Author : Wahid Ahmad
When we talk about
people who primarily gather wild plants and animals for food, we often use the
term "hunter-gatherers." However, this term can be misleading because
it implies that these societies are all the same, when in fact there's a lot of
variation in how they live, what they eat, and how they interact with their
environment.
Some experts argue that
instead of just seeing hunting and gathering as a way to get food, we should
think of it as a whole way of life—a mode of production. This means that
hunting and gathering aren't just about finding food; they involve a whole set
of social practices and relationships.
To make things clearer,
we can distinguish between two things: the way people get food (which we can
call "food collecting") and the social practices and relationships
that come with it (which we can call "food production").
In the past, when we
talked about "food production," we usually meant farming and raising
animals. But this can be confusing when we're talking about societies before
agriculture. It might seem like they weren't "producing" anything in
the same way.
But if we stick with
this distinction, we need to be consistent. So, instead of just saying
"hunter-gatherers," we can use "food collectors" to talk
about how they get food. And we can talk about the social aspects of their
lives separately.
Today there are very
few groups of people who primarily rely on gathering food from their
environment. They're mostly found in remote areas like the Arctic tundras,
tropical forests, and arid savannahs, where farming is challenging. These
food-collecting populations make up a tiny fraction of the global population,
but they're extremely important for understanding human history and culture.
These societies usually
don't have complex systems for controlling their environment. Their way of life
is flexible and adapts to seasonal changes. For example, some groups move
around based on where food is available, like the Inuit following the movements
of game animals or the !Kung San shifting with water availability.
Despite their small
size and mobility, these populations are highly efficient at obtaining food and
maintaining good health. They don't need elaborate social institutions because
they rely on informal sharing practices to maintain cohesion within the group.
Surpluses are distributed among members rather than stored because nomadic life
makes storage difficult.
However, there's another
group of food-collecting populations, like Aboriginal Australians and the
peoples of the American Northwest Coast, that don't fit this classic model
perfectly. They have more complex social structures and often delay consumption
rather than consuming immediately like other food collectors do. These
differences highlight the diversity among food-collecting societies and the
need for nuanced understanding when studying them.
Hunting gathering in
prehistoric perspective
When we look back at
early human history, we find that our ancestors primarily survived by gathering
food from their surroundings. This mode of survival, termed
"food-collecting," was fundamental to their existence. However, there
has been a shift in the way we understand this period.
Initially, there was a
widely accepted idea known as the "Man the Hunter" paradigm, which
suggested that early humans lived in small groups, hunting animals for food.
However, this notion has been challenged in recent years.
Some researchers, like
Binford, argued that early humans didn't hunt much and consumed little meat.
While this view might be extreme, it's clear that early humans weren't exactly
like the hunter-gatherer societies we see today. Their territories weren't as
extensive, and we're not entirely sure if they operated from a central base or
not. Plus, it's uncertain if they shared food or divided tasks based on gender
roles.
Despite the difficulty
in archaeological evidence, it's generally believed that early humans had a
mixed diet, gradually incorporating more non-vegetable foods as technology
advanced and social cooperation increased. Just like modern primates, different
groups of early humans likely had diverse food habits.
What characterize early
human subsistence patterns is their limited variation, basic tools, and minimal
collaboration in obtaining food. Each individual mostly ate what they gathered
themselves, with sharing primarily occurring within family units. This period
saw the development of cognitive and technical skills related to food
gathering, along with increasing social cooperation within families and between
male-female pairs.
Communication about
food and its symbolic significance in social relationships also began to emerge
during this period. These developments laid the foundation for what can be
considered a mode of production, as described by Marx.
As humans spread into
different environments, their techniques diversified, with hunting becoming
more prevalent in temperate and arctic regions due to the less reliable
plant-based resources. The Upper Paleolithic hunters of Europe mark the
earliest group we can clearly define as hunter-gatherers in the modern sense.