BIO 358 Lecture 17: BIO 358 Topic 17
14 Jun 2018
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Topic 17: Introduction to the powerful new theory of history that emerges from social coercion theory
Notes:
1) Introduction to the powerful new theory of history that emerges from social coercion theory
a) Theory of history
i) Theory of present and future
b) Understanding contemporary world as it emerges from ancient biology
c) Review: social cooperation emerges as our ability to manage the COI problem → things emerged like
our human mind, sexuality, and elite communication → SCT CAN also explain history!!!!
d) Social scientists think: once our biology is established, all subsequent historical events are
disconnected from out biology → WILL ARGUE THIS IS WRONG!!!
1) What does history look like?
a)
i) How do we put history on this timeline? We introduce a fourth variable: adaptive sophistication
(1) We can measure it in many ways
(a) Today we will measure it by looking at tools
(b) How do we get from the hand axe
to 747’s?
(i) We are doing archaeology on
human tools—this would look
like STEPS! NOT A SLOPE!
(ii) Instead, we see a series of very
rapid changes (adaptive revolutions) and then long periods of no change (adaptive
stasis)
1. Human historical record forms an “adaptive staircase”
a. Adaptive revolution → adaptive stasis → adaptive revolution.. etc.
b. We are currently living through an adaptive revolution—we are used to things
changes
(iii) Vertical adaptive revolutions are not instantaneous
1. We get extremely rapid change in a time scale of 100s-1000s of years (like a +slope)
a. In a zoomed out picture of millions of years, this looks like vertical lines
i. They are extraordinarily fast on the overall timescale change
2) How does social coercion theory predict history?
a) Review of the mind: non-human animals have culture, but humans have a vastly expanded river of
cultural information
b) Our ability to manage COI problem creates a truth telling public environment → access to a lot of
reliable information → this + biological prediction of the village → allows large and powerful human
mind to form
i) This is a background to history
ii) Our collective sharing of information makes us adaptively powerful
(1) We are the “pedagogical animal” as a result of this
c) Shows pics of variety of foods
i) Corn picker: picks dozens of acres of corns a day
(1) We can exchange the fruits of what we do to the fruits of what they do
ii) Learning in our individual minds: direct access to cultural information
iii) Indirect access to cultural information (exchanging)
(1) This is what we do as the “economic animal”—going out in the public, work for a living, provide
expertise for $, use that $ to buy what other ppl do as a result of their expertise
(2) It’s the scale that matters
(3) There is much expertise to expand upon
3) Tasmania—a first test of a theory of history
a) The world 18,000 years ago and today
i) The north pole had a lot more ice (and Albany :O )
b) Showed video on Glacier Surfing
i) Sense of how much ice and water evolved
ii) Small piece of ice breaking off of a glacier has an enormous effect
(1) Creates a huge ass wave
c) Showed video of animation of polarized caps ~ 18kya
i) Polar ice melting
ii) Sea level changes dramatically as a result (deposits a lot of water when it melts)
(1) Sets up the natural experiment we want to talk about
d) Back to Tasmania
i) Was shallow water separating it from Australia
(1) When the glacier was present, there was originally dry land in those shallow water areas
ii) Natural experiment: large continental human population → small population isolated for 8k years -
→ what happens?
iii) Africa
(1) Primitive tools → modern human arrived → more “modern” tools
(2) Spread to Australia BUT
(a) At the beginning we see the “modern” tools, surprisingly after that, we see the primitive
tools
(i) When European colonials showed up, almost all of the sophisticated technology (ex:
modern tools) had been lost
1. The population was evolving backwards technologically
a. This is expectable if the size of the population determines the technological that
is attainable
iv) Every time we saw a small local population, we saw technological regression
v) Scale of our social cooperation matters for our adaptive sophistication
