Hunter-gatherer 210098 224819198 2008-07-10T15:40:19Z FinnWiki 3660796 iw {{Economic systems (sidebar)}} {{Otheruses4|the pre-agricultural practice of harvest from the wild|other uses|gather}} {{For2|general information about hunting|[[hunting]]}} {{For2|the movie with same name|[[Hunting and Gathering (film)]]}} A '''hunter-gatherer''' society is one whose primary [[List of subsistence techniques|subsistence method]] involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, [[foraging]] and [[hunting]] without significant recourse to the [[domestication]] of either. The demarcation between hunter-gatherers and other societies which rely more upon domestication (see [[agriculture]] and [[pastoralism]] and [[neolithic revolution]]) is not a clear-cut one, as many contemporary societies use a combination of both strategies to obtain the [[foodstuff]]s required to sustain themselves. Hunting and gathering was presumably the only subsistence strategy employed by [[Homo (genus)|human]] [[societies]] for more than two million years, until the end of the [[Mesolithic]] period. The transition into the subsequent [[Neolithic]] period is chiefly defined by the unprecedented development of nascent agricultural practices. Agriculture [[neolithic Revolution|originated and spread]] in several different areas including the [[Middle East]], [[Asia]], [[Mesoamerica]], and the [[Andes]] beginning as early as [[10th millennium BC|12,000 years ago]]. Many groups continued their hunter-gatherer ways of life, although their numbers have perpetually declined partly as a result of pressure from growing agricultural and pastoral communities. Areas which were formerly unrestricted to hunter-gatherers were, and continue to be encroached upon by the settlements of agriculturalists. In the resulting competition for land use, hunter-gatherer societies either adopted these practices or moved to other areas. [[Jared Diamond]] has also blamed a decline in the availability of wild foods, particularly animal resources. In North and South America, for example, most large mammal species had gone extinct by the end of the [[Pleistocene]], according to Diamond, because of overexploitation by humans<ref name="Diamond">{{cite book | author=Diamond, Jared. | title=Guns, Germs and Steel | location=London | publisher=Vintage | year=1998 | id=ISBN 0-09-930278-0}}</ref>, although the [[Pleistocene extinctions|overkill hypothesis]] he advocates is strongly contested. As the number and size of many agricultural societies increased, they expanded into lands traditionally used by hunter-gatherers. This process of agriculture-driven expansion soon led to the development of complex [[Form of government|forms of government]] in agricultural centers such as the [[Fertile Crescent]], [[Ancient India]], [[Ancient China]], [[Olmec]], and [[Norte Chico]]; and set in motion the impetus for further expansion through [[war]]fare and [[colonization]]. As a result of the now near-universal human reliance upon agriculture, the few contemporary hunter-gatherer [[culture]]s usually live in areas seen as undesirable for agricultural use. ==Methods of study== [[archaeology|Archaeological]] and [[Paleontology|paleontological]] evidence must be used to learn about [[Prehistory|prehistoric]] hunter-gatherers, and [[ethnography|ethnographic]] studies, as well as [[history|historical]] information, provide information about living or historic hunter-gatherers. Interdisciplinary fields such as [[ethnohistory]], [[ethnoarchaeology]], [[human behavioral ecology]], [[paleoanthropology]] and [[paleoethnobotany]] have also arisen in the search for insight into the hunter-gatherer past. ==Common characteristics== [[Image:San tribesman.jpg|thumb|150px|right|A [[Bushmen|San]] man from [[Namibia]]. Fewer than 10,000 San live in the traditional way, as hunter-gatherers. Since the mid-1990s the central government of [[Botswana]] has been trying to move San out of their lands.<ref>[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0914_040914_labushmen_2.html African Bushmen Tour U.S. to Fund Fight for Land]</ref>]] ===Habitat and population=== Hunter-gatherer societies tend to be relatively mobile or "[[nomadic]]", given their reliance upon the ability of a given [[natural environment]] to provide sufficient [[Natural resource|resources]] in order to sustain their population and the variable availability of these resources owing to local [[climate|climatic]] and [[season]]al conditions. Their population densities tend to be lower than those of [[Agriculture|agriculturalists]], since cultivated land is capable of sustaining [[population density|population densities]] 60&ndash;100 times greater than land left uncultivated. Individual [[Band society|bands]] tend to be small in number (10-30 individuals), but these may gather together seasonally to temporarily form a larger group (100 or more) when resources are abundant. In a few places where the environment is especially productive, such as that of the [[Pacific Northwest]] coast of North America, hunter-gatherers are able to settle permanently. Hunter-gatherer settlements may be permanent, temporary, or some combination of the two, depending upon the mobility of the community. Mobile communities typically construct [[House|shelters]] using impermanent [[building material]]s, or they may use natural [[rock shelter]]s, where they are available, while more settled communities build more durable structures. ===Social and economic structure=== Hunter-gatherer societies also tend to have non-[[Social hierarchy|hierarchical]], [[egalitarian]] social structures. This might have been more pronounced in the more mobile societies, which generally are not able to store surplus food. Thus, full-time leaders, bureaucrats, or artisans are rarely supported by these societies.<ref name=gawdy>{{cite book |title=Limited Wants, Unlimited Means: A reader on Hunter-Gatherer Economics and the Environment |author=Johm Gowdy |year=1998 |publisher= Island Press |location=St Louis |isbn=155963555X |pages=342 }}</ref><ref name="Dahlberg">{{cite book | author=Dahlberg, Frances. |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=eTPULzP1MZAC&pg=PA120&dq=Gathering+and+Hominid+Adaptation&sig=f2ulfIDfAvoqEcolNjz6MTIrM84#PPA126,M1 | title=Woman the Gatherer | location=London | publisher=Yale university press | year=1975 | id=ISBN 0-30-02989-6}}</ref><ref>Erdal, D. & Whiten, A. (1996) "Egalitarianism and Machiavellian Intelligence in Human Evolution" in Mellars, P. & Gibson, K. (eds) Modelling the Early Human Mind. Cambridge Macdonald Monograph Series </ref> In addition to social and economic equality in Hunter gatherer societies there is often though not always sexual [[Wikt:parity|parity]] as well.<ref name=Kiefer>{{cite web|url=http://www.suluarchipelago.com/E20Website2002/default.htm|title=Anthropology E-20|accessdate=2008-03-11 |author=Thomas M. Kiefer |date=Spring 2002 |work= Lecture 8 Subsistence, Ecology and Food production|publisher=Harvard University}}</ref> <ref name=gawdy>{{cite book |title=Limited Wants, Unlimited Means: A reader on Hunter-Gatherer Economics and the Environment |author=Johm Gowdy|authorlink=http://www.rpi.edu/~gowdyj/ |year=1998 |publisher= Island Press |location=St Louis |isbn=155963555X |pages=342 }}</ref> Hunter gatherers are often grouped together based on kinship and band (or tribe) membership.<ref name=Kiefer>{{cite web|url=http://www.suluarchipelago.com/E20Website2002/default.htm|title=Anthropology E-20|accessdate=2008-03-11 |author=Thomas M. Kiefer |date=Spring 2002 |work= Lecture 8 Subsistence, Ecology and Food production|publisher=Harvard University}}</ref> Others, such as the [[Haida]] of present-day [[British Columbia]], lived in such a rich environment that they could remain sedentary, like many other [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native American]]s of the Pacific Northwest coast. These groups demonstrate more [[social stratification|hierarchical social organization]]. War in hunter-gatherer societies is usually caused by grudges and vendettas rather than for territory or economic benefit.<ref name=Kiefer>{{cite web|url=http://www.suluarchipelago.com/E20Website2002/default.htm|title=Anthropology E-20|accessdate=2008-03-11 |author=Thomas M. Kiefer |date=Spring 2002 |work= Lecture 8 Subsistence, Ecology and Food production|publisher=Harvard University}}</ref> A vast amount of ethnographic and archaeological evidence demonstrates that the sexual [[division of labor]] in which men hunt and women gather wild fruits and vegetables is an extremely common phenomenon among hunter-gatherers worldwide, but there are a number of documented exceptions to this general pattern. A study done on the [[Aeta]] people of the [[Philippines]] states, "About 85% of Philippine Agta women hunt, and they hunt the same quarry as men. Aeta women hunt in groups and with dogs, and have a 31% success rate as opposed to 17% for men. Their rates are even better when they combine forces with men: mixed hunting groups have a full 41% success rate among the Agta."<ref name="Dahlberg">{{cite book | author=Dahlberg, Frances. | title=Woman the Gatherer | location=London | publisher=Yale university press | year=1975 | id=ISBN 0-30-02989-6}}</ref>. It was also found that among the [[Ju'/hoansi]] people of Namibia that women helped the men during hunting by helping them [[Tracking (hunting)|track]] down quarry<ref name="biesele and barclay">{{citation | first1 = Megan | last1 = Biesele |first2 = Steve | last2 = Barclay | title = Ju/’Hoan Women’S Tracking Knowledge And Its Contribution To Their Husbands’ Hunting Success | journal = African Study Monographs | volume = Suppl.26 | pages = 67–84 | date = March 2001}}</ref>. Moreover, recent archaeological research done by the anthropologist and archaeologist Steven Kuhn from the University of Arizona suggests that the sexual division of labor did not exist prior to the [[Upper Paleolithic]] and developed relatively recently in human history. The sexual division of labor may have arisen to allow humans to acquire food and other resources more efficiently.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061207-sex-humans.html |title= Sex-Based Roles Gave Modern Humans an Edge, Study Says |work= National Geographic News |author= Stefan Lovgren |accessdate= 2008-02-03 }}</ref> It would, therefore, be an over-generalization to say that men always hunt and women always gather. [[Image:Indig1.jpg|thumb|250px|A 19th century [[engraving]] of an [[Indigenous Australians|Indigenous Australian]] encampment.]] At the 1966 "Man the Hunter" conference, anthropologists [[Richard Borshay Lee]] and [[Irven DeVore]] suggested that [[egalitarianism]] was one of several central characteristics of nomadic hunting and gathering societies because mobility requires minimization of material possessions throughout a population; therefore, there was no surplus of resources to be accumulated by any single member. Other characteristics Lee and DeVore proposed were [[flux]] in territorial boundaries as well as in [[demography|demographic]] composition. At the same conference, [[Marshall Sahlins]] presented a paper entitled, "[[Original affluent society|Notes on the Original Affluent Society]]," in which he challenged the popular view of hunter-gatherers living lives "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," as [[Thomas Hobbes]] had put it in 1651. According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more [[leisure]] than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well. Their "affluence" came from the idea that they are satisfied with very little in the material sense. This, he said, constituted a [[Zen]] economy. One way to divide hunter-gatherer groups is by their return systems. James Woodburn uses the categories "immediate return" hunter-gatherers for egalitarian and "delayed return" for nonegalitarian. Immediate return foragers consume their food within a day or two after they procure it. Delayed return foragers store the surplus food (Kelly<ref name="kelly">{{cite book | author=Kelly, Robert L. | title=The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways | location=Washington | publisher=Smithsonian Institution | year=1995 | id=ISBN 1-56098-465-1 }}</ref>, 31). Some [[Marxism|Marxist]]s have theorised that hunter-gatherers would have used [[primitive communism]] and [[anarcho-primitivists]] elaborate the mechanics further by asserting it would have been a [[gift economy]], (although this would not have applied for all hunter-gatherer societies.) Mutual exchange and sharing of resources (I.e. meat gained from hunting) are important in the economic systems of Hunter gatherer societies.<ref name=Kiefer>{{cite web|url=http://www.suluarchipelago.com/E20Website2002/default.htm|title=Anthropology E-20|accessdate=2008-03-11 |author=Thomas M. Kiefer |date=Spring 2002 |work= Lecture 8 Subsistence, Ecology and Food production|publisher=Harvard University}}</ref> ==Problems with generalizing== There is far too much variability among hunter-gatherer cultures across the world to be able to illustrate a “typical” society in anything but the broadest strokes. The “hunter-gatherer” category roughly circumscribes an extremely diverse range of societies who happen to share certain traits. It is therefore important not to mistake common characteristics of hunter-gatherer societies for a universal description. On the other hand, that hunter-gatherer societies seem to manifest significant variability as studies in relatively modern times clearly support, does not allow us to generalize about the extent of variability characteristic of the human [[Evolutionary Psychology#The environment of evolutionary adaptedness| Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness]] (EEA) that is so important to the development of [[evolutionary psychology|evolutionary psychological]] theory. The hunter-gatherer cultures examined today have had much contact with modern civilization and do not represent to "pristine" original human culture (see succeeding paragraphs re: post-agricultural effect on original hunter-gatherers).<ref>{{cite journal |author=Portera, Claire C.; Marlowe, Frank W. |title=How marginal are forager habitats? |journal=Journal of Archaeological Science |volume=34 |issue=1 |pages=59–68 |year=January 2007|doi=10.1016/j.jas.2006.03.014 |url=http://www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/marlowe_pubs/how%20marginal%20are%20forager%20habitats.pdf}}</ref> Much variability we now see in hunter-gatherers is also the result of this mode of living being carried into environmental conditions significantly divergent from our original habitat. Unlike other primates still living in warm climate conditions within Africa, the human primate has moved far beyond the realm of his original EEA ---the [[Inuit]] are a clear example of hunter-gatherers clearly divergent from the human EEA (understandably, there was little "gathering" of vegetation among the Inuit). Yet it may well be that, like the more rigidly defined social structures of other primates, our original social behaviors did not diverge so significantly from one nomadic family to the next in the EEA. So the point of not generalizing until more data is forthcoming extends not only to the possible behavioral consistency of social patterns in the human EEA, but also to possible behavioral variability of such social patterns. The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture is not necessarily a one way process. It has been argued that hunting and gathering represents an [[adaptation|adaptive strategy]] which may still be exploited, if necessary, when environmental change causes extreme food stress for agriculturalists. <ref name="cambridge">{{cite book | editor=Lee, Richard B. & Daly, Richard, eds. | title=The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers | year=1999 | publisher=Cambridge University Press | id=ISBN 0-521-60919-4 }}</ref> In fact, it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line between agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies, especially since the widespread adoption of agriculture and resulting cultural diffusion that has occurred in the last 10,000 years. Many hunter-gatherers consciously manipulate the landscape through cutting or burning undesirable plants while encouraging desirable ones, some even going to the extent of [[slash and burn|slash-and-burn]] to create habitat for game animals. These activities are on an entirely different scale than those associated with agriculture, but they are nevertheless domestication on some level. Today, almost all hunter-gatherers depend to some extent upon domesticated food sources either produced part-time or traded for products acquired in the wild. Some agriculturalists also regularly hunt and gather (e.g. farming during the frost-free season and hunting during the winter). Still others in developed countries go hunting, primarily for leisure. In the Brazilian rainforest, groups which recently or continue to rely on hunting and gathering techniques seem to have adopted this lifestyle, abandoning most agriculture, as a way to escape colonial control and as a result of the introduction of European diseases reducing their populations to levels where agriculture became difficult. ==Modern context== [[Image:Shoshoni tipis.jpg|thumb|280px|right|Shoshoni tipis, circa 1900.]] In the early 1980s, a small but vocal segment of anthropologists and archaeologists attempted to demonstrate that contemporary groups usually identified as hunter-gatherers do not, in most cases, have a continuous history of hunting and gathering, and that in many cases their ancestors were agriculturalists and/or pastoralists who were pushed into marginal areas as a result of migrations, economic exploitation, and/or violent conflict. The result of their effort has been the general acknowledgement that there has been complex interaction between hunter-gatherers and non-hunter-gatherers for millennia. Some of the theorists who advocate this “revisionist” critique imply that, because the "pure hunter-gatherer" disappeared not long after [[colonialism|colonial]] (or even agricultural) contact began, nothing meaningful can be learned about prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies of modern ones (Kelly<ref name="kelly" />, 24-29; see Wilmsen<ref name="wilmsen">{{cite book | author=Wilmsen, Edwin | title=Land Filled With Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari | publisher=University Of Chicago Press | year=1989 | id=ISBN 0-226-90015-0}} </ref>); however, most specialists who study hunter-gatherer [[ecology]] (see [[cultural ecology]] and [[human behavioral ecology]]) disagree with this conclusion. As well, Lee and Guenther have refuted most of the arguments put forward by Wilmsen and currently the revisionist school has been largely discredited.{{Fact|date=December 2007}} There are contemporary hunter-gatherer peoples who, after contact with other societies, continue their ways of life with very little external influence. One such group is the [[Pila Nguru]] or the [[Spinifex People]] of [[Western Australia]], whose habitat in the [[Great Victoria Desert]] has proved unsuitable for European agriculture (and even pastoralism). Another are the [[Sentinelese]] of the [[Andaman Islands]] in the [[Indian Ocean]], who live on [[North Sentinel Island]] and to date have maintained their independent existence, repelling attempts to engage with and contact them. They are different ===Social movements=== There are some modern social movements related to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle: *[[Anarcho-primitivism]], which strives for the abolishment of civilization and the return to a life in the wild. *[[Freeganism]] involves gathering of discarded food (and sometimes other materials) in the context of an urban or suburban environment. *[[Gleaning]] involves the gathering of food that traditional farmers have left behind in their fields. *[[Hunter-gatherer fitness]], involves adopting a physically active lifestyle similar to that of ancient hunter-gatherer groups. *[[Paleolithic diet]], which strives to achieve a diet similar to that of ancient hunter-gatherer groups. ==See also== {{col-begin}}{{col-2}} * [[Indigenous Australians]] <!-- Per [[History_of_Indigenous_Australians#Before_British_arrival]]: "While Torres Strait Island populations were agriculturalists who supplemented their diet through the acquisition of wild foods the remainder of Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers." --> * [[Batek]] * [[Bushmen]] * [[Hadza people]] * [[Mbuti]] * [[Pygmy|Pygmies]] * [[Inuit]] * [[Nukak|Nukak-Makú]] * [[Pirahã people|Pirahã]] * [[Cro-Magnon]] * [[Neanderthals]] {{col-break}} * [[Homo floresiensis|Man of Flores]] * [[Human migration]] * [[Paleolithic]] * [[Prehistoric music]] * [[Primitive skills]] * [[Uncontacted peoples|Uncontacted tribes]] * [[Indigenous peoples]] * [[Sentinelese]] * [[Spinifex People]] * [[Neolithic Revolution]] * [[Nomads]] {{col-end}} ==References== {{Reflist|2}} ==Further reading== * {{cite book | author=Barnard, A. J., ed. | title=Hunter-gatherers in history, archaeology and anthropology | publisher=Berg | year=2004 | id=ISBN 1-85973-825-7 }} * {{cite book | author=Bettinger, R. L. | title=Hunter-gatherers: archaeological and evolutionary theory | publisher=Plenum Press | year=1991 | id=ISBN 0-306-43650-7 }} * {{cite book | author=Brody, Hugh | title=The Other Side Of Eden: hunter-gatherers, farmers and the shaping of the world | publisher=North Point Press | year=2001 | id=ISBN 0-571-20502-X }} * {{cite book | author=Lee, Richard B. and Irven DeVore, eds. | title=Man the hunter | publisher=Aldine de Gruyter | year=1968 | id=ISBN 0-202-33032-X }} * {{cite book | author=Morrison, K. D. and L. L. Junker, eds. | title=Forager-traders in South and Southeast Asia: long term histories | publisher=Cambridge University Press | year=2002 | id=ISBN 0-521-01636-3 }} * {{cite book | author=Panter-Brick, C., R. H. Layton and P. Rowley-Conwy, eds. | title=Hunter-gatherers: an interdisciplinary perspective | publisher=Cambridge University Press | year=2001 | id=ISBN 0-521-77672-4 }} ==External links== * [http://www.pygmies.info/ African Pygmies] Culture and photos of these African hunter-gatherers. * [http://www.ancientinstruments.co.uk Reconstructed bone flutes, sound sample and playing instructions.] * [http://foragers.wikidot.com/start A wiki dedicated to the scientific study of the diversity of foraging societies without recreating myths] [[Category:Anthropological categories of peoples]] [[Category:Economies]] [[Category:Stone Age]] [[Category:Hunter-gatherers]] [[ca:Societat caçadora-recol·lectora]] [[da:Jæger og samler]] [[de:Jäger und Sammler]] [[es:Caza-recolección]] [[eo:Ĉasistoj-kolektistoj]] [[fr:Chasseur-cueilleur]] [[is:Veiðimenn og safnarar]] [[it:Caccia e raccolta]] [[he:ציידים-לקטים]] [[nl:Jager-verzamelaar]] [[no:Jegere og samlere]] [[ja:狩猟採集社会]] [[pt:Caçador-colector]] [[ru:Охотники и собиратели]] [[simple:Hunter-gatherer]] [[sh:Lovci-sakupljači]] [[fi:Metsästäjä-keräilijät]] [[sv:Jägare-samlare]] [[zh:狩猎收集者]]