Commentary: A Response to Doug Jones

Commentaries

Commentary: A Response to Doug Jones D A N I E L W I L D C AT IRENA SUMI V I N E D E L O R I A J r. We are interested in Doug Jones’s [AA 105.3] proposed use of kinship systems as criterion for human “prehistory” (2003:501), especially “given the scanty knowledge available” (2003:502) at this time. What is the evidence for the proposed new “deep” genealogy? Particularly troubling seems the new return to old discredited evolutionary assumptions about culture, history, and humankind. Judging from the writings of one of the pioneers of the “new synthesis,” the emerging “new” story of humankind’s “origin” and “demic expansion” is not only not so new (Renfrew 2000a) but also nowhere nearly as simple or reliable as Jones would have us believe (Renfrew 2000b). In Jones’s study of kinship and culture areas, we are told there is evidence for global-scale patterning of cultural variation. We are then given the rather weak assessment that in understanding this variation one cannot deny influences from ecology and subsistence regimes and that, ultimately, when correlations are run between absolute latitudes of the ten culture areas and social structure “the correlations are only marginally significant” (2003:505). We hope scientists require more evidence than offered here to reach conclusions. Even in sub-Saharan Africa where genetics and linguistics seem to correlate very highly with demic expansions, the outliers—the Amhara and !Kung San—suggest precisely that environment and history might play roles in cultural variation. Likewise, the claim that there may also be an Amerind language macrofamily is controversial precisely because there is so little evidence for its existence. The evidence for synthesis seems to only weaken as we visit different geographic realms around the world; Jones repeatedly takes us from “prehistory” to “precapitalism” to “ethnographic present” in a single breath. No doubt one can find high correlations between genes, languages, and kinship systems in many places. However, the definition of social structure that is associated with such analyses is terribly simplistic and reified. Involving population genetics is par-

ticularly misleading: Population genetics employs a mathematical model whose crucial dynamic variable is “mutation” readable in genetic markers such as mtDNA and the Y-chromosome. The frequency of these mutations is matter of speculation: It is deemed accurate or credible when the computed spans of time between mutations fit a preset, hypothetical scenario of a “demic expansion.” Exciting as such speculative science may be, it nevertheless yields bland, linear, and unimaginative speculation on humankind’s past. Moreover, it seems to exploit the fact that few social scientists familiarize themselves with modern genetics, and likewise geneticists seem largely ignorant of what social scientists know about the way humans build their communities and imagine the past, as well as how social scientists in turn represent these notions. This mutual ignorance seems to increasingly produce unquestioned mutual belief. Science never occurs in a vacuum. Is it worth asking why this “old” story clothed in the “new synthesis” is so important and to whom does it matter so much? At present “new synthesis” advocates would do well to more clearly sort out their assumptions, evidence, theories, and knowledge.

D ANIEL W ILDCAT American Indian Studies, Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence, Kansas 66046 I RENA S UMI Institute for Ethnic Studies, 1000 Ljubljana, Erjavceva 26, Slovenia V INE D ELORIA J R. Professor Emeritus, History Department, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309

REFERENCES CITED Jones, Doug 2003 Kinship and Deep History: Exploring Connections between Culture Areas, Genes, and Languages. American Anthropologist 105(3):501–514. Renfrew, Colin 2000a At the Edge of Knowability: Towards a Prehistory of Languages. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10(1):7–34. 2000b Introductory. Archaeogenetics:Towards a Population Prehistory of Europe. In Archaeogenetics: DNA and the Population Prehistory of Europe. Colin Renfrew and Katie Boyle, eds. Pp. 3–13. Cambridge: McDonald Institute Monographs (Oxbow Books).

C 2004 by the American Anthropological Association. All American Anthropologist, Vol. 106, Issue 3, p. 641, ISSN 0002-7294, online ISSN 1548-1433.
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