Symbolism and Language Depend on Egalitarianism
Discussion
Camilla Power:
So far, I have claimed that these features of our biology, life history and evolved psychology provide evidence of an egalitarian past during our evolution: our large brain size; our cooperative eyes; menopause and childhood; our intersubjectivity and Machiavellian counterdominance. These are underpinned by women’s evolved sexual physiology which increases equality of reproductive opportunities among men, compared with great ape cousins.
Now I am going to argue that using symbols and speaking language could only have emerged on the basis of a ‘platform of trust’ afforded by that egalitarianism. I will draw on some famous social anthropologists because they are experts on symbolism in practice. Over fifty years ago, leading US anthropologist Marshall Sahlins made a revealing comparison of nonhuman primates against human hunter-gatherers. Noting egalitarianism as a key difference, he saw culture as ‘the oldest “equalizer”. Among animals capable of symbolic communication’ he said, ‘the weak can collectively connive to overthrow the strong.’ We can reverse the arrow of causality here. Because among Machiavellian and counterdominant humans weaker individuals can connive to overthrow the strong, we are animals capable of symbolic communication.
Only in such conditions is language likely to emerge. The strong have no need of words; they have more direct physical means of persuasion.
Here listen to David Graeber himself, discussing the ignorance and lack of imagination of those in power in state administration, but his words apply very well to the evolutionary origins of language as the essence of human creativity:
- If you have the power to hit people over the head whenever you want, you don’t have to trouble yourself too much figuring out what they think is going on, and therefore, generally speaking, you don’t. Hence the sure-fire way to simplify social arrangements, to ignore the incredibly complex play of perspectives, passions, insights, desires, and mutual understandings that human life is really made of, is to make a rule and threaten to attack anyone who breaks it.
Language as the mutual exploration of each other’s minds – ‘the incredibly complex play of perspectives, passions, insights, desires, and mutual understandings’ as Graeber has it – requires nonviolent safe space and time to be able to work. Conversation as a necessarily consensual process expresses the quintessential opposite of the relations of dominance applied by the big stick. It relies on the ultimate in intersubjective negotiation and ability to look through the eyes of the other. A fundamentally egalitarian matrix is the only possible ground for the evolution of language.
With his anarchist instincts, Graeber associates arbitrary rules with the power of the bureaucratic and bullying state which has no interest in what its subjects actually think since it can apply violence with impunity. All too true. But the first rules ever invented by human beings surely did not come from the minds of dominant individuals. The powerful need only operate by the maxim of ‘might is right’.
Rules and taboos observed in hunter-gatherer communities where there is no possibility of coercion follow another dynamic. On first examination, they may appear as random collections of weird customs with no particular logic. Take for example the concept of ekila among the BaYaka. This is an ancient idea found across the Congo basin among diverse groups of forest hunter-gatherers. Untranslatable, it encompasses food taboos, hunting luck, respect for animals, menstrual blood, fertility and the moon. For anthropologist Jerome Lewis, ekila provides a trail of breadcrumbs for any individual as they grow up, teaching them how to ‘do’ their culture. This is thoroughly egalitarian because the authority for these rules does not rest with any single influential person, but with the forest itself. The axiom of ekila is proper sharing, interdependency and respect, between those of different age or sex, between humans and animals. Then the forest provides. We can tell that this was not dreamed up by some dominant male because for a man to maintain his ekila (roughly, his hunting luck), he should not have sex prior to a hunt. A woman preserves her potency or ekila when she goes to the moon, that is menstruates. All those in the same hut as her must follow the same observances and taboos.
Ekila is a very ancient self-organising system of law that may echo the big bang of earliest human culture. It really represents what I claim is the original rule, the rule against rape, ‘No means NO’, a woman’s body is sacred if she says so."