In 'Egalitarianism made us the symbolic species', biosocial anthropologist #CamillaPower opposes the idea that just anything goes in our evolution as Homo sapiens. While Graeber and Wengrow say about our speciation that ‘we have next to no idea what was happening’, we can be fairly confident about what wasn’t happening - patriarchy! This hypothesised trajectory of change in ‘dominance’ relations reflects change in brain size through Pleistocene Homo evolution. The very large brain sizes of the period of our speciation are predicted to associate with significant egalitarianism. Our anatomy, psychology and cognition provide evidence for constraints. The evolution of cooperative eyes, intersubjectivity, large brains, a ratchet effect of cultural accumulation and language itself needed stable, protracted periods in sociopolitical contexts of egalitarianism. Gender relations must be pivotal in the processes of increasing levels of social tolerance and aversion to inequity.

#biosocial #anthropology #evolution #brainsize #maternalenergetics #cognition #egalitarian #cooperativechildcare
https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/hgr.2022.2