Division
of labor, which has had so much to do with bringing us to the present global
crisis, works daily to prevent our understanding the origins of this horrendous
present. Mary Lecron Foster (1990) surely errs on the side of understatement
in allowing that anthropology is today "in danger of serious and damaging
fragmentation." Shanks and Tilley (1987b) voice a rare, related challenge:
"The point of archaeology is not merely to interpret the past but to change
the manner in which the past is interpreted in the service of social reconstruction
in the present." Of course, the social sciences themselves work against
the breadth and depth of vision necessary to such a reconstruction. In terms
of human origins and development, the array of splintered fields and sub-fields-
anthropology, archaeology, paleontology, ethnology, paleobotany, ethnoanthropology,
etc., etc. - mirrors the narrowing, crippling effect that civilization has embodied
from its very beginning.
Nonetheless,
the literature can provide highly useful assistance, if approached with an appropriate
method and awareness and the desire to proceed past its limitations. In fact,
the weakness of more or less orthodox modes of thinking can and does yield to
the demands of an increasingly dissatisfied society. Unhappiness with contemporary
life becomes distrust with the official lies that are told to legitimate that
life, and a truer picture of human development emerges. Renunciation and subjugation
in modern life have long been explained as necessary concomitants of "human
nature." After all, our pre-civilized existence of deprivation, brutality,
and ignorance made authority a benevolent gift that rescued us from savagery.
"Cave man" and `Neanderthal' are still invoked to remind us where
we would be without religion, government, and toil.
This
ideological view of our past has been radically overturned in recent decades,
through the work of academics like Richard Lee and Marshall Sahlins. A nearly
complete reversal in anthropological orthodoxy has come about, with important
implications. Now we can see that life before domestication/agriculture was
in fact largely one of leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, sexual
equality, and health. This was our human nature, for a couple of million years,
prior to enslavement by priests, kings, and bosses.
And lately
another stunning revelation has appeared, a related one that deepens the first
and may be telling us something equally important about who we were and what
we might again become. The main line of attack against new descriptions of gatherer-hunter
life has been, though often indirect or not explicitly stated, to characterize
that life, condescendingly, as the most an evolving species could achieve at
an early stage. Thus, the argument allows that there was a long period of apparent
grace and pacific existence, but says that humans simply didn't have the mental
capacity to leave simple ways behind in favor of complex social and technological
achievement.
In another
fundamental blow to civilization, we now learn that not only was human life
once, and for so long, a state that did not know alienation or domination, but
as the investigations since the '80s by archaeologists John Fowlett, Thomas
Wynn, and others have shown, those humans possessed an intelligence at least
equal to our own. At a stroke, as it were, the `ignorance' thesis is disposed
of, and we contemplate where we came from in a new light.
To put
the issue of mental capacity in context, it is useful to review the various
(and again, ideologically loaded) interpretations of human origins and development.
Robert Ardrey (1961, 1976) served up a bloodthirsty, macho version of prehistory,
as have to slightly lesser degrees, Desmond Morris and Lionel Tiger. Similarly,
Freud and Konrad Lorenz wrote of the innate depravity of the species, thereby
providing their contributions to hierarchy and power in the present.
Fortunately,
a far more plausible outlook has emerged, one that corresponds to the overall
version of Paleolithic life in general. Food sharing has for some time been
considered an integral part of earliest human society (e.g. Washburn and DeVore,
1961). Jane Goodall (1971) and Richard Leakey (1978), among others, have con-
cluded that it was the key element in establishing our uniquely Homo development
at least as early as 2 million years ago. This emphasis, carried forward since
the early '70s by Linton, Zihlman, Tanner, and Isaac, has become ascendant.
One of the telling arguments in favor of the cooperation thesis, as against
that of generalized violence and male domination, involves a diminishing, during
early evolution, of the difference in size and strength between males and females.
Sexual dimorphism, as it is called, was originally very pronounced, including
such features as prominent canines or "fighting teeth" in males and
much smaller canines for the female. The disappearance of large male canines
strongly suggests that the female of the species exercised a selection for sociable,
sharing males. Most apes today have significantly longer and larger canines,
male to female, in the absence of this female choice capacity (Zihlman 1981,
Tanner 1981).
Division
of labor between the sexes is another key area in human beginnings, a condition
once simply taken for granted and expressed by the term hunter-gatherer. Now
it is widely accepted that gathering of plant foods, once thought to be the
exclusive domain of women and of secondary importance to hunting by males, constituted
the main food source (Johansen and Shreeve 1989). Since females were not significantly
dependent on males for food (Hamilton 1984), it seems likely that rather than
division of labor, flexibility and joint activity would have been central (Bender
1989). As Zihlman (1981) points out, an overall behavioral flexibility may have
been the primary ingredient in early human existence. Joan Gero (1991) has demonstrated
that stone tools were as likely to have been made by women as by men, and indeed
Poirier (1987) reminds us that there is "no archaeological evidence supporting
the contention that early humans exhibited a sexual division of labor."
It is unlikely that food collecting involved much, if any division of labor
(Slocum 1975) and probably that sexual specialization came quite late in human
evolution (Zihlman 1981, Crader and Isaac 1981).
So if
the adaptation that began our species centered on gathering, when did hunting
come in? Binford (1984) has argued that there is no indication of use of animal
products (i.e. evidence of butchery practices) until the appearance, relatively
quite recent, of anatomically modern humans. Electron microscope studies of
fossil teeth found in East Africa (Walker 1984) suggest a diet composed primarily
of fruit, while a similar examination of stone tools from a 1.5 million-year-old
site at Koobi Fora in Kenya (Keeley and Toth 1981) shows that they were used
on plant materials. The small amount of meat in the early Paleolithic diet was
probably scavenged, rather than hunted (Ehrenberg 1989b).
The `natural'
condition of the species was evidently a diet made up largely of vegetables
rich in fiber, as opposed to the modern high fat and animal protein diet with
its attendant chronic disorders (Mendeloff 1977). Though our early forbears
employed their "detailed knowledge of the environment and cognitive mapping"
(Zihlman 1981) in the service of a plant-gathering subsistence, the archaeological
evidence for hunting appears to slowly increase with time (Hodder 1991).
Much
evidence, however, has overturned assumptions as to widespread prehistoric hunting.
Collections of bones seen earlier as evidence of large kills of mammals, for
example, have turned out to be, upon closer examination, the results of movement
by flowing water or caches by animals. Lewis Binford's "Were There Elephant
Hunters at Tooralba?" (1989) is a good instance of such a closer look,
in which he doubts there was significant hunting until 200,000 years ago or
sooner. Adrienne Zihlman (1981) has concluded that "hunting arose relatively
late in evolution," and "may not extend beyond the last one hundred
thousand years." And there are many (e.g. Straus 1986, Trinkhaus 1986)
who do not see evidence for serious hunting of large mammals until even later,
viz. the later Upper Paleolithic, just before the emergence of agriculture.
The oldest
known surviving artifacts are stone tools from Hadar in eastern Africa. With
more refined dating methods, they may prove to be 3.1 million years old (Klein
1989). Perhaps the main reason these may be classified as representing human
effort is that they involve the crafting of one tool by using another, a uniquely
human attribute so far as we know. Homo habilis, or "handy man," designates
what has been thought of as the first known human species, its name reflecting
association with the earliest stone tools (Coppens 1989). Basic wooden and bone
implements, though more perishable and thus scantily represented in the archaeological
record, were also used by Homo habilis as part of a "remarkably simple
and effective" adaptation in Africa and Asia (Fagan 1990). Our ancestors
at this stage had smaller brains and bodies than we do, but Poirier (1987) notes
that "their postcranial anatomy was rather like modern humans," and
Holloway (1972, 1974) allows that his studies of cranial endocasts from this
period indicate a bascally modern brain organization. Similarly, tools older
than 2 mil- lion years have been found to exhibit a consistent right-handed
orientation in the ways stone has been flaked off in their formation. Right-handedness
as a tendency is correlated in moderns with such distinctly human features as
pronounced lateralization of the brain and marked functional separation of the
cerebral hemispheres (Holloway 1981a). Klein (1989) concludes that "basic
human cognitive and communicational abilities are almost certainly implied."
Homo
erectus is the other main predecessor to Homo sapiens, according to longstanding
usage, appearing about 1.75 million years ago as humans moved out of forests
into drier, more open African grasslands. Although brain size alone does not
necessarily correlate with mental capacity, the cranial capacity of Homo erectus
overlaps with that of moderns such that this species "must have been capable
of many of the same behaviors" (Ciochon, Olsen and Tames 1990). As Johanson
and Edey (1981) put it, "If the largest-brained erectus were to be rated
against the smallest-brained sapiens - all their other characteristics ignored
- their species names would have to be reversed." Homo Neanderthalus, which
immediately preceded us, possessed brains somewhat larger than our own (Delson
1985, Holloway 1985, Donald 1991). Though of course the much-maligned Neanderthal
has been pictured as a primitive, brutish creature - in keeping with the prevailing
Hobbesian ideology - despite manifest intelligence as well as enormous physical
strength (Shreeve 1991).
Recently,
however, the whole species framework has become a doubtful proposition (Day
1987, Rightmire 1990). Attention has been drawn to the fact that fossil specimens
from various Homo species "all show intermediate morphological traits,"
leading to suspicion of an arbitrary division of humanity into separate taxa
(Gingerich 1979, Tobias 1982). Fagan (1989), for example, tells us that "it
is very hard to draw a clear taxonomic boundary between Homo erectus and archaic
Homo sapiens on the one hand, and between archaic and anatomically modern Homo
sapiens on the other." Likewise, Foley (1989): "the anatomical distinctions
between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens are not great." Jelinek (1978) flatly
declares that "there is no good reason, anatomical or cultural" for
separating erectus and sapiens into two species, and has concluded (1980a) that
people from at least the Middle Paleolithic onward "may be viewed as Homo
sapiens" (as does Hublin 1986). The tremendous upward revision of early
intelligence, discussed below, must be seen as connected to the present confusion
over species, as the once-prevailing overall evolutionary model gives way.
But the
controversy over species categorization is only interesting in the context of
how our earliest forbears lived. Despite the minimal nature of what could be
expected to survive so many millennia, we can glimpse some of the texture of
that life, with its often elegant, pre-division of labor approaches. The "tool
kit" from the Olduvai Gorge area made famous by the Leakeys contains "at
least six clearly recognizable tool types" dating from about 1.7 million
years ago (M. Leakey, 1978). There soon appeared the Acheulian handaxe, with
its symmetrical beauty, in use for about a million years. Teardrop-shaped, and
possessed of a remarkable balance, it exudes grace and utility from an era much
prior to sym- bolization. Isaac (1986) noted that "the basic needs for
sharp edges that humans have can be met from the varied range of forms generated
from `Oldowan' patterns of stone flaking," wondering how it came to be
thought that "more complex equals better adapted." In this distant
early time, according to cut-marks found on surviving bones, humans were using
scavenged animal sinews and skins for such things as cord, bags, and rugs (Gowlett
1984). Further evidence suggests furs for cave wall coverings and seats, and
seaweed beds for sleeping (Butzer 1970).
The use
of fire goes back almost 2 million years (Kempe 1988) and might have appeared
even earlier but for the tropical conditions of humanity's original African
homeland, as Poirier (1987) implies. Perfected fire-making included the firing
of caves to eliminate insects and heated pebble floors (Perles 1975, Lumley
1976), amenities that show up very early in the Paleolithic.
As John
Gowlett (1986) notes, there are still some archaeologists who consider anything
earlier than Homo sapiens, a mere 30,000 years ago, as greatly more primitive
than we "fully human" types. But along with the documentation, referred
to above, of fundamentally `modern' brain anatomy even in early humans, this
minority must now contend with recent work depicting complete human intelligence
as present virtually with the birth of the Homo species. Thomas Wynn (1985)
judged manufacture of the Acheulian handaxe to have required "a stage of
intelligence that is typical of fully modern adults." Gowlett, like Wynn,
examines the required "operational thinking" involved in the right
hammer, the right force and the right striking angle, in an ordered sequence
and with flexibility needed for modifying the procedure. He contends that manipulation,
concentration, visualization of form in three dimensions, and planning were
needed, and that these requirements "were the common property of early
human beings as much as two million years ago, and this," he adds, "is
hard knowledge, not speculation."
During
the vast time-span of the Paleolithic, there were remarkably few changes in
technology (Rolland 1990). Innovation, "over 2 1/2 million years measured
in stone tool development was practically nil," according to Gerhard Kraus
(1990). Seen in the light of what we now know of prehistoric intelligence, such
`stagnation' is especially vexing to many social scientists. "It is difficult
to comprehend such slow development," in the judgment of Wymer (1989).
It strikes me as very plausible that intelligence, informed by the success and
satisfaction of a gatherer-hunter existence, is the very reason for the pronounced
absence of `progress'. Division of labor, domestication, symbolic culture--these
were evidently refused until very recently.
Contemporary
thought, in its postmodern incarnation, would like to rule out the reality of
a divide between nature and culture; given the abilities present among people
before civilization, however, it may be more accurate to say that basically,
they long chose nature over culture. It is also popular to see almost every
human act or object as symbolic (e.g. Botscharow 1989), a position which is,
generally speaking, part of the denial of a nature versus culture distinction.
But it is culture as the manipulation of basic symbolic forms that is involved
here. It also seems clear that reified time, language (written, certainly, and
probably spoken language for all or most of this period), number, and art had
no place, despite an intelligence fully capable of them.
I would
like to interject, in passing, my agreement with Goldschmidt (1990) that "the
hidden dimension in the construction of the symbolic world is time." And
as Norman O. Brown put it, "life not repressed is not in historical time,"
which I take as a reminder that time as a materiality is not inherent in reality,
but a cultural imposition, perhaps the first cultural imposition, on it. As
this elemental dimension of symbolic culture progresses, so does, by equal steps,
alienation from the natural.
Cohen
(1974) has discussed symbols as "essential for the development and maintenance
of social order." Which implies--as does, more forcefully, a great deal
of positive evidence--that before the emergence of symbols there was no condition
of dis-order requiring them. In a similar vein, Levi-Strauss (1953) pointed
out that "mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions
toward their resolution." So whence the absence of order, the conflicts
or "oppositions?" The literature on the Paleolithic contains almost
nothing that deals with this essential question, among thousands of monographs
on specific features. A reasonable hypothesis, in my opinion, is that division
of labor, unnoticed because of its glacially slow pace, and not sufficiently
understood because of its newness, began to cause small fissures in the human
community and unhealthy practices vis-a-vis nature. In the later Upper Paleolithic,
"15,000 years ago, we begin to observe specialized collection of plants
in the Middle East, and specialized hunting," observed Gowlett (1984).
The sudden appearance of symbolic activities (e.g. ritual and art) in the Upper
Paleolithic has definitely seemed to archaeologists one of prehistory's "big
surprises" (Binford 1972b), given the absence of such behaviors in the
Middle Paleolithic (Foster 1990, Kozlowski 1990). But signs of division of labor
and specialization were making their presence felt as a breakdown of wholeness
and natural order, a lack that needed redressing. What is surprising is that
this transition to civilization can still be seen as benign. Foster (1990) seems
to celebrate it by concluding that the "symbolic mode...has proved extraordinarily
adaptive, else why has Homo sapiens become material master of the world?"
He is certainly correct, as he is to recognize "the manipulation of symbols
[to be] the very stuff of culture," but he appears oblivious to the fact
that this successful adaptation has brought alienation and destruction of nature
along to their present horrifying prominence.
It is
reasonable to assume that the symbolic world originated in the formulation of
language, which somehow appeared from a "matrix of extensive nonverbal
communication" (Tanner and Zihlman 1976) and face-to-face contact. There
is no agreement as to when language began, but no evidence exists of speech
before the cultural `explosion' of the later Upper Paleolithic (Dibble 1984,
1989). It seems to have acted as an "inhibiting agent," a way of bringing
life under "greater control" (Mumford 1972), stemming the flood of
images and sensations to which the pre-modern individual was open. In this sense
it would have likely marked an early turning away from a life of openness and
communion with nature, toward one more oriented to the overlordship and domestication
that followed symbolic culture's inauguration. It is probably a mistake, by
the way, to assume that thought is advanced (if there were such a thing as `neutral'
thought, whose advance could be universally appreciat- ed) because we actually
think in language; there is no conclusive evidence that we must do so (Allport
1983). There are many cases (Lecours and Joanette 1980, Levine et al. 1982),
involving stroke and like impairments, of patients who have lost speech, including
the ability to talk silently to themselves, who were fully capable of coherent
thought of all kinds. These data strongly suggest that "human intellectual
skill is uniquely powerful, even in the absence of language" (Donald 1991).
In terms
of symbolization in action, Goldschmidt (1990) seems correct in judging that
"the Upper Paleolithic invention of ritual may well have been the keystone
in the structure of culture that gave it its great impetus for expansion."
Ritual has played a number of pivotal roles in what Hodder (1990) termed "the
relentless unfolding of symbolic and social structures" accompanying the
arrival of cultural mediation. It was as a means of achieving and consolidating
social cohesion that ritual was essential (Johnson 1982, Conkey 1985); totemic
rituals, for example, reinforce clan unity.
The start
of an appreciation of domestication, or taming of nature, is seen in a cultural
ordering of the wild, through ritual. Evidently, the female as a cultural category,
viz. seen as wild or dangerous, dates from this period. The ritual "Venus"
figurines appear as of 25,000 years ago, and seem to be an example of earliest
symbolic likeness of women for the purpose of representation and control (Hodder
1990). Even more concretely, subjugation of the wild occurs at this time in
the first systematic hunting of large mammals; ritual was an integral part of
this activity (Hammond 1974, Frison 1986).
Ritual,
as shamanic practice, may also be considered as a regression from that state
in which all shared a consciousness we would now classify as extrasensory (Leonard
1972). When specialists alone claim access to such perceptual heights as may
have once been communal, further backward moves in division of labor are facilitated
or enhanced. The way back to bliss through ritual is a virtually universal mythic
theme, promising the dissolution of measurable time, among other joys. This
theme of ritual points to an absence that it falsely claims to fill, as does
symbolic culture in general.
Ritual
as a means of organizing emotions, a method of cultural direction and restraint,
introduces art, a facet of ritual expressiveness (Bender 1989). "There
can be little doubt," to Gans (1985), "that the various forms of secular
art derive originally from ritual." We can detect the beginning of an unease,
a feeling that an earlier, direct authenticity is departing. La Barre (1972),
I believe, is correct in judging that "art and religion alike arise from
unsatisfied desire." At first, more abstractly as language, then more purposively
as ritual and art, culture steps in to deal artificially with spiritual and
social anxiety.
Ritual
and magic must have dominated early (Upper Paleolithic) art and were probably
essential, along with an increasing division of labor, for the coordination
and direction of community (Wymer 1981). Similarly, Pfeiffer (1982) has depicted
the famous Upper Paleolithic European cave paintings as the original form of
initiating youth into now complex social systems; as necessary for order and
discipline (see also Gamble 1982, Jochim 1983). And art may have contributed
to the control of nature, as part of development of the earliest territorialism,
for example (Straus 1990).
The emergence
of symbolic culture, with its inherent will to manipulate and control, soon
opened the door to domestication of nature. After two million years of human
life within the bounds of nature, in balance with other wild species, agriculture
changed our lifestyle, our way of adapting, in an unprecedented way. Never before
has such a radical change occurred in a species so utterly and so swiftly (Pfeiffer
1977). Self-domestication through language, ritual, and art inspired the taming
of plants and animals that followed. Appearing only 10,000 years ago, farming
quickly triumphed; for control, by its very nature, invites intensification.
Once the will to production broke through, it became more productive the more
efficiently it was exercised, and hence more ascendant and adaptive.
Agriculture
enables greatly increased division of labor, establishes the material foundations
of social hierarchy, and initiates environmental destruction. Priests, kings,
drudgery, sexual inequality, warfare are a few of its fairly immediate specific
consequences (Ehrenberg 1986b, Wymer 1981, Festinger 1983). Whereas Paleolithic
peoples enjoyed a highly varied diet, using several thousand species of plants
for food, with farming these sources were vastly reduced (White 1959, Gouldie
1986).
Given
the intelligence and the very great practical knowledge of Stone Age humanity,
the question has often been asked, "Why didn't agriculture begin, at say,
1,000,000 B.C. rather than about 8,000 B.C.?" I have provided a brief answer
in terms of slowly accelerating alienation in the form of division of labor
and symbolization, but given how negative the results were, it is still a bewildering
phenomenon. Thus, as Binford (1968) put it, "The question to be asked is
not why agriculture...was not developed everywhere, but why it was developed
at all." The end of gatherer-hunter life brought a decline in size, stature,
and skeletal robusticity (Cohen and Armelagos 1981, Harris and Ross 1981), and
introduced tooth decay, nutritional deficiencies, and most infectious diseases
(Larsen 1982, Buikstra 1976a, Cohen 1981). "Taken as a whole...an overall
decline in the quality--and probably the length--of human life," concluded
Cohen and Armelagos (1981).
Another
outcome was the invention of number, unnecessary before the ownership of crops,
animals, and land that is one of agriculture's hallmarks. The development of
number further impelled the urge to treat nature as something to be dominated.
Writing was also required bydomestication, for the earliest business transactions
and political administration (Larsen 1988). Levi-Strauss has argued persuasively
that the primary function of written communication was to facilitate exploitation
and subjugation (1955); cities and empires, for example, would be impossible
without it. Here we see clearly the joining of the logic of symbolization and
the growth of capital.
Conformity,
repetition, and regularity were the keys to civilization upon its triumph, replacing
the spontaneity, enchantment, and discovery of the pre-agricultural human state
that survived so very long. Clark (1979) cites a gatherer-hunter "amplitude
of leisure," deciding "it was this and the pleasurable way of life
that went with it, rather than penury and a day-long grind, that explains why
social life remained so static." One of the most enduring and widespread
myths is that there was once a Golden Age, characterized by peace and innocence,
and that something happened to destroy this idyll and consign us to misery and
suffering. Eden, or whatever name it goes by, was the home of our primeval forager
ancestors, and expresses the yearning of disillusioned tillers of the soil for
a lost life of freedom and relative ease.
The once
rich environs people inhabited prior to domestication and agriculture are now
virtually nonexistent. For the few remaining foragers there exist only the most
marginal lands, those isolated places as yet unwanted by agriculture. And surviving
gatherer-hunters, who have somehow managed to evade civilization's tremendous
pressures to turn them into slaves (i.e. farmers, political subjects, wage laborers),
have all been influenced by contact with outside peoples (Lee 1976, Mithen 1990).
Duffy
(1984) points out that the present day gatherer-hunters he studied, the Mbuti
Pygmies of central Africa, have been acculturated by surrounding villager-agriculturalists
for hundreds of years, and to some extent, by generations of contact with government
authorities and missionaries. And yet it seems that an impulse toward authentic
life can survive down through the ages: "Try to imagine," he counsels,
"a way of life where land, shelter, and food are free, and where there
are no leaders, bosses, politics, organized crime, taxes, or laws. Add to this
the benefits of being part of a society where everything is shared, where there
are no rich people and no poor people, and where happiness does not mean the
accumulation of material possessions." The Mbuti have never domesticated
animals or planted crops.
Among
the members of non-agriculturalist bands resides a highly sane combination of
little work and material abundance. Bodley (1976) discovered that the San (aka
Bushmen) of the harsh Kalahari Desert of southern Africa work fewer hours, and
fewer of their number work, than do the neighboring cultivators. In times of
drought, moreover, it has been the San to whom the farmers have turned for their
survival (Lee 1968). They spend "strikingly little time laboring and much
time at rest and leisure," according to Tanaka (1980), while others (e.g.
Marshall 1976, Guenther 1976) have commented on San vitality and freedom compared
with sedentary farmers, their relatively secure and easygoing life.
Flood
(1983) noted that to Australian aborigines "the labour involved in tilling
and planting outweighed the possible advantages." Speaking more generally,
Tanaka (1976) has pointed to the abundant and stable plant foods in the society
of early humanity, just as "they exist in every modern gatherer society."
Likewise, Festinger (1983) referred to Paleolithic access to "considerable
food without a great deal of effort," adding that "contemporary groups
that still live on hunting and gathering do very well, even though they have
been pushed into very marginal habitats."
As Hole
and Flannery (1963) summarized: "No group on earth has more leisure time
than hunters and gatherers, who spend it primarily on games, conversation and
relaxing." They have much more free time, adds Binford (1968), "than
do modern industrial or farm workers, or even professors of archaeology."
The non-domesticated
know that, as Vaneigem (1975) put it, only the present can be total. This by
itself means that they live life with incomparably greater immediacy, density
and passion than we do. It has been said that some revolutionary days are worth
centuries; until then "We look before and after," as Shelley wrote,
"And sigh for what is not...."
The Mbuti
believe (Turnbull 1976) that "by a correct fulfillment of the present,
the past and the future will take care of themselves." Primitive peoples
do not live through memories, and generally have no interest in birthdays or
measuring their ages (Cipriani 1966). As for the future, they have little desire
to control what does not yet exist, just as they have little desire to control
nature. Their moment-by-moment joining with the flux and flow of the natural
world does not preclude an awareness of the seasons, but this does not constitute
an alienated time consciousness that robs them of the present.
Though
contemporary gatherer-hunters eat more meat than their pre-historic forbears,
vegetable foods still constitute the mainstay of their diet in tropical and
subtropical regions (Lee 1968a, Yellen and Lee 1976). Both the Kalahari San
and the Hazda of East Africa, where game is more abundant than in the Kalahari,
rely on gathering for 80 percent of their sustenance (Tanaka 1980). The !Kung
branch of the San search for more than a hundred different kinds of plants (Thomas
1968) and exhibit no nutritional deficiency (Truswell and Hansen 1976). This
is similar to the healthful, varied diet of Australian foragers (Fisher 1982,
Flood 1983). The overall diet of gatherers is better than that of cultivators,
starvation is very rare, and their health status generally superior, with much
less chronic disease (Lee and Devore 1968a, Ackerman 1990).
Lauren
van der Post (1958) expressed wonder at the exuberant San laugh, which rises
"sheer from the stomach, a laugh you never hear among civilized people."
He found this emblematic of a great vigor and clarity of senses that yet manages
to withstand and elude the onslaught of civilization. Truswell and Hansen (1976)
may have encountered it in the person of a San who had survived an unarmed fight
with a leopard; although injured, he had killed the animal with his bare hands.
The Andaman
Islanders, west of Thailand, have no leaders, no idea of symbolic representation,
and no domesticated animals. There is also an absence of aggression, violence,
and disease; wounds heal surprisingly quickly, and their sight and hearing are
particularly acute. They are said to have declined since European intrusion
in the mid-19th century, but exhibit other such remarkable physical traits as
a natural immunity to malaria, skin with sufficient elasticity to rule out post-childbirth
stretch marks and the wrinkling we associate with ageing, and an `unbelievable'
strength of teeth: Cipriani (1966) reported seeing children of 10 to 15 years
crush nails with them. He also testified to the Andamese practice of collecting
honey with no protective clothing at all; "yet they are never stung, and
watching them one felt in the presence of some age-old mystery, lost by the
civilized world."
DeVries
(1952) has cited a wide range of contrasts by which the superior health of gatherer-hunters
can be established, including an absence of degenerative diseases and mental
disabilities, and childbirth without difficulty or pain. He also points out
that this begins to erode from the moment of contact with civilization.
Relatedly,
there is a great deal of evidence not only for physical and emotional vigor
among primitives but also concerning their heightened sensory abilities. Darwin
described people at the southernmost tip of South America who went about almost
naked in frigid conditions, while Peasley (1983) observed Aborigines who were
renowned for their ability to live through bitterly cold desert nights "without
any form of clothing." Levi-Strauss (1979) was astounded to learn of a
particular [South American] tribe which was able to "see the planet Venus
in full daylight," a feat comparable to that of the North African Dogon
who consider Sirius B the most important star; somehow aware, without instruments,
of a star that can only be found with the most powerful of telescopes (Temple
1976). In this vein, Boyden (1970) recounted the Bushman ability to see four
of the moons of Jupiter with the naked eye.
In The
Harmless People (1959), Marshall told how one Bushman walked unerringly to a
spot in a vast plain, "with no bush or tree to mark place," and pointed
out a blade of grass with an almost invisible filament of vine around it. He
had encountered it months before in the rainy season when it was green. Now,
in parched weather, he dug there to expose a succulent root and quenched his
thirst. Also in the Kalahari Desert, van der Post (1958) meditated upon San/Bushman
communion with nature, a level of experience that "could almost be called
mystical. For instance, they seemed to know what it actually felt like to be
an elephant, a lion, an antelope, a steenbuck, a lizard, a striped mouse, mantis,
baobab tree, yellow-crested cobra or starry-eyed amaryllis, to mention only
a few of the brilliant multitudes through which they moved." It seems almost
pedestrian to add that gatherer-hunters have often been remarked to possess
tracking skills that virtually defy rational explanation (e.g. Lee 1979).
Rohrlich-Leavitt
(1976) noted, "The data show that gatherer-hunters are generally nonterritorial
and bilocal; reject group aggression and competition; share their resources
freely; value egalitarianism and personal autonomy in the context of group cooperation;
and are indulgent and loving with children." Dozens of studies stress communal
sharing and egalitarianism as perhaps the defining traits of such groups (e.g.
Marshall 1961 and 1976, Sahlins 1968, Pilbeam 1972, Damas 1972, Diamond 1974,
Lafitau 1974, Tanaka 1976 and 1980, Wiessner 1977, Morris 1982, Riches 1982,
Smith 1988, Mithen 1990). Lee (1982) referred to the "universality among
foragers" of sharing, while Marshall's classic 1961 work spoke of the "ethic
of generosity and humility" informing a "strongly egalitarian"
gatherer-hunter orientation. Tanaka provides a typical example: "The most
admired character trait is generosity, and the most despised and disliked are
stinginess and selfishness."
Baer
(1986) listed "egalitarianism, democracy, personalism, individuation, nurturance"
as key virtues of the non-civilized, and Lee (1988) cited "an absolute
aversion to rank distinctions" among "simple foraging peoples around
the world." Leacock and Lee (1982) specified that "any assumption
of authority" within the group "leads to ridicule or anger among the
!Kung, as has been recorded for the Mbuti (Turnbull 1962), the Hazda (Woodburn
1980) and the Montagnais-Naskapi (Thwaites 1906), among others."
"Not
even the father of an extended family can tell his sons and daughters what to
do. Most people appear to operate on their own internal schedules," reported
Lee (1972) of the !Kung of Botswana. Ingold (1987) judged that "in most
hunting and gathering societies, a supreme value is placed upon the principle
of individual autono- my," similar to Wilson's finding (1988) of "an
ethic of independence" that is "common to the focused open societies."
The esteemed field anthropologist Radin (1953) went so far as to say: "Free
scope is allowed for every conceivable kind of personality outlet or expression
in primitive society. No moral judgment is passed on any aspect of human personality
as such."
Turnbull
(1976) looked on the structure of Mbuti social life as "an apparent vacuum,
a lack of internal system that is almost anarchical." According to Duffy
(1984), "the Mbuti are naturally acephalous - they do not have leaders
or rulers, and decisions concerning the band are made by consensus." There
is an enormous qualitative difference between foragers and farmers in this regard,
as in so many others. For instance, agricultural Bantu tribes (e.g. the Saga)
surround the San, and are organized by kingship, hierarchy and work; the San
exhibit egalitarianism, autonomy, and sharing. Domestication is the principle
which accounts for this drastic distinction.
Domination
within a society is not unrelated to domination of nature. In gatherer-hunter
societies, on the other hand, no strict hierarchy exists between the human and
the non-human species (Noske 1989), and relations among foragers are likewise
non-hierarchical. The non-domesticated typically view the animals they hunt
as equals; this essentially egalitarian relationship is ended by the advent
of domestication.
When
progressive estrangement from nature became outright social control (agriculture),
more than just social attitudes changed. Descriptions by sailors and explorers
who arrived in "newly discovered" regions tell how wild mammals and
birds originally showed no fear at all of the human invaders (Brock 1981). A
few contemporary gatherers practiced no hunting before outside contact, but
while the majority certainly do hunt, "it is not normally an aggressive
act" (Rohrlich- Leavitt 1976). Turnbull (1965) observed Mbuti hunting as
quite without any aggressive spirit, even carried out with a sort of regret.
Hewitt (1986) reported a sympathy bond between hunter and hunted among the Xan
Bushmen he encountered in the 19th century.
As regards
violence among gatherer-hunters, Lee (1988) found that "the !Kung hate
fighting, and think anybody who fought would be stupid." The Mbuti, by
Duffy's account (1984), "look on any form of violence between one person
and another with great abhorrence and distaste, and never represent it in their
dancing or playacting." Homicide and suicide, concluded Bodley (1976),
are both "decidedly uncommon" among undisturbed gatherer-hunters.
The `warlike' nature of Native American peoples was often fabricated to add
legitimacy to European aims of conquest (Kroeber 1961); the foraging Comanche
maintained their non-violent ways for centuries before the European invasion,
becoming violent only upon contact with marauding civilization (Fried 1973).
The development
of symbolic culture, which rapidly led to agriculture, is linked through ritual
to alienated social life among extant foraging groups. Bloch (1977) found a
correlation between levels of ritual and hierarchy. Put negatively, Woodburn
(1968) could see the connection between an absence of ritual and the absence
of specialized roles and hierarchy among the Hazda of Tanzania. Turner's study
of the west African Ndembu (1957) revealed a profusion of ritual structures
and ceremonies intended to redress the conflicts arising from the breakdown
of an earlier, more seamless society. These ceremonies and structures function
in a politically integrative way. Ritual is a repetitive activity for which
outcomes and responses are essentially assured by social contract; it conveys
the message that symbolic practice, via group membership and social rules, provides
control (Cohen 1985). Ritual fosters the concept of control or domination, and
has been seen to tend toward leadership roles (Hitchcock 1982) and centralized
political structures (Lourandos 1985). A monopoly of ceremonial institutions
clearly extends the concept of authority (Bender 1978), and may itself be the
original formal authority.
Among
agricultural tribes of New Guinea, leadership and the inequality it implies
are based upon participation in hierarchies of ritual initiation or upon shamanistic
spirit-mediumship (Kelly 1977, Modjeska 1982). In the role of shamans we see
a concrete practice of ritual as it contributes to domination in human society.
Radin
(1937) discussed "the same marked tendency" among Asian and North
American tribal peoples for shamans or medicine men "to organize and develop
the theory that they alone are in communication with the supernatural."
This exclusive access seems to empower them at the expense of the rest; Lommel
(1967) saw "an increase in the shaman's psychic potency...counterbalanced
by a weakening of potency in other members of the group." This practice
has fairly obvious implications for power relationships in other areas of life,
and contrasts with earlier periods devoid of religious lead- ership.
The Batuque
of Brazil are host to shamans who each claim control over certain spirits and
attempt to sell supernatural services to clients, rather like priests of competing
sects (S. Leacock 1988). Specialists of this type in "magically controlling
nature...would naturally come to control men, too," in the opinion of Muller
(1961). In fact, the shaman is often the most powerful individual in pre-agricultural
societies (e.g. Sheehan 1985); he is in a position to institute change. Johannessen
(1987) offers the thesis that resistance to the innovation of planting was overcome
by the influence of shamans, among the Indians of the American Southwest, for
instance. Similarly, Marquardt (1985) has suggested that ritual authority structures
have played an important role in the initiation and organization of production
in North America. Another student of American groups (Ingold 1987) saw an important
connection between shamans' role in mastering wildness in nature and an emerging
subordination of women.
Berndt
(1974a) has discussed the importance among Aborigines of ritual sexual division
of labor in the development of negative sex roles, while Randolph (1988) comes
straight to the point: "Ritual activity is needed to create `proper' men
and women." There is "no reason in nature" for gender divisions,
argues Bender (1989). "They have to be created by proscription and taboo,
they have to be `naturalized' through ideology and ritual."
But gatherer-hunter
societies, by their very nature, deny ritual its potential to domesticate women.
The structure (non-structure?) of egalitarian bands, even those most oriented
toward hunting, includes a guarantee of autonomy to both sexes. This guarantee
is the fact that the materials of subsistence are equally available to women
and men and that, further, the success of the band is dependent on cooperation
based on that autonomy (Leacock 1978, Friedl 1975). The spheres of the sexes
are often somewhat separate, but inasmuch as the contribution of women is generally
at least equal to that of men, social equality of the sexes is "a key feature
of forager societies" (Ehrenberg 1989b). Many anthropologists, in fact,
have found the status of women in forager groups to be higher than in any other
type of society (e.g. Fluer- Lobban 1979, Rohrlich-Leavitt, Sykes and Weatherford
1975, Leacock 1978).
In all
major decisions, observed Turnbull (1970) of the Mbuti, "men and women
have equal say, hunting and gathering being equally important." He made
it clear (1981) that there is sexual differentiation - probably a good deal
more than was the case with their distant forbears - "but without any sense
of superordination or subordination." Men actually work more hours than
women among the !Kung, according to Post and Taylor (1984).
It should
be added, in terms of the division of labor common among contemporary gatherer-hunters,
that this differentiation of roles is by no means universal. Nor was it when
the Roman historian Tacitus wrote, of the Fenni of the Baltic region, that "the
women support themselves by hunting, exactly like the men...and count their
lot happier than that ofothers who groan over field labor." Or when Procopius
found, in the 6th century A.D., that the Serithifinni of what is now Finland
"neither till the land themselves, nor do their women work it for them,
but the women regularly join the men in hunting."
The Tiwi
women of Melville Island regularly hunt (Martin and Voorhies 1975) as do the
Agta women in the Philippines (Estioko-- Griffen and Griffen 1981). In Mbuti
society, "there is little specialization according to sex. Even the hunt
is a joint effort," reports Turnbull (1962), and Cotlow (1971) testifies
that "among the traditional Eskimos it is (or was) a cooperative enterprise
for the whole family group."
Darwin
(1871) found another aspect of sexual equality: "...in utterly barbarous
tribes the women have more power in choosing, rejecting, and tempting their
lovers, or of afterwards changing their husbands, than might have been expected."
The !Kung Bushmen and Mbuti exemplify this female autonomy, as reported by Marshall
(1959) and Thomas (1965); "Women apparently leave a man whenever they are
unhappy with their marriage," concluded Begler (1978). Marshall (1970)
also found that rape was extremely rare or absent among the !Kung.
An intriguing
phenomenon concerning gatherer-hunter women is their ability to prevent pregnancy
in the absence of any contraception (Silberbauer 1981). Many hypotheses have
been put forth and debunked, e.g. conception somehow related to levels of body
fat (Frisch 1974, Leibowitz 1986). What seems a very plausible explanation is
based on the fact that undomesticated people are very much more in tune with
their physical selves. Foraging women's senses and processes are not alienated
from themselves or dulled; control over childbearing is probably less than mysterious
to those whose bodies are not foreign objects to be acted upon.
The Pygmies
of Zaire celebrate the first menstrual period of every girl with a great festival
of gratitude and rejoicing (Turnbull 1962). The young woman feels pride and
pleasure, and the entire band expresses its happiness. Among agricultural villagers,
however, a menstruating woman is regarded as unclean and dangerous, to be quarantined
by taboo (Duffy 1984). The relaxed, egalitarian relationship between San men
and women, with its flexibility of roles and mutual respect impressed Draper
(1971, 1972, 1975); a relationship, she made clear, that endures as long as
they remain gatherer-hunters and no longer.
Duffy
(1984) found that each child in an Mbuti camp calls every man father and every
woman mother. Forager children receive far more care, time, and attention than
do those in civilization's isolated nuclear families. Post and Taylor (1984)
described the "almost permanent contact" with their mothers and other
adults that Bushman children enjoy. !Kung infants studied by Ainsworth (1967)
showed marked precocity of early cognitive and motor skills development. This
was attributed both to the exercise and stimulation produced by unrestricted
freedom of movement, and to the high degree of physical warmth and closeness
between !Kung parents and children (see also Konner 1976).
Draper
(1976) could see that "competitiveness in games is almost entirely lacking
among the !Kung," as Shostack (1976) observed "!Kung boys and girls
playing together and sharing most games." She also found that children
are not prevented from experimental sex play, consonant with the freedom of
older Mbuti youth to "indulge in premarital sex with enthusiasm and delight"
(Turnbull 1981). The Zuni "have no sense of sin," Ruth Benedict (1946)
wrote in a related vein. "Chastity as a way of life is regarded with great
disfavor...Pleasant relations between the sexes are merely one aspect of pleasant
relations with human beings...Sex is an incident in a happy life."
Coontz
and Henderson (1986) point to a growing body of evidence in support of the proposition
that relations between the sexes are most egalitarian in the simplest foraging
societies. Women play an essential role in traditional agriculture, but receive
no corresponding status for their contribution, unlike the case of gatherer-hunter
society (Chevillard and Leconte 1986, Whyte 1978). As with plants and animals,
so are women subject to domestication with the coming of agriculture. Culture,
securing its foundations with the new order, requires the firm subjugation of
instinct, freedom, and sexuality. All disorder must be banished, the elemen-
tal and spontaneous taken firmly in hand. Women's creativity and their very
being as sexual persons are pressured to give way to the role, expressed in
all peasant religions, of Great Mother, that is, fecund breeder of men and food.
The men
of the South American Munduruc, a farming tribe, refer to plants and sex in
the same phrase about subduing women: "We tame them with the banana"
(Murphy and Murphy 1985). Simone de Beauvoir (1949) recognized in the equation
of the plow and the phallus a symbol of male authority over women. Among the
Amazonian Jivaro, another agricultural group, women are beasts of burden and
the personal property of men (Harner 1972); the "abduction of adult women
is a prominent part of much warfare" by these lowland South American tribes
(Ferguson 1988). Brutalization and isolation of women seem to be functions of
agricultural societies (Gregor 1988), and the female continues to perform most
or even all of the work in such groups (Morgan 1985).
Head-hunting
is practiced by the above-mentioned groups, as part of endemic warfare over
coveted agricultural land (Lathrap 1970); head-hunting and near-constant warring
is also witnessed among the farming tribes of Highlands New Guinea (Watson 1970).
Lenski and Lenski's 1974 researches concluded that warfare is rare among foragers
but becomes extremely common with agrarian societies. As Wilson (1988) put it
succinctly, "Revenge, feuds, rioting, warfare and battle seem to emerge
among, and to be typical of, domesticated peoples."
Tribal
conflicts, Godelier (1977) argues, are "explainable primarily by reference
to colonial domination" and should not be seen as having an origin "in
the functioning of pre-colonial structures." Certainly contact with civilization
can have an unsettling, degenerative effect, but Godelier's marxism (viz. unwillingness
to question domestication/production), is, one suspects, relevant to such a
judgment. Thus it could be said that the Copper Eskimos, who have a significant
incidence of homicide within their group (Damas 1972), owe this violence to
the impact of outside influences, but their reliance on domesticated dogs should
also be noted.
Arens
(1979) has asserted, paralleling Godelier to some extent, that cannibalism as
a cultural phenomenon is a fiction, invented and promoted by agencies of outside
conquest. But there is documentation of this practice (e.g. Poole 1983, Tuzin
1976) among, once again, peoples involved in domestication. The studies by Hogg
(1966), for example, reveal its presence among certain African tribes, steeped
in ritual and grounded in agriculture. Cannibalism is generally a form of cultural
control of chaos, in which the victim represents animality, or all that should
be tamed (Sanday 1986). Significantly, one of the important myths of Fiji Islanders,
"How the Fijians first became cannibals," is literally a tale of planting
(Sahlins 1983). Similarly, the highly domesticated and time-conscious Aztecs
practiced human sacrifice as a gesture to tame unruly forces and uphold the
social equilibrium of a very alienated society. As Norbeck (1961) pointed out,
non-domesticated, "culturally impoverished" societies are devoid of
cannibalism and human sacrifice.
As for
one of the basic underpinnings of violence in more complex societies, Barnes
(1970) found that "reports in the ethnographic literature of territorial
struggles" between gatherer-hunters are "extremely rare." !Kung
boundaries are vague and undefended (Lee 1979); Pandaram territories overlap,
and individuals go where they please (Morris 1982); Hazda move freely from region
to region (Woodburn 1968); boundaries and trespass have little or no meaning
to the Mbuti (Turnbull 1966); and Australian Aborigines reject territorial or
social demarcations (Gumpert 1981, Hamilton 1982). An ethic of generosity and
hospitality takes the place of exclusivity (Steward 1968, Hiatt 1968).
Gatherer-hunter
peoples have developed "no conception of private property," in the
estimation of Kitwood (1984). As noted above in reference to sharing, and with
Sansom's (1980) characterization of Aborigines as "people without property,"
foragers do not share civilization's obsession with externals.
"Mine
and thine, the seeds of all mischief, have no place with them," wrote Pietro
(1511) of the native North Americans encountered on the second voyage of Columbus.
The Bushmen have "no sense of possession," according to Post (1958),
and Lee (1972) saw them making "no sharp dichotomy between the resources
of the natural environment and the social wealth." There is a line between
nature and culture, again, and the non-civilized choose the former.
There
are many gatherer-hunters who could carry all that they make use of in one hand,
who die with pretty much what they had as they came into the world. Once humans
shared everything; with agriculture, ownership becomes paramount and a species
presumes to own the world. A deformation the imagination could scarcely equal.
Sahlins
(1972) spoke of this eloquently: "The world's most primitive people have
few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount
of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all, it is
a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention
of civilization."
The "common
tendency" of gatherer-hunters "to reject farming until it was absolutely
thrust upon them" (Bodley 1976) bespeaks a nature/culture divide also present
in the Mbuti recognition that if one of them becomes a villager he is no longer
an Mbuti (Turnbull 1976). They know that forager band and agriculturalist village
are opposed societies with opposed values.
At times,
however, the crucial factor of domestication can be lost sight of. "The
historic foraging populations of the Western Coast of North America have long
been considered anomalous among foragers," declared Cohen (1981); as Kelly
(1991) also put it, "tribes of the Northwest Coast break all the stereotypes
of hunter- gatherers." These foragers, whose main sustenance is fishing,
have exhibited such alienated features as chiefs, hierarchy, warfare and slavery.
But almost always overlooked are their domesticated tobacco and domesticated
dogs. Even this celebrated `anomaly' contains features of domestication. Its
practice, from ritual to production, with various accompanying forms of domination,
seems to anchor and promote the facets of decline from an earlier state of grace.
Thomas
(1981) provides another North American example, that of the Great Basin Shoshones
and three of their component societies, the Kawich Mountain Shoshones, Reese
River Shoshones, and Owens Valley Paiutes. The three groups showed distinctly
different levels of agriculture, with increasing territoriality or ownership
and hierarchy closely corresponding to higher degrees of domestication.
To `define'
a disalienated world would be impossible and even undesirable, but I think we
can and should try to reveal the unworld of today and how it got this way. We
have taken a monstrously wrong turn with symbolic culture and division of labor,
from a place of enchantment, understanding and wholeness to the absence we find
at the heart of the doctrine of progress. Empty and emptying, the logic of domestication
with its demand to control everything now shows us the ruin of the civilization
that ruins the rest. Assuming the inferiority of nature enables the domination
of cultural systems that soon will make the very earth uninhabitable.
Postmodernism
says to us that a society without power relations can only be an abstraction
(Foucault, 1982). This is a lie unless we accept the death of nature and renounce
what once was and what we can find again. Turnbull spoke of the intimacy between
Mbuti people and the forest, dancing almost as if making love to the forest.
In the bosom of a life of equals that is no abstraction, that struggles to endure,
they were "dancing with the forest, dancing with the moon."