Our Prehistory as Egalitarian Nomadic Foragers with Antiauthoritarian Leadership: What These Nomads Can Teach Us Today

ABSTRACT

Our species has deep prehistoric roots in egalitarian and antiauthoritarian bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers. As large agricultural societies develop after the Neolithic revolution 10,000 years ago, despotic rulers, social hierarchies and brutal social inequalities begin to emerge. Through the immensely long arc of the history of our species the pendulum has swung between authoritarianism and antiauthoritarianism, egalitarianism and hierarchy, cooperation and competition, collective solidarity and individual selfishness. Recognizing these oscillations is a key to understanding the political and social nature of our species. As I show, our capacity to control bullies and tyrants and our longing for autonomy and freedom have deep roots in the egalitarian ways of life of nomadic foragers that prevailed during 100,000 years of the prehistory of our species or perhaps much longer. A better understanding about what is known about this prehistory gives us reasons to believe that “the better angels of our nature” are not just historical products, but are indeed rooted in human nature.

KEYWORDS:

• Leadership
• nomadic hunter-gatherers
• prehistory
• egalitarianism
• psychoanalysis

Acknowledgments

My thanks to Sarah Hrdy, Barbara Lenkerd, Michael Maccoby, and David Sloan Wilson for their valuable suggestions and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ The domestication of dogs had begun earlier, 16,000 years ago (Hare et al., 2002).

² The great ape family includes chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and humans.

³ You can see some of these videos by going to Michael Tomasello’s web site at: http://www.eva.mpg.de/psycho/videos/children_clothes.mpg

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mauricio Cortina

Mauricio Cortina, M.D., is affiliated with the Washington School of Psychiatry.