Rich and Strange Aeons

1987 book I just finished, by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson. It's about the contact between white Australians and highland New Guinea in the 1930s, mostly done by Australian gold prospector Michael Leahy, with Leahy's 1930s photographs (and some 1980s ones, by the book's authors.) It's main sources are Leahy's diaries and 1980s interviews of both surviving Australians and highlanders. So we get views from both sides, though most of the surviving highlanders were teens or kids at the time, naturally.

First half or so of the book is a step-by-step following of the initial expeditions, but it later pans out to further developments and reactions, closing with independence for Papua New Guinea in 1975.

Notes:

* The highlanders seem to have been extremely isolated from the coast. They can't have been entirely so, because shells filtered up as highly valuable prestige/trade/moka items, but OTOH they hadn't heard of the white men who'd been on the coast for 50 years, and on first viewing thought the whites were relatives returned from the dead. The highlanders themselves say that.

* Pretty isolated from each other, it seems, or more accurately a person's radius of experience was pretty short, hemmed in by hostiles tribes.

* Volatile mix of racism, paternalism, and humanity among the whites. Michael could readily go for a lethal show of force to "kill before we're killed" while objecting to the bloodfeud killing of the natives or gratuitous killing by his own coastal native 'gunbois'. One brother went half native, taking two native wives and never leaving; a friend from the Administration went full native, being accepted by the highlanders he lived among; Michael turned into an Angry Old White Man, disappointed at not getting wealthy and ranting to his grave against the independence movement.

* Both major Out Of Context problems and rapid adaptation by the highlanders. Took them a while to figure out if the whites were human and not spirit, but quickly taking advantage of the wealth they offered and assessing the physical danger they posed.

* Highlanders somewhat balking at independence, as they had less negative experience of colonialism than the coastal New Guineans, and feared being dominated by the coastals. A Liberian UN commissioner was really surprised at the feelings he ran into. "Development, then independence." Of course, most of the Australians had no intention of developing NG into economic independence, that's not what colonies are for.

* Examples of both benign and imperial introductions of money and trade. The early prospectors weren't that violently rapacious, though killing a fair number of people to establish "don't mess with our stuff"; they brought in lots of wealth of shells, axes, and other goods to buy food and labor with, but the workers weren't losing their own land, and had a real choice to work. Administration and the coastal colonists didn't like independent labor though, and instituted poll taxes that had to be paid in Australian money.

(The prospectors might have been worse had they ever found major gold prospects to dredge. Happily they didn't, and coffee plantations ended up the main means of wealth extraction.)

* WWII was a push toward independence. No mention of attitudes wearing off from the Japanese or the fact of their pushing out Australia, but the returning US and Australian soldiers are claimed to have been relatively egalitarian, a shocking contrast with the pre-war colonists.

* Colonialism probably really did bring down the violent death rate, here.

I was randomly reminded of my list of Five Tools that make humans what we are, materially speaking, vs. other animals:
knives: artificial and replaceable teeth and claws
spears: knife on a stick, for ranged or missile fighting. cheating!
clothing: for adapting to a wide range of environments
bags: to carry stuff
fire: to scare other animals, shape the environment, and cook

I first thought about that list after learning that my advisor's son couldn't wear a backpack through his high school; they had to run from class to class clutching things in their arms, with stopovers at their lockers. That seemed pretty dehumanizing to me, even more so after that list; only clothing was left...

Arguably, also housing as a difference; other animals make nests or burrows, but I don't know how often "shelter from the elements" is part of the function there. Probably at least sometimes.

***

I previously mentioned the Swiss voting to restrict immigration; elsewhere, someone said they thought that was a killer argument against direct democracy, though they didn't explain their reasoning, if any. Yesterday, I learned of something from the other end: in Spain, the government is on track to re-ban abortion -- despite 70-80% opposition in popular polls. There's big protests too, tens of thousands of people -- but let us face it, protests have no reliable power whatsoever. It's just a bunch of people shouting; what matter is elections.

I don't know if the ruling conservatives don't believe in polls (that seems to be a recurrent thing) or really believe in banning abortion despite electoral risk or figure that a lot of the people pissed at them will still vote for them anyway due to higher priority issues.

Okay, time to try to review this before I pay more in fines than it'd cost to buy my own copy! If you haven't heard of this, it's Pinker's book stating and arguing that human on human (and to a degree, on animal) violence has decreased massively throughout history -- by up to three orders of magnitude -- and trying to get at the causes of why. Much (much!) shorter versions of this are in his 2007 Edge essay and his 2010 TED talk (transcript and video at link). My journal includes by those links this on falling homicide rates in England for the past 800 years. Note it's a log scale, so that line is an exponential decline in normal terms.

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There could be more, but that's enough.

...you probably don't think of compulsory education for all classes and both genders.

The whole set of Aztec pages is pretty interesting. Super-productive agriculture (tropics + natural hydroponics + lake mud soil + seedling transplant), a form of slavery even nicer than classical versions, rest stops every 10-15 km. Someone else claims women's rights and semi-elected leadership (clan elect elders, elders elect war leader and internal affairs leader) but there's no pointable source, and I note wikipedia saying daughters could be sold into sex slavery. Sons could be sold into slavery but you needed official designation of your son as incorrigible. Maybe the daughters too, I dunno.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/jun/15/childrensservices.familyandrelationships
Aka pygmies, highly egalitarian, father in reach of their infant 47% of the time. Paternal 'suckling'. Mothers as primary caregivers, men as primary hunters, but lots of flexibility and switching. Named positions are all male, but only somewhat important, vs. common decision making. Lots of time, not "quality time".

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