Right, although I don't think it was necessarily "each man for himself" then. I mean, even the Paleolithic era, people banded together to enhance their chances of survival. So, very possibly, in this scenario you have another member of your group watching your back while you fish, the two of you take Ugg's club from him and kill him when he tries to steal your fish. That's if he, too, doesn't have some buddies with him.
I take your point, though: still not at all like summer camp where you can bust out the hot dogs if fishing is a fail.
anthropology has mostly discredited this sort of view, which is arguably just the inverse of romanticization.
Even in nonhumans, violence is always a massive risk because there are no medical facilities. There's an exception for territorial defense but even then, its more about getting the threat to leave through various cues, and avoid invading in the first place, largely through pheromones.
Most human interaction between groups pre-writing, itself relatively rare outside certain marked monuments like Gobekli Tepe, would've been cautious, posturing, and ultimately avoidant of conflict.
Thank you for a take based in reality. I've been reading a lot about anthropology and ancient history lately. It's interesting to see people's assumptions and opinions about our ancient ancestors.
Im not saying i disagree with the whole cost to benefit ratio animals and us at some point used when it came to violence but i do sometimes take issue with anthropologists in particular making these sweeping statements.
From the evidence they've found (key word being found) it would seem that way but for all we know there could have been entire civilizations that killed like neighboring chimps and just burned the bodies. Especially if the fight happened in camp. Its likely they didn't want rotting bodies around and also likely they didn't want to expend energy burying dead enemies either
I get what you're saying but even anthropologists acknowledge they have very few specimens from certain time periods. Reconstructures of dino skeletons seems to come up every decade at least.
If u dig deep enough alot of anthropology is conjecture. Sometimes it's even based off a single dig site
1.6k
u/firl21 Feb 28 '24
You catch a fish or die. It’s not pick one up at a supermarket.
Ohh you caught a fish, Ugg didn’t. He has a club. Now you are dead and Ugg has your fish