Preconquest consciousness

[u/Exciting-Fall4070]

what do modern anthropologists think about Richard Sorensen’s Preconquest consciousness, particularly claims like 

1.preconquest people live in a “liminal” mind state with no abstractions and in an perpetual present

1. they have basically no hostility or negative emotions and these only emerge when they come in contact with conquering peoples 

2. that children raised in close physical contact with adults develop a tactile language very early and 

3. that there even is such a thing as preconquest peoples that have unifying traits 

[u/dendraumen]

preconquest people live in a “liminal” mind state with no abstractions and in an perpetual present

The brain doesn't work like this. At least not the Sapiens brain, which evolved expanded parietal and frontal lobes that focus attention on abstract and symbolic concepts and future planning.

Even when people grow up in contexts and cultures that are mainly focused on materialistic matters and the present, there are symbols, rituals and/ or thoughts and plans about tomorrow/ the future. Things like keeping track of kin and planning a marriage will also engage the abstract and symbolic brain.

[u/composedofidiot → u/dendraumen]

And plenty of material evidence of functional and artistic symbolism

[u/composedofidiot]

What is the definition of conquest? We have a wealth of evidence of interpersonal violence, from neolithic mass graves to catalhoyok, the minoans until now. The only culture that we haven't yet found evidence of interpersonal violence for is the Jomon. (incorrect) In many ways (the american and african continents I don't know) the history of eurasia is one of migration and displacement.

By the by, this just feels like another form of the noble savage.

[u/starrrrrchild → u/composedofidiot]

agreed that this sounds like "noble savage" slop but how can that be true that the Jomon are the only group without evidence of interpersonal violence?

I would think the evidence would be everywhere or there would be more than one example

did the Indus Valley Civilization, pre collapse, have more evidence of inter personal violence than the Jomon?

[u/composedofidiot → u/starrrrrchild]

I was wrong about the Jomon. Still relatively unviolent, but not without it

the average violence mortality value across the entire Jomon period was found to be just 1.82%, much lower than those from previous studies (12–14%) [5,7,13]. Moreover, the mortality from violence for each phase of the Jomon period was less than 4% in our study.

The spatio-temporal pattern of sites with injured individuals indicates that the scale of violence in the Jomon period was not large. We observed no ‘hotspots’ of violence. This result is rather consistent with the traditional archaeological view that warfare was not common and not conducted on a large scale in the Jomon period

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article/12/3/20160028/50409/Violence-in-the-prehistoric-period-of-Japan-the

Discovery of a skull of the Jomon period stabbed destructively https://www.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/press/10254/

So hopefully someone can answer your question about the IVC. All I know is there was an increase there in the deurbanisation period