The bare necessities

What is the smallest set of things that we need in a modern consumer society? Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller delves for insights ON SOCIAL media site Instagram, thousands of people in the US post photos with the hashtag #edc, meaning “everyday carry”. These show the tools, weapons and accoutrements that they haul around day in, day out. Men also show off the contents of their pockets through #pocketdump (currently 17,900 photos), whereas women tend to favour #whatsinmybag (25,450 photos). The core stuff is remarkably similar for both groups. Those possessions we keep closest on a daily basis have a special practicality, concreteness, intimacy and symbolic importance. As the tool-making species, we are what we carry. And what we carry might offer a guide to what we really need, stripped of the clutter of overconsumption. For an evolutionary psychologist like me it is natural to wonder if we can link our everyday stuff to that of our distant ancestors, for whom raw survival dictated most possessions. Sadly, we don’t have any prehistoric #pocketdump or #whatsinmybag images, but we do have some useful clues from Ötzi, a man who lived about 5300 years ago, and whose ice-preserved body was found in the Italian Alps in 1991. Since then, we have learned a lot about him, from his genome and the proteins expressed in his brain to the make-up of his gut microbes and his lethal arrow wound. His possessions were also wellpreserved: a diverse set of clothes, tools, weapons, fire-makers, supplies and foulweather gear suitable for his mixed roles of soldier, hunter, camper and explorer. Much of his gear looks primitive to modern eyes. But Ötzi wasn’t a distant ancestor: he had an anatomically modern brain in an anatomically modern body. In terms of timescale, we are no further from Socrates than Socrates was from Ötzi. So we should be able to find similarities between what he carried and our essentials. The things we carry NATHAN SCHRODER Many are obvious. Ötzi’s tinder fungus and flint for making fires is analogous to a lighter. His lumps of birch polypore fungus had antibiotic and antiparasitic properties, as well as the ability to stop bleeding, like modern Amoxycillin, deworming tablets and adhesive bandages. Likewise, Ötzi’s clothing and luggage make sense to us as everyday essentials. His well-worn, often-repaired goat-hide leggings are akin to a favourite pair of jeans. His deerskin shoes with bearskin soles are like rugged boots. His leather backpack is today’s bag to haul our essentials around. But it is Ötzi’s weapons that really  get to the heart of the search for our essential possessions – namely, the ability to acquire food. His longbow was an important possession. If he had lived long enough to finish making it, it would have been a formidable weapon, capable of killing animals up to 40 metres away. In the same vein, Ötzi’s prize possession was probably his axe, with a blade of almost pure copper. It could chop down trees, split firewood and defend against humans and predatory animals. Security and warmth are core necessities for us, too. Of course across much of the world we no longer need an axe or longbow to acquire food and gain security, and this is where we get to the core of the things we really need today. Given modern supermarkets, hospitals, police and armies, the true analogues are the debit card, the health-insurance card, the driver’s licence and the passport. As physical objects, they are just shards of paper and plastic, hardly enough to swat a fly. But as identity technologies, they tap into all the threats and promises offered by vast systems of finance, medicine, security and governance. The contents of a high-status New Yorker’s wallet or purse represent a small yet potent claim on the combined resources BRIDGEMAN/GETTY of Citibank, the Mount Sinai Medical Center, the New York Police Department and the US Navy.  Although not a carried possession, there is another aspect of Ötzi’s life  that informs today’s needs. For thousands of years, his people lived  in permanent settlements, usually on hilltops, for protection against raids.  If Ötzi was high status, he would have lived in the equivalent of a McMansion  in a gated community, with an active neighbourhood watch. Almost all #pocketdump or #whatsinmypurse images include house keys. This ubiquitous portable possession unlocks warmth, shelter, security and access to the rest of our things. And while most of Ötzi’s possessions look purely practical, it is clear that some had a bit more pizzazz. Take his stripy coat. It was made from strips of goat hide, alternating dark and light, and would have presented a striking pattern. Today’s urban hipster might wear a bomber jacket in distressed leather – wholly practical yet pretentiously stylish. And Ötzi’s axe almost certainly carried prestige value;  of his formally buried clan-mates, fewer than one in five were interred with similar axes. We start to see that even essentials can’t escape that grey zone where needs and wants mingle. Just like Ötzi’s axe, the stuff we carry can go beyond the practical to be highly symbolic – the iPhone 5S,  the BMW car keys, the “magnum-sized” condoms, the Clinique lipstick. World in our hands Finally, our most advanced essential – the smartphone – has no real analogue in Ötzi’s kit. With it we can access any human knowledge, buy any good or service, and summon any form of help. We can talk with any of the 5 billion people who own a phone. We can find  our location through GPS, food through Yelp, shelter through Airbnb and a mate through Match.com. If the copper axe was the most distinctive status symbol that Ötzi carried, the smartphone is ours. Clearly, at the physical level, our technologies are better, lighter and  more robust than Ötzi’s. Our modern boots beat Ötzi’s leaky shoes. Amoxycillin kills bacteria better than birch fungus. Yet the real power of our handy essentials comes from the physical, social and informational ecosystems that they let us access. Car keys, house keys, debit cards, passports and smartphones aren’t just hardware; they are the input-output devices that let our brains and bodies plug into modern civilisation. One car key can access 300 horsepower. One Oyster card can access all 400 kilometres of track on the London Underground. One iPhone can access trillions of dollars of telecoms, internet and GPS satellite infrastructure. With them we can tap into vast networks of human cooperation, mutual accountability and symbolic status, on scales unimaginable to Ötzi and his peers. So, what we need is pretty much what we carry. Next time you leave the house, grabbing your bag with your keys, phone and wallet, spare a thought for what you have with you – all the power, knowledge and vanity of an entire species compressed into a handful of objects.  ■