thanks for the reply ... would you have any resources related to the radical anthropology group? On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 2:06 AM, Andy Robinson <[email protected]> wrote:

Hiya,

Sims is new to me, but this sounds very similar to Engels' position, and also to Zerzan. Things get very speculative that far back, and most anthropologists leave this stuff to archaeologists nowadays, partly because of the reflexive turn in anthropology. The main quibble I'd raise is that, while some hunter-gatherer groups are recorded as gender-egalitarian, others are not (e.g. Sambia, Guarani, Yanomami), and on the other hand, some sedentary pastoralists are gender-egalitarian or tend towards women's power (Ladakh, Manipur). Also, there isn't much evidence for rule by women at any point, and the whole transition from ape to man thing is dubious. We're talking transition from extinct early hominids whose social life we know next to nothing about; people in the Engelsian tradition (and social Darwinists also) extrapolate from chimps (which are patriarchal and aggressive), but we're actually more closely related to Bonobos, which are also communistic, egalitarian and arguably matriarchal. Also I'm fairly sure the "incest taboo led to intelligence" thing is falsified by animal breeding experiments, though I don't know the details.

bw Andy

On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]>wrote:

...

see http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/old/pub_knight_power_watts_big.pdfan... read it with http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/old/pub_knight_power_watts_big.pdf

really interesting stuff about the origins of class society and the hunter-gathering to agriculture switch

Michel

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