Wind, Earth and Fire —

where our temperaments

come from
Andreas Hofer

The most fascinating thing about us humans as compared to

other animals is our vast range of temperaments and
personalities. While variation is common among all species,
none shows the rainbow-like colours of ours. Psychologists have
reduced this variety to five (or six) statistical dimensions: the
Big 5 (or HEXACO). However, these are not universal, and say,
African hunter-gatherers or Amazonian farmers typically only
show two dimensions: a provisioning (more male) and a
prosocial (more female) one, the Yin and Yang of Chinese
philosophy. However, Chinese philosophy also recognizes five
personality types, based on elements. The Chinese water
element contains a lot of Yin (female) qualities, like nurturing
ones. So, where do Wind, Earth and Fire come from?

In Who We Are and How We Got Here (2018) David Reich tells
the parallel stories of two subcontinents: Europe and India. Both
originally inhabited by foragers (hunter-gatherers), then settled
by farmers and finally conquered by Indoeuropean steppe
pastoralists (Yamnaya).
After the invasion of the steppe pastoralists, the Vedic texts were
written in Sanskrit (Indo-European). Ayurveda recognizes three
doshas.

Vata : dark-skinned people. Most likely the original forager

population

Pitta : light-skinned people. Most likely invading Indoeuropean

pastoralists from the North

Kapha : intermediate. Most likely Iranian farmers that had

expanded to India

What’s more, the original Indian caste system was probably

based on these “tribes”, as the word for caste is “varna”
(Sanskrit: “colour”). The Ayurvedic system does not only
describe complexion, however but also body types as well as
psychological and psychological traits. We can expect such
different traits to have evolved through these ancestral modes of
subsistence. E.g. Kapha types show regular eating patterns
whereas Vata types eat irregularly. This is exactly what we could
have inferred from farming vs foraging.

Something similar happened in Europe, where first Anatolian

farmers moved into Greece and then were invaded by steppe
pastoralists. The Greeks used the famous four temperaments
found in many personality systems:

The fourth element, Water, as mentioned above is a more

“female” temperament. We, therefore, get the following
temperaments (including Myers-Briggs and Helen Fisher)
Helen Fisher’s research is focused on assortative mating and she
derives three groups that tend to mate among themselves:
Directors-Negotiators (hunter-gatherers), Builders (farmers)
and explorers (Pastoralists).

Of course, we are all a bit mixed. However, assortative mating

(psychological), endogamy and social stratification (cultural)
prevented a lot of mixing.

Check out my latest book on how these three tribes have shaped
history:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08ZR3KPVH