Why Starting with HunterGatherer Societies

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Why Starting with Hunter-Gatherer Societies?

• Although they are almost extinct, HGS have been
  the only form of society over more than 5 million
  years of hominid evolution
• Even modern humans spent more than 90 per cent of
  their existence in HGS
• Humans are social animals from their very origin
  they only survived through joining their
  resources and sharing their skills for collective
  achievements
• HGS stay at the beginning of cultural evolution

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How did HGS Live?

• HGS live from hunting large game animals and
  gathering plants
• There is a primitive role differentiation for
  sex women gather, menfolk hunt
• HGS are nomadic once the resources of their
  surrounding are exhausted, they search for
  another campsite
• HGS live in small self-sufficient bands usually
  between 20 and 60 people

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What kept HGS together?

• Members of HGS are kept together by kinship ties
• As a matter of risk sharing and insurance,
  individuals shared their achievements with the
  kingroup
• Kinship ties establish a system of mutual
  obligations that secures survival

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How were HGS Governed?

• Differentiation of leadership roles is low
• Usually there is a headman whose leading role is
  based on prestige and not institutionalized
• The headman is not a full-time specialized leader
• His leadership-role is limited, restricted by
  consensus-finding among qualified adults

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What did HGS Believe?

• Most HGS developed animist beliefs, that is, the
  belief that all things in nature host spirits who
  influence the course of events
• They employed religious ceremonies in an attempt
  to influence the spirits in nature
• HGS valued venturesome independent initiative
  rather than obedience to routine work
• HGS cherish the challenge and excitement of their
  way of life
• HGS are free in the sense that no one is
  subjugated to the will of another person

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What Made HGS Successful?

• HGS had a command over techniques that gave them
  a competitive advantage over all other species
• These techniques included the use of fire and
  elaborated weapons as well as knowledge about
  useful plants
• There were also cultural techniques the use of
  symbols and language to transmit accumulated
  knowledge

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Did HGS Develop?

• From 100,000 to about 40,000 B.C. archeological
  remains show little innovation
• But from 40,000 B.C. on, the innovation rate
  accelerates bow and arrow appear, cave paintings
  appear, burial remains appear, broad spectrum
  revolution
• It has been speculated that these innovations
  have been fueled by critical advances in language
  development

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What was the Problem?

• HGS had developed the predatory way of life to
  the limits of its advantages
• Further increases in nutritional payoff and
  improvements in other aspects of the living
  condition were no longer possible within the HGS
  paradigm
• This situation seems to have been appeared about
  10,000 B.C.

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Why was Agriculture the Solution?

• There was mixture of
• necessities
• opportunities
• that gave agriculture a competitive advantage
  over hunting-gathering

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Which Necessities?

• After humans had extended their habitat all over
  the globe, most HGS found themselves within the
  population frontier
• Exit was therefore no longer an option to escape
  pressure from a growing population
• The effect was over-exploitation of resources.
  For instance, large game animals such as the
  mammoth became extinct
• Food supply became increasingly insecure, with
  more and prolonged periods of severe shortage

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Which Possibilities?

• Ever since, humans accumulated intensive
  knowledge about the fauna and flora around them
• Thus, from gathering grain cereals to sow seeds
  was not such a huge step
• Climatic change at the end of the Ice Age greatly
  expanded the area of wild cereals in the Fertile
  Crescent

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When has Agriculture been Invented?

• Agriculture has not been discovered as a complete
  package in one instance
• Instead, there was a slow transition from (1)
  pure predation to
• (2) predation with some additional domestication
  to
• (3) domestication with some additional predation
  to
• (4) pure domestication

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Where and When First?

• Available evidence suggests that first forms
  appeared about 8,000 B.C. at the rain-watered
  wooden hillsides in Anatolia
• The first forms were described as hoe
  agriculture based on slash-and-burn farming
• They were organized in small free farmer villages
• Based on the differentiation between wooden
  hillsides and flat grass lands, there occurred a
  separation into agricultural and pastoral
  societies about 6,000 B.C.

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Why and How did Farmers and Herders Replace
Hunter-Gatherers?

• In times of extreme seasonal food shortages,
  whole HG-bands died, while farmers and herders
  survived
• The expansion of farmers and herders limited the
  habitat of HGS
• Farmer societies could nourish denser
  populations, giving them the manpower to expel
  HGS
• Hence, wherever agriculture was possible, HGS had
  to vanish or to adopt the new style of life

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The Transition to Agriculture A Revolution?

• The sedentary way of life was linked with several
  features that accelerated cultural evolution
• It allowed for denser populations on a higher
  level of labor division
• It allowed for the development of technologies
  that would have been useless in HGS
• It was a precondition to create the first states,
  empires and civilizations in alluvial deltas

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