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Originally Posted by RandoymRandt  I know you are talking neanderthals here, but tribal cultures are not, IMO, "attuned to a much simpler social system".
Most tribal cultures have infinitely richer social systems, rituals, and family structures than "urbanites".
IMO, so complicated, in fact, that when I was doing the tribal living thing on Hopi/Navajo, I knew I was on a learning curve that I'd never see the end of.  Agree on the point of it not telling us anything tho. |
Thanks, and I agree, I should have specified I was thinking of simple Paleolithic cultures, not all cultures that could be considered "tribal." I don't think of any original culture in North America as simple in the sense I had in mind. Even the Paleolithic cultures are not oversimple - but neither are they the impersonal economic hive that is a modern bureaucratic city.
The most substantial changes in human consciousness would all have taken place prior to any Neolithic or later society, and I simply think of Neolithic societies as civilization, even they are tribal.
Nor is it true that tribal order has vanished in the West, although it's least common in the suburban middle class and diluted elsewhere. This is one of the drivers for conflict between the middle and working classes and between immigrants and nativists.