#640 Manvir Singh: Going Beyond the Nomadic-Egalitarian Model of Hunter-Gatherers
Dr. Manvir Singh is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Toulouse. His research program aims to explain why societies develop complex, recurrent traditions such as shamanism, witchcraft, origin myths, property rights, sharing norms, lullabies, dance, music, and gods, as these have appeared in all types of societies across the globe, from nomadic hunter-gatherer bands to complex, industrial, mega-urbanized states.
In this episode, we talk about a recent paper of his, “Human social organization during the Late Pleistocene: Beyond the nomadic-egalitarian model”. We break down the nomadic-egalitarian hunter-gatherer model. Dr. Singh presents his diverse histories model, and we discuss the implications it has for our evolved psychology, and how we think about evolutionary mismatches. We discuss how human societies get organized, the origins of agriculture, the transition to large-scale agricultural societies, and non-agricultural state societies. We also talk about the sympathetic plot in fiction, and its psychological origins. Finally, we discuss how to think about the functionality of beliefs.
Time Links:
Intro
The nomadic-egalitarian model, and where it comes from
What aspects of our evolution does this model inform?
The problem with “evolutionary mismatches”
The diverse histories model
How do human societies get organized? Is it ecology, culture, evolved adaptations?
When did we really develop agriculture?
Implications for how we understand our evolved psychology: dominance and status-seeking behaviors; group identity; gene-culture coevolution and human social psychology
Intergroup conflict and war
The transition to large-scale agricultural societies
State societies that are not based on agriculture
The “cognitive revolution”
A comment on popular science writing, and a summary of the diverse histories model
The sympathetic plot, its psychological origins, and implications for the evolution of fiction
Thinking about functionality in human traditions, beliefs and behaviors
Follow Dr. Singh’s work!
Follow Dr. Singh’s work:
Our first interview: https://youtu.be/Ijf8cNBgztA
Personal website: https://www.manvir.org/
ResearchGate profile: https://bit.ly/2WeXaKF
Pieces on Aeon: https://bit.ly/3iU3Ath
Twitter handle: @mnvrsngh