This blog is about the intersection between evolutionary biology and food. But also about practical applications, sustainable agriculture, and general tasty things. I originally started eating this way to heal from chronic health problems and...it worked!
Melissa McEwen
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09/08/2011 - 18:36
All societies are sick, but some are sicker than others…. There are some customs and social institutions in all societies that compromise human wellbeing…. For a number of reasons …many anthropologists have chosen not to write about the darker side of life in folk societies, or at least not to write very much about it... The message of this book is not that traditional beliefs and practices are never adaptive and that they never contribute to a population’s well-being; and I am not claiming that people never think rationally enough to make effective decisions about meeting the challenges posed by their environments. To do so would be absurd…what I am calling for is a moratorium on the uncritical assumption that the traditional beliefs and practices of folk populations are adaptive while those of modern societies are not and a commitment to examining the relative adaptiveness of the beliefs and practices of all societies. The goal is a better understanding of human adaptation not just in particular societies but over the course of human history.
That's from Sick Societies, by Robert B. Edgerton, which is a very interesting book. The subtitle "the myth of primitive harmony" is misleading. Not all societies in the book are stereotypically "primitive." He includes both jungle foragers and Appalachians living in hollers. Harmful maladaptations include physical mutilation, cannibalism, food and sex taboos, initiation ceremonies that make the worst Frat hazing look tame, and belief in witchcraft and divination (yes, some foraging societies persecute and sometimes kill people that they believe are witches).
The Netsilik Inuit believed that when a pregnant woman first felt labor pains, she had to be confined to a small snow house if it was winter or a tent during the summer. The woman herself was considered to be unclean, and a newborn child was thought to give off a particularly dangerous vapor at birth. Because the entire community was thought to be in great danger, no one was permitted to assist the woman in giving birth. If the birth proved to be difficult, a shaman might be summoned to drive away evil spirits, but no one was allowed to touch the woman.87 This taboo might have served as a population control measure because it probably increased infant mortality, but it also endangered the mother, and there is no evidence that the Netsilik had any desire to reduce the number of fertile and sexually attractive women in their society.
The Gebusi of Papua New Guinea are one of many small-scale societies whose fear of witches has been maladaptive. A very small society of about 450 people in a lowland rain forest area of southcentral New Guinea, the Gebusi were still beyond the influence of missions or government officials when Bruce Knauft studied them between 1980 and 1982.34 They were a remarkably noncompetitive, self-effacing, mutually deferential people who actively encouraged nonviolence. Yet they believed that all illness was caused by witchcraft, and their resulting attacks against presumed witches were so violent that their homicide rate was one of the highest ever recorded. Nearly one-third of all deaths among them were homicides, and almost all of the victims were suspected witches. Keith Otterbein has suggested that their practice of executing people thought to be witches was an adaptive “group survival” strategy because it controlled the malevolence of witches; but Knauft points out that their killing can hardly be considered adaptive because the population, small to begin with, was “dying out at an exceedingly rapid rate,” and their extremely high homicide rate continues to be an important cause of their population decline.35
For me, it is quite fascinating. Having grown up around very traditionalist people I derive a certain level of comfort from traditionalism. But at some point it's clear that I'll always be an outsider, as my parents were. When it comes to committing heart and soul to ancient traditions whether social, dietary, or religious…I baulk. In the end traditionalism fails for me because in every tradition there is maladaptive beliefs and behaviors bundled together with ancient wisdom. Members of these traditions who have grown up with them from birth are often unable to see this.
Traditional solutions and long-standing beliefs and practices tend to persist not because they are optimally beneficial but because they generally work just well enough that changes in them are not selfevidently needed. Given all that we know about the sometimes astoundingly bad judgment of “rational” planners in modern nations, it seems unlikely that people in smaller and simpler societies that lack our scientific and technological sophistication would always make optimally adaptive decisions even should they try to do so...Psychologist Donald Campbell has suggested that this may be so because people have evolved to be conservative, to respect established ways and responsible leaders; for Campbell, conservatism is a survival mechanism.43 Similarly, sociologist Joseph Lopreato was so impressed by the human predilection for conforming to rules and forcing others to do likewise that he posited a genetic need for conformity….ith the partial exception of subsistence activities, for every man or woman in a folk society who has been able to explain why something believed or done is beneficial, there have been thousands (in some societies this includes everyone) who provide no more by way of explanation than “it is our custom” or “we’ve always done it this way.”
This has happened even when I've tried to climb up the family tree into our own past. A problem here is there are lots of trees to climb. I've climbed a lot of them so far and have been pretty disappointed, so I take what I like and leave. Unfortunately this is in itself somewhat maladaptive itself as it leaves me without the community and sense of belonging that usually accompanies such traditionalism.
postpartum depression are thought to include the stress of the event for the mother and family (including fears of being an inadequate mother), individual psychological characteristics of the woman, and changes in levels of estrogen and progesterone. Yet despite the frequency and seriousness of postpartum depression in the United States, the phenomenon appears to be quite rare in non-Western societies.112 For example, when Sara Harkness asked Kipsigis women in Kenya about their emotions following child birth, they unanimously denied that they felt sad or cried during the early weeks after giving birth. In fact, they declared that such things never occurred.113 For these Kipsigis women, despite hormonal changes, postpartum depression did not exist; giving birth was a happy event, one looked forward to by women who received positive social support throughout their pregnancies and after the birth of the child. The reasons why American culture (and the cultures of Western European countries) has made giving birth a depressing event presumably have to do with psychosocial stress. The Kipsigis and other societies have not made giving birth a stressful occurrence.
I've often thought that Jewish people are lucky because they have a strong secularized diaspora. I have some Jewish blood myself, but found that even that community still seems to be based on ties of kinship that render me an outsider. Is there an equivalent for Southerners out there somewhere? Maybe in Austin or Atlanta? I'm not a big fan of hot weather unfortunately.
09/04/2011 - 13:05
When watching the show about the men of Vanuatu, I became curious about the state of women on Tanna. In the show, there are no interviews of any Tannan women. In fact, the women aren't mentioned much at all, except when the Tannans are commenting on the housework practices of the Western families. The Tannan men say that in their culture, such housework (cooking, cleaning) is something only women do.
So I started reading more about the women of Vanuatu. The situation is complex because, as usual, most of the earliest accounts are written by Westerners, but luckily we have the accounts of both missionaries AND anti-missionary tradespeople. They are remarkably consistent in some ways, so it seems that the people once practiced widow strangulation after the husband's death, something similar to the Indian Sati widow immolation. Colonialist efforts to stop the practice were mostly successful, though it persisted in some areas for a long time. There are also accounts of women being beaten by their husbands.
Vanuatu now seems to be in a situation where some of the tribes were Christianized by missionaries and others are part of a traditionialist reactionary movement called "Kastom." Based on the practices portrayed on the show and their religion, it seems that these men are part of "Kastom" tribes. There is good evidence that Kastom has had some harmful effects on women as people have become more strict about taboos. A huge burden of the taboo system lies on women since many taboos are about childbirth and menstruation. If a woman does something improperly, like gardening during menstruation (they are supposed to seclude themselves in menstrual huts), she may be blamed for misfortunes that befall the village, particularly if she does not sacrifice pigs to repair the violation.
Vanuatu is not completely isolated and their are women's movements in islands across the Pacific (which I'm aware is a very diverse place). This interesting article gives a voice to some of their concerns.
I am not a bra-burning person; I never wore a bra, so, I do not know why bra-burning is so important to the feminist. —Participant in “Women, Development and Empowerment” workshop, Naboutini, Fiji, 1987
It's clear that many women in these places feel that Western feminism is concerned with very trivial things. I would confess that I agree, having most recently been in an argument with a feminist tech writer over whether or not the face that we give little girls "gendered" toys leads them to not chose careers in tech and science (I don't agree.)
Many women's writers in the Pacific, such as Tongan writer Konai Helu Thaman, in fact reject the feminist label. This phenomenon is not just Pacific, a growing number of young women in the West, even those that hold classical feminist ideas, also reject this label.
Interviewing 82 people in Guam in order to gauge their thoughts on feminism, Laura made the same mistake that I had made in my interview with Thaman.14 We had both used the term feminism without first defining it. Laura recalls asking “Are you a feminist?” “What do you think of feminism?” “Without exception,” she states, “they said: Please don’t call me a feminist”
Like many Western women who are further quizzed on their rejection of feminism, Thaman later qualifies her statement “when people ask, are you a feminist, if feminism is about equality, equal worth, then, yes, I am a feminist”
I think it's quite interesting that Western social conservatives often lament the decline of the nuclear family, often pointing out that children that grow up without a father are worse off. Many Western feminists spend a large amount of time critiquing the nuclear family as being oppressive to women. But the nuclear family is a modern invention. As Folese, a Samoan writer, says:
The origins of western feminism arose out of suburbia [sic] depression and the need women felt to “get out of the house,” leave the kids behind, burn bras, overcome depression and addiction to things like valium etceteras. In life in a Samoan village, the extended family acts as a support system for mothers. The trap of the nuclear family simply doesn’t exist in the village situation.12
To me, the Western nuclear family has many parallels to Western agro-monocultures, in that it represents a less robust and rich caricature of the natural human family structure. Furthermore, the Western nuclear structure often is packaged with a belief that it is bad for women to work outside the home. Pacific women have always worked, tending their crops and animals.
In the Pacific, feminism is perceived as being hostile to the communal and family values. As a women in the Guam workshop put it:
… “feminists” do not want babies and yet women’s lives are defined in terms of their children. Some respondents did not want to have anything to do with women who wanted to live only with other women, or who rejected the family. In their view, the base of women’s lives was the family. (Griffen with Yee, 1989, p. 8)
Furthermore, traditions that the women do not view as oppressive, which involve separate complementary spheres for men and women, are often labeled as oppressive by Western feminists. As Tupu, a Western Samoan women says: “We don’t seek a social structure of total “equality”—we don’t want to do the same things as men. We have a social structure that has reciprocal power relations in different forms."
The women often do not want to do away with traditions like menstrual seclusion (something not alien to the West certainly. Less than a mile away from me in Williamsburg there are Hasidic Jewish women who do the same thing). Among Maori feminists, there is currently an argument about whether or not the traditional Maori culture was oppressive to women. Some Maori women believe that women were powerful in their own way in the traditional culture and their goal is to reclaim this from Westernization. It seems that in some ways traditional cultures were better, such as in Tonga where women had access to land which was prohibited by colonial governments. In other ways they seem worse, such as the widow strangulation in Vanuatu.
Having grown up in the South with some of my family being very traditionalist, the skepticism of the Pacific women towards feminism is very familiar to me. However, I find that such skeptical traditionalist women in America are often belittled, whereas feminists are willing to listen to non-Western women, though their voices are often conspiciously absent, perhaps because they do not toe the party line.
09/03/2011 - 12:07
That's what the men of Vanuatu proclaim in this really interesting series called Meet The Natives. I don't usually enjoy reality TV, but I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed this show, which is posted on Youtube. The premise of the show is that five men from Tanna, a village in Vanuatu go to Britain and live among what they refer to as "three tribes": the working class, the middle class, and the upper class. I often find that shows about tribal people can be dehumanizing and prevent people from seeing the tribal people as individuals, but this show does not suffer from this. Chief Yapa, Joel, Posen, Albi and Jimmy Joseph are all very interesting and wise people. Jimmy is the narrator, as he speaks very good English, but the voices and personalities of the other men are very distinct as well. Interestingly, Jimmy also seems to be the uploader on Youtube and has some comments on the show there.
I actually learned about Vanuatu from The Paleo Guy's blog. The people of Vanuatu are not hunter-gatherers, but foraging horticulturalists who grow roots and raise pigs. It's clear from the documentary that the people are very healthy, with lean muscular bodies, clear skin, and strikingly white straight teeth. As I have written before here, horticultural and foraging cultures are very diverse. I can understand why the people of Tanna were chosen because their tribe seems very happy and healthy.
It becomes obvious that the five men aren't going to Britain just to experience the culture, but because they dream of meeting Prince Philip, who they believe is the son of their God. The rest of this post contains spoilers for the show, so if you want to be excited about finding out if they achieve their dream, watch the show first and then come back here.
The first family they visit is a middle class pig-farming family. I thought it was interesting that they chose a free-range pig farmer, since most pig farms these days are not free range. I would imagine that the men would have had a very difficult experience if they visited a typical pig farm.The people of Tanna also farm pigs, but there were amazed by the size and fatness of the pigs in Britain. However, the fact that the farmer artificially inseminated the pigs bothered them. The chief said that "animals and human beings are the same thing, mating should be done in private." Posen, the pig farmer, says that pigs are possessions and they must treat them with respect. They then cut to a video of Posen feeding his pigs some coconut. The pigs in Tanna are even more free ranging than the British pigs, wandering about the village. I suppose they stick around because the people feed them.
However, while animals and human beings are the same thing to the Tannans, the chief also says that "animals are made to be killed, but not human beings." The Tannan views on animals are among the most interesting parts of the show. While eating dinner with the middle class family, it comes up that the Tannans eat dogs. The middle class mother asks if they eat their pets. They say that they do not, but some dogs are pets, others are not.
Dogs come up again later in the show when they are staying with the working class family. While out shopping with them, the Tannans see homeless people for the first time. They cannot understand how people can be homeless. Jimmy says that in their village anyone can build a hut and everyone will help them and share food with them. Later in the show the Tannans say that sharing is the source of their happiness. The sad fact is that if a homeless person tried to build their own house on unused land in the US they would be evicted. It is even illegal to share food with the homeless in some cities.
After they learn about the homeless the Tannans are brought to a place where women spent all day "treating dogs like humans." It's a dog grooming parlor. After seeing this the chief says that "English people care a lot for their animals but they don't care about people's lives."
The Tannans meet a kindred spirit when they meet a professional rabbit hunter. They are impressed with his skills and philosophy on life, which is that he wants to do what he loves and not be part of the rat race. They say he is like a brother to him. When they are skinning the rabbit, they learn that people no longer want to wear fur. Jimmy is mystified, he says it makes sense to wear the fur since the rabbits are living in England and it's cold in England and the fur is warm. The hunter says this mystifies him too, but that he is so happy to spent time with the Tannans since they understand him and many people in England do not understand hunting anymore. Later when they are visiting the upper class people, the Tannans see a fox hunt. Because of animal rights activists, real fox hunts are banned in England and they carry on the tradition by having fake fox hunts. The Tannans think this is a crazy waste of time.
Another interesting this is that when they see the homeless people they ask "does this mean they have no fathers or mothers?" Later they learn about the fact that many families in Britain are broken. Their working class host, Ray, tells them he has a son from a previous relationship who he never sees. Now he is off to war in Afghanistan. This makes the Tannans very said. They explain that the bond between fathers and sons is very important.
Another thing I really liked about the show is that it also wasn't exploitative of the people of Britain. I've seen a fair number of British reality shows that portray British people, particularly the working class, as being very uncivilized, but while it's clear the working class family on this show had problems, they were shown as very nice and welcoming people. The Tannans form very close bonds with the working class family and are actually happy that they have to share a room because they like sleeping near each other so they can talk.
Unfortunately when they visit the working class family they have their first tastes of truly processed foods from boxes and KFC. I think some people have the idea that taste is more culturally relative than it actually is. The truth is that all humans are vulnerable to hyperpalatable foods, though increasing exposure seems to lead to increasing divorce between craving and needs. The Tannans say that KFC is very good, even better than home cooked foods. I was heartened to see that during a meal with the middle class family, the chief asks to be passed the butter and he eats all of it up with a spoon.
I was very happy that they do get to meet Prince Phillip, though they want him to come back to the island with them to fulfill their prophecy and he doesn't. It's funny because they say that they understand that son of their God chose to live among the upper class tribe because the upper class tribe follows the ancient rules of the ancestors. In the end Joel says "I think the English should return to a more traditional life. I think they used to be a lot like us, living with love and respect and unity. But if they carry on the way they are, they won't be able to find that life anymore."
Interestingly, the people there credit some Westerners with having taught them important things. According to legend, a US serviceman during WWII named "John Navy" taught them to end tribal warfare.
I think it's amazing that we are at the point that we can listen to the wisdom of people from places like Vanuatu, but underneath there is a tension. In the show it's clear that on their island there are gender roles that most Westerners would be uncomfortable with. Some jobs are lady's jobs, some are men's jobs. When they visit a gay club the Tannans are very uncomfortable. I learned later that parts of Tanna are part of a movement known as Kastom, which is a traditionalist movement. They resist things like public schools, believing them to be a threat to their customs (correct, IMHO). The commenters on Youtube praised the Tannan's ability to "live in harmony with nature" but were clearly put off by these attitudes as well as the attitudes towards animals.
Either way, I learned a lot from the show and I'm looking forward to watching the next one, which is about their trip to the US.
Jimmy home with his baby
12/08/2010 - 17:36
A well-meaning, but mistaken, commenter pointed me towards this paper: Hadza Scavenging: Implications for Plio/Pleistocene Hominid Subsistence. Notice it says "Implications for" not "An example of." The Hazda are not living fossils, though many anthropologists think their lifestyle might have some similarities with paleolithic humans.
But the paper is priceless for the actual descriptions of how Hazda people obtained meat. Often it was
1. Some people hear something or see vultures in the distance
2. They investigate
3. Turns out to be some predator consuming meat
4. They scare away the predator and hope something good is left
5. Often all the "premium cuts" are gone, but they crack open the brain and other bones and eat the fat from theses
In this way it challenges two silly assumptions
1. Foragers eat lots of lean meat... sorry! the lions took that before you got there! Looks like only marrow is left.
2. Male foragers obtain giraffe meat by valiantly hunting it down...sorry! Looks like a group of women and some kids scavenged that meat from a lion kill.
Note that Hazda have some modern technology, so paleolithic foragers would have been even more dependent on scavenging.
Hmm, I think I have some marrow bones in the fridge calling my name....
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