Human universals are those things found in all known human societies, like gossip and envy. No matter where you go there they are.
I list some below. The full list is too long for a 500-word post. I will not list things that are seen as common among other animals, like feelings, fighting and defending land. Nor will I list things that an ordinary person would not notice or care about, like stuff about phonemes.
- technology: fire, lever, shelter, spear, weapons, tools, tools to make tools, cutting, tying, measuring
- language: nouns, verbs, figurative speech, language as not a simple reflection of reality
- numbers: one, two
- named colours: black, white
- words for different plants, animals, body parts, inner states, family relationships based on birth, kinds of weather, units of time
- thought:
- logic: part/whole, general/particular, opposite, same, not, and
- ideas: male, female, mother, father, child, face, hand, person, self and others, intention, roles, personality, behaviour, fairness, right and wrong, true and false, fortune and misfortune, time, past, present, future, speed, motion
- poor objectivity
- dichotomies
- what-if reasoning
- imagination
- folklore, jokes, myth, stories, poetry, sayings
- art and beauty
- music, melody, singing, rhythm, religious music, dance music
- dance
- decoration
- hairstyles, bodily adornment
- faces:
- expressions of anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise
- trying to hide your feelings by the expression on your face
- knowing people by their face
- self:
- private inner life
- self-image
- personal name
- trying to change one’s mood (like through drink and drugs)
- judging others, pride, envy, gossip, lies, insults, hope, revenge
- hospitality, visiting, manners, greetings, gifts
- meal time
- cooking
- men, women and children as having different natures
- division of labour by gender and age
- pretend play
- taking turns
- rituals and customs, especially about birth and death
- finding meaning in dreams
- trying to tell what the future will be
- planning the future
- medicine
- magic
- religion or belief in the supernatural
- sexual modesty
- marriage
- taboos: about sex between mother and son, certain foods, certain words
- morals: incest, murder, rape, some forms of violence as wrong
- moral ideas: authority, obedience, crime, punishment, deals, favours, motive, character
- righting wrongs
- law: rules, rights, duties
- collective decision-making
- rich and poor, trade, property, rules for inheritance
- nepotism
- ethnocentrism
- collective identities
- in-groups and out-groups
The Swadesh list of the 100 words most commonly found in human languages (near-universal):
- pronouns: I, you, we, this, that
- actions: see, hear, say, know, come, give, eat, bite, drink, sit, stand, walk, lie (down), sleep, swim, fly, burn, die, kill
- adjectives: good, big, small, long, dry, hot, cold, full, round, new
- colours: white, black, red, green, yellow
- number: one, two
- quantity: all, many
- questions and logic: who?, what?, not
- people: man (not woman), woman, person, name
- man-made: path, fire, ashes, smoke
- nature: water, stone, earth, sand, cloud, rain, night, star, sun, moon, mountain
- plants: tree
- of plants: leaf, bark, root, seed
- animals: fish, dog, bird, louse
- of animals: head, hair, eye, ear, nose, mouth, tongue, tooth, neck, breasts, skin, hand, belly, knee, foot, horn, claw, tail, feather, liver, heart, bone, blood, grease, flesh, egg
- plants: tree
Sources: Steven Pinker, “The Blank Slate” (2002), Wikipedia: Swadesh list (2012), behavioural modernity, Kohlberg’s Stages Of Moral Development
See also:
- behavioural modernity – human universals as they appear archaeologically
- Kohlberg’s Stages Of Moral Development – universal moral stages that people go through
- dichotomous thinking
- “It was the times!” – the fallacy of assuming that the past had less advanced morals
- Reading Thucydides – led to a discussion on human universals
Abagond, Thank You for this very informative post. Again, Thanks for the knowledge.
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Just curious, Abagond, do you find this list to be accurate? I tend to question it when someone says something is universal.
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yea white and black areny colors. theyre tints.
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Otherwise fairly accurate but: Where is sweet tooth? I have not met a single culture or people who do not have any sweets of some sort.
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Competition for females not only is throughout the human race, its very much in effect throughout the animal world also
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@ Sam
The list is not exhaustive. Steven Pinker, the main source for the list, does list “sweets preferred”. I left it off because I am not sure if that is just a human thing.
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@ K AWesome (@raylene05)
I think the list is more or less right. It roughly falls in line with behavioural modernity – the sort of things that began to appear in Europe in the archaeological record when Homo sapiens arrived. But there are probably some debatable items.
For example, “religion or belief in the supernatural” is debatable. That will turn on your definition of “religion” and “supernatural”: conceived too narrowly in a Western way and it will fail.
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@abagond: Ok. I know some animals also prefer sweet taste but I don’t know do they go looking for it or just eat it if and when they happen to find it. But the idea of sweets connecting people is also funny. Think about high level meeting between heads of states. The meeting goes not so well untill someone passes around a small bag of candy.
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You forgot to include in TABOOS sex between Father and daughter.
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This post is positively existential my brotha : )
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Wow, a rage face. Last thing I expected to see in a post of yours. 😛
Anywho, this is a pretty interesting post. Good job with it.
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Division of labour by GENDER and age. Not by sex. This is evident in Dayak peoples as described by Christine Helliwell.
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Abagond:
Thus my contention that “racism” is natural. That’s not to say it’s desirable or inevitable, but rather that it’s congruent with the common human tendency towards groupism. Considering the innumerable ways in which people engage in discriminatory groupism, why wouldn’t race be part of this?
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