Hunter-gatherers: What Characteristics Do These Cultures Present?
Hunter-gatherer societies have been and are cultures seen as nomadic and in which agriculture has not been developed, which is why they depend greatly on the resources that nature offers.
Although their name gives many clues about how their way of subsistence works, the truth is that it also has an impact on their own social hierarchy and the idea of material property, in addition to the fact that not everyone is so nomadic or homogeneous.
We’ll see now The fundamental characteristics of hunter-gatherer societies dispelling some myths associated with them.
Human societies, both prehistoric and current, can be classified following different criteria related to the degree of complexity of their social hierarchy, the development of their culture and technological application, in addition to their size.
One of the most recurring criteria is the one that refers to how they obtain the food they need to survive. This is when we talk about hunter-gatherer societies, in contrast to societies that have developed agriculture
Hunter-gatherer cultures have been human groups basically composed of bands and tribes. The bands are defined according to three basic characteristics according to one of the experts in the field, TC Lewellen (1983):
The hunter-gatherer economy It has been the most basic form of subsistence and also the most common It has been estimated that more than 90% of human beings who have lived from the first individuals of our species to the present have lived in a human group in which they subsisted by hunting and gathering vegetables.
Many vegetables, but few animals
Although these cultures have generally been called hunter-gatherers, the truth is that this name is a generalization of the subsistence behavior patterns of these human beings. In fact, it is somewhat surprising that today this expression continues to be used to refer to cultures in which more than 40% meat is rarely incorporated into their diet
You might think that this makes sense if you take into account that hunting an animal is not the same as collecting vegetables. Hunter-gatherers, having not developed agriculture, do not have animals so easily available.
Furthermore, in the wild an animal does not allow itself to be killed as easily as a domesticated animal would, accustomed to human presence and not suspecting where it is going to end up. It should be said that the location of wild animals changes, as do the hunter-gatherers themselves.
On the other hand, the plants are there, stuck to the ground and, unless someone picks them up, they do not change their place. They are a source of resources that are easy to obtain, since they do not involve a large expenditure of energy compared to hunting animals which involves having to chase them, study their behavior patterns, what they eat, how dangerous they are…
The sedentary nature of vegetables and the certainty that they grow in the same place every year are the explanation why most of the hunter-gatherer diet leans towards plants.
Do women gather, men hunt?
Traditionally, when talking about hunter-gatherer societies, the idea was very well established that men were in charge of hunting while women stayed at home taking care of their offspring and collecting vegetables.
This idea, in which it is proposed that the man is the active one, chasing wild boars, deer and all kinds of vermin, while the woman, passive, is in charge of picking up what does not move, that is, the plants, is has proven to be very far from reality.
There are several researchers who have debunked this belief, which has its roots in a fairly marked anthropological sexism Both in current and prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies there have been many cases in which women and men, although they do not share all the same roles, do interact in various functions, and among them is hunting.
According to Harris and Ross (1991), during the Paleolithic, since hunting strategies involved high mortality and danger, it should not have made sense to have only the male half of the adults in the group do this.
The involvement of as many people as possible was necessary, and women were not excluded from this activity An excessive division of labor based on sex could be synonymous with a lack of foods of animal origin, foods which, as we have already said, are neither abundant nor easy to obtain.
One of the main characteristics of these societies is their mobility. Both prehistoric and current ones, in many cases, change their place of settlement, especially depending on the season of the year and the availability of resources. It should also be said that the size of the group varies depending on the season of the year and its associated availability.
An example of this is a culture that lives in Africa: the !Kung During the dry season, these towns are grouped together in macropopulations, near predictable and relatively abundant water sources.
Since there is little water and everyone is aware of where it is, they are more likely to get together, sharing it and administering it to avoid deficiencies. On the other hand, when the rainy season arrives and the vegetation blooms again, the macropopulation disintegrates, settling in various places.
It should be said that, although the majority of hunter-gatherers are nomads, They present different settlement patterns depending on their culture and the needs of the group itself On the one hand we have the more collector-type cultures, settling near their preferred resources until they are exhausted or they change location, as is the case of the !Kung.
On the other hand, there are others who move more frequently, traveling long distances and establishing temporary settlements. This is the case of the Dogrib Indians in Canada, who travel long distances in search of caribou.
The problem of material property
One of the consequences of nomadism and total dependence on the resources of the natural environment is material poverty. Those hunter-gatherer societies that are forced to change their habitat relatively frequently are forced to do without carrying anything that is not extremely necessary. This is not a big problem either, since making tools is not very complicated, given how rudimentary they usually are.
It seems that There is a correlation between how nomadic the culture is and the sophistication of its tools, together with the amount of material properties possessed by individuals and families. An example of this is the Inuit, who have relatively low mobility and their villages are usually stable. This has allowed them to spend more time developing their technology, which has become more valuable and less expendable.
Based on this, one might think that material property in the most nomadic cultures, far from being a symbol of power or something to boast about, is rather seen as a burden. This is why it has been stated that nomads do not have the sense of material property, so clearly visible in the Western world. However, this idea is too general.
This is easily refuted considering that, No matter how nomadic they may be, there are many cultures that bury their dead with grave goods Among this trousseau there are objects associated with the deceased, used by him. In essence, your material properties, since it would make no sense to bury something that belongs to everyone and lose it in a burial if the idea of property did not exist.
However, what there is no doubt about is the idea that food belongs to everyone. It is usually very frowned upon not to share the hunt, even if it was thanks to the action of a single hunter Although the collected products are usually consumed by the family nucleus, hunting is something that is distributed throughout the group. Sharing these resources is not done as a value, that too, but out of the extreme need to increase group survival.
It is through sharing food that social bonds are also reinforced. Not sharing it is seen as an act of terrible selfishness, which is a transgression of the traditions and norms that make up the mentality and culture of the group, transmitted from generation to generation and orally since time immemorial.
