going dutch

daniel hannan (Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World) is full of admiration for the dutch (so am i!). here from a blogpost of his — I’ve realised why I like the Dutch so much: they invented capitalism — from the other day:

“Only recently, though, was I able to put my finger on what I liked so much. It’s this: for centuries, the Dutch made the honest pursuit of self-betterment a supreme virtue. Other European nations elevated honour and faith and martial glory, but the people Shakespeare called ‘swag-bellied Hollanders’ quietly got on with trade….

“I’ve just written a book about Anglosphere exceptionalism, published in the US next week and in Britain the week after. While writing, I couldn’t help noticing that one place had kept pace with the English-speaking peoples in the development of property rights, representative institutions, limited government and individualism. Indeed, on one critical measure, the Dutch beat us to it: modern capitalism, as defined by the twin concepts of limited liability and joint stock ventures, was invented in the Netherlands….”

meanwhile, in another corner of the internet, t.greer has been asking — and nicely answering! — a neat question: why the rise of the west? specifically, why in the middle ages did europe “diverge” from the rest of the world economically, never to look back? from Another Look at ‘The Rise of the West’ – But With Better Numbers (see also The Rise of the West: Asking the Right Questions):

“A few months ago I suggested that many of these debates that surround the ‘Great Divergence’ are based on a flawed premise — or rather, a flawed question. As I wrote:

“‘Rather than focus on why Europe diverged from the rest in 1800 we should be asking why the North Sea diverged from the rest in 1000.‘

“By 1200 Western Europe has a GDP per capita higher than most parts of the world, but (with two exceptions) by 1500 this number stops increasing. In both data sets the two exceptions are Netherlands and Great Britain. These North Sea economies experienced sustained GDP per capita growth for six straight centuries. The North Sea begins to diverge from the rest of Europe long before the ‘West’ begins its more famous split from ‘the rest.’

“[W]e can pin point the beginning of this ‘little divergence’ with greater detail. In 1348 Holland’s GDP per capita was $876. England’s was $777. In less than 60 years time Holland’s jumps to $1,245 and England’s to 1090. The North Sea’s revolutionary divergence started at this time.“

so, by the early 1400s, england and holland had taken off.

i’ve been in awe of the dutch golden age and the dutch during the renaissance/age of enlightenment (fwiw) in general (i love the art!).

why the dutch (and the english)? and why then? (you already know what i’m going to say….)
_____

the netherlands — the low countries in general — were, once upon a time, a part of the early frankish kingdom of austrasia (i’ve more-or-less outlined the netherlands here — *ahem* — roughly):

the franks converted to roman catholicism early — in the late 400s — so they were positioned to adopt the church’s cousin marriage bans right away when they were instituted in the very early 500s (502 a.d.?), nearly one hundred years before the anglo-saxons in england. and there’s evidence that the franks did, indeed, adopt the cousin marriage bans early on — definitely by the late 500s (there’s always a lag time with these things). in fact, they seem to have taken pretty seriously all of the church’s marriage bans, including the ones regarding spiritual kinship (i.e. you couldn’t marry any of your godparents’ relatives because, since you were spiritually related to your godparents, you were also spiritually related to your godparent’s relatives). as i quoted in a previous post:

“St Boniface [d.754] expressed surprise when he learned that ‘spiritual kinship’ was created by lifting a child from the baptismal font and was being treated as an impediment to marriage among the Franks. But it was the law.”

The Outbreeding Project was so successful in franco-belgia and southern england that, by the 1300s, cousin marriage was a complete non-issue in the ecclesiastical courts in those regions.

the exception in the low countries was the group of frisians along the coast who didn’t convert to christianity until the late 700s [pg. 11], so they were at least three hundred years behind the franks as far as The Outbreeding Project went.

in addition, the frisians went untouched by manorialism, which served to reinforce the cousin marriage bans as well as to push for nuclear families. and the frisians (like their coastal neighbors the ditmarsians) remained a bit wild and clannish until rather late in the medieval period. from michael mitterauer’s Why Europe? [pgs. 41-41 & 76]:

“The area settled by the Frisians along the North Seas coast is an interesting case from within the Frankish Empire itself. Manorial estates had not been established there — not by the king, the church, or the nobility — although the imperial heartland lay very close by. The reason for this may well be the ecological conditions that determined the economy. The region was admirably suited for grazing, so that agriculture faded into the background…. Natural conditions were lacking for the cerealization that had been implemented by Frankish neighbors. That a region in the Frankish Empire specializing in animal husbandry did not even begin to come close to establishing the bipartite estate confirms, e contrario, the belief in a connection between increased grain production and the rise of the manorial system. Nor was the agricultural system in Frisian settlements shaped later on by manorial structures. Very strong rural communal groups were established instead, placing the local nobles dispensing high justice in a percarious position….

“Ecological conditions might well have blocked the [hide] system’s progress in Friesland and the North Sea coastal marshes. It is striking that those are precisely the areas where we find features — such as the clan system and most notably blood revenge — that typify societies strongly oriented toward lineage. Blood revenge is rooted in a concept of kinship in which all men of a group are treated almost like a single person. The agnates together are considered to be the bearers of honor — and guilt. That is why the guilt of one relative can be avenged on someone else who had utterly no part in the deed. The idea of blood revenge is completely incompatible with Christian views of guilt and innocence. Nevertheless, the institution of blood revenge was still alive in several European societies even after they were Christianized, those in the North Sea marshes among them.”

the frisians were free!
_____

the dutch and the anglo-saxons are exceptional in terms of being individualistic (versus clannish) and, yet, oriented toward the commonweal — they’re both groups that developed capitalism and liberal democracy (perhaps the anglos are more fond of liberal democracy) — because these were the two populations in northwest europe that started outbreeding the earliest.

and now i’ve arrived back where i started two-and-a-half years ago (boy, will i ever shut up??) — with avner greif‘s paper Family Structure, Institutions, and Growth: The Origin and Implications of Western Corporatism [opens pdf]:

“There is a vast amount of literature that considers the importance of the family as an institution. Little attention, however, has been given to the impact of family structures on institutions, their dynamics, and the ability to change them…. This paper illustrates this by highlighting the importance of the European family structure in one of the most fundamental institutional changes in history.

“This change has been the emergence of economic and political *corporations* in late medieval Europe. ‘Corporations’ are defined here, consistent with their historical meaning, as intentionally created, voluntary, interest-based, and self-governed permanent associations. Guilds, fraternities, universities, communes and city-states are some of the corporations that dominated Europe in the past. Businesses and professional associations, business corporations, universities, consumer groups, republics and democracies are some of the corporations in modern economies.

“Providing institutions through corporations is a novelty. Historically, the institutions that secured one’s life and property and mitigated problems of cooperation and conflicts were initially provided by large kinship groups. Subsequently, such institutions that rely on this family structure were complemented or replaced by those provided by self-interested rulers. Corporation-based institutions can substitute for those provided by both kinship groups and self-interested rulers. When they substitute kinship-based institutions, corporations are complementary to a different family structure, namely, the nuclear family structure. For an individual, corporations reduce the benefits from belonging to a kinship group while a nuclear family increases the benefits from being a member of a corporation….

“[T]he actions of the Church caused the nuclear family — constituting of husband and wife, children, and sometimes a handful of close relatives — to dominate Europe by the late medieval period.

“The medieval church instituted marriage laws and practices that undermined large kinship groups. From as early as the fourth century, it discouraged practices that enlarged the family, such as adoption, polygamy, concubinage, divorce, and remarriage. It severely prohibited marriages among individuals of the same blood (consanguineous marriages), which had constituted a means to create and maintain kinship groups throughout history. The church also curtailed parents’ abilities to retain kinship ties through arranged marriages by prohibiting unions in which the bride didn’t explicitly agree to the union.

“European family structures did not evolve monotonically toward the nuclear family nor was their evolution geographically and socially uniform. However, by the late medieval period the nuclear family was dominate. Even among the Germanic tribes, by the eighth century the term family denoted one’s immediate family, and shortly afterwards tribes were no longer institutionally relevant. Thirteenth-century English court rolls reflect that even cousins were as likely to be in the presence of non-kin as with each other.

“The practices the church advocated, such as monogamy, are still the norm in Europe. Consanguineous marriages in contemporary Europe account for less than one percent of the total number of marriages. In contrast, the percentage of such marriages in Muslim, Middle Eastern countries, where we also have particularly good data, is much higher – between twenty to fifty percent. Among the anthropologically defined 356 contemporary societies of Euro-Asia and Africa, there is a large and significant negative correlation between Christianization (for at least 500 years) and the absence of clans and lineages; the level of commercialization, class stratification, and state formation are insignificant.”

in general, the dutch and the english have been outbreeding for the longest of all the europeans (of anybody, really), and they are two of the groups having the longest history of corporations in europe (there’s the northern italians, too), and they also have the strongest tendencies towards cooperative, voluntary, corporate groups today.

however, some of the dutch — and some of the english — actually did inbreed longer than some of the others: the frisians vs. the franks, the east anglians vs. the southeastern english. these groups were some of my in-betweeners — more outbred than your average arab, but less outbred than the longest of the long-term outbreeders. and the puritans (largely from east anglia) were big into business if Albion’s Seed is to be believed. and the frisians, too, were some of the earliest businessmen/traders in the low countries. from A Brief History of the Netherlands [pg. 15 – see also The Evolution of the Money Standard in Medieval Frisia: A Treatise on the History of the Systems of Money of Account in the Former Frisia (c.600-c.1500)]:

“Frisia (Friesland), however, remained a land apart. The Frisians were traders, stockbreeders, and fishermen, and feudalism took little hold in the swampy soil here.”

the combination of two not wholly dissimilar groups (franks+frisians, for instance), with one of the groups being very outbred (the franks) and the other being an in-betweener group (the frisians), seems perhaps to be a winning one. the outbred group might provide enough open, trusting, trustworthy, cooperative, commonweal-oriented members to the union, while the in-betweener group might provide a good dose of hamilton’s “self-sacrificial daring” that he reckoned might contribute to renaissances.

(and, yes, i am talking about the natural selection of innate behaviors.)

i could be wrong, but that’s my theory, and i’m sticking to it! (for now.) (^_^)
_____

p.s. – in case you’ve forgotten, the nations that saw the earliest reduction of homicides in the medieval period…yes…england and the netherlands/belgium: kinship, the state, and violence.
_____

previously: what about the franks? and trees and frisians and the radical reformation and whatever happened to european tribes?

_{(note: comments do not require an email. sunbathing giant sloth!)}

kinship, the state, and violence

earlier this month, the inestimable peter frost wrote:

“Over the past millennium, Western Europeans have created a social environment where the individual is largely free from collective ties of kinship and ethnicity. Because the State has imposed a monopoly on the use of violence, there is less need to rely on kinsmen to safeguard one’s life and property. That’s what the government is for. In many other societies, however, the State is much more recent and often foreign. Collective identity still matters most and, when the chips are down, personal ties of friendship matter little. Your real friends are your ‘blood’.”

in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011), steven pinker says that, in england, this process of the state taking over and monopolizing violence began during the reign of henry i, which lasted from 1100-1135 a.d. [kindle locations 1830-1839]:

“Feuding among knights and peasants was not just a nuisance but a lost opportunity. During Norman rule in England, some genius recognized the lucrative possibilities in nationalizing justice. For centuries the legal system had treated homicide as a tort: in lieu of vengeance, the victim’s family would demand a payment from the killer’s family, known as blood money or wergild (‘man-payment’; the *wer* is the same prefix as in *werewolf*, ‘man-wolf’). King Henry I redefined homicide as an offense against the state and its metonym, the crown. Murder cases were no longer *John Doe vs. Richard Roe*, but *The Crown vs. John Doe* (or later, in the United States, *The People vs. John Doe* or *The State of Michigan vs. John Doe*). The brilliance of the plan was that the wergild (often the offender’s entire assets, together with additional money rounded up from his family) went to the king instead of to the family of the victim. Justice was administered by roving courts that would periodically visit a locale and hear the accumulated cases. To ensure that all homicides were presented to the courts, each death was investigated by a local agent of the crown: the coroner.”

pinker cites daly and wilson (1988) on this who, in turn, cite hurnard (1969). there is also green (1972). see also The Aristocracy of Norman England (2002), pg. 243.

the only problem with this picture is, as was discussed on this blog in a previous post, there is good evidence that the kindred in anglo-saxon england — the importance of kinship, in other words — was already beginning to disappear (in southern england, anyway) in the early 900s, or maybe even the late 800s, a full two hundred years before henry i and his coroners showed up on the scene.

as i said in that post:

“the *gegildan* appears in some of the anglo-saxon laws in the late-800s as an *alternative* group of people to whom wergeld might be paid if the wronged individual had no kin. by the 900s, though, in southern england, the *gegildan* might be the only group that received wergeld, bypassing kin altogether.”

again, from Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe (1991) [pgs. 39-42]:

“The laws of King Alfred of Wessex, dated to 892-893 or a few years earlier, are more informative about the *gegildan*. Again, the context is murder and the wergild — the compensation required for the crime. By Alfred’s time, if not during Ine’s, the *gegildan* is clearly a group of associates who were not related by blood. The clearest example of this is in chapter 31 of the laws: ‘If a man in this position is slain — if he has no relatives (maternal or paternal) — half the wergild shall be paid to the king, and half to the *gegildan*.’ No information exists on the purpose of the *gegildan* other than its role as a substitute for kinship ties for those without any relatives. These associates, who presumably were bound together by an oath for mutual protection, if only to identify who was responsible, would benefit anyone, whether the person had relatives or not…. Although the evidence from the laws of Ine may be read either way, the *gegildan* seems to be an old social institution. As seen more clearly in the tenth and eleventh centuries, it acquired additional functions — a policing role and a religious character.

“The nobles, clergy, and commoners of London agreed upon a series of regulations for the city, with the encouragement and approval of King Athelstan, who caused the rules to be set down some time in the late 920s or 930s. The primary purpose of these ordinances was to maintain peace and security in the city, and all those supporting these goals had solemnly pledged themselves to this *gegildan*. This type of inclusive guild, sometimes referred to as a peace guild, was an attempt to create one more additional level of social responsibility to support the king and his officials in keeping the peaces. This social group of every responsible person in London is a broad one, and the law does not use the term *gegildan* to describe the association in general….

“The idea of a guild to keep the peace was not limited to London, and a document from the late tenth century contains the rules and duties of the thegn’s guild in Cambridge. This guild appears to have been a private association, and no king or noble is mentioned as assenting to or encouraging this group. Most of the rules concern the principle purposes of this guild — the security of the members, which receives the most attention, and the spiritual benefits of membership itself. The guild performed the tasks of the old *gegildan*: the members were obliged to defend one another, collect the wergild, and take up vengeance against anyone refusing to pay compensation. The members also swore an oath of loyalty to each other, promising to bring the body of a deceased member to a chosen burial site and supply half the food for the funeral feast. For the first time, another category of help was made explicit — the guild bound itself to common almsgiving for departed members — and the oath of loyalty the members swore included both religious and secular affairs. Although in many respects this guild resembles a confraternity along the lines Hincmar established for the archdiocese of Rheims, the older purpose of the group — mutual protection with its necessary threat of vengeance — makes the Anglo-Saxon guild something more than a prayer meeting. To include almsgiving to members in distress would be a small step, given the scope of activities this guild established. There is no sign that the thegns cooperated in any economic endeavors, but older rules of rural society had already determined methods of sharing responsibility in the villages, and the thegns cooperated on everything that was important in their lives. The thegns of Cambridge had a guild that resembles in some important ways the communal oath, that will be discussed below, of some Italian cities in the next century.”

so, in england anyway, the individual didn’t become “largely free from collective ties of kinship and ethnicity” thanks to the state. anglo-saxon individuals were already on their way to becoming free from the collective ties of kinship before the state stepped in.
_____

pinker has a neat chart in Better Angels — Fig. 3.3 – Homicide rates in five Western European regions, 1300–2000:

as he says about england [kindle locations 1581-1584]:

“Once again we see a decline in annual homicide rates, and it is not small: from between 4 and 100 homicides per 100,000 people in the Middle Ages to around 0.8 (eight-tenths of a homicide) per 100,000 in the 1950s. The timing shows that the high medieval murder rates cannot be blamed on the social upheavals that followed the Black Death around 1350, because many of the estimates predated that epidemic.”

and [kindle locations 1599-1603]:

“Were the English unusual among Europeans in gradually refraining from murder? Eisner looked at other Western European countries for which criminologists had compiled homicide data. Figure 3–3 shows that the results were similar. Scandinavians needed a couple of additional centuries before they thought the better of killing each other, and Italians didn’t get serious about it until the 19th century. But by the 20th century the annual homicide rate of every Western European country had fallen into a narrow band centered on 1 per 100,000.”

i discussed this difference in the timing of the drop in homicide rates between various european countries in a previous post — outbreeding, self-control and lethal violence — in which i looked at manuel eisner’s paper, Modernization, Self‐Control and Lethal Violence. pinker also drew on eisner’s work for Better Angels. in that paper, eisner said:

“[T]he data suggest that the secular trajectories of low homicide rates differ among large geographic areas. It appears that English homicide rates were already considerably lower in the late sixteenth century than during the late Middle Ages and that they declined continuously along a log-linear trend over several centuries. Extant estimates for the Netherlands and Belgium suggest a very similar structure trend in these areas. In the Scandinavian countries, the transistion to the decreasing trend occurs notably later, namely in the first decades after 1600. Despite huge gaps in the data, the German-speaking areas may also be assumed to have joined the declining trend from the early seventeenth century onwards. For Italy, however, all the available data indicate that acts of individual-level lethal violence remained very frequent until the early nineteenth century. It is not until the mid-nineteenth century that the rate begins to decline, but then very steeply.”

and, as i said in my previous post:

“hmmmm. now where have i heard a pattern like this before? england, the netherlands, germans earliest in *some*thing … scandinavians later … italians last.”

that “something” that i was referring to is, of course, the avoidance of close cousin marriage — or The Outbreeding Project, as i like to call it. (i guess i should really call it The European Outbreeding Project or The Norwestern European Outbreeding Project.) the importance of kinship — extended families and kindreds — disappeared in large parts of northwestern europe, because northwest europeans quit marrying their close cousins, and the ties (including genetic) between individual northwest europeans and their extended family members simply loosened. loosened to the extent that, after several hundreds of years, extended families and kindreds just didn’t matter to people anymore. and, so, kindred-driven activities like feuding ceased and homicide rates decreased markedly.

the dutch — thanks to having been a part of frankish austrasia — and the southern english (especially the ones in kent) — thanks to being heavily influenced by the franks just across the channel — began avoiding cousin marriage very early in the medieval period, probably already in the 600-700s (see “mating patterns in europe series” below ↓ in left-hand column — also more on medieval england and france). the germans weren’t far behind, especially since the franks had so much influence in what would eventually become germany over the course of the medieval period (see the ostsiedlung). the scandinavians lagged behind since they were comparatively late in adopting christianity (and, therefore, in adopting the cousin marriage bans). and the italians were very late since they mostly did not have manorialism (which reinforced the cousin marriage bans). the italians, in fact — especially southern italians — kept marrying close cousins up until very recently.
_____

eisner offered several explanations — not necessarily mutually exclusive — for why homicide rates should’ve dropped so much in western europe over the course of the middle ages. one of the ones that steven pinker latched on to was the idea of the leviathan — the replacement of family feuds and compensation for killings with punishment (esp. execution) by the state. certainly there’s probably something to this — removing enough violent individuals from the gene pool could very well reduce the frequencies of “genes for violence” in a population in just one thousand years or so. (see also peter frost on rome – pdf.)

eisner also suggested another explanation, though, one that he drew from emile durkheim [pg. 632]:

“Durkheim saw the decline of homicide rates as resulting from the liberation of the individual from collective bonds rather than as the consequence of the coercive potential of the state. High levels of lethal violence thus mirror the intensity of ‘collective emotions’, which bind the individual to ‘groups of things that symbolically represent these groups’. Violence thus declines to the degree that the person becomes liberated from its sacred obligation to the group, and the rise of moral individualism brings about both subjective reflexivity and emotional indifference in conflict situations (Durkheim 1957: 115).”

replace “liberated from its sacred obligation to the group” with “more and more outbred” and you’ve got a nice, little sociobiological theory there!

“This theoretical approach offers valuable insights into the historical patterns of declining homicide rates. First, the Durkheimian argument offers a theoretical framework for understanding the multifarious cultural meanings of violence in medieval society. Much empirical research on the topic emphasizes the crucial role of insults in triggering situational conflicts. This is in accordance with a society in which ‘honour’ constitutes highly important social capital of the male person as a representative of his group. It requires retributive violence as a potential and culturally accepted means for maintaining one’s honour. Such a theoretical framework may help to better understand why the secular decline in homicide rates primarily seems to have been due to a decrease in male-to-male fights. And it may also offer a point of departure for understanding the high violence rates in italy, where a culture of honour persisted despite the early development of administrative and judicial structures in the city states.“

in anglo-saxon england, then, the kinship groups and their “culture of honor” (feuds, etc.) declined before the state got involved in safeguarding the lives of individuals. meanwhile, in medieval italy, the culture of honor persisted despite the presence of states that punished violent offenders. the difference, of course, is that italy — especially southern italy — barely ever joined in The Outbreeding Project, whereas england was one of its leading nations.

previously: the importance of the kindred in anglo-saxon society and outbreeding, self-control and lethal violence and what pinker missed and more on genetics and the historical decline of violence and clannishness defined

_{(note: comments do not require an email. hmpf!)}

flatlanders vs. mountaineers revisited

if you’ve been following along, you’ll know that last year i posted about a bit of research by an anthropologist(?) by the name of joseph westermeyer the results of which suggested that peoples in lowland areas below 500m above sea level have a tendency to outbreed (i.e. avoid cousin marriage) while uplanders above 500m above sea level (and, perhaps, peoples in other marginal areas) have a tendency to inbreed (i.e. favor cousin marriage). (see also here.) westermeyer only looked at southeast asia, but i, too, seemed to be finding that pattern repeating in many places: balkans peoples – largely inbreeders, especially the ones way up in the hills; populations in the caucasuses – inbreeders; the auvergnats in france – inbreeders; heeland scots – inbreeders until quite late; afghanis – generally inbreeders, but more so in the mountains than in lowland areas; etc.

on friday, i posted about the wrist-knife wearing, ak-47 some sort-of big gun carrying turkana of east africa (kenya) who also appeared to confirm the pattern: they are a bunch of outbreeders (they avoid anything closer than second cousin marriage) and they live in a lowland region. and they’re pastoralists to boot — teh anthropologists keep saying that pastoralism leads to close marriages (like with the arabs). not!

well. last night i came across this book — Reproduction and Social Organization in Sub-Saharan Africa (1989) — which just blows this flatlanders vs. mountaineers theory right out of the water! (yipee! it’s almost like i’m doing real science! almost. ok, not really. but uncle karl would be so proud!)

in the second chapter, “The Components of Sub-Saharan Reproductive Regimes and Their Social and Cultural Determinants: The Empirical Evidence,” there’s a table on pages 74 and 75 indicating the presence or absence of cousin marriage for 47+ sub-saharan populations (data from murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas), and, as far as i can tell, there’s no rhyme or reason for why some groups inbreed and others don’t. at least the pattern (if there is one!) doesn’t appear to be connected to living in upland or lowland areas.

here is the table from the book (i’ve removed the columns that weren’t related to cousin marriage):

so far i’ve only run through the outbreeders (mostly), but here’s what i’ve got for where these different groups live. i’ve divvied them up by country and indicated approximately where each of the groups lives on the maps (topographic maps from wikipedia — click on maps for LARGER views — not sure who the Kru people from liberia are, so i’ve skipped them for now):

KENYA [source]
0-Kalenjin – uplanders
0-Kikuyu – uplanders
0-Kisii (AbaGusii) – uplanders
0-Luhya – uplanders
0-Luo – uplanders
0-Meru-Embu – uplanders
0-Mijikenda – lowlanders
0-Turkana – lowlanders
1-Arab groups [somalis, etc.] – lowlanders

CAMEROON
0-Adamawa groups – uplanders
0-Bafia – uplanders
0-Baya (Gabaya) – uplanders
0-Cameroon Western Highland groups – uplanders
0-Duala – lowlanders
0-Mandara groups – uplanders

SENEGAL
0-Diola (Jola) – lowlanders

(btw – check out the HUGE velingara circular structure to the right of where i typed “diola.” impact crater? [pdf])

GHANA
0-Kusasi – lowlanders (below 500m)
0-Tallensi – lowlanders

BURKINA FASO
0-Mossi – lowlanders

see? that’s eleven upland groups right there which are — if the data are correct — outbreeders not inbreeders. either the flatlanders vs. mountaineers theory is wrong, or the sub-saharan africans are some sort of exception to this rule.

again, most of the groups practice polygamy which does complicate the picture wrt genetic relatedness. i’ll work the inbreeders into the maps one day soon. promise!

previously: this one’s for g.w. and the flatlanders vs. the mountain people

_{(note: comments do not require an email. velingara circular structure.)}

the turkana: mating patterns, family types, and social structures

t.greer recommended to me a paper on the mating patterns of the turkana of east africa (thanks, t!): Mating Structure of a Nomadic Pastoral Population (1982).

first, here’s a nice turkana person for ya (^_^):

the turkana mating patterns are interesting, i think, for a handful of reasons:

– they appear to uphold the notion that flatlanders tend to be outbreeders (see also here) — while mountaineers/peoples in marginal lands tend to be inbreeders;
– they also appear to uphold the notion that the greater the outbreeding, the looser the family and social structures (see…half of the blog);
– and they appear to contradict the notion that pastoralists tend to inbreed (see explanations from anthropologists the world over). hmmmm.

from the paper, the turkana live here in kenya:

and this region of kenya is fairly flat:

the turkana who practice pastoralism (most of them — a few are agriculturalists) apparently do bring their herds (of camels and goats) uphill for grazing in the summer, but mostly they reside in the valleys, and they consider themselves to be flatlanders rather than mountaineers.

from the paper, we learn that the turkana have clans (28 patrilineal clans) [pg. 472], that they avoid marrying within those clans — in the study, 96% of those surveyed were married to someone from another clan [pg. 474], and that they even try to avoid marrying anyone closer than second cousins [pg. 472].

(one thing that the turkana do have which complicates the picture is polygamy. clearly polygamy, like cousin marriage, also results in closer relatedness [a lot of individuals in the population are half-siblings]. i haven’t thought through polygamy yet — what it means for relatedness. obviously it depends on if only a certain portion of the males get to mate and the remainder are left out or if the whole system is more of a rotating system of polygamy and women are swapped between most or all of the men. polygamy is complicated. i’ll have to think about it one of these days.)

so, what is turkana society like? what are their family types like? what about these clans then?

from Turkana (1996) [pgs. 16, 20-22]:

“The nuclear family is the basic social and political unit among the Turkana.”

uh…kinda.

“The family comprises a man, his wife or wives, his sons and their wives and children, and his unmarried daughters. In the homestead there might also be a grandparent or other relative and a concubine (a woman living in the household to whom he is not married).

“The man is the head of the family. The family is represented economically by its herd of livestock….

“The Extended Family

“Among the Turkana, the extended family (*ngi-tungakothi*) is made up of all males who can claim common descent on the male side. The unit could go back three or four generations. To members of the group, those within it are ‘our people.’ But strictly speaking, the extended family also includes the wives of each of these men if they have raised a child to walking stage. It excludes women who have married elsewhere and are no longer in the family.

“The core of the extended family, however, is essentially the son of a deceased father, his full brothers, his half-brothers, and his paternal male first cousins, along with the nuclear families of all these men…. Members also share fellowship on other such occasions as initiation, weddings, and judicial compensation, when there is mutual assistance in givings and receiving livestock.”

“judicial compensation” there is interesting. is that like wergeld? dunno. will have to find out more.

“The Clan

“Every Turkana belongs to a clan (*ateger*), of which there are about 20. They fall into two major types: the large, widespread clans, each comprising over 1,000 adult males, and the very small ones consisting of only about 30 members.

“Clans are of little practical or political importance to the Turkana today, especially since clans no longer own herds or pastures or watering places…. Nor do travelling Turkana any longer expect help or hospitality from fellow clansmen. They would expect that help from bond-friends, people in various parts of the country to whom they have made a ritual commitment.“

“bond-friends.” also very interesting.

from The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State (2000), we learn that the turkana’s family and social structures are, indeed, really loose, and the whole “clan” structure seems to mostly be a system used to maintain the outbreeding (the exogamy) — a way to keep track of whom you’re not supposed to marry [pgs. 197-99]:

“Dyson-Hudson and McCabe (1985: 79-80) describe the degree to which Turkana groups form out of myriad individual decisions:

“‘Kinship, both agnatic and affinal, is an important basis for cooperative relationships. However since livestock are a readily partible resource, and since the frequent moves of camps and splitting of the major *awi* into satellite camps allow the breaking of old bonds and the establishment of new ones, a man has great latitude to choose to live with people he likes. A woman also has some choice: she can live with her father, her brother, or her grown sons, as well as with her husband. Flux and flexibility characterize [their] social networks.‘

“Although the Turkana lack highly structured kin groups, territories, and a formal political system, they do establish and maintain large networks that amount to a kind of effective community for each homestead. First, hamletlike groups of close relatives and friends live and move together for part of the year. Second, such groups cluster within convenient walking distance of one another, and men in such a cluster meet often to take turns distributing freshly slaughtered meat and to share information on herds and pastures. These two levels of social organization (Gulliver calls them primary and secondary neighborhoods) provide the individual househead with a network of friends through which food and information flow, friends from whom he may beg insistently as a good Turkana should (Gulliver 1951; Patton 1982) and who will cooperate with him in defense against raiding. Although a family is free to move at will, in practice families tend to move with their neighbors and settle near them at new locations….

“The main cement of Turkana social organization, however, is the exchange of livestock. A nuclear family’s herds are all owned and managed by the father; and although their daily care falls to women and boys, spread over the countryside, there is a strong sense of the essential unity of the family and its herd. Some hamlet groups are the remnants of old extended families whose senior male has died: in such cases the brothers and in-laws continue to live near each other, and, because their herd once had a common owner, the men continue to feel part of one family. Often, as we have seen, the hamlet-size group also includes friends….

“How extensive is Turkana social structure? On the one hand, there are indicators of ‘tribal’ integration. The Turkana say, ‘We are all brothers,’ and respect this tribal identity by rarely raiding or using spears against one another (bandits, *igorokos*, are exceptions). They know and acknowledge the ‘territorial’ names of their regions. They also belong to clans, some of them small and localized, others widespread throughout Turkana land. In past times, apparently, whole regions of Turkana mustered thousands of warriors against non-Turkana enemies.

“Yet in their daily life the Turkana are not conscious of themselves as a tribe. They have no tribal, territorial, or clan leaders, no corporate groups, and no genealogical reckoning beyond the grandparent level. They are highly individualistic and tend to migrate within circumscribed areas; even close-knit extended families usually separate at times in response to their individual needs….“

also, from here:

“There would appear to be no clan leadership or organisation. Gulliver states that ‘if one asks a Turkana who is head of his clan he usually replies *there is no head, we have no heads. They were all long ago.* However a few will give the name of a man of a clan recently alive, or an old man, who achieved fame and importance for some reason and say that he is the head. But enquiry shows that he has no authority over any of them outside his own extended family should he still be alive…’ (1951: 69).”

so, the turkana outbreed, and they have loose family and social structures. friends seem to be important (as important as family?). the turkana are individualistic, yet share readily with their friends.

they do go to battle, though. mostly with non-turkana peoples. sometimes the non-turkana steal the turkana’s animals, oftentimes it’s the other way around [from here]:

“Warfare is traditionally an essential part of Turkana life and the principal occupation of young men. Weapons are considered a man’s proud possessions and the practical tool for increasing herds by raiding and for expanding their territory. Ever since they entered Kenya, the Turkana have been in a perpetual process of expansion. Previously settled tribes such as the Samburu, Pokot, Donyiro, Toposa and Karamojong were forced out of their territory by belligerent Turkana warriors (Gulliver, 1951: 143). No administration has ever able completely to contain the Turkana and put an end to these conflicts. These common age-old pursuits still trouble independent Kenya.

“Turkana believe that all livestock on earth, including that owned by other people, is theirs by right, and that there is nothing wrong in going after it and taking it by force. A young man, they say, must be prepared to die in pursuit of stock (Soper, 1985: 106).”

i love how people justify their own actions to themselves. (~_^) don’t mess with the turkana, though! they have wrist knives. yikes!:

_{(note: comments do not require an email. fighting with wrist knives! (O_O) )}

athletes and human biodiversity

you may have seen these howard schatz photos floating around on the internet the past couple of days. (if you did, you spend too much time online! — if you didn’t, you don’t spend enough time online!) i lifted the ones below from imgur.

all different sizes and shapes of people! neat! (^_^)

left to right: gymnastics, high jump (of course!), trampoline, high jump, triple jump, wrestling [click on images for LARGER views]:

long distance running, marathon (i love this guy!), decathalon, marathon (him, too!), running (800m):

rhythmic gymnastics (oww!!), sport aerobics (huh?), gymnastics, gymnastics, high jump (uh…yeah), gymnastics:

bodybuilding, weightlifting, weightlifting(!), rhythmic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics:

there’s more @imgur. and on howard schatz’s website.

previously: you, too, can become the fastest man on earth!

_{(note: comments do not require an email. wolffish!)}

how much of a northerner are you?

via ed west (one of those foppish southerners (~_^) ), here is The North-o-Meter test!

how much of a northerner am i? ay up! winter is coming…

(^_^)

right-wing authoritarian (RWA) test

(note: the sunday linkfest shall appear tomorrow [if all goes as planned!]. i feel like we just had a linkfest, since last week’s didn’t happen until wednesday. oops.)

here’s an online right-wing authoritarian (RWA) test for you to try out. i have NO idea how valid it is, or if it even resembles altemeyer’s RWA test. my suspicion is that it’s an older version of the test, but i really don’t know. it’s just an okcupid quiz, so i wouldn’t put a whole lot of weight on it. (~_^)

make sure to follow the instructions re. if you only agree with part of a statement!

i took the quiz last week before i read the chapters in avi tuschman‘s Our Political Nature that include material on the RWA — didn’t want to bias myself. here are my results:

don’t know if my score is particularly high or not. it’s certainly higher than most of the folks over @the democratic underground who took the quiz. not a surprise. (^_^) note that this percentage score does not resemble altemeyer’s scale, so i don’t think there’s any way to compare your scores on this little quiz to any actual academic study. oh well.

more importantly…how much of a northerner are you…?

previously: our political nature and authoritarianism

_{(note: comments do not require an email. authoritarian states.)}

kirobo

first humanoid robot in space!: “Kirobo off from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan to be a companion for Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata aboard the ISS. ‘Mr. Wakata? Did you leave already, I can not wait to see you!'” (open the pod bay doors, kirobo…. (~_^) )

_____

previously: robo ping pong!