Romancing the past

If you train people to work overseas, you are aware that there are two types you have to avoid: First, the type who sees the new society as "different" and therefore evil/primitive/inferior.
The second: Those who see the new society as wonderful. Often they  see utopias that never existed in the new country, while condemning the land of their origin as the source of all evil.

The truth is that each culture has good and bad points.

As a doc, we have to know these cultural nuances to care for our patients.

Every time a new "society" is found, the mythmakers project their ideas onto it: Be it the Noble Savage of Rousseau or the "peaceful" Mayans.

Much of this has been debunked, but never mind: The myth continues.

The latest one to question this type of mythmaking is this article that questions the myths of the "hunter gatherer" humans of the past and present.

(headsup Instapundit)

All I can say is: Duh. I knew the high maternal and child mortality because I met docs working with the !Kung. One doc was working with the local illiterate midwives to teach them what to watch for and when the woman might need transfer to a larger clinic or hospital for prolonged or obstructed labor.

In the past, or in rural areas without modern medicine, injuries get infected (which is why their murder rate is so much higher than the rest of the world: Because they died of minor injuries without an ICU could have saved them). Cuts lead to tetanus. Kids die of diarrhea. Moms breast feed for four or five years to prevent death from protein deficiency, but if she gets pregnant too soon, the toddler often develops malnutrition and dies of minor diseases.

One history type film I saw "illustrating" why hunter gatherers settled down as farmers showed the man pointing back, unwilling to settle, but his pregnant wife pointed to the village and argued with him. Yeah. Hunting and gathering is fine when you are young and healthy; when you are eight months pregnant isn't very romantic, and all those stories about women who simply went into the forest and had their baby alone? Well, one wonders how many died during or after child birth and never returned.

Women are often left out of the stories.