How old is war? Does it stretch deep into human origins, or did warfare become common only as growing populations settled down? 

In Part II of this conversation with Douglas P. Fry, we return to the long-running debate about the origins of war.

Fry revisits his argument that aggression is ancient, but war is not. I put that claim to the test, raising some of the strongest objections from archaeology and the study of modern hunter-gatherers. We discuss Jebel Sahaba, nomadic and settled foragers, food storage, marine resources, population growth, and the archaeological sequences through which warfare seems to emerge in different parts of the world.

Is war an ancient adaptation—or a more recent cultural development? And is the answer relevant to our modern quest for a more peaceful world?

Enjoy!

FACT-CHECKING

No errors have been detected in this conversation. If you notice one, please get in touch via Substack or the form below.

LINKS

Fry's 2026 book: ⁠Advanced Introduction to Conflict Resolution⁠

Support: ⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠

Articles & newsletter: ⁠⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠⁠

Get in touch: ⁠⁠https://forms.gle/h5wcmefuwvD6asos8⁠⁠

Music credit: Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) via Pixabay.

NAMES MENTIONED

Douglas P. Fry | Luke Glowacki | Richard Wrangham | Brian Ferguson | Christopher Boehm | Richard B. Lee | Donald E. Brown

ETHNIC GROUPS AND HISTORICAL REGIONS

Northwestern Alaska | Valley of Oaxaca | Jebel Sahaba  | Monte Albán | Zapotec Empire | Calusa people | Batek people | Orang Asli | Juǀ’hoansi, !Kung | Mbuti 

KEY WORDS

Origins of war | prehistory of war | history of warfare | causes of war | why humans go to war | anthropology of war | anthropology of peace | peace studies | conflict studies | war studies | peace and conflict studies | evolutionary anthropology | human evolution | human nature and war | hunter-gatherer warfare | hunter-gatherers | nomadic hunter-gatherers | mobile foragers | complex hunter-gatherers | prehistoric violence | interpersonal violence | coalitionary aggression | coalitionary killing | lethal aggression | human aggression | conflict resolution | restraint of aggression | archaeological evidence of war | archaeology of warfare | archaeological record | Pleistocene | Holocene | Neolithic warfare | origins of social complexity | sedentism | permanent settlements | food storage | population growth | population density | resource competition | resource intensification | marine resources | aquatic resources | Neolithic revolution | human universals | evolutionary psychology | chimpanzee warfare 

History is full of wars. Why? Is war driven by fear? Greed? Revenge? Ambitious leaders? Is it rooted deep in human nature—or does it emerge only under particular social conditions?

And what do we learn if we change the angle from wars to non-wars? What lessons emerge from a study of all the periods and regions where war did not take place? 

My guest in this two-part mini-series is Douglas P. Fry, an anthropologist who has spent decades studying these questions. He is also a returning guest, and one of the first scholars ever to appear on this podcast.

In Part II of our conversation, we will return to the topic of our episode from years back: the origins of war in prehistory. In this first part, however, we take a very different approach. We discuss lessons from modernity, with our topics ranging from the quest for peace after WWII to the societies in the Brazilian Amazon and Indigenous North America.

What makes former enemies trust one another? What roles are played by equality, trade, or a new shared enemy? And how can cycles of fear, retaliation, and revenge be reversed without simply surrendering to aggression?

At a time when war once again dominates the news, these questions could hardly be more urgent. But they also point towards a part of the human story that is too easily forgotten: our capacity not only to make war, but to understand it—and to build peace that lasts.

Enjoy!

FACT-CHECKING

My wording on Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for "security guarantees" is slightly stronger than the formal language of the Budapest Memorandum, which talked of “security assurances” rather than legally binding security guarantees.

If you notice a factual error in this conversation, please get in touch via Substack or the form below.

LINKS

Fry's 2026 book: Advanced Introduction to Conflict Resolution

Support: ⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠

Articles & newsletter: ⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠

Get in touch: ⁠https://forms.gle/h5wcmefuwvD6asos8⁠

Music credit: Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) via Pixabay.

NAMES MENTIONED

Douglas P. Fry | Geneviève Souillac | Jean Monnet | Konrad Adenauer | Mahatma Gandhi | Edward Westermarck | Charles E. Osgood | Brian Ferguson | Eleanor Roosevelt | Vladimir Putin 

KEY WORDS

Douglas P. Fry | peace studies | conflict studies | war studies | peace and conflict studies | anthropology of war | anthropology of peace | war and peace | causes of war | origins of war | human nature and war | peacebuilding | conflict resolution | peace systems | lasting peace | international cooperation | nonviolence | revenge | reciprocity | negative reciprocity | deterrence | security dilemma | arms race | nuclear weapons | nuclear disarmament | Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons | TPNW | Budapest Memorandum | United Nations | UN peacekeeping | Blue Helmets | UN Security Council | international law | global governance | World War II | Second World War | post-war peace | European integration | Jean Monnet | European Coal and Steel Community | Switzerland | Nordic peace | Åland Islands dispute | League of Nations | Upper Xingu peace system | Indigenous peace systems | Haudenosaunee Confederacy | Iroquois Confederacy | Great League of Peace | GRIT strategy | Graduated Reciprocation in Tension Reduction | Charles E. Osgood | Edward Westermarck | Ukraine war | Russia–Ukraine war

Was India once an affluent empire, later impoverished by British colonisation? Or was India never rich to begin with?

More generally, what does historical data on wages and other economic indicators tell us about the broader story of the making of the modern world – a world with great affluence, but where much of the riches are still concentrated in the Western world.

For over 20 years now, Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta have worked to measure the evolution of global living standards from the medieval period onwards.

In this episode, they begin by discussing a comparison between the historical economies of India and Britain. We then continue to a broader story of the living standards of the pre-industrial world. We also discuss different theories of the “Great Divergence” between the West and the rest of the world. We finish by turning our attention to the future, asking if the 21st century will be remembered as the Asian century.

This episode concludes the five-part series on the making of the modern world, produced by CAGE Research Centre and On Humans. 

LINKS AND REFERENCES

Do you prefer reading to listening? You can find⁠ a summarised essay ⁠of this conversation, with a bibliography, at our series page:⁠ ⁠https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/news/podcasts/⁠⁠

 NAMES MENTIONED

Kenneth Pomeranz | Angus Maddison | Daron Acemoglu | James Robinson |  Nico Voigtländer | Hans-Joachim Voth | Debin Ma | Robert Allen | Joel Mokyr

KEYWORDS

Economics | History | Global Economic History | Industrial Revolution | Indian history | Imperial history | East India Company | Emperor Akbar | Colonisation | Historical GDP estimates | Historical living standard estimates | Wage history | History of labour | Social history | Comparative development | State capacity | Malthusian trap | History of Technology 

INFO

Guests: Bishnupriya Gupta (University of Warwick) and Stephen Broadberry (University of Oxford)   ⁠⁠⁠

Contact: ⁠[email protected]

The tech gap between China and the West is closing fast. But why did the land that invented paper and gunpowder ever fall behind?

Debin Ma is the world’s leading economic historian of East Asia. In this fourth episode of our Great Divergence series, he approaches the making of the modern world from an eastern perspective. We discuss why China fell behind, why Japan modernised early, and why East Asia has experienced so many economic miracles. We also discuss China’s recent transformation – a transformation that Ma has witnessed firsthand. 

LINKS AND REFERENCES

Do you prefer reading to listening? You can find⁠ a summarised essay ⁠of this conversation, with a bibliography, at our series page:⁠ ⁠https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/news/podcasts/⁠⁠

GREAT DIVERGENCE: THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD

This episode is part of a series produced by Warwick University’s⁠ ⁠CAGE Research Centre⁠⁠ in collaboration with⁠ ⁠On Humans⁠, searching for explanations to why Western Europe and North America emerged as the most affluent and technologically advanced regions of the modern world. Guided by six expert guests, including a winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in economics, we approach this topic with balance and breadth, exploring everything from colonialism and fossil fuels to science and technology. 

1 | Why the West? Colonies, fossil fuels, and lessons from China (Kenneth Pomeranz)

2 | Why did so many inventions come from Europe? (Joel Mokyr)

3 | Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Britain? (Robert Allen)  

4 | A view from the East: China, Japan, and the other paths to prosperity (Debin Ma)

5 | The big picture: Measuring the origins of the modern world (Bishnupriya Gupta and Stephen Broadberry)

NAMES MENTIONED

Joseph Needham | Kenneth Pomeranz | Joel Mokyr | Robert Allen | Francis Fukuyama | Jared Rubin | Yin Weiwen | Kaiser Kuo | Deng Xiaoping | Yasheng Huang

KEYWORDS

Economics | History | Global Economic History | Industrial Revolution | Chinese history | Japanese history | Developmental Economics | Needham Puzzle | Needham Question | Qianlong Emperor | Macartney embassy | Meiji Japan | Iwakura mission |  Age heaping | Comparative development | State capacity | Modern fiscal state | History of taxation | Industrial Policy | History of Technology | Human capital

INFO

Guest: Debin Ma (Fudan University and All Souls College, University of Oxford)   ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Host: Ilari Mäkelä (⁠⁠⁠On Humans⁠⁠⁠)

Contact: ⁠[email protected]

Why was industrial modernity born in Europe and not, say, China? This is one of the most consequential questions about the origins of the modern world. Yet asking “why Europe” can mislead. The Industrial Revolution was not a European event. It was a British event.

So why was the steam engine invented in Britain, and not France or Italy?

Oxford professor Robert Allen has worked for decades trying to understand this question.

Allen believes that to understand the path to modernity, we must forget grand generalisations about the West. Instead, he asks us to zoom in on two very specific dynamics that shaped the British economy in the 1700s: cheap fuel and expensive workers. Together, they jolted Britain into a path where ever more work was streamlined with the help of machines and fossil fuels — a path that we are still walking on, with AI and robotics simply the latest sightings on this long march of modernity.

In this episode, we discuss the surprising revelations that led Allen to his theory. We discuss the reasons that British wages were high, and we discuss recent scholarship suggesting that this wasn’t the case–or at least, was not the cause for the Industrial Revolution. We also discuss the more humane side of wages, tracing the history of worker wellbeing from the Black Death to today. 

As always in this series, we finish with our guests’ reflections on the future.

LINKS AND REFERENCES

Do you prefer reading to listening? You can find⁠ a summarised essay ⁠of this conversation, with a bibliography, at our series page:⁠ ⁠https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/news/podcasts/⁠⁠

GREAT DIVERGENCE: THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD

This episode is part of a series produced by Warwick University’s⁠⁠ ⁠CAGE Research Centre⁠⁠⁠ in collaboration with⁠⁠ ⁠On Humans⁠⁠, searching for explanations to why Western Europe and North America emerged as the most affluent and technologically advanced regions of the modern world. Guided by six expert guests, including a winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in economics, we approach this topic with balance and breadth, exploring everything from colonialism and fossil fuels to science and technology. 

1 | Why the West? Colonies, fossil fuels, and lessons from China (Kenneth Pomeranz)

2 | Why did so many inventions come from Europe? (with Joel Mokyr)

3 | Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Britain? (Robert Allen)  

4 | A view from the East: China, Japan, and the other paths to prosperity (Debin Ma)

5 | The big picture: Measuring the origins of the modern world (Bishnupriya Gupta and Stephen Broadberry)

NAMES MENTIONED

James E. Thorold Rogers | Kenneth Pomeranz | Joel Mokyr | Jane Humphries | Daniel Defoe | Bradford J. (Brad) DeLong | Branko Milanovic | Daron Acemoglu | Oded Galor

KEYWORDS

Economics | History | Global Economic History | Industrial Revolution | Age of Inventions | Steam engine| European Miracle | British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective | Wage history | History of labour | Social history | Comparative development | Meiji Japan | Spinning Jenny | Industrial Policy | History of Technology | History of Inventions 

EPISODE INFO

Guest: Robert C. Allen (Nuffield College, University of Oxford and NYU Abu Dhabi)   ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Host: Ilari Mäkelä

Contact: ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠

Music by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) ⁠⁠⁠via Pixabay⁠

Several inventions mark the progress towards modernity - the Gutenberg printing press, the Galileo telescope, the Watt steam engine. But why was Europe the birthplace of so many of these? 

Joel Mokyr, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in economics, thinks the cause was culture. For decades he has asked economists to take intellectual history more seriously. Economies are shaped by new inventions, Mokyr argues, and inventions can only be understood when we understand the culture that gives rise to them. 

But how much did Europe's culture shape its economy? And how to square early modern Europe's progressive culture with it's colonial legacy? Mokyr answers these and other questions in this episodes, finishing with his reflections on the future of technological progress.

Enjoy!

LINKS AND REFERENCES

Do you prefer reading to listening? You can find⁠ a summarised essay ⁠of this conversation, with a bibliography, at our series page: ⁠https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/news/podcasts/

GREAT DIVERGENCE: THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD

This episode is part of a series produced by Warwick University’s⁠⁠ ⁠CAGE Research Centre⁠⁠⁠ in collaboration with⁠⁠ ⁠On Humans⁠⁠, searching for explanations to why Western Europe and North America emerged as the most affluent and technologically advanced regions of the modern world. Guided by six expert guests, including a winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in economics, we approach this topic with balance and breadth, exploring everything from colonialism and fossil fuels to science and technology. 

1 | Why the West? Colonies, fossil fuels, and lessons from China (Kenneth Pomeranz)

2 | Why did so many inventions come from Europe? (with Joel Mokyr)

3 | Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Britain? (Robert Allen)  

4 | A view from the East: China, Japan, and the other paths to prosperity (Debin Ma)

5 | The big picture: Measuring the origins of the modern world (Bishnupriya Gupta and Stephen Broadberry)

NAMES MENTIONED

Joel Mokyr | Robert Lucas | David Hume | Isaac Newton | Antoine Lavoisier | Joseph Black | James Watt | John Robison | Josiah Wedgwood | Sadi Carnot | Margaret Jacob | Evangelista Torricelli | Galileo Galilei | Blaise Pascal | Otto von Guericke | Aristotle | Denis Diderot | William Harvey | Song Yingxing | Marco Polo | Zheng He | Louis XIV | Avner Greif | Guido Tabellini | Kenneth Pomeranz | Adam Smith | Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot | Montesquieu | Voltaire | Confucius | al-Ghazali | Ptolemy | Euclid | David Ricardo | Karl Marx | Hippocrates | Galen | Xi Jinping | Joseph Needham | Nigel Farage | Joseph Stalin | Trofim Lysenko | Robert Allen

KEYWORDS

Economics | History | Global Economic History | Intellectual History | Age of Inventions | Rise of the West | European Miracle | Enlightened Economy | Culture of Growth | Gift of Athena |Industrial Revolution | History of technology | History of inventions  

INFO

Guest: Joel Mokyr (⁠⁠⁠Northwestern University)⁠⁠⁠

Host: Ilari Mäkelä

Contact: ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠

Music by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) ⁠⁠via Pixabay

Why did Western Europe become the richest region of the early modern world? Was the rise of the West powered by colonization, inventions, or something else entirely? And what happened to the medieval might of China and India?

The term “great divergence” is increasingly used by historians who want to study this immense question, but who want to do it carefully, without falling into traditional East-West clichés. 

This episode marks the beginning of a five-episode series exploring the state of this research, produced by the University of Warwick’s CAGE Research Centre in collaboration with the On Humans Podcast.

In this opening episode, we meet Kenneth Pomeranz, the historian of China who coined the term "great divergence" in a field-defining book of the same name. We begin by discussing Pomeranz’s groundbreaking approach and the surprising answers that he arrived at. In the second half of the episode, we zoom out and place the rise of the West into the broader story about the history of humanity – a story Pomeranz divides into four parts, with the fifth one beginning right now.

Enjoy!

LINKS AND REFERENCES

Do you prefer reading to listening? You can find summary essays, bibliographies, and much more at our series page: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/news/podcasts/

GREAT DIVERGENCE: THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD

This episode is part of a series produced by Warwick University’s⁠⁠⁠ ⁠CAGE Research Centre⁠⁠⁠⁠ in collaboration with⁠⁠⁠ ⁠On Humans⁠⁠⁠, searching for explanations to why Western Europe and North America emerged as the most affluent and technologically advanced regions of the modern world. Guided by six expert guests, including a winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in economics, we approach this topic with balance and breadth, exploring everything from colonialism and fossil fuels to science and technology. 

1 | Why the West? Colonies, fossil fuels, and lessons from China (Kenneth Pomeranz)

2 | Why did so many inventions come from Europe? (with Joel Mokyr)

3 | Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Britain? (Robert Allen)  

4 | A view from the East: China, Japan, and the other paths to prosperity (Debin Ma)

5 | The big picture: Measuring the origins of the modern world (Bishnupriya Gupta and Stephen Broadberry)

NAMES MENTIONED

Joel Mokyr | Brad DeLong | Arthur Wigley | Jan De Vries | Robert Allen | Simon Schama | Isaac Newton | Vasco da Gama | Jonathan Spence| Anthony Wrigley | Thomas Malthus | Nate Hagens | Charles Lockyer | Marshall Hodgson | Aristotle | Plato | Jared Diamond | Adam Smith | 

KEYWORDS 

Economics | History | Global Economic History | Malthusian Economics | Fossil Fuel Economics | Economics of Colonialism | Rise of the West | European Miracle | California School of Economics | Atlantic Trade | Industrial Revolution | Second Industrial Revolution | Historic living standards

INFO

Guest: Kenneth Pomeranz (⁠⁠University of Chicago⁠⁠)

Host: Ilari Mäkelä

Contact: ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

Music by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) ⁠⁠⁠via Pixabay.⁠⁠

Something big is coming soon. Stay tuned!

Whilst waiting, you can enjoy one of my all-time favourites from the archives.

A lot of the recent episodes have mentioned the impact of bipedalism in the human story, but the remarks have hardly done justice to the depth of the matter.

Jeremy DeSilva did it justice.

Enjoy! 

ORIGINAL SHOW NOTES

Humans are odd in many ways. But perhaps the oddest of our features is our upright posture. We walk on two legs. And we are the only mammal to do so. 

So why do we walk upright? And why does it matter? 

Jeremy DeSilva is a fossil expert and a professor of paleoanthropology at Dartmouth College. He is also the author of a remarkable book, aptly titled First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human

DeSilva’s treatment of the subject is sweeping: while tracing the journey of human posture, he draws remarkable links between bipedalism and many facets of the human condition, from difficult births to complex language and from lower back pains to the beauty of friendships.

In this episode, we talk about questions such as:

• What Darwin got right and wrong about the role of walking in human evolution
• When and why did we start walking upright?
• Why the common picture of human evolution is wrong - and what would be a better picture
• Why walking makes us fragile
• How our ancestors survived bone fractures - and why this is a big deal
• Why is human birth so difficult
• Why walking is so good for us: introducing the “myokines”
• What studying the human journey has taught DeSilva about our species

_________

Please consider becoming a supporter of On Humans. Even small monthly donations can make a huge impact on the long-term sustainability of the program.

Visit: ⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans ⁠⁠

_________

Names mentioned

Charles Darwin / Ian Tattersall / Donald Johanson / Mary Leakey / Sherwood Washburn / Richard Wrangham (ep 21) / Kristen Hawkes (ep 6) / Holly Dunsworth / Daniel Lieberman 

Mentioned hominin species

Sahelanthropus / Ardipithecus / Australopithecus (e.g. Lucy) / Homo habilis / Homo erectus / Homo sapiens

Music by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) ⁠via Pixabay.⁠

Imagine a group of ancient humans, crafting stone tools at the dawn of humankind. What did these creatures look like? 

To find out, we can stare at the skulls in museums or glance at reconstructions made by paleo-artists. Not a bad start. But what if we move the lens and zoom into their surroundings? What was the scientific “Garden of Eden” like? Was it a lush forest, a dry savanna, or an icy cave? And what can the answer tell us about human nature more broadly?

Denise Su is a world-leading expert on these questions. A paleoecologist at Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins, she uses ever-more imaginative ways to get a glimpse into the nature and the weather that set the stage for the human story.

In this episode, we focus on two kinds of “changes” in the ecology of human evolution: both the actual climate change that drummed the beat of human origins, and the theoretical changes in the views of scientists thinking about these topics. Indeed, this episode digs deep into one of the hotly contested questions about the reasons why humans evolved: "the savanna hypothesis".

According to the savanna hypothesis, our naked, upright species evolved because African forests were shrinking and dry savannas emerged instead. Other apes stayed in the shrinking forests, but our brave ancestors took the shot, conquering the vast flatlands. As they did so, they started standing upright to better walk on the savanna and lost their fur, to sweat away the heat of the scorching sun.

I have told versions of this story on the show, and so have many senior guests. Yet even a brief Google search will give you plenty of critics telling that the savanna hypothesis is nothing but a convenient myth.⁠ Articles by Denise Su⁠ are often included in the evidence. So what’s going on? Listen to the episode to find out!

TIMELINE 

• Last common ancestor with humans and chimpanzees: 6–7 million years ago 
• Ardipithecus ramidus: 4.5–4.2 million years ago 
• Australopithecus anamnesis: 4.2–3.8 million years ago 
• Austrolopithecus afarensis (e.g. Lucy): 3.9–2.9 million years ago 
• Australopithecus deyiremeda: 3.5–3.3 million years ago 
• Earliest Homo: about 2.8 million years ago 
• Homo erectus: 1.9 million–112,000 years ago 
• Homo sapiens: 300,000 years ago till present 

FACT-CHECKING

No factual errors have been detected so far. However, timing estimates and species names are still debated. Furthermore, the “hours” in the metaphorical clock can shift a fair amount based on the “midnight”: our last common ancestor with chimpanzees lived 6 to 7 million years ago, with some estimates pushing the date as far as 8 million. In the episode, our clock is tuned to 6 million years ago. 

If you see an error, you can get in touch using the form below.

LINKS

Support: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Articles & newsletter: OnHumans/Substack.com

Get in touch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forms.gle/h5wcmefuwvD6asos8⁠⁠⁠⁠

Music by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) ⁠via Pixabay.⁠

KEY WORDS

anthropology | archaeology | paleontology | human origins | human behavioural ecology | savanna hypothesis | paleolithic | paleoecology | hominid fossils | carbon isotopes C3/C4 | human evolution | human biology | climate change | human futures

What was life like before farming? Was it nasty, brutish, and short? Or did our hunter-gatherer ancestors live lives that were relatively free, affluent, and ecologically stable?

In the lack of a time machine, many anthropologists have sought answers from studying the few hunter-gatherer communities that still exist today. In 1966, several leading names in the field were invited to present their results at a symposium at the University of Chicago. This “Man the Hunter” conference became a landmark event, but what exactly were the results? And have they stood the test of time? 

To mark the 60th anniversary of the "Man the Hunter" symposium, On Humans is glad to share the first-ever long-form podcast with the legendary anthropologist and co-organiser of the symposium, Richard B. Lee. We discuss the legacy of the conference, Lee’s own experiences living with hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari, and his reflections on what we do and do not know about the ancient lifeways of hunter-gatherers. As we do so, we also discuss various controversies and mysteries, from women's roles to Native American farmers, and from archaeological black holes toThe Dawn of Everything.

Enjoy!

FACT-CHECKING

No factual errors have been detected so far. If you see an error, you can get in touch using the form below.

LINKS

Support: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Get in touch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forms.gle/h5wcmefuwvD6asos8⁠⁠⁠

Music by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) ⁠via Pixabay.⁠

MENTIONS

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (Jared Diamond) https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race-12157

The Original Affluent Society (Marshall Sahlins) https://www.uvm.edu/~jdericks/EE/Sahlins-Original_Affluent_Society.pdf

For my previous coverage on “woman the hunter” controversies, see “Is Man the Hunter Dead” and my interviews with Cara Ocobock and Katie Starkweather, all available here: ⁠https://onhumans.substack.com/p/is-man-the-hunter-dead⁠

For Richard Lee's own comments on the controversy, see his interview with Vivek Venkataraman ⁠https://osf.io/x7ar3_v1/

Names: Richard B. Lee | James Suzman | Marshall Sahlins | David Graeber | David Wengrow | Jared Diamond | Sarah Blaffer Hrdy | Jerome Lewis | Colin Turnbull | James Woodburn | Eleanor Leacock | Louis Henry Morgan | Karl Marx | George Armelagos | Irvin DeVore | Sherwood Washburn | Jay Desmond Clark | Harriet Rosenberg | Lawrence K. Marshall | Elizabeth Marshall | John Marshall | Greta Thunberg | Vivek Venkataraman

Ethnic groups: San | Ju/’hoansi | !Kung | Khoisan | Khoikhoi | “Bushmen” | “Hottentots” | First Nations | Tlingit | Haida | Inuit | Australian Aboriginal peoples | Bayaka| Batek | Huron-Wendat | Iroquois | Six Nations | Plains Indians | Hopi | Navajo | Cherokee

KEY WORDS

anthropology | archaeology | ethnography | human origins | human behavioural ecology | hunter-gatherers | paleolithic | neolithic transition | original affluent society | Kalahari Desert | Botswana | Namibia | paleogenetics | gathering vs hunting | gender roles | women hunting | egalitarianism | origins of hierarchy | surplus | food storage | salmon economies | Northwest Coast hunter-gatherers | archaeology of early farmers | bioarchaeology | stature/height decline | teeth health | disease burden | zoonoses | cross-species infection | Neolithic fertility increase | population pressure and “intensification” | chiefdoms | states | empires | ecology vs culture debate | materialist vs idealist | concentration–dispersion | colonialism | exploitation | land rights | climate change | human futures

The world is full of religions, but none as timeless as shamanism. And whilst many modern religions have shed their shamanic skins, the shaman is rarely as far away as we have been told.

Or so argues anthropologist Manvir Singh in his book, Shamanism: The Timeless Religion.  

Singh’s work is fascinating in its capacity to link the exocit with the familiar, showing how rainforest rituals are not so far removed from urban modernity as we might think.

Today, I will have the rare chance to enjoy Singh's insights together with you, as a listener. The hard work will be done by Kensy Cooperider, the host of the Many Minds Podcast.

Many Minds is one of my own go-to shows and has a lot to recommend for it. Just like On Humans, it breaks down complex scientific concepts about humanity into easy-to-follow yet in-depth conversations. Yet unlike On Humans, it has insanely well-referenced show notes! Just check this one out.

Kensy and I had a beachside chat this November and decided it would be good to introduce ourselves to each other's audiences. So here we go!

LINKS

Many Minds: https://disi.org/manyminds/

Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute: https://disi.org/

Episode page: https://disi.org/the-shaman-with-a-thousand-faces/

Manvir Singh: https://www.manvir.org/

KEYWORDS

Anthropology | Psychology | Religion | Cross-cultural study | Abrahamic religions | Neo-shamanism | Human universals |