The Usefulness of "Prehistory"?

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The following guest post come from Randall Foote. This is part of an exchange he had with the eminent historian John Lukacs about the usefulness of the idea of "prehistory." See Foote's earlier post on a related topic here. Foote is retired from his business and now teaches as an adjunct instructor at Roxbury Community College.

Dear Professor Lukacs,

As to your question:

“. . . . Because of your thoughts about the genesis of mankind: do you agree with Barfield (and myself) that, strictly speaking or, rather, thinking, there was no such thing as ‘prehistoric’ man?”

Yes, that goes to the heart of one subject I am working on.

In brief: no, the idea of “prehistoric man” makes no sense to me, in either of the two ways in which it is understood. The sense of “pre-history” as that which comes before written history is very odd, as if the discovery and use of writing were some particular defining moment in human evolution, rather than merely one means by which we understand the present and the past: Man’s past defined solely by our own current means of comprehending it. This concept leads, for example, to a belief that the early Romans were a “historic civilization”, while their neighbors the Celts were a “prehistoric” archaeological Culture-type, who only entered into “History” when Caesar wrote about them in his Commentaries? All that changed was the historical tools by which we can learn about them. It is not difficult to trace these newly “historicized” Celts back to the Hallstatt culture of Central Europe, it merely requires different tools than reading primary sources. And these are similar to the tools that we might use to understand the daily lives of non-literate peasants of medieval Europe – the “testimony of the spade” (pace Bibby).

The broader sense of “prehistoric” is as that time before, for example, the Neolithic Revolution – which actually was a type of defining moment in certain parts of the human world. I would instead use the term “Archaic Man” for this. For me, and I believe for you and for Barfield, there is only one defining moment in the History of Man: which is when human consciousness and human language began, when the Word took human form in some mysterious manner. This may have happened in an instant or it may have been something that occurred over a few generations, but this essential change is not something that “evolved” over a million years in some Darwinian process from hominoids and hominids.

There was time and a place when human history truly began: perhaps 100,000 years ago in the northeast of Africa. A spark went into a physical body that then became Man. God breathed a soul into Adam’s nostrils. Spirit became matter, brain became mind, as consciousness and language were born for the first time. The mechanism for this change in consciousness is not understood yet. Perhaps it is an unknowable Act of God, as the cosmological Big Bang will ever be unknowable, the first moment of Creation.

But just as physics can trace the path back to almost the first moment of the Big Bang, so too can linguistics, genetics and anthropology point roughly to the conception of Man as a conscious being. Language families (and macro-families) converge at some point in the past, pointing to one original language; there still exist traces in the most unrelated of languages of common words for the simplest of things (finger, one, two, eye). In addition, unique elements of human genetic material also converge back in time, circa 100,000 years ago. Further, a modern physical form of Man emerged out of Africa into the Middle East about 80,000 years ago. With this new human (“anatomically modern homo sapiens” in anthropology) is found evidence of burial, symbolic expression (“art”), and apparently unnecessary and changing elements of design in tools and clothing (“fashion”), among other differences from earlier hominids (Neandertal, Erectus, etc.). And the other, older hominids soon vanished before the newcomer, for whatever reason. Human history began as man became fruitful and multiplied, out of Africa and across the earth.

I am only able to understand this and other evidence as pointing to the inception of human language and human consciousness, which define Man (in the image of God). In the beginning was the Word. There does not seem to be any gradual Darwinian “evolution” leading up to this beginning of human culture, of humanity itself (as opposed to the evolution of the hominid body), nor any radical change since that time.

Of course, human culture has evolved over the millennia, just as the understanding of God has evolved, but human Language (as distinct from all the supposed animal “languages”) either is or it is not, across the races of man as well as in the growth of a child. There are no “primitive” or unformed or partial languages. The fact that any human infant can learn any human language fluently argues convincingly for the monogenesis of language, with no significant/essential changes having occurred since that genesis. Evolution of language (as in Barfield) is cultural refinement, not essential change, as is “the evolution of consciousness, which is probably the only evolution there is” (End of an Age). (vide Lincoln: “The only progress is of the human heart”). Human consciousness begins with language, and since that point “evolution” might be refinement and growth, but not a change-of-state.

Perhaps much as you found correspondences to your own historical thinking in Heisenberg’s writings, I have been working to connect science and linguistics (not a science) to my own historical sense of human beginnings. This sense, this human story, is not Darwinian or “scientific”, nor in a strict sense religious--but human, historical, including and larger than science and religion. Currently, science and religion are each devolving into their own forms of fundamentalism, and the time is past when either can alone provide the needed understanding of man’s “evolution” (or of the universe for that matter). I see this “historical Genesis” as the opening chapter of the new kind of history, as that you call for, a history for a new era, following upon a “conscious historical recognition of the opening of a new phase in the evolution of our consciousness.” ( JL, Confessions of an Original Sinner.)

More on Deep History and Prehistory

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This guest post comes from Randall Foote, who emailed me last week regarding an earlier post on Deep History. Foote has graciously allowed me to post his note. Retired from business, Foote is now an adjunct history professor at Roxbury Community College. (In the coming days I'll also post Foote's letter to historian John Lukacs on prehistory and history.)

"But is it History? III"
Randall Foote

I read with interest your post of 9/16 on the Historical Society blog regarding Deep History, and I felt I should comment on the question you asked:

“. . . . But, as Heather asked earlier on a different topic, is it history? How can we understand preliterate humans and societies in a historical sense? Can historians add to our understanding of prehistoric humans in ways that anthropologists and archeologists cannot? Historians inside and outside of the guild will have to figure those questions out for themselves.”

How we understand history is constantly changing. It was not very long ago – say, 200 years – when Sumer, Egypt, Troy, Babylon et al were seen as either mythical and/or biblical. Europeans saw two threads of history: the Classical, which began with Herodotus, and the Biblical, which began with Moses. Other cultures had even less historical horizon. No culture had a truly global historical sense before the modern Western European. It was archaeology that opened the doors to a larger view. Yes, writings were discovered, but the larger picture – which is still very much evolving – came from “the testimony of the spade."

Historians follow upon archaeologists to form a larger picture, with broad interconnections. Absolutely there is a place – indeed a necessity -- for applying historical sense every step of the way. After all, History is in essence the science and art of humanity. Certainly, there are now many more "non-historical" tools to gather information for historical understanding of pre-literate cultures, including genetics, linguistics and highly developed archaeological techniques. We should use them all as a part of developing a broader (and deeper) History. An interesting first step of applying the genetic point of view to “deep history” was L. L. Cavalli-Sforza’s History and Geography of Human Genes. Cavalli-Sforza is a geneticist who is more adventurous and ambitious than are most historians. There is much history yet to be written.

I think future historians will view the European Aurignacian and Magdalenian (similarly the Australian Dream-time, Archaic Native American, Chinese Yang Shao and others) as every bit historical as we now view Troy and Sumer. It was not long ago (indeed, in my own school years) that the Ancient/Medieval/Modern triptych was the basic academic framework. I think that the Prehistoric/Historic dichotomy is as limited a mindset as both that one and the Biblical chronology.

Relegating preliterate man to the backwater of “Prehistory” is to miss out on some of the most interesting and creative elements of human history. After all, what is more fascinating than beginnings – our own beginnings.

Historians, like scientists, need to maintain a certain humility about how much we still do not know, but that is really most of all a great challenge and opportunity. There is always so much more to be discovered. In this time of increasing specialization and insularity in academic history departments, what we really need is more history with the long view, even when there is so much uncertainty and likelihood for contradiction as new discoveries are made. The rapid change in understanding prehistory and man's origins is a real case in point: when I was young it was a given that the Five Races evolved separately on their own continents (with the Caucasian Race being of course the most highly evolved). Seems like an eon ago.

But is it History? II: Deep History

Randall Stephens

Harvard University professor of history Daniel Lord Smail has challenged the idea that history begins only with the advent of writing. In his 2008 book, On Deep History and the Brain (University of California Press), he lays out his arguments about how history and biology have worked together over the long arc of time. Smail asks "When does history begin?" and "What characterizes it?" He follows up on the work of evolutionary biologists and the macro history of Jared Diamond, with a new way of understanding the past.

"The ancient world is unimaginable without archeological evidence;" Smail observes, "the Middle Ages very nearly so; and the effort to reconstitute the lives of peoples without writing has been one of the signal achievements of the twentieth century." In light of that Smail asks: "So what does it matter that the evidence for the deep past comes not from written documents but from the other things that teach--from artifacts, fossils, vegetable remains, phonemes, and various forms of modern DNA?" (On Deep History, 6)

But, as Heather asked earlier on a different topic, is it history? How can we undertsand preliterate humans and societies in a historical sense? Can historians add to our understanding of pre-historic humans in ways that anthropologists and archeologists cannot? Historians inside and outside of the guild will have to figure those questions out for themselves.

What follows are some recent macro-historical, deep history, evolutionary history essays, and tidbits from the web:

Drake Bennett, "How Animals Made Us Human," Boston Globe, September 12, 2010.

. . . . What explains [our] yen to have animals in our lives? An anthropologist named Pat Shipman believes she’s found the answer: Animals make us human. She means this not in a metaphorical way — that animals teach us about loyalty or nurturing or the fragility of life or anything like that — but that the unique ability to observe and control the behavior of other animals is what allowed one particular set of Pleistocene era primates to evolve into modern man.>>>

Cynthia Haven, "Stanford historian tells why the West rules - for now," Stanford University News, September 14, 2010.

. . . . Stanford Classics and History Professor Ian Morris puts forth some bold answers in his ambitious new 750-page book, Why the West Rules – For Now (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). And that places Looty in a longer story going back to the last ice age.

Morris' book argues that history is a slow, complicated tango between geography and social development.>>>

How could a civilization that mastered the planet suddenly Collapse? Inspired by the New York Times best-selling book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed", NGC time travels 200 years into the future to see what the world would look like after civilization as we know it collapsed. Guided by author Jared Diamond, we'll piece together the remarkable story of what on earth triggered our decline.

Collapse: Based on the Book by Jared Diamond, National Geographic Channel.

How could a civilization that mastered the planet suddenly Collapse? Inspired by the New York Times best-selling book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed", NGC time travels 200 years into the future to see what the world would look like after civilization as we know it collapsed. Guided by author Jared Diamond, we'll piece together the remarkable story of what on earth triggered our decline.>>>

Mary Gray, "Are You Descended from Neanderthals?" New Zealand Herald, September 2, 2010.

. . . . With the expansion of human populations and climate change, Neanderthal populations are thought to have shrunk toward Europe and Spain. Europeans and Neanderthals had potentially longer to interbreed compared to other human populations, but there is no evidence for this - so far. Did waves of human migration from the Middle East replace ancient Neanderthal-human Europeans or did the first human inhabitants of Europe and Neanderthals keep to themselves? >>>

What Can Historians Learn from Biologists

David Meskill

Can historians learn anything from biologists? Jared Diamond’s 1997 book Guns, Germs, and Steel sparked a flurry of interest among at least some historians, who published a special forum in the American Historical Review and held panels at the annual AHA meetings. A more common response to Diamond, however, if I go by numerous conversations with historians, has been disapproval tinged with an almost visceral rejection. I surmise that this disdain derives from the book’s underlying biological premise: as with other species, Diamond argues, humans’ fates have been determined by the environment and the availability of natural resources. It may also have to do with Diamond’s emphasis on the long term and his relative lack of interest in individuals and events. None of these things - the biological roots of human behavior, environmental determinism, the disregard for particularities – historians can abide. In fact, most historians have probably not taken a stance one way or the other in regard to Diamond’s book – or to the growing number of intellectual encroachments by natural scientists onto terrain usually reserved for historians. Whether due to parochialism or indifference, we historians remain, as Daniel Lord Smail has put it, in the “grip of sacred history.” We still conceive of history as starting with civilization and written records some 5,500 years ago in Sumer.

The relatively generous attention paid to Diamond actually confirms the extent of the problem: Guns, Germs, and Steel was a gripping, popular (but not unserious) read. If it hadn’t been a best-seller, it almost certainly would not have earned the AHA’s attention. Less visible, but in many cases even more important, works by natural scientists usually go unnoticed by historians. Since the 1980s, for example, several schools of biologists and anthropologists have been developing ambitious theories of “coevolution.” These approaches treat human culture as an evolutionary system in its own right and investigate its properties and its interactions with its genetic counterpart. They thereby hope to develop comprehensive, indeed potentially revolutionary theories of human behavior, something one might think would be of interest to historians. Yet a JSTOR search reveals that none of these books received even one review in a historical journal.

They deserve better. The following is a review of one of such project: Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson’s 1985 book Culture and the Evolutionary Process. (The others are Luigi Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus Feldman’s Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach [1981] and William Durham’s Coevolution [1991].)

Culture, as Boyd and Richerson (B & R) define it, includes all episodes of social learning of ideas and behaviors, whether by teaching or imitation. B& R provide considerable evidence that social learning of this type – and not individual learning or rationality, as neo-classical economics and rational choice approaches assume – plays a predominant role in human behavior. They point to the numerous cases of “cultural inertia,” in which people don’t respond to new circumstances, even for generations (see, for example, David Hackett Fischer’s excellent book, Albion’s Seed, on the persistence of different English folkways in America), and to psychologists’ plentiful evidence that people operate by various, often inaccurate, rules of thumb.

According to B & R, culture shares with genetic inheritance the three crucial ingredients necessary for an evolutionary system: variation, inheritance, and selection. I.e. people have different ideas and act in a variety of ways; they pass along these cultural traits to “cultural offspring,” who usually include their biological offspring, but can also include friends, students, etc.; finally, some cultural traits get passed on more often than others (for reasons to be discussed below). B & R therefore call their model a “dual inheritance” theory.

Crucially, the two inheritance systems, while similar, are not identical. Cultural evolution allows for “acquired variation.” It is Lamarckian. In genetic evolution the behavior of an individual has no effect on the genes she/he passes on. With culture, however, an individual can learn something on her/his own or otherwise pick and choose from her/his cultural heritage. What she/he passes on to cultural offspring has been changed. Additionally, in cultural evolution there can be many “parents,” not just the two of biological reproduction.

B & R distinguish between several different “forces” giving cultural evolution its directions. The first two, which belong together, they call “guided variation” and “direct bias.” Guided variation involves the interaction of individual learning, or innovation, and cultural evolution by social learning. Despite having culturally inherited certain ideas or behaviors, individuals are also capable of assessing their surroundings and options and developing a new response, one they did not inherit. For example, a medieval farmer stumbles upon a different way to plow his fields. If he can ascertain that this is an improvement over traditional methods – something that may not be easy to evaluate - he is then likely to pass on this new variant to his cultural offspring, in this case primarily his sons but perhaps also neighbors. Direct bias, on the other hand, is less innovative: the person does not invent a new response, but adopts one of the various options she has inherited from various cultural parents. However, a certain predisposition may favor – directly bias – one kind of cultural alternative over the others. In the cases of both guided variation and direct bias, criteria are needed to make individual judgments. And these criteria, B & R argue, must come from our genes, i.e. from biological natural selection. For this reason, they refer to these two forces as socio-biological. That is, cultural inheritance will track and reinforce biological inheritance.

With the other forces – which, B & R argue, are likely to be more important than guided variation or direct bias - this is not necessarily the case. The socio-biological forces depend on individual learning or discrimination: even in the case of direct bias, the individual has to make judgments about the available options, which bias to apply, and how to do so. But gathering such information has costs, which opens the door to other, less costly “forces” affecting social learning. Two of these are “indirect bias” and “frequency bias.” With the first, one individual identifies another whom he deems successful – an older brother, a village headman, a movie star - and copies many behaviors from him. Overall, this process is less costly because the first individual is not trying to assess which behaviors of the cultural parent have caused the latter’s success; he simply copies many or all of them. However, in some instances, B & R argue, costly “runaway” processes can ensue: people go to great lengths to dress like rock stars they admire, efforts that could never be justified in terms of clothes’ evolutionary selective power. The process is akin to the evolution of the peacock’s tail, in which an arms race over sexual attraction may impair the creatures’ survival. Frequency bias means that people simply copy the most frequent cultural variant, which will often prove to be a simple, efficient strategy.

A final force is natural selection, not of genes, in this case, but of cultural variants. This arises because genetic and cultural evolution are asymmetrical. We inherit our genes from our mother and father and the same two individuals are often important for imbuing us with our ideas and behaviors. However, we often inherit cultural variants from many other sources as well (siblings, teachers, friends, religious leaders, public figures). These non-parental sources will become relatively more important as we age. If we only inherited culture from our parents, B & R argue, we might expect that those ideas and behaviors would track or conform to the biological impulses we inherited from them: for example, we would imbibe the idea that having large families is a good thing. However, the existence of asymmetrical strands of cultural inheritance means that ideas and values can spread that may run counter to our biological imperative (and hence to what our biological parents on their own would teach us). Thus, teachers and other professionals may spread the message that professional success - something they themselves have achieved, and which requires sacrifices of the time and energy necessary for physical reproduction – is of great value. A Darwinian competition would then ensue – between biological parents and teachers over whose ideas and values would spread faster. B & R make a convincing case that this kind of asymmetric inheritance and the resulting natural selection of cultural variants probably lie at the root of the current, extraordinary demographic revolution. People, especially in affluent countries, are having fewer and fewer babies. Biology and biological Darwinism would predict just the opposite: as resources increase – as they have for humans over the last century or more, especially in industrialized countries – birth rates should steadily increase. In these cases, B & R say, the cultural variant “enjoy your own life, be successful professionally, don’t acquire these noisy, troublesome little creatures” has undermined the biological imperative to reproduce as much as possible.

Because of these final three forces – indirect bias, frequency bias, and natural selection of culture – cultural evolution will often come into tension with the dictates of biological evolution. They help to explain the internal conflicts that individuals experience much the way Freud described the struggles between id and superego. They also distinguish B & R’s approach from a strictly socio-biological one and from William Durham’s 1991 Coevolution, which foresees greater – though still not complete - congruence between biology and culture.

Finally, B & R ask how cultural evolution itself could have arisen in the first place? This is especially acute given cultural evolution’s frequent (biologically) maladaptive consequences. The generic answer is that as long as culture is overall biologically adaptive, its benefits outweigh its considerable costs. More specifically, culture may be expected to arise under particular environmental circumstances. If the environment remains constant for long periods, the best strategy is to hard-wire behavior in genes. This eliminates the costs associated with learning, either of the individual or social kind. If, on the other hand, the environment changes significantly quite frequently, then not only is genetic hardwiring the wrong strategy. Social learning, with its inertia, is as well. Under these circumstances, individual learning is the best option. Social learning – which allows for limited individual learning and variation – is best when the environment remains fairly constant but changes to some degree. In later work, B & R suggest that this was precisely the environment during the ice ages starting 2.5 million years ago and lasting until 12,000 years ago.

Culture and the Evolutionary Process is a challenging work. B & R rely frequently on mathematical models, which will not always be easy to follow unless one already has considerable facility with such methods. However, the authors always take the trouble to walk the reader through the main steps and, most important of all, the conclusions of the models. They also offer tangible examples from history and other social sciences to illustrate their points. The book should be required reading for anybody interested in “big” or “deep” history. Even at smaller time scales, the book offers a very stimulating framework for analysis, especially for thinking about broad patterns of social and cultural development. So, can historians learn anything from biologists? Yes – if they are willing.

David Meskill received his Ph.D. in Modern European History from Harvard University in 2003. He will be Assistant Professor of History at Dowling College in fall 2009. He blogs regularly at http://davidmeskill.blogspot.com/