Talk:Savanna principle
 | The contents of the Savanna principle page were merged into Satoshi Kanazawa on 13 September 2017 and it now redirects there. For the contribution history and old versions of the merged article please see its history. |
I'm not sure why this article exists. Ideally there should be a page on the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA), which is apparently a major source of 'inspiration' for the Savanna principle. The Savanna principle is not an original idea and I doubt many evolutionary psychologists have actually even heard of this way of talking about the EEA. Sorry for not having time to do this myself, but this article needs a flag of some kind. Ianrickard (talk) 09:18, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Development
[edit]Very poorly developed, it isn't clear which parts are just undisputed evolutionary history (the ancestral environment was the savanna, and the environment is now different), and which parts are an actual "theory", and the so-called "challenges" making the obvious statement that the radically changed conditions imposed different selection pressures aren't even addressing the "savanna principle" in any way. They aren't "challenges" because there is no obvious contradition.
The "savanna principle" seems to posit that basic human universals reflect the savanna environment. This seems to me rather pedestrian and more like a commonplace than a "theory". The selection pressures arising since the Neolithic revolution affected some populations but not others, so clearly whatever we find are human universals (ingroup-outgroup behavior, sexual jealousy, preference for sugar) clearly didn't arise with them and clearly wasn't erased by them, while other traits, such as cohesion in tribal societies, altruism, religion, and in northern climate the strong pressure against temporal discounting otoh are clearly not of "savanna" origin because they aren't human universals.
I fail to see the problem. There are human universals, and then there is human biodiversity. This "savanna" thing traces the universals to the savanna, but it clearly will not attempt to trace non-universals to the savanna. --dab (𒁳) 09:40, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
- Support merge proposal instituted at about the time of the last comment; all the source from the Savanna principle are by Satoshi Kanazawa, so the lack of independent coverage suggests that a merge to a section on his page would be appropriate. Klbrain (talk) 16:40, 20 August 2017 (UTC)