Chapter Five: Hunter-Gatherers

On a Clear Day

Well, the view from HBC is very interesting, I must say. From this great height of possibly 100,000 years ago, or more, we can look down for years and years through millennia after millennia of human history. The view is admittedly a bit foggy. But with a little more research we might be able to see forever. Or at least as far into the future as now.

What I want to do next is take a close look at certain specific hunter-gatherer groups in an attempt to determine, however tentatively, which aspects of certain cultures could be survivals from HBC and which might represent a variant or divergence from the ancestral model.

Traditionally, as we’ve seen, anthropologists have tended to assume that there are certain people out there who can be grouped together as “hunter-gatherers” or “foragers,” because they appear to have so many things in common. And since the notion of cultural survival was long ago discarded as some sort of myth, anthropologists now tend to think of such shared traditions as due to some universal characteristic that we could call, I suppose, “hunter-gatherer-ivity.” If they hunt and gather, and have no other visible means of support, that means they must belong to some mysterious cultural sub-species of the human race that for some mysterious reason shares all sorts of interesting beliefs, attitudes, methodologies, etc.

From our newly constructed baseline observatory, however, what I now see, through a glass darkly, is the likelihood that what all so called “hunter-gatherer” groups might have in common is their connection with HBC. Now that we have a baseline, we can not only reconsider the possibility of cultural survivals, but speculate with much more precision regarding their nature and their origin. It's not so much a matter of proving that some particular instance is in fact a survival, because that would be almost impossible to do, as opening the door on a fresh approach to comparative studies of the sort that could help us organize and systematize our search for history and meaning.

The Hadza

Let us consider, for example, the Hadza, a group of “hunter-gatherer” bands, some of which are still living an apparently traditional lifestyle in what is now Tanzania (formerly Tanganyika and Zanzibar). A recent issue of National Geographic contains a very interesting article by Michael Finkel, titled The Hadza (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/12/hadza/finkel-text.), and subtitled as follows:

They grow no food, raise no livestock, and live without rules or calendars. They are living a hunter-gatherer existence that is little changed from 10,000 years ago. What do they know that we've forgotten?

The subtitle is misleading, “10,000 years ago” refers simply to the general estimate among Archaeologists that the earliest signs of agriculture date from roughly 10,000 years in the past. The assumption being that 1. the Hadza have lived as hunter-gatherers during the entire period since the earliest advent of agriculture; 2. hunting and gathering in itself is a principal determinant of culture, and 3. all hunter-gatherers are now living as our ancestors lived. These are huge assumptions.

Nevertheless, we have good reason to believe that certain aspects of Hadza life haven't changed much over a period anywhere from 40,000 to very possibly well over 100,000 years ago. How can we make such a statement? Not on the basis of loosely defined assumptions, but very specific evidence pointing to strong socio-cultural affinities with HBC, the ancestral culture we've constructed as our (hypothetical) baseline.

We learn toward the beginning of the article that one of the Hadza males is “maybe five feet tall.” The mean height of Hadza males has been estimated at 162.24 centimeters, i.e. roughly 64 inches or 5 foot 3. Since Aka Pygmy males are reported as averaging 153 centimeters, or roughly 5 feet, the Hadza don't seem all that much taller. And as we've learned, certain Bushmen groups fall into roughly the same ballpark. Did the Hadza, Pygmies and Bushmen inherit their small height from a common ancestor or is it some sort of adaptation, or even perhaps a coincidence? Only biological research can tell us for sure, so this remains an open question.

The Hadza language is correctly described as an isolate. Despite the use of clicks it has not been possible to group it with Khoisan or any other family. However, like so many other African languages, it is tonal. According to Finkel, “Gene­tic testing indicates that they may represent one of the primary roots of the human family tree—perhaps more than 100,000 years old,” but I don't know of any research supporting that. On the contrary, the Hadza appear to be a genetic isolate. Consider the following graph, based on an analysis of autosomal microsatellite markers, by Tishkoff et al (click on image to enlarge):

Figure 5.1 Autosomal DNA in Africa (Tishkoff et al. 2009)

The Hadza are easy to spot as they are represented by a bright yellow vertical band roughly one-third of the way in from the left. The fact that they are the only group represented by this color tells us how distinctive their genetic profile is. The Hadza are a musical isolate as well, as far as I've been able to determine, with a vocal style completely different from both P/B style interlocking and the call and response pattern so typical of Bantu singing. Here is an example of Hadza vocalizing, from the two CD set, The Hadza Bushmen of Tanzania, disk 2, track 7: Audio Example 11: La Source de Chemchem.

To my knowledge no one has ever done a systematic study of Hadza music, so my impressions are based exclusively on this particular set of recordings, which might not be fully representative. On this basis, it would seem that Hadza singing, like Hadza autosomal markers, is highly distinctive -- very beautiful indeed, but quite different from any other type of sub-Saharan African music with which I am acquainted. For one thing, the vocalizing on these CDs is almost exclusively in “social unison,” where all voices sing more or less in the same rhythm (albeit polyphonically, in a manner not unlike the parallel organum of the Medieval church) – while not unknown in sub-Saharan Africa, social unison is far less common there than call and response antiphony.

Moreover, the Hadza tend to sing in relatively free, loosely coordinated, rhythms, and the rhythmic relation between the accompanying handclaps and the voices doesn’t appear to be very clearly coordinated -- all of which is very unusual for Africa south of the Sahara, where rhythms and rhythmic coordination tend to be clearly defined and precise. While the existence of musical isolates is not unheard of in Africa, the unusual style of Hadza vocalizing is surprising and also puzzling, especially since they have so much else in common with Pygmies and Bushmen, whose musical style we could expect them to share.

While there is indeed something very mysterious in both the genetic and musical pictures for the Hadza, such anomalies could be explained, I believe, by a severe population bottleneck.¹ Such an event, leaving only a very small proportion of the original population to serve as a subsequent “founder group,” could explain both the genetic and the musical anomalies. The highly integrated, tightly coordinated musical style of P/B could have been altered in the wake of a disaster that temporarily isolated only a small number of survivors.

It seems as though such a bottleneck could only have occurred very early on. If it occurred relatively recently, then the genetic picture for the Hadza would not look so radically different from that of all other African populations (see graph). This is my own interpretation of the genetic evidence, and I am by no means an expert, but as far as I can tell a very early bottleneck appears to be the only logical explanation for the Hadza “mystery.” I’ll be discussing such bottlenecks and their cultural effects in much more detail presently.

When we leave aside the genetic, linguistic and musical differences, we see a great many striking similarities with Pygmy and Bushmen culture, strongly suggesting that, bottleneck or not, a great many traditions could well be survivals from HBC. For one thing, we learn from the article that a significant number of Hadza, one-quarter, “remain true hunter-gatherers,” with strong evidence that all Hadza lived solely by hunting and gathering in the not too distant past.

Anthro­pologists are wary of viewing contemporary hunter-gatherers as “living fossils,” says Frank Marlowe, a Florida State University professor of anthropology who has spent the past 15 years studying the Hadza. Time has not stood still for them. But they have maintained their foraging lifestyle in spite of long exposure to surrounding agriculturalist groups, and, says Marlowe, it's possible that their lives have changed very little over the ages (p. 104).

“The Hadza do not engage in warfare,” “have plenty of leisure time,” “live almost entirely free of possessions,” “collect honey,” and hunt with poison arrows, cultural characteristics shared among all three of our baseline “feeder” groups, EP, WP and Bu. Additionally, they “recognize no official leaders,” favor “individual autonomy,” and rarely stand on ceremony for events such as weddings, funerals and other rituals.

In this latter respect they do differ somewhat from HBC, where we would expect to find rituals similar to the Elima girl's initiation, or the Molimo festival, as practiced by the Mbuti, or the Xhoma male initiation ritual of the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen. Moreover, “there are no Hadza priests or shamans or medicine men.” Perhaps such traditions were lost in the same bottleneck event that may have affected their genetic profile and their music.

The status of women among the Hadza appears extremely close to their status among EP, WP and Bu -- and thus HBC -- i.e., a state of relative equality, with very clear overtones of subservience in certain areas, as reflected in sometimes very different gender roles and limitations.

The Hadza also have “beehive” huts, very much like those of the Pygmies and Bushmen: “During the rainy season, they construct little domed shelters made of interwoven twigs and long grasses: basically, upside-down bird's nests.”

Figure 5.2 Hadza Hut

I’ll be getting more deeply into the very intriguing question of Beehive huts as possible HBC survivals in an upcoming chapter.

Core HBC values such as avoidance of conflict and strong emphasis on sharing are also present among the Hadza: “Most conflicts are resolved by the feuding parties simply separating into different camps. If a hunter brings home a kill, it is shared by everyone in his camp.” The Hadza also practice scarification, as is evident from a photo on p. 119 of the National Geographic article:

 Figure 5.3 Hadza Woman

Other Groups

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers contains separate articles on 53 different groups from seven world regions and to the best of my knowledge they are merely skimming the surface. Each group has its own individual history, of course, and certain distinctive qualities not shared with many of the others. Moreover, each author of each study has his or her own approach and his or her own philosophy regarding what hunter-gatherers (aka “foragers”) are and how to think about them. Nevertheless, a consensus does seem to have emerged, in this volume and elsewhere, at least among those who still think the category “hunter-gatherer” has any meaning at all.

In the Introduction, “Foragers and Others,” by editors Richard Lee and Richard Daly (Lee and Daly 1999:1-19), it is acknowledged that “Hunter- gatherers are a diverse group of peoples living in a wide range of conditions.” Nevertheless,

within the range of variation, certain common motifs can be identified. Hunter-gatherers are generally peoples who have lived until recently without the overarching discipline imposed by the state. They have lived in relatively small groups, without centralized authority, standing armies, or bureaucratic systems. Yet the evidence indicates that they have lived together surprisingly well, solving their problems among themselves largely without recourse to authority figures and without a particular propensity for violence (p. 1 -- my emphasis).

Other commonalities noted by Lee and Daly are: relatively egalitarian ethic; mobility; flexible patterns of concentration and dispersion; communal ownership of property; “generalized reciprocity” (i.e., sharing of most resources with no expectation of return).

Another important trait shared by almost all hunter-gatherer groups is some form of Shamanism:

Shamanism is another major practice common to the great majority of hunting and gathering peoples. The word originates in eastern Siberia, from the Evenki/Tungus word saman meaning “one who is excited or raised.” Throughout the hunter-gatherer world community-based ritual specialists (usually part-time) heal the sick and provide spiritual protection. They mediate between the social/human world and the dangerous and unpredictable world of the supernatural. Shamanism is performative, mixing theatre and instrumental acts in order to approach the plane of the sacred (ibid:3-5).

Remarkably, just about everything Lee and Daly have found that all or almost all hunter-gatherers have in common are features we’ve identified as characteristic of HBC. Is this commonality due simply to the fact that the three groups we've been using to construct our HBC model happen themselves to be hunter-gatherers? In other words, is the long list of commonalities among so many hunter-gatherers to be explained by “hunter-gatherer-ivity”? Or, to put it in functionalist terms, is hunter-gatherer culture in general a function of hunting and gathering in particular?

I wonder how many anthropologists have realized how circular this “explanation” is. Hunters and gatherers apparently live the way they do because they hunt and gather. And they hunt and gather because that's the way they live. Significantly, neither the editors nor any of the other contributors to this very thick volume make any attempt whatsoever to explain all these remarkable similarities, as though they could simply be taken for granted.

Is there an explanation? Yes, of course. As seems clear to me, hunters and gatherers live the way they do, not because they hunt and gather (duh!), but because they are highly conservative peoples who have gone to a tremendous amount of trouble over many thousands of years to preserve their traditional way of life, based on practices and beliefs that could only have been established tens of thousands of years ago in the culture of a common ancestor. Such deeply ingrained conservatism would explain not only why they all seem to share so many cultural attributes, but also why they continue to live by hunting and gathering, wherever possible, in the face of so many forces at work in the world of today trying to “modernize” them.

Violence and Competition

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers covers North and South America, Africa, North Eurasia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Australia -- but not New Guinea or Island Melanesia. These areas are a problem for hunter-gatherer studies because the great majority of the many indigenous groups therein are not, strictly speaking, foragers, but usually described as “horticulturalists” -- which boils down, in many cases, to hunter-gatherers who also do a bit of simple gardening.

What makes this a problem is that it isn't always so easy to distinguish the two. For example, the Encyclopedia includes a chapter on the Batak, in the Philippines, despite the fact that “they have long produced some rice by shifting cultivation, together with smaller amounts of maize, cassava and sweet potato, but cultivation is a far less important activity for them than it is for their lowland neighbors” (p. 295). I have a feeling that much the same could be said of a great many Melanesian horticulturalists as well.

In an online article, The Hunter-Gatherer Spectrum in New Guinea, Paul Roscoe informs us that some New Guinean populations are -- or were -- hunter-gatherers after all:

It has long been supposed that New Guinea is a land of cultivators. . . However, a close examination of the ethnographic record – in particular, of unpublished and non-English language sources – has revealed numerous references to the presence of “hunters and gatherers.”

Roscoe distinguishes two principal types of New Guinea foragers, those dependent on “terrestrial and arboreal game,” who “markedly resembled the classic hunter-gatherer societies typified by the Kung, Inuit, Mbuti, and many Australian Aboriginal groups. . .” and those concentrating on “aquatic resources.” The former were “relatively egalitarian,” with “mobility as an important conflict resolution mechanism,” and a “comparatively unelaborated” ritual life.” However, “Contradicting a common stereotype that war is attenuated or absent among hunters and gatherers, fighting was endemic.” [my emphasis]. The latter

typically exhibited a cultural complexity rivaling that of agriculturalists in New Guinea and they strongly resembled other aquatically adapted, hunter-gatherer societies such as the Native American communities of the Northwest Coast. . . Most of these groups also had developed highly elaborate ceremonial and visual art. Some, such as the Asmat, Karawari, Kwoma, and Purari are among the most famous of New Guinea’s ritual artists.

And once again, as with the terrestrial foragers, violence is an important element in the cultural mix: “Warfare was generally intense, and most of these groups were head-hunters.”

The importance of violence among New Guinea's hunter-gatherers, and in Melanesia generally, even among the simpler, more egalitarian societies, certainly does go against the stereotype, an “inconvenient truth” that must be accounted for by anyone seeking to characterize hunter-gatherers in general according to the “core values” identified in our baseline.

The contradiction is not lost on Roscoe:

Hunter-gatherer scholarship has largely overlooked the importance of war, partly because of long-standing assumptions that warfare is a relatively recent emergence in human history and that hunter-gatherers lead a peaceful life. There is increasing evidence, however, that these assumptions are misplaced and that New Guinea’s foragers may more accurately represent the hunter-gatherer past. Recent primate research finds that chimpanzees practice a form of lethal aggression against neighbors that has striking similarities to ambush in human society. This suggests that organized deadly violence may antedate the human-chimpanzee split, some 5 to 7 million years ago, and therefore may have characterized the whole of human prehistory.

Another complication posed by Melanesia, not mentioned by Roscoe, but of equal relevance, is the importance in just about every Melanesian society of the so-called “Big Man.” According to Marshall Sahlins, who made an intensive study of Melanesian social structure,

Politics is in the main personal politicking in these Melanesian societies, and the size of a leader's faction as well as the extent of his renown are normally set by competition with other ambitious men. . .

[A Big Man] must be prepared to demonstrate that he possesses the kind of skills that command respect . . . Typically decisive is the deployment of one's skills and efforts in a certain direction: towards amassing goods, most often pigs, shell monies and vegetable foods, and distributing them in ways which build a name for cavalier generosity, if not for compassion (Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief, pp. 290-291).

While Melanesian social structure is still often referred to as “relatively egalitarian” or “more-or-less egalitarian” (see for example “Irian Jaya - Anthropological and Historical Perspective,” by Waruno Mahdi, part 2), the notion of a “Big-Man” in the above sense would be pure anathema to any of the Pygmy or Bushmen groups whose cultures we've been examining. As we’ve learned, these cultures are more than simply “egalitarian,” they perpetuate social mechanisms that actively discourage any attempt on the part of any individual to stand out from the group. While certain individuals do emerge as “natural leaders” due to certain outstanding abilities, personal ambition is strongly frowned upon, and overt competition of any kind is almost unheard of.

It's important to understand, moreover, that neither violence nor “Big-Man” politics among either hunter-gatherers or horticulturalists is confined to Melanesia, though both are particularly common in this region. In fact certain “hunter-gatherer” groups have exhibited highly competitive and violent behavior, in many parts of the world.

Does this mean that “deadly violence” in fact “characterized the whole of human prehistory,” as Roscoe has alleged? Does it mean that competition is genetically ingrained into the human spirit? Only if we are willing to accept the commonly held view of “hunter-gatherers” as representative, for better (the traditionalist view) or worse (the revisionist view), of some sort of universalized essence of “Stone-Age Man.” I’ll be delving more deeply into this extremely important issue in the following chapter.

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1. “A population bottleneck (or genetic bottleneck) is an evolutionary event in which a significant percentage of a population or species is killed or otherwise prevented from reproducing.” (Wikipedia)