Life as a Hunter-Gatherer: Nice or Nasty?

[phildwyer]

For fuck's sake Phil, use the word technology when you mean it!

I would, but it doesn't wind Gurrier up so much. The spectacle of his rages is worth some minor inexactitude, I don't get much fun in life...

 

[Crispy]

I am wearily entertained by these threads

 

[kyser_soze]

Phil, why not have the courage of your convictions? It'd be quite interesting to see how you find living as anb h-g - or even doing a Ray Mears et al type thing of living with some h-gs and writing a diary about it?

Personally, and having spend a lot of time living off the land when I was a kid an having spent time hunting out of doors in Montana, my feeling on the subject is that yes it's lovely but I liked having the comfy cushion that technology and Western civilisation supplies.

Another point...if h-g was such a great lifestyle why abandon it for agriculture in the first place?

 

[Alf Klein]

Another point...if h-g was such a great lifestyle why abandon it for agriculture in the first place?

It wasn't abandoned for agriculture everywhere was it?

 

[kyser_soze]

It wasn't abandoned for agriculture everywhere was it?

True.

 

[Random]

Another point...if h-g was such a great lifestyle why abandon it for agriculture in the first place?

Well the foraging systems I mentioned in my post were wiped out as part of (often German) colonial expansion into central/east europe in the early middle ages. These methods of food production were encouraged by barons as they could support a bigger population, and add to their holdings.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Clark and Haswell (1970) reckon a hunter-gatherer needs 150 ha of favourable habitat or about 250 ha of at least reasonably decent habitat per person in order to obtain average of around 2500 kcal per day of food energy. I've seen lower estimates, of around 40 ha say, but they tend to be fairly narrow ones whereas the Clark and Haswell stuff is looking at something closer to the total footprint including fuel use and all that kind of stuff.

The total habitable surface of the earth includes about 1.5 billion ha of arable land. If we divide that by the 6 billion people who need to be fed, that leaves each person with a "share" of the good food-producing land of ~ 0.25 ha. Obviously you can use marginal land for some things as well, but that 0.25 ha is the key figure when you're trying to get a rough working estimate of how many people the Earth's resources can feed and how close we are to the limits. 0.25 ha can support a person, but only either using the methods and oil inputs of industrial agriculture or fairly labour intensive organic gardening techniques (hand-picking bugs, training fruit up every vertical surface etc)

This is why hunter-gatherer lifestyles are generally becoming unviable. Anywhere that the habitat is favourable enough to support a population of hunter-gatherers, no matter how miserably, it is now under pressure from other people living nearby who increasingly don't have enough land to subsist using the more efficient (in terms of yield per ha) methods of agriculture.

The west uses a disproportionate share, for example by making less developed countries use land for growing cash crops to pay off the IMF. So in practice, many people in less developed countries are trying to get by with far less than 0.25 ha land to feed themselves. In Rwanda in 1993 for example, the ratio dropped to around 0.15 ha per cap which was dangerously low, as was demonstrated tragically by the genocide which took place the following year.

The ecological footprint (which is slightly more involved than the above measure, but sort of comparable for the purposes of this discussion) of the US is 10.3 ha per person and that of the average UK citizen is around 5 ha. Pimentel (Food, Energy & Society, 1996) does this back-of-an-envelope calculation of how much land you'd need to support an average European level of consumption (about half that of the US) using completely sustainable methods. His estimate per capita is 0.5 ha per person to grow food, 1.5 ha for energy systems (biomass, solar, wind etc) and 1 ha for pasture and biodiversity (not all of that needs to be strictly arable though.) For a total of 3 ha per cap. The problem with this is of course, that if everyone currently alive were living like this, we'd still need two more planets for them to live on.

What this means in practice appears to be that neither at present, nor in any likely future, is the west likely to share those resources equitably with the rest of the world. That leaves little scope for hunter-gatherers except in the most shitty and marginal of habitats that nobody else can find a use for right now.

 

[phildwyer]

I don't think anyone's arguing that hunter-gathering is viable on any large scale today. I would argue, however, that it is the natural state of human society. It has certainly been the way human beings have lived for the overwhelming preponderance of their history. "Civilization," the condition of living under a state, is little more than a euphemism for wholesale oppression. Its primary and universal characteristic would seem to be the appropriation by the few of the labor of the many. This is simply not possible, on any organized scale, in a hunter-gatherer economy. And this--the alienation of labor--is in my view the ultimate source of every human ill and vice. Human history is indeed, as James Joyce put it, a nightmare from which we are unsuccessfully trying to awaken.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

You've got stable agricultural economies that have been around for a long time in remote spots. The New Guinea highlands for example, where agriculture seems to have evolved indepdently have a forest gardening culture which seems to have been running smoothly and sustainably for something like 7000 years now.

Edited to add: of course they did make quite a bit of use of infanticide and war to keep their population in line with resources, so it'll be interesting to see how they get on now that they've been persuaded (mostly) to stop all that stuff.

 

[phildwyer]

You've got stable agricultural economies that have been around for a long time in remote spots. The New Guinea highlands for example, where agriculture seems to have evolved indepdently have a forest gardening culture which seems to have been running smoothly and sustainably for something like 7000 years now.

But that's a mere drop in the ocean in the context of human history as a whole.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

But that's a mere drop in the ocean in the context of human history as a whole.

Well, I'd see it as more of an interesting case on the margins. By being in such an inaccessible place, they mostly got left alone until they were spotted by pilots fairly recently. So they're a very interesting example of an independent agricultural society that has been stable a long time.

 

[phildwyer]

Well, I'd see it as more of an interesting case on the margins. By being in such an inaccessible place, they mostly got left alone until they were spotted by pilots fairly recently. So they're a very interesting example of an independent agricultural society that has been stable a long time.

Didn't they attack the helicopters sent to check on them after the Tsunami with bows and arrows? Which reminds me, Bernie, maybe you can settle an argument I've had with a friend. Are there any "uncontacted" people left in the world? That is, uncontacted by "civilized" people?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Let's see. Say 200 ha per person, let's use the arable land figure of 1.5 billion ha, because if we want to have a nice time as happy hunter-gatherers we'll want to be doing it someplace fertile with a decent climate.

I make that a global population of around 1.5 million happy hunter-gatherers, but please feel free to double-check my maths.

We could actually do better than 1.5 million by all adopting US consumption levels.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Didn't they attack the helicopters sent to check on them after the Tsunami with bows and arrows? Which reminds me, Bernie, maybe you can settle an argument I've had with a friend. Are there any "uncontacted" people left in the world? That is, uncontacted by "civilized" people?

As far as I know there aren't, except possibly in some of the Southern US states. Oh, and in one particular village on the Isle of Wight.

I'm not an anthropologist though, but there is at least one of those around here someplace.

 

[phildwyer]

As far as I know there aren't, except possibly in some of the Southern US states. Oh, and in one particular village on the Isle of Wight.

I'm not an anthropologist though, but there is at least one of those around here someplace.

Oh, I thought there were some in New Guinea, Ecuador and Brazil. I suppose it depends what you mean by "uncontacted." There must be plenty of people who've never visited a city or been in a car or used electricity. There must be some people who've never *met* anyone who's done any of these things too, right? That's pretty uncontacted if you ask me.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Yep, by using Pimentel's model for how you'd sustainably replicate current US consumption, I get a sustainable global population figure of 500 million people as opposed to around 1.5 million with the happy hunter-gatherer model above.

This illustrates the problem I have with the Noble Savage thing, it's very selfish.

It's actually even more selfish than the current US model, which is saying rather a lot. If one is going to go for utopias, give me William Morris , Christopher Alexander and Kropotkin anyday. At least their version of paradise on earth is able to feed itself sustainably (just about, if you take Kropotkin's assumptions from "Fields, Factories and Workshops " and rework them using the very best of modern techniques, the sort of approaches you'd find at Findhorn or CAT say.)

 

[phildwyer]

Yep, by using Pimentel's model for how you'd sustainably replicate current US consumption, I get a sustainable global population figure of 500 million people as opposed to around 1.5 million with the happy hunter-gatherer model above.

This illustrates the problem I have with the Noble Savage thing, it's very selfish.

Why is it "selfish?" No-one would suggest that we should kill 5 and a half billion people so the rest could live as hunter-gatherers. But many people would argue that it would have been better if the world's population had never risen about 500 million. That's no more selfish than advocating birth control.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Sure but the way to limit population and avoid any Malthusian nastiness is to:

1) Educate and empower women, and make sure they can get at contraception.
2) Assure security, including: food, economic, personal, home and land security.
3) Make sure rich and/or powerful people can't isolate themselves from any of the consequences of their actions.

Which means that you need a social model which would do those things if you're going to aspire to a better human condition, otherwise horrible shit may happen. From where we are now to some sort of horrible wretched awful disaster isn't a whole long way. We know how to do things better and that sort of life is still workable in principle, but we're rapidly getting to the end of that opportunity.

 

[redsquirrel]

I would argue, however, that it is the natural state of human society.

Jesus not this shite again. If humans (natural beings) are currently living in non hg societies then those socities by defintion are natural.

 

[phildwyer]

Jesus not this shite again. If humans (natural beings) are currently living in non hg societies then those socities by defintion are natural.

Just let me get this straight: your argument is that anything human beings do is by defintion natural, is that right?

 

[Brainaddict]

Just let me get this straight: your argument is that anything human beings do is by defintion natural, is that right?

There is an argument for it. We're part of nature. We're animals.

 

[Crispy]

That monkey's using a stick to get ants out of that rotting tree! Take it off him before he gets corrupted!

 

[Brainaddict]

As for 'uncontacted tribes' - the only place I know for certain they exist is in Papua New Guinea/Irian Jaya.

An interesting piece on 'first contact' tourism here:

http://alex.golub.name/log/?p=329

I read a book about Bruce Parry and some other guy (the author) in Irian Jaya in search of first contact. They managed it but fucked it up and pretty much realised they were being selfish pricks.

 

[redsquirrel]

Just let me get this straight: your argument is that anything human beings do is by defintion natural, is that right?

Yes, Brainaddict has already stated it. If it isn't true then either you have a situation where humans aren't part of nature (like in the Bible where they are given control of all the animals) or you have a natural being doing something unnatural which is a conradiction.

That monkey's using a stick to get ants out of that rotting tree! Take it off him before he gets corrupted!

Yeah this is why phils arguments are garbage. Technology and the use of tools is totally natural and as you point out it's not even limited to the human species.

 

[phildwyer]

There is an argument for it. We're part of nature. We're animals.

Well yes, but that's not really much of an argument when you think about it. We're a fairly unique sort of animal. We have all sorts of things that animals don't, such as self-consciousness, language, culture and so forth. You can't explain such things by recourse to nature. Although sociobiologists and social Darwinists try to do so, their case is transparently a rationalization of a particular form of social organization.

 

[Brainaddict]

Well yes, but that's not really much of an argument when you think about it. We're a fairly unique sort of animal. We have all sorts of things that animals don't, such as self-consciousness, language, culture and so forth. You can't explain such things by recourse to nature. Although sociobiologists and social Darwinists try to do so, their case is transparently a rationalization of a particular form of social organization.

Yes, well I said that there's an argument for it, not that I bought into it.

I think there is a meaningful and useful distinction between the world of conscious, self-aware nature and the world of non-conscious nature - but it's worth being careful about how you phrase it.

 

[phildwyer]

Yes, Brainaddict has already stated it. If it isn't true then either you have a situation where humans aren't part of nature (like in the Bible where they are given control of all the animals) or you have a natural being doing something unnatural which is a conradiction.

This is the most simplistic tautology I've ever encountered. You're saying: "human beings are natural, therefore everything human beings do is natural." That is a tautology: a fallacious argument. Can you grasp this? Maybe not. Well then, to try to prod your case a bit further along, would you deny that human beings do in fact have "control of all the animals?"

 

[Brainaddict]

This is the most simplistic tautology I've ever encountered. You're saying: "human beings are natural, therefore everything human beings do is natural." That is a tautology: a fallacious argument. Can you grasp this? Maybe not. Well then, to try to prod your case a bit further along, would you deny that human beings do in fact have "control of all the animals?"

but phil, human beings *are* natural, in that they evolved and develop according to the same rules of the Universe as everyone else. Language and culture *can* be explained by recourse to nature, because when you get down to it, unless you believe in divine intervention theres's nothing *but* nature in existence.

As I say above, there is still a useful distinction to be made in my opinion.

 

[Crispy]

This is the most simplistic tautology I've ever encountered. You're saying: "human beings are natural, therefore everything human beings do is natural." That is a tautology: a fallacious argument. Can you grasp this? Maybe not. Well then, to try to prod your case a bit further along, would you deny that human beings do in fact have "control of all the animals?"

[flip]You trying controlling a lion that's ripping your face off.[/flip]

Seriously, no we don't. We have lots of power, but it is conditional and easily lost. I'd like to see you control the human immunodefficiency virus as well, that's a nasty one.

 

[redsquirrel]

This is the most simplistic tautology I've ever encountered. You're saying: "human beings are natural, therefore everything human beings do is natural." That is a tautology: a fallacious argument. Can you grasp this? Maybe not.

Yes you arrogant twatI do relise that is a tautology that's precisely why I think the phrase human nature/unatural etc are nonsense and why I brought up the fact that your use of it was crap.