Marvin Harris
MOTHER COW
· · Some reports consider this belief as one of the main factors of poverty and hunger in the area, to diminish the agricultural efficiency. But if you look at the data on cattle, we see that there are very few oxen, animal along with the water buffalo are the main source of traction for plowing fields. The lack of animal traction is a serious risk to farm families who may lose their properties. Zebu cows oxen stop, do not specialize in the manufacture of milk, like Westerners, although they produce help to support their respective owners. The Indian industrial system also consumes very little power compared to modern western agriculture.
· In addition, you get more calories when they eat the plants directly through the consumption of animals and their meat is not wasted as there are castes who consume it, after her death. There is no competition with man for food, because cows eat mostly waste, converting low-value items of immediate use in products such as milk.
• The Cow love to help humans survive in an ecosystem of low energy, where there is no room for wastage. This shows that India uses its cattle more effectively than the U.S., not because the animals are more productive, but because they use all their products.
PORCOILIA And PORCOFOBIA
· · This issue raises the question of why some people hate the same animal that others love. The pig is an abomination to Jews and Muslims, while the center of pig love is in New Guinea and Melanesian islands.
· But taboos ecological explanations in addition to also serve the social function of providing a community of distinctive signs. Currently this is its function, assuming no serious loss to this community and be distinguishable from the rest of humanity.
Primitive warfare
· · Primitive people up in the fight when no better alternatives to concrete problems. The Maring, for example, attributed to the vengeance of violence, as in many other towns.
• The war broke out in the time of production and consumption are booming. The important thing is not the regulating effect of war on a particular group, but on the whole population of the region. And is not caused by the casualties of combat, and that the belligerents are the men and their deaths hardly affect the reproductive potential. The Maring, like many primitive groups practice polygyny, many men have several wives, and women develop the most horticultural tasks. In fact, the system retains the Maring war through two indirect consequences: the gardens are abandoned before reaching the roof of their productivity and increasing female infant mortality. The temporary abandonment of the orchards to maintain the carrying capacity of the region, are intensively cultivated areas as fallow as they are put into growing new areas. In the system of slash and burn the continued operation of an area, poses a threat to the resilience of the forest.
• The war is the price paid by primitive societies to raise children when they can not afford to create daughters. And the war, throughout history, has been an adaptive strategy linked to technological, demographic and specific ecological and not the result of the aggressive nature of human beings as we have been postulating.
THE WILD MALE
· • The female infanticide practiced by the most primitive societies, is a demonstration of male supremacy. The main form of human adaptation is cultural, not biological, so in the human physical differences are not significant.
The more ferocious · are men, most wars are, and men are needed most ferocious. While increases sexual aggression, exploitation of women and polygyny. Polygyny leads to a shortage of women, increases the level of frustration among young men and power the reasons for going to war. Taken to climax women are neglected and killed in infancy and wage war to capture women and men can raise aggressive.
THE POTLATCH
· · Because of their desire for prestige are more people working and increasing production in the area, while Grant plays the role of preventing labor productivity levels recede to offer no safety margin to the crisis and serves to create an extensive network of economic expectations. Acted as compensator annual production fluctuations between different areas.
· This form of exchange produced by the great men and the potlatch is to assemble the productive efforts of many people and then redistribute them differently. But while the big men were no crumbs so with the heads of potlatchs, they left the hard work for his followers. For Harris, the next step in social evolution, would be the hereditary kings who had not done any basic and best kept to himself.
• The feasting appears when you can increase the productive efforts without inflicting damage to the habitat carrying capacity. And this was achieved when animals and plants were domesticated, as greater effort is an increase in production. The only problem is that people only work right and so did the redistribution. Almost all hunters and gatherers with social systems based on reciprocity, were destroyed or moved to remote areas, by more powerful and populous societies, which increased the production and organized hierarchically.