DYING, AGING AND TANISTRY

One of the things that makes evolutionary psychology such an interesting subject it that it generates many questions. One question that popped into my head as I was reading Fischer’s book Albion Seeds about folkways of English immigrants to the United States surrounding death rituals and aging related to the idea of how did humans adapt to knowing they could die especially as it relates to organization in society. Certain other animals know they can die but do not contemplate the consequences of dying on themselves or others as we do—they simply die and are gone. Thoughts related to dying include thought about ageing.

The first concern is with our own well-being after we die; this gives rise to all the spiritual and religious nonsense about souls, heaven, and hell. It is not enough to simply die and that is that. On a more practical basis, we know we will rot and decay, which is a nasty mess. Caskets, tombs, holes in the ground, funeral pyres within one, two, or three days are all part of the culturally influenced rituals. Some elaborate form of embalming go back to ancient Egypt but in term of, death related folkways in America were much simpler and involved such things as relatives putting dishes of salt on the stomachs of the dead because the know salt is a preservative. In addition to the biology of death there are great concerns with our accumulated wealth, which is so precious in life; we write wills, etc. Much of this shows up as cultural universals meaning our genome reflects some of these social adaptations or behaviors as they relate to growing old. I think a relationship to death and aging by natural selection relate to hierarchy dominance, which by definition has to be a group and not an individual adaptation.

I learned a couple of new words when reading about this as it relates to our ancestors from England—the “seeds” of our culture. The first is ‘tanistry’. It relates to the law of succession of authority. It is not necessarily primogeniture; the oldest son gets everything including the right to dominate those the father dominated; it is the most able. It could be the strongest, the most able, the most cunning, etc. The word father and not mother is intended and reflects the truth of gender dominance. Good sense would suggest the worthiest and wisest of the male relatives of the “chief, king, boss” elected by the people from among eligible candidates would be the leader. The eligible relatives were termed the ‘derbfine’, a cohort of kin extending to as many as four generations, which can include many people. In modern times, I expect it would extent to as many as five-generations because of longer lives. This is where story seems to turn bestial; to be a product of natural selection, a well conserved biological and not a cultural universal.

The historical record indicates that Anglo Irish Judges declared the practice of tanistry illegal because it resulted in bloody wars and feuds between families within the derbfine. A clear indication that fighting and killing each other to gain a leadership position was common. They were acting like a pack of wolves, or a group of apes, or any of a large number of other beasts, which adds the dimension of weakening due to sickness and/or aging. These judges were my relatives in the time of James I (1566-1625). With 20 years per generation, it would be 20 generations ago that my some of my relatives were fighting like animals for dominance.

I cannot speak for others but I can trace a thread of logic running through this bit of natural history. It seems as if we as a species have made some progress over the past 400 years or 20 generations, call it humanization if you like. Since that time we leaned to write wills and refine some laws related to tanistry to eliminate some bestial aspects of the process and expand a derbfine from four generation of kin to “all” of humankind—if we ignore racial slavery—confined within well defined political boundaries we call states and nations. We have progressed from packs and tribes to societies regulated by Monarchs and Sultans, to well-regulated elections that include women. My ancestors might say we have a “jolly good start”, if that is how people who originate from the border country of northern England, Scotland and Ireland would say it.

URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated