If we look for traces of Pygmy/Bushmen style on a worldwide basis, we find them almost exclusively among marginalized indigenous (or peasant) populations living in isolated refuge areas, mountains, islands, thick forests or deserts. This the case all over the world, in Asia, Europe, Oceania, the Americas and, as far as I've been able to determine so far (my research on this matter is incomplete), even in Africa. This "interrupted distribution" makes P/B an excellent candidate for the sort of cultural element noted by Sapir, that "must have arisen prior to the event or series of events that resulted in [its] geographical isolation."*
It's not difficult to understand the logic behind Sapir's observation. When we see essentially the same tradition among groups that, as far as we can tell, have been isolated from one another for a very long time, and we see these isolated communities surrounded by societies with very different traditions, then there would seem to be only three possible explanations: 1. coincidence, based on "independent invention"; 2. "convergent evolution," based on the assumption that the tradition represents an adaptation of some sort; 3. an early "diffusion of the element over its area of distribution," followed by "events that resulted in the geographical isolation of the . . . areas."
Since essentially the same coincidental, "independent invention" would have had to occur in each and every case, in a great many different parts of the world, the first possibility seems extremely unlikely. It was once assumed that the many instances of vocal polyphony to be found in mountain areas represented some sort of adaptation to that environment, but such traditions can be found in tropical forest, desert and island environments as well. Since very similar styles can be found in completely different environments, it's very difficult to see how they could be adaptations -- adaptation to what? We must, additionally, take into account the unusual distinctiveness of this style, and so many of the instrumental ensembles with which it is associated, which makes it even more unlikely that it could have developed independently, for whatever reason, in so many different parts of the world.
Which leaves us with the third possibility: an early diffusion of P/B across a truly vast expanse, followed by some sort of event -- an event that would have resulted, ultimately, in the fragmentation and isolation of the more traditional cultures that maintained the original style, a process that would no doubt have had other cultural consequences as well, and would almost certainly have left its mark on the genetic record. Since the gap I've been pointing to is far greater than any of the other gaps, and since it is centered on a crucial region of the "southern route," it is here that we must look for further evidence that might give us a clue as to the nature of the event that produced the gap, an event that may well have been a turning point in human history
*Contrast this sort of distribution with the distribution of monophony (solo and/or unison singing), widely found among mainstream cultures in a great many contiguous regions of Europe and Asia, a pattern consistent with a relatively recent diffusion process or perhaps many such processes, some of which could, in fact, have been responsible for the isolation of the polyphonic traditions, and more specifically, P/B.
Check this. Cultural and technological innovation seems to rely on mere numbers. Larger or more connected groups would hence innovate more than small isolated ones and also be more open to outsider influence, which in turn would be more intense too.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good explanation that could on its own solve the problem. Mere demic growth would tend to breach natural conservatism. And that's why P/B remnants only persist in isolated pockets: because elsewhere people has innovated more.
Gee, Maju, I always thought it was the technological innovation that triggered population growth, not the other way 'round. Innovation creates the conditions that permit growth, no? Otherwise, how can such growth be explained?
ReplyDeleteLooks to me like more cum hoc ergo propter hoc to me. Correlation does not imply causation, remember?
If the paper explains how populations can grow on their own, without a cause, and in certain places and not others, for no reason, then I'd be interested.
Yes, that's the type of modeling of an evolutionary process that should underlie our molecular, phenotypical and cultural reconstructions. Nettle (different from the musicologist Nettl) advanced a theory that the reason why linguistic diversity (both in terms of the number of stocks and isolates and in terms of the number of typological patterns) is high in places like America and Oceania and low in places like Europe and Africa is because linguistic change is faster in small populations. This theory didn't receive support from simulations, though. See Wichmann, S., D. Stauffer, C. Schulze et al. 2008. Do language change rates depend on population size? Adv. Complex Syst. 11(3):1–13.
ReplyDeletePopulation size, however, is a good explanation for the regional differences in gene diversity levels. Africans have higher intragroup diversity than non-Africans because their long-term effective population size has been larger. The relative paucity of archaeological signatures of modern human behavior in Asia, Australasia and, especially, America in opposition to Africa and Europe as well as the wide-spread delays in the emergence of complex symbolic behavior in the very same areas correlates well with the long-term differences in population sizes between Africa and Europe vs. Asia and America.
If the larger population size the faster the speed of cultural innovation, then polyphony is a derived musical tradition because it's dominant in the region in which effective and absolute population sizes are larger. If humans expanded out of Africa and went through bottlenecks (one at teh exit from Africa and one at the entrance to America), then their population size wouldn't be able to support innovation.
For my way of thinking is very evident. Population can grow for non-anthropogenic causes, like climatic amelioration or expansion into new "virgin" areas. Of course it can also happen because people find an improved way to exploit resources.
ReplyDeleteBut what I see crucial is not so much growth as such but interaction. If an area is fertile enough, it will host more people, more diverse individuals and groups, who will interact more frequently leading to accelerated innovation. Nearly all "great advances" have happened at crossroads like West Asia. Why? Because they got very diverse influences that enriched cultures overall, at least that's surely part of the reason.
Instead the more isolated a region is, the more backwards it tends to be.
There can be chain effects in anthropogenic causes too: a simple innovation (say poison or a fishing technique) can cause a demic expansion that in turn causes further innovations, not necesarily in productivity but maybe in art or whatever.
Another relevant publication seems to be the one by Peregrine, CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARATIVE APPROACHES IN ARCHAEOLOGY, Annual Review of. Anthropology 30: 1–18 (2004), in which he shows, with the help of linear regressions, that human cultural history overall has a trend toward increasing complexity. Peregrine confirms what was so clearly formulated by Goldenweiser (not an evolutionist) back in 1937: “there is an element of truth in the conception that the development of culture has been an unfoldment, that the different aspects of culture are interconnected, that certain phases of culture cannot materialize unless certain other phases have preceded them."
ReplyDeleteAgain, this is consistent with the upward trend in human demography. The more interconnected human beings are, the more interconnected their culture is. And again it contradicts Victor's reconstruction of a highly complex P/B style for HBC. I'm sympathetic with the overall departure from a primitive "simple to complex" argument but we can't dismiss it altogether.
Wichmann'09 is not conclusive.
ReplyDeleteOne element that we should not ignore when dealing with languages is that "highly interactive" areas are, because of their own nature, much more likely to see language homogenization, because language is in itself a means to that interaction, maybe the most important one. Isolate groups have much lesser need to learn "the common language" and, if they do, will use it more sparsely than central, highly interacting, ones.
That is why rare languages and dialects are almost invariably found in isolated areas and populations and never in cosmopolitan ones.
It's conclusive, as appears from the following quote: " Our empirical investigations strongly indicate that the sizes of speaker populations do not in and of themselves determine rates of language change." (Wichman & Holman 2009, Population size and rates of language change).
ReplyDeleteMaju: "For my way of thinking is very evident. Population can grow for non-anthropogenic causes, like climatic amelioration or expansion into new "virgin" areas."
ReplyDeleteSuddenly your hyper-critical powers have deserted you, Maju. Also your common sense. Someone has found a correlation between large population size and innovation. Duh! Didn't we all know that already? But the traditional explanation, the one that still makes sense, is that innovation makes larger population sizes possible, NOT the other way 'round. And if population growth is due to environmental factors, then it cannot be an ultimate cause in any case. So why not associate certain types of environment with both innovation and population growth?
And by the way, that's also been done. There is a clear association between difficult and challenging environments and innovation, and population growth has been greatest in temperate climates, NOT tropical climates where the living is easy.
I'd feel better if we both had actually read the paper in question, but even if there is some truth to it, what does this have to do with the theory I've been exploring? And what is the "innovation" in question? The loss of polyphonic singing and complex interlocking instrumental ensembles in favor of unison singing and simple one-beat accompaniments by hand clapping or simple drumming?
When you are being skeptical, Maju, you can come across as really dogmatic and picky. But when you are being gullible, that's much worse. I have to say it: I prefer the skeptic. :-)
"There is a clear association between difficult and challenging environments and innovation."
ReplyDeleteSure, Ziploc bags were invented during the recession of 1970-1971. No kidding: people thought that making their food last deserves a new product.
"I'd feel better if we both had actually read the paper in question, but even if there is some truth to it, what does this have to do with the theory I've been exploring? And what is the "innovation" in question? The loss of polyphonic singing and complex interlocking instrumental ensembles in favor of unison singing and simple one-beat accompaniments by hand clapping or simple drumming?"
No, not with yours. But with mine. I read the paper a few months ago, and it does offer a clue as to why modern human behavioral signatures are more salient in the Pleistocene archaeological record of Africa and Europe and not in Asia, Australasia and America.
"I have to say it: I prefer the skeptic. :-)"
And I prefer the gullible Maju. (smiley face.)
I can't agree: can't you see that, historically, Eurasia evolved faster than Africa just because it included much more people? And that Africa evolved faster than America because it was much better connected with the huge landmass of Eurasia? And that America, in spite of its isolation evolved much faster than Australia just because of its sheer size?
ReplyDeleteWithout communication, innovations get lost if they ever happen at all. That innovations can at times improve productivity and hence allow greater populations is not contradictory but part of a feedback cycle if anything.
Again you are judging things aprioristically and not on their own merits.
There is a clear association between difficult and challenging environments and innovation...
That's a very old undemonstrated theory: so old that I learned from my grandfather. However, if that would be true, agriulture nor anything of importance would have ever been invented in the Fertile Crescent with its great productivity and warm climate, all innovation would happen at the Arctic Circle (and obviously it does not).
It's a quite fallacious theory proper of more Eurocentric and racist times.
And I'd dare say that tropical climate can be quite challneging. Ok, you don't need clothes, but you still have to face so many other challenges...
And what is the "innovation" in question? The loss of polyphonic singing and complex interlocking instrumental ensembles in favor of unison singing and simple one-beat accompaniments by hand clapping or simple drumming? -
Seems so. Not all innovations are for better (from a subjective viewpoint). I hate cars for instance and I'm quite sure that we'd live better without so many innovations. Is Punk music better than classical Opera? Who knows? I like it better but others can think the opposite. The case is that there is a change and that is innovation.
You could even dare and dig deeper and wonder if there were social innovations of some sort that preceded and/or caused such artistic innovations. Maybe a more violent and individualist society or who knows?
You haven't even explored yet the Indian foragers, who should be central to this question. (Admittedly I haven't either). Why do Indian foragers don't have P/B traits while SE Asian foragers do? That may perfectly be the question.
But the question is not the same as the answer.
When you are being skeptical, Maju, you can come across as really dogmatic and picky. But when you are being gullible, that's much worse. I have to say it: I prefer the skeptic.
ReplyDeleteI prefer you when you when you don't go around insulting. It only says bad things of you.
Maju: "I can't agree: can't you see that, historically, Eurasia evolved faster than Africa just because it included much more people?" etc.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, I don't want to sound dismissive, especially because I recently accused you of the same thing. The best I can do is to simply say that we have very different ways of thinking about such matters. From my perspective, what you've written in this comment seems extremely simplistic and naive, I'm sorry I don't know any other way to express myself and maintain an honest dialogue. But I could be wrong and maybe there is something essential in your argument that escapes me.
Surely there are many things to consider when we think about "innovation," which is itself a very vague and ambiguous concept. To insist that the only cause or the principal cause is population size just strikes me as a gross oversimplification of a very complex issue.
I have no problem with the possibility that pop. size and innovation could be correlated. That makes sense and seems to fit the evidence fairly well, at least for certain periods of history (though maybe not all). But when we leap from a simple correlation to cause and effect then there has to be additional evidence -- not just "common sense" -- to confirm such a hypothesis. Until we have a chance to read this paper and see if they do provide such evidence, I will remain extremely skeptical.
"The case is that there is a change and that is innovation."
No, they are NOT the same. The authors refer specifically to "innovation" not "change." But even if we are talking only about change, a change in population size is itself a change, and in fact a very important change. Which must have a cause of some sort. It certainly didn't cause itself.
As I understand, you seem to be claiming that the changes in musical style from P/B to simple polyphony and monophony, along with the loss of many distinctive instrumental traditions must be due to increase in population size in one part of the world, where we see such a change, and stability in another, where we don't. And the problem I have with such an idea is: what explains the increase in population size in one part of the world and the stability in another? The problem posed by the gap remains, it's just been shifted into another arena, from culture to demography.
And by the way, this theory is not in conflict with my theory at all, it just offers a somewhat different explanation for the gap. Instead of Toba we have population expansion. I'd be happy to accept such a theory if I found it credible. It would fit my theory just as well as Oppenheimers. But I find it far less convincing than Oppenheimers, that's all.
Maju: "You could even dare and dig deeper and wonder if there were social innovations of some sort that preceded and/or caused such artistic innovations. Maybe a more violent and individualist society or who knows?"
ReplyDeleteNow you are on much more solid ground and I have no problem with this line of thinking. This is an area I was planning to look into as a matter of fact, so you are getting ahead of me here. It's possible that there can be social changes with causes we can never know, so a Toba or a Tsunami might not be necessary to explain them. But when we look at the gap we see something of enormous size, so it's natural (at least for me) to look for some dramatic cause for such a huge difference. And a huge natural disaster would fill the bill, while less far-reaching explanations would be more problematic.
If one group gradually or suddenly became more violent and individualistic, that might explain the artistic changes, yes. But only in that one group. If you want to argue that they then expanded into the entire Indian subcontinent, spreading their culture throughout the entire region, you have to provide signs of such a huge voyage of conquest -- on the part of nomadic hunter-gatherers of the paleolithic, with no horses and no metal weapons.
If you want to argue that a more violent and individualistic culture emerged independently among a great many societies in the same region at roughly the same time, that's a very different matter, which must be explained on the basis of an external cause, common to all. And a natural event encompassing that particular region seems the most likely suspect, as far as I can see.
"And the problem I have with such an idea is: what explains the increase in population size in one part of the world and the stability in another? The problem posed by the gap remains, it's just been shifted into another arena, from culture to demography."
ReplyDeleteI myself have a very clear answer to this: the colonization of the Old World from east to west (or from America and east Asia/Australasia) into Europe and Africa) changed original Pleistocene demography. The abundance of new land encouraged population growth. Some populations, such as Africans, went through bottlenecks (very easy for small foraging demes who become overstretched as new lands become available) but then once they settled in the new continent they rebounded, expanded in size and engaged in gene flow. I agree with "the rapid replacement model" in that the colonization was rapid, only not from Africa. People who stayed in the east continued to live in greater isolation from each other and expanded slowly in a fission-fusion mode. Linguistic diversity and intergroup genetic diversity are high in those areas, while intragroup genetic diversity and the sheer number of languages within a language family is low.
To insist that the only cause or the principal cause is population size just strikes me as a gross oversimplification of a very complex issue.
ReplyDeleteOf course it is a simplification. But is not wrong for that reason. And at least to me it makes perfect sense: just look at how much faster things evolve since Gutenberg and much more since telegraph, railroads, mass media and now with the Internet.
Culture works a lot like the mind: while brain size (or "density") alone is not the only factor, it is certainly a factor (or humans and dolphins would have brains just like those of chimpanzees or rats).
It's not just size but specially network connectivity. And this line of network studies is important in anthropology and sociology, with interesting penetrations in prehistory as well (cf. Gamble 2001 for instance).
No, they are NOT the same. The authors refer specifically to "innovation" not "change".
They are the about same thing, except that change sounds like potentially (but not necesarily) more passive. I don't share the teleological Neo-Christian hypothesis of human evolution by which this would have some specific direction, so I find really hard to make a distinction between change and innovation.
In any case, abandoning some sort of music for some other sort is innovative, even if you don't happen to like the result (which is subjective).
But even if we are talking only about change, a change in population size is itself a change, and in fact a very important change.
I am not even talking of change in population size or even population size as such (nor why it happens). I am talking of connectivity, which is much more likely to happen if the density is larger. This connectivity is what makes cultural innovations to spread, while instead isolation poses a barrier for such cultural diffusion.
As I understand, you seem to be claiming that the changes in musical style from P/B to simple polyphony and monophony, along with the loss of many distinctive instrumental traditions must be due to increase in population size in one part of the world.
Not exactly. First I don't say "must" but "could".
Second I don't think it's population growth what causes them but high interconnection which allows such changes to spread rapidly. Of course, connectivity has some direct relation with population density but it's not exactly the same anyhow.
What I suggest is that any cultural or technological change happening in late MP India had much better chances of rapid spread (or of spread at all) than one happening in Kalahari or Australia at about the same time, just because India had then a high population density (possibly most of Humankind, per Atkinson, in a relatively small area).
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ReplyDelete... what explains the increase in population size in one part of the world and the stability in another? -
I'd say that South Asia is a most fertile land. Even today it holds about one fifth of all humankind and certainly more than Africa. When people finally arrived there, they just thrived like locusts in a rainy year (ok, a bit exaggerated but illustrative anyhow).
This demic explosion is very well illustrated by the huge starlike structure of macro-haplogroup M, with about 40 different basal lineages, most of them still located in South Asia. Star-like structures in genetics mean rapid demic expansions but there is not any other so large as that of M.
We also see technical innovations happening in South Asia: the first stone blade industries (absent in Eastern Eurasia until much later) and then the first microlithic industries happened there (some 20,000 years before anywhere else).
So there is some clear evidence of innovation in the subcontinent, which may have been triggered or just favored by the greater population density.
Of course this is exactly the opposite of what Oppenheimer claims but that's Oppenheimer's problem as I see it.
Maju: "You could even dare and dig deeper and wonder if there were social innovations of some sort that preceded and/or caused such artistic innovations. Maybe a more violent and individualist society or who knows?"
ReplyDeleteNow you are on much more solid ground and I have no problem with this line of thinking.
It is not really more solid (in fact it's highly speculative) but it is more akin to your way of thinking, it seems.
It's possible that there can be social changes with causes we can never know, so a Toba or a Tsunami might not be necessary to explain them. But when we look at the gap we see something of enormous size...
As large as India and the 60% or so of humankind it might have harbored at the time.
... so it's natural (at least for me) to look for some dramatic cause for such a huge difference. And a huge natural disaster would fill the bill, while less far-reaching explanations would be more problematic.
And what would explain the loss of P/B in Africa and Australia?
You have suggested since I my knowledge of your work reaches that the loss of P/B musical wealth can only be because of a tragedy that dislocated society. I found suggestive your idea at first but as I understand better the complexities of the problem, I am less and less persuaded.
I think that the loss of P/B began in Africa and all African populations but P/B themselves are proof of it, beginning with the Hadza and following with all the rest. This can't be explained by the localized action of the Toba ash layer or a related tsunami. Instead it could be explained by greater cultural flow caused by larger densities and connectivity already in East Africa and then also in Eurasia.
If you need a tragedy (not sure how much is it really necessary anymore) I could argue that larger population densities do not just allow for greater cultural diffusion but also probably intensify conflict. But really I can't say for sure. What I see anyhow is a process that, even if culminates probably in MP South Asia, has deeper roots.
If one group gradually or suddenly became more violent and individualistic, that might explain the artistic changes, yes. But only in that one group. If you want to argue that they then expanded into the entire Indian subcontinent, spreading their culture throughout the entire region, you have to provide signs of such a huge voyage of conquest...
As you can see above this is not my point at all. I'd rather suspect, if anything, that the process affected all groups similarly in a horizontal manner in contexts of increased population densities. So maybe just increase of inter-groupal tensions may be a cause (impacting also in intra-groupal ones).
I acknowledge this is speculative but not more than what you have provided so far.
If you want to argue that a more violent and individualistic culture emerged independently among a great many societies in the same region at roughly the same time, that's a very different matter, which must be explained on the basis of an external cause, common to all.
See above. I think I am providing a valid alternative hypothesis that fits your demands.