Reply #8: My disagreement was based on tying such societies to herding-based economies.

[ConsAreLiars]

At least before being turned into a killing field, Afghanistan had an extensive system of canals that were used to route summer snow melts from the mountains to irrigate farmlands and orchards and fill cisterns. Although goatherds were a part of the economy, agriculture and commerce were no less important, and the same sets of values are shared by all. The food merchant in a village is no less vulnerable to bandit attacks than the guy with the goats, and the only solution to that problem was elimination of that particular gang. Catching them and shackling them to the wall of a dungeon and tossing them food and disposing of their waste every so often, well, that was not really an option.

I think the strength of the short article is in pointing out that material conditions shape ideology and "morality," rather than seeing such beliefs and value systems as wholly arbitrary of accidental. "How their minds construct the world" depends greatly on how that world actually is.