Food Foraging (Life Before Heavy Beef)

Hunters and Gatherers

There most likely are none today, even though Haviland writes: “perhaps a quarter of a million people still support themselves mainly through…hunting, fishing, and the gathering of wild plant foods.” (p. 435)

To supplement your text, visit : anthro.palomar.edu/subsistence/Default.htm

and click on Foraging…(pedestrian, equestrian, aquatic)

Hunters and Gatherers

• Food Foraging (Hunting and Gathering)

Important to understand….We were all living in food foraging societies until about 10,000 years ago….before the Neolithic Revolution. Since then everyone depends on domesticated species.

We depend on imperfect studies of ethnographies of societies largely dependent on food foraging and on interpretations of archeological evidence.

Often cited societies include the “Bushmen” of Southern Africa, Aborigines of Australia, and “Eskimo” of the Arctic.

The basic idea in modern psychological anthropology is that we are essentially hunters and gatherers in a post-industrial world.

An approach to understanding ourselves is to understand food foragers.

Julian Steward and Cultural Ecology

Emphasis is on the relationship between technology and environment….how resources are recognized and used….how this interaction affects other aspects of culture and society.

• Food Foraging (Hunting and Gathering)

– Semi Nomadic (Tethered Nomads)

– Occupy Distinct Area (Domain)

– Population Size Stabilizes near the Maximum Long Term Carrying Capacity of Domain

Carrying Capacity - number of individuals who can be supported at a given level of technology.

Food Foraging Societies

(Hunters and Gatherers)

Food Foragers (Hunters and Gatherers) have developed sinceat least Homo erectus times.

They occupy a specific locale whose boundaries vary from sharply to poorly defined.

A

E

F

B C

D

Food Foraging Societies (Hunters and Gatherers)

Food Foraging Societies (Hunters and Gatherers)

All societies without domestication for food.

Domain Endogamy/Exogamy

Dialectal culture

Basic division of labor -

Men hunt

Women gatherVery efficient….among most leisured people…… “workweek” about 20 hours/week

Food Foraging (Life Before Heavy Beef)

Hunting and gathering, collecting, trapping, fishing, etc.Domain (territory) must supply all subsistence resources.People lived in small, local, patrilineal bands.Basic division of labor: Men hunt; Women gather.If we assume:

Women have average of 5 children who live to weaning;

Children are often suckled until the age of 5;

Women walk an average of 7 miles per day;

There are ca. 365 Days per year, therefore:

5 X 5 X 7 X 365 = ca. 63,875 miles a woman in a foraging society walks carrying a child.

The Basic Problem in Hunting and Gathering Societies:

What Do Men Do?

They Go Hunting!

Food Foraging Societies (Hunters and Gatherers)

Central Ideas (Leda Cosmides and John Tooby)

Our neural circuits were designed by natural selection to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our species' evolutionary history.

Consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg; most of what goes on in your mind is hidden.

Different neural circuits are specialized for solving different adaptive problems.

The brain is a physical system designed to generatebehavior that is appropriate to environmental circumstances.

Our modern skulls house a stone age mind.

Modules for language, sexual attraction, emotion, mapping, etc.Modules for language, sexual attraction, emotion, mapping, etc.

William James called this “instinct blindness.”William James called this “instinct blindness.”

In short, we are hunter-gatherers in a modern, post industrial world.In short, we are hunter-gatherers in a modern, post industrial world.

Hunting and Gathering Societies

Tabula rasaThe Blank Slate has also served as a sacred scripture for political and ethical beliefs. According to the doctrine, any differences we see among races, ethnic groups, sexes, and individuals come not from differences in their innate constitution but from differences in their experiences. Change the experiences—by reforming parenting, education, the media, and social rewards— and you can change the person. Underachievement, poverty, and antisocial behavior can be ameliorated; indeed, it is irresponsible not to do so

Palimpsest

A palimpsest is a manuscript on which an earlier text has been effaced and the vellum or parchment reused for another. It was a common practice, particularly in medieval ecclesiastical circles, to rub out an earlier piece of writing by means of washing or scraping the manuscript, in order to prepare it for a new text. The motive for making palimpsests seems to have been largely economic--reusing parchment was cheaper than preparing new skin.

M.J. Tovée, V. Swami, A. Furnham & R. Mangalparsad

2006 “Changing Perceptions of Attractiveness as Observers are Exposed to a Different Culture.” Visual Cognition, In Press.

…..results suggest that humans have mechanisms for acquiring norms of attractiveness that are highly plastic, and which allow them to track different ecological conditions through learning.

Speculation About the Psychology of Food Foraging Societies

Knowledge of the natural world is very intensive, but generally limited to the domain of the society. In pedestrian foraging, this limitation would be quite severe….space would be small.

Time is neither sequential nor measured.

Time and space are conflated….

Kinship is major form of social organization….xenophobia rules (non group members are seen as potentially dangerous)

Food Foraging Societies (Hunters and Gatherers)

Caveats regarding anthropological generalizations:

The Ethnographic Present

Danger of Overgeneralization

Food Foraging Societies (Hunters and Gatherers)

Two Oft-mentioned Examples

Bushmen of the Kalahari

Eskimo of the Arctic

Have been studied for more than 100 years

Occupy dramatically different environments

Together represent broad range of hunting and gathering societies

Food Foraging Societies (Hunters and Gatherers)

Bushmen of the Kalahari

Food Foraging Societies (Hunters and Gatherers)

Bushmen of the Kalahari

Part of the Kalahari is true desert….rest is desert-like because of rainfall pattern.

Temperature varies from below freezing in winter to over 100 degrees in summer.

Terrain is flat to rolling with some trees but mostly brush and grass.

Summer is rainy season, winters are cold and dry.

Food Foraging Societies (Hunters and Gatherers)

Bushmen of the Kalahari

The people are called !Kung San, they call themselves

Zhun/twasi “the real people.”

The !Kung San are classic examples of food foraging

way of life.

The women gather and men hunt, using spears and poison tipped arrows.

Food Foraging Societies (Hunters and Gatherers)

What the Hoodia seems to contain is a molecule that is about 10,000 times as active as glucose. "It goes to the mid-brain and actually makes those nerve cells fire as if you were full. But you have not eaten. Nor do you want to."

"The San will finally throw off thousands of years of oppression, poverty, social isolation and discrimination. "We will create trust funds with their Hoodia royalties and the children will join South Africa's middle classes in our lifetime. "I envisage Hoodia cafes in London and New York, salads will be served and the Hoodia cut like cucumber on to the salad.”

South African lawyer Roger Chennells at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/2947810.stm

Food Foraging Societies (Hunters and Gatherers)

Eskimos of the Arctic

One of world’s harshest environments.

Extends from Northeastern Siberia to Northern Greenland.

Food Foraging Societies (Hunters and Gatherers)

Eskimos of the Arctic

Igloos, kayaks, umiaks, ice fishing and hunting, play activities

Winters very long, very cold….Summers short, warm.

Algonquin for “eaters of raw meat”

Martin Frobisher's 1576-78 expedition to Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic made this engraving of an Inuit igloo village

Summertime in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge at:http://homepage.mac.com/rbartelow/Kongakut/PhotoAlbum11.html