This Idea Explains Everything: The Hunter-Gatherer

Hypothesis

Preface

Hunter-gatherers vs farmers

The evolution of personality groups according to subsistence type

Evolutionary sociology - a possible origin of social class

The evolution of religion

Evolutionary Economics - The iPhone, the long tail and the winner-takes-all economy

Patterns in history: technological innovation

Foundations of an Evolutionary Pedagogy

Preface

The hunter-gatherer idea does not explain everything, of course. I have always loved the
book by John Brockman that bears this title. It is not about ideas that really explain
everything, but about ideas that have far reaching epidemiological consequences.

In this brief book I have put together some of my core ideas and tried to explain interesting
phenomena like why some highly intelligent people fail at school, or why so many people
buy iPhones when you can purchase similar phones (some would even argue better ones)
for half the price.

The content of this book is available for free on my blog The Bigger Picture. Publishing it on
Amazon requires that I charge a minimum price of $ 0.99 (of which I get 33%).

Hunter-gatherers vs farmers

Scientists used to think that the human mind was a blank slate (John Locks’s famous tabula
rasa) which was written on by culture. However, evolutionary psychology and increasingly
genetics are disproving this idea. A lot of traits have a genetic component, e.g. how
conscientious a person is, their parenting style, or whether they are night owls or early birds.

Evolutionary psychologists used to believe that everybody is a hunter-gather psychologically

speaking. However, that is not true. The few thousand years since the time farming was
invented did have a genetic impact. Farmers compared to hunter-gatherers needed to be
more hard-working, more conscientious (cf. Daniel Nettle) and more defensive of their
property. On the flip side, they have become less generous (but only to outgroup members),
less egalitarian and more status-seeking (accumulated wealth allowed for status). As William
von Hippel points out in his great book “The Social Leap” the highly sharing and caring
hunter-gatherer attitude towards everybody in the group would have been highly
disadvantageous for early farmers.

Farming would have involved quite a lot of cognitive, personality and behavioral changes.
Strong focus on work, routine and conscientiousness were among them. Hunter-gatherer, on
the other hand, needed to be more flexible and vigilant. Thom Hartman argues that ADHD is
a manifestation of the hunter-gatherer mind, which is easily distractible (potential dangers,
etc.) but has the ability to hyperfocus. Unfortunately, in our modern world ADHD minds often
become dysfunctional as a farmer mind would obviously be much more adapted to a 9-5 job
or a long school day than a hunter-gatherer mind. Sleep patterns might be part of the
package: hunter-gatherers needed to be flexible, whereas for farmers is was more
advantageous to get a good night's sleep and rise with the sun. Night owls are therefore
more likely to have inherited a hunter-gatherer mind than early risers.

Another problem for early farmers would have been parenting and teaching. As Peter Gray
shows in his highly recommendable book “Free to Learn” hunter-gather children spend most
of their time playing, thus learning everything they need as grown-ups through peer-learning
and self-directed learning. My hunch is that the majority of kids with oppositional defiant
disorder in addition to those diagnosed with ADHD and a tendency to be autodidacts in
schools have inherited hunter-gatherer minds, whereas the ones who easily adapt to the
school system have inherited farmer minds. For farmers it was probably highly important to
formally teach their children early on so they could help with the many daily chores.
Not only children are treated in this egalitarian way, but also women are considered equal
and not supposed to be submissive to their husbands. There is no concept of “pater familias”
and there is less sexual dimorphism than in farmer societies, which can not only be seen in
cultural artifacts (e.g. fewer and less opulent jewelry) but also physically as men don’t show
typically male digit ratios.

The following table shows a list of traits typical for hunter-gatherer vs. farmer minds. All of
them have been found to have a genetic component. Of course, also mixed traits occur and
culture and an individual’s life trajectory might override genetic tendencies.

hunter-gatherer farmer

High on personality trait “openness”, low on High on personality trait

“conscientiousness” “conscientiousness”, low on “openness”

Strongly (actively) egalitarian status-seeking

Tendency towards out-group sociality, more Tendency towards in-group sociality

accepting of diversity (e.g. different (identifies more strongly with a core group,
sexuality, refugees, etc.) like family, religious group or sports team)

More liberal ideology More conservative ideology

Tendency to wanting fewer children Tendency to wanting more children

 Permissive child-rearing attitude Authoritative - authoritarian child-rearing,
“helicopter parenting”

Night owls Early risers

“Lazier” (when it comes to physical work More hard-working

and chores)

highly rebellious when feeling personal Individualistic and competitive, but also
freedom and values are threatened, more conformist and highly loyal to their
otherwise very prosocial attitude and non- core group
competitive

Less interest in small-talk and gossip Higher interest in small-talk and gossip

The evolution of personality groups according to subsistence

type

Going back to our personality types, it seems clear that early farmer evolved most likely SJ
traits and that hunters were NT and gatherers NF types. However, there remains a fourth
group: SPs So far I have followed the logic that the mode of subsistence had the biggest
impact on personality traits. Continuing this logic it makes sense to look for a subsistence
economy with selective pressures on high dopamine.

Moreover, we know from MBTI that SP types are spontaneous, flexible and can become
daredevil risk-takers. Enter pastoralists:

From: Pastoralism

We now get a complete picture of personality groups according to subsistence economy:

Of course, just hypothesising about evolutionary-based personality groups doesn’t make
them real. What is required is genetic proof and I hope modern gene sequencing will provide
the proof soon. It could also explain an interesting fact about genetic similarities between
human groups:

In the meantime, we have to look for other clues on how to identify people belonging to the
hunter-gatherer neurotribes.

Evolutionary sociology - a possible origin of social class

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, as well as semi-nomadic horticulturalists, lived in a classless,

egalitarian society. Agriculture allowed harder-working individuals to accumulate more goods
and therefore also status. However, social hierarchy doesn’t explain the creation of social
classes. Many animals evolve hierarchies, but no other animal has ever evolved classes.
Classes are different from mere hierarchies in being at least partially impermeable through
endogamy or assortative mating.
Interestingly the tripartite social division we know nowadays (upper, middle, lower class) also
characterizes early agricultural societies, in particular in the Fertile Crescent, e.g all Indo-
Europeans had very much a three-class system. Of course, the longer and more complex
these societies got, the more stratified they tended to become (as in the case of Egyptians).
The three classes typically comprised:

Upper class king, priests, landowners, high-ranking

soldiers

Middle class warriors and artisans

Lower class labourers, slaves (who often constituted the

lowest class)

Social stratification is often explained in terms of division of labour and functional. However,
the division of labour doesn’t explain endogamy and why not all people strove to achieve an
occupation with a higher status.

We now know that social class partially genetically determined, with individuals with high IQs
and the personality traits conscientiousness and openness achieving the highest status in
our contemporary society and at the same time these are also some of the most important
criteria in assortative mating. Somebody who struggles in school, might not strive to become,
say, a manager or university professor.

Going back to complex ancient farming societies, the development of classes might have
been influence by genetic traits. The earliest farmers had to become extremely hard-working
and conscientious, working from dawn to dusk during the planting and harvesting seasons.
This is in contrast to hunter-gatherers who rest frequently and work in short bouts. Moreover,
farmer would have had to become more “planning” and forward-looking than hunter-
gatherers.

Fast forward a few thousand years and evolution might have selected for the above-
mentioned traits in farmers. Moreover, the descendants of those early farmers had not only
inherited theses genes but also a lot of property. Their surplus goods most likely attracted
neighbouring pastoralists and hunter-gatherers, the latter probably increasingly less able to
feed themselves due to overpopulation and destruction of animal habitats.
I have argued before, that these early modes of subsistence had an impact on personality.
Farmer types (SJ in Myers-Briggs) being high in serotonin. Pastoralist types being high in
dopamine, with higher activity levels. In fact, what I call “pastoralist” types are often called
“artisans”, entrepreneurs”, or even “warriors” in the Myers-Briggs groupings (SP-types). It
seems therefore not unlikely that these herders traded goods with the rich farmers, leaving
the hunter-gatherers (N-types) with low-skilled, low-wage work.

Fast forward again a few thousand years and you will a tripartite class system in a complex
agricultural society, whose members will prefer to choose their partners from their own class
due to evolved sexual preferences: farmers according to productivity and wealth, pastoralists
according to physical strength and dexterity, and hunter-gatherers according to their
egalitarian mindset.

Upper class: early farmers (SJ) king, priests, landowners, high-ranking

soldiers

Middle class: pastoralists (SP) warriors, artisans, and merchants

Lower class: hunter-gatherers (N) labourers, slaves (who often constituted the
lowest class)

Of course, the system was rarely this neat. Take the Magyars, as an example: this
pastoralist tribe invaded Hungary, established themselves as a ruling class and imposed
their language on the local population. However, they left few of their genes, due to
intermarriage. Being pastoralists, their descendants got replaced by hard-working farmer
types on top of the social hierarchy again.

Something similar might have occurred in Rwanda.

The Twa were the earliest hunter-gatherer inhabitants. The Hutu were Bantu farmers that
settled the region around 500 AD. The Tutsi were a nomadic (pastoralist) people that most
likely superimposed themselves as minority rulers over the Hutu. However, centuries later,
not all Tutsi constitute the upper class and they are often indistinguishable from the Hutu
from a socio-economic point of view. The Tutsi are genetically similar to Bantus but also
have some Cushitic pastoralist admixture. Genetic studies found 22.2% of E1b1b in a small
sample of Tutsis from Burundi, but no bearers of the haplogroup among the local Hutu and
Twa populations, which suggests that the ancestors of Tutsis in this area may have
assimilated some Southern Cushitic-speaking pastoralists
Even though there is no class system due to ethnic origin, it isn’t hard to see that there once
was one, with the Tutis (also defined as the ones close to the king) as former upper class,
the Hutu as middle class and the Twa hunter-gatherers as lower class.

The evolution of religion

In recent years religion has been increasingly considered a human instinct shaped by
evolution with a genetic component involved. There are indications that already the
Neanderthals buried their dead, very much for the same reasons we do nowadays, to
honour our deceived loved ones.

The evolution of religion roughly went through three stages at different times and places in
history:

● Animism
● Polytheism
● Monotheism

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors may have had an evolved sense of spirituality, however, they
didn’t have organized religion and dogmatism was virtually unknown. This changed with the
early civilisations. We see polytheistic religions popping up soon after the advent of farming
everywhere. I have argued that these early civilizations were not only hierarchical but
stratified to the previous mode of subsistence, with the descendants of early farmers making
up the upper class (many of who had inherited their wealth), pastoralists the middle class
filling the slots of artisans and hunter-gatherers making up the lower class, being labourers
and slaves.

The defining feature of polytheistic religion is that their deities were stratified, like the society
in which they were practised. It seems likely to me that these deities had been created out of
the worship of ancestors of the different classes, with the ancestors of farmers making up
the highest echelon of gods. Priests were right at the top of the social hierarchy too, keeping
their ideological inheritance and dominance within the upper class, just like the nobility kept
most of the wealth within their class. Before formal law was established religion was an
instrument of power justifying the social hierarchy.

The descendants of early farmers therefore inherited

● Material wealth
● Ideological power
● Genetic traits like being hard-working and ambitious

Basically they had all the means to keep polytheism going for millennia and for some time
they did. However, a few millennia later we see monotheism pop up everywhere. How could
that have happened?
Visionaries started to dream of social change and started with the ideological superstructure.
Where did those visionaries come from? Most likely from the hunter-gatherer class, because
their sense of egalitarianism made them hate hierarchy and authority. The first attempts at
monotheism were probably very short-lived as they must have met with considerable
opposition from the farmer/priest class.

The first successful hunter-gatherer to establish monotheism was pharao Akhenaten, who
established the god Amun as the only god. This cult fell out of favour again after his death
but might have lived on in the lower hunter-gatherer class and been the basis for Judaism
provided that the Israelites really once were part of the Egyptian lower class.

Whenever we see religious founders (visionaries) in history promoting monotheism, we can

be pretty sure they were from the hunter-gatherer part of the population: Zoroaster, Jesus
and Buddha.

Evolutionary Economics - The iPhone, the long tail and the

winner-takes-all economy

Classic economic theory had homo economics at its centre: a completely rational being that
maximizes utility and wealth. When buying, say a smartphone then people should buy
according to these economic principles. However, this model totally fails to predict actual
human buying behaviour. The most desired smartphone model is not the most economic
one, but the most expensive one: the iPhone. How can this phenomenon be explained?
The long tail theory (Chris Anderson) is an extension of the classical model. It predicts that
quasi perfect markets that are possible because of the web would cater to many different
needs. In the case of smartphones, this means there should be smartphones for every type
of person (e.g. outdoor people, geeks, fashionistas, etc.) and this is true. As far as budgets
go, you can buy smartphones from $50 to $1000+, yet among the thousands of smartphone
models there is one model that exceeds all others and one company that gets the lions’
share, while the majority of smartphone makers don’t make any profit at all.

Many people simply claim they pay a superior price for a superior innovative product.
However, that is not true. There are cheaper models than the iPhone that beat the iPhone on
specs like camera, speed, battery life or whatever features people desire most. The iPhone
hasn’t been innovative since Steve Jobs died, either. It mostly copies over features from
successful Android makers that catch the eye of the market. NFC, triple cameras, night sight
are all features Android phones had long before the whatever current iPhone model when it
was launched. And still, iPhones are selling like hot cakes.

How can we make sense of such behaviour? Evolutionary psychology would answer that
“utility” can only be obtained when an item increases survival chances and/or an individual’s
reproductive potential. The economist who came closest to this thinking was Thorstein
Veblen with his idea of “conspicuous consumption”. According to this theory, people buy
iPhones not because they need them, but because they want to show off their status and
how much money they have got to spend.

There is, however, considerable variation in spending behaviour. Extroverts tend to spend
much more than introverts and it seems likely that they have a higher need to display their
status. Another factor that classic economy theory neglects is conformism. Some people
tend to be more conformist than others. Some people start to show off their status and the
rest plays “keeping up with the Jones, er… influencers”.

In my theory of evolution of personality according to subsistence type, the most conformist

type would be “farmer” (SJ in Myers-Briggs). As farmer types make up the majority of the
population (around 50%), this would explain the winner-takes-all economy we can see
around us everywhere. Instead of the long-tail, people tend to buy the same products, watch
the same TV shows, consume the same goods.

The long tail does work much better for hunter-gatherer personality types (N types in Myers-
Briggs), who tend to care less about social conventions and have their own passions. Adam
Smith and Chris Anderson are, after all, INTPs, i.e. hunter-gatherer types. Personally, I was
an early adopter of Amazon when they were still only selling books I got my first book about
Evolutionary Psychology from the US via Amazon.com for which I was much more willing to
spend my money on than I would have been willing to spend it on an iPhone.

Patterns in history: technological innovation

The percentage of innovative individuals in a population is rather low, at around 2,5%. If you
look at famous inventors and innovators, you will find a lot of common psychological traits
among them, e.g. there is a tendency for them to be outsiders and to see the world with a
childlike curiosity.
In fact, high IQ and creativity are related to the traits “openness” and “low
conscientiousness” in the Big 5 inventory. These traits roughly translate to N (openness)
and P (explorativeness and flexibility) in the Myers-Briggs inventory (MBTI). The technical
part of innovation (vs.e.g innovation in art and social innovation) is due to higher
testosterone levels, i.e. T in MBTI or low agreeability in the Big 5 model.
In fact, when you look at technical innovators they more often than not have an NTP profile
in MBTI: Leonardo da Vinci (ENTP), Einstein (INTP), Edison (ENTP), Alexander Graham
Bell (ENTP), Marie Curie (INTP) and Feynman (ENTP). There are also many high
conscientious (high serotonin) people among the innovators, though: Newton (INTJ), Tesla
(INTJ) and Mark Zuckerberg (INTJ), just to name a few. The latter types tend to become
experts in one particular field rather than the more explorative P types, who tend to be more
explorative in width.
As an example: Google vs Facebook. The Google founders, Larry Page (INTP) and Sergey
Brin (INTP) have a wide variety of interests ranging from Search to self-driving cars and
extending human life-spans. Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, tends to stick with social
media, not only extending his own Facebook all the time, but also buying up the competition
like WhatsApp and Instagram.
I have argued that N-types have more hunter-gatherer genes than S-types in MBTI, who
have more genetic heritage from early farmers. How come, that hunter-gatherer types make
the majority on inventions when they didn’t invent much before the advent of farming? One
possibility is the admixture of Neanderthal genes, as the “Great Leap Forward” occurred
around the same time as the Neanderthal admixture, around 40.000 years ago.

However, the majority of human inventions still happened after the advent of farming and
some, like the domestication of fire, weapons and musical instruments (e.g. flutes) happened
before the neolithic. What is more likely: the patters of innovation we see in history are the
result of an arms race between farmers and hunter-gatherer types who lived in farmer
societies. Hunter-gatherer types are not cut-out for routine work like farmer minds.
Traditional schooling is such a routine activity and many famous inventors and scientist did
struggle in schools. Isaac Newton hated farming and did poorly in school. So did Edison and
many others. In fact, it seems there is hardly any Nobel-prize winner who didn’t hate school
(see here).
It can, therefore, be safely assumed that hunter-gatherer types did worse in farmer societies
than farmer minds. A lot of innovations in history might have been due simply to necessity. A
famous proverb says that necessity is the mother of invention. What kind of necessity? The
necessity not to be regarded as lazy or inferior human beings. The necessity to be respected
and loved and the necessity to live an authentic life according to one’s evolutionary
programme, aka self-actualization.
Looking at the technological innovation adoption life-cycle, we can make some interesting
inferences regarding the hunter-gatherer/farmer hypothesis.

Innovators are most likely INTP/ENTP types with INTJ/ENTJ types working out the details
and making the technology more usable for farmer types. The innovators are driven by their
need of self-actualization, their open-mindedness and playfulness (characteristic traits of
hunter-gatherer minds.

Early adopters are most likely hunter-gatherer types too. They are open-minded and curious
about new technology, just like children are curious about new toys. For early adopters, the
technology doesn’t have to be perfectly developed or user-friendly, not even very practical
yet. Early adopters can see the future potential and are therefore interested in the
technology.
The majority are mostly farmer types who might have varying motives to adopt the new
technology. For the early majority, it is most likely status and prestige, whereas for the late
majority it is more likely the practical aspect of the technology. Farmer types are usually
more set in their routines and therefore slower to adopt new technology. What about the
laggards? One thing that is highly important in farmer societies is conformism, and it is most
likely conformism that drives the laggards to finally adopt the new technology.
The people who never adopt new technology are most likely to have hunter-gatherer minds
again. If they find no real use for the technology hunter-gatherer minds are not moved by
status and conformism to adopt it.

Foundations of an Evolutionary Pedagogy

I have been a teacher for 20 years now despite having been confronted with a lot of
pedagogical and methodological ideas and theories none of those had an evolutionary
approach to teaching. Peter Gray’s book Free to Learn is a notable exception. Gray’s ideas
are based on learning in hunter-gatherer societies, in which there is no formal learning, no
coercion, little extrinsic motivation for learning (grades, “stars”, praise, etc.” and still children
become fully functioning members of their groups due to their inborn instincts to survive, play
and learn form older children and adults.

Formal teaching and schooling is basically an invention of agricultural societies as

agriculture made a certain degree of coercion necessary. Modern hunter-gatherers
consistently refuse to become farmers as it is too much trouble and work for them.
I have argued before that modern people are more or less the descendants of either early
farmers or hunter-gatherers, genetically kept partially apart by assortative mating through the
past 12 millennia since the origin of agriculture. This distinction corresponds roughly to the
distinction between intuitives and sensors in the Myers-Briggs/Jungian personality
framework.

In pedagogy, I have often encountered opposing ideas that correspond to “farmer” vs

“hunter-gatherer” (HG) “instincts” or values in education. Here are some of them:

farmer values hunter-gatherer values

objective is the integration of the learner objective is the independence of the

into society learner

fosters conformity forsters independence

 standardization individualization

Extrinsic motivation (grades, “stars”, Intrinsic motivation (passion), non-

praise), partially driven by competitive competitive (the only competition is the
thinking and comparison between learner him/herself)
students

Learning is “work” attitude Learning is “growth” attitude

Sequential learning Big picture, integrated learning

Teacher-centred Student-centred

Rule-based learning Explorative learning

Mastery of sets of skills Lifelong learning and flexibility

Current trend towards more formal Current trend towards homeschooling

schooling or unschooling

Peter Gray is optimistic that in the near future the trends will shift towards hunter-gatherer
values and traditional schooling will be perceived as barbaric soon. Unfortunately, this is not
what I am experiencing as a teacher, the trends are more towards “farmer values”, i.e.
crammed curricula, more schooling and more (international) competitive thinking.

Apart from the fact that most students lose their curiosity, motivation and interest in the
subject matters themselves and study for grades and credits instead of developing a passion
for learning. This trend seriously hurts the “hunter-gatherer” kids, in particular, the highly
creative ones. These kids get filtered out by our school system because have difficulties with
the sequential learning, rote memorization and are often considered disorganized and lazy
by their teachers.

One can imagine that children who are programmed to learn freely struggle with the
coerciveness of elementary school. My gifted son who was able to read at age two and who
had been a highly curious child until elementary school suddenly became defiant and even
aggressive in first grade. He would rather cry an hour over homework that would have taken
him five minutes to do. This seemingly irrational behaviour can only be explained by inborn
instincts.

My research into personality types has led me to assume that the majority of children with
ODD (oppositional defiant disorder), ADHD and ASD children are probably among the
hunter-gatherer personality type and can therefore often be found in special ed. HG kids
might seem slow, lazy, dreamy and unmotivated in elementary school.
On the flip side also the majority of the gifted kids I have taught belong to the hunter-
gatherer group, which leads me to assume that hunter-gatherer children are very much the
same as “orchid children”, who might thrive or fade depending on their environment. They
might be hyperlexic (or at least early readers - pretty much all people I know who taught
themselves to read before school are HG people) or dyslexic. If my son hadn’t been able to
read fluently at age two, he might have easily turned out dyslexic. His teacher only saw a
slow, dreamy and sloppy kid in him and given his inattentive ADHD and defiant behaviour
this might easily have turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The objective of an evolutionary pedagogy should have as a scope an evolutionary

perspective on learning styles, not just categorizing them by three different types of sensory
input or eight different kinds of intelligence. Sequential learning vs. pattern learning style
might be a more meaningful category or rule-based vs explorative learning styles, as well as
a preference for being taught vs self-directed learning.

HG children are different from “farmer” children in the following traits:

● Relatively immune to extrinsic motivation like grades

● High performers when intrinsically motivated
● Special interests/passions way beyond the ordinary (e.g. knowing the names of 300
instead of 30 dinosaurs)
● Criticism can be absolutely detrimental to learning motivation
● Coercion most likely causes defiant rather than compliant behaviour
● May appear physically younger and emotionally less mature than their peers
● Preference for self-directed learning
● Highly sensitive to noise, light and other physical stimuli
● Less stress-resistent or resilient

HG children suffer more from stress and react with higher cortisol levels, which can often
lead to physical illness such as allergies, asthma or anaemia (especially high in children with
ADHD). I am afraid that schools actually might be partly to blame for their ailments and hope
that scientists and polygenic scores will be able to shed more light on the matter.

In middle and high schools, HG children are much more likely to be among the students who
drop out, get bullied (they are generally non-violent and frequently loners), self-harm or even
commit suicide. On the other hand, they are also among the high performers and highly
creative (a trait that hardly matters in many schools) children. As HG children are big
pictures thinkers it should be in the interest of schools, the economy and society that
education for them is an empowering experience rather than an obstacle in their lives.