263. The Baseline Scenarios -- 39: The Gap

While the mtDNA "clock" contrasts superhaplogroup M in South Asia with M in "East Asia," it's important to understand that the dynamics of the "southern route" points to South-east Asia as the precursor of modern humans in northern East Asia. In other words, if we find tone languages in China and Japan, it is probably because tone languages were already established in Southeast Asia, long before modern humans migrated north from there.

Further confirmation of the "southern route" hypothesis comes from a very recent paper, just published in the December edition of Science, Mapping Human Genetic Diversity in Asia, by "The HUGO Pan-Asian SNP Consortium":

More than 90% of East Asian (EA) haplotypes could be found in either Southeast Asian (SEA) or Central-South Asian (CSA) populations and show clinal structure with haplotype diversity decreasing from south to north. Furthermore, 50% of EA haplotypes were found in SEA only and 5% were found in CSA only, indicating that SEA was a major geographic source of EA populations (from the Abstract -- my emphasis).

Evidence for important founder effects in South Asia, as suggested by both Oppenheimer and Soares et al., comes from another recent paper, published in Nature last September, Reconstructing Indian population history, by David Reich et al: "Allele frequency differences between groups in India . . . [reflect] strong founder effects whose signatures have been maintained for thousands of years owing to endogamy" [my emphasis]. So strong are these effects that they are believed to have an important influence on the health of the population generally:

The widespread history of founder events in India is also medically significant because it predicts a high rate of recessive disease. In Finland, there is a high rate of recessive diseases that has been shown to be due to a founder event, and that has resulted in a minimum FST of 0.005 with other European groups. Our data show that many Indian groups have a minimum FST with all other groups that is at least as large. . .

By showing that a large proportion of Indian groups descend from strong founder events, these results highlight the importance of identifying recessive diseases in these groups and mapping causal genes [my emphasis].

The large number of Indian lineages with a history of founder effects is consistent with the notion that South Asia could have been subject to a major population bottleneck during the Out of Africa migration, possibly due to a catastrophic event such as the Toba explosion, a Tsunami, major flooding, or a widespread, long-lasting drought. As I suggested in my "Echoes" paper, an event such as this could have had a major impact on the culture of the surviving groups, which could explain both the absence of much trace of P/B musical style, and the absence of tone language in this region. In other words, the "strong founder events" reported in this paper may have been a major factor in human evolution, genetic, morphological and cultural, at a crucial moment in history.

As is well known, certain tribal groups in South Asia have been described as "Australoids," due to their striking resemblance to Australian aboriginal peoples, which has suggested to many an archaic connection between the two regions. As I wrote in "Echoes of our Forgotten Ancestors,"

Is it possible that Australia, populated, at least 10,000 years after the Toba blast, could have been occupied by one of the altered survivor lines out of South Asia? Could that also explain the musical discrepancies between Australia and the rest of the out-of-Africa P/B style singer-players? Could that population have simply lost its polyphony, its hocketing, its panpipes, etc. as
a result of an ages-old natural catastrophe, and been forced to invent itself anew?

While a genetic connection between south Asiatic tribal peoples and Australian aborigines has been debated for years, a recent paper on that topic, Reconstructing Indian-Australian phylogenetic link, by Satich Kumar et al., though modest, does support such a possibility:

Our complete mtDNA sequencing of 966 individuals from 26 relic populations of India identified seven individuals from central Dravidian and Austro-Asiatic tribes who share two basal synonymous mtDNA polymorphisms G8251A and A9156T with
the M42 haplogroup, which is specific to Australian Aborigines. . .

Our results showing a shared mtDNA lineage between Indians and Australian Aborigines provides direct genetic evidence that Australia was populated by modern humans through south Asia following the "Southern Route" (pp. 1-2 -- my emphasis).

The cultural connection would be more convincing if the music of Tribal India were stylistically close to that of native Australia, but it is not. Nevertheless, the absence of both the African musical "signature" and tonal languages in both Tribal India and Australia, whereas both of these important cultural indicators can be found in abundance everywhere else along the Out of Africa path, does seem consistent with genetic evidence pointing to an archaic connection between the two regions. The unusual features attributed to "Australoid" peoples are also consistent with a genetic bottleneck and subsequent founder effect centered in South Asia during the great migration eastward. If the first wave of migrants had already arrived in Southeast Asia by this time, they would have been upwind from the Toba blast and, assuming this as the cause of the bottleneck, relatively unaffected.

262. The Baseline Scenarios -- 38: The Gap

As we've seen in the previous post, there is a striking resemblance between the distribution of P/B style (A1 - A4), as presented in the second of my mini-maps, and the distribution of tonal languages in the Old World. A very similar pattern presents itself when we consider the distribution of musical instruments, wood carving and mask making traditions, and negrito populations. In every case, we see essentially the same gap, in southwestern and southern Asia, where certain things we would expect to find, based on a smooth, uninterrupted southern migration from Africa to the Sahul, are missing.

As I've already mentioned, genetic anthropologist Stephen Oppenheimer has pointed to a very similar gap in the genetic evidence, which led him to propose a major bottleneck event stemming from the eruption of Mount Toba. While the timing of the Toba eruption makes Oppenheimer's interpretation problematic, the genetic evidence he cites does indeed suggest that something very unusual must have happened in South Asia very early on, at what might well have been a critical turning point in human history.

With all this in mind, let's return to the genetic map I presented two posts ago:


(Click on the above to enlarge the image.) The map, representing a phylogenetic tree based on mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA, representing female lineages only) is from a recently published article, Correcting for Purifying Selection: An Improved Human Mitochondrial Molecular Clock, by Pedro Soares et al., June 2009. (Among the co-authors, by the way, is Stephen Oppenheimer.) What makes this tree especially interesting is, first of all, the effort by the authors to correct for the effects of natural selection, and secondly, the introduction of timing estimates based on what the authors claim to be a new and improved molecular "clock." The number displayed next to each node represents their estimate for the origin of that node, in thousands of years. Thus, for example, the origin of M is given as 60.6, i.e., 60.6 thousand years ago.

Each node is color coded according to its most common geographical occurrence, as indicated in the key at the upper right. What's unusual here is the fact that the M haplogroups for South Asia (in violet) are presented farther to the right, and slightly lower, than the M haplogroups for East Asia (in blue), implying that the South Asian haplogroups appeared at a later date than those for East Asia. And sure enough, the date for South Asian M is 49.4, while that for East Asian M is 60.6. If the Out of Africa migration proceeded in an orderly, predictable fashion, from west to east, we would expect to find the oldest haplogroups in South, not East, Asia.

So once again we must ask: what gives?

The first point to be made regarding the new research is the fact that the dates they've come up with "render an out of-Africa dispersal prior to the Toba eruption in Sumatra at ~74 kya less likely." Given that Oppenheimer is one of the co-authors, this is a particularly significant conclusion. Nevertheless, the inconsistency between South and East Asia must be accounted for:

In the context of the southern-coastal-route model, it should be noted that although the distribution of haplogroup M has also been used to support the southern route model, the age of haplogroup M in India, at 49.4 (39.0; 60.2) kya, is significantly lower than in East Asia, at 60.6 (47.3; 74.3) kya . . . At face value, this could suggest an origin of haplogroup M in East Asia and a later migration back into South Asia, suggesting that it may have been a ‘‘pre-M’’ lineage that initially crossed South Asia. . . Southeast Asia may [therefore] be the point of origin of haplogroup M . . . Alternatively, if M dispersed with N and R through South Asia, M may have been caught up in a subsequent bottleneck and founder effect so that its age signals the time of re-expansion rather than first arrival (p. 752 -- my emphasis).

There will, of course, be a great many refinements and no doubt revisions of all the many phylogenetic trees that are now being published. Nevertheless it seems clear, not only from these results, but others already published, that the gap I've noted, based largely on cultural evidence, is reflected in the genetic evidence as well. While such a gap might at first seem to be a stumbling block in our understanding of the earliest migrations of modern humans out of Africa, it is also, as I see it, a tremendously important clue, which could explain a great many other mysteries, some of which are so obvious as to have been taken for granted by the great majority of investigators.

(to be continued . . . )

261. The Baseline Scenarios -- 37: The Gap

Before continuing with an analysis of the genetic map I left you with in the last post, I want to return to the four minimaps I was discussing just before I displayed the genetic one -- because I just noticed something else:

This is thanks to Maju, who in a comment to the previous post, questioned an aspect of the above display that puzzled him: the presence of A3 and A4 in northern South Asia, in the first, second and fourth minimaps. Now A3 and A4 stand for two variants of P/B style, contrapuntal interlock and canonic interlock, found in the Caucasus and Europe, usually in refuge areas associated with mountainous terrain. And the reason I initially placed them in South Asia was because there was genetic evidence linking mtDNA haplogroups U5 and HV (see Oppenheimer, The Real Eve, p. 145) with the origins of early Europeans in what is now Pakistan and western India.

In order to account for the population of Europe by descendants of HMP, we need to find a pathway via which some subgroup would have branched off from the main body moving steadily eastward along the southern route. And it occurred to me that the most natural northward path after the Arabian coast would have been along the Indus River. Lo and behold, if our proto-Europeans had made their way far enough along the Indus valley, they might well have been sufficiently far from the effects of either Toba or the Tsunami I've depicted to have survived with their HMC traditions (including A3 and A4) intact. And that would explain why we find P/B variants A3 and A4 so abundantly in Europe as well as Southeast Asia, Melanesia, etc. Which is why I placed A3 and A4 where I did.

Now the reason I'm bringing this up again is because I just discovered that there is in fact an important pocket of tone language in exactly the same region where I placed A3 and A4, the upper reaches of the Indus, which, according to my hypothesis, could have been an important starting point for a migration of U5 and/or HV into the Caucasus and from there to Europe. And if this group had been insulated from whatever disaster befell it's cousins in Southern Asia, that could explain the survival of tone languages in this region. In fact, tone languages seem to have survived, like P/B, only in regions that would not have been affected by either the Toba explosion or a Tsunami centered south of India.

The linguistic map of tone languages shows only one in this general area, Kalami. In fact the entire region, unlike any other in either Pakistan or India, is rich in tone languages:

It appears to be the case that a majority of the languages of northern Pakistan (Punjab, NWFP, Northern Areas, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir) are tone languages. If we look at the numbers of speakers of these languages, it appears to be the case that a majority of the people of northern Pakistan are speakers of tone languages (Tonal features in languages of northern Pakistan, Joan L.G. Baart, p. 2).

Putting all the pieces together, we see a striking correlation between the survival of the musical style I've been calling "P/B," according to the hypothesis illustrated on these maps, and the distribution of tone languages in the Old World -- specifically, in SubSaharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Melanesia -- and the northern reaches of the Indus valley. The distribution is seen most clearly in the second map, labeled "Bottleneck Event," where only the surviving versions of my musical "super-haplogroup," A -- including A3 and A4 in the upper Indus valley -- are shown.

260. The Baseline Scenarios -- 36: The Gap

Let's take another look at the world map of tone languages:

The first thing I'd like to call your attention to is the saturation of tone languages in Africa. This map is taken from a remarkable website, The World Atlas of Language Structures Online (WALS), consisting of 141 maps of distinctive linguistic features, and as far as I've been able to determine, it's very unusual for any one region to be dominated by a single trait. The chances of this being a coincidence have to be pretty close to nil. If modern humans originated in Africa, then the earliest languages, including the language spoken by the Out of Africa migrants (HMP), were almost certainly tonal.

The next thing I'd like to call your attention to is the comparable saturation of tone languages in Southeast Asia and also Melanesia -- here too coincidence seems highly unlikely. Since these are areas populated by many indigenous groups, hunter-gatherers or horticulturalists, the saturation of tonal languages is most likely part of a broader pattern of cultural inheritance from HMC, as evidenced by other important features I'll be discussing presently.

If this is the case, then what are we to make of the areas along the same pathway where tone is almost completely absent? The dearth of tone languages in Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea and much of Island Melanesia can easily be explained by the relatively recent expansion of Austronesian speaking agriculturalists throughout this region beginning around 8,000 years ago. But India, Pakistan and Australia are not part of this development, and their non-tonal languages are much, much older. Since the very long South Asian coastline represents an important segment of the Out of Africa path, one would expect to find tonal languages here as well. And since both the archaeological and genetic evidence indicates that Australia was a very early, if remote, offshoot from the Out of Africa migration, the total absence of tonal languages on that continent is also extremely puzzling.

A pattern begins to emerge, however, as we realize that essentially the same odd distribution applies to certain other important characteristics, morphological, genetic and cultural, that, taken alone, are equally puzzling. For example, as I've already noted, those peoples in Asia and Oceania closest morphologically to African pygmies (thus likely to resemble HMP -- see Post 254), usually referred to as negritos, are not found at all in South Asia (aside from the Andaman Islands, well to the south and east), but are relatively common in Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Melanesia.

While Africa is famous for its remarkably rich traditions of wood carving and mask design, comparably elaborate artistic traditions are not found until we go beyond South Asia to indigenous peoples in parts of Malaysia, Indonesia and Melanesia, where some of the resemblances to African carvings, both artistic and contextual, are truly striking. If these were were traditions maintained by HMC, as seems very likely, why aren't they found in equal abundance everywhere along the Out of Africa trail?

The same question could be applied to the musical traditions of HMC, dominated as they must have been by P/B style. The "African signature" I've written so much about is essentially absent from the musical practices of both South Asia and Australia. This mystery is discussed at some length in my essay, Echoes of Our Forgotten Ancestors and also on this blog, beginning with Post 12. As I wrote in "Echoes,"

If the original Out-of-Africa group moved uniformly all the way from Africa down the coast of south Asia to the Malay Peninsula and from there down through Indonesia to New Guinea and Australia, as is sometimes claimed, then we musicologists have a problem. While many indigenous groups along the “beachcomber” route sing and play in a manner strongly reminiscent of P/B style, there has to my knowledge never been any instance of such a style found anywhere in Australia (p. 30).

Essentially the same absence applies to the entirety of the Near East and South Asia. In none of these regions have I as yet found more than the faintest traces of P/B, either vocal or instrumental -- no hocket, no interlock, no hocketing pipe, flute, trumpet or panpipe ensembles, no stamping tubes, no hocketing gong or percussion ensembles, maybe the occasional slit drum. Yet once we move into the same region where tone languages, negrito hunter-gatherers, and African-style carvings and masks are found, all the above musical practices, and the instruments associated with them, are also found -- in abundance. So what gives?

The same gap appears in the genetic evidence, interestingly enough. Stephen Oppenheimer has written as follows, regarding

the paradox of the Indian genetic picture, in which the genetic trail of the beachcombers can be detected, but the bulk of Indian subgroups...are unique to the subcontinent, especially among the tribes of the south-east. This is what we would expect for a recovery from a great disaster (The Real Eve, p. 193).

Oppenheimer had a very specific disaster in mind, by the way,

“the greatest natural calamity to befall any humans, ever,” the eruption, c. 70,000-74,000 years ago, of Mount Toba, in Sumatra. The explosion was so vast it left a plume of ash over the entirety of India for approximately five years, what Oppenheimer has called a “nuclear winter,” in which almost every living thing in that area would have been wiped out (The Real Eve, p. 82). This is one of the very few events in prehistory that can be precisely dated and measured, since “a metres-thick ash layer is found throughout the region.” ("Echoes," p. 31).

Though the evidence that modern humans were in Asia at the time Toba erupted is both slim and controversial, there is in fact very good reason to believe that some sort of calamity befel HMP's descendants during their great migration eastward. I discussed this possibility at some length in Post 12, where I presented the following map, illustrating how the early history of the Out of Africa migrants, and their music, could have been affected by a disaster of this sort -- in this case, a Tsunami.

I'll quote from what I wrote then:

In the first little map, titled "Out of Africa," all the arrows are red, representing the five variants of the original "Pygmy/Bushmen" style (A1 - 5 on the Phylogenetic Tree) that, as I see it, must have spread along with the original "out of Africa" migrants, following Oppenheimer's coastal route, all the way to Sundaland and beyond, turning the corner around the Moluccas, I guess and then continuing north along the SE Asiatic coast.

Mini-map 2, "Bottleneck Event," is an attempt to picture a catastrophic event that could account for the musical gap we find between Yemen and Myanmar, where little or no evidence of Pygmy/Bushmen style can be found today. According to Oppenheimer, there is a very similar gap in the genetic evidence, though, as I understand, not everyone agrees about this. As I see it, only some sort of catastrophe at some point from, say, 75,000 to 50,000 years ago, can explain all the very different musical styles we find in the world today, especially the styles
represented in the phylogenetic tree as B2 and B3 and their derivatives. So this map, unlike any other I've ever seen, is not based solely on continuity, but contains an abrupt break, representing the effects of the bottleneck on the various surviving groups.

I'll include one more map before quitting for the day: It's from a recently published article titled Correcting for Purifying Selection: An Improved Human Mitochondrial Molecular Clock. See what you can make of it.

(to be continued . . . )

259. The Baseline Scenarios -- 35: The Migrants -- Culture

Since we have no way of knowing what the original Pygmy language might have been, or if Pygmies ever had a fully formed (i.e., fully syntactic) language of their own, it did not seem possible to formulate a meaningful hypothesis regarding the language spoken by HBP. While many have speculated that Khoisan (the click language of the Bushmen) could represent the earliest language, there is no real evidence of that -- we have no reason to believe Pygmies ever used clicks and for that matter no reason to believe clicks were used by either HMP or any of its Asiatic, European, Oceanic or American descendants, since clicks are absent from just about all world languages outside of south and east Africa.

I now realize that another, much more significant, aspect of language was staring me in the face all that time, so obvious I simply overlooked it. Almost every single language in SubSaharan Africa is a tonal language, i.e., a language in which differences of meaning are determined by differences in pitch. Thus, if homo sapiens originated in Africa, as is now generally believed, the first language is very likely to have been tonal -- which tells us that, if HBP had any language at all, it too would have been tonal -- and even if they didn't have a fully formed, fully syntactic language (as I suspect they may not have), then whatever vocabulary they had would most likely have contained tonally differentiated phonemes. This observation ties in rather nicely, I must say, with earlier speculations of mine that the development of music may well have preceded, and influenced, the development of speech, because musical notes in and of themselves operate like tonal phonemes (see "Echoes of Our Forgotten Ancestors").

Regardless of whether a fully formed tonal language was part of HBC, such a language was almost certainly employed by HMP -- first, because they were in all likelihood SubSaharan Africans, but also because, unlike clicks, tonal languages are in fact widely found among their descendants. If we expect to conclude, however, that tonal languages were spread via the migration initiated by HMP, along the southern route, we have a problem. A very puzzling gap can be seen in the distribution of tonal languages along this route:

Tonal Languages

As you can see, a great many tonal languages have been identified in Africa, and also in SouthEast Asia, as well as Near Oceania (New Guinea and Island Melanesia), with some also in the Americas -- but hardly any in South Asia (what is now India and Pakistan) and none at all in Australia. What could this mean?

(to be continued . . . )

258. The Baseline Scenarios -- 34: The Migrants -- Culture

While aspects of P/B vocal style appear to have survived as a kind of "African signature" among indigenous groups in Southeast Asia, Southern China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, New Guinea, Island Melanesia, among certain Siberian, Inuit and Amerindian groups, as well as among certain "peasant" communities in various regions of Europe, it would appear to have a very different meaning for these peoples than it has for the Pygmies and Bushmen groups I've been using to construct my HBC model.

For one thing, the style tends to be watered down, lacking the complexity, subtlety, spontaneity and creative freedom so characteristic of almost all Pygmy and Bushmen music. The counterpoint is often more limited in scope, the degree of improvisation restricted, or in many cases non-existent. Performances tend to be planned in advance and often rehearsed, with a fixed rather than open-ended number of parts.

The social context in which this particular type of music is performed also tends to be far more restricted. In a great many cases, the style is reserved for special occasions, often associated with some of the most important rituals, as though this music were consciously associated with the oldest and most powerful ancestral traditions. In other cases, we find it, as in the "throat singing" of certain Paleosiberian and Inuit groups, characterized as a game (though as Nattiez has demonstrated, this "game" has decidedly shamanistic roots).

It's important to understand that such limitations do not apply among African Pygmies and Bushmen. While certain repertoires are reserved for special ceremonies, such as the girl's elima or the molimo ceremony among the Mbuti, or the Eland or Xhoma rituals among the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen, the style as a whole is a characteristic, spontaneously expressed, aspect of everyday life, as it very likely was for HBC. Whether the same applies to P/B as practiced by HMC is not completely clear, especially since we find "watered down" and contextually restricted forms of P/B among many African groups as well.

Only a very few, rather simple, musical instruments are native to either Pygmies or Bushmen. Most instruments now in use among these groups, such as the drum, the mbira and various string instruments are known to be borrowed from neighboring farming or herding peoples. In fact the only musical instrument commonly found among all three of our "feeder" groups, EP, WP and Bu, is the musical bow, an extremely important instrument that was undoubtedly a part of both HBC and HMC, and is widely found among a great many indigenous groups in many parts of the world.

Of special interest in the present context are the many polyphonic wind ensembles, of pipes, whistles, trumpets, horns or flutes, to be found among certain groups in Africa, organized in a manner very similar to the hocketed interlocking of parts so characeteristic of P/B vocalizing. Typically, each instrument has a single note to play, or in some cases, a repeated phrase, which interweaves with all the other parts to produce a resultant melody, rhythm or polyphonic texture. Since I've already discussed such ensembles at some length on this blog (see Post 38 et seq.), I won't go into detail on their organization here.

The Mbuti perform with hocketed ensembles of single-note pipes called Luma, tuned and kept for them by their Bantu "masters." The BaAka use the mobeke pipe, described as "a small whistle made from the stem of a papaw plant," for the same purpose. Among the Ba'Benzele Pygmies similar pipes are called hindewhu. In all cases, the pipes participate as equal partners with voices in hocketed/interlocked P/B style performances. I would have included pipe ensembles of this kind in HBC, except for the fact that they are not found, apparently, among Bushmen groups, and I've been trying to be as strict as possible with my "triangulation" method.*

Nevertheless, since such ensembles are so common in Africa, with very similar ensembles of pipes, panpipes and trumpets found outside of Africa, in many of the same parts of the world as P/B style vocalizing, it would be very difficult to explain such a link unless the tradition had been disseminated via HMC. Thus, despite the fact that it's not strictly speaking possible to attribute instrumental hocket/interlock to HBC, the worldwide distribution of this tradition can be explained only if it were a part of HMC. The vocal and instrumental forms of P/B are so close stylistically and structurally that the latter most likely developed from the former, possibly only after the proto-Bantu diverged from the ancestral proto-Pygmies and Bushmen.

Hocketed percussion, possibly a development from the very complex polyrhythmic interactions of P/B handclapping, is also an important tradition in many parts of Africa, with important echoes, once again, along the southern "Out of Africa" route. One of the simplest types, stamping tubes, is widely found in Africa, but also along the same southern "Out of Africa" route as so many of the other traditions I've been discussing. In this highly interactive type of music-making, each performer typically has a single tube in each hand, performing only one segment of an intricate melodic-rhythmic resultant pattern, usually repeated over and over.

Though commonly found among many African groups, stamping tubes are not reported among either Pygmies or Bushmen, though similarly interactive rhythmic effects are produced by them using sticks, a practice that could be regarded as prototypical. Since very similar types of stamping tube ensembles are found outside of Africa, and the complexities of the rhythms make independent invention unlikely, despite the simplicity of the instruments themselves, once again we have a musical tradition that could only have been transmitted via HMC.

Much the same could be said of a very simple type of xylophone, made from slabs of wood placed on the lap or legs of the performer, which once again is commonly found both in Africa and along the Out of Africa path, but not reported for Pygmies or Bushmen, thus most likely not directly associable with HBC.

Another instrument of great interest, with a very similar multi-regional distribution, is the slit drum, which is also, like stamping tubes, often played in hocketed/interlocked ensembles. Once again, the distribution of this very important instrument, often elaborately carved and with great ritual significance in certain cultures, can be explained only if it were part of a tradition disseminated via HMC.


*However, hocketed panpipe ensembles were reported among their close relatives, the Khoi-Khoi (Hottentot) cattle herders.

257. The Baseline Scenarios -- 33: The Migrants -- Culture

The easiest aspect of the Hypothetical Migrant Culture (HMC) for me to speculate about is music, since this is the area where I've done by far the most research. And the first thing I need to point out in this regard is the fact that P/B, i.e., Pygmy/Bushmen style, which I've written so much about both here and elsewhere (see, for example, Post 5 et seq., as well as the articles downloadable from Post 172), is 1. in some form or other, vocal or instrumental or both, widely distributed among indigenous peoples in many different parts of the world; and 2. in its most complex, complete and characteristic form found only in Africa, usually among Pygmies and Bushmen, though some other African groups come very close to the Pygmies and Bushmen in certain respects. Even in such cases, however, the style appears to be reserved for certain types of ritual or festival or certain times of year, e.g., associated with planting or harvest time, etc., whereas the Pygmies and Bushmen sing this way as part of their daily life.

I've already made what I believe to be strong case for P/B as an equally pervasive and important aspect of the culture of the ancestral group, HBC. What must be considered now is what role, if any, the style played in HMC.

One clue, as far as Africa is concerned, is the very interesting center of P/B style to be found in a region very close to what is widely considered both a possible birthplace of "modern" humans and the staging area for the Out of Africa migration: the Omo River valley in southwest Ethiopia. According to the Cantometric database, the following peoples in this region, all speakers of "Omotic" languages, vocalize at least some of the time using interlocking counterpoint, one of the most distinctive features of P/B: the Ari, Dorze, Gamo, Ghimira and Wolamo. As far as I know, however, the Dorze are the only ones in this region who regularly yodel, another important feature of P/B among Pygmies and Bushmen.

Whether the culture of the Out of Africa migrants was as saturated with this style as the cultures of today's Pygmies and Bushmen are, or whether it might have taken some more or less "watered down" form by that time, is very difficult to say. Judging from the widespread distribution of certain very distinctive features of this very distinctive style, especially in certain key regions along the southern Out of Africa route, it's impossible for me to believe that a very similar musical practice did not play an extremely important role in HMC.

The following are characteristics of P/B widely found among various (though by no means all) indigenous cultures outside of Africa. Assuming a single migration, the culture of the Out of Africa migrants being the only possible link between HBC and the ancestral traditions of all these different peoples, the same characteristics would therefore have played an important role in HMC as well:

1. Simple shouted "hocket," where one voice or one group half sings and half shouts one or two notes, in rapid alternation with other voices or groups;

2. more elaborate forms of hocket, where two or more voices interlock closely together to produce a melodic or contrapuntal resultant;

3. more smoothly integrated interlocking counterpoint, very similar to the above, and also producing resultant effects;

4. imitative or even canonic forms of vocal counterpoint, often resembling simple rounds, but sometimes much more complex;

5. additive structures, where there are as many parts as there are participants, who enter and exit as they please;

6. a continuous flow of sound, with no audible articulation points and alternation of breathing among all participants;

7. wide, disjunct melodic intervals, often producing a "fanfare" type effect;

8. yodel -- many groups in Africa that sing in variant forms of P/B do not also yodel, but judging from the importance of yodel among so many indigenous peoples outside of Africa, HMP almost certainly did;

9. some form of percussion accompaniment, ranging from handclaps to the striking of sticks or simple rattles -- while such rhythms can be extremely intricate and subtle among Pygmies and Bushmen and indeed many other African groups, we don't find comparable rhythmic complexity outside of Africa, at least not among indigenous peoples, which means that HMC may not have had as elaborated a rhythmic sense as their ancestors;

In the next post, I'll discuss instrumental music, which would most likely have played only a minor role in HBC, but must have been far more important and elaborated among the Out of Africa migrants.

256. The Baseline Scenarios -- 32: The Migrants -- Culture

If there were only one early Out of Africa migration, as most investigators now seem to believe, that would make it much easier to formulate testable hypotheses regarding the nature of HMC, for reasons that should become evident as I proceed. If more than one, the process of accounting for HMC1, HMC2, etc., and distinguishing between them, becomes much more difficult. On the other hand, multiple migrations would offer more interpretive flexibility -- and provide a convenient out in the event a serious contradiction emerges. While it's always nice to have an "out," I'd much prefer it if a single event were actually the case, because that greatly simplifies the process.

I'll begin by exploring that first alternative, a single Out of Africa migration. My strategy will be simple. I'll first consider, one by one, the characteristics of HBC that we've already considered, and ask whether it's likely that the same traditions could still have been alive in HMC. I'll then consider possible characteristics of HMC that might differ from HBC.

It's important to remember that our assessement of HBC was based on the examination of three African populations, EP, WP and Bu, whereas our assessment of HMC must be based on non-African traditions as well. Assuming a single Out of Africa event, it should be clear that all non-African cultures everywhere in the world ultimately derive from the culture of the original Out of Africa migrants. I repeat: all non-African traditions, however diverse, can be understood in the most fundamental sense as stemming from HBC as filtered by HMC. While EP, WP and Bu served as "feeders" in the construction of our HBC model, all non-African cultures, especially those of the most traditional indigenous groups, are available as "feeders" in the construction of our model for HMC. While this immeasurably enhances the richness of the possibilities, it also makes the process of hyphothesis construction far more complicated and uncertain.

Let's begin with some relatively straightforward questions. Did the Out of Africa migrants have bows and arrows? And if so, did they use poison arrows? While the use of bows and arrows and arrow poison by HBP remains uncertain (no stone arrow points have been discovered in the tropical forests of Africa -- but most Pygmies and Bushmen traditionally used bone or wood points that would not have been preserved), the widespread presence of bows and arrows both in and out of Africa makes it almost certain that this technology was an important part of the material culture of HMC, from where it would have spread to the rest of the world.*

As for the use of poison tips, on arrows, spears and darts, it seems logical to conclude that this too is very likely to have been an important part of the hunting technology of HMC, especially since such tips can be found among so many hunting and gathering people today.

Did the Out of Africa migrants have beehive huts? HBP almost certainly had them, as I've already argued. And since we still find them scattered about among a great many indigenous peoples worldwide, it seems clear that HMP must also have had them.

Were HMP hunters and gatherers? An obvious question for many, but it must be asked, nevertheless. And since so many indigenous peoples in Asia, Oceania and the Americas are not strictly hunters and gatherers, but also, to some extent, farmers (more commonly referred to as "horticulturalists") this must remain an open question -- despite the widespread assumption among anthropologists and archaeologists that no form of farming or herding could have taken place prior to ca 10,000 years ago. I'm not so sure, so I'd prefer to leave this as an open question.

(to be continued . . . )

*While it's possible to argue, on the basis of its apparent late appearance in the Americas, that the bow and arrow may well have been independently invented there, it seems highly unlikely that it could have been independently invented in many different places, as is sometimes claimed. There is nothing obvious about bows and arrows, and certainly nothing obvious about the archery skills necessary if they are to be of any use. Given what we now know about African origins, it seems logical to conclude that a technology as widely used as this must have had its beginnings on that continent, along with so much else.

255. The Baseline Scenarios -- 31: The Migrants -- Geography

I've been reminded in comments by both German and Maju that representatives of haplogroups M and N are found along both the southern and northern routes, thus apparently negating the possibility of an association between these two major non-African mtDNA haplogroups and the two major OoA pathways postulated by Cavalli-Sforza and others.

Looking more closely at Maju's tree, however (see Post 253), I see that M-derived haplogroups are found exclusively along the southern route [assuming East Asia was initially populated via Southeast Asia, as suggested in a recent publication]. It would appear to be only the N-derived haplogroups that are found along both routes. This suggests the following possibility: 1. an initial migration out of Africa by a group dominated by M haplotypes, whose descendants followed the southern coast of Asia pretty consistently from Yemen to Southeast Asia, Sundaland and the Sahul, with at least one subgroup pressing northward along the Pacific coast toward northeast Asia, Japan, Siberia and ultimately the Americas; 2. a second out of Africa migration by a group dominated by N haplotypes, which could have begun along the southerly route, but at some point bifurcated, possibly at what would have been the first major water obstacle, the Indus River Delta, with one group forging on along the southern route, and another continuing north along the west coast of the Indus to ultimately populate western India, Europe and Central Asia. Since Maju put this tree together, I'm wondering what he thinks of such a possibility.

Another possibility is a single exodus from Africa of groups dominated by L3 haplotypes, which bifurcated into M and N subgroups while in Asia, possibly at the same point, the Indus Delta. It's not clear, however, why all or most of the M groups would have continued along the southern route, with only the N groups bifurcating into northern and southern clades. Which leads me to believe that a dual exodus theory could make more sense. I'm wondering also whether the Y chromosome and autosomal evidence might either clarify or muddy the mtDNA picture.

I'm sorry to make such a fuss over what might seem like a purely technical issue that might never get resolved, but it's important to my project that we be able to determine whether one or two (or possibly more) groups migrated out of Africa during this very early period of human history. I believe the cultural evidence could provide us with some clues, but it would be really helpful to know more clearly what lies behind the sometimes puzzling and contradictory genetic evidence.

254. The Baseline Scenarios -- 30: The Migrants -- Morphology

Before getting into the complexities of the cultural history, let's see how far we can get when we get physical. Admittedly, the cultural aspect interests me much more, but now that we've reached this point, I can't resist speculating about the physical stuff as well.

Two very intriguing questions immediately come to mind: 1. is there any evidence that HMP were short, like today's Pygmies -- and also certain Bushmen groups; or is it more likely they were of "normal" size, or even taller? 2. is there any evidence that could help us decide whether HMP were morphologically closer to Pygmies or to Bushmen? I think there is evidence that could help us on both counts, though some of it is inconclusive for sure.

To deal with the "easy" question first, it seems evident that HMP must have been more Pygmy-like, 1. because there are a great many "negrito" peoples in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and Melanesia, who have a decidedly "pygmoid" physiognomy; 2. there are also a great many taller peoples who strongly resemble Bantu Africans, who are closely related genetically to African Pygmies and look far more like Pygmies than Bushmen; 3. no other people in the world look like Bushmen,* while a great many resemble African Pygmies; 4. the genetic evidence seems consistent with Pygmies, or at least proto-Pygmies as ancestral to everyone else, while mtDNA L0, characteristic of most Bushmen, seems relatively isolated, with no out of Africa branches at all. I'm aware, of course, that there are some striking similarities between modern East Asians and Bushmen, including the epicanthic fold, flattened facial features, etc., but I don't see any evidence of a direct or intermediate link between the two populations, so this might well be a coincidence -- (or perhaps the late "flowering" of some recessive genes).

As for shortness, this is a more complex issue, because we still don't know whether the shortness of all or even most Pygmy groups is inherited from a common ancestor or represents a series of independent adaptations. What we do know is that every single "negrito" group in the world is located along the hypothetical southern coastal route supposedly taken by HMP after leaving Africa for Asia, and it would seem difficult to explain the presence of so many of these groups -- many of which are hunter-gatherers with a culture very similar to HBC -- along this particular path unless they were direct descendants of HMP. It's also true, however, that many, though not all such groups were orginally found living in tropical forest environments, which means that all Pygmy and Pygmoid shortness could be an adaptation to that particular environment (though this doesn't explain Bushmen shortness). It's also true that the great majority of groups now living along this path, and represented by M and N clades, are not negritos. So if HMP were Pygmies, or Pygmoid, then why aren't all their descendants short? If we insist on a single Out of Africa migration, then, at some point, at least one of the descendant groups must have adapted, one way or the other. But this difference could also be the sign that there was more than one Out of Africa migration, and thus more than one HMP, one short, one of "normal" size. Do we need to think in terms of HMP1 and HMP2? and HMC1 and HMC2 as well? As we turn to the cultural evidence, we might find some clues to help us deal with this very fundamental question.

(to be continued . . . )
*[Added 12-14: I should have written "no other people in the world, outside of Africa, look like Bushmen." There are many people in southern Africa who do in fact look a lot like Bushmen, which is to be expected if we accept the commonly held theory that Bushmen and their close relatives, the Khoi-khoi (so-called Hottentots), dominated all or most of southern Africa prior to the Bantu expansion.]

253. The Baseline Scenarios -- 29: The Migrants

Here's another picture of HMP. I lifted this off of Maju's blog, Leherensuge, which is full of neat stuff like this. Thanks, Maju.

(Click to enlarge.)

What we see here is a phylogenetic tree somewhat similar in content (though different in design) to that displayed in my previous post, in that it represents mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), i.e. female lineages only. But in this case, the M haplogroups, in red, and the N haplogroups, in blue, are greatly expanded, so we can get a good look not only at HMP, but many of its descendants throughout the world.

Despite the fact that N appears lower down on this map than M, it's important to recognize that both are "sister" clades, branching off from the same "mother": L3 -- now found only in Africa. If M and N are sisters, does this mean there were two different Out of Africa migrations? I don't know enough about population genetics to get into this question very deeply, but perhaps Maju, who knows a lot more than I, will be willing to chime in with some suggestions. I found an interesting reference to this issue in a paper by Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus Feldman, The Application of Molecular Genetic Approaches to the Study of Human Evolution, dating from 2003.

After referring to the widely accepted theory that "the spread of humans into Asia occurred through two routes," a southern route along the Indian Ocean coast, and a "central route through the Middle East, Arabia or Persia to Central Asia, from where migration occurred in all directions . . .", they note that "it is still unresolved whether the divergence between these two expansion routes occurred in Africa or after entry into West Asia . . ." (p. 270). If the former is the case, then there would have been two Out of Africa migrations, and therefore two different HMPs, one carrying M and the other N. If the latter is the case, it looks as though there was only one such migration, of an L3 group which produced its M and N branches only after HMP crossed over into what is now Yemen. This is all, of course, highly speculative still, but much is nevertheless generally accepted as what the authors refer to as the "standard model of modern human evolution" (p. 270).

Having established, however provisionally, a baseline for the consideration of the physical and cultural nature of the population ancestral to M, N, and L -- what I've been calling HBP and HBC -- we are now in a position to speculate further regarding the physical and cultural characteristics of their descendants, the Out of Africa migrants. This will not be anywhere near so easy, however. If you look carefully at the phylogenetic tree reproduced above, you'll notice an important difference between the uppermost branches, labeled L, and those lower down, dominated by M and N. Though not indicated on the diagram, the deepest branches, especially L0, L1, and L2, are dominated by Bushmen groups and both of the major Pygmy groups, Eastern and Western. The simplicity of this picture, along with the equally clear musical evidence, has made it relatively easy to characterize HBC on the basis of what we know about these three groups, using the triangulation method already described. The many branches emanating directly from M and N present a very different picture, however, with far less structure. Unlike the situation with L, it's not at all clear where we can look if we wish to triangulate, or even quadrangulate or quintangulate (have I just invented two new words?).

We can, of course, look backward to HBC for signs that certain ancestral features might have survived in HMC. But we will also need to draw on what we know about a great many indigenous societies in many different parts of Asia, Oceania, Australia and Europe as well. And since there are so many differences among so many of these groups, our task will not be easy. It is nevertheless, in my opinion, possible to develop some very interesting and to some extent testable hypotheses regarding both HMP and HMC, and to the extent that we can do so, we will have established another important baseline for the study of human history.

252. The Baseline Scenarios -- 28: The Migrants

According to the Out of Africa model of human history, a relatively small group of Homo Sapiens migrated across the Red Sea, possibly at its southernmost point, the Bab el-Mandeb ("Gate of Tears"), some 80,000 to 60,000 years ago. There would have been nothing special about this group whatsoever. They were not the first to have crossed the Red Sea to Asia -- relics of a much earlier migration have been found in what is now Israel. And there may well have been other groups to have made a similar crossing both before and after they did. They would have had no way of knowing they were leaving Africa, and in fact would have had no concept of Africa or even of what a continent is. As far as they were concerned the perilous journey across the water to a shore they could barely make out on the horizon might not have been much different from other such crossings made over various rivers as they journeyed from place to place -- they were, in all likelihood, nomads. If the water was salt instead of fresh, it's not clear what that would have meant to them over and above its drinkability. It's possible that, like the Children of Israel, they crossed over the Red Sea to escape some other people seeking to destroy or enslave them. Or maybe they simply hoped to find better opportunities for hunting, fishing, collecting shellfish and other nutrients. We'll never know.

They had their picture taken, however, though it wasn't developed until tens of thousands of years later. Here it is:


It's a family picture. To enlarge it, right-click and select "Open in New Window." They're the ones roughly in the middle, toward the bottom, in the violet area, under the words "Out of Africa" -- the ones labeled M and N. This picture is somewhat misleading, however. First of all it's ladies only, the men have been excluded. Secondly, it's restricted only to surviving family members, or, to be more precise, those whose lineages have survived all the way to the 20th and 21st centuries. There were undoubtedly many others who could have been represented, some of whom might even have crossed over to Asia before them, but, most geneticists seem convinced that M and N are the only "Out of Africa" families whose lineages survived. Which means that everyone whose ancestors lived outside of Africa is descended from this one small group. The Migrants. What I'll be calling HMP, or "Hypothetical Migrant Population."

251. The Baseline Scenarios -- 27: Hunter-Gatherers

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers covers North and South America, Africa, North Eurasia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Australia -- but not New Guinea or Island Melanesia. These areas are a problem for hunter-gatherer studies because the great majority of the many, many indigenous groups therein are not, strictly speaking, foragers, but usually described as "horticulturalists" -- which boils down, in many cases, to hunter-gatherers who also do a bit of simple gardening.

What makes this a problem is that it isn't always so easy to distinguish the two. For example, the Encyclopedia includes a chapter on the Batak, in the Philippines, despite the fact that "they have long produced some rice by shifting cultivation, together with smaller amounts of maize, cassava and sweet potato, but cultivation is a far less important activity for them than it is for their lowland neighbors" (p. 295). I have a feeling that much the same could be said of a great many Melanesian "horticulturalists" as well.

In an online article, The Hunter-Gatherer Spectrum in New Guinea, Paul Roscoe informs us that some New Guinean populations are -- or were -- hunter-gatherers after all:

It has long been supposed that New Guinea is a land of cultivators. New Guineans were among the first peoples on Earth to cultivate crops, and at contact a majority were either horticulturalists, cultivating root crops such as taro and yam under long-fallow regimes, or agriculturalists cropping sweet potato under intensive cultivation regimes. However, a close examination of the ethnographic record – in particular, of unpublished and non-English language sources – has revealed numerous references to the presence of “hunters and gatherers.”

Roscoe distinguishes two principal types of New Guinea foragers:

Groups that procured limited amounts of meat protein or that relied primarily on terrestrial and arboreal game markedly resembled the classic hunter-gatherer societies typified by the Kung, Inuit, Mbuti, and many Australian Aboriginal groups. At contact, their population densities were usually below 1/sq.km; their settlements were small, typically between 10 and 40 inhabitants; and they were mostly semi- or fully-nomadic, shifting residence every few weeks or months. Political life was relatively egalitarian: inequities in power and influence
were uncommon, though fighting prowess, hunting ability, ritual expertise (including sorcery), and/or economic generosity brought prestige. Mobility was an important conflict resolution mechanism. Ritual life was comparatively unelaborated, and there was little visual art - though other aesthetic pursuits
such as dance and song were sometimes highly developed.

However: "Contradicting a common stereotype that war is attenuated or absent among hunters and gatherers, fighting was endemic." [my emphasis]

The other type of forager group concentrated on "aquatic resources" rather than terrestrial hunting and, interestingly enough, had a very different type of culture:

Groups that depended on aquatic resources rather than terrestrial and arboreal game typically exhibited a cultural complexity rivaling that of agriculturalists in New Guinea and they strongly resembled other aquatically adapted, hunter-gatherer societies such as the Native American communities of the Northwest Coast. . .
Most of these groups also had developed highly elaborate ceremonial and visual art. Some, such as the Asmat, Karawari, Kwoma, and Purari are among the most famous of New Guinea’s ritual artists.

And once again, as with the terrestrial foragers, violence is an important theme: "Warfare was generally intense, and most of these groups were head-hunters."

The importance of violence among New Guinea's hunter-gatherers, and in Melanesia generally, even among the simpler, more egalitarian societies, certainly does go against the stereotype, an "inconvenient truth" that must be accounted for by anyone seeking to characterize hunter-gatherers in general according to the "core values" we've been discussing.

The contradiction is not lost on Roscoe:

Hunter-gatherer scholarship has largely overlooked the importance of war, partly because of long-standing assumptions that warfare is a relatively recent emergence in human history and that hunter-gatherers lead a peaceful life. There is increasing evidence, however, that these assumptions are misplaced and that New Guinea’s foragers may more accurately represent the hunter-gatherer past. Recent primate research finds that chimpanzees practice a form of lethal aggression against neighbors that has striking similarities to ambush in human
society. This suggests that organized deadly violence may antedate the human-chimpanzee split, some 5 to 7 million years ago, and therefore may have characterized the whole of human prehistory. This conclusion is corroborated by historical research on reputedly peaceful hunter-gatherer groups such as the
!Kung, Inuit, and Australian Aborigines, which suggests that war was considerably more prevalent among these peoples than previously supposed.

Looks like deja vu all over again. I've already examined some of these issues in earlier posts, specifically the questionable comparison of humans with chimps (see Post 197), Steven Pinker's claim that early humans must have been "naturally" violent, based on all the "new" evidence of violence among hunter-gatherers (see Post 199), and the "revelation" that the so-called "Harmless People," i.e., the !Kung Bushmen, were at some point discovered to have an unusually high homicide rate (see Post 209).

Another complication posed by Melanesia, not mentioned by Roscoe, but of equal relevance, is the importance in just about every Melanesian society of the so-called "Big Man." According to Marshall Sahlins, who made an intensive study of Melanesian social structure,

Politics is in the main personal politicking in these Melanesian societies, and the size of a leader's faction as well as the extent of his renown are normally set by competition with other ambitious men. . .

[A Big Man] must be prepared to demonstrate that he possesses the kind of skills that command respect . . . Typically decisive is the deployment of one's skills and efforts in a certain direction: towards amassing goods, most often pigs, shell monies and vegetable foods, and distributing them in ways which build a name for cavalier generosity, if not for compassion (Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief, pp. 290-291).

While Melanesian social structure is still often referred to as "relatively egalitarian" or "more-or-less egalitarian" (see for example "Irian Jaya - Anthropological and Historical Perspective," by Waruno Mahdi, part 2), the notion of a "Big-Man" in the above sense would be pure anathema to any of the Pygmy or Bushmen groups whose cultures we've been examining. These cultures are more than simply "egalitarian," they perpetuate social mechanisms that actively discourage any attempt on the part of any individual to stand out from the group. While certain individuals do emerge as what could be called "natural leaders" due to certain outstanding abilities, personal ambition is strongly frowned upon, and overt competition of any kind is almost unheard of.

It's important to understand that neither violence nor "Big-Man" politics among hunter-gatherers, or horticulturalists with otherwise very similar cultures, is by no means confined to Melanesia, though both are particularly common in this region. In fact there are many such groups that have exhibited highly competitive and violent behavior, in many parts of the world.

So what gives? Does this mean that "deadly violence" in fact "characterized the whole of human prehistory," as Roscoe, and so many others, have alleged (see above)? Does it mean that the spirit of competition is ingrained into the human spirit, in the now widely accepted "liberal" view dominating "free" market economics? Only if we are willing to accept the commonly held view of "hunter-gatherers" as represenative, for better (the traditionalist view) or worse (the revisionist view), of some sort of universalized essence of "Stone-Age Man."

As I made clear in the previous post, I cannot accept such a view, from either perspective (i.e., "naturally" egalitarian and non-violent or "naturally" competitive and warlike), because neither makes sense and both are based on assumptions rather than evidence. As now seems clear, from both the genetic and the cultural evidence, all such groups, along with all other human societies now sharing our planet, are descended from a single ancestral group that could only have had a very particular culture, which I've been calling HBC.

And if the ancestral culture can be modeled, as I believe it can, on the "fiercely egalitarian" (Barry Hewlett, Intimate Fathers), non-competetive, and essentially non-violent* ("War is unknown," William L. Ury, Conflict Resolution among the Bushmen) ethos of Pygmy and Bushmen hunter-gatherers, then I'm sorry but no: neither "deadly violence" nor the competitive spirit "characterized the whole of human prehistory." While some "hunter-gatherers" can undoubtedly be described in such terms, the ancestral group from which they emerged was, in all likelihood, relatively egalitarian and peaceful.

What could have happened among so many of their descendants that turned them so disastrously in the direction of both competiveness and war?

*See Post 209 for an in-depth discussion of Bushmen violence. While acts of violence, including murder, have been reported among both Pygmies and Bushmen, the core values reported over and over again for all these groups strongly discourage violent behavior, there is no glorification of war or warriors, and in fact no warrior class at all -- nor are there any weapons of war, nor any sign of the blood feuds, raids and out and out warfare so common among the groups discussed above.

250. The Baseline Scenarios -- 26: Hunter-Gatherers

I haven't posted in a while, partly because I've been busy with three different projects, but mostly because the hunter-gatherer picture is a bit daunting and I haven't been sure how best to proceed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers contains separate articles on 53 different groups from seven world regions and to the best of my knowledge they are merely skimming the surface. Each group has its own individual history, of course, and certain distinctive qualities that may not be shared with many of the others. Moreover, each author of each study has his or her own approach and his or her own philosophy regarding what hunter-gatherers (aka "foragers") are and how to think about them. Nevertheless, a consensus does seem to have emerged, in this volume and elsewhere, at least among those who still think the category "hunter-gatherer" has any meaning at all.

In the Introduction, "Foragers and Others," by Lee and Daly, it's acknowledged that "Hunter- gatherers are a diverse group of peoples living in a wide range of conditions." Nevertheless,

within the range of variation, certain common motifs can be identified. Hunter- gatherers are generally peoples who have lived until recently without the overarching discipline imposed by the state. They have lived in relatively small groups, without centralized authority, standing armies, or bureaucratic systems. Yet the evidence indicates that they have lived together surprisingly well, solving their problems among themselves largely without recourse to authority figures and without a particular propensity for violence (p. 1 -- my emphasis).

With reference to hunter-gatherer social life, they write as follows:

The basic unit of social organization of most (but not all) hunting and gathering peoples is the band, a small- scale nomadic group of fifteen to fifty people related by kinship. Band societies are found throughout the Old and New Worlds and share a number of features in common. Most observers would agree that the social and economic life of small-scale hunter gatherers shares the following features.

First they are relatively egalitarian. Leadership is less formal and more subject to constraints of popular opinion than in village societies governed by headmen and chiefs. Leadership in band societies tends to be by example, not by fiat. The leader can persuade but not command. . .

Mobility is another characteristic of band societies. People tend to move their settlements frequently, several times a year or more, in search of food, and this mobility is an important element of their politics. People in band societies tend to "vote with their feet;' moving away rather than submitting to the will of an unpopular leader. Mobility is also a means of resolving conflicts that would be more difficult for settled peoples.

A third characteristic is the remarkable fact that all band-organized peoples exhibit a pattern of concentration and dispersion. Rather than living in uniformly sized groupings throughout the year, band societies tend to spend part of the year dispersed into small foraging units and another part of the year aggregated into much larger units. . .

A fourth characteristic common to almost all band societies (and hundreds of village based societies as well) is a land tenure system based on a common property regime (CPR). . . In traditional CPRs, while movable property is held by individuals, land is held by a kinship- based collective. . . [my emphasis]

Under "Ethos and Word View," Lee and Daly give special importance to sharing, as

the central rule of social interaction among hunters and gatherers. There are strong injunctions on the importance of reciprocity. Generalized reciprocity, the giving of something without an immediate expectation of return, is the dominant form within face-to-face groups. Its presence in hunting and gathering societies is almost universal. [My emphasis.]

Another important element shared by almost all hunter-gatherer groups is Shamanism:

Shamanism is another major practice common to the great majority of hunting and gathering peoples. The word originates in eastern Siberia, from the Evenki/Tungus word saman meaning "one who is excited or raised.” Throughout the hunter-gatherer world community-based ritual specialists (usually part-time) heal the sick and provide spiritual protection. They mediate between the social/human world and the dangerous and unpredictable world of the supernatural. Shamanism is performative, mixing theatre and instrumental acts in order to approach the plane of the sacred (pp. 3-5).

In sum, what just about all hunter-gatherer populations would appear to have in common (with certain important exceptions) are: small bands; lack of central authority; tendency toward non-violence; relatively egalitarian ethic; mobility; flexible patterns of concentration and dispersion; communal ownership of property; "generalized reciprocity" (i.e., sharing of most resources with no expectation of return); shamanism.

I've quoted at length from Lee and Daly, highly respected authorities on hunter-gatherer societies, because just about everything they find that all or almost all such peoples have in common are features already identified here as characteristic of HBC. So we must ask the following question: is this commonality due simply to the fact that the three groups we've been using to construct our HBC model, EP, WP and Bu, are themselves hunter-gatherers? In other words, are all hunter-gatherers to be explained by "hunter-gatherer-ivity"? Or, to put it in functionalist terms, is hunter-gatherer culture in general a function of hunting and gathering in particular? I wonder how many functionalists have realized how circular this "explanation" is. Hunters and gatherers apparently live the way they do because they hunt and gather. And they hunt and gather because that's the way they live.

Is there an alternative explanation? Yes, of course, and I've thoughtfully provided it. Hunters and gatherers live the way they do not because they hunt and gather (duh!), but because they are highly conservative peoples who have gone to a tremendous amount of trouble over many thousands of years to preserve their traditional way of life, based on traditions that could only have been established tens of thousands of years ago by their common ancestors, a very particular group who actually existed at a very particular time and place, whom I've been referring to as HBP. This would explain not only why they all seem to share so many core values, but also why they continue to live by hunting and gathering, wherever possible, in the face of so many forces at work in the world of today trying to "modernize" them.

(to be continued . . . )

249. The Baseline Scenarios -- 25: Hunter-Gatherers

The National Geographic article on the Hadza, by Michael Finkel, is accessible in full via the internet at the following address:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/12/hadza/finkel-text. The subtitle is misleading, since the bit about the Hadza "living a hunter-gatherer existence that is little changed from 10,000 years ago" refers simply to the general estimate among Archaeologists that the earliest signs of agriculture date from roughly 10,000 years in the past. The assumptions being that 1. the Hadza have lived as hunter-gatherers during the entire period since the earliest advent of agriculture; 2. hunting and gathering in itself is the principal determiner of culture, and 3. all hunter-gatherers are now living as our ancestors lived -- these are huge assumptions.

Nevertheless, we have good reason to believe that certain aspects of Hadza life haven't changed much over a far longer period -- anywhere from 40,000 to very possibly well over 100,000 years ago. How can we make such a statement? Not on the basis of assumptions, but evidence pointing to strong socio-cultural affinities with HBC, the ancestral culture we've been taking as our (hypothetical) baseline.

We learn toward the beginning of the article that one of the Hadza males is "maybe five feet tall." The mean height of Hadza males has been estimated at 162.24 centimeters, i.e. roughly 64 inches or 5 foot 3 (see table in How universal are human mate choices? Size does not matter when Hadza foragers are choosing a mate, Sear and Marlowe, p. 608). Since Aka Pygmy males are reported as averaging 153 centimeters, or roughly 5 feet, the Hadza don't seem all that much taller. And as we've learned, certain Bushmen groups fall into roughly the same ballpark. Did the Hadza, Pygmies and Bushmen inherit their small height from a common ancestor or is it some sort of adaptation, or even perhaps a coincidence? Only biological research can tell us for sure, so this remains an open question.

The Hadza language is correctly described as an isolate. Despite the use of clicks it has not been possible to group it with Khoisan or any other family. According to Finkel, "Gene­tic testing indicates that they may represent one of the primary roots of the human family tree—perhaps more than 100,000 years old," but I don't know of any research supporting that. On the contrary, the Hadza appear to be a genetic isolate. Consider the following graph, based on an analysis of autosomal microsatellite markers by Tishkoff et al (from Supporting Online Material, figure S12):

(For an enlarged view, right-click and select "Open in new window".) The Hadza are easy to find as they are represented by a bright yellow band roughly one-third of the way in from the left. The fact that they are the ONLY group represented by this color tells us how distinctive their genetic profile is.

The Hadza are a musical isolate as well, as far as I've been able to determine, with a vocal style completely different from that of the Pygmies and Bushmen, and also very different from the call and response pattern so typical of Bantu vocalizing.

[Added 12-6: Recordings of Hadza music were released a few years ago on two CDs, The Hadza Bushmen of Tanzania. Clips from all tracks can be previewed at the Amazon.com web page by clicking on the above link. Volume 1 is limited to solo vocals and instrumentals, but Volume 2 contains several excellent recordings of traditional group vocalizing. In a comment to this post, Maju provides links to a couple of interesting youtube videos of Hadza people singing and dancing: one -- two. The youtube clips sound like typical East/South African call & response Bantu style singing, and the dancing strikes me as rather tentative and half-hearted. Looks to me like a show put on for tourists, based more on Bantu traditions than Hadza ones, which tourists might find puzzling. The recordings on the CD set, especially those on Volume Two, are very different, with much less emphasis on call and response, and with long intricate melodies and drawn out, sustained tones, very unusual for Bantu Africa.]

While there is indeed something very mysterious in this picture, it could be explained, I believe, by a severe population bottleneck that could only have occurred at some very early point in their history as a distinct group. Such a bottleneck, leaving only a very small population to serve as a "founder group," would explain the genetic anomaly as well as the musical one -- the highly group oriented, cooperative style of P/B could have been lost in the wake of a disaster that temporarily isolated a small number of survivors. If such a bottleneck event occurred relatively recently, the genetic picture for the Hadza would not look so different at so many values for K (see graph). This is my own interpretation of the genetic evidence, and I am by no means an expert, so it could be totally wrong, but as far as I can tell a very early bottleneck seems to be the only logical explanation for the Hadza "mystery."

When we leave aside the genetic, linguistic and musical mysteries, we see a great many striking similarities with Pygmy and Bushmen culture, strongly suggesting survivals from HBC. For one thing, we learn from the National Geographic article that a significant number of Hadza, one-quarter, "remain true hunter-gatherers," with strong evidence that all Hadza lived solely by hunting and gathering in the not too distant past.

Anthro­pologists are wary of viewing contemporary hunter-gatherers as "living fossils," says Frank Marlowe, a Florida State
University professor of anthropology who has spent the past 15 years studying the Hadza. Time has not stood still for them. But they have maintained their foraging lifestyle in spite of long exposure to surrounding agriculturalist groups, and, says Marlowe, it's possible that their lives have changed very little over the ages (p. 104).

"The Hadza do not engage in warfare," "have plenty of leisure time," "live almost entirely free of possessions," "collect honey," and hunt with poison arrows, cultural characteristics shared among all three of our baseline "feeder" groups, EP, WP and Bu. Additionally, they "recognize no official leaders," favor "individual autonomy," and rarely stand on ceremony for events such as weddings, funerals and other rituals. In this latter respect they do differ somewhat from HBC, where we would expect to find rituals such as the Elima girl's initiation, or the Molimo festival, as practiced by the Mbuti, or the Xhoma male initiation ritual of the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen. Moreover, "there are no Hadza priests or shamans or medicine men." Perhaps such traditions were lost in the same bottleneck that affected their genetic profile and their music.

Unlike most Pygmies and Bushmen, who tend toward monogamy, the
Hadza rarely marry for life: "Most of the Hadza I met, men and women alike, were serial monogamists, changing spouses every few years." Again, the relative looseness of marital relations could possibly be due to an extended period early in their history when social norms may have broken down.

"There was a bevy of children in the camp, with the resident
grandmother, a tiny, cheerful lady named Nsalu, running a sort of day care while the adults were in the bush. Except for breast-feeding infants, it was
hard to determine which kids belonged to which parents."

This approach to raising children, with involvement by individuals other than the parents is not uncommon for most Pygmy and Bushmen groups and may well have been a feature of HBC child-rearing.

"Gender roles are distinct, but for women there is none of the forced subservience knit into many other cultures. . . Among the Hadza, women are frequently the ones who initiate a breakup—woe to the man who proves himself an incompetent hunter or treats his wife poorly."

The status of women among the Hadza appears extremely close to their status among EP, WP and Bu -- and thus HBC -- i.e., a state of relative equality, with very clear overtones of subservience in certain areas, as reflected in sometimes very different gender roles and limitations.

We have already discussed Hadza "beehive" huts: "During the rainy season, they construct little domed shelters made of interwoven twigs and long grasses: basically, upside-down bird's nests."

Core HBC values such as avoidance of conflict and strong emphasis on sharing are also present among the Hadza: "Most conflicts are resolved by the feuding parties simply separating into different camps. If a hunter brings home a kill, it is shared by everyone in his camp."

I was especially intrigued by the scarification on the forehead and nose of this Hadza woman (see photo on p. 119):

For one thing, it tells us that the Hadza too, employ scarification, another link with HBC. Moreover, the scarification pattern reminds me of a very similar type of linear design found very commonly in cave art from many parts of the world. For example:

Gargas Cave, French Pyrenees

Llonin Cave, Spain

El Pindal, Spain

Koonalda Cave, Australia

Experts have long puzzled over the meaning of these lines, and I'm wondering what meaning this particular scarification pattern might have for the Hadza. I'm not claiming to have uncovered a connection, but who knows -- if such patterns were commonly used by HBP, and had some sort of meaning for them, then it's possible they could have had more or less the same meaning for their rock-painting descendents. Just a thought -- but worth looking into, I should think.

248. The Baseline Scenarios -- 24: Hunter-Gatherers

The old debate centered around whether certain "tribal" groups dubbed "hunter-gatherers" or "foragers" were or were not representative of our earliest fully human ancestors, who, it was assumed, must have also lived by hunting and gathering, way back when, in the depths of the "Stone Age." The "hopelessly naive" saw no problem with associating contemporary foragers with our oldest stone-wielding ancestors, but for the more "sophisticated," all living peoples must be seen as "fully modern" and thus as "fully evolved" as "we" are. What both schools had in common was a tendency to think in terms of assumptions -- about culture, about evolution and about change. And what both lacked is what we now have: a baseline that enables us to cast aside our assumptions and formulate hypotheses on the basis of: evidence.

If our common ancestors were hunter-gatherers, which apparently they were, they would have been a very particular group of hunter-gatherers, with a very specific set of cultural practices, artifacts and values. They would have had a very specific language, for example -- and also a very specific type, or types, of musical expression, which is also a form of language, as well as dance, which can also be regarded as a language. They would have lived in very specific types of dwelling, and would have had very specific types of bodily adornment. They would have preferred very specific types of food, and would have had very specific methods and conventions governing the preparation of food, the curing of illness, the conduct of rituals, kinship, mating, arranging "marriages," rearing children, and, of course, hunting and gathering. They would also, most likely, have shared a very specific set of "core values," with respect to fundamental socio-cultural issues such as political power and control, relative freedom and equality, individualism as opposed to subordination, cooperation as opposed to competition, sharing as opposed to hoarding, violence as opposed to non-violence, etc.

If all of today's hunters and gatherers spoke the same language, had the same sort of music and dance, lived in the same sort of dwellings, used the same sort of bodily adornment, ate the same sort of food, used the same methods of curing illness and conducting rituals, had the same conventions governing sexual relationships, marriage, and kinship, had the same methods of child rearing, used the same hunting and gathering techniques, and shared the same core values, then it might make some sense to assume that "hunter-gatherers" the world over were perpetuating the lifestyle and value system of their -- and our -- "stone-age" ancestors.

But there are a great many different types of hunter-gatherers living in the world today, with certain things in common and other things not in common, so in order to claim "hunter-gatherers" represent our earliest ancestors it is necessary to universalize them first, which means removing most reference to specifics and in effect more or less "essentializing" them out of any real existence and into some idealized fantasyland -- i.e., turning them into a myth. Which is exactly what offends our thoroughly "post-modern" Millies of perpetual revision -- who have gone off just as far in the opposite direction: pointless cynicism and denial.

If it might look as though I am doing more or less the same thing, i.e., "essentializing" today's Pygmies and Bushmen in order to promote their lifestyle and values into the perfect represenatation of "Stone-Age Man," I assure you that this is not the case. The Pygmies and Bushmen of today (or, to be more accurate, yesterday) live very different lifestyles in completely different environments, with different languages, hunting methods, marriage customs, healing techniques, types of adornment, and customs for the distribution of food and other goods. They may be no more similar to their common ancestors than any other hunter-gatherer groups. What makes them special is not the fact that they more closely resemble our ancestors than anyone else, but that there are certain clues to the nature of the ancestral culture that only they possess. And I'm sorry, but it would be pointless to go over all these clues here, since I have already covered this topic abundantly in many earlier posts. (See the Table of Contents to find the first post in this series.)

What I want to do now is consider certain specific hunter-gatherer groups in an attempt to determine, however tentatively, which aspects of their cultures could be survivals from HBC and which might represent a variant or divergence from the ancestral model.

Let's consider, for example, the Hadza, a group of "hunter-gatherer" bands, some of which are still living a more or less traditional lifestyle in what is now Tanzania (formerly Tanganyika and Zanzibar). I happen to have the latest issue of National Geographic handy, containing a very interesting article titled The Hadza, and subtitled as follows:

They grow no food, raise no livestock, and live without rules or calendars. They are living a hunter-gatherer existence that is little changed from 10,000 years ago. What do they know that we've forgotten?

(to be continued . . .)