Diabolical is in the eye of the beholder.
Honestly IDK, we are condensing eons of events into speculative eggshells, but from anecdotal evidence based on what warring tribal humans have been known to do, I think its a safe assumption that head hunting existed long before the neolithic age turned humanity evil.
Yes, I agree that head hunting would have existed before the Neolithic since it was practiced recently still amongst hunters-gatherers (and even by some US soldiers during WWII and Vietnam war).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headhunting
Headhunting is the practice of taking and preserving a person's head after killing them. Headhunting was practiced in historic times in parts of Oceania, South and Southeast Asia, West and Central Africa, and Mesoamerica, as well as among certain tribes of the Celts, the West Germanic peoples, the Norse[1] and Scythians of ancient Europe. It occurred in Europe until the early 20th century in the Balkan Peninsula and to the end of the Middle Ages in Ireland and the Anglo-Scottish border regions.
…
During World War II, Allied (specifically including American) troops occasionally collected the skulls of dead Japanese as personal trophies, as souvenirs for friends and family at home, and for sale to others. (The practice was unique to the Pacific theater; German and Italian skulls were not taken.) The Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, in September 1942, mandated strong disciplinary action for any soldier who took enemy body parts as souvenirs. Nevertheless, trophy-hunting persisted: Life, in its issue of May 22, 1944, published a photograph of a young woman posing with the autographed skull sent to her by her Navy boyfriend, causing significant public outcry
Not sure, though, that it existed before the appearance of behavioral modernity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity, and even more doubtful that is was practiced before we controlled the fire and then used it for grilling food.
Im under attack , Trojans are at my gateway.....My filters wont let me download the book,
I sent you by e-mail the pdf of that book “Sex at Dawn”. BTW, Aura, your link for this pdf you made no longer works.
anyway there is still much I doubt that the book could address in regards to our current predicament. Feel free to explain on this thread anything that would persuade me to think differently.
This book is not meant to address our current predicament, but to try to establish a correct idea of what life would have been in the Paleolithic and debunk the recent, ill founded view that chimps and humans have always been inherently belligerent and violent against their own kind.
Though I don't think we disagree on things, only we are looking at different issues. Sure we can say that ideally humans can live in peace and harmony with each other in small tribal groups, but the reality of today's world is so far removed that it would be suicidal for most people to attempt to abandon the violent ways of the modern man.
Do modern man always have violent ways? Sometimes, yes, but religious antagonism and nationalisms compounded by exciting substances in grain and cooked foods often ignite fights and wars. Sexual repression cause frustration, neurosis, loss of extrasensory perception and thus materialism and delinquency.
So if this is true, what do the authors of Sex at Dawn suggest we do?
I don’t feel they suggest what we have to do. They don’t seem to know about raw paleo diet and they even make a mistake in stating that we have used fire to cook food since a million years ago or so. But otherwise, the content of their book overlaps at 90% what GCB had been relentlessly telling in his “metasexuality” theory since the 70’s.
If a diet adapted to our species (an instinctive raw paleo diet) tends to normalize our sexual drives, then most aggressive and violent behavior would vanish and current social rules repressing our sexuality could be relaxed. Materialistic and possessive tendencies would also be largely reduced.
There will always be uncertainty in the future and no matter how well things seem to be going, humans still must retain the capacity to be intrinsically diabolical. Its insurance against total annihilation when times get apocalyptic.
Why? On the opposite, it seems to me that cooperation has always been a better way to insure survival than deadly fights and wars, which can lead to mutual annihilation.
You can idealize all you want about the past, but I know Intrinsically, and am adamantly sure that my ancestors went though the inferno.
Yes, but there are very strong clues that this inferno followed the shift from foraging-hunting-gathering to agriculture. It doesn’t mean that the life of our pre-fire ancestors was always enjoyable, but certainly nothing comparable to the abominable cruelties committed for example by the Assyrians, the inquisitors in the middle age, or in WW II by the Nazis and the burning alive of hundreds thousand civilians by the English/US incendiary bombing of Dresden.
Neither angel or devil, Mankind will become what ever nature demands of him(or her).
And most of all, the conditions we inflict to ourselves.
Topic: Are humans intrinsically diabolical? (Read 19903 times)