Hunter-gatherers: what are the characteristics of these cultures?

This way of life was shared by all humans thousands of years ago.

Hunter-gatherer societies have been and are cultures seen as nomadic and in which agriculture has not been developed, so they depend a lot on the resources offered by nature.

Although their name gives enough clues about how their way of subsistence works, the truth is that it also has repercussions on their own social hierarchy and the idea of material property, in addition to the fact that they are not all so nomadic or homogeneous.

We will now take a look at the fundamental characteristics of hunter-gatherer societiesand debunking some of the myths associated with them.

What are hunter-gatherers?

Human societies, both prehistoric and present-day, can be classified according to different criteria related to the degree of complexity of their social hierarchy, the development of their culture and technological application, as well as their size.

One of the most recurrent criteria is the one that refers to how they obtain the food they need to subsist. It is here that we speak of hunter-gatherer societies, as opposed to societies that have developed agriculture..

Hunter-gatherer cultures have been human groups composed, basically, of bands and tribes. Bands are defined according to three basic characteristics according to one of the experts on the subject, T. C. Lewellen (1983):

• Seasonal mobility, i.e., nomadism.
• Lack of centralized authority structures.
• Hunter-gatherer economy.

The hunter-gatherer economy has been the most basic and, also, the most common form of subsistence.. It has been estimated that more than 90% of human beings who have lived from the first individuals of our species to the present day have lived in a human group in which subsistence was based on hunting and gathering vegetables.

• You may be interested in, "What is the origin of Homo sapiens?"

Many vegetables, but few animals

Although these cultures have generally been called hunter-gatherer cultures, 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 to this day this expression is still used to refer to cultures in which cultures that rarely incorporate more than 40% meat in their diet..

One might think that this makes sense if one takes into account that hunting an animal is not the same as gathering vegetables. Hunter-gatherers, not having developed agriculture, do not have animals so easily at their disposal.

In addition, in the wild, an animal does not allow itself to be killed as easily as a domesticated animal, accustomed to human presence and unsuspecting of where it will end up. It must be said that the location of wild animals changes, as do the hunter-gatherers themselves.

Plants, on the other hand, are there, stuck to the ground and, unless someone picks them up, do not change their location. They are an easy source of resources to obtain, since they do not involve a great expenditure of energy compared to hunting animals, which involves having to chase them.which implies 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 explain why most hunter-gatherers' diets are plant-based.

Women gather, men hunt?

Traditionally, when talking about hunter-gatherer societies, the idea that men were in charge of hunting while women stayed at home taking care of the offspring and gathering vegetables was well established.

This idea, in which the male is the active one, chasing wild boars, deer and all kinds of vermin, while the woman, passive, is in charge of catching what does not move, that is to say, the plants, has been demonstrated as very far from reality.

There are several researchers who have demolished this belief, which is rooted in a rather marked anthropological sexism.. In both present-day and prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies there have been many cases in which women and men, while not sharing all the same roles, do share several functions, and among them is hunting.

According to Harris and Ross (1991), during the Paleolithic, given that 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 in charge of this.

It was necessary to involve as many people as possible, and women were not excluded. women were not excluded from this activity.. An excessive division of labor according to sex could be synonymous with a lack of food of animal origin, food which, as we have already said, is neither abundant nor easy to obtain.

Nomadism in these societies

One of the main characteristics of these societies is their mobility. In many cases, both prehistoric and present-day populations change their place of settlement, especially depending on the season and the availability of resources.The size of the group varies according to the season of the year and the availability of resources. It should also be said that the size of the group varies according to the season of the year and its associated availability.

An example of this is a culture that inhabits Africa: the !kung. During the dry season, these peoples cluster in macro-populations near predictable and relatively abundant water sources.

Since water is scarce and everyone is aware of where it is, they are more likely to gather together, sharing and managing it to avoid shortages. On the other hand, when the rainy season arrives and the vegetation flourishes again, the macro-population disintegrates and is located in various places.

It should be noted that, although most hunter-gatherers are nomadic, have 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 these are exhausted or they change location, as is the case of the !kung.

On the other hand, there are others that 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 natural resources is material poverty. Those hunter-gatherer societies that are obliged to change their habitat relatively frequently are forced to do without anything that is not extremely necessary. This is not a big problem either, since tool making is not very complicated, given how rudimentary they tend to be.

There seems to be a correlation there is a correlation between how nomadic the culture is and the sophistication of its tools, coupled with the amount of material properties possessed by individuals and families.The most common example of this is the Eskimo people, who have a very high level of material properties. An example of this is the Eskimo, who have relatively low mobility and their settlements tend to be stable. This has allowed them to spend more time in the elaboration of their technology, which has become more valuable and less expendable.

Based on this, one might think that material property in the more nomadic cultures, far from being a symbol of power or something to strut about, is seen more as a burden. This is why it has been said that in nomads there is no sense of material property, so clearly visible in the Western world. However, this idea is too generalistic.

This is easily refuted taking into account that, however nomadic they may be, there are more than a few cultures that bury their dead with grave goods.. Among this trousseau are objects associated with the deceased, used by him. In essence, material property of the deceased, 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.

What there is no doubt about, however, is the idea that food belongs to everyone. It is often frowned upon not to share in the hunt, even if it was thanks to the actions of a single hunter.. Although the products gathered are usually consumed by the family, hunting is something that is distributed throughout the group. Sharing these resources is not done as a value, which is also a value, but because of the extreme need to increase group survival.

It is through the sharing of food that social bonds are also strengthened. 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.

Bibliographical references:

• Binford, L. R. (1994) In search of the past: Deciphering the archaeological record. Barcelona, Crítica.
• Cashdan, E. (1991) Cazadores y recolectores: El comportamiento económico de las bandas, in S. Plattner (ed.), Antropología económica. Mexico, Alianza Editorial: 43-78.
• Harris, M. and E. B. Ross (1991) Population regulation among early human foragers", in Death, sex and fertility: Demographic regulation in pre-industrial and developing societies. Madrid, Alianza Editorial: 30-45.
• Lee, R. B. (1981) La subsistencia de los bosquimanos !kung: Un análisis de input-output", in J. R. Llobera (ed.), Antropología económica: Estudios etnográficos. Barcelona, Anagrama: 35-64.
• Arce Ruiz, Ó. (2005) Hunters and gatherers. A theoretical approach. In: Gazeta de Antropología, Nº 21, Article 22.