Thursday, July 06, 2006

A myth of the primitive?

A recent book says some 2 billion would have been killed if we had had primitive tribal life in the 20th century. It's an interesting thought. Right now the Ayammarra Indians, Bolivia, are going through a period of seeking the pre-Spanish idyll, WSJ front page 7-6. Rousseau published on the innocence and beneficence of the primitive and this myth has driven various revolutionary movements since. Interesting that that the 'class struggle' or other issues could serve as screen memories to an idyllic time in infancy, a memory that is a part of normal development. OTOH in a book I commented on before, end of post, the author argued that their were no 'man on man' pictograms before the invention of the bow and arrow, which gave in 'economic' terms an advantage to an organized assault.

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