Violence in Human Evolution and Postmodernism's Capture of Anthropology

Anytime a researcher publishes a finding that suggests violence may have been widespread over the course of human evolutionary history, you can count on a critical response from one of just a few anthropologists. No matter who the original researcher is or what methodological and statistical approach are applied, one of these critics will invariably insist the methods were flawed and the analysis fails to support the claim. To be fair, these critics do have a theoretical basis for their challenges. By their lights, violence, especially organized, coalitional violence, emerged in complex societies as the result of differential access to prized resources. Hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists tend to roam widely, so they don’t accumulate much by way of property over their lifespans, which means there’s nothing much for them to fight over—at least according to the theory.

But these anthropologists also openly admit to a political agenda driving their engagement in the controversy. The idea that violence was rampant over the course of human evolution could imply that humans evolved to be violent—that violence is in our genes. And, if the view that humans are innately and hence irredeemably violent is allowed to take hold, war hawks can more credibly brush aside talk of peace as naively utopian. As Brian Ferguson, the single most cited advocate of the view that our hunter-gatherer past was markedly more peaceful than our civilized present, says in a documentary about the history of controversial research among the Yąnomamö of Brazil and Venezuela, “If we’re going to work against war, we need to work against the idea that war is human nature” (36:26). In other words, these scholars see a direct line connecting the science of human violence and the politics of war. If you want peace, according to this line of thinking, you must not let the contention that violence was widespread throughout human evolution go unchallenged. 

Of course, admitting to an agenda like this opens you to accusations of ideological bias. Are scholars like Ferguson insisting the evidence of violence in the Pleistocene is weak because they genuinely believe it is? Or is it because they believe they can prevent wars by convincing enough people it is? If some new evidence clearly demonstrated their view to be in error, would they admit this publicly? Or would they continue singing the same tune about our notionally peaceful past while casting aspersions on whoever reported the new evidence? The inescapability of questions like these are what makes it so odd that anyone would admit to a political agenda in a scientific context. So how do they justify it? 

Image by Canva’s Magic Media

Anthropology is an odd discipline. The political homogeneity of people in the field has made it particularly vulnerable to the encroachment of a certain set of ideas from nonscientific disciplines. Postmodernism is rife in the field, and one of the central tenets of postmodernism is that there are more or less covert political motivations driving every intellectual or artistic endeavor. From this perspective, all the scholars proclaiming their ambition to promote peace are doing differently from their seemingly apolitical colleagues is explicitly owning up to their political agenda. 

(Many scholars, no matter how well the label fits, chafe at being called postmodernist, complaining that the term is too vague or that it’s too broad to be meaningfully applied to them. I suspect this is mostly an effort at muddying the waters, but here I’ll simply define postmodernism as a philosophy that focuses on the role of power relations—oppressors versus the oppressed—in knowledge formation and which thus encourages a high degree of skepticism toward scientific claims, especially those that can be viewed as in any way negatively portraying or impacting some marginalized or disempowered group.)

This is where the situation gets scary, because the flipside to postmodernists’ presupposition of political motives is that any researcher who reports evidence of pre-state conflict or any theorist who emphasizes the role of violence in human evolution must likewise have an agenda—to promote war. This must be true even if the anthropologist in question explicitly denies any such agenda. Here’s Douglas Fry in an interview with Oxford University Press:

When the beliefs of a culture hold that humans are naturally warlike, people socialized in such settings tend to accept such views without much question. Cultural traditions influence the thinking and perceptions of scientists and scholars as well. I suspect that one reason that retelling this erroneous finding is so common is that it supposedly provides “scientific confirmation” of the warlike human nature view.

The specific “erroneous finding” Fry refers to is that Yąnomamö men who kill in battle father more children than those who never kill anyone. It was published by Napoleon Chagnon in Science, and Ferguson promptly responded with his criticisms, which Fry insists completely undermine Chagnon’s analysis. Whether the finding has truly been overturned is contested to this day, but Fry’s interview demonstrates a common pattern: Yes, of course, the evidence proves the findings about violence wrong, the postmodern anthropologist will claim, but just for good measure let’s also indict the anthropologist who reported them for his complicity in perpetuating a culture of war. They never seem to realize that the second part of this formula undermines the credibility of the claim made in the first. 

Chagnon’s Findings on Unokai (Killers)

Whether you accept the proposition that politics percolates beneath the surface of all forms of intellectual discourse, you can see how the postmodern activist stance provides a recipe for overly politicized debates, where instead of arguing on the merits of competing views, scholars are enjoined to imagine they’re engaged in righteous combat against their morally compromised colleagues. If you’re more of a traditional scientist, meanwhile—i.e., if you don’t take postmodernism seriously—then the sanctimonious tone taken by your detractors will strike you as evidence of an ideological commitment to sweeping inconvenient evidence under the rug.  

If you’ve ever debated someone who insists on arguing against your presumed ideological agenda while completely ignoring major parts of the case you’re actually making, you know how maddening and futile such exchanges can be. Indeed, many of the rules of scientific discourse—rules postmodernists believe only serve to allow justifications for oppression to fly in under the radar—exist to help intellectual rivals avoid the deadlock of competitive mind-reading and the attribution of sinister motives. Nonetheless, many scholars today take it for granted that science not only can coexist with postmodernism but that science needs postmodernism to prevent the reemergence of evils like eugenics, scientific racism, or colonialist exploitation. What they don’t understand is that you can’t take in the Trojan horse of an idea like ulterior agendas without opening the gates to the entire army of postmodern tenets. Once you let morality or politics or ideology into the debate, then that debate is no longer scientific; there’s no having it both ways. 

Ah, but the postmodernist critic will object that it’s impossible not to let politics and ideology into any debate. Pure objectivity is a fantasy. So, if hidden agendas and biases are going to continue operating despite our best efforts, we may as well call them out. And, having exposed them to the light of day, we may as well admit that our disagreement is as much political as it is scientific. As Allison Mickel and Kyle Olson write in a 2021 op-ed for Sapiens titled “Archaeologists Should Be Activists Too,” 

There are still some who argue that scientists maintain their authority only when they remain objective, separate from current political concerns. Many academics have decried this view for decades, demonstrating that fully objective science has always been more of a myth than a reality. Science has always been shaped by the contemporary concerns of the time and place in which research occurs.

This brings us back to the permissibility, even the moral necessity, of infusing our science with postmodernism. 

But this point rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of science. The point was never to thoroughly eradicate bias or to deny that individual perspectives are always shaped by forces beyond the individual’s awareness. The point is that by taking measures to reduce bias we can engage in more fruitful discussions that are more likely to lead to real insights and discoveries. True, bias can never be fully eliminated. Nor can pathogens ever be thoroughly annihilated from an operating theater. That doesn’t mean anyone should undergo surgery in a gas station bathroom. Seeing countless scientific debates degrade into petty moralizing and name-calling free-for-alls between tribalized groups of intellectuals for the past decade on social media ought to have convinced us all that at least trying to stick to the facts while avoiding ad hominem attacks has a lot to recommend it. 

The public trusts science—insofar as this is still true—precisely because scientists make a point of examining evidence as objectively as humanly possible while doing whatever they can to minimize bias. But, once scientists start proclaiming their activist agendas, they forfeit that trust, giving the public no reason to see scientists and scientific institutions as any different from all the other special interest groups vying for attention and resources. Indeed, this loss of trust is already well underway, as the Covid-19 pandemic made abundantly clear.

There are at least two other major problems with the melding of postmodernism onto science. The first is that, while it may be true that we all operate on unconscious beliefs and agendas, there currently exists no method that’s even remotely reliable for determining what those beliefs and agendas are. If you accuse some anthropologist of reporting on the violence she observed among the people she’s studying merely because she favors military expansionist policies, you can expect her to reply that, no, she’s simply telling everyone what she witnessed. How, without resorting to spectral evidence, would you then go about establishing that she in fact doesn’t know her own true motivation? How can others check the work you put into uncovering this hidden agenda? The awkward reality is that postmodern anthropologists routinely insist that their rivals have some reactionary agenda even when those rivals are on record supporting progressive causes. 

To see how catastrophically the attribution of unconscious motives can go awry, take a look at some of the earliest theories about the inner workings of the mind from the turn of the last century. Freud can be credited with the revelation that much of what goes on in our minds is outside of our awareness. But nearly every theory he put forth based on that revelation turned out to be wrong—and in the most grotesque ways. As the theory of the Oedipus Complex, which posits that infant boys want to kill their fathers and marry their mothers, ought to make clear, without sound methods for examining the contents of our unconscious minds, all this speculation about hidden biases and motivations all too easily morphs into fodder for the formation of cultic beliefs. 

The postmodernist anthropologists counter this point by insisting they’re not interested in the contents of individual minds. Rather, they’re interested in the impact those individuals’ actions and statements have on society. Whether, say, Napoleon Chagnon really intended to bolster the rationale for sending troops to Southeast Asia is beside the point. His case for widespread violence in human evolutionary history had that effect regardless of his intentions.

But did it really?

Leaving aside the question of whether someone should be held morally accountable for outcomes he didn’t intend, we still must ask how the postmodernists know what the impact of an idea will be—or has been. How do they know Chagnon’s work had the effect they claim it had? Is there any evidence that Kennedy or Johnson or any of the top generals were even aware of Chagnon’s work among the Yąnomamö? (His infamous paper on Yąnomamö warriors having more children wasn’t published until 1988.) Are there any survey data tying beliefs about pre-state warfare to voting behavior? As is the case with their efforts at revealing an individual’s unconscious motives, the absence of any viable methods for examining the societal impact of ideas essentially gives postmodern critics a blank check to assert whatever’s on offer from their darkest imaginings.  

This leads into the next flaw in the campaign to blend postmodernism with science. The connection between beliefs about human nature and the political or moral convictions one holds is hardly straightforward. Personally, I’ve gone back and forth on the issue of how violent our Pleistocene ancestors were, but I have never, and would never vote for any politician campaigning on the glories of conquest. Likewise, I believe there are consequential differences between male and female psychology, but I have never, and would never vote for a candidate who insists women should be banned from certain professions because of these differences. Indeed, I hold many views that are more compatible with the conception of human nature that gets ascribed to those with conservative politics, but I’ve never voted for a Republican in my life. In this supposed contradiction, I’m far from alone. 

Survey data show that adaptationist psychologists, whose stance allegedly serves to perpetuate the political status quo, are no more likely to vote conservative than any other psychologists, all of whom tend to be left-leaning. This however isn’t to say political leanings have no connection to the beliefs of anthropologists. One large, in-depth survey showed that while people in the field are almost invariably on the left, some are much farther to the left than others. And those who identify as Radical, as opposed to Liberal or Moderate, are more likely to agree with the statement, “Foraging societies in prehistory were more peaceful.” They’re also more likely to disagree with the statement, “Advocacy and fieldwork should be kept as separate as possible to help protect the objectivity of the research.” Not surprisingly, Radicals are also more likely to agree that “Postmodern ideas have made an important contribution to anthropology.” 

One of the most recent flareups over the role of violence in human evolution was fomented by Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature, which argues that the story of civilization is one of progress toward greater peace. If Western societies are becoming less violent over time, then they must have been more violent in the past. To demonstrate this, Pinker includes a graph showing what percentage of various populations likely died at the hands of other people. (Like clockwork, Brian Ferguson went on record insisting the numbers for pre-state societies are exaggerated.) Many anthropologists and native rights activists believe the publication of these figures is unconscionable. But the interesting point here is that Pinker cannot be using his evidence of pre-state violence as a justification for war, because the whole point of his book is to examine the causes of the documented decline in violence. Let me emphasize this point: Pinker argues both that violence was rampant in our evolutionary past and that we as a species are entirely capable of transcending that past. Indeed, we’re not only capable of reducing violence; we’ve been doing it for centuries. Better Angels thoroughly obliterates the notion that believing violence played a significant role in human evolution makes one a de facto advocate for war in the present. 

There are plenty of other instances of this disconnect. Anthropologist Agustin Fuentes recently raised a kerfuffle by writing an op-ed for Science about all the racism and misogyny on display in Darwin’s Descent of Man. Fuentes contends it’s important to see that even someone as brilliant and insightful as Darwin was still a slave to the prejudices of his day, which ought to make us all consider how big of a role prejudice may be playing in our own thinking. To make this point, Fuentes explains how Darwin got so much about race right: he knew no clear line separates one race from another and that no feature is found in any one race that’s absent in all the others. Most importantly, as an outspoken abolitionist, he knew that slavery is evil. Fuentes can’t hide his frustration with Darwin for getting so close without quite reaching the modern understanding of race as a social construct. What Fuentes is missing is that Darwin demonstrates that it’s not necessary to believe all races or all individuals are completely equal in every regard for one to insist that all races and all individuals should be treated as equally human. The scientific belief in group differences, or gender differences, or individual differences, contra the postmodernists, can live peacefully alongside a commitment to equal and universal human rights.

Politics can never be completely decoupled from science. Beliefs about human nature can’t be completely disentangled from moral reasoning. But the lines connecting theory to policy, or paradigm to advocacy, are seldom as straight as postmodernists would have us believe. The notion that you can improve the circumstances of indigenous peoples, or reduce racism, or make way for military drawdowns simply by criticizing intellectuals you disagree with and making accusations against them you can’t prove strikes me as childish and absurd. That’s because my own deepest intuition is that to solve a problem it’s best to first try to reach as thorough an understanding of that problem as possible. Any insistence that activism supersede science is based on the pretense of already having the very answer you’re supposedly seeking. What if humans really are naturally violent in some circumstances? Isn’t it better to honestly investigate what those circumstances are than to zealously promote a fantasy of violence being some civilization-induced aberration from our history of angelic communalism?

            For many people, the addition of a second reason to reject an idea probably makes the criticism that much more plausible. Not only is the evidence not a hundred percent airtight, but if people believe this idea there’ll be hell to pay. But scientists ought to recognize the fallacy of an argument from adverse consequences when they see it. Plenty of anthropologists catch on to this trick when it’s played by creationists: If people believe they descended from apes, they’ll start to behave as if they had. The second part may seem plausible, but it still requires evidence to establish. More importantly, the first part may be true even if the second is. Scientists trained to recognize such flaws in human reasoning ought to know focusing on the reasons you want a claim to be true does nothing but detract from your credibility. 

            If your priority when engaging in science is to seek the truth, that will be reflected in your readiness to change your mind when new evidence emerges. If on the other hand your main concern is managing what ideas make their way into the prevailing culture, then you have no right to call yourself a scientist. What you’re trying to be is some sort of preacher, but what you’re probably engaging in more than anything else is censorship. Scientists are supposed to be truth-seekers first and foremost, not social engineers. Activism is well and good, but if you mix it with science, you degrade the integrity of both. Yes, neither you nor anyone else will escape bias and cultural programming, but that should make postmodernists just as intellectually and morally humble as they demand scientists be. The best way to rein in your bias after all is to engage regularly in discourse with people who hold different views and beliefs. Given postmodernism’s woeful effect on intellectual discourse of any sort, it seems a catalyst for more, not less bias, and more, not less tribalism. 

Also read:

Just Another Piece of Sleaze: The Real Lesson of Robert Borofsky's "Fierce Controversy"

The Self-Righteousness Instinct: Steven Pinker on the Better Angels of Modernity and the Evils of Morality

“The World until Yesterday” and the Great Anthropology Divide: Wade Davis’s and James C. Scott’s Bizarre and Dishonest Reviews of Jared Diamond’s Work

Napoleon Chagnon's Crucible and the Ongoing Epidemic of Moralizing Hysteria in Academia