THE CONTRADICTION OF BIPEDALISM-CEPHALIZATION AND
BIOLOGICAL PRECONDITIONS OF PRIMITIVE HUMAN SOCIAL
ORGANIZATION
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
ASM 104 - BONES, STONES, AND HUMAN EVOLUTION
SPRING 2024 - WEEK 4
Introduction:
IN this chapter the author's argument is that the refinement of bipedalism2 with
encephalization3 that began in Homo erectus is an evolutionary contradiction. On the one
hand, bipedalism enabled humans to survive in the open landscapes of Africa in the form of
expanded range, free hands, and thus cash production. On the other hand, both
encephalization and constriction of the reproductive tract due to bipedal anatomy
encouraged prematurity of births that prolonged childhood and decreased the productive
activity of reproductive females, thus increasing their dependence on the food supply of
others. The resolution of this contradiction is the formation of a specific social organization4
that goes beyond the bonds of female-male pair mating; a social organization that in Marx-
Engels' speculation operates communistically. In the context of low levels of productive
power, this communistic social organization is the most likely way out compared to social
organizations based on polygynous marriage bonds or limited social groupings in the form
of male-female pair marriage bonds.
Friedrich Engels once said, "it is clearly impossible to conclude that man, the most
sociable of all animals, descended from a direct non-sociable ancestor "1. Ancestors of
modern humans2. The earliest evidence of hominin sociality are the footprints of three
individuals walking on volcanic dust fossilized at Laetoli. The age of the fossils is estimated
to be around 3.8 million years ago (jts) and most experts attribute them to Australo- pithecus
afarensis3.
Paleoanthropological evidence can indeed provide data that many of the hominin
fossils unearthed in one place are often the fossils of several individuals who may have died
together for some reason in that place. This evidence confirms their sociality. But, although
we can indirectly prove the sociality of human ancestors from these data, it is rather difficult
to determine what their social organization was like. it is difficult to determine how they
organized their lives social life. This difficulty is related to the fact that social life is not
fossilized. The evidence that does exist is indirect, either by drawing comparisons to
contemporary hunter-gatherer societies or to the social lives of present-day primates.
Charles Darwin speculated that the most primitive form of human social organization
was small groups that resembled the polygynous "families" of gorillas. According to him,
"If we look far enough back in time, it is highly improbable that primitive male and
female humans lived together promiscuously. Judging from the social habits of male
man as he now exists, and from those of the wildest humans who are polygamists, the
most likely view is that primitive male man originally lived in small communities, each
with as many wives as he could support and acquire, which he would guard strictly from
other males. Or [in other words] he may have lived with several wives to himself, like
the Gorilla "1.
In Darwin's view, the polygynous family was not the smallest unit of primitive
human social organization, but a form of primitive social organization itself. Although his
assertion that gorillas live in polygynous communities is confirmed by current
primatological findings2, his conclusion that primitive human forms of social organization
resemble gorilla families/communities is drawn on the assumption that this form also
prevails among hunter-gatherer societies, which are considered to represent the most
primitive cultural levels available at the time. Ethnography of contemporary hunter-gatherer
societies does not confirm the latter assumption Darwin1. Instead of polygyny, hunter-
gatherer tribes were generally monogamous in the sense that men and women bonded
together as a family. However, this kind of Darwinian idea is natural when looking at his
gradualist assumptions. In his theory, nothing breaks down from one ancestor to another.
Assuming humans and gorillas share a common ancestor and hence a common morphology,
it would be impossible for primitive humans to develop a social organization that was so
different from that of their close relatives.
Another naturalist, Edward Westermarck, took a different view. According to him, if
Thomas Huxley's conclusion in Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863) is correct, that
humans are anatomically close to gorillas and chimpanzees, then it is possible that the
ancestors of modern humans developed behaviors that are close to those two relatives.
Therefore, primitive human social organization must have been similar to the nuclear family
with monogamous marriage as the binding force because gorillas and chimpanzees were the
same. Malinowski, the granddaddy of modern anthropology, simply agreed with
Westermarck's conclusion and said that "mating in a single pair - monogamy in the sense
that Westermarck and I use - is primeval "2.
Westermarck's conclusions, although based on the same assumptions as Darwin,
were supported by erroneous data. As is now known, neither gorillas nor chimpanzees
practice monogamous mating. While gorillas have developed member-limited social
organizations with polygynous mating bonds at their core, chimpanzees are known for their
diverse and multilevel grouping units of individuals within flexible social organizations
(fission-fusion communities). Moreover, instead of mono- gamy, chimpanzee mating habits
are characterized by promiscuity with no lasting mating bonds between males and females.
Engels agreed with Darwin that there was no difference between family and
community in the social organization of primi- tive humans. In Engels' view, the family - in
the sense of a social unit composed of a male-female mating bond and its children - is a
product of further development in social evolution. However, if Darwin opted for the
polygynous gorilla family/community model, according to Engels, drawing on the
speculations of Johann J. Bachofen and Lewis H. Morgan, mankind's primitive form of
social organization was the large community based on group marriage1; similar to the many-
male and many-female communities of chimpanzees in which every adult mated with every
other individual of the opposite sex with collective care of the children born. Since there is
no (or no need for) certainty of paternity2, the most elementary unit is the mother-child
relationship (matrifocal). Therefore, in this "horde organization", according to Marx's
speculation, "there is no family; [so] only mother-power can play various roles "3.
Moreover, "production is essentially collective, just as consumption takes place through the
direct distribution of products within communities "4. This community, besides being
economically property-free, also does not restrict access to sex and biological reproduction.
Marx calls this kind of community "communism in practice" which according to his
hypothesis "begins in the needs of the consanguineous family "6.
Engels' evidence for the existence of this primitive social organization, following
Bachofen and Morgan, is the existence of a kinship classification system among the
primitive tribes of the Americas and the Shore Seas that uniformly referred to their parents
and siblings. All of the father's male siblings were classified and called "father". Similarly,
the mother's female siblings are also called "mother". However, arguably, this proposed
evidence is still from the realm of culture because the existence of a kinship classification
system presupposes a certain development of the symbol system or, in Marx's terms, when
humans have developed a "theoretical relation" to things that are "baptized with the aid of
words "1. Language itself, as contemporary findings suggest, is a recent phenomenon in
human evolution. This means that if we adhere to the notion that culture is historical, which
means that it has an origin, then its origin cannot be from culture itself. In this case we must
look for the origin of man's primitive social organization in his biology. Since the modern
anatomical definition of humans is "bipedal African great apes", my review will start from
bipedalism as a key human characteristic. In the following two sections, I will detail the
arguments that I have made This paper is based on the findings of various related
disciplines.
Bipedalism-Encephalization Contradiction
Biologically, humans are a species of Homo sapiens whose oldest fossils were found
195,000 years ago (rts). In current primate taxonomy, we are members of the subfamily
Homininae (African great apes) of the "tribe" Hominini (hominins for short)2. Hominin
includes us, our direct ancestors, and a number of proto-hominin species close-but-not-our
ancestors that lived throughout the evolutionary time since 7 million years ago (jts).
Systematic biologists lump all of these species into one "tribe" because we share a number
of distinct features that other African great apes do not. One key feature is our upright
posture and bipedal (on two legs) locomotion. This mode of locomotion is unusual in the
mammalian world. Evolution has shaped our feet, legs, thighs, hips and also the position of
our skull base, which differs from that of all other African apes with hominin ancestry.
Could it also have been a precondition for primitive human social organization?
All hominins have post-cranial anatomy1 that supports bipedalism. However, their
degree of bipedality is not the same. Hominins that have lived from 7 to 2 ka still have the
morpholo- gy heritage of apes2. Their post-cranial anatomy from the hips upwards still
shows the importance of climbing trees in daily life. The oldest evidence from the
Ardipithecus species that lived 4.4 millennia ago shows a greater ratio of forelimb to foot
length than in modern humans. Similarly, the anatomy of the toes shows that the thumbs had
gripping ability3. The arms and hands of the various Australopithesin species that lived 3.8
to 2.5 BCE also do. Their hands and arms were clearly still functional for movement in the
trees4. Reconstructions of the ecology of the places where they lived that characterize
forests or forest edges support this interpretation. Climbing was probably regularly practiced
as a tactic by these early hominins to avoid predators and also, as modern chimpanzees do,
to sleep at night. Arguably, their bipedal- ism was still in its semi or transitional form. In
human evolution, it was not until Homo ergaster1, which appeared in Africa around 1.8 AD,
that bipedal anatomy was complete. This refinement of bipedal anatomy was also
accompanied by a fully terrestrial lifestyle, more advanced stone tool use and production,
and a doubling of skull capacity compared to previous hominins2.
Why did hominins develop bipedalism at all? Since Darwin, bipedalism has been
associated with the liberation of the hands which provides anatomical preconditions for tool
use and manufacture; an important feature of human behavior. According to Darwin,
"If it is advantageous for [today's] man to have free hands and arms and to stand mainly
on his feet, which cannot be doubted from his extraordinary success in the fight for life,
then I see no reason why it should not also be advantageous for the ancestors of man to
become more and more upright or bipedal. They would, then, have been better able to
defend themselves with rocks or clubs, or to attack their prey or in other words to obtain
food "3.
With the same retrospective perspective as Darwin, Engels4 made a similar
argument. He went so far as to say that bipedal adaptation and the differentiation of limbs
into hands and feet were not only important as preconditions for tool use and manufacture,
but also, as work progressed, became the foundation for the evolution of human speech and
symbolic capacities.
Scholars now see other "advantages" of bipedal adaptation. The most widely
suggested is that bipedalism reduces the energy cost of movement and the efficiency of body
temperature regulation. Compared to chimpanzee and gorilla knuckle-walking, bipedalism is
less draining1. Bipedalism also makes it easier to cool the body while moving compared to
the crawling style of chimpanzees. These two advantages allowed hominins to explore larger
landscapes than chimpanzees2.
Both Darwin and Engels only saw the "advantages" of bipedalism. As children of the
Enlightenment, both saw this advantage in terms of man's ability to conquer nature through
his technology. Despite the fact that other advantages of bipedalism are now understood, it is
clear that the Enlightenment optimism bias in Darwin and Engels' views clouded their
horizons from the "disadvantages" of upright posture and bipedal locomotion to hominins,
especially from a female perspective. They saw no contradiction in bipedal adaptation.
There are several disadvantages to bipedal adaptation. Two of them are that being
bipedal makes movement slower and individuals become more visible to predators when
they are in open landscapes. Both of which made hominins more vulnerable3.
In other departments, bipedalism also changes the shape of the female's reproductive
anatomy. To support an upright body, the hips become shorter (from top to bottom) as well
as wider (from right to left side). At the top, to support an upright head, the shoulders also
widened. The impact of shortened hips for female hominins is the narrowing of the birth
canal. On the other hand, the shoulders are also wider. This narrowing of the birth canal and
the wider shoulders of the delivered fetus make obstetric stress much more severe4. That is
why In humans, childbirth is a painful, blood-curdling process that can even be a matter of
life and death for the mother and child. This is what male scholars, including Darwin and
Engels, did not see. According to Fedigan1, the reason may lie in the fact that they were men
living in a society that placed men above women. When bourgeois society was pushing hard
for the Industrial Revolution, technology and economics, which had always been associated
with men, became exalted. And when they look back at human evolution, the two
This "advantage" is also apparent in the bipedal adaptations of human ancestors. After all,
according to Engels, "even the steam-machine, in so far as it is the most powerful tool for
the transformation of nature, because it is a tool, depends ultimately on the hand "2. In other
words, both Darwin and Engels were only able to see bipedal evolution from what men
could see in the society of their time.
Going back to bipedalism, in terms of hominin evolution in general, the narrowing of
the oviduct stifles any signs of encephalization (brain enlargement). There must have been
enormous pressure for encephalization to occur. The development of the brain meant the
need to organize physiology and behavior to deal with the environment. According to
neurologists, the part of the hominin brain called the neocortex, inherited from our
mammalian brains, is much more developed than other parts of the brain. It is in the
neocortex that the neural folders for the ability to analyze and manipulate the complex-
sensomotor environment-are located. In hominins it is six times larger than in mammals of
the same size in general. Why did this part develop so rapidly? One thesis is that there is a
positive correlation between group size in primates and the size of the neocortex. The larger
and more complex the social group a primate belongs to, the larger the neocortex becomes.
Perhaps one of the major pressures that forced hominins to develop their brains was
increasingly complex group living.
Why did hominins live in groups? As mentioned, with bipedal adaptations hominins
became vulnerable to prey. The more open landscapes they lived in, the more vulnerable
hominins became. It is no coincidence that climate change in the early Pliocene narrowed
the African wilderness and expanded the open landscapes that hominins were ecologically
host to at the time. By living in groups, hominins tried to overcome the weaknesses resulting
from their bipedal adaptations.
However, like all organs of the body, the brain needs energy intake. Not only does it
need energy, but a certain amount of high-quality energy at a greater proportion than other
organs. Despite weighing less than two percent of body weight, the human brain consumes
20 percent of the energy produced by metabolism. In addition, because of the huge energy
requirements, brain enlargement also requires the development of a special heat control
mechanism for the brain. And, again, this requires no small amount of additional energy. So,
there is a lower limit that must be exceeded for brain enlargement to be possible in addition
to the pressure of social life needs. Necessity alone will not be able to enlarge the brain
without the material prerequisites for enlargement itself being met.
The diet of early hominins, like that of most apes, was fruits and leaves. Engels once
stated that "the most important effect of the meat diet was to utilize the brain which now
received a much richer flow of substances necessary to encourage and develop it "2.
According to Engels, "the transition from a completely vegetal diet to an increased
consumption of meat" was "another decisive step in the process of transition from ape to
man" because"the meat diet contains in it the most essential ingredients in the most readily
digestible form required by the organism for metabolism "1. Before getting to the impact of
meat consumption on the brain, Engels speculated that at one point in evolution, hominins
were forced to consume "an ever-increasing variety [of] foodstuffs" in addition to the great
apes' traditional diet of fruits and foliage, thus diversifying the "substances entering the
body". This diversity of food sources became "a chemical precondition for the transition to
humans "2.
So, according to Engels, before the brain can develop, before the The "necessities" of
group living forced them to evolve, hominins had to exist in conditions that allowed them to
change their diet first. Technologically, this change required the availability and
affordability of highly nutritious foodstuffs, especially those containing substances
necessary for brain development. But obtaining meat was not easy for hominins in the late
Miocene and early Pliocene. They were not the supreme predators of the African landscape.
Instead of predators, they were more often prey3. Besides, edible mammals were plentiful.
But hominins at that time did not have the technology to hunt them. Around 2.6 AD, certain
types of hominins did start producing stone tools4. Scholars classify these stone tools, which
are generally stone flakes and crushed stones, as Oldowan technology. From their shape
alone, these stone tools are associated with butchering and bone crushing. That is, instead of
hunting, With a limited level of productive power, it is most likely that they scavenge the
carcasses of dead mammals. Or scraping the bones of mammals that have been eaten by
other predators for marrow or meat. That is, if conditions permit, i.e. when the predator has
left. The productivity of such scavenging activities is too low to supply a large caloric
requirement.
Another possibility, before hominins could consume meat regularly, according to
Engels' speculation, was to "utilize fish for food (including crabs, shellfish, and other aquatic
animals) "1. Marx called fish the "first artificial food" of man2. In fact, this food source was
abundant in the places and times when pre-Homo ergaster hominins evolved, namely the
Great Rift Valley from the Afar Gulf of Ethiopia to Tanzania, the ancient Lake Chad Basin,
and the watery lowlands of South Africa3. In addition, iodine, iron, copper, zinc, and
selenium, which are essential minerals for the brain, as well as DHA (docosa-hexaeonic
acid), AA (arachidonic acid), and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid), which are specialized fats
for brain development and function, are more abundant in aquatic animals4. So it is no
exaggeration to Marx's speculation that instead of hunting mammalian meat which was "too
difficult to obtain "5, perhaps with limited technology, early hominins, before being able to
consume meat routinely, utilized aquatic animals as supplementary food.
Encephalization did occur in Homo erectus. Their brains were twice that of the
average Australopithecus1. Almost certainly, their ancestor was one of the hominins who
lived between 2.6 and 2 millennia ago and was already accustomed to adding mammal and
aquatic animal meat consumption to their diet. Armed with a more "diluted" brain, and the
increasingly severe natural pressures of the Pleistocene era, Homo erectus also developed
the production of more advanced stone tools, namely the double-edged hand-held axe
known as Acheulean Mode 2 technology, plus the use of fire, both as a means of production
and protection2. With this evidence, it is possible that the level of subsistence productivity
in supplying meat portions was even greater than that of previous hominins. As choppers
and cutters, hand-held axes were more efficient than Oldowan shale stones. However, along
with the efficient acquisition of nutrients that supplied energy for brain development, Homo
erectus had also abandoned the morpho-logic of movement in trees completely. They
became the first hominins to be truly bipedal like us. In addition, their sexual dimorphism
also shrank considerably. The females' bodies grew larger, approaching the size of the
males. The increase in body size meant that they also needed more energy to sustain them.
Then, with the perfection of bipedal anatomy, to support an upright head, hominin shoulders
were also wider than those of quadrupedal apes. On the female side, this makes the
obstetrical stresses they face more severe. On the one hand, their babies' heads are larger and
their shoulders are wider. Meanwhile, their birth canals were even narrower. Compared to
previous hominins, their childbirth was probably much more difficult than ours (a fact long
known only to women). Moreover, the journey through the birth canal was also a painful
experience for the fetus itself.
The solution to this difficulty is prematurization of birth. Nature made it possible
for erectus pups to be born before their brain organs were fully developed1. At birth, their
brains were only 20-25 percent of those of adults. Although birth prematurization was an
ingenious way of dealing with both encephalization and the narrowing of the birth canal due
to bipedal anatomy, it did not mean that it did not contribute to further difficulties. There are
two main impacts. Firstly, the fetus is more fragile and highly dependent on its mother's help
until the end of its childhood. Second, most organs and brain functions develop outside the
womb or what experts call secondary altriciality. Both of these make the mother's energy
needs greater and over a shorter time span. Unlike chimpanzees who, despite weaning until
their infants are more than 3 years old, are able to be self-sufficient in subsistence, even after
weaning, our ancestral children are not yet self-sufficient in most activities of daily living
for several more years than chimpanzee children. From a perspective that places the female
as the subject, reproduction includes at least five stages: sex, pregnancy, childbirth,
breastfeeding, and caring for the child after weaning until it enters reproductive age.
Biological reproduction must first be preceded by sexual intercourse between a male and a
female. The success of this stage is signaled by the pregnancy of the female. Up to this
point, the energy required by the female has not increased. In the womb of the female, the
fetus develops gradually until it can be born. Fetal development requires a certain amount of
energy that the mother must metabolize. This requirement increases in magnitude as the
fetus develops until it is ready to be born. At this stage of gestation, the female's energy
requirements increase. When the child is born, the need for energy also does not decrease. A
newborn child requires the intake of nutrient-rich food. As mammals, female hominins are
endowed with a natural pair of breasts and the physiology of breastfeeding. Female hominin
milk supplies all of the infant's nutritional needs at least until weaning. To suckle, of course,
the mother not only needs energy to sustain her own body, but more energy to produce milk.
As their needs grow, childcare reduces their productivity. Females in the reproductive period
must have their productive time cut short to take care of their young. If reproductive success
not only means that the female can bear children, but also nurture and look after the
offspring, then the reproductive success of the female must be reduced.
The "welfare" of children until they reach reproductive age, which since Homo
erectus means around the age of 14, or at least when the child enters the age of 9 and is
expected to be able to find their own food, then the cost of reproduction is enormous. This is
also based on the assumption that females only give birth once in a lifetime. In Aiello and
Key's calculations, the daily energy cost of an adult female Homo erectus is 1815 kcal/day.
Throughout the gestation period (pregnancy) her needs increase by 24 percent to 2268
kcal/day. It increases further during lactation (breastfeeding), which requires 37 percent
additional daily energy (2486 kcal/day)1. Taking into account the number of children and
the interval between births, Opie and Power2 calculated that the energy requirements of
Homo erectus females increased on average according to the number of children, from 2291
kcal/day for two children to 2951 kcal/day for six children.
Assuming the total average production of erectus females is equal to average
production of contemporary female gatherers3, which is about 2292 kcal/day from
adulthood, then erectus females at least requires an additional 194 kcal/day throughout
gestation and 659 kcal/day during lactation1. If we also assume a decline in female
productivity throughout gestation and lactation, the female's need for additional calories is
even greater. At least until weaning at around 2 years of age. If we add to this the caloric
requirements of the offspring, which in erectus must still be supplied by the mother at least
until the offspring reaches the age of 9 years, an age when it is expected to be able to forage
on its own, we can imagine the caloric requirements for successful reproduction. Where will
the extra calories come from? Who can provide them with adequate food?
The Way Out: Male, Parent, or Collective?
Since the 1920s, the answer to the above question has pointed to the male. According to this
hypothesis, it is the males of the female's mating partners that supply the extra calories.
Males, which are associated with hunting large animals, are able to produce a surplus of
calories that will not be consumed by themselves. This surplus is used to supply additional
calories for reproductive females and the nutritional intake of their young.
There are several problems with this hypothesis. First, it takes for granted that the
interests-or at least the a priori-reproductive bag-of males and females are the same. In fact,
males and females have different priorities. Due to their biology, males can in principle
father an almost unlimited number of children. Meanwhile for females there are limits that
do not allow for an infinite number of children. In terms of genetic sustainability, it is more
adaptive for males to inseminate as many females as possible. After all, this is supported by
their reproductive biology. The more offspring a male has from multiple females at once, the
more likely their genes are to be inherited. As much and as often sex as possible with
multiple females is more important than supplying food for one offspring from one female
(Knight 1991, 32). That is why only 3 percent of mammal species and less than 15 percent
of primates have males that practice monogamous mating1. It is also worth noting that in no
primate species do males share food with their young2; only females have been found to
share food with their young3.
In contrast to males, when primate females are pregnant or parenting, like most
mammalian females, they have little to gain (in terms of genetic inheritance) from being
frequently inseminated4. After all, once pregnant, it can take months until the baby is born,
and even years until the child can be weaned, for a female to become fertile and inseminate
again. Therefore, the reproductive priority of females is more about how the current
offspring survive at least until they reach reproductive age. She is more concerned with
feeding, protecting and nurturing the existing offspring rather than reproducing sex for
insemination. So, in other words, while males prioritize sex over "economy", females are
more concerned with "economy" rather than sex5.
Related to the male-provider hypothesis and the facts above, why would a male want
to give game meat to an infertile female when there is an opportunity to give it to another
fertile female? For the welfare of the cubs, perhaps? But who can be sure that the child the
female is carrying is indeed her biological child? Is it not possible that when the
When a male goes hunting, another male marries the female and his seed becomes a fetus in
the female's womb? Very likely. The confidence of the males, including the "males" of
modern humans like us, is the certainty of the paternity of the baby. Even with ideology,
institutions and technology to discipline the sex of "females", modern human males cannot
be one hundred percent sure of the paternity of their wives' babies. Especially for primitive
human males like Homo erectus. Instead of facts, it was our ideology of romantic love that
"forced" Homo erectus females "to" be faithful to one male. Since the priority of females is
to save their young across the ages of vulnerability and dependency, it makes no sense for
them to ignore offers of meat from any male who wants to win them. After all, it's not
certain that the male who goes hunting will come home with a bounty. Is it still lucky if he
comes back, if he dies in the hunt? The cubs might not survive. So, one of the possible
conditions for the practice of males giving meat to pregnant females (which is infertile, and
therefore against their reproductive priorities) is that there must be some sort of "political"
force that can compel males to share meat. Some researchers hypothesize a female-female
alliance that uses synchronization and menstrual blood as "symbols of unity" to strike sex as
a "political revolution" to force males to share meat1.
The male-earner hypothesis, in addition to being based on the assumption of equality
reproductive prioritization, for which there is no solid evidence, is also based on the
assumption that Homo erectus males had the same level of productivity as contemporary
hunters. The problem is that there is a historical gap separating the two. That gap lies in
productive capacity. Contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, such as the Hadza people of
Tanzania or the Kung San of Kalahari-Namibia, for example, already had bow-arrow and
throwing spear technology. With these two weapons, contemporary hunters could kill
mammals from a distance. Meanwhile, Homo erectus, during its million-plus years on earth,
only knew double-edged hand-held axes and stone flakes. With these weapons, it is
impossible for Homo erectus' hunting activities to be as productive as contemporary hunter-
gatherers. Even if there was a caloric surplus obtained by males from hunting, it was
probably no more than a few percent of the daily caloric needs of repro- ductive females.
Keep in mind that hunting in the wild has never been modeled on going to work in the
morning and going home in the evening, like working in an office in Jakarta. Even
contemporary hunter-gatherers can spend days just to get a single mongoose or python. By
looking at archaeology, the male-provider hypothesis probably developed after humans
developed the technology and social organization for sedentary living. This means that, at
the earliest, it was only possible with Homo sapiens armed with late stone tools. In other
words, only our ancestors who lived after 15,000 years ago could have developed a social
organization based on the pair bond model.
Instead of to males whose reproductive interests are different and
Thus unreliable, some scholars point to the mother of the mother as a helper. In
paleoanthropology this idea is known as the grandmothering hypothesis1. This hypothesis
states that the mother of a reproductive mother is the most likely to be relied upon. This
hypothesis is based on a fact that is generally hidden from the eyes of male scholars, namely
that human females experience menopause (cessation of the fertile-menstrual cycle)
accompanied by a long post-menopausal life span. Why do only Homo sapiens females
experience menopause? Is menopause a product of certain adaptive behaviors of the
ancestors of modern humans? According to proponents of the role-support hypothesis, yes.
Menopause is a product of our ancestors' adaptive strategies. That adaptive behavior is the
importance of post-reproductive females in the reproductive success of the population as
suppliers of the energy and nurturing needs of reproductive females1.
Moreover, ethological studies have found that in the primate world in particular and
mammals in general, female-female cooperation is the easiest type of cooperation to form
compared to male-female cooperation, both in subsistence and, in particular, in the context
of caring for and feeding young2. The reason is that females share a common (biological)
reproductive interest in providing their young with the best possible resources to survive. It
is likely that the same is true for hominins.
Utilizing data on reproductive energetics and calculations of productivity rates of
contemporary female gatherers, some scholars are convinced that the mother of a Homo
erectus female would have been able to supply the energy needs throughout the reproductive
life of her offspring. However, if the contemporary gatherer model is valid for Homo
erectus, Caspari and Lee's investigation found that in hominin evolution the ratio of young
to old (OY ratio) only showed an increase in the Late Paleolithic3. In the Homo erectus
population, the OY ratio was only 0.25. That is, one post-reproductive female to four
reproductive females. With a productivity level of As high as contemporary female gatherers
are, there is no way a post-reproductive female can supply the energy deficiency of four
reproductive females1.
Thus, according to Opie and Power, Homo erectus females and later hominin
females, even up to Homo sapiens females living before the development of late paleolithic
technology around 50 rts, could only obtain enough reproductive energy for their offspring if
assisted by several males and several post-reproductive females at once2. This conclusion
indicates a form of cooperation in which reproductive females were collectively supplied
with their energy needs. Thus, instead of a joint family, whether bifocal3 as implied by the
male-provider hypothesis or matrifocal4 as implied by the spawning hypothesis, the most
basic minimal social organization in human evolution must be a community that transcends
groupings based on blood ties and male-female pair mating alone. Since the most elementary
relationship in the mammalian world is that of parent-offspring, it may also have been a
matrifocal community in which females played a key role in successful group repro-
duction.
In the thinking of Marx and Engels, this kind of community was It is conceived of as
a condition where people exist "in a naturally evolving society" where there is no
"separation between particular and general interests" so that "activity is divided not by will
but by nature "5. Here, "no one has an exclusive sphere of activity" so that everyone
summarizes Each person gets what he or she can afford and each person gets what he or she
needs. A corollary to Opie and Power's calculations is that the division of labor within the
community, if it exists at all, is not based on sex or age - a product of further developments
in human social evolution - but between non-productive and productive members of the
community. The first group includes females in gestation and lactation, all children of both
sexes, as well as sick, disabled or old members. The productive group includes healthy adult
males and adult females who are not in the reproductive period.
Taken in another direction, the above conclusion reminds us of Engels' hypothesis in
The Origin of the Family, that "for the development of man beyond the degree of the animal,
for the achievement of the greatest advance that nature can realize, something more is
needed: the defensive power lacking in the individual must be made adequate by the united
strength and cooperation of the mob "1. Furthermore, according to Engels, "mutual
toleration among adult males, freedom from jealousy, is the first condition for the formation
of larger and lasting groups in which animals can become human beings". Therefore, "group
marriage, that form of family in which the whole group of males and the whole group of
females reciprocally claim each other, leaving little room for jealousy" was the most likely
adaptation strategy at the beginning of primitive human social organization2.
In Engels' understanding, social organization takes the form of a community
This large intra-generational group marriage-based is the most likely reproductive
mechanism in the transition towards the evolution of human society. In it, care is collective.
Since property had not yet developed, at this stage there were no (and there is no need for)
certainty of paternity. The only thing that is clear, whether necessary or not, because its basis
is biological rather than cultural, is the maternity1 of children. Therefore, again according to
Engels' speciation, since in this earliest stage of human social evolution only maternity was
evident, coupled with the tendency towards matrifocality of human groups inherited from
mammalian social biology, the form of kinship organization in the next stage must have led
to matrilineal clans. Engels believed that both patriarchal monogamous families and
patrilineal clans must have developed later as the institution of ownership over the means
and power of production developed.
Discussion and Conclusion:
The above conclusion still leaves an important question: since the reproductive
interests of the two sexes are different, before the development of private property and thus
the need for certainty in the paternity of children, what makes (some) males interested in
donating meat to infertile females? Or, related to Engels' speculation, what were the
conditions that made "mutual tolerance between males" and "freedom from jealousy"
possible?
The answer to the above question requires a separate review that goes beyond the
purpose of this paper. Here it is sufficient to conclude that firstly, although the data
presented throughout this paper have not unequivocally confirmed Marx and Engels'
hypothesis of "primitive communism" as the most original form of social organization in
human social evolution, we can categorically dismiss the possibility of monogamous or
polygynous joint family-based social organization as the most original unit in the evolution
of human social organization. Westermarck's idea that Malinowski affirmed The authenticity
of the monogamous nuclear family is more of a fable than an empirical conclusion.
Second, the evidence presented in this paper supports Marx's hypothesis that
humanity's original social organization "began in the needs of the consanguineous family"
related to biological reproduction1. Biological reproduction or procreation, in Marx and
Engels' thinking, is one of the two sides of human "production of life" which is "on the one
hand a natural thing, on the other a social relation "2. Together with the production of the
means of life, procreation forms what the two called the "materialist connection" or "man-
nature metabolism" of human society whose form and dynamics are "determined by their
needs and mode of production "3. Needs themselves are not fixed and solid in themselves as
they "exist under the relations" between individuals "and only change form and direction
under different social relations "4.
Therefore, thirdly, if there is such a thing as human nature, it is not individuality, but
historical-sociality which is a reaction to the contradictions rooted in the dialectic of biology
and ecology; inheritance and adaptation. However, Marx insists that "the essence of man is
not an abstraction inherent in every single individual. In reality it is the fabric of social
relations "5. This assertion stems from the notion of man being understood "not in any
fantastical isolation and sphericality, but in the actual empirically sensed processes of
development under conditions of socialization" particular "1. Although sociality is rooted in
biology-initiated problems, it does not mean that human nature is in the biology of
individual humans. The genotypes and phenotypes of humans as a species are only elements
of that "nature" and, as this paper emphasizes, biological capacities are also dependent on
certain social developments in their evolution. Since the combination of social relations is
formed from the metabolic relationship between man and nature and between individuals in
relation to the practical efforts to meet the unstable needs of life in the midst of a nature that
is also constantly in process2, "human nature" is bound to a particular time and space that is
symptomatic of the actual actions or work of man in the face of his material conditions. This
means that human nature is historical and so "must be verified in a completely empirical
way "3 rather than being fixed from the start in our efforts to understand human beings4.
In relation to the gender bias implicit in Engels' notion of bipedalism, we can say that
it is important to treat Engels' (and Marx's) works reasonably. Marx and Engels, after all,
thought in the midst of their times, and wrote with categories tied to that world. This means
that what they wrote was not suprahistorical dogma that is timeless in time and space. Being
a Marxist is not the same as being an eloquent copyist who repeats in full what Marx and
Engels wrote, because then the photocopier would be more valid as a Marxist than anyone
else. Marxism is a science. The key to science, as Martin Suryajaya says, lies in method1.
Materialist dialectics, as the nexus of Marxist scientific method, like "human nature", is not
a commandment from which we depart anywhere, but a finding that "must be verified in a
completely empirical way".
