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The Hunter-Gatherer pursuit...
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04-11-2014 11:08pmHey. How should I begin...well basically I started thinking pretty deeply about life and came to the conclusion that we're not living the way we are designed to live and because of that we face all the problems of modern life. Everything from depression to obesity to murderers and rapists to war just to name a few. I compare these problems to the problems hunter-gatherers face/ed. Depression? nope Obesity? well no obviously! Malnutrition? No Muderers/rapists etc.? nope war? nope small conflicts with other tribes? nope
Have a look at these links: I had to take out the links because I'm a new user but look up hunter-gatherers.org, relax like a hunter-gatherer and hunter-gatherers: examples of healthy omnivores.
Lets look at the modern life on a broad scale: School -> college -> job -> retired( if you make it that far) -> death. And for what? so you could spend 48 weeks every year hating your stressful life, coping with depression, weight problems, mental disorders, addiction or whatever just so you can relax for the four weeks you get off? or just so you can have a few pints at the weekend? Well that's not a life I see worth living. Well there's another problem! suicide... no hunter-gatherer ever committed suicide that I know of. I'd rather be happy for the majority of the time I spend here. I'd rather find out what it's like to actually LIVE as a real human being, a real homo sapiens. Everything from the thrill of hunting game hunter-gatherer style, not shooting it from half a kilometer away to grabbing honey from a bee-hive. Sitting around a fire every night making music with anything we find and voices and dancing. Just generally being happy.
Now don't get me wrong I know that living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle would be extremely tough at the beginning and wouldn't just be fun and games the whole time but I can assure you with overwhelming confidence that we would be happy. How long d'ya reckon hunter-gatherers had to work a day? Most paleo-anthropologists reckon 3-4 hours a day. And guess what? They don't consider it work. It's not stressful to them. Come to think of it I doubt they have a word that means work although don't quote me on that...
I'm not sure if I've gotten my point across or if this sounded a lot better in my head but anyway I'll continue...
What's the point of all this hunter-gatherer talk? After all we don't live in a society which accepts it as an appropriate pursuit in life. Try telling your parents at 16 you want to go live in a forest somewhere. They ain't gonna be pleased. However that's where I come in or at least I hope to. I want to make the hunter-gatherer lifestyle an accepted pursuit in life. I want teenagers like me to be able to walk into their career's guidance counsellor and say, 'I want to be a hunter-gatherer.'
The only problem is that's all I've got, well along with a burning hot passion but I need people out there with web design skills, people who know how to set up organisations etc. or at least people who can show me how. Most of all though I need someone who shares the same beliefs I do, someone who knows that the modern world is completely f***ed up for lack of a better word and who wants to change it.
Now I know we can't have 7 billion hunter-gatherers running around but we can make a start. Eventually the human population will decrease and hopefully by the time it reaches reasonable levels we will have all realized the benefits of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
The basic aim of this organization will be to improve the lives of humans with the amazing by-product of reducing climate change and as a result improving the lives of all animals and ecosystems etc. I'm thinking of the home page of the web site saying something like, Aim: To show humans that the Hunter-Gatherer lifestyle is more beneficial and fulfilling than the modern/western lifestyle and to help them find a way to live the H&G lifestyle in their region.
It's scary I know, it's crazy I know but revolutionary perhaps? anyway if anyone is interested at all send me a message and we can have a chat and see where we go from there. No worries. Also I know many people can't just give up there whole life and everything they've done to go live as a hunter-gatherer but I've got ideas for that. In fact that's all I have, a huge bunch of ideas.
Hopefully I've got my message across but please if you read this at least start thinking, about life and whatnot. Don't just be a person who regrets everything on their death bed. I certainly won't.0
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Doubt that I would want to return to the hunter-gatherer stage of human and cultural development. Maternal and infant mortality were high, otherwise simple health problems today could kill you back then, average lifespan was in the mid-30s, paternalism ruled with women dominated, superstition was worse than today, and I would suspect that tribal warfare over hunting and gathering grounds, and women would have existed too.
Of course there is always room for compromise between outback and civilisation. I have a cousin that became a park ranger, lives in the remote forest with his family, hunts during season and preserves enough for a year, and has a victory garden that provides much the vegetables they need. They are a bit short on fruit and grains, so they buy that in bulk from distant farms, jarring the fruit for future use. If he, wife, or children get sick, he can hop into his SUV and drive to a clinic or hospital many kms distant. In an emergency, the hospital has a medical chopper. His park ranger job has a good benefit plan, including health, dental, visual, pension when old, and life insurance should he die early and leave wife and children behind.0 -
One one hand:
From a health benefit of such a lifestyle, I'd say it would depend on skill level. AFAIR from reading a history text on the transition from hunter to farmer, comparing skeatal remains showed that the latter were actually in poorer heath than the hunter gatherers. While there is always the issue of skewed evidence of missing hunter remains, it would suggest that there are benefits.
On the other:
As the OP suggested for some it would have a positive benefit of improving climate change. Then again however, so would increases to nuclear production or technological means to remove carbon (source "Carbon Crunch") for which a tech society is needed. As non-manmade climate temp decreases are common based on ice-cores, when having the ability to make electric fire sources might be a positive.
Thus, a limited return might be of benefit but in moderation.0 -
Well there's another problem! suicide... no hunter-gatherer ever committed suicide that I know of.Now I know we can't have 7 billion hunter-gatherers running around but we can make a start. Eventually the human population will decrease and hopefully by the time it reaches reasonable levels we will have all realized the benefits of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
The thing you need to consider is that the prior to the Neolithic Revolution human populations were quite low. Farming allowed the production of cereal crops, which supported far greater populations and so populations grew. Without that only a fraction of our population could survive; when you think about it, how many animals and wild, edible, plants are available in the environment? Do you really think there's enough to feed everyone?
Answer is not even close, so your eventual decrease would in reality be a famine that would make the Irish potato famine look like a feast.Black Swan wrote: »Doubt that I would want to return to the hunter-gatherer stage of human and cultural development. Maternal and infant mortality were high, otherwise simple health problems today could kill you back then, average lifespan was in the mid-30s, paternalism ruled with women dominated, superstition was worse than today, and I would suspect that tribal warfare over hunting and gathering grounds, and women would have existed too.
As to paternalism, we don't actually know, and there have been plenty of theories forwarded that many hunter-gatherer societies were actually matriarchal.0 -
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I compare these problems to the problems hunter-gatherers face/ed... war? nope small conflicts with other tribes? nope...
...we will have all realized the benefits of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.The Corinthian wrote: »Actually, life expectancy was higher when we were hunter-gatherers than for the majority of our 'civilized' history. In the Upper Paleolithic period, it was 32 and actually didn't really go back to that level until the last century. We were taller too, BTW.
As to paternalism, we don't actually know, and there have been plenty of theories forwarded that many hunter-gatherer societies were actually matriarchal.0 -
However war and the concept of warrior's differ across societies. This was especially true in the Native Americans. Instead of having a primary aim of killing the enemy*, the more accepted aim was either to injure or to count-coup (heroic acts of personal bravery). This was not due to any inherent sense of goodness in the Hunter/Gatherers, but that the loss of manpower in the type of European warmaking would have destroyed both losing and winning tribe. It was only in agrarian societies where the land tillage negated this, that other more bloodied forms of combat emerged*.
*Lincoln's Laws of War by DeWitt
* Western way of War by Hanson.0 -
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The idea of the hunter-gatherer society has been somewhat romantically idealized - it wasn't as prosperous/problem-free as you make out.
Steven Pinkers 'The Better Angels of our Nature' makes the general argument that we're living in the least violent period of history, and the early parts of the book make a very good case of how hunter-gatherer societies were actually extremely violent, with a very high death rate (made heavy use of 'deaths per 100,000 people') compared to now.
One of the big reasons why hunter-gatherer societies are just not practical now: The size of the human population pretty much requires industrialization, and there isn't enough land for the whole population to sustainably exist as hunter-gatherers; to be sustainable, it actually requires a very stable ecosystem, with a relatively small number of hunter-gatherers within it.
Another point worth noting: What style of government would back the hunter-gatherer society? It would probably be decentralized/anarchic, which is not a practical way for societies to exist, as it would only be a matter of time before competing factions go to war with each other for control over land/hunting-grounds.
A prime cause of this would be: Population growth. The greater the population of a hunter-gatherer faction, the more land they need to sustainably exist, and this will inevitably lead to conflicts between tribes.
As a solution to climate change, it is a straight-forward no-go: Even if it were feasible, there is just not enough time left for a transition to such a society (with the massive population decline it would require), because climate changes is going to become a Very Big Problem this century - a relatively short time-span.
Any solution to climate change, has to come through reform of existing economies/societies (better technology will help, but there is no technological silver bullet, so it will only be supplementary to the wider solution) - most notably, through economic reform - eventually we will have to adapt some form of Steady-State Economy.0 -
The whole OP is based on a very romanticised notion of the "simple life" and the incorrect idea that depression, famine, war, murder and rape are "new" phenomena.
The idea that the life would be stress-free is somewhat laughable. The primary difference is that rather than spending your time stressing about whether or not you can afford to buy Xmas presents for your children, you instead spend your time worrying about real things like whether or not they'll actually survive the cold winter, or be carried off by a predator, or kidnapped and forced to become someone's wife or concubine.
I don't know about anyone else, but I spend practically none of my time worrying about whether or not I'm going to survive into the short and medium-term. A hunter-gatherer living wild will spend practically all of their time worrying about this.
The entire "natural" notion is pretty much flawed anyway. Hunter-gatherer societies arose through evolution. Modern society likewise has arisen through evolution. There is no logical reason to believe that modern society is "wrong" or "unnatural", and there is no logical reason to believe that hunter-gatherer societies are "right" or "natural".
Modern civilisation is a product of evolution. It's as "natural" and normal as any other.0 -
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The whole OP is based on a very romanticised notion of the "simple life" and the incorrect idea that depression, famine, war, murder and rape are "new" phenomena.
Omitted in the romantic notion of primitive hunter-gatherer life were the harsh realities that it was hard, short, and violent.0 -
Black Swan wrote: »Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Discourse on the Origins of Inequality contributed to this romantic philosophy that suggested primitive human (hunter-gatherer) life was naturally good, and that the formation of concentrated communities and the advance of civilisation served to corrupt humans. Claude Lévi-Strauss furthered this perspective by suggesting through his "writing experiment" that the adoption of writing led to a hierarchy structure that further distanced humans from their natural state; i.e., the noble savage was lost to the evolving and accumulation of knowledge, organisational structure, and bureaucracy.
Omitted in the romantic notion of primitive hunter-gatherer life were the harsh realities that it was hard, short, and violent.
That is very much how I think on this topic.
I see that language is a box to put ideas into and so we are trapped within that context. It seems like the prison walls of our minds.
I see education the same in some ways.
When I started getting into philosophy not long ago, I came aross the thought that by reading and learning from other philosophers I am narrowing my choice of paths and thoughts, thus walking into a prison as well.
I haven't seen reason to think that is not true still. I do learn a lot, but the cost I am unsure of. Maybe I need to be imprisoned to know what it is to be free
Or maybe to recognise free if ever I stumble across it.
Also when countries begin to centralize power, it always seems to corrupt.
I am more or less for complete chaos(close to hunter gatherer) until a working system is discovered. Which will take many more failures. I am impatient at the progress of humanity right now, as we are so afraid to fail, that it has crippled us or will be our end.
People cling to this broken system of governance(oligarchical faschism or whatever it is) and are too afraid to let go. By people I mean the people who rule the world, not the ones who watch tv and work.
It could be argued too, that we have not finished making mistakes in this current oligarchical model and certainly haven't explored a democratic model in my opinion. So maybe I am just impatient and we should have another 100 years of slavery, before pulling it down and starting a new model.0 -
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KomradeBishop wrote: »One of the big reasons why hunter-gatherer societies are just not practical now: The size of the human population pretty much requires industrialization, and there isn't enough land for the whole population to sustainably exist as hunter-gatherers; to be sustainable, it actually requires a very stable ecosystem, with a relatively small number of hunter-gatherers within it.The whole OP is based on a very romanticised notion of the "simple life" and the incorrect idea that depression, famine, war, murder and rape are "new" phenomena.
The idea that the life would be stress-free is somewhat laughable. The primary difference is that rather than spending your time stressing about whether or not you can afford to buy Xmas presents for your children, you instead spend your time worrying about real things like whether or not they'll actually survive the cold winter, or be carried off by a predator, or kidnapped and forced to become someone's wife or concubine.
I don't know about anyone else, but I spend practically none of my time worrying about whether or not I'm going to survive into the short and medium-term. A hunter-gatherer living wild will spend practically all of their time worrying about this.The entire "natural" notion is pretty much flawed anyway. Hunter-gatherer societies arose through evolution. Modern society likewise has arisen through evolution. There is no logical reason to believe that modern society is "wrong" or "unnatural", and there is no logical reason to believe that hunter-gatherer societies are "right" or "natural".
Modern civilisation is a product of evolution. It's as "natural" and normal as any other.Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Now the transition from HG to farmers was rapid enough, it still took thousands of years and since that time more genetic changes have occurred in humans than in the 40,000 years previous to the rise of agriculture. Moving from farming to industrialisation and the modern world has been far more rapid. Basically a couple of centuries. One might argue that this transition has left us somewhat adrift waiting for our genes and culture to catch up.0
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Black Swan wrote: »Doubt that I would want to return to the hunter-gatherer stage of human and cultural development. Maternal and infant mortality were high, otherwise simple health problems today could kill you back then, average lifespan was in the mid-30s, paternalism ruled with women dominated, superstition was worse than today, and I would suspect that tribal warfare over hunting and gathering grounds, and women would have existed too.
I've read that many hunter-gatherer societies were actually egalitarian. I can't find it right now but I'm sure I read a paper that H&G's often lived to 60. I think the reason average lifespan might be so low is because infant mortality was probably higher than today but as a H&G if you lived past 5 you'd probably have a decent chance of making it to 50/60. I've heard superstition only arose around 15,000 years ago? but that sounds low so it could be wrong but that time estimate is relatively close to the agricultural revolution. I think it was 50,000 years ago when humans started showing signs of art, language and abstract thought so I'd imagine superstitions might have come in around then too. Maybe there was some sort of mistake in our evolution? I sometimes think that. It seems we became too smart and we tried to make sense of the world. We couldn't think of anything but some sort of higher power made it all.0 -
The idea that the life would be stress-free is somewhat laughable.
I think that our stress levels as HG would be similar to that of wild chimps and other apes. Now I'm not saying that chimps have stress free lives but I would put money on it that their stress levels are minute compared to the average Joe nowadays.0 -
Someday we may evolve to properly digest grains
And dairy! I'm not lactose-intolerant but I went off all dairy products for 2-3 months recently but then cracked and couldn't resist a bowl of cereal (addiction! another problem you rarely see HG face! although I must admit I've seen a few go to great lengths to get honey) and I spent the rest of the day on the toilet...0 -
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I've read that many hunter-gatherer societies were actually egalitarian.I can't find it right now but I'm sure I read a paper that H&G's often lived to 60. I think the reason average lifespan might be so low is because infant mortality was probably higher than today but as a H&G if you lived past 5 you'd probably have a decent chance of making it to 50/60I've heard superstition only arose around 15,000 years ago? but that sounds low so it could be wrong but that time estimate is relatively close to the agricultural revolution. I think it was 50,000 years ago when humans started showing signs of art, language and abstract thought so I'd imagine superstitions might have come in around then too.Maybe there was some sort of mistake in our evolution? I sometimes think that. It seems we became too smart and we tried to make sense of the world. We couldn't think of anything but some sort of higher power made it all.Someday we may evolve to properly digest grainsRejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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I've read that many hunter-gatherer societies were actually egalitarian.
Relatively more recent native American hunting and gathering tribes like the Lakota Souix were not egalitarian by gender at the time of the European invasion and migration era (roughly 300 years ago), but to say they were representative of all such hunting and gathering humans was problematic, especially when we factor in the range from hundreds to thousands of years, as well as other measures of potential diversity.I can't find it right now but I'm sure I read a paper that H&G's often lived to 60. I think the reason average lifespan might be so low is because infant mortality was probably higher than today but as a H&G if you lived past 5 you'd probably have a decent chance of making it to 50/60.I've heard superstition only arose around 15,000 years ago? but that sounds low so it could be wrong but that time estimate is relatively close to the agricultural revolution. I think it was 50,000 years ago when humans started showing signs of art, language and abstract thought so I'd imagine superstitions might have come in around then too.Maybe there was some sort of mistake in our evolution? I sometimes think that. It seems we became too smart and we tried to make sense of the world. We couldn't think of anything but some sort of higher power made it all.0 -
I read a book called "Catching fire", which posed a theory relating to consciousness and diet.
The basic idea being that as apes or whatever we were, we ate much more vegetation and so a lot of our energy was put towards digestion.
Later when we discovered fire and cooked food, we didn't need so much energy directed to the intestines and they got shorter, allowing that left over "energy"(if you will) to go towards cognition.
To me this seems like a good explanation for the rise of the self and with that I think it's inevitable superstition and god would follow.0 -
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To me this seems like a good explanation for the rise of the self and with that I think it's inevitable superstition and god would follow.0 -
Black Swan wrote: »Doubt that I would want to return to the hunter-gatherer stage of human and cultural development. Maternal and infant mortality were high, otherwise simple health problems today could kill you back then, average lifespan was in the mid-30s, paternalism ruled with women dominated, superstition was worse than today, and I would suspect that tribal warfare over hunting and gathering grounds, and women would have existed too.
Of course there is always room for compromise between outback and civilisation. I have a cousin that became a park ranger, lives in the remote forest with his family, hunts during season and preserves enough for a year, and has a victory garden that provides much the vegetables they need. They are a bit short on fruit and grains, so they buy that in bulk from distant farms, jarring the fruit for future use. If he, wife, or children get sick, he can hop into his SUV and drive to a clinic or hospital many kms distant. In an emergency, the hospital has a medical chopper. His park ranger job has a good benefit plan, including health, dental, visual, pension when old, and life insurance should he die early and leave wife and children behind.
Actually patriarchy is a creation of agrarian society so hunter gatherers are/were matriarchal.0 -
Human suffering doesn't stem from modernity. Religions argue it originates from a desire to 'want' and in order to live a fulfilling life we should neglect that aspect of our lives. A desire to accumulate 'possessions' is normal in all human beings but having those things may not make your life any better than it already is. Having a car maybe beneficial to you in some circumstances but on the other side of things it will make you lazy and unfit. For every thing you gain you likely lose something in return. We already live in a 'perfect' society. Its how you chose to look at things.0
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ezra_pound wrote: »Actually patriarchy is a creation of agrarian society so hunter gatherers are/were matriarchal.
Certainly the Lakota Sioux do not represent all hunter gatherer groups, but we know a lot about the Sioux because of their relatively recent recorded history (where we may have to theorize or guess about many other hunter gatherer groups without recorded history), consequently your summary statement was not supported in terms of the Lakota Sioux, who were clearly hunter gatherers with an obvious patriarchy established way before the European influence that eventually introduced them to agriculture.0 -
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Black Swan wrote: »It seems feasible that cave paintings were associated with human cognition development (see RE Clark regarding metacognitive skills, learning transfer, and declarative knowledge), which appears to have been dated (minimally) to about 40,000 years ago in Southeast Asia (Sulawesi caves), or perhaps as long ago as 100,000 years as evidenced by decorated pieces of ochre and ostrich eggshell in South African caves. Perhaps such developing cognition and associated early primitive enquires into human origins suggested superstitious beliefs, which later became codified and organised into religious followings, who knows?
My theory would be that previous art was based on the human body. Body paint, maybe modification, all things that would fade within weeks after death. Neandertals collected pigments(more into blacks and sparkly mica, we were more into the ochres). Shells have been found with traces of these pigments, so may have been used as paint pots. Horse toe bones have also been found with paint on their tips, "brushes" of a sort. Yet these colours aren't found on the external landscape. The only thing left really are the people themselves. This art may have started out as a camouflage technique, even a sunblock or parasite preventative, but would soon find use as a group signifier, you belong to this family/tribe kinda dealio. You're a Mod, I'm a Rocker sorta thing.
Maybe it started going onto walls of caves because the increasing population density meant that individual groups didn't only signify belonging to each other, but belonging to the land and it to them, a territory marker and cultural binder in the face of the increasing population density. It may have started out as a cultural arms race between groups and even previous humans in the landscape. This might explain why it went through the roof around that time. The modern humans from Africa walking into Europe and Asia would have found people already there and they met at that time.ezra_pound wrote: »Actually patriarchy is a creation of agrarian society so hunter gatherers are/were matriarchal.Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Which came first. Cave paintings or use of fire?
To me that might decide if it was a rise in cognition through eating cooked food or through painting on walls, unless I confused some posts above.
The food theory seems pretty convincing to me, for the rise in cognitive abilities. And alsowould explain a drastic change in a short time...I think. Depending on how long a period this quick drastic change occurred over.0 -
Wibbs would be the expert, but from my reading (AFAIR Leaky etc) on some of the precursors to Homo Sapiens fire was present in their camp sites (the ability to create as oppose to keep burning naturally occuring fire was a development). However only modern man and to a lesser extent Neanderthals had a developed cave art system.0
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Fire seems to have come along about a million years ago with Homo Erectus, so a goodly time before we come along. We were pretty much modern for 150,000 years before concrete signs of art and modern culture. We looked human for a very long time before we acted human. The jury is still out on art in Neandertals, though there is some tantalising evidence of some abstract thought, but nothing like our own, or even close to our output. Before Neandertals there is only silence*
As for fire and its effect? It was a major seachange in our development. It meant we could move into territories colder than before. It kept wild animals away and made the night less dangerous and most of all it gave us cooking. Cooking is essentially a predigestion process. So we could extract more nutrients from more food items. We didn't need the stronger stomach acids of predators to eat meat and we didn't need the multistomachs of herbivores to eat many veggies. It also kills parasites and renders some plant foods safe. It physically changed our shape. After fire below the neck we look pretty much as we do today. It was a gamechanger.
How we came to use fire is a bit of a puzzle. As noted animals avoid it like the very plague, yet our ancestors approached and used it. Probably for it's anti animal and heat properties first, then when some meat happened to fall into some fire and came out tasty, Ug said to Og "bloody hell I've invented steak". We had to wait for longer before chips came along... (though we did eat a lot of root veggies, so Homo Erectus may well have sat down to a primitive steak and chips dinner.:).
We probably trapped and stored fire at first as an opportunistic thing. Even into historical times there are some modern human HG's , the Andaman islanders, who didn't know how to make fire, but basically became experts at storing embers and could keep embers going for weeks at a time. The initial fire came from lightning strikes and the like. Making fire is quite an involved process, banging flints together won't do it, so it's likely we were storing it for a long time. By the time of Neandertals though we had it down pat. Indeed they were such experts it seems they were able to make the first compound glue from tree resins in a heating process that requires very precise temps in an anerobic environment.
*save maybe for the whisper of forethought and symmetry in some handaxes/bifaces that appear to be purposely made to be "beautiful". Some indeed were so large as to be useless as tools. Though other theories hold they may have been made as courtship offerings to show the skills of the mate. Come up and see me handaxe luv kinda thing.Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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However only modern man and to a lesser extent Neanderthals had a developed cave art system.The jury is still out on art in Neandertals, though there is some tantalising evidence of some abstract thought, but nothing like our own, or even close to our output. Before Neandertals there is only silence*0 -
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Black Swan wrote: »A 13 year study at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southwestern France of a 50,000 year old Neanderthal site suggests that the burial was intentional not accidental, and may give early evidence of a behaviour that differentiated both Neanderthals (and Homo Sapiens) from other animals. Did such unique behaviour also suggest a very early, primitive type of cognition?
Take burial itself. In modern humans it's only one way to dispose of and respect the dead. It's a particularly European way and most of the research is done by Europeans or Americans(Europeans by proxy in culture). In other cultures the dead may be left out to be consumed by carrion, a "sky burial". In some rare cultures the dead are barely regarded at all, left where they drop, or moved away from the living. In other cultures consuming the flesh of the dead is considered deeply respectful. The clear evidence that Neandertals did practice cannibalism might be an example of that in their culture. To them, burial might have been only reserved for unclean or despised members of their kin. We simply don't know. Until we find a clear example of a burial with associated ritual like pigments and/or grave goods like we have in modern humans it's all very much conjecture.
Take the above La Chapelle dude. Zero evidence of digging of the "grave" hole and the word hole oversells it, it's more a very shallow depression in the cave. These people were well capable of digging out a proper grave if they wanted to. So maybe they used an existing depression and laid him in it. OK, but there's zero evidence of filling in of said depression. Now this chap was old for a Neandertal. The poor divil had been pretty decrepit for many a year, barely a tooth in his head and riddled with arthritis. The lack of teeth shows that he was considered valuable enough to be looked after as others would have had to prechew his food for him like a toddler and they did so for at least 5 years before he died. So care was shown for him in life, but after that? Another explanation might be that he went off to die on his own, or was caught out in a bad storm and lay down in the tiny cave in the lowest position for shelter(I've seen it myself and it is tiny). He may have gone to sleep and never woke up. Snow drifts may have covered him very quickly, which would explain the lack of predation. Cave sediment could then have covered him quickly enough and whammo it looks like a "burial" and since it triggers expectations in our modern mind we see what we want to see.
The other thing is they lived in very isolated groups and appear to have been quite xenophobic in nature. Individual groups may have varied in how they regarded the dead.Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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So it's likely HG in colder climates acted differently to HG in warmer climates. Since we originated in a warm climate (Africa) is it safe to say our behaviour in Africa is the behaviour we were designed to exhibit? I would be fairly sure behaviour is a part of evolution and so we would be 'designed' to exhibit a particular behaviour. Were HG in Africa more likely to be egalitarian? or not? There probably is no solid evidence behind this and many modern HG in Africa are not really HG since many of them herd cattle so we can't really use them as an example...0
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The problem is R, we're not a static animal, in culture or in our physical selves. The folks who originated in Africa 200,000 years ago were quite different to people today. They looked different and would stand out in a crowd today. Their culture and behaviour has no obvious differences to other humans around at the time. They used the same tools, ate the same things etc. So let's fast forward to say 20,000 years ago when it looks like we're the only ones left standing, fully modern humans, with art and a modern culture. They were different to people today, albeit in a more subtle way. There have been more changes to the human genome in the last 10,000 odd years than occurred in the previous 50,000 years. The obvious ones are adaptations to novel diets, but there are other changes too.
Take different populations today. Europeans are "designed" to consume milk and metabolise alcohol, whereas many East Asian populations aren't. Look at what you noted about us coming from a warm climate and how that may have affected behaviour. OK, but when we moved into temperate regions our behaviour would have to change. The diet choices would be different and we would have to plan ahead more because of the harsher environments we went into. Look at Eskimo folks. They've been in the arctic area for around 15,000 years. In that time they've adapted to the environment. They became shorter and stockier to conserve heat. Their livers grew much larger to metabolise the near completely animal based diet, they even have more capillaries in their face and hands to keep them warm. The nature of their environment would also have impacted culturally. And all this happened in the blink of an eye in geological terms. Humans are incredibly diverse and adaptable to local conditions. It's what has made us so damned successful. One size can't fit all.Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,353 CMod ✭✭✭✭Join Date:Posts: 36469
Let's look at this hunter gather lifestyle from a personal anecdotal and emic perspective; i.e., through the eyes of a (potential) participant.Lets look at the modern life on a broad scale: School -> college -> job -> retired( if you make it that far) -> death. And for what? so you could spend 48 weeks every year hating your stressful life, coping with depression, weight problems, mental disorders, addiction...
Today I am not depressed, I'm physically fit with no over-weight problems (e.g., healthy diet, participate in a sport, and workout daily), have no addictions (except for my love of java), although I've been told by my friends that I am stark raving mad (but happily so). I do not foresee that radically changing my lifestyle to one of a primitive hunter-gatherer would improve it, or make me more happy.Sitting around a fire every night making music with anything we find and voices and dancing. Just generally being happy.Now don't get me wrong I know that living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle would be extremely tough at the beginning...What's the point of all this hunter-gatherer talk? After all we don't live in a society which accepts it as an appropriate pursuit in life.
It's scary I know, it's crazy I know but revolutionary perhaps?
Now I know we can't have 7 billion hunter-gatherers running around but we can make a start. Eventually the human population will decrease and hopefully by the time it reaches reasonable levels we will have all realized the benefits of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Perhaps you can find this hunter-gatherer lifestyle today in the Australian outback, the Canadian Yukon, or the far reaches of Alaska, and if so, grand for you. Just don't turn the clock back and force me to go with you.0 -
About the idea of some Hunter gather societies being egalitarian, yes some of them are, but they aren't just passively egalitarian they are actively egalitarian using methods like insults to prevent the formation of a "Big Man" type society.
Unfortunately can't find my old essay on social structures in prehistory ATM on this so no proper links/references apart from this one
http://www2.southeastern.edu/Academics/Faculty/mrossano/grad_cog/ancestral%20landscapes/chapter%208.pdf0 -
Black Swan wrote: »Let's look at this hunter gather lifestyle from a personal anecdotal and emic perspective; i.e., through the eyes of a (potential) participant.
Currently I am enjoying university, and related work as a research associate. It's not stress-free, but neither is your hunter-gatherer existence. Hans Selye suggested in his theory of stress that stress was normal in life, but there were different kinds. For example, prolonged distress was not healthful, but "eustress" was healthful in that it motivated us to get up in the morning, to discover something new, and take on the diverse challenges of life. I have very little distress today, but a lot of eustress that drives me to experiment and play with life.
Hmm maybe I'm talking to the wrong people, most of us in Ireland are very well off. Maybe I'd be better off talking to people who aren't as lucky as us.Black Swan wrote: »Today I am not depressed, I'm physically fit with no over-weight problems (e.g., healthy diet, participate in a sport, and workout daily), have no addictions (except for my love of java), although I've been told by my friends that I am stark raving mad (but happily so). I do not foresee that radically changing my lifestyle to one of a primitive hunter-gatherer would improve it, or make me more happy.
I don't think I've met some in this day and age without an addiction. Video games, chocolate, t.v, sweets, bread,? The list goes on. How many could you stop using/eating? Often people don't notice, at least in my opinion, that they're addicted because it's something that people nowadays accept you to be addicted to.
I wouldn't be doing this because I think people in developed countries would be better off, I would be doing this because it would improve the lives of people from developing nations and even the less fortunate here and also for other species. So instead of comparing your life to a HG compare, for example, a homeless persons life to a HG life.
Also maybe instead of comparing snapshots of the worst moments of HG lives (like infants dying at birth) we should compare the avg. day of a HG. But I suppose that in itself is difficult to work out.0 -
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Also maybe instead of comparing snapshots of the worst moments of HG lives (like infants dying at birth) we should compare the avg. day of a HG. But I suppose that in itself is difficult to work out.0 -
Black Swan wrote: »Continuing with the emic personal and anecdotal perspective, because I have relatively narrow hips (although into sports and healthier than most of my peers), there's a good chance that I would probably not survive giving birth to a child in the hunter-gathering wilds lacking modern medicine. Of course, some may think that I and the child should die and not pass on my genes to future generations, because of not having optimum H&G physical characteristics?
If we did live in a HG society though it's not very likely that the genes associated with narrow hips would have ever got passed down. So in a HG society I doubt it was a huge problem, only affecting a single person and never being passed down. Nature's motto is kinda 'survival of the fittest' so maybe in a HG you 'should' die although it's a pretty strong word for it. It's not like all your HG mates would be chasing you around with spears.
Of course there are some farmers who breed huge continental breed bulls with small British breed Heifers, resulting in the calf being too big to be naturally pushed out and generally both will die in the process. I'm just trying to say that although modern medicine might make it possible for you and others with narrow hips to give birth, modern practices also make it very difficult for other species to give birth. Also I'm confident to say that although women with narrow hips in developed countries have access to modern methods to enable them to give birth, there are probably plenty of narrow hipped women in places like India, parts of Africa and China that don't.
Also if we were HG and had the knowledge, we could always 'pair' women with narrow hips with very skinny, short guys. Although it's impractical to think that we can just pair up. Plus that means the gene would live and eventually someones gonna suffer for it.0 -
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If we did live in a HG society though it's not very likely that the genes associated with narrow hips would have ever got passed down. So in a HG society I doubt it was a huge problem, only affecting a single person and never being passed down. Nature's motto is kinda 'survival of the fittest' so maybe in a HG you 'should' die although it's a pretty strong word for it. It's not like all your HG mates would be chasing you around with spears.
Herbert Spencer coined the term "Survival of the Fittest," was considered Social Darwinism Theory, and if applied today would suggest that hunter-gatherer peoples were not the fittest, and had been replaced by a more fit modern society.0 -
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Black Swan wrote: »I thought you were proposing that we should all leave today's modern civilisation and return to the hunting-gathering existence?
Herbert Spencer coined the term "Survival of the Fittest," was considered Social Darwinism Theory, and if applied today would suggest that hunter-gatherer peoples were not the fittest, and had been replaced by a more fit modern society.
I was and stand by it.
First of all there are still hunter-gatherers around today.
Second of all they weren't replaced instead most hunter-gatherers became farmers.
That's like saying modern civilization is fitter than the roman civilization. It doesn't work like that. The term 'survival of the fittest' can't really be applied to civilizations.0 -
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It doesn't work like that. The term 'survival of the fittest' can't really be applied to civilizations.
Technology rules. Hunter-gathering societies failed to compete against more advanced technologies, especially when there was demand and competition for scarce resources, or a need to produce resource surpluses. An appeal to the cruel harsh reality of day-to-day hunter-gathering existence exemplifies the vestigial philosophical remains of 18th century sentimentalism and early 19th century romantic primitivism.0