Montagnais-Naskapi
Article
Montagnais-Naskapi is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 10, 2022 and July 15, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Montagnais-Naskapi, who anthropologists normally consider egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers”; “the Montagnais-Naskapi tribe performs a divination ritual”. It most often appears alongside Hobbes, Iroquois, Kenya.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: June 10, 2022
- Last seen: July 15, 2025
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Hobbes (2 shared issues)
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- Iroquois (2 shared issues)
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- Kenya (2 shared issues)
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- North America (2 shared issues)
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- Rousseau (2 shared issues)
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- 50,000 BC (1 shared issues)
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- Aboriginal (1 shared issues)
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- Aboriginal Australia (1 shared issues)
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- Aboriginal society (1 shared issues)
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- Aborigine (1 shared issues)
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- Aborigines (1 shared issues)
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- Aborigines of Australia (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Because it sure looks like being popular was the primary concern for prehistorical societies, at least if we use the same evidence the Davids do. In 1642, the Jesuit missionary Le Jeune described this phenomenon of a lack of all formal power among the Montagnais-Naskapi, who anthropologists normally consider “egalitarian” bands of hunter-gatherers:
The former chronicles the wonders of cultural evolution. Seemingly “primitive” societies’ seemingly “barbaric” practices turn out to be brilliant beyond “civilized” man’s ability to comprehend. For example, the Montagnais-Naskapi tribe performs a divination ritual using an animal’s shoulder bones to decide where to hunt. This sounds stupid, but Henrich chronicles how the divination ritual actually has useful mathematics-of-randomness properties that makes it more likely to generate efficient hunting patterns than the tribesmen would get through normal decision procedures. The Aztecs performed a complicated series of rituals to corn before they ate it, mixing it with powdered shells; only in the 1900s did Westerners realize that this process activates vitamins; without it, anyone who eats too much corn risks dying of niacin deficiency. Henrich’s conclusion is that primitive tradition is a repository of wondrous practices selected by millennia of trial-and-error, and we pooh-pooh it at our peril.