You meet a hunter and gatherer

[rainforests1]

Do you approve or disapprove of their way of life? What do you say to them?

 

[ledboots]

Do you approve or disapprove of their way of life? What do you say to them?

Want some cake?

 

[shyvas]

Want some cake?

If in the UK don't say 'crumpet' as they would understand something else.

 

[beancounter]

Do you approve or disapprove of their way of life? What do you say to them?

Does this take place at the dawn of human civilization, or in modern times?

 

[Clueless Git]

Do you approve or disapprove of their way of life? What do you say to them?

If they ever come close enough to civilisation for me to say anything to them at all then whatever I say (about the hunting aspect) will be disapproving.

Reason simply being that there is no need to live like a savage if you ever come that close to civilisation.

Wanting to live like a savage, only as far it entertains you so to do, is a serious case of nob-headery, imho.

 

[rainforests1]

If they ever come close enough to civilisation for me to say anything to them at all then whatever I say (about the hunting aspect) will be disapproving.

Reason simply being that there is no need to live like a savage if you ever come that close to civilisation.

Wanting to live like a savage, only as far it entertains you so to do, is a serious case of nob-headery, imho.

I don't believe they had or have money.
Populations were small.
No Governments
Didn't have advanced technology, so they had no way of sweeping the ocean floors clean like we do today.
No nuclear warheads. We may regret this at some point, but hunters and gatherers never will.

I'm not sure if you're being serious, but in almost every way(excluding the hunting part) their way of life is better than ours.

 

[Clueless Git]

I'm not sure if you're being serious ...

Nobody mentioned anything about this being the type of meet-up for which a time machine would be required, did they, though ..

 

[Envy]

I don't believe they had or have money.
Populations were small.
No Governments
Didn't have advanced technology, so they had no way of sweeping the ocean floors clean like we do today.
No nuclear warheads. We may regret this at some point, but hunters and gatherers never will.

I'm not sure if you're being serious, but in almost every way(excluding the hunting part) their way of life is better than ours.

Only if you don't mind having a life expectancy of 33 years.

 

[Kitties]

Does this take place at the dawn of human civilization, or in modern times?

That's kind of what I was thinking. Did I get transported to another continent or back in time.

I've actually made the comment that being an American, we are no longer a hunting and gathering society.

 

[Calliegirl]

We do have modern day gatherers, they're called freegans.

 

[das_nut]

I don't believe they had or have money.
Populations were small.
No Governments
Didn't have advanced technology, so they had no way of sweeping the ocean floors clean like we do today.
No nuclear warheads. We may regret this at some point, but hunters and gatherers never will.

I'm not sure if you're being serious, but in almost every way(excluding the hunting part) their way of life is better than ours.

You might want to check the violent death rate in hunter-gatherer and hunter-agricultural societies before you conclude their life is better than ours. In some of the more violent societies, about a quarter of the adult male population can expect to end their lives in a violent death at the hands of another human being. You can make an excellent argument that your chance of dying due to violence by another human being was lower as a random person in the 20th century than it would be in the average hunter-gatherer society.

It would almost certainly be more peaceful - hunter-gatherers/hunter-agriculturalists had a high chance of having organized group violence against another group (aka war) per year.

Sometimes we find prehistoric evidence of such conflicts. One of the more notable ones in the US is Crow Creek. Roughly 150 years before Columbus ever set foot in the New World, something went horribly pear-shaped near Chamberlain, South Dakota. We're not sure what happened, but 483 bodies have been unearthed, with the evidence pointing to the individuals dying in one attack. Evidence further points to this not being the first attack. Several individuals showed signs of previously surviving being scalped or being wounded by arrows. After the last attack, some of the victims were mutilated. Their bodies laid exposed to the elements before some unknown group later buried them.

I'm not going to call that way of life better than ours.

 

[rainforests1]

Only if you don't mind having a life expectancy of 33 years.

For most of the time period we've had agriculture life expectancy wasn't very high. It's ony in recent decades where life expectancy has skyrocketed. Even today many people don't live very long. As long as other species are much, much better off it's a risk I'd be willing to take.

 

[Blobbenstein]

If I were time traveled back a few thousand years, I suppose I would try to learn the hunters language and then impart what knowledge of science and technology I have to him, or her.

 

[rainforests1]

You might want to check the violent death rate in hunter-gatherer and hunter-agricultural societies before you conclude their life is better than ours. In some of the more violent societies, about a quarter of the adult male population can expect to end their lives in a violent death at the hands of another human being. You can make an excellent argument that your chance of dying due to violence by another human being was lower as a random person in the 20th century than it would be in the average hunter-gatherer society.

It would almost certainly be more peaceful - hunter-gatherers/hunter-agriculturalists had a high chance of having organized group violence against another group (aka war) per year.

Sometimes we find prehistoric evidence of such conflicts. One of the more notable ones in the US is Crow Creek. Roughly 150 years before Columbus ever set foot in the New World, something went horribly pear-shaped near Chamberlain, South Dakota. We're not sure what happened, but 483 bodies have been unearthed, with the evidence pointing to the individuals dying in one attack. Evidence further points to this not being the first attack. Several individuals showed signs of previously surviving being scalped or being wounded by arrows. After the last attack, some of the victims were mutilated. Their bodies laid exposed to the elements before some unknown group later buried them.

I'm not going to call that way of life better than ours.

The world is much better off. That's my basic argument. Many children were dying young. If they had all of this violence added onto that, wouldn't the population drop? I assume there was violence and probably more than our society, but some people may be exaggerating.

 

[das_nut]

The world is much better off. That's my basic argument. Many children were dying young. If they had all of this violence added onto that, wouldn't the population drop? I assume there was violence and probably more than our society, but some people may be exaggerating.

If you want details from a pop-sci perspective, try reading "The Better Angels of Our Natures" by Pinker. Turns out Hobbes was right; life was nasty, brutish and short.

There's studies that have been done on violence in hunter-gatherer/agriculturalist tribes. They point to a far more violent life than what we see today.

Now imagine that instead of some random hunter-gatherer seeing their child die, it's your mother, your siblings, your partner, your self. Imagine this was an expected event in the life, that would happen multiple times.

It doesn't seem to be a nice life to me.

I'd rather take the modern first world, where the population is reproducing at replacement levels, living standards are high, children don't usually die, and violence is a rare exception rather than the rule. Sure we could do better on the environment and sustainability, but it's not like hunter-gatherers/agriculturalists were ideal when it came to not wiping out other species.

 

[nigel1]

As a professional archaeologist I have observed that most of the general public's notion of what a "hunter-gatherer" is is quite cartoonish, ridiculously generalized and wrong when held up to most known examples. Can you describe what the term means to you, OP?

 

[rainforests1]

If you want details from a pop-sci perspective, try reading "The Better Angels of Our Natures" by Pinker. Turns out Hobbes was right; life was nasty, brutish and short.

There's studies that have been done on violence in hunter-gatherer/agriculturalist tribes. They point to a far more violent life than what we see today.

Now imagine that instead of some random hunter-gatherer seeing their child die, it's your mother, your siblings, your partner, your self. Imagine this was an expected event in the life, that would happen multiple times.

It doesn't seem to be a nice life to me.

I'd rather take the modern first world, where the population is reproducing at replacement levels, living standards are high, children don't usually die, and violence is a rare exception rather than the rule. Sure we could do better on the environment and sustainability, but it's not like hunter-gatherers/agriculturalists were ideal when it came to not wiping out other species.

You're comparing maybe 10 million people during the hunting and gathering days to 7 billion people now. You don't think there's a huge difference between the number of species wiped out? If we have a nuclear war do you change your mind?

 

[rainforests1]

As a professional archaeologist I have observed that most of the general public's notion of what a "hunter-gatherer" is is quite cartoonish, ridiculously generalized and wrong when held up to most known examples. Can you describe what the term means to you, OP?

I'm not sure how to answer that. Many of them have remained hunters and gatherers even with civilizations around them. Many people are happy as hunters and gatherers so that tells me life couldn't have been too difficult. It wasn't perfect, but compared to the misery and suffering animals suffer from today it was a paradise. Moving towards agriculture is one decision humans will eventually regret. Maybe not today, but it will hapen.

 

[nigel1]

I'm not sure how to answer that. Many of them have remained hunters and gatherers even with civilizations around them. Many people are happy as hunters and gatherers so that tells me life couldn't have been too difficult. It wasn't perfect, but compared to the misery and suffering animals suffer from today it was a paradise. Moving towards agriculture is one decision humans will eventually regret. Maybe not today, but it will hapen.

You didn't answer the question. What is a hunter-gatherer? What did/do they eat? How did/do they obtain things?

 

[das_nut]

You're comparing maybe 10 million people during the hunting and gathering days to 7 billion people now. You don't think there's a huge difference between the number of species wiped out? If we have a nuclear war do you change your mind?

There hasn't been a nuclear war.

And I'm comparing your chance of dying violently in hunter-gatherer/hunter-agriculturist societies and today.

As for species being wiped out, since you brought that up, the PaleoIndians seem likely for several extinctions that we know of - Giant Ground Sloths. Ditto with the PaleoAboriginies in Australia and the Polynesians in New Zealand and the Pacific. I'm not trying to single them out as groups - Eurasians probably had their own extinction event, but since their hunting and environment altering habits were evolving to be more effective, it's harder to pin extinctions on them.