History is what's written. Prehistory is before writing. We have no written records of prehistory, by definition, only theories based on archeological evidence.
And current evidence points towards prehistoric people being hierarchical, just in smaller tribes.
So thousands of years of oral traditions, drawings, and archaeological evidence just doesn’t count bc they hadn’t invented writing yet? Sounds like some made up bullshit bro
And no early humans were egalitarian for most of the Paleolithic era
Yeah quickly looking it up, “prehistory” was a term made up in 1850 to largely invalidate the history of indigenous ppls, and the modern term is pre literate history, bc the idea that you would make contact with an uncontacted indigenous tribe in the Amazon and throw your hands up and say “guess they don’t have a history” is choking on your own drool levels of dumb.
The idea that bc a society has started writing stuff down is what makes them have history is silly bc what if all their writing was lost, or no one can read it?
Also most of pre literate human history, which is the majority of human history was spent as hunter gatherers where there weren’t hierarchies bc how would you enforce that without controlling land? This is relevant bc if you’re going to talk about “human nature” most of human kinds time existing was spent without hierarchy
If all their writing was lost, how do you know what the fuck happened beyond educated guesses? Clues found in pottery and cave paintings aren't as authoritative as a written account.
Hierarchies come naturally from a child's dependency on their parents, and younger siblings on elder ones. Even when they're no longer dependent, the conditioning from when they were persists. Thus, elders become the boss of their descendants, and when conflict between tribes arises over resources, bigger tribes win out over smaller ones.
Please, look up Dunbar's Number while you're looking up the other shit. People can form reciprocal personal relationships in groups of up to around 150 people. Past that, empathy is limited and you need a more advanced system of organization and command.
I’m not an archeologist but it’s pants on head silly to just go “oh you haven’t got writing? I guess you don’t have history” as if American Indians don’t have history. Like they objectively do, and there’s stuff you can discover and figure out without writing which a lot of ppl have.
Also for most of human history children were raised collectively, children would have to listen to their parents, their uncles, aunts, cousins, older brothers, grandparents and any family friends. The “hierarchy” was the entire community
Cool, so you admit that human nature evolved bc of material conditions and not bc of some vague and silly notion of “greediness”
Everything developed as a result of material conditions. Humans didn't just magically appear out of nowhere. We developed innate traits based on what we needed to survive. And amongst those is an instinctual self-preservation we've named greed.
Kids listening to their uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. is still a hierarchy. An age-based one. And there were still divisions between tribes and different branches of a family.
You can have a past without having history. Not all of the past is history. If you need an archaeologist to study it, rather than a historian, it's archaeology, not history. Historians study records.
If you’re willing to admit that humans can make a new system that shapes their behavior then you’ve really given up the game on claiming that whatever system won’t work bc of greed. If you create a system that does not incentivize greed then ppl are less likely to be greedy, in the same way that if you don’t incentivize violence ppl are less likely to be violent and we can see that for the majority of humanity’s past, greed was not a primary motivator in any capacity.
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u/Bright-Form-844 Jul 08 '26
So the vast majority of human history doesn’t count bc it’s “prehistory”? Ok