ASEBL Journal – Volume 10 Issue 1, January 2014
Boehm meticulously links our ancestral past to our present (and accommodates both
industrialized and still-present foraging societies).
Boehm is a cultural anthropologist, so it is not (perhaps) surprising that he would lay
emphasis on the group: culture as problem solving; morality is a group concern.
Consider how Dennis Krebs, a psychologist trained by but then turning away from
Kohlberg, lays emphasis on the individual: indirect reciprocity; morality as a personal
action. According to Boehm, Richard Alexander “flirted” with group selection theory
(73). Interestingly, Alexander (a biologist) is used differently by the psychologist
Krebs and the anthropologist Boehm. Nevertheless, as Alexander himself proposes (in
The Biology of Moral Systems), there cannot be any altruism without selfishness: both
punishment of and aid to another are motivated (in the short or long term) by one’s
self-interest. Matt Ridley (The Origins of Virtue) insists (for many sequential pages of
explanation) that while altruism is evident on a social/group level, the ultimate cause
of such is selfishness.
In a nutshell, here is Boehm’s line of argument: easily by 250,000 years ago large
game hunting (horses and antelope) was done in egalitarian groups (which had
replaced the alpha male hierarchy) and which set the pace for altruist sharing (meat
distribution) and punishment of cheaters who demanded or stole more than their share.
Boehm admits that hunting goes back much further, that there was large game hunting
as far back as 400,000 years ago. But by 250,000 years the large game was hunted
routinely and butchered carefully and systematically. This is not a new argument.
Ridley (as well as Richard G. Klein) comfortably places such hunting and butchering
back to approximately 1.4 million years ago. Novel here is Boehm’s insistence on a
complete shift to group culture. However, in The Origins of Virtue Ridley cites Hill
and Kaplan (1989) who say, “Societies . . . do not have needs, individuals do; and
societies are the sum of individuals, not entities in themselves. Therefore only by
understanding what made sense for the individuals would anthropology make
progress” (99).
Debunking the tolerated theft theory (biologist Nicholas Blurton-Jones), Boehm
asserts that such cooperative hunting and sharing would promote “social bonding,”
encourage “sympathetic feelings,” and involve some form of “perspective taking”
(139-140). Of course one could argue that, nonetheless, there is always (risk)
calculation in such sharing. The fascinating aspect of this book is how Boehm
correlates his theory to the many contemporary late Pleistocene-like communities he
has so assiduously researched, from the Inuit to the Kalahari (and many more).
Drawing on work of Donald T. Campbell, Boehm notes that many early civilizations
(and even contemporary foraging communities) employ “preaching in favor of
altruistic generosity” (191). Such preaching might underscore, however, our innate
selfish tendencies that repeatedly need correction; indeed, the preacher might be an
individual within the group who wants his ego to supplant many others. And yet
intriguing is how Boehm uses evidence from our prehistory to bolster his message: the
conscience evolved through a process of social (more than natural) selection as
hierarchical coalitions were formed and it was paramount to choose “useful
partnerships” wisely while punishing (at times severely) others (149). Boehm says
that this idea of deviant punishment affecting gene pools and leading to a conscience
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