Do hunter-gatherers have it right?

[sandbender]

An interesting article and five minute interview with Tom Standage talking about his new book, An Edible History of Humanity, on BBC Radio 4

Link here.

"...Secondly, while the evidence for the 'progressivist' point of view seems overwhelming, it's surprisingly hard to prove. Studies of the few remaining hunter gatherer societies show these people work less hard than their farming neighbours, and enjoy a much healthier and more varied diet.

When asked why he hadn't adopted agriculture, one Kalahari Bushman quoted by Jared Diamond replied, "why should I, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"

The evidence from archaeology supports the idea that hunter gatherer societies were surprisingly healthy. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that average height at the end of the last ice age was around 5'9". With the adoption of agriculture the figure crashed, and by 3000 BC had reached a low of 5'3".

Similar comparative studies of tooth decay, and from the scars left on bones by diseases like tuberculosis, point to a similar conclusion..."​

Tom Standage blog is here.

A review of the book in the New Scientist is here.

Thanks for looking.

 

[Treemonk]

Increasing economic work is being done on "happiness" rather than "wealth".

It is noted the two don't always go together - in fact we are richer today than we have ever been but the least happy.

Just adds to the argument really

 

[durulz]

Interesting point.
I am quite happy to agree that hunter-gatherer lifestyles are perfectly healthy and that they are in no way 'secondary' to agriculture.
However.
The chief advantage of agriculture is the ability to produce a surplus which can be stored in case of blight, bad weather, fire, natural disaster etc. Hunter-gathering does not have the ability to reap stocks large enough to support large societies (which is why hunter-gatherer societies tend to be considerably smaller).

 

[gregorach]

Yeah, it is an interesting point... To my mind, key advantage of agriculture is the ability to produce enough malting barley to make beer.

 

[Asa Samuel]

I think everyone would be happier if we were hunter-gatherers, less worrying about paying the mortgage. But there's no way we could all go back to that lifestyle without culling a few billion people first. not enough food to go around without people producing it on a wide scale.

 

[stuart f]

Interesting stuff,so has changing to Agriculture ultimately put the nail in the coffin for human kind,as i've read that Agriculture can cause desertification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertification.
Listening to the radio link it was interesting to hear that we will have to farm more to supply the growing population.

It don't add up to my way of thinking.

But what would i know,i left school with only a pencil and come to think about it:bluThinki the pencil was'nt even mine



PS i'm not trying to start a teetowooki thread neither,i just found it interesting thats all.

Cheers Stuart.

 

[Barn Owl]

Simple fact is we're too clever for our own good and there are far too many humans on the planet.

As I've always thought...something 'experimented' with our ancestors making us think we're better than the other life forms around us,leading 'us' to think 'we' have dominion over everything.

I mean is it natural to have billions of one species able to plunder all others and the materials of the earth itself ?

This is why some indigenious peoples live as they're ancestors did 'cos there's no need to use the 'brain' to overcome problems that don't exist for them.

In the 'new' worlds, it's the escalating numbers of people that required the use of the brain to overcome the problems of feeding,treating illness and sheltering same.

This ability to do so in my opinion was implanted somehow by a 'creator' or 'creators'.
These would be the Pagan Gods or the God as worshipped by several religions.

Simple thoughts of a simple man...

 

[Scots_Charles_River]

There could be a 'tipping point' that all hunter gatherer societies reach where there is not enough game around near the home village so then they have to farm to supply the needs.

All civilisations have failed in the past, mayans, romans, greeks etc at tipping points, who knows why.

Nick

 

[firecrest]

A good book to read is the Third Chimpanzee by Jared diamond.

Agriculture has several advantages over hunter-gatherer lifestyle, however none of it is what our bodies were evolved for. The staple of our diet is not evolved to be carbs as school taught us but veg and meat.
When we calculate life-span it seems to based on the estimations made with western chauvanism. We saw the victorians had a limited life, we saw the medievial people rarely reached old age, why then! Mr caveman must have only lived to have been about 35!
This can be blown out of the water by drawing on our evolution again. Humans, like many other higher mammals live passed reproductive age in order to raise grandchildren. Linages where grandparents were around for a long time could share child rearing and benefited from the knowledge in a world without books. We could never have evolved this extended life if it were not put in use until modern times so evidently mankind lived probably at least till their 50`s and 60`s for millenia.

However if we look at agriculture, its benefits are clear. they may work harder, live shorter unhappier lives but more farmers can live in one area than hunter gatherers can. Perhaps 10 times as many or more. One square mile of farm land can support a community in a way gathering cannot. The effect of this is war. The farming community has the resources to destroy the hunter-gatherers hands down because there will always vbe more of them in any area.
another benefit (perhaps I should that in inverted commas) is civilisation. If one man can feed two people then the second man is freed up to specialise in something else. if one man can support ten people farming then ten people are freed up to specialise in something else which they trade with the farmer for food. Progress around the globe is directly related the amount of calories contained in the foodcrop and the animals in that area that can be domesticated. Central and south america had llama species to be domesticated, milked, shorn and corn that could be grown. they too progressed to technology. Our western explosion is due to better growth and quality of our crop and superiority of western farming animal species as opposed to alpaca/llama. Sheep pigs and cows were all first domesticated in Iraq - the garden of eden.

 

[Barney]

Interesting point.
I am quite happy to agree that hunter-gatherer lifestyles are perfectly healthy and that they are in no way 'secondary' to agriculture.
However.
The chief advantage of agriculture is the ability to produce a surplus which can be stored in case of blight, bad weather, fire, natural disaster etc. Hunter-gathering does not have the ability to reap stocks large enough to support large societies (which is why hunter-gatherer societies tend to be considerably smaller).

The ability to produce a surplus is expected to be short lived. I have read/heard, cant remember which, that currently 40% of the surface area of the planet is effectively under the plough to produce food for roughly six and a half billion people. Over the next forty or so years, by 2050, the population is expected to increase by about 50% to a minimum of nine billion.

I think that the human race turned to static lifestyle and farming due to the age old question "where the effin hell have you been until this time"

 

[Walks with dogs]

As a teenager when I started out in Economics I was taught about a bloke called Malthus who essentially said that as population increased there wouldn't be enough food/ resources to sustain the population. We were taught that he was "wrong" because technology lead to an increase in yield so we were all ok. As a teenager I though that was a poor argument. As an adult I am convinced it is a very poor argument.

The Caveman diet is healthier than our agricultural diet but sustains far fewer people. But as myself and many others have said on here, the planet is overpopulated anyway and will take its own steps to remedy that sooner or later.

 

[BOD]

One need not look at old skeletons to deduce this problem of inferior nutrition and overwork.

The hunter gatherer peoples who have been settled by the authorities in Borneo are not as healthy as their forest cousins.

But the forest is shrinking

 

[Tengu]

`Typee` by Herman Melville.

A depiction of Utopia....but why is everyone so unhappy?

 

[sandsnakes]

As someone who writes about this kind of stuff I find it all very interesting. It is possible to follow a Hunter-Gather life style in the modern world which reduces impact on the environment and is essentially healthier.

A H-G diet, when you get used to it, is more healthy and you eat less, your cholesterol levels go down, anti-oxidant ratios go up, obesity disappears. When you get used to the diet most cravings go, what you do crave for is fats not carbs. The ideal meat for this craving is lamb, which is where foods such as mutton (lamb) come into play. Mutton in its own way is a renwable resource as we get wool from it.

When you have followed the diet for a couple of months a cake or sugary sweet, doughnut etc can give you hit so large you can almost feel after as though you had a glass of scotch. Interestingly an experiment was conducted in the 70’s with a group of monkeys who were feed on junk foods, high carbs and saturated fats. When the monkeys were reintroduced to their natural diet they refused to eat it, they were all strung out and addicted to the junk food. Even at the point of starvation many of them refused to touch the normal foods provided.

When you consider ‘modern’ agricultural methods let us not forget that the foods we are growing are addictive in their own rite.

Sandsnakes

 

[sandbender]

A H-G diet, when you get used to it, is more healthy and you eat less, your cholesterol levels go down, anti-oxidant ratios go up, obesity disappears. When you get used to the diet most cravings go, what you do crave for is fats not carbs. The ideal meat for this craving is lamb, which is where foods such as mutton (lamb) come into play. Mutton in its own way is a renwable resource as we get wool from it.

I've managed that diet for a couple of weeks and had quite a rush from packet of biscuits at the end, if you've followed a similar diet for a longer period you must have been flying when you again tried sugary foods

There is a middle way I suppose in the 'Nomadic' lifestyle, people like the Maasai, Sami or in more ancient times the Scythians could benefit from a ready supply of meat, milk and wool but still be able to take advantage of anything there travels brought them across.

 

[Dynamite_1303]

In strict archaeological terms I think Tom Standage is not entirely accurate. Yes the people may have been taller, but they lived for a much shorter period and suffered from a lot more physical deficiencies. If you look at any "good" or complete skeles from British pre-sedentary life then most show bone-evidence of having suffered a great lack of something major in their system. So they may have been physically string and athletically healthy, but inside in truth they were being eaten away and looked forward to a nice death at between the age of about 30-50 if they were lucky.

Saying that I reckon most of the people who visit a site like this would prefer to live that way of a fashion (I would).

Plus it's hot and sunny in Greece and the woods were lined with edible gold. In Britain all we had were mushrooms ... but we were happy!

 

[VirusKiller]

This is an eye-opener and my eyes were already partially opened...

http://www.earth360.com/diet_paleodiet_balzer.html

 

[Barney]

interesting link that, Thanks.

 

[sandsnakes]

There is a lot of specualtion about the H-G diet and their associated farming practices. There is evidence that they opperated a kind of small scale slash and burn to foster an abundance of certain plants and herbs. Also that they mulched around the base of trees to ensure that the soil stayed moist and that the particular nut/seed/fruit bearing tree flourished.

It is also suspected that in some climates they opperated a kind of permaculture, planting one plant in the shadow of another so that there was always somthing growing or bearing fruit.

What is beyond doubt that if you use a well formulated H-G diet, it is very healthy indeed, so throw away your rat packs and get out the stewpan!

Sandsnakes

 

[East Coaster]

Hang on a minute!!!

This would mean,,,,,no Crunchy Nut Cornflakes