A new (evidence-free) hypothesis that eliminates sex roles in hunter-gatherer societies

June 14, 2023 • 11:45 am

Many “progressives” don’t like evolutionary psychology because it posits that there are evolved differences between men and women, and some of these differences are still seen in modern society (sexual behavior, aggressiveness, sexual jealousy, and so on). I’ll have more to say about this when our Big Paper comes out in about ten days. But the objections to evolutionary psychology come largely from the Left, I think, because they put limits on the “infinite malleability”  of human behavior posited by Marx and his successors, and also because they imply that some inequities of sex representation in populations may be due not to bigotry but to sex differences in preference.

A lot of objections to evolutionary psychology are based on the misguided criticisms that the discipline comprises only made up “just so stories” that cannot be tested, and that every feature of our behavior was specifically installed by natural selection for that feature. There are no byproducts, no “bugs.” (Masturbation, of course, is a feature with no obvious evolutionary advantage, and is probably a byproduct behavior taking advantage of the existence of orgasms, which evolved to promote the spread of genes. Another example is adoption by infertile couples, which is likely a nonadaptive byproduct of evolved parental instincts.)

While evolutionary psychology and its ancestor sociobiology did have their share of “soft” papers, the field has matured, so that now the hypotheses can be tested in a number of ways (more about that again in the Big Paper), and some hypotheses have been falsified.

What’s ironic about the article below, then, is that it is much weaker than most evolutionary psychology papers—for it is 100% speculation, with some counterevidence, too—and yet it may well be applauded by “progressives” because it proposes that gender roles in early humans may not have existed. In other words, it’s compatible with today’s “blank slate” ideology and notions of flexible gender identity.  But I claim that if you criticize evolutionary psychology because it’s purely speculative, made up of scenarios that comport with a scientist’s ideology, then you have to be ESPECIALLY critical of this article.

It’s by an anthropologist and was published in The Conversation. Click the screenshots to read.

Garvey’s hypothesis, which is hers, is that early humans in North America were not really classical “hunter gatherers”. Instead of the men going out to hunt meat and the women staying around home gathering vegetable matter (and taking care of kids), the women went along on the hunt, too, so the classical “men hunt/women gather” division of labor may not have existed at all.

Why does Dr, Garvey think this? Because her calculations show that if humans ate “digesta”—the stomach contents of large mammals like bison—they could ingest enough essential carbohydrates to eliminate the need to gather. And so, presto—no more sex roles.

Here’s the basis of her hypothesis:

The plant material undergoing digestion in the stomachs and intestines of large ruminant herbivores is a not-so-appetizing substance called digesta. This partially digested matter is edible to humans and rich in carbohydrates, which are pretty much absent from animal tissues.

Conversely, animal tissues are rich in protein and, in some seasons, fats – nutrients unavailable in many plants or that occur in such small amounts that a person would need to eat impractically large quantities to meet daily nutritional requirements from plants alone.

If past peoples ate digesta, a big herbivore with a full belly would, in essence, be one-stop shopping for total nutrition.

And so she makes some calculations that, to her, show that women could have hunted, too, for if everyone eats digesta there’s no need to forage:

To explore the potential and implications of digesta as a source of carbohydrates, I recently compared institutional dietary guidelines to person-days of nutrition per animal using a 1,000-pound (450-kilogram) bison as a model. First I compiled available estimates for protein in a bison’s own tissues and for carbohydrates in digesta. Using that data, I found that a group of 25 adults could meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recommended daily averages for protein and carbohydrates for three full days eating only bison meat and digesta from one animal.

. . . . there is evidence to suggest that large game was much more abundant in North America, for example, before the 19th- and 20th-century ethnographers observed foraging behaviors. If high-yield resources like bison could have been acquired with low risk, and the animals’ digesta was also consumed, women may have been more likely to participate in hunting. Under those circumstances, hunting could have provided total nutrition, eliminating the need to obtain protein and carbohydrates from separate sources that might have been widely spread across a landscape.

And, statistically speaking, women’s participation in hunting would also have helped reduce the risk of failure. My models show that, if all 25 of the people in a hypothetical group participated in the hunt, rather than just the men, and all agreed to share when successful, each hunter would have had to be successful only about five times a year for the group to subsist entirely on bison and digesta. Of course, real life is more complicated than the model suggests, but the exercise illustrates potential benefits of both digesta and female hunting.

(Of course the model assumes a group size of 25; if it was larger, there might have been a lot more hunting success.

That aside, Garvey’s scenario raises many questions. She admits that “eating digesta may have been a more common practice in the past” and “direct evidence is frustratingly hard to come by”. In fact, the sole evidence adduced for her hypothesis is this:

Ethnographically documented foragers did routinely eat digesta, especially where herbivores were plentiful but plants edible to humans were scarce, as in the Arctic, where prey’s stomach contents was an important source of carbohydrates.

The reference she gives is a technical report on “Vitamins and minerals in the traditional Greenland diet,” and says this:

Inuit in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic have experienced health problems, including vitamin C deficiency, as their diet in the 20th century shifted from an exclusive reliance on traditional diet to a mixed diet on traditional food and market food use (Bjerregaard and Young 1998). Formerly, when an animal was caught, all the internal organs were exploited by the Inuit, even the stomach content of ptarmigan, seal and caribou was eaten (Rodahl 1949). When leaving the strict traditional diet, Inuit need to balance their diet properly and weigh benefits and contaminant risks of traditional food.

So yes, the Inuit did eat digesta when hunting some animals. But those are Inuit, and these questions remain:

a. Did the ancestors of modern Homo sapiens, presumably hunter-gatherers who lived in plant-rich environments like Africa, also eat digesta?

b. If so, why did they when the plants were available around them?

c. Modern hunter gatherers do not eat digesta because it’s yucky. Why would their ancestors who lived in places like Africa and South America?

d. If the ancestors of modern hunter-gatherers did eat digesta, why did they stop, so that now they’ve reverted to the traditional sex-role division with men hunting and women gathering (there are of course individual exceptions)?

e. If the men hunted and DID bring back digesta, why did women need to participate in the hunt? Did they not have children to take care of (remember, there was no birth control back then). I would suspect that every woman of reproductive age had kids, and women over and under reproductive age wouldn’t be appropriate for hunts. But of course you could say they had crèches, but that just expands the hypothesis.

f. Do women regularly participate in the hunts of modern Inuit? (After all, their consumption of digesta is the only evidence supporting Garvey’s speculation.)  The Wikipedia article on Inuit women suggests not:

Jobs in Inuit culture were not considered men’s work or women’s work, but the Inuit did believe in men’s skills and women’s skills. For example, hunting was generally done by men. Sewing clothes, cooking and preparing food, gathering food outside of hunting, and caring for the home were generally done by women. This does not mean that women never hunted, nor that men never helped with other jobs. This was just how the work was traditionally divided.

Of course that doesn’t mean that things were always this way, but one has to then concoct a reason why they weren’t.

I would suggest that this scenario of hunting women and the eating of digesta is in fact motivated by ideology: a desire to efface the traditional division of sex roles between hunting men and gathering women. And, of course, the evidence given (the consumption of digesta, but in societies with traditional hunter-gatherer sex roles) is far thinner than we see in most modern papers on evolutionary psychology. Will we see the evo-psych critics go after Garvey’s speculation, too? For some reason I don’t think so.

In the end, this article is another example of what I call the “reverse appeal to nature”: you see—or in this case, speculate—what exists in nature only insofar as it comports with your predetermined ideology. To put it in short: “what is good for humans is what one finds in nature.”

Oh, and one more point. Right at the start of the article is this bit:

First, I want to note that this article uses “women” to describe people biologically equipped to experience pregnancy, while recognizing that not all people who identify as women are so equipped, and not all people so equipped identify as women.

I am using this definition here because reproduction is at the heart of many hypotheses about when and why subsistence labor became a gendered activity. As the thinking goes, women gathered because it was a low-risk way to provide dependent children with a reliable stream of nutrients. Men hunted either to round out the household diet or to use difficult-to-acquire meat as a way to attract potential mates.

In other words, her hypothesis requires the biological definition of women (based on gamete size, nearly completely correlated with the ability to get pregnant) to buttress the traditional division of labor in hunter-gatherer societies. (By the way, the division of labor might have also been based on differential speed and strength, favoring men as the sex who would best chase down and kill animals.)

But then why is the first paragraph in there, a paragraph in which she claims that trans women can’t get pregnant and some biological women identify as men? This seems to be a nod to gender activists, and for the life of me I can’t see what it has to do with Garvey’s theory. It’s looks like a bit of irrelevant prose stuck into the article to show that the author is virtuous.

 

h/t: Luana, whose informing me about these things costs me many hours of work and heartache

Misconceptions about evolution

June 14, 2023 • 9:35 am

Over the 14 years (can it be that long?) that I’ve been writing this website, I’ve put up several lists of misconceptions about or misrepresentations of evolution, but they’ve all been compiled by other people (for example, see here, here, and here). Some of them aren’t really misconceptions, such as the second link, which lists “misrepresentations” that are really pieces of advice about how to teach evolution.  Those are generally good, though I can’t say I agree fully with this one: ““Avoid giving the impression that evolution is atheistic, or that evolutionists must be atheists.”

The way I teach evolution, starting with two sessions on why we accept evolution (these lectures were turned into Why Evolution is True), involves a certain amount of creationism-bashing. That’s because I use the rejection of creationism in favor of evolution in the late 18th century as an example of the way science proceeds: theories are discarded when they become increasingly incompatible with the evidence, while the alternative theory (evolution in this case) is able to explain facts that stymie creationism. The fossil record, anomalies of development, vestigial organs, and (my favorite) biogeography are all areas in which evolution explains phenomena that can’t be explained by Biblical creationism.

Now it wasn’t I who made this argument, but Darwin. If you read On the Origin of Species, which Darwin himself characterized as “one long argument,” you’ll see that he’s constantly opposing creationism with evolution without going too hard after Christian creationism (Britain wasn’t full of fundamentalists like America is now). Describing the imbalance of organisms on oceanic islands, for instance, was a very clever way that Darwin showed how evolution could explain phenomena that baffled creationists. In fact, I’ve never seen a good creationist explanation of biogeography, especially of the “unbalanced” nature of life on oceanic islands: the lack of endemic mammals, amphibians, and freshwater fish while there are plenty of endemic insects, plants, and birds.

But teaching this way offended a few of my religious students, who called me out for “creation-bashing” in my evaluations. I reject that criticism, for, after all, creationism was THE going explanation for life and its patterns before Darwin, and within a decade his compelling arguments had vanquished that explanation. Teaching this way, I think, is a good object lesson in how science is done (yes, creationism was a scientific hypothesis before Darwin), as well as educating the students on why nearly all scientists accept the fact of evolution.  And I took this approach in Why Evolution is True. The usefulness of opposing two theories and adjudicating them with evidence is supported by the success of that book—far greater than I expected.

I don’t say anything about atheism in my classes, for that’s not part of my job, but most students do get the idea that the Bible should not be taken literally as a theory of biology. And if they ask me my views about gods straight out, I will be honest with them.  Further, if they ask me, according to the guidance in bold above, whether religion and evolution (or science in general) are compatible, I will explain to them (privately, because the explanation is long) that while one can be religious and accept evolution, they are incompatible in a fundamental way: one accepts religious “truths” based only on authority, dogma, or scripture, while science accepts empirical truths based on evidence and the consensus of scientists.  (Yes, religions do make truth claims.) That is why I wrote Faith Versus Fact.  But I’ve never had a student complain that I’ve said that either evolution or science are atheistic, for I have never claimed that in lecture. It is of course true in an important way, for a practicing scientist rejects the idea that what he/she is investigating could have divine explanations.  You leave your faith at the door of the lab. (I won’t reiterate my incompatibility claims here; read FvF if you want to see my argument.)

In that sense, then, science is atheistic, for it rejects belief in gods. Let me emphasize that, as I say in FvF, that this rejection is not by a priori agreement: scientists didn’t get together in some smoke-filled room and agree to reject gods, despite some creationists who claim that.   Indeed, there were times in science, like early astronomy or when Biblical creationism reigned, that divine explanations were part of science.  But since they haven’t proven useful in explaining anything, we now reject them as being useless.  The best expression of this idea is the conversation that supposedly took place between the Emperor Napoleon and the French polymath Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1802, after Napoleon had been given Laplace’s five-volume work on celestial mechanics.  There are many versions of this conversation,  which may never have taken place, but here’s one from British mathematicial Walter Ball, published in 1888:

“Laplace went in state to Napoleon to accept a copy of his work, and the following account of the interview is well authenticated, and so characteristic of all the parties concerned that I quote it in full. Someone had told Napoleon that the book contained no mention of the name of God; Napoleon, who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with the remark, ‘M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.’ Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy, drew himself up and answered bluntly, ‘Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.’ [‘I had no need of that hypothesis.’]

Even if the conversation never happened, the anecdote explains why science is atheistic in practice: we have no need of that hypothesis.

But I digress. In August I’m lecturing to people on a cruise to the Galápagos Islands, which of course were visited by Darwin on the Beagle.  I’m giving two lectures on that trip, “Darwin on the Galápagos” and “Why evolution is true”, as well as a Q&A session with two five-minute mini-lectures.  But first let me point out two widespread misconceptions about Darwin and the Galápagos islands, which I won’t go into here but will do on the voyage:

  1. Darwin did not have an “aha moment” in the Galápagos islands when suddenly evolution and natural selection became clear to him.
  2. The famous “Darwin’s finches”, while they did play some role in Darwin’s thinking that led to The Origin, did not play a major role. He doesn’t even mention the finches in that book, and barely mentions the Galápagos (only 16 times). Other data and ideas were more important to the revolution in thought wrought by Darwin.  If you want to read about his adventures on the islands, read Chapter XVII of  the earlier The Voyage of the Beagle, “Galapagos Archipelago.”  It’s free online at the link.

But I digress again. I have 5-10 minutes to explain to the guests what the biggest misconceptions about evolution are, so of course I have to leave some out. But the list is designed to inspire discussion, so here it is:

  1. Evolution is “only a theory”
  2. In evolution, everything happens by accident
  3. Natural selection transforms individuals over time (in reality, individuals don’t change, but populations and species)
  4. Evolution operates “for the good of the species”
  5. Evolution is inherently progressive
  6. Evolution equips organisms to face challenges that arise in the future
  7. Humans are no longer evolving

I could of course give more, but these are the seven I’ve chosen to explain, and I hope I can do it in no more than ten minutes. (I’m leaving out details and hope that they’ll come out in audience discussion.)

I may give summaries of my other minitalks here later (on the ship I’ll ask people which one(s) they want to hear), which include “What evidence would disprove evolution?”, “What IS the theory of evolution?”, and “Why do so many Americans reject evolution?”.

**********

Here’s a first-edition of On the Origin of Species in a presentation copy. (I’m not sure what that is for the handwriting is surely not Darwin’s.) Only 1250 copies were printed, and this one goes for $950,000:

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ blasphemy

June 14, 2023 • 8:45 am

The new Jesus and Mo strip, called “dread2,” came with this note (take a look at what Jesus and Mo are reading):

Another resurrection this week, this time from 2009.

Jesus clearly isn’t thinking too hard. On the other hand, since Jesus is supposed to be God incarnate, he surely accepts God’s existence on the premise, “I think therefore I am.”

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 14, 2023 • 8:15 am

Today we have photos from Africa from reader Susan Hoffman. Her ID’s and intro are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

To help charge the tank, here are some pics taken over just the last few days by my husband, Richard Beck, in Lake Nakuru National Park in Kenya.

Hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius) feeding next to Lake Nakuru:

Rock hyrax (Procavia capensis) behind Lake Nakuru lodge [JAC:  This is often deemed to be the closest living relative to the elephant, though there’s some controversy about it.]:

Alternative pic of rock hyrax:

Alternative pic of rock hyrax:

Lionesses (Panthera leo) licking their cubs:

Hadada ibis (Bostrychia hagedash):

Male weaver bird, I think Speke’s (Ploceus spekei):

Female Speke’s weaver, mate of #7:

Nest of the two weavers above:

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

June 14, 2023 • 6:45 am

Good morning on a Hump Day (“こぶの日” in Japanese), June 14, 2023, and National Strawberry Shortcake Day. In New England, this dessert is served on an unsweetened biscuit, like this:

From Yankee Magazine

. . . but I like it on cake better, and it’s best on angel food cake with plenty of real whipped cream.

It’s also the Army’s Birthday (on this day in 1775, the American Continental Army was formed), National Bourbon Day, International Bath Day, Flag Day, and World Blood Donor Day.

Here’s Washington and Lafayette at Valley Forge in the hard winter of 1777. But we won!

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the June 14 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first, and this is a sad one. Author Cormac McCarthy, whose unique prose style is, in my view, best on display in the two novels All the Pretty Horses   and Blood Meridian, died yesterday of natural causes in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was 89.  Although the NYT has a guide to his best books, start with Horses to get a taste of his work. After reading a few more, read The Road, his darkest work (I haven’t read every one).  Who you gonna listen to, the NYT–or me? He was one of the greats. 

*Today’s the Big Arraignment Day for the Trumpster.

Former President Donald J. Trump pleaded not guilty in federal court in Miami on Tuesday to criminal charges that he risked disclosure of defense secrets and obstructed the government’s efforts to reclaim classified documents he took with him upon leaving office.

After arriving from his nearby Doral resort, Mr. Trump was booked and escorted into a 13th floor courtroom at the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse in downtown Miami in a scene as surreal as it was momentous.

Inside the courtroom, Mr. Trump — wearing a dark suit and a red tie — sat with his arms crossed at the defense table while the magistrate judge overseeing the hearing described the indictment. One of his lawyers, Todd Blanche, entered a plea on Mr. Trump’s behalf.

“We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty,” he said.

The other person charged, Trump’s valet Walt Nauta, didn’t enter a plea but asked for a two-week extension. And. . .

Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman, who oversaw the hearing, ordered Mr. Trump not to discuss the case with Mr. Nauta or any witnesses — a common restriction in a criminal case. The judge said he understood that the two men must speak on a daily basis, but said anything related to the case must go through their lawyers.

Mr. Trump was represented in court by Christopher M. Kise, a former Florida solicitor general, and Mr. Blanche, a prominent New York defense lawyer. His legal team has been in flux since two other lawyers representing him resigned shortly after the indictment was made public. Mr. Smith, the special counsel, attended the hearing.

I’m writing this on Tuesday evening; tonight we can expect more bombast from Trump about witch hunts and the Department of Injustice. Oy! Get your popcorn!

Here are 38 minutes of remarks made by Trump after he was arraigned yesterday, pronouncing himself not guilty.  Can you imagine this man running the country for four more years?

*A quickie: a new story at Public with three authors, one of them Matt Taibbi, reports that now the “wet lab” theory of coronavirus origin is back in the dumpster again. It’s the Wuhan lab again!

After years of official pronouncements to the contrary, significant new evidence has emerged that strengthens the case that the SARS-CoV-2 virus accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

According to multiple U.S. government officials interviewed as part of a lengthy investigation by Public and Racket, the first people infected by the virus, “patients zero,” included Ben Hu, a researcher who led the WIV’s “gain-of-function” research on SARS-like coronaviruses, which increases the infectiousness of viruses.

And so it goes, back and forth and back and forth, with each new change of locale supposedly supported by good evidence. I’ll read it later.

*Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who will be overseeing Trump’s trial in Miami, has been accused before of being soft on Trump. That’s because she made several rulings in his favor that legal scholars criticized. How important is she, a Trump nominee, in the upcoming trial? The Washington Post gives its take:

Aileen M. Cannon, the federal judge assigned to the Justice Department’s criminal case against former president Donald Trump, will set the pace and rules for how the unprecedented proceedings unfold.

She will be under intense scrutiny, not least because of her past rulings in Trump’s favor in a case related to the classified documents indictment.

When charges of obstruction of justice and willful mishandlingagainst Trump were unsealed last week, special counsel Jack Smith said he would seek a “speedy trial.” And the Southern District of Florida is known for its “rocket docket,” quickly moving cases to trial.

But Trump,now seeking reelection in 2024, has a track record of dragging out court proceedings, often to his advantage, making Cannon’s role in controlling the timeline even more pivotal.

“She is really in the driver’s seat in terms of the pacing. The danger here is if it backs up into the 2024 campaign or if the case lingers until after Trump is reelected or another Republican elected, and they can direct the Justice Department to drop charges or pardon the president,” said retired federal judge Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor. “This is a situation where speed equals substance.”

. . .After [Trump makes his first appearance], Cannon, 42, who was nominated by Trump during his final year in office and has less than three years experience on the bench, will be in charge.

It is the second time she is overseeing a legal dispute involving the former president. Last fall, Cannon issued a controversial ruling in response to a lawsuit Trump filed that initially slowed the FBI review of classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago. She was roundly reversed by a conservative panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Her handling of the lawsuit has led to calls for Cannon to step aside as trial judge, a role that court officials say she was assigned randomly after Trump was indicted last week. But legal experts said Monday the Justice Department is unlikely to make a recusal request.

*If you’re wondering what’s going on in the Ukrainian spring offensive, the WSJ has a front-page story, and it’s not depressing.

Four of the Jaegers [members of a brigade] were killed taking Blahodatne, and several were wounded, men from the unit said.

It was one of a string of local victories in this area in the first days of Ukraine’s big offensive. Ukrainian forces, armed with newly delivered Western tanks and armored vehicles, have begun an ambitious, monthslong operation to take back as much as they can of the nearly 20% of their country that Russia currently occupies. The early focus of assaults has been in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions in the south and east.

The past week’s battles have also highlighted Russian forces’ problem of low morale, according to several Russian soldiers taken prisoner in recent days who spoke to The Wall Street Journal.

“The battles are fierce, but we are moving forward,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address late on Monday. Muddy ground after recent rain is among the difficulties facing troops, he said.

. . .In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainian troops have made only small gains so far. Some units have struggled against Russian minefields and airstrikes. The 47th Mechanized Brigade, with many troops and officers freshly trained by U.S. forces in Germany over the winter, suffered heavy losses last week, including a number of German-made Leopard 2 tanks and U.S.-made Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

In next-door Donetsk, however, troops from experienced brigades such as the 68th have made steady progress, driving Russian forces out of a string of villages along the Mokri Yaly River. Starting from around the town of Velyka Novosilka, Ukrainian units are pushing south toward the Russians’ main defensive line, replete with antitank obstacles.

The early battles around Velyka Novosilka are displaying Ukrainian troops’ determination and firepower—the former driven by the country’s suffering since Russia launched its full-scale invasion last year, the latter boosted by the heavy weapons from the U.S. and European allies.

On the other hand, Russia has started going after civilians in a big way, firing a missile at an apartment complex (a war crime):

. . . at least 11 people were killed and 34 wounded overnight in a Russian missile strike on the city of Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown.

*An archaeological find of first-century Roman surgical instruments has led to a revision on how sophisticated early doctors really were.

. . . The epitaph on more than one Roman tombstone read: “A gang of doctors killed me.”

Medical remedies have improved since those times — no more smashed snails, salt-cured weasel flesh or ashes of cremated dogs’ heads — but surgical instruments have changed surprisingly little. Scalpels, needles, tweezers, probes, hooks, chisels and drills are as much part of today’s standard medical tool kit as they were during Rome’s imperial era.

Archaeologists in Hungary recently unearthed a rare and perplexing set of such appliances. The items were found in a necropolis near Jászberény, some 35 miles from Budapest, in two wooden chests and included a forceps, for pulling teeth; a curet, for mixing, measuring and applying medicaments, and three copper-alloy scalpels fitted with detachable steel blades and inlaid with silver in a Roman style. Alongside were the remains of a man presumed to have been a Roman citizen.

The site, seemingly undisturbed for 2,000 years, also yielded a pestle that, judging by the abrasion marks and drug residue, was probably used to grind medicinal herbs. Most unusual were a bone lever, for putting fractures back in place, and the handle of what appears to have been a drill, for trepanning the skull and extracting impacted weaponry from bone.

The instrumentarium, suitable for performing complex operations, provides a glimpse into the advanced medical practices of first-century Romans and how far afield doctors may have journeyed to offer care. “In ancient times, these were comparatively sophisticated tools made of the finest materials,” said Tivadar Vida, director of the Institute of Archaeology at Eötvös Loránd University, or ELTE, in Budapest and leader of the excavation.

. . . Similar kits have been found across most of the Empire; the largest and most varied was discovered in 1989 in the ruins of a third-century physician’s home in Rimini, Italy. But the new find is described as one of the most extensive collections of first-century Roman medical instruments known

Here’s a photo with the article:

(From the NYT): Some of the newly excavated instruments included forceps, a curet and three copper-alloy scalpels fitted with detachable steel blades and inlaid with silver in a Roman style.Credit…Rusznák Gábor/ELTE

They didn’t show the bone lever, but here are some Roman bone levers from a University of Virginia site on Roman surgical instruments:

*Another critique of our “merit paper” has appeared, this time in Wire: The Science. There are two main objections, one being that a concentration on merit reduces the possibility of increasing diversity, which is an arguable point. Sadly, the author, Deboutta Paul, doesn’t argue it very well:

Meritocracy sounds excellent from a narrow view of science. However, from a broader perspective, it harms the goal of diversifying the knowledge base of the entire human species and propagating scientific temper amongst everyone. Social engineering, a way to achieve knowledge as a common, is more important than the “fundamental research” that the paper advocates for without bothering to explain.

I guess Dr. Paul thinks that, in science, social engineering is more important than research. But here’s the real kicker:

The most severe flaw the paper suffers from is its over-reliance on “objective” truth. Such truth may not always exist. While experiments rule out false scientific theories, there arise scenarios where multiple theories can explain observed phenomena accurately. Access to scientific resources and networking play a role in the trends that set the tone for further examination of competing theories.

With that dumb statement, Dr. Paul disqualifies himself from practicing rational criticism.  Yes, there may be several theories to explain an observation, but that doesn’t mean there are several objective truths!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili smells a rat (or a mouse):

Hili: These hollyhocks smell strange.
A: Why strange?
Hili: I don’t know, it must be investigated.
In Polish:
Hili: Dziwnie te malwy pachną.
Ja: Dlaczego dziwnie?
Hili: Nie wiem, trzeba to zbadać.

And a picture of sweet Szaron:

x

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From The Cat House on the Kings:

x

From Merilee, the dreaded cassowary (Casuarius sp.; there are three):

They’re worse than honey badgers!

And from Gary Larson’s The Far Side:

From Masih. The child was killed, but here’s a video. The Farsih translation first:

Today#Kian_Perflek, instead of celebrating his birthday, is sleeping under the cold soil. Because Khamenei’s soldiers drowned Kian and his dreams in blood. Today, however, the child-killing government has fallen to the people more than ever before. In a free Iran, there will be no more Revolutionary Guards to stand above the law and shoot children. Rather, the power will be in the hands of the people and our struggle will continue until that day. #Freedom_Life_Woman

From Luana. This is unbelievable (but true).  I love the combination of gender-activist (non) language and Rowling’s snarky take. UPDATE: After the expected uproar, Johns Hopkins decided to deep-six its definition of “lesbian“:

“Upon becoming aware of the language in question, we have begun working to determine the origin and context of the glossary’s definitions. We have removed the page from our website while we gather more information,” Jill Rosen, director of media relations at the school, tells The Messenger in an emailed statement.

From Malcolm: a Ukrainian Jewish cat, helping his staff:

I found this one, showing a parrot opening a young coconut and drinking the coconut water:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a six-year-old boy gassed on arrival:

From Professor Cobb, now off to Paris to lecture. I’ve never seen the elusive green flash, though I’ve often tried, but apparently it’s real:

Well, if you look at the paper, the theory applies only to one family: rove beetles (granted, it’s the most species-rich beetle family):

It’s a tough life for ducks—unless they’re in Botany Pond:

Are Americans as divided as we think?

June 13, 2023 • 12:00 pm

One thing that readers (and I) remark on again and again on this site is the remarkable political polarization among Americans. To me it looks as if the country is more divided at any time during my life, with the possible exception of the divisions about civil rights and the Vietnam War in my youth.  But now it looks as if the division affects almost every issue: gun control, abortions, fealty to political parties, trans issues, censorship and free speech. . . the list is very long.

But at the Substack site Persuasion, Michael Baharaeen, political research director at the research consulting firm Blue Compass Strategies, argues that the divisiveness is more imaginary than real, and gives a lot of data trying to show that Americans are generally in agreement on many issues.  I’m not sure that he makes his case, though we already know that on issues like abortion, American are far more united (in support of the Roe v. Wade principles) than, say, the Supreme Court.

Click to read, and note that he says that much of America’s political divide is an illusion, not all of it.  But his aim is clear: to help us see that we’re not as bad off as we think:

Amid this never-ending doom spiral of division, many of us have become convinced that we have nothing in common with those in the opposing tribe, especially on the toughest moral issues of the day. And when we just know the other side is so extreme and hateful—that the most pugnacious and provocative voices among them must be representative of them all—how is it possible to ever compromise with them or even listen to them with an open mind?

Here’s where I can report some hopeful news: Americans are actually more moderate, more heterodox, and less easily sorted along partisan lines than the media might have us believe.

. . . Political scientists, sociologists, and others have written extensively about how the country can best try to repair itself and alleviate the more destructive effects of our polarization, be it political, cultural, racial, educational, or anything else. Restoring trust and reducing fear between America’s tribal factions is a necessary first step in that project, especially if we are to have any hope of holding our fragile democracy together. Perhaps a good starting place is encouraging Americans to recognize their own complex identities and political outlook. Maybe then they will come to see the same in their fellow citizens.

But of course “complex identities” does not mean “political agreement”. Click to read:

I’ll single out a few of the issues where, Baharaeen says, we’re more in consensus than we think. I’ve indented his statements.

Party affiliation.

Gallup’s annual survey of partisan self-identification has found that independents have constituted a growing plurality of all voters since 2009, a sign that fewer people are making their attachment to one of the two major parties a core part of their identity. Additionally, data from the 2022 midterms showed that just 27 percent of voters identified as either “very” liberal or conservative, while the vast majority (73 percent) either thought of themselves as moderate or only “somewhat” liberal or conservative. The Pew Research Center also periodically releases studies of the two major parties’ coalitions, which demonstrate just how much diversity of thought and life experience exists among voters within each party.

Yes, but when it comes to filling in the circles on your Presidential ballot, diversity of thought and life experience is distilled into one black dot. And the number of those black dots on right and left have been perilously close in number in the last two elections, causing the last one to be followed by an insurrection.  “Somewhat” conservative voters, for example, often voted for Trump, an action that certainly feels divisive to me. For there’s no way in hell that I can see a rational person voting for him over Biden in the last election. (My fears have, of course, been borne out.)

Racial justice

Many Democrats believe that Republicans not only don’t care about racial justice but actively oppose measures to secure equal rights for racial minorities. A study by the group More in Common found that Democrats estimated just half of Republicans even believed racism still existed in America. In reality, that figure was closer to 80 percent. Similarly, a 2021 Gallup survey asking whether voters approved of interracial marriages found that nine in 10 Republican respondents favored them.

Well, the marriage battle was won long ago, in Loving v. Virginia. But it’s still Republican lawmakers who gerrymander states to keep black voters from expressing their will, something so egregious that the Supreme Court just overturned it.  This shows the problem with Baharaeen’s thesis: while average Americans may be more moderate than we think, the people who get into power are not as moderate. Even Biden, I think, is more to the left than many Democrats (and I’m one of them) thought.

Here’s a fairly accurate statement:

On the flip side, many conservatives fear that liberals are so obsessed with race that they are willing to supplant longstanding American support for merit in things like college admissions with race-based considerations. In fact, a majority of Democrats oppose using race and ethnicity as a major factor in college admissions—as do, notably, majorities of black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans.

That has been shown in several surveys. It’s only the extreme Left “progressives” (I put them in quotes because they’re really authoritarian regressives) who are strongly in favor of affirmative action. But those are also the loudest ones. I’m to the left-center on this issue, thinking that we need affirmative action of some sort, but a brand based not on race but on class.

What should be taught in schools.

Americans on the whole do not want public schools to be mills for promoting social justice activism but rather institutions that prepare kids for 21st-century jobs and teach them how to reason and think critically. Republicans, as well as Democrats of color, also agree that schools may not be the best place for teaching more divisive and unsettled concepts like whether gender identity is separable from biological sex.

At the same time, an overwhelming share of the public—including a majority of Republicans—favors teaching students about the history of racism in America. And while there are partisan divides on how best to teach some divisive topics, both Democrats and Republicans broadly oppose banning their teaching altogether. The vast majority of Americans also oppose banning books about controversial topics.

Yes, but this consensus has not stopped states like Florida from banning certain topics like CRT, and states like California from being embroiled in exactly HOW the history of bigotry should be taught.  The problem again is that beliefs may be closer together than we thought, but when it comes to voting or infighting, political extremists hold the field.

Abortion rights. Here’s one where we already know the data; most Americans do not align with the “allow no abortion” states but with the previous law limned in Roe v. Wade.  But again, it’s the courts, political extremists and politicians that enforce the divisiveness,

The country is generally more supportive of abortion rights than not. A healthy majority disagrees with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, and even around 40 percent of Republicans think abortion should be legal in “all or most cases.” Many Americans, including the vast majority of Republicans, also believe that there should, at minimum, be exceptions for rape and incest and to protect the life of the mother. At the same time, most of the country favors at least some restrictions. A Harvard/Harris poll conducted just after the Supreme Court’s decision came down last June showed 72 percent of Americans—including 60 percent of Democrats—support restrictions at 15 weeks of pregnancy (or earlier), while just 10 percent favored allowing unrestricted abortion access up to nine months.

Sadly, this hasn’t played out in the law, As we know, the laws of many states now totally repudiate the principles of Roe v. Wade.

Transgender issues.

There is perhaps no topic more closely tied to America’s culture war today than transgender issues. Indeed, there are deep partisan divisions over whether greater acceptance of trans people is “good for society,” and some red and blue states have ironically found consensus on removing trans children from their parents’ custody—though for vastly different reasons. But several recent polls have found that the public holds a mix of conservative and liberal views on these issues.

In some ways, the country is a little more skeptical of left-leaning positions on these issues. For example, they generally oppose allowing trans women to compete in women’s sports, and more than two-thirds believe that schools should either teach that gender is inseparable from one’s biological sex or not talk about it at all (a position held by notably high numbers of black and Hispanic Democrats). Substantial majorities also oppose medical interventions for minors such as puberty blockers and hormone therapies.

However, most Americans are leery of government overreach into transgender people’s lives and believe that this population faces discrimination. As a result, majorities support protections against discrimination in jobs and housing.

I think this is a wee bit misleading, for the controversy is not so much about general rights of transgender people, but about sports and “women’s spaces” like prisons and battered women’s shelters. That (and “drag queen story hour”) is where the battle is joined, and it’s a vicious and persistent battle, with gender extremists labeling everyone who doesn’t adhere to their views (e.g., J. K. Rowling) as “transphobes”. Even the Biden administration appears to hold the view that transgender women should be allowed to compete in sports with biological women. This issue will only get more polarizing as the number of trans people increases, as it’s doing exponentially.

In the end, Baharaeen has a point: if you poll individual Americans, their views (especially on things like abortion) aren’t as polarized as we may think. But remember that it the most extreme people who not only make the most noise, but who are the most eager to vote and, to some extent, go into politics. In a nation where Trump got 46.1% of the popular vote, beating Hillary Clinton, who got 48.2% of the popular vote, in the electoral college; or where in the 2020 election Trump got 46.8% of the popular vote, losing to Biden, who got 51.3% of the popular vote, I can’t say that polarization is overrated.  By then Trump had shown that he was a dangerous and mentally ill autocrat, and yet still nearly half of Americans voted for him. As I said, regardless of your feelings on abortion or trans rights, in the ballot box you have to fill in either the Trump or the Biden circle.  And once that happens, the nature of Donald Trump guarantees a long period of polarization, regardless of who wins.

CODA: Here’s the beginning of Jamelle Bouie’s column in the NYT today, “Republicans have made their choice.”

In the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Republican officeholders had three choices.

They could stick with and defend Donald Trump and his riotous allies, and if they were members of the House or Senate, they could vote in support of the effort to overturn the results of the election, in a show of loyalty to the president and, in effect, the rioters.

Or they could criticize and condemn the president as conservative dissenters, using their voices in an attempt to put the Republican Party back on a more traditional path.

Or they could leave. They could quit the party and thus show the full extent of their anger and revulsion.

But we know what actually happened. A few Republicans left and a few complained, but most remained loyal to the party and the president with nary a peep to make about the fact that Trump was willing to bring an end to constitutional government in the United States if it meant he could stay in office.

Now THAT is polarization!

h/t: Lee