From the Neolithic tribes to the present
According to what the anthropologist and philosopher Esteban Krotz says, one can recognize and identify oneself in the encounter with the other. This means that for one to know who it is, it is necessary, to know who is not one to be able to define itself. In his text alterity and anthropological question, he raises the case of Neolithic humans. In this example, a small group of people from one tribe cross with another tribe, of similar physical appearance. In his study, Krotz concludes or that a) The tribes see the other as suprahuman beings or b) The tribes come to the other as infrahuman beings when both options actually (a and b) are fallacious since both tribes are human are. Indistinct of what happens in this imaginary encounter, whether a devastating fight or an encounter from which none of the parts wins nothing, something very interesting happens in this primary and basic encounter, both tribes identify themselves as humans. As Judith Butler says, so that the human is human, it must be related to the non -human. So so that these Neolithic tribes can be identified as humans, they had to find this that they called non -human, that is, the other tribe. Now, we have a Neolithic tribe who knows that they are human since they crossed with another tribe and came to the conclusion that they are different from us and as we are human they are not human. Before we said that it was not relevant that it happened with those tribes that were in the Neolithic, well now it becomes more relevant.
We have two groups, which both identify as humans and identify the other group as non -human and something will happen. The general assumption of what will happen is that there will be a meeting that will end in a fight between both parties until one of the parties cannot fight more, and that makes sense at a stage as primal as theof the Neolithic, since the only thing they know as a mode of interaction with other animals outside their tribe was to feed and to feed there must be a hunter and a hunted, two hunters are being found here. Well, suppose that one of the sides triumphs over the other and they remain as the ‘winners’ of this meeting. What can the members of this tribe do from the fact that they are effectively human? At first glance to them, they did not change anything, they simply survived another day, however, there was a much deeper change in the thought of this tribe, now they know what they are and that they are not. They practically did not gain any ability that they did not possess before, but theoretically change everything, they are no longer an invalidate entity that spinning a territory in search of food, they are now human. So now the question arises, what do we win being human? And how is this situation extrapola in the Neolithic with our day by day?
We will make an attempt to answer these questions. We will start by what do we win by being human?. Homo sapiens, is a hominid of the kingdom of mammals as well as the monkey, the bear, the rat and many more animals. However, there is a characteristic that distinguishes us from the other animals from the mammalian kingdom. A feature that we have not yet found in another living being, the reasoning is this characteristic. The reasoning allowed the development of the human being to reach the level of distinction that it has with any other animal we know. From logic to art, through imagination and social sciences, all these abstractions were unlocked at the time we acquire the ability to reason. This is what you earn being human, the ability to reason and everything that entails. Now, at first, these Neolithic tribes are already supposed to reason since they have complex tools that other animals cannot still develop, but from the moment in which these humans realized that they were humans, they also arrivedto the realization that they have the ability to reason and could start developing it as well as all their other capabilities and could also start exploiting it as a tool.
The answer to this first question could bring whole extension books to be able to answer completely, but with this simplistic response we reach us for the analysis we will perform, since the emphasis of this essay is in the second question. How is this situation extrapola in the Neolithic with our day by day? To be able to do this extrapolation, the first thing we will do will be to identify the main actors of this meeting and try to find their counterparts today. The actors of this meeting are, mainly, the two tribes that cross. What would we call ‘tribe’ today? To a society or an entire culture? One would tend to think that this group of people is too broad and diverse to include it in the ‘tribe’ category. Then, we identify as a tribe to a group of people who are united by something in common as their football team or use the circle of people close to a person to be a tribe focused on a person. In this analysis we will use the tribe centered around a person. According to Robin Dunbar, the maximum relationships that a person can maintain at the same time is 150. Based on this statement, our two tribes are reduced to 2 groups of 150 people. However, unlike how it happened in the Neolithic, these 150 people do not move in a group, it is even possible that people within this group do not know each other, an aunt of someone does not have to meet friendsclose to that someone.
It could also happen that a person belongs to both circles of relationships. All this hinders our extrapolation, making it almost impossible. In spite of this, we will assume that the two groups of people we know are all known within their group and do not know anyone who is part of the other group. If parts of these groups will be by chance on public roads (as well as our Neolithic Tribes), as much as possible it is that these two people are ignored but for any reason these people have to interact, the first thing that both parties would do would be to doA conscious analysis to treat, with everything they perceive of that other, make an assessment of that person to see if they are buying them, whether they are equivalent, superior or lower than them. Even before the first interaction happens, both parties already have a way to face this meeting based on their mental models (which they consider equivalent, upper, lower and how situations with these ‘others’ face) face). This makes these meetings completely unpredictable since the mental models of a group can be similar but would never be exactly the same.
To conclude, the tribes are currently difficult to define and much more difficult to define are the encounters between two or more tribes, if it is even possible to find ‘tribes’ today. The way in which these tribes are composed are extremely complex and almost impossible to standardize or try to create patterns. In order to even try to reach a developed and complete answer of the questions we ask ourselves in this essay we require much more time and work extension.
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