INTRODUCTION

Chapter One

Anthropological Systems

Anthropological, or human-type systems, have their basis in the organization and function of the complex brain and associated nervous system. We cannot distinguish such systems as separate from other biological systems unless we do so on the basis of a comparison of the human brain and its physiological functions with the nervous systems of other kinds of animals. The fundamental functions of a canine brain are quite similar to that of the human brain, and in many ways can be said to be homologous structures within an evolutionary framework. Even more alike are Chimpanzee, Gorilla and human brains, each kind of which appears to be capable of similar levels of complex thought, logic and communication. If the human brain is different from these other biological forms, it is so more by size and degree of complex integration than it is necessarily by any kinds of qualitative differences. Only the expansion and enlargement of the areas of the frontal cortex in the human brain suggest the development of more complex processing that is associated with emotion, reason, imagination, etc.

It is possible to look upon the brain as the final biological frontier, if one does not consider the challenges of alien life forms. But understanding of the physiology and functioning of the brain is only the beginning of a scientific basis for understanding of human informational patterning and human systems that are the concern of the psychological and social sciences. While the brain may be the basis for a human science, the brain is only a central part of a larger system of informational patterning that includes human language, human conceptual systems, human information systems, symbolization, complex self-motivated behavior patterns, and social relational and communicational systems. These form a complex of informational patterns and facets of human reality that are critical to the description of anthropological systems in general and cannot be dispensed with or analytically reduced in terms of mere brain or body function. To put this issue another way, it can be said that while the brain is centrally important in making possible all informational functioning and patterns in human systems, it is the brain that is understood only in its anthropological context and development, that achieves its degree of dynamic function and super-biological informational patterning and processing. A brain that exists in social isolation is of not much use, and, even worse, may end up being a dysfunctional or diseased brain. A brain that is functioning within an organic and environmental context that achieves a high level of integration is one that is capable of achieving remarkable feats of creative, productive and intellectual prowess. In this sense at least, the brain is not that much different from a digital computer, regardless of the design differences. For both forms of complex information processing, the same general input-output feedback loop holds. We say "junk in, then junk out." What is the mechanism of the brain that processes the junk, and how do we arrive at the definition in a formal and scientific sense of what the junk is in the first place.

The description of the brain is prerequisite but not sufficient to the description or theoretical explanation of human language, social institutions and processes, human psychology, symbolization, human behavior or any other facet of human reality. There has been significant progress in the interdisciplinary fields of the cognitive sciences that relates artificial intelligence and robotic automation to psychological, linguistic and philosophical models of human cognitive functioning and the organization of knowledge. In terms of the organization of knowledge, we are striving for what can be called the natural order and organization of information as this occurs in the brain and becomes processed via the brain and its auxiliary organs. This can be contraposed to what can be called an arbitrary order of knowledge and information that is based primarily upon abstract or culturally defined concepts. There is an exciting convergence of various disciplines to the central issues of understanding the human brain and its central role and function in the articulation of human reality. With new imagining techniques in vivo, we are no longer confined to the placement of electrodes and the diagnostic study of traumatic aphasias.

Whatever aspect or discipline of the human sciences with which we are concerned, the study of the brain remains a central core component of any such study. We can expect that the full and complete explanation of human brain-mind function will lead to a clearer understanding of the complexities of human social and psychological realities.

In the analysis of human systems, we may again distinguish several levels of human informational patterning. These sublevels include:

1. The individual, including the cognitive, symbolic, emotional, subjective and mental functioning involving one way or another brain function.

2. The social group, involving dynamic communication and interaction between different individuals, organization of belief and behavior in cultural systems that can be said to be institutionally enduring.

3. The inter-group context, which involves exchange and interactive relationships between different groups, or between different individuals of different groups, and leading to complex historical and social formations of intergroup relations.

At this late stage in our hominid evolutionary development, it is not always clear which should come first and which follow in our analysis. We are left with a hen and egg kind of dilemma, and realize that we are dealing with conjunctive rather than disjunctive sets of information framed between these three different levels.

*****

Anthropological systems stem from an understanding of the emergence of a level of natural information pattern that can be defined ultimately as cultural. I would include in these systems potential "non human" kinds of systems that would probably have similar cultural patterns and features from at least a structural framework. Anthropological systems emerged from the landscape of the African plains and forests to somehow be capable of systematically beating the odds against evolutionary constraints. Exactly how it did so remains still a mystery, though we understand in better detail now the early record of hominid emergence than ever before. What is most remarkable I think about this record is its degree of continuity of development for the past four million years at least. With but few noteworthy exceptions, we see largely a single line of allopatric phylogeny of the hominid descent from probably 5 to 6 million years before. We find the early radiative adaptation and dispersion of Homo erectus throughout the Old World, from Africa across to the furthest reaches of Asia. Their tools appeared to have been in the first phase fairly primitive chopper-tools, simple river cobbles that are split and broken into well defined edges capable of doing basic work in cutting, and smashing. Limited evidence suggests the presence of oddly defined Archaic Homo saipiens in many of the same regions 1 to 2 hundred thousand years ago, and then a second or possibly third radiative explosion of modern Homo sapiens sapiens from what seems to be the perennial African homeland, probably commencing 70 to 60 thousand years B.P. and eventually crossing over to the New World within the last 30,000 years. The last million years especially bore witness to what can be considered overall as a unilineal line of hominid development that witnessed the enlargement mainly of human cerebral capacity to their present day proportions and the rise of the associated basic culture complexes--the discovery of fire, use of refined stone working tools, clothing, shelters, and probably some early form of language.

The understanding of human systems stems from an appreciation of the unique role that the human brain and related complex of bio-behavioral traits have played in the development of symbolic culture and human civilization. These are understood universally to be the unique hallmarks of human patterning, the integration of which cannot be fully explained in terms of biological systems theory alone. There occurs in interaction, communication and cultural transmission, both vertically and horizontally, the possibility for an entirely new level of informational patterning and for behavioral response to the environment that cannot be accounted for by biological factors alone. The human brain is of course a complex cellular organ, and the human nervous and sensory systems are of course extremely complex and sensitive systems that connect to the brain. It is apparent that human brain pattern, when tied to constructed environmental contexts, achieves a higher order intelligent functioning.

Human systems theory stratifies into three levels. These levels are the individual, the intermediate group, and the larger social system that ultimately comprises the entire human species. Again, similar processes of systemic stratification and multi-level integration appear to occur with human systems as with more basic biological and physical systems, in terms of psychological, cultural and larger sociological patterns. It furthermore is important to construe these within an historical framework of the past that informs the world in detail and explains how it is that our world came to be as it currently is.

Human systems theory is derived from anthropological theory of human systems in general. A human system can be any system that is socially constituted (including a society of one person) that has achieved some level of structural-functional and cultural integration such that it confers upon its members a separate and distinctive sense of identity that is shared. This sharing tends to occur in many different levels of interaction and communication, and commonly involves the development of unique social dialects and isolects of a language, as well as common patterns of symbolic-behavioral response. Material environment will also be shaped and shared along particular and distinct design motifs. Social customs, institutions and traditions emerge that serve to further integrate people into such systems and to perpetuate and replicate the cultural patterns that have been developed in such contexts.

Human social systems tend towards incredible complexity in an historical sense because the extension of human sociability is that social groups tend toward interrelation into larger and larger systems, and that no group or individual remains forever or always in social isolation. Thus I believe it is a clear proclivity that in general human systems are interconnected, and these connections constitute the basis for the further integration of such systems in ever larger structural patterns. There has been of course many exceptions to this general trend--isolated island, forest and mountain groups that maintain little or no contact with outsiders. Frequently, individual people may pass between different or distant groups while the groups themselves maintain fairly rigid or even hostile boundaries between one another. People tend to have a very natural proclivity, when this capacity is not repressed or arrested by psychological and behavioral rigidity and dependency, to be quite culturally flexible. The wide variation of pattern of natural, traditional cultural patterns in the ethnographic world attests to the inherent flexibility and openness of the individual human and to their fundamental plasticity that is tied to environmental adaptation. If this pattern were biologically preprogrammed, either as memes or as social genes, then it is likely that we would see a rather monothetic and monotypical formation of culture worldwide, rather than almost infinite variation.

In general, whenever acculturative contact arises, there is a trend for a sense of dynamic exchange to take place that leads to rapid alterations and changes of one or more groups at different levels. Social contact between very different groups can stimulate radical changes that can be both destructive and constructive.

*****

Balancing Cultural & Natural Ecologies

Human cultural ecology is distinct from the natural ecologies from which it arose. Human cultural ecology has been extremely successful, for the most part, in promoting the adaptive and reproductive success of the human species, and in its diversification to a wide range of niches in the world. Indeed, its open and constructive capacities has resulted in the development of entirely new niches and even whole ranges of niches that did not previously exist before the invention and construction of culture.

But this success in our shared history has not come without a heavy price being extracted from our natural environment. Modern Homo sapiens may have refined the technologies of ecocide, but they were not the first to invent or utilize such technologies, and we may reach deeply into our shared heritage to find examples of the mass slaughter of life and the systematic destruction of entire ecosystems on behalf of maintaining a growing human system.

This success has been achieved by means of social organization, the application of technological systems in shaping, controlling and managing the environment, and in terms of anthropogenic factors like symbolic language, culture, and mind. We may find counter-examples among many species of similar forms of adaptation, particularly of social systems, but these are analogies of parallel evolution of form and function, and not homologies of shared design features or genetic coda.

It is clear that cultural and natural ecology have been out of balance, and the former has been advanced largely at the expense and exploitation of the latter. The sense of imbalance, or disequilibrium between cultural and natural ecologies is in the long run bound to have negative consequences for both forms of ecology, to the extent that cultural ecology is basically bound to and dependent upon natural ecology, and to the extent that natural ecologies are becoming increasingly influenced by and under the control of human cultural ecologies. The long-term consequence of course, as is evident with Global Warming and other global trends, is the rapid destruction and disruption of natural ecologies, almost upon every level at which they occur. These are long-term consequences for which we have known precedents, and, unfortunately, we do not have to wait very much longer to bear witness to their dire consequences.

The challenged faced by humankind is to bring back into balance, upon a new level, both natural and cultural ecologies, which means primarily the refashioning and reshaping of human cultural ecologies in a manner that will be less destructive and exploitative of natural ecologies. First and foremost is the effort to rapidly bring human population growth to control, even to a level of negative growth. Secondly, is to curtail and circumscribe the activities of human systems and communities, in terms that are most relevant to the future development of natural ecologies.

We are faced with a kind of Easter Island Scenario. The planet earth is a very large but not unlimited Easter Island. There is no convenient or suitable way off the island, at least for most people. We are wholly dependent upon the resources of the island for our survival and success, and yet by our very success in exploiting the resources of the island we are jeopardizing our future on that island. Of course, if we cut down all the trees on the island in order to transport our giant Moa heads, and we denude the island of all productive vegetation as a consequence ultimately of too great a human population, then we run headlong into the problem of the breakdown of natural ecologies for the sake of maintaining an imbalanced human ecology. We are then reminded of the Malthusian dilemmas of natural population increase that outstrips its environmental carrying capacities.

Altering human adaptive ecology to be more in line with a natural ecological framework begins with the individual in the home, but does not end there. Certainly in many systems it is not just undesirable, but downright socially self-destructive, to abnegate the drive and symbols of affluence by which modern societies are based and regulated, even if these patterns towards affluence are directly averse to the challenge of developing saner and safer human ecologies. I have learned this by personal experience. It takes organized corporate institutional structures to effectively implement new designs that encourage and entail alternative forms of human adaptation. Only by means of a ground swell, grass-roots movement, a "human tidal wave" might industry and government be encouraged to adopt alternative and less exploitative practices. If everyone boycotted those things known to be the most environmentally destructive, including large vehicles, etc, then certainly industry would be forced to alter their designs to suit public demand and taste. But cultivating such a form of resistance is difficult, especially when vast amounts of capital are spent just in advertising designed to convince people that they "need" big vehicles and the stuff that anti-environmental industry thrives upon.

It becomes in a sense, therefore, a kind of war, made up of many battles. The first battles are with ourselves in our local environment--recycling, eating lower on the trophic level, walking instead of driving, making fewer babies, working for the environment rather than against it, etc. It extends out to our local and areal communities--creating awareness, setting examples, participating and even initiating programs that come to rescue the environment or promote awareness of the environment. Finally, it extends to regional and national levels, and ultimately, to international and global levels of awareness.

We can conclude this overwrought essay by suggesting that those who are not only a part of the problem but the primary reason of the problem, cannot be counted upon to change themselves voluntarily, or to adopt policies that will be in reverse or adverse to their own established interests that are consonant with the established order of things in the world. The solution cannot come from those with power, but only from those who can and must empower themselves. The kind of revolution of human ecology I'm referring to is ultimately a kind of pacifist revolution, a concerted effort to deny to those who are in power and who are a big part of the problem the means of dehumanization and violence that they use to force their motives and get their way in the world.

The further removed or more distant the object of our observations and measurement from ourselves, in kind or quality or property of pattern we observe, the more non-arbitrary hence more objective manner we can attribute "truth" to our facts.

The complementary antithesis of this is the opposite principle:

The closer our descriptions and observations are in kind or quality or property of pattern to ourselves, even in a social sense of reality, the less non-arbitrary and hence less objective the knowledge and the manner with which we can attribute "truth" to our facts.

It seems we can contrapose the mighty but small atom against the larger but weaker human upon the opposite ends of a spectrum that is defined by relative arbitrariness and certainty about knowledge. If we realize at some point that, as the only observers and knowers in town, all our knowledge is ultimately situated at the human end of the spectrum, then we can see the dilemma this results in terms of the inherent anthropological relativity of our knowledge systems. We can, as "pure" scientists pretend that this is not so, or, better yet, presume it away, but we cannot really escape its implications and consequences for our knowledge systems and the constraints that we must deal with in terms of the scientific discovery and definition of reality.

First, Second & Third-Order Human Systems

Efficiency and Entropy within an Eco-evolutionary Context

Efficiency in ecological and evolutionary frameworks are relative to the system and the surroundings being described. A mechanical definition of efficiency is a relatively high ratio of output to input in a working system. An maximally efficient system accomplishes a set of effects (an end state) with the minimum of waste or effort. We can contrapose efficiency of a working system to the complementary state of entropy we can assign to a system, which for a closed thermodynamic system becomes the measure of the amount of total energy unavailable for work, or the relative measure of disorder or randomness in a system (in any given state). All naturally occurring systems, including human systems, must obey the laws of thermodynamics, which means that we can have no perfectly efficient or perfectly non-entropic system.

Work is defined as the informational (nonrandom) organization of energy to achieve some desired effect or product or to maintain some systemic state of order within a given amount of time. Work in its most fundamental sense can be defined as the systematic transfer of energy from one form or state to another, or state transformation. Work induces a kind of change therefore, and results a form of change. This form of change is the opposite of natural entropic tendencies towards increasing randomization. I will therefore call "positive change" any state transformation that results in an increasingly non-entropic state, and a negative change as any state transformation resulting in an increasingly entropic state.

All naturally occurring systems change.

No system that exists cannot change--there are no static systems.

There are no perfectly entropic or random states in reality.

There are no perfectly ordered or non-random states in reality.

All systems are changing either towards increasing order or increasing disorder.

All other things being equal, all systems will tend towards increasing disorder if no work is done to increase order.

Since work is always be definition imperfect, and because all systems tend in the long run toawards increasing disorder, all working systems must eventually become dysfunctional as systems.

Naturally occuring systems can therefore be called informationally stochastic or "self-organizing" systems because there occurs no well-defined, external causal agency that determines the organizational structure of the patterning of a system.

An organized system is one that is intelligently ordered, or "informationally coherent," to perform some minimal form of work. Intelligent ordering of any system is a measure of that system's integration and relative state complexity.

1. All systems are part of a larger, more entropic environment that constitute the surroundings of a system.

2. All systems are thermodynamically open to their surrounding environment.

3. All systems are composed of multiple components and thus are multi-factorially determined.

4. The determination of any system, according to the laws of thermodynamics and of informational dynamics, is always incomplete--systems are thus complexly underdetermined.

5. Systems are therefore subject to continuous state change that is both exogenous and exogenous.

6. The complex underdetermination of partially open thermodynamic systems entails that all such systems can perform only a limited amount of work for a given duration of time.

7. Eventually, all naturally occurring systems must disintegrate and cease to function (to do work) as informationally coherent systems.

It is important to distinguish between total entropy of a complex system and the net entropy of such a system.

1. Naturally occurring systems are self-organizational working systems that achieve some sense of complex equilibrium within its environment.

2. Equilibrium is an entropy dependent and temporally dependent relationship of a system, such that the higher the equilibrium of a system, the lower its total entropy, and the longer lasting the system will be.

3. This equilibrium can be understood in terms of the ratio of net efficiency of the ratio of energy input into a system (EI) over the energy output from the system (EO) plus the energy lost from the system, or the instantaneous disorder of the system (S) equals 1.

K = EO / EI - S = 1

4. All natural systems will tend towards some optimum value of equilibrium that will be a function of the time and size of the system. Equilibrium of a system is a time dependent function, such that a system will increase in order towards equilibrium, achieve a stable state-path trajectory, and eventually then decrease in order back towards total disequilibrium.

5. The measure of the efficiency of a system is positively correlated with the measure of the integration and informational value of a system.

6. A totally disordered system is a one that exists at the lowest potential energy state and has the least amount of informational value, whereas a hypothetically and totally ordered system is one that exists at the highest potential energy shate and that has the greatest amont of informational value.

Define natural physical systems.

Distinguish these from biological systems and define these.

Distinguish these from human systems and define these.

I will venture a basic set of propositions about biological systems in general and their eco-evolutionary tendencies:

1. Natural biological systems tend to evolve towards higher energy utilization or a higher energy budget but at a cost of greater entropy to the system.

The primary concerns with human systems theory are to explain:

The processes underlying the original and historical development of human systems

The processes underlying the organizational patterning and integration of human systems.

The processes underlying the transformation of human systems from one state into another.

Because human beings are mammals and are social, they represent animal populations. Human populations are therefore subject to the same basic biological imperatives that all biological systems are subject to. These imperatives, defined within an eco-evolutionary framework, are the challenges of adaptive survival and reproductive success. These become expressed in animal populations primarily in terms of three primary biological goals:

1. feeding as a primary measure of environmental adaptation

2. avoiding negative selection, primary by predation or parasitism

3. achieving positive selection by successful breeding

Because within a natural eco-evolutionary framework, no trait-development will be tolerated or successful in the long-term unless it promotes evolutionary success, the rise of human trait-complexes relating to and underlying human cultural systems can only be understood within an eco-evolutionary framework.

All natural systems are governed by basic thermodynamic rules and all biological ecosystems can be understood in terms the energy exchange dynamics that occur in such systems. Early eco-systems models were based upon energy exchange dynamics of foodwebs within ecosystems.

Reliance upon plants is an inherently more energy efficient strategy than reliance on other animals, and leads to greater biomass.

Larger biomass systems are determined either by greater population densities and/or greater body size per individual.

The rise of human cultural systems can be fit squarely into this eco-evolutionary framework. Human systems, as natural systems, will increase in order, scale and complexity as the result of increased working efficiency by which it achieves these basic biological imperatives. This is definable as the use of information (or know-how or "basic science") to improve the efficiency and likelihood of success in all three areas of adaptation.

It follows that the rise of human civilization and the evolutionary development of cultural systems can be understood clearly in terms of the degree to which these goals have been achieved with increasing efficiency through the use of knowledge.

1. early humans relied primarily upon high-energy cost/low efficiency patterns of Type III response and numerical response predation and attack-abatement/defense by which to accomplish biological goals 1 & 2. Predation strategies represented always mixed animal-plant dependent eco-trophic niche profiles that entailed a great deal of local and regional variability of patterning. Hunting and gathering strategies that were primarily opportunistic modes of adaptation that entailed active pursuit and defense and put humans at the top of the eco-trophic niche pyramid in competitive exclusion with other top predators: i.e. large cats. In order to survive, the earliest strategy adopted by human populations were those of niche diversification and niche generalization, requiring high levels of mobility and relatively small and flexible group formations that were most highly responsive to alternating environmental circumstances.

2. subsequent development of cultural patterns were tied to the alteration of food-getting and processing strategies that permitted lower energy costs per returns of food value, increasing security and increasing the potentiality of reproductive growth. Waterways adaptations to lacustrian, lotic and coastal systems were an important intermediate adaptation, as were the pre-pastoral reliance upon great herds of ungulates.

3. This process led eventually to multiple forms of plant and animal domestication, early forms featuring the domestication of horses, possibly reindeer, dogs, pigs, cattle, as well as many different kinds of plants and cereal cultigens like barley, early strains of wheat, rice, yam, taro, sago, bananas & plantains, etc. In this regard, it would be important to ask what pre-domesticated strains and patterns might have been like, such as broad-cast planting and harvesting of wild strains of rice, etc.

We can understand the net energy balance in human eco-systems in terms of the amount of free energy that could be achieved from any particular mixed or heterogeneous strategy that would be adopted by a group of a certain size. We can assume that in any given context, low energy expenditure would be the preferred pattern over high energy expenditure. We can assume as well that high energy returns would be preferred over low energy returns. We can expect a calculus in foraging strategy that would attempt to optimize gains over costs. The general pattern therefore was the following kind of game theory framework:

Low energy returns +1

High energy returns + 2

High energy expenditures -2

(-2 + 1) = -1

(-2 + 2) = 0

Low energy expenditures -1

(-1 + 1) = 0

(-1 + 2) = +1

It is evident in this model that we can derive correlation coefficients of systems relative to their total inputs and outputs. For any real system to be effective, it would depend upon a positive correlation between low energy expenditures (of human physical effort) and reasonably high energy returns (per unit of human effort). Systems must at least break even in this formula, and will soon go extinct if they fail or achieve a high negative correlation. As a result, humans have learned through information and know-how to substitute the labor or work of other animals to maximize their gains while minimizing their own expenditures. Much of the other "animals" have been other humans, and this formula underlies our history of complex social stratification. Domestication has represented a process of systematically substituting the labor of other animals in the management and procurement of increased resources. Later on, industrialization permitted humans to substitute physical machinery, coupled to natural energy sources, to drive sophisticated systems of production that tended to displace human labor. It cannot be said that the efficiency ratios under these alternative developments of second and third order systems were necessarily absolutely efficient per unit energy consumed, but it can be said that these systems tend to provide more stability and hence food-getting security for human populations, and relative to human labor, they provided net greater return. At the same time, these breakthroughs that permitted greater system stability at the same time provided a platform for dramatically increased population densities to be permanently sustained. It gave rise therefore also to new forms of social organization and new problems and issues that have yet to be solved.

Human population growth would be made possibly only under circumstances where favorable environmental conditions permitted favorable food-getting strategies and minimized negative selection. These would be the preferred locations-systems that humans would have found and they would have invented for themselves means to achieve this preferred pattern of pro-adaptive systems via adoption of various modalities of cultural selection (the use of know-how & information) to achieve either: 1. Higher energy systems; 2. Higher net gains in systems.

There were two general tendencies in human systems:1. the drive towards adaptation at lower eco-trophic niche levels, which permitted greater net energy returns in terms of total biomass of human systems; 2. the drive towards higher eco-trophic niche levels, which permitted humans to survive as secondary and even tertiary consumers which entailed that humans operated at lower overall biomass.

As long as these tendencies were achieved primarily through patterns of natural selection, the drive towards 1. Usually meant a form of adaptive-niche specialization and probably higher levels of predation. Thus, as long as this was primarily a naturally mediated processes through genetic character displacement, such groups would have run a high risk of extinction. 2. The alternate pattern entailed a form of adaptive-niche generalization and diversification, which entailed maximization of populations but at a narrower base near the top. This would have resulted in competitive exclusion of possible interspecific predators, and would have been evolutionarily the preferred pattern of development.

Human cultural systems achieve mostly a balance between these two tendencies, except in regions that prevent one or the other from occurring, such as in extremely cold or extremely hot and dry climates where plant productivity is comparatively lower.

We must distinguish between natural selection patterns, both positive and negative, as well as, in human systems, what can be called cultural selection patterns that were both positive and negative. Cultural selection factors can only be construed within an eco-evolutionary framework if they result in some form of natural selection pattern. Cultural selection factors therefore represent of form of indirect natural selection. The general trend over time was an increase in cultural selection factors and a decrease in influence of direct negative selection factors. This indirection was mediated within human cultural systems that achieved greater work load and/or greater efficiency and therefore carried heavier informational load and/or greater communicational efficiency.

Social & cultural stratification and the rise of second order systems.

Human systems are historically underdetermined

They tend towards increasing complexity, leading to supercritical states.

Expectable but unpredictable event structures lead to a sudden and rapid dissolution of the system of order.

Human prehistory is inherently complex and chaotic.

It is probably more complex than is evident by the archaeological record.

Human beings are fundamentally dynamic creatures who live chronically within dynamic contexts--things change and tend to go from simple to more complex.

Human systems, as natural systems, are in the long run subject to decay and disintegration, and this is explanable mechanistically in terms of the laws of thermodynamics.

Human systems, as cultural systems, are informationally based and comprise knowledge systems that are symbolically encoded.

People usually do things for reasons, even if the reasons may seem illogical or irrational.

Human history in the structure of the long run tends to be a history of unintended consequences.

Murphy's law of history: In spite the best of intentions, accidents tend to always happen.

A general archaeological model of human systems development and dynamics.

Explanation of culture change and dynamics:

Levels of human systems integration:

Culture change is both continuous and discontinuous, and it occurs upon multiple levels. It can be both selective and random, deliberate and unintended.

Culture loss

Culture drift

Culture conflict

Culture transmission

Culture displacement

First, Second & Third-Order Human Systems

Efficiency and Entropy within an Eco-evolutionary Context

The natural stratification of human systems

Human systems cohere upon multiple levels naturally. In this they are like other complex mammalian systems that also stratify upon several levels of patterning simultaneously. Unlike other similar biological systems, human systems are uniquely characterized by the quality and complexity of the pattern of integration that is achieved upon these different levels, and when we investigate patterns of human ecology and relationship within a metabiotic context, we discover that this ecology is also unique and unlike that of any other form of life on earth in terms of its complexity and sophistication of pattern. In particular we must attribute these unique patterns to certain properties of the large human brain and its consequences for behavior and for the life-trajectory of human beings. In particular we may specify the capacity of the human brain for human language and for symbolic pattern recognition and symbol manipulation. This patterning is also tied to prolonged post-partum infant dependency on a prolonged and delayed period of developmental acquisition that is achieved through learning and transmission of environmentally based patterns. Human beings have become evolutionarily dependent upon these post-partum patterns of postponed cognitive-morphological development to acquire the information and skills necessary for successful adaptation in complex contexts in the natural world. The result has been a form of symbolic-cultural dependency upon externally created systems of organization of information and behavior that are posited in the social body and pattern of social organization.

Thus we may find human systems being articulated on the level of the individual human being, the small biologically reproductive family grouping, and upon larger community and inter-community levels of organization and interaction. Each of these levels has a symbolic-cultural overlay with resonances upon the other levels, and we may say that human systems cohere upon these multiple levels to foster a sense of a human metasystem, or supersystem. If an individual human system is uniquely complex and its own system, it is also an inherently underdetermined system, as it is upon the other levels as well. As such, any individual human system is partially dependent upon involvement at the other levels in a larger framework of a metasystem. Such involvement entails that the individal human being cannot be a completely self-determining creature, but remains largely a product and a consequence of interacting factors embedded in larger situational circumstances, contexts normally defined in relation to a larger sense of social order.

It is the complex dependent and undetermined nature of human systems in general that have made the social, psychological, behavioral and anthropological sciences of these patterns so problematic and difficult. Comprehensive theory of such systems that is satisfactory for all interests and involvements in these areas of inquiry seems either impossible to achieve or else so remote a possibility that its likelihood remains very low.

Many in the field argue against the possibility of a genuine science of humankind that extends beyond a biological framework to embrace a cultural and social perspective.

A comprehensive framework of understanding human systems in general can only be achieved through the objectification of such systems, as cultural and symbolic based realities that are the product of natural patterning and integration involving the complexities of the human brain and other related and uniquely human capacities like language, hand-eye manipulation skills, symbolic cognition and human social patterning that also, in its total arrangement, seems unique on earth.

It is assumed that, because humans are all of a single species, a species that may have essentially evolved in just the past one hundred thousand years or so, the anthropological structure of this species remains in its basic substrate the same, or universal, for all intents and purposes, and in spite of a substantial amount of variability between populations and different individuals. It is clear that variability of patterning in the human species also coheres at multiple levels, individually and socially, and this variability is important to an understanding of the factors that influence human design. Thus, while we may produce generalizations about this patterning that upon some level or another hold true for all human beings, these generalizations are never complete or of the form that we find in the physical or even biological sciences, and they disguise generally a great range of natural variation that exists within the human population for any particular trait or trait complex.

This points up the first shared characteristic of the human species, upon a biological level, and that is the evidence for the tremendous genetic load that we carry as is evidenced by this pattern of variability. This load becomes expressed on both the individual and populational levels of variation, but it is especially apparent populationally when we take into account broad distributions of groups and subgroupings over large bio-geophysical regions. This load may well have been a consequence of the adaptive success of the human species in its ability to fan out to and occupy a vast range of different habitats in a variety of ecological frameworks, as well as its ability to perennially maintain surplus populations in a reproductive capacity that would be otherwise impossible or unlikely if selection regimes and circumstances were more restrictive and tolerance limits narrower.

All of this can be accounted for as the consequence of the cultural intervention, or process of cultural selection, operating in lieu of natural selection upon the human species. It may also have been the consequence of the the broad geographical distribution of the human species, especially in the last 70 thousand years, but even for the previous two million years, which may have resulted in broad patterns of genetic diffusion and rediffusion of traits leading to in increase in the overall heterogeneity of populations. The fact that the human species has remained reproductively viable on a species level in spite of a broad distribution and a great deal of inherent variability of pattern indicates that though many early human populations may have been relatively isolated from one another, few if any were or could afford to have been in complete isolation. Upon a regional level of increasing scope, local populations readily interacted and exchanged genetic traits as a result of such intercourse. Such variability that built up would result in increasing heterogeneity for the human population as a whole as well as an inherent stability of the overall population profile regardless of such a heavy load.

It is possible that this load is indicated by the relatively large number of genetic syndromes that recur in the human population, and in different populations, that have built up and resisted negative selection.

It is important to understand the larger and most basic evolutionary role that this genetic load may have played in the unique conditioning of the human species. This load was based upon a broad range adaptive generalization and successive radiations the consequence of which would have been a distinctive form and general direction of evolutionary development for humankind. It is possible that the unique patterns of human sexuality may be related to this issue of the maximization of genetic variability of the species. We may say that human beings have evolved as a rather sexually gregarious, if not completely promiscuous species, and this inherent orientation of human sexuality required subsequent institutional development of social mechanisms of control to limit and constrain populations especially in contexts where socio-environmental circumscription from local overpopulation developed. Sexual gregariousness assured the relatively open and unhindered transmission of genetic traits across a wide range gene pool.

The maximization of a generalizing strategy of adaptation may have been, throughout most of human evolutionary history, the default and predominant preference in selection patterns, which tendency would have resulted in and in turn benefited from the heterogenization and increase in genetic load of the human species.

It can be said that human populations increasingly benefited from carrying excess genetic load, as I have defined this, in spite of the risk of carrying potentially deleterious genetic traits forward. Increasing genetic load is related to increased adaptive/reproductive generalizability of the species. Maximization of the heterogeneity of the human population entailed that very wide parameters of environmental limitations could be set down upon this population. It is in this evolutionary context of favorable increase in genetic variability and load that we can find the causes and consequences of the expansion of human cranial capacity and its general specialization of the brain towards language and productive/reproductive behavior.

The human species through increased intelligence and development of a material culture gained a handle of cultural control over basic adaptive problems in natural selection. This led to a shift of emphasis from inter-specific relations increasingly towards intra-specific relations and preoccupations, and to a preoccupation with reproductive success, versus generalized adaptive success. Out-migration is a typical strategy for peripheral members or groups that fail to compete endogenously within a group context. Humans were well equipped for successful out-migration, and seem to have been selected by this method towards larger brains. A migrating group or disparate set of individuals would have to put a premium upon generalized adaptability to a broader range of possible resources and ecological relations. Such patterns of out-migration tended to select certain general types, and also encouraged the forms of gene transmission between groups that resulted in the amalgamation of the human species over space and time.

At the same time, it is possible that infant mortality rates during most of the period of human evolutionary emergence may have been quite high--in excess of 50 percent or more due to a variety of causes such as disease, malnutrition, neglect, accidental or intentional trauma, and abuse. Infant mortality rates as high as 30% are estimated for most human populations during the historical epoch previous to the industrial era and the age of modern medicine, and I would suspect that these rates were even higher during and earlier evolutionary epoch.

Such high rates of infant mortality must be seen in connection to the long periods of post-partum neo-natal and infantile dependency that would put both the child and the mother at some risk in contexts where their minimal requirements for survival could not be easily or straightforwardly met. I suspect that a mother or couple could afford to lose a child, being capable of easily replacing the child with a new one within a year or less. A high rate of infant mortality would almost certainly be correlated with a high rate of birth for mothers, and a maximization of the reproductive role of the female within such a context. A premium would be thus set pon a females reproductive capacity and the maximization of this capacity during a woman's life cycle. This dilemma is a paradox when we consider that human populations probably tended towards their saturation levels for most of human history. If human populations found an ecological vacuum, then within just a few generations they could quickly fill this vacuum with descendants. In such circumstances, social investment in the welfare of the individual would be a function of longevity and age would be a principal factor of social stratification within such a system. Early human populations rapidly increased to their carrying capacity as a consequence of their high rates of birth, stimulated by high rates of infant mortality. It would have required an average of 100 births to produce fifty or less viable adult offspring capable of carrying the genetic load, and of these fifty, the gene pool would have been split almost in half between male and female. If these twenty-five couples were reassorted, and had 10 births each on average, with a similar 50% birth rate, then at the end of a cycle 125 viable offspring would be produced, which would lead to a reassortment of 62.5 males and a similar number of females, or more than twice the previous generation. The generation cycle would be shortened as well, with an estimated time of less than twenty five years--possibly as few as 15 years. In a sense such a system would exhibit a self-maintaining equilibrium of exponential increase coupled to a cycle of periodic expansion-niche diversification and out-migration, as well as to a larger system of mate-exchange and genetic transmission. The basis for a primitive form of regional or inter-community social organization would be established. A group of ten individuals, five males and five females, could potentially migrate to a new region and within a century reach the carrying capacity for the region with fourth or fifth generation offspring, some of whom would then be faced with the choice of having to seek greener pastures, and hence new social relations beyond the area. This pattern is to be considered especially applicable to an understanding of early human ecology if we also understand that this adaptive success was largely mediated through human-made technology and increasing knowledge that permitted humans a broader base of eco-trophic niche adaptation than would have been otherwise possible, and hence capable of sustaining in a stable manner a much higher carrying capacity than would have been otherwise possible under natural (i.e., non-cultural circumstances.)

Under the framework of a perennially heavy genetic load, there would be a premium placed on out-mating to larger systems, as I suspect that if inbreeding occurred at a high rate, then deleterious traits would quickly show up in such a loaded system resulting in rapid decline of viable offspring.

Within such a framework genetic load and inheritance of deleterious or less than optimal traits could be tolerated up to some point, as the high likelihood of early death would have obviated the consequences of this load anyway, and the benefit of maintaining an open gene pool would have outweighed its potential costs.