At the Airport. An airport scene ; Why study traditional societies? ; States ; Types of traditional societies ; Approaches, causes, and sources ; A small book about a big subject ; Plan of the book. --
Part one. Setting the Stage by Dividing Space. Friends, enemies, strangers, and traders (Boundary ; Mutually exclusive territories ; Non-exclusive land use ; Friends, enemies, and strangers ; First contacts ; Trade and traders ; Market economies ; Traditional forms of trade ; Traditional trade items ; Who trades what? ; Tiny nations). --
Part two. Peace and War. Compensation for the death of a child (An accident ; A ceremony ; What if? ; What the state did ; New Guinea compensation ; Life-long relationships ; Other non-state societies ; State authority ; State civil justice ; Defects in state civil justice ; State criminal justice ; Restorative justice ; Advantages and their price) ; A short chapter, about a tiny war (The Dani war ; The war's time-line ; The war's death toll) ; A longer chapter, about many wars (Definitions of war ; Sources of information ; Forms of traditional warfare ; Mortality rates ; Similarities and differences ; Ending warfare ; Effects of European contact ; Warlike animals, peaceful peoples ; Motives for traditional war ; Ultimate reasons ; Whom do people fight? ; Forgetting Pearl Harbor). --
Part three. Young and Old. Bringing up children (Comparisons of child-rearing ; Childbirth ; Infanticide ; Weaning and birth interval ; On-demand nursing ; Infant-adult contact ; Fathers and allo-parents ; Responses to crying infants ; Physical punishment ; Child autonomy ; Multi-age playgroups ; Child play and education ; Their kids and our kids) ; The treatment of old people : cherish, abandon, or kill? (The elderly ; Expectations about eldercare ; Why abandon or kill? ; Usefulness of old people ; Society's values ; Society's rules ; Better or worse today? ; What to do with older people?). Part four. Danger and Response. Constructive paranoia (Attitudes towards danger ; A night visit ; A boat accident ; Just a stick in the ground ; Taking risks ; Risks and talkativeness) ; Lions and other dangers (Dangers of traditional life ; Accidents ; Vigilance ; Human violence ; Diseases ; Responses to diseases ; Starvation ; Unpredictable food shortages ; Scatter your land ; Seasonality and food storage ; Diet broadening ; Aggregation and dispersal ; Responses to danger). --
Part five. Religion, Language, and Health. What electric eels tell us about the evolution of religion (Questions about religion ; Definitions of religion ; Functions and electric eels ; The search for causal explanations ; Supernatural beliefs ; Religion's function of explanation ; Defusing anxiety ; Providing comfort ; Organization and obedience ; Codes of behavior towards strangers ; Justifying war ; Badges of commitment ; Measures of religious success ; Changes in religion's functions) ; Speaking in many tongues (Multilingualism, The world's language total ; How languages evolve ; Geography of language diversity ; Traditional multilingualism ; Benefits of bilingualism ; Alzheimer's disease ; Vanishing languages ; How languages disappear ; Are minority languages harmful? ; Why preserve languages? ; How can we protect languages?) ; Salt, sugar, fat, and sloth (Non-communicable diseases ; Our salt intake ; Salt and blood pressure ; Causes of hypertension ; Dietary sources of salt ; Diabetes ; Types of diabetes ; Genes, environment, and diabetes ; Pima Indians and Nauru Islanders ; Diabetes in India ; Benefits of genes for diabetes ; Why is diabetes low in Europeans? ; The future of non-communicable diseases). --
At Another Airport. From the jungle to the 405 ; Advantages of the modern world ; Advantages of the traditional world ; What can we learn?
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