Hierarchy in the Forest
by Christopher Boehm · first published 1999
3mentions
2recommended by
3HN commenters
2023–2026first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
…sense of the literature because there ultimately isn't a single framework or even a single set of frameworks that everyone uses. Another good introduction to this question more specifically is Boehm's "Hierarchy in the forest". It's not comprehensive either, but it's sort of a landmark work on the topic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C7%83Kung_people#Social_struc...
on “The Dawn of Everything challenges a mainstream telling of prehistory” ↗…all seems to me like a mere extrapolation of the 19th century imagination of the default human condition as being "nasty, brutish, short." =) Some interesting texts: * The Harmless People (a classic) * Hierarchy in the Forest * Hunter-Gatherers of the Congo Basin * The Foraging Spectrum
on “AI is breaking our proxies for expertise” ↗I too have read Never in Anger, the ethnography mentioned in this blog post, and the way I found it was by reading a survey of egalitarian societies called Hierarchy in the Forest, by Christopher Boehm. Many of the personality traits that the author seems to think are special about people who share the East Asian phenotype are actually common amongst fiercely egalitarian societies.…
on “East Asian personality may stem from Ice Age Siberia 20000 yrs ago” ↗