­el was the Lithuan­ian-Amer­i­can archae­ol­o­gist Mar­i­ja Gimbu­tas (1901–1994). Gimbu­tas envi­sioned a pre-Indo-Euro­pean agri­cul­tur­al soci­ety in Europe which was matris­tic and “God­dess-cen­tered”, and peace­ful, while the con­quer­ing Indo-Euro­peans were patris­tic and vio­lent. These Indo-Euro­peans were iden­ti­fied as specif­i­cal­ly being the Kur­gan cul­ture of the west­ern Eurasian steppes. This rather car­toon­ish view of the Neolith­ic, which relied on cul­tur­al­ly com­fort­able notions of gen­der dual­i­ty and also on tra­di­tion­al, but bio­log­i­cal­ly naive, ideas of race and eth­nic­i­ty, had a tremen­dous influ­ence, not only on his­to­ri­ans, but on pop­u­lar cul­ture. Read more »

Skye Sepp points out to me that the Con­ser­v­a­tive bud­get is not as innocu­ous as I believed. I find his objec­tion entire­ly con­vinc­ing, and here­by change my mind. He focus­es on the “tax-free $5,000 account” pro­gram, which looks very attrac­tive on the sur­face. But, on clos­er exam­i­na­tion, it turns out to be a swin­dle, aimed at neu­tral­iz­ing the pro­gres­sive income tax sys­tem, so that the rich pay less while the poor and aver­age Cana­di­ans pay more. In the pro­gram, Indi­vid­u­als will be able to put only $5,000 a year into accounts to earn tax-free inter­est and/or cap­i­tal gains. In their first full year of oper­a­tion, this will cost the fed­er­al trea­sury only $50 mil­lion in lost tax rev­enue. That’s why it did­n’t leap out of the bud­get with glar­ing warn­ing lights. In fact, it looked rather warm and fuzzy. The small ini­tial sum makes it look like a mea­sure aimed at Cana­di­ans with mod­est sav­ings. The Con­ser­v­a­tives keep repeat­ing that it would “help some­one buy a car” — which is non­sense on the face of it, as you would have to have very large amounts in sav­ings for it to be use­ful for that. Read more »

Fidel Cas­tro with Chilean dic­ta­tor Augus­to Pinochet, in 1977, cel­e­brat­ing the tri­umph of Pinochet’s tor­ture regime. Pinochet ulti­mate­ly faced a mild pun­ish­ment and repu­di­a­tion, but it looks like Cas­tro will get away with his atrocities.

Cas­tro with Sovi­et dic­ta­tor Niki­ta Khrushchev. Among oth­er crimes, Khrushchev mas­ter­mind­ed racist pogroms and orches­trat­ed planned famines.. Togeth­er, C and K near­ly brought the world to a nuclear holocaust.

Cas­tro with Ethiopi­an dic­ta­tor Mengis­tu Haile Mari­am. Cas­tro’s behind-the-scenes schem­ing brought Mari­am to pow­er, with Sovi­et sup­port. Cas­tro’s admi­ra­tion for Mengis­tu, who start­ed his reign with a blood­bath, was unbound­ed. In May of 1977 the Swedish gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Save the Chil­dren Fund stat­ed that “1,000 chil­dren have been killed, and their bod­ies are left in the streets and are being eat­en by wild hye­nas … You can see the heaped-up bod­ies of mur­dered chil­dren, most of them aged eleven to thir­teen, lying in the gut­ter, as you dri­ve out of Addis Aba­ba.” [1] Cas­tro enthu­si­as­ticly applaud­ed the action. Mari­am sub­se­quent­ly under­took one of the cen­tu­ry’s larg­er geno­cides, in which many mil­lions died. Cas­tro’s sup­port for this geno­cide con­tin­ued until Mengis­tu’s fall.

Span­ish dic­ta­tor Fran­cis­co Fran­co. Fran­co and Cas­tro were life-long friends and mutu­al admir­ers. Cas­tro mod­eled his speak­ing style and swag­ger­ing man­ner­isms on Fran­co’s. Cas­tro’s “ide­ol­o­gy” was Span­ish Fas­cism (Falangism) until it sud­den­ly became Marx­ism… a “change” that is mean­ing­less, as it involved no change.

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I have lost all respect for Gen­er­al Rick Hilli­er, Canada’s Chief of Defense Staff (the high­est rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cer in the coun­try). He may be very com­pe­tent in run­ning mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, but he can­not be trust­ed in the fun­da­men­tal area of prop­er pub­lic behav­iour for some­one in his post. He has done some­thing which is extreme­ly offen­sive to a free peo­ple in a demo­c­ra­t­ic nation. He has used his office to try to muz­zle demo­c­ra­t­ic debate in Cana­da about our role in Afghanistan. By claim­ing that our free demo­c­ra­t­ic debate “helps” the Tal­iban, he is demon­strat­ing that he, him­self, is infect­ed with the vilest ide­ol­o­gy of the Tal­iban. His “shut up, don’t think, and do what you’re told” atti­tude to the Cana­di­an peo­ple is pro­found­ly offen­sive. He should be removed from his post at once.

The rul­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty is rife with kind of Tal­iban-like men­tal­i­ty. We should be work­ing to get rid of them, too.

A read­er asked me why I assumed that late mesolith­ic and ear­ly neolith­ic peo­ples could under­take long riv­er and coastal journeys. 

Let me tell you about a lit­tle place in north­ern Cana­da called Peawanuck. I have writ­ten about it else­where, because it has sen­ti­men­tal impor­tance to me. It also has some impor­tance to the out­side world, because, since 2000 it has been the site of the Peawanuck Neu­tron Mon­i­tor. This is part of a glob­al net­work of neu­tron mon­i­tors strate­gi­cal­ly locat­ed to pro­vide pre­cise, real-time, 3‑dimensional mea­sure­ments of cos­mic ray angu­lar dis­tri­b­u­tion activ­i­ty. If your main inter­est is his­to­ry, you may not know why this is impor­tant, but trust me, it is. Oth­er mon­i­tors are locat­ed at the South Pole, Maw­son and McMur­do Sound sta­tions in Antarc­ti­ca; at Inu­vik, Fort Smith, Nain, and Goose Bay in Cana­da; at Thule in Green­land; on Sval­bard (the arc­tic island which appears in The Gold­en Com­pass); and Apati­ty in north­ern Rus­sia. These loca­tions share an obvi­ous char­ac­ter­is­tic: remote­ness. Read more »

For the last fif­teen years, I’ve been com­plain­ing to every­one I know about the pecu­liar absence of fish from his­tor­i­cal writ­ing and analy­sis. Go into any uni­ver­si­ty library, and you will find the stacks filled with mas­sive col­lec­tions of books and jour­nals about every con­ceiv­able aspect of farm­ing, ani­mal hus­bandry, and nomadism. Urban stud­ies from every region and era have been under­tak­en. Con­tro­ver­sies and debates about the pre­cise rela­tion­ships between all these activ­i­ties flash like sum­mer light­ning storms. But where is fish­ing? Try to even find his­tor­i­cal stud­ies of fish­ing and fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties in a uni­ver­si­ty library. One imme­di­ate­ly plum­mets from banks of shelv­ing units to a tiny clus­ter on a sin­gle dusty shelf. Very lit­tle of this is his­tor­i­cal in out­look. Read more »