Kindred by Rebecca Wragg Sykes
by stephenpalmersf
I’ve been fascinated by human evolution for a long time, so Rebecca Wragg Sykes’ new book Kindred was a must-buy for me. Subtitled Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, it’s an up-to-date, wide ranging, in-depth look at everything we know about the Neanderthals as of spring this year.
As the author observes, following a decade of new discoveries – mostly in the field of genetics – this new decade is shaping up to be a good one for our long lost cousins. The author covers everything Neanderthal – discovery, fossilisation, site mechanics, species assessment and reassessment – before heading off into fields needing more nuance and interpretation: love, death and art. The chapter on death is particularly good. Sykes is a keen observer, stating probabilities where that is necessary, elsewhere unafraid of giving her own personal interpretation. The impression is of an author on top of her material, possessed of humanity, experience and insight.
The book overall is well written, albeit with a tendency for an occasional lapse – poor puns, for instance a particularly jarring dental one. Also the footnotes which litter the first half of the book become irritating quickly. These notes, most of which are incidental if not irrelevant, should have been numbered and relegated to pages at the back of the book. But overall, the style is okay.
I very much liked the author’s reassessment of the terrible masculine lapses of earlier archaeology. Not for her a male, Western view. The end of the book is a highly commendable look at how Neanderthals skills, minds and lives should be assessed from a human vantage, not a male, white, Western one. Non-Western hunter-gatherer individuals have for instance reinterpreted archaeological evidence, and in fact have found new evidence simply by looking at Neanderthal sites with “new” eyes.
An excellent book, highly recommended.
stephenpalmersf 
I’ve been fascinated with Neanderthals since reading Clan of the Cave Bear, but I assumed it was pure fiction. Then along comes genome sequencing, and suddenly we all may have at least some neanderthal genes. Amazing! More recently still, I’ve started to wonder whether some of homo sapiens better traits might not be thanks to those long lost cousins. Did they gift us with empathy to counter our very obvious aggression?
Will definitely check Sykes’ book out.
Empathy is a function of consciousness and vice versa. The social intelligence theory of consciousness, put forward by the brilliant Nicholas Humphrey and now generally accepted, shows how we perform this mental process as an act of empathy, imagining the mind of another. Neanderthals are as good as human, and therefore were not the first to acquire empathy. Our ‘very obvious aggression’ is recent and due to the takeover of the world by men – or, to be more accurate, boys. The overwhelming proportion of aggression is socially sanctioned by these boys. It is neither biologically sourced (except perhaps for a bit of teenage angst) nor genetic. Boys would have you believe however that it is genetic, so they don’t have to take responsibility for their juvenile actions.
I’m not sure I agree with the idea that empathy is part of consciousness. How then do you explain those who lack it in some measure? And what of the idea that many of those who now direct our largest corporations are, in fact, degrees of sociopath? High functioning sociopaths to be sure, but lacking in what we used to call ‘social conscience’.
We can actually see that lack of empathy playing out right now, in the way certain people have responded to Covid-19. There are those who follow the rules out of fear, there are those who follow them out of a genuine sense of altruism, and there are those who seem to be oblivious to everything but the impact on their comfort zones.
I spend a fair bit of time on Twitter, and I’ve seen these reactions at first hand. At first I thought they might be trolls. Then I thought they might be misguided conspiracy theorists. In the end though, I had to accept that some simply do not care. They may not exhibit the classic signs of a serial killer, but they are quite happy for others to die so long as /they/ are not inconvenienced.
Anecdotal, I know, but I’m starting to believe that there are a heck of a lot more sociopaths out there than we’d like to believe.
Anyway, back to your idea of boyz. I’m sure there are a lot of elderly juveniles around, and I know what kind of an impact they have on society, but I suspect that a great many of them lack the empathy that makes social cohesion and adult behaviour /possible/. 😦
You are welcome to disagree about the empathic foundation of consciousness. I recommend that you read Nicholas Humphrey “The Inner Eye,” “A History Of The Mind,” and “Seeing Red.” And it is a mistake to take a specific circumstance from a general principle. Human minds as individual things in the 21st century are subject to all sorts of conditions and accidental genetic mistakes. That doesn’t affect a quarter of a million years of evolution in the slightest. As for social media, I would never assume that behaviour seen there is somehow part of human nature. Social media is having a malign influence on humanity because of its specific conditions. It provides a vehicle for and amplifies that narcissism most human beings have as part of their character. Narcissism is very difficult to overcome, alas, not least for the juveniles currently dominating the world.
Social media certainly amplifies elements of human nature, but only because they are there already. As for empathy, I do believe it’s the critical ingredient in social cohesion. But not all self-aware humans have it. On that point we will have to disagree. 🙂
I don’t think we do disagree on the point. I agree that some – usually male – people alive now don’t have empathy. That’s certainly true. But that fact doesn’t relate to the evolution of consciousness over hundreds of thousands of years. It relates to the now. And, yes, social media is without doubt amplifying something already present – narcissism (which I use in the most general sense – see my Narcissism Week posts on this blog).
But a lack of empathy isn’t a learned response. It’s genetic, and genes don’t suddenly change for no good reason. And frankly, if being ruthless results in success and power, then natural selection is going to keep on selecting the package that includes a lack of empathy. As for social media, it may validate certain types of behaviour, but it doesn’t create the underlaying cause[s] of that behaviour.
I believe that empathy is critical to the continued survival of the human race, but … -shrug-
Lack of empathy is very much a learned response, with the exception of those whose brains are damaged by condition or accident – a vanishingly small minority, eg psychopaths. Lack of empathy is not genetic. ‘Genetic’ is not an explanation for any specific social condition. You are doing what so many men do, which is excuse ‘ruthless’ and ‘successful’ and ‘powerful’ behaviour by believing it’s down to genes, which therefore means nothing can be done about it. Ruthlessness and success at the expense of others and power are all learned behaviours acquired in a social milieu. What men do by calling everything ‘genetic’ is to absolve themselves of responsibility for their vile, inhumane behaviour. It’s a standard man’s excuse. Natural selection created consciousness over hundreds of thousands of years. Men created war and power hierarchies and so on over 5,000 years, for their own benefit and at the expense of everybody else.
Regarding the social media point, I didn’t say social media was validating certain types of behaviour, I said it was amplifying it. We agree that there is an underlying cause, which social media carries and amplifies. In my opinion, that cause is narcissism.
lol – no! I don’t blame genetics for every bad behaviour, or any bad behaviour actually, except the most extreme – i.e. the particular genetic makeup of say, serial killers. Like most things, ‘behaviour’ is the result of both nature /and/ nurture. For example, someone born with low empathy can still turn out to be a perfectly decent, functioning member of society…IF they’re brought up in a family and society that emphasizes ‘good’ behaviour. By contrast, the same person brought up in an environment that emphasized ‘winning at all costs’ and power as the only measure of success could well turn into a ruthless CEO, or politician or…or…etc.
My point is that empathy is on a continuum from Ted Bundy at one end to [perhaps] Mother Theresa at the other. In effect, your typical bell curve.
If I’m right, then diminished empathy, or no empathy at all, are as much human characteristics as eye colour or the length of one’s nose. Behaviour is just harder to ‘see’.
That said, I do not for one moment excuse male children for bad behaviour, either before or after reaching adulthood.
In a sense, you’re the one who is excusing this bad ‘behaviour’ by saying that it’s a product of the last 5000 years and /not/ an intrinsic part of human nature. If we accept that some people will have a tendency to certain behaviours because of diminished empathy, then we have a chance to modify those behaviour right from the start instead of dismissing them as ‘boys will be boys’.
We have settled on the nature vs. nurture debate! I’m very much a 95% nurture 5% nature kind of person, but I expect that proportion doesn’t much appeal to you… 😉 I would and do refute the argument that what we’ve seen in the patriarchal era is a product of humanity generally. Human nature is time specific in my view. What was human nature in 20,000BC is not what is human nature in 2020AD. And if I could stop boys dismissing their own behaviour as “boys will be boys” I certainly would. That kind of lazy, callous entitlement is presently destroying the planet.
-grin- progress? We actually agree about da boyz, and I’m prepared to concede that matriarchal societies did and to a certain extent still do exist. In the traditional Australian Indigenous societies, family connection was matrilineal as only the mother had an observable, direct connection to the children that issued from her body. Thus mother to children and mother’s brothers to children but not necessarily father to children.
Nevertheless, even in these quasi matrilineal societies, ‘men’s business’ had more…shall we say ‘grunt’ than ‘women’s business’.
Given that our First Peoples have been in Australia for upwards of 60,000 years, I’d say their cultures and oral histories provide a fair idea of how pre-5000 year old humans lived.
As for the ratio of nature to nurture, I suspect even geneticists would be hard pressed to answer that one. I mean, most of the time, genes determine tendencies. And those tendencies can be enhanced or retarded by environment. But then environment can also turn certain genes on or off. And are those genes dominant or recessive? Do they act on their own or only in combination with others genes. Do those other genes have to be turned on or off in a given sequence? It’s mind boggling. Let’s just say that the old saying about sow’s ear and silk purses probably applies. 🙂
I read a really good book about epigenetics a few years ago which makes a terrific contribution to the nature vs. nurture question. It was by Nessa Carey. I agree that the Australian First Peoples provide a good idea of the last 60,000 years in Australia, but we do need to be wary of generalising. But, yes, there is a lot to learn from indigenous societies. Rebecca Wragg Sykes’ book makes this point very well.
Our great party trick seems to be to generalise. Works well a lot of the them, not so well at others. Unravelling the distant past and our own place in it is a work in progress. 🙂
May I say how much I’ve enjoyed this discussion? Cheers.
Yes, it’s been good! Many thanks for your contributions. 🙂
My pleasure! 🙂