Expert: John Shea - 8/10/2011

Question
In a discussion I was having recently, a person wrote "Anthropologists have searched in vain for precivilizational humans".  I was under the impression that there are still many pockets on earth that have small cultures that would be understood as 'pre-civilized'.  What s your understanding of this?

Answer
Hi Mike
Anthropologists don't use the term "precivilizational" very much, but there are two options here about what this person means.
They might mean lacking the features we see in "civilizations", such as writing, cities, agriculture, etc.  If they meant that, they are obviously wrong.  Such societies are well documented.
I think, because the line you quote sounds very similar to something I wrote in American Scientist (Feb 2011 available online), they might mean "humans who are not behaviorally modern", people who are "primitive" for some organic reason.  If that is the sense they intend the term, they are right.  There are no such things as primitive humans, all of us are products of evolution.
There are few if any isolated human societies.  Most are known to neighbors with whom they fight, trade, exhange personnel, etc.  In a few parts of the world, such as the Americas and Australia, disease brought by Europeans, Asians, and Africans knocked populations so low that there were groups that became isolated for decades or so, but nobody has thus far ever found a human society totally cut off from all others for any significant length of time, such as centuries or more.
Cheers,
John Shea

PS: Last week I watched a very amusing opera by Menotti called "The Last Savage" whose plot hinged on a search for such an uncivilized "wild man" in India. If you are in the vicinity of Santa Fe, NM, catch it!