Well, we shall have to agree to disagree on that. I certainly don't find that HGs have any kind of superior intelligence as, if that were the case, they would have dominated/devastated settled communities most of the time rather than the other way round. In short, higher intelligence gives one too great a competitive advantage, so either there is no difference in IQ or the more settled communities are brighter.
OK. If you're interested in how it is that Hunter Gatherers could possibly be more intelligent, on avg, than Neolithic people, I recommend Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.
There seems to be an unwritten assumption that HGs for hundreds of thousands of years were too dull to choose to be anything else, and that their survival with low breeding rate was accidental.
Odd, because they did so choose, apparently when they deemed it necessary.
IMHO they could have invented the neolithic anytime, but saw no reason to do so until ~12,000 years ago.
Correct, William. Dr. Cordain and others have written about the Paleoanthropological and historical research that found that multiple societies tried Neolithic agriculture, didn't like it, and returned to hunting/gathering. The Lakota/Dakota/Nakota are a famous example in North America. When the Spanish brought horses to the continent, these First Nations peoples used them to hunt buffalo (bison) and thus return to the HG lifestyle that they had never forgotten and longed to return to.
Over the years as I've investigated the derogatory claims of Moderners (among whom I don't include Tyler, though he has cited research, opinions, etc. from this school of thought--which I am grateful for, actually, because he has provided a very useful counterpoint to posit my speculations and ramblings up against without having to deal with the really harsh critics like PETA-type folks) about the Stone Agers and HGs in general I've found that most of them are based on false assumptions, fictions, and falsehoods. Manthropology is just the latest compilation of revelations about the fallacies of the Moderners, revealing that the abilities of even recent HGs were superior in multiple ways to moderners. The usual knee-jerk response is to engage in ad hominem and claim that the scientist or layman who reports these phenomena is just promoting the "noble savage myth" or longs for a primitive utopia.
What never gets mentioned is that the critics (and their claims that others cite) are sometimes influenced by a utopianism of their own, often unbenownst to them, that infected academia decades ago, which is a sort of Utopian Progressivism. It's dogma is endless progress, man as machine, and the perfectability of man. That which is new is considered "improved," and that which is old is assumed inferior unless widely publicized mountains of evidence make it impossible to ignore the obvious. The dogma of endless progress is far, far, far more common than noble savage mythology (how else explain the endless advancement of "new and improved" technologies, foods and drugs, almost without restraint?). It claims to be scientific, but much of it's original source material comes from fictional or misguided sources like Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes and it seems built on scientific reductionism and consensus. Assumptions are rarely questioned; instead, the same old fallacies (such as "the diet-acne connection is an old wives' tale") and faulty studies (such as the bogus 1960s study that claimed to refute the diet-acne connection) get cited over and over again ad nauseum and then Modernism's defenders point to the piles of rehashed articles and say "See, there is a scientific consensus backed by the weight of the evidence," when in reality it all teeters precariously on one or two bogus studies or maybe some snippets of 17th century philosophy.
"But wait a minute," you say. "Hobbes was a Monarchist, not a Progressive." True, but some of his concepts made an impression on the masses and were misinterpreted and reshaped over time (such as the "nasty, brutish, and short" quip, which Hobbes used to describe agrarian Englishmen, but which was transformed into an archetype of the HG) eventually infecting academia and the Progressives, deep into their psyches like an invasive cancer, probably setting science back several centuries. Plus, some Progressives replaced the despotism of monarchy with a new form of despotism: an all-knowing Mother Culture led by a cultural elite that sought to "help" the "savages" and "underclasses" by "civilizing" them.
Luckily, there have been and are reformers amongst the Progressives and the academics who have recognized where things went wrong and have been shedding light on this, such as Margaret Meade, Richard Leakey, Daniel Quinn, Jared Diamond, Art De Vany, Boyd Eaton, Loren Cordain, Michael and Mary Eades, and Nicholas Taleb. These and other academics, intellectuals and Progressives put various pieces of the puzzle back together that make up the ancient storehouse of knowledge and experience: man is not perfectible, everything new is not necessarily improved, many of the assumptions on which current scientific consensus is based are faulty, and beginning around 10 thousands years ago there was a "Great Forgetting," as Quinn called it, about ancient knowledge that we have only begun to re-learn within the past century or so.
Assumptions are being questioned, studies re-examined, paradigms shifted, and we are witnessing the dawn of a scientific revolution. I call it The Great Remembering.
"But hold on!" you say. "You did what you criticized others for doing--engaged in ad hominem about Progressives." Not all Progressives. Many would call me one, actually (others might claim I'm a Positivist or Libertarian--I don't think I fit neatly into any philosophical or political slot at present). Notice also that I didn't single any one out and was careful to explain that I'm not including Tyler in my critique. It was more of a general critique of the basic school of thought that seems to underlie the source materials that critics of RPD and HGs have relied upon, based on an impression I've garnered from years of watching Paleo dieters and advocates get attacked. Notice that I instead singled out some Progressives and likeminded academics for praise. I hope that I've managed to critique the message and its underlying underpinnings more than the messengers.
One thing I also try to remember is that all variations of Paleo diets, raw diets, and low carb diets are regarded as heresy worthy of ridicule by the powers that be. Based on their criticisms, they apparently regard us all as idiots or devils to be straightened out or silenced. So I try to remember not to criticize too harshly folks from similar ways of eating, but like a dumb, dumb I sometimes forget. So I apologize to any such I have offended in the past, and proactively apologize to the folks in the future I will likely also offend when I let my words get ahead of my brain.
For ten thousand years we have been blinded by The Great Forgetting. The Great Remembering has only just begun. Imagine what amazing revelations await.
Good luck and good eating.
