Social DNA. M. Kay Martin
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SOCIAL DNA
SOCIAL DNA
Rethinking Our Evolutionary Past
M. Kay Martin
First published in 2019 by
Berghahn Books
© 2019, 2020 M. Kay Martin
First paperback edition published in 2020
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2018040128
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78920-007-2 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78920-757-6 paperback
ISBN 978-1-78920-008-9 ebook
To Eleanor Burke Leacock
1922–1987
Chapter 1 Perspectives on Anisogamy
Chapter 3 Paleoecology and Emergence of Genus Homo
Chapter 4 Paleolithic Dinner Pairings: Red or White?
Chapter 5 Signature Hominin Traits
Chapter 6 Kinship and Paleolithic Legends
Chapter 7 Kinship as Social Technology
Figures
1.1. Selfish-gene theory and the origin of female exploitation. By Drew Fagan.
3.1. Homo erectus lakeshore encampment in the Early Pleistocene. By Drew Fagan.
4.1. “Lucius.” By Emiliano Troco, oil on canvas, scientific supervisor Davide Persico, private collection.
4.2. “Neanderthal Clan.” By Emiliano Troco, oil on canvas, scientific supervisor Davide Persico, collection of Museo Paleoantropologico de Po.
5.1. Middle Pleistocene Homo heidelbergensis butchery site at Boxgrove, West Sussex, England. With permission of Getty Images.
5.2. A model of human society based on general systems theory. By Drew Fagan.
Tables
2.1. Principal assumptions about Pan-Homo social life in androcentric models.
I came to the field of anthropology under the mentorship of ethnohistorian Harold Hickerson, content to haunt the card catalogs and cavernous stacks of university libraries for early accounts of preagricultural peoples. My treasure hunts were aimed at uncovering glimpses of aboriginal social organization for hunter-gatherers on three continents and documenting postcontact change in these societies over time. The aggregate picture that emerged for foragers in their most pristine state was one of robust communities, diverse systems of kinship, and a broad spectrum of sociopolitical complexity. For most of these societies, however, their vitality and continuity was short-lived. Genocide, disease, atomism, and cultural dismemberment accompanied the unrelenting advance of European colonialism, leaving them depopulated, displaced, and a shadow of their former selves. Ironically, ethnohistorians, in their efforts to reconstruct the cultures of these peoples, often become the unwitting chroniclers of their sorrows.
During the mid to late 1960s, American ethnologists began to reinvent the concept of cultural evolutionism so roundly rejected by their discipline’s founding fathers. Neoevolutionary schemes inevitably commenced with portraits of small, atomistic family bands pursuing a meager living from limited resources in a harsh and unfriendly world. I was struck at the time by the incongruity of memorializing surviving hunter-gatherer societies in these models as living examples of Paleolithic life. Historic foragers, in my mind and experience, were arguably remnant or refugee communities, and unlikely avatars of our ethnographic past. Similarly, the characterization of early human kinship as inevitably male-centered did not square well with what I knew of the ethnohistorical and ethnographic records.
In 1975, I coauthored a book entitled Female of the Species with archaeologist and colleague Barbara Voorhies. An overarching premise of this work was that the human evolutionary