Social DNA. M. Kay Martin

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       SOCIAL DNA

      SOCIAL DNA

       Rethinking Our Evolutionary Past

       M. Kay Martin

      First published in 2019 by

      Berghahn Books

       www.berghahnbooks.com

      © 2019, 2020 M. Kay Martin

      First paperback edition published in 2020

      All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress

      Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2018040128

       British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      ISBN 978-1-78920-007-2 hardback

      ISBN 978-1-78920-757-6 paperback

      ISBN 978-1-78920-008-9 ebook

       To Eleanor Burke Leacock

       1922–1987

      

Contents

       List of Illustrations

       Preface

       Introduction Some Givens

       Chapter 1 Perspectives on Anisogamy

       Chapter 2 First Families

       Chapter 3 Paleoecology and Emergence of Genus Homo

       Chapter 4 Paleolithic Dinner Pairings: Red or White?

       Chapter 5 Signature Hominin Traits

       Chapter 6 Kinship and Paleolithic Legends

       Chapter 7 Kinship as Social Technology

       Epilogue

       Endnotes

       Bibliography

       Index

Illustrations

       Figures

       0.1. Overview of human evolution (copyright John A. J. Gowlett) from Gowlett and Dunbar (2008: 22). With permission of John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

       1.1. Selfish-gene theory and the origin of female exploitation. By Drew Fagan.

       3.1. Homo erectus lakeshore encampment in the Early Pleistocene. By Drew Fagan.

       4.1. “Lucius.” By Emiliano Troco, oil on canvas, scientific supervisor Davide Persico, private collection.

       4.2. “Neanderthal Clan.” By Emiliano Troco, oil on canvas, scientific supervisor Davide Persico, collection of Museo Paleoantropologico de Po.

       5.1. Middle Pleistocene Homo heidelbergensis butchery site at Boxgrove, West Sussex, England. With permission of Getty Images.

       5.2. A model of human society based on general systems theory. By Drew Fagan.

       Tables

       2.1. Principal assumptions about Pan-Homo social life in androcentric models.

       2.2. Impact of ecological variables on female feeding strategies and primate social organization. Source data: Wrangham (1979, 1980).

Preface

      I came to the field of anthropology under the mentorship of ethnohistorian Harold Hickerson, content to haunt the card catalogs and cavernous stacks of university libraries for early accounts of preagricultural peoples. My treasure hunts were aimed at uncovering glimpses of aboriginal social organization for hunter-gatherers on three continents and documenting postcontact change in these societies over time. The aggregate picture that emerged for foragers in their most pristine state was one of robust communities, diverse systems of kinship, and a broad spectrum of sociopolitical complexity. For most of these societies, however, their vitality and continuity was short-lived. Genocide, disease, atomism, and cultural dismemberment accompanied the unrelenting advance of European colonialism, leaving them depopulated, displaced, and a shadow of their former selves. Ironically, ethnohistorians, in their efforts to reconstruct the cultures of these peoples, often become the unwitting chroniclers of their sorrows.

      During the mid to late 1960s, American ethnologists began to reinvent the concept of cultural evolutionism so roundly rejected by their discipline’s founding fathers. Neoevolutionary schemes inevitably commenced with portraits of small, atomistic family bands pursuing a meager living from limited resources in a harsh and unfriendly world. I was struck at the time by the incongruity of memorializing surviving hunter-gatherer societies in these models as living examples of Paleolithic life. Historic foragers, in my mind and experience, were arguably remnant or refugee communities, and unlikely avatars of our ethnographic past. Similarly, the characterization of early human kinship as inevitably male-centered did not square well with what I knew of the ethnohistorical and ethnographic records.

      In 1975, I coauthored a book entitled Female of the Species with archaeologist and colleague Barbara Voorhies. An overarching premise of this work was that the human evolutionary