Human Groups as Evolving Organisms
Wednesday March 1, 2017 12:00pm-1:00pm
The Old Church (corner of First Avenue and King Street) - Smithers, BC
About this presentation
In this seminar, Richard Overstall continues the story from previous talks of how a complex, horizontal, bottom-up social order developed on what is now called the North Coast of British Columbia. Earlier presentations showed that the spatial and temporal patterns of available, high-energy foods in the region of the Skeena-Nass estuary over the last two millennia required disparate groups of peoples to interact with each other—at first in physical conflict, and later as nested, delicately balanced groups governed by laws of kinship and contracted alliances. This seminar focuses on the adaptive governance structures those groups generated in order to efficiently harvest food, shelter and technological materials to sustain a rich and intricate culture, while dealing with the inevitable tensions of living in close proximity to one another.
About Richard Overstall
Richard is a Smithers lawyer who, among other things, is enthralled by the interaction of the natural environment, human actions, and the law from deep historical times to the present.
