This is Origin Stories, the Leaky Foundation podcast.

I'm Meredith Johnson.

Being human means wanting to belong to something bigger than ourselves.

We're driven to form bonded groups with strong loyalties, shared names, histories, beliefs, and heritage.

In anthropology, these groups are called tribes, and they're an essential element of human behavior.

So much so that when existing tribes decline, new ones will form.

Dr. Polly Weisner is an anthropologist who studied tribes all over the world.

She's conducted 40 years of research among the San of the Kalahari Desert, and 30 years among the Enga in Papua New Guinea.

Her research focuses on the power of social networks and the ways traditional

societies respond to rapid cultural change. On today's episode, we're sharing a lecture she

gave as part of the Leakey Foundation's Survival Symposium series. In this talk, she

discusses tribes, old, and new. What tribes might have been like over human history,

why and how tribes form,

the emotional and psychological impact of tribal culture on members,

and how our tribal nature is evolving.

Here's Polly Wisner, recorded in September 2019

at the Morgan Library in New York.

About 2006, I was in Highland, Papua New Guinea, far out in the bush,

interviewing an old tribal leader who was a renowned peacemaker.

And it was at a very difficult time because among the Eng of Papadougin,

the bow and arrow had been replaced

by shotguns and high-powered weapons almost overnight.

...