Monday, February 02, 2009

Quote of the day

A noteworthy passage from R.L. Kelly's The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-gatherer Lifeways (1995, pp. 261-262):

Though stereotyped images of hunter-gatherer social organization, especially relations between men and women (equality or inequality), are sometimes take to be ancient behavior rooted in Pleistocene adaptations, we repeat that this is not necessarily true. Modern hunter-gatherers do not live out the presumed legacy of their (and our) Plio-Pleistocene ancestors any more than we do. Instead, diversity or similarities in behavior are the result of diversity or similarities in selective pressures and enculturative environments.

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