Status Updates From La Fabrique de l'humanité

Excellent discussion on family. E.g., "A matrilineal society is not a matriarchy. The fact that descent is traced through mothers does not put them in power. In matrilineal societies, as in other lineage societies, ultimate political authority is the prerogative of senior men. So, in political terms, it would be more appropriate to say that children become members of their mother’s brothers’ group."

Philip of Orleans changed his name to Philip Equality during the French Revolution and voted in favor of the death penalty for his cousin Louis XVI. This signal of loyalty to the new regime was all the more significant, as it made it impossible for the man to ever return to, let alone lead, the core royalist camp. Such signals demonstrate affiliation to one alliance but also burn one’s bridges with the others.

"There is one domain, however, where this retreat from animism and anthropomorphism still meets considerable resistance, and that is human behavior. When we try to explain why people do what they do, our natural inclination is to see them as persons.

...That is just as wrong for a SCIENCE of people as for science of rivers. There is of course nothing wrong in treating people as persons when we INTERACT with them."

Sometimes you read a book when you are not quite ready for the book yet.

I started that's why to reread this book after 1) understanding finally the tools of making cooperation work well enough (after 40 years of reading on the subject, making simulations etc.) and 2) reading the other book by Boyer "Human Cultures through the Scientific Lens: Essays in Evolutionary Cognitive Anthropology".