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Beauty can lie all too easily, while oftentimes truth is ugly on first inspection. I’ve been reading Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism, and it is a beautiful book, full of style and erudition, and paragraph after paragraph of mellifluous argumentation. It is far more gossamer than Victor Lieberman’s Strange Parallels, which is weighted down by turgid prose. But where Lieberman’s narrative is dense in unique and distinctive data, Larry Siedentop’s Inventing the Individual circles around the same big facts. Siedentop promotes a bold, if not original, thesis, that the Hebrew-Hellenic synthesis which became Christianity was the seed for the invention of liberal individualism, which reigns ascendant today, at least in name if not reality. Lieberman makes an observation about the parallel development of societies across Eurasia, even in its isolated and far-flung regions in the protected peninsulas and archipelagos of Southeast Asia, and gropes confusedly at overarching explanations. And yet it is the “ugly duckling” of Strange Parallels that is more satisfying than the crisp and elegant theses of Inventing the Individual. The latter is a joy to read, but if you know a fair amount of 
history, and cross-cultural history at that (I do), a lot of it comes off as hot air and naked assertion. It’s a great read, but will only persuade the persuaded, and unfortunately is a little thinner on “dense description” than I would have liked for a work which I knew I was going to look at skeptically (that is, even if you find a work uncongenial on the whole, there are often great gains to be made in extracting nuggets of information).
The ultimate problem that confronts me when entertaining the core contention of Inventing the Individual is sentences such as the following on page 77: “But texts are facts. And the facts remain.” The question is whether they are non-trivial facts, and that is debatable. There is a school of thought that ideas are the drivers of history, and Inventing the Individual takes that position as a premise. If one is wobbly on that premise, the force of the argument falls flat.
Second, do readers have any particular papers/books on domestication that they think are particularly good? My professional research focus is in this area and I need to do a thorough survey of the literature.
Third, I am not an “adaptationist” as Larry Moran has asserted. I’m “dynamic agnostic,” and am wary of null hypotheses of what drives variation in organisms as a whole (i.e., I think neutrality may be more justified for some branches of the tree of life than others).
Fourth, I should mention again that if you are following an RSS feed for my content, http://feeds.feedburner.com/RazibKhansTotalFeed is preferred. The reason is that it bundles all my content, and I don’t like to cross-post notifications across blogs. E.g., if I write for The Guardian again or something it will show up in that feed, and I’m liable not to mention it on this blog (though it will show up in Twitter since that pushes the above feed).
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Trying to get more of a grip on Indo European history and I read J.P. Mallory, and in talking about different archaeological cultures of give or take 4,000 B.C. he calls some “Cro-Magnon”
Does this correlate with EHG populations?
Have you read Liberalism: The Life of an Idea? If so: What do you think of its’ explanation of the origins of western liberalism? (which puts the origins of liberalism in much more recent times than Siedentop)
If you’re looking at flora as well as fauna:
Zohary, D., Hopf, M., and Weiss, E. 2012. Domestication of plants in the Old World. Oxford.
There are older versions of this title, 2012 is the most recent edition.
Not sure if they’re exactly what you’re looking for, but I imagine you’ll at least find some of Lidar Sapir-Hen’s papers interesting: https://telaviv.academia.edu/LidarSapirHen
Does this correlate with EHG populations?Replies: @Razib Khan
no, this is an error on his part.
Thanks for the answer. So when he talks about the "physical type" of different cultures around the black sea, it sounded like the "gracile Mediterranean type" was creeping up from the Balkans into the north of the Black Sea and meeting with local "indigenous" populations and mixing to some extend. I assumed the "gracile Mediterranean type" was analogous to EEF/ENF does that seem accurate in light of recent discoveries?
haven’t read it.
fwiw, i think ‘liberalism’ is an elaboration of deep intuitions. arguably they are more powerful intuitions than illiberalism, which may be an adaptation to the post-neolithic world….
Razib,
Thanks for the answer. So when he talks about the “physical type” of different cultures around the black sea, it sounded like the “gracile Mediterranean type” was creeping up from the Balkans into the north of the Black Sea and meeting with local “indigenous” populations and mixing to some extend. I assumed the “gracile Mediterranean type” was analogous to EEF/ENF does that seem accurate in light of recent discoveries?
Razib,
Any thoughts on the efficacy of the DHS/TSA behavior detection program? The TSA workers walking around the airport are supposedly these behavior detection officers. Their training is 2 weeks long. They make more money than the x-ray operators or metal detector operators. This behavior detection idea was based on the work/theory of one psychologist, Paul Ekman. TSA spends around $200,000,000 per year on this program. It is not used by El Al, FBI, U.S. military, or anyone else. Any thoughts on this?
Razib, one reason why the direct RSS feed of your GNXP post might be preferred is that (so far as I can tell) that particular feed provides the full text of articles, while your “total” feed only provides excerpts.
what do you think about the child free movement.
did not know that was an issue. it is now *full post* instead of summary. thanks for bringing it to my attention.
I loved “Interstellar” if anyone hasn’t seen it yet. Very cool that they incorporated pop theoretical physics into the movie in a serious way. If you watch it make sure it’s a Blu Ray!
Yes, very good film, and well researched.
Somehow, I’m still not a Matthew M. fan but I can now finally accept the Christopher Nolan hype. Seems like it should’ve won best pic. I liked the Hawking film but this was an Epic. A few cheesy moments but I’ll give those a pass – very cool ending.
Just watched my cat use the litter pan. He dug a small hole, then poo’d nowhere near it. Then scraped his paw across the floor, then scraped his paw across the litter, but still, nowhere near the poo. It’s still lying there, uncovered. What’s he thinking?
Toxoplasmosis Gondii is a hell of a drug
the movement doth protest too much, methinks 😉 but i’m chill. all the pro and anti-child arguments are dumb. those who breed shall inherit the world, and those who do not shall taste it before they leave it. to each his own.
I’m reading The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama. I’m just in the middle so far, but he takes the middle road in expressing the view that both economic and religious influences were vital in the development of individual rights and views of selfhood. From the little I could get from the Amazon description of Inventing the Individual, Fukuyama, I think, would agree that the time frame of the beginnings of individualism started around the advent of Christendom but would be more open to materialist causes as the main driver. He cites the Catholic church prohibiting divorce, adoption and marrying close kin, partially as an expression of New Testament teachings: “whoever loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me”, but moreso as a way to inherit land and political power.
There is a generally give and take between kinships groups and larger political groups in terms of who is granted primary loyalty but kin groups almost always won out in early history so state development was a non-starter. The Chinese found an effective solution in their exam system, and the Ottoman Empire perfected military slavery, but those solutions were solutions in forming a non-kin government bureaucracy and not something that seeped down to general society. Only in Western Europe did you have a powerful religious institution that was able to counteract kinship groups, and when decisions are no longer collective, the nuclear family and eventually individuals rose in importance.
I’m finding it a compelling theory. Is your view that the time frame and the primary mover – in this case the Catholic Church – is correct and you just disagree with placing ideas on the pedestal over economic explanations? Or is your view completely different?
main objection is the idea that it percolated down. the church's regulation of marriage was an elite affair until recently. cavalli-sforza's data on marriage patterns (or lack thereof) in italy until recently pretty clear evidence of that. most marriage in pre-modern europe was common law.Replies: @Twinkie
Not those who breed. The progeny of those who breed, no? In that sense, breeding is a profoundly selfless act.
Personally, not tasting the creation of another human life doesn’t seem like tasting the world, but then again, I am a traditionalist who believes in the truthfulness of what is beautiful and such.
By the way, those with children might find this amusing: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_hidden_brain/2010/11/parents_are_junkies.html
There is a generally give and take between kinships groups and larger political groups in terms of who is granted primary loyalty but kin groups almost always won out in early history so state development was a non-starter. The Chinese found an effective solution in their exam system, and the Ottoman Empire perfected military slavery, but those solutions were solutions in forming a non-kin government bureaucracy and not something that seeped down to general society. Only in Western Europe did you have a powerful religious institution that was able to counteract kinship groups, and when decisions are no longer collective, the nuclear family and eventually individuals rose in importance.
I'm finding it a compelling theory. Is your view that the time frame and the primary mover - in this case the Catholic Church - is correct and you just disagree with placing ideas on the pedestal over economic explanations? Or is your view completely different?Replies: @Razib Khan
Only in Western Europe did you have a powerful religious institution that was able to counteract kinship groups, and when decisions are no longer collective, the nuclear family and eventually individuals rose in importance.
main objection is the idea that it percolated down. the church’s regulation of marriage was an elite affair until recently. cavalli-sforza’s data on marriage patterns (or lack thereof) in italy until recently pretty clear evidence of that. most marriage in pre-modern europe was common law.
main objection is the idea that it percolated down. the church's regulation of marriage was an elite affair until recently. cavalli-sforza's data on marriage patterns (or lack thereof) in italy until recently pretty clear evidence of that. most marriage in pre-modern europe was common law.Replies: @Twinkie
But per Clark and Unz, wouldn’t the “replication rate,” if you will, of the elites be much greater and eventually become adapted people-wide?
I recently watched the 2007 Danny Boyle film Sunshine, which is similar in some ways. For my money, Sunshine was 10 times better. Your mileage may vary.
Has anybody else checked out the new podcast “Our National Conversation About Conversations About Race”? http://feeds.feedburner.com/showaboutrace
The set-up is basically: a black liberal, a liberal Latina, and a white liberal walk into a podcast. Punchlines basically write themselves at that point. I’ve been enjoying hearing them voice their opinions so far. I can’t tell yet if they believe that the three of them represent a diverse array of opinions.
Thanks a lot for the recommendation. It is now at the top of my Netflix list. Dat Blu Ray on my big screen…yeah, baby! I’m a big Cillian Murphy fan after I watched Peakey Blinders.
Re: child free movement. I’m pro-child for decent people and anti-child for the dim. i Feel there are too many 3rd worlders though.
Sam Neill was very good as usual, of course. But I thought his Ulster accent was rather poorly done, so I looked it up on the internet and supposedly the heavy Ulster accent was toned down for the benefit of the American audiences who might find it incomprehensible.
Maybe the producers should have had all the characters speak in the Midwestern "standard" American English. Very comprehensible.Replies: @Robert Ford
in which case there’s no diff. between china and west europe probably.
The mechanism is the same or very similar, but the intensity is different (monogamy vs. polygamy), so the pace of diffusion/adoption among the general public is different and is more prone to distortions from other forces. I would think that might account for some of the differences.
“Second, do readers have any particular papers/books on domestication that they think are particularly good?”
I have looked for such things myself and the situation is not very good. I have seen the Zohary book for plants, and there are plenty of others floating around about “why would humans switch to an agricultural lifestyle?” but when it comes to the domestication of animals, there is a strange dearth of comprehensive books on the topic, in spite of its popularity among the lay public. There are plenty of academic papers to be found on individual animals, and a few books on them, but few take the totality of domesticates into consideration to point out common themes.
While shopping at a local bookstore, I stumbled upon an advance copy of an upcoming popular account, called Domesticated, which I promptly bought (I suspect selling advance copies is not even legal!). The author is a neuroscientist himself, and there is an extensive bibliography, which you might be interested in viewing when the book comes out. Quite a few species of mammals are covered, and he discusses some commonalities between them, as well as general ideas about evolution (mostly good, but a little too enthusiastic about epigenetics for me). Unfortunately, there was nothing in my advance copy about chickens or other non-mammals, which might change in the final version. Of course, it is a popular account, so a lot of it is going to be too basic for your needs.
Getting more technical, there is a book I managed to find called Animals as Domesticates: A Worldview through History, which had a lot of information on archaeological finds. Since a lot of animals probably passed through a commensal stage on their way to domestication, you might also be interested in its fellow book, Animals as Neighbors. I also found a book called Social Zooarchaeology, which details the effect of domesticated animals on human societies (beware that it has a fair amount of post-modern jargon; at least the parts I read did). Other than these I haven’t found very much at all, and I’d be happy for some suggestions myself!
(Just like with domestication books themselves, the whole field surrounding study of animal domestication is weirdly obscure: it doesn’t even know whether to call itself archaeozoology or zooarchaeology. One can see the obscurity in the lack of suggested books given by Amazon in the links below.)
Upcoming book Domesticated: http://www.amazon.com/Domesticated-Evolution-Man-Made-Richard-Francis/dp/0393064603
Animals as Domesticates: http://www.amazon.com/Animals-Domesticates-through-History-Animal/dp/1611860288/
Animals as Neighbors: http://www.amazon.com/Animals-Neighbors-Present-Commensal-Animal/dp/1611860954/
Social Zooarchaeology: http://www.amazon.com/Social-Zooarchaeology-Humans-Animals-Prehistory/dp/052114311X/
Because I became a fan of Cillian Murphy after “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” (I am a sucker for anything that has to do with guerilla warfare), I tried a couple of episodes of “Peaky Blinders.” What a disappointment. It’s just a British period version of “The Sopranos.” I guess I chalk it up as an example of another casualty of the British-American pop cultural convergence.
Sam Neill was very good as usual, of course. But I thought his Ulster accent was rather poorly done, so I looked it up on the internet and supposedly the heavy Ulster accent was toned down for the benefit of the American audiences who might find it incomprehensible.
Maybe the producers should have had all the characters speak in the Midwestern “standard” American English. Very comprehensible.
Sam Neill was very good as usual, of course. But I thought his Ulster accent was rather poorly done, so I looked it up on the internet and supposedly the heavy Ulster accent was toned down for the benefit of the American audiences who might find it incomprehensible.
Maybe the producers should have had all the characters speak in the Midwestern "standard" American English. Very comprehensible.Replies: @Robert Ford
hmm, i never watched “Sopranos” so maybe that’s why i liked it. i’d had enough italian mob movies, etc. for a lifetime by the time it started so i never watched it as i didn’t want it to ruin my interest in dramas. now it’s my turn!
Hey Razib, has the idea that Australian Aboriginals (or some particular ones?) had “Indian” admixture / ancestry (is it right to call it Indian or South Asian) held up thus far? Any new genetic studies from those populations?
i’ve seen no follow up. and the data is not available to double check ;-(
Nothing new on the autosomal front, but Australian Y DNA has finally been sorted out.
There was an idea that Australian Y haplogroup C* was related to rare Indian C* due to some similarity in STR haplotypes, but it turns out (unsurprisingly) that Australian C forms a clade with C-M38 from Oceania and eastern Indonesia. (The Indian C* itself has not yet been resolved, but the scenario of Indian colonists bringing a rare Oceanian-related clade to Australia without any more common and characteristic Indian haplogroups seems exceedingly unparsimonious.)
The other Australian Aboriginal haplogroup, K*, turns out to be related to Papuan haplogroup S (or at least one sample properly tested does). So the patrilineal DNA is entirely in line with geography, though sample sizes are very small and there could still be surprises.
re domestication
Consider reaching out to Anna Kukekova, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Behavioral genetics of silver fox domestication. She gave a nice talk at Berkeley’s QB3 Genomics and the Brain Symposium.
I’m sure many are already aware of this:
http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-modify-human-embryos-1.17378
Chinese scientists genetically modify human embryos using CRISPR/Cas9 system.
When you refer to “Indians,” do you mean the actual (later arrival) Indians or do you mean Indian/Andaman Island negritos who are supposedly related to Polynesians?
Razib – re your question about domestication, you’re probably aware of Elia, I. The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 88, No. 3 (September 2013), pp. 163-183, and Trut, American Scientist 87: 160-169. I think both discuss the neuro-physiological changes under selection for friendliness, and the gene pathways thought to be involved.
the hypothesis in question means very recent intrusion from southern India by Dravidian speakers or their genetic kin. Geoffrey Cochran sums up nicely: https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/
But is it conclusively established that the "intruders" were Dravidian-speakers or possibly flow from what one commenter calls the "Veddic" substrate?Replies: @John Massey, @Greg Pandatshang
I was completely unaware of this. Thank you, sir.
But is it conclusively established that the “intruders” were Dravidian-speakers or possibly flow from what one commenter calls the “Veddic” substrate?
Something happened around 4,000 years ago (introduction of the dingo, more sophisticated stone tool technology, and possibly widespread linguistic changes), but it is not clear what.
Even among researchers who are un-PC enough to consider the possibility, there seems to be a pretty general consensus that neither unskilled immigrants and their offspring, nor the tendency of lower IQ natives to have more kids than higher IQ natives nor the combination of the two trends threatens to produce any significant reduction in US population IQ in the reasonably near future (say 50 years).
Can you point to something that explains why (assuming I’m correct that there is a general consensus on this issue)? Given the numbers of — either of skilled to unskilled immigrants or children per Harvard grad vs. children per HS dropout — it seems counter intuitive. Is it all some combination of reversion to group mean (so it’s not hugely important which members of each group reproduce) and Flynn effect?
But is it conclusively established that the "intruders" were Dravidian-speakers or possibly flow from what one commenter calls the "Veddic" substrate?Replies: @John Massey, @Greg Pandatshang
No, it’s still debated whether such an event even occurred.
Something happened around 4,000 years ago (introduction of the dingo, more sophisticated stone tool technology, and possibly widespread linguistic changes), but it is not clear what.
But is it conclusively established that the "intruders" were Dravidian-speakers or possibly flow from what one commenter calls the "Veddic" substrate?Replies: @John Massey, @Greg Pandatshang
Here’s a paper on the subject: http://www.pnas.org/content/110/5/1803.long
I have only skimmed this, since serious genetics research isn’t really my thing. Looks like they compared Australian aborigines to different sets of modern Dravidian speakers. I don’t know if anybody knows much about how similar that is to the genes of early Dravidian speakers 4kya. I’m also not sure if there’s been much research of the genes of living “Vedda” populations.
There are purported typological similarities between Pama-Nyungan languages of Australia and Dravidian. Most of these similarities strike me as highly circumstantial, since they are true of many languages. However, when you have several circumstantial data points clustered together, that starts to look a bit like real evidence. Moreover, one of the apparent similarities is pretty striking viz the similar phoneme inventory of Proto-Dravidian and some Pama-Nyungan languages. Both include sets of sounds that are definitely not at all common cross-linguistically.
It’s actually a very old theory, because of some purported similarities in physical appearance between some Aboriginal people and Dravidians.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…maybe it really is a duck.