MANVIR SINGH

The deep origins of sedentism, inequality, and large groups

Zoom link: https://unibocconi-it.zoom.us/j/93338469143

Abstract 

Many researchers assume that until 10-12,000 years ago, humans lived in small, mobile, relatively egalitarian bands. This “nomadic-egalitarian model” suffuses the social sciences. It informs evolutionary explanations of behavior and our understanding of how contemporary societies differ from those of our evolutionary past. In this talk, I synthesize research challenging this model and articulate an alternative, the diverse histories model, to replace it. I review the limitations of using recent foragers as models of Late Pleistocene societies and the considerable social variation among foragers commonly considered small-scale, mobile, and egalitarian. I review ethnographic and archaeological findings covering 34 world regions showing that non-agricultural peoples often live in groups that are more sedentary, unequal, large, politically stratified, and capable of large-scale cooperation and resource management than is normally assumed. These characteristics are not restricted to extant Holocene hunter-gatherers but, as suggested by archaeological findings from 27 Middle Stone Age sites, likely characterized societies throughout the Late Pleistocene (until c. 130 ka), if not earlier. These findings have implications for how we understand human psychological adaptations and the broad trajectory of human history.

Bio

Manvir Singh received a PhD from the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University in 2020. His research asks why humans societies everywhere give rise to practices and beliefs with striking similarities, with a focus on behaviors such as music, story, shamanism, and punitive justice. His toolkit combines ethnographic research, psychological experiments, and the analysis of cross-cultural databases.