Hunter-gatherers: what characteristics do these cultures present?

Hunter-gatherer societies have been and are cultures seen as nomadic and in which there is no it has developed agriculture, as it depends a lot on the resources that nature offers.

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

We'll see now the fundamental characteristics of hunter-gatherer societies, dismantling some myths associated with them.

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What are hunter-gatherers?

Human societies, both prehistoric and current, can be classified following different related criteria with the degree of complexity of its society hierarchy, the development of its culture and technological application, in addition to the size of the herself.

One of the most recurrent criteria is the one that refers to how they obtain the food they need to survive. This is when we speak of hunter-gatherer societies, in contrast to societies that have developed agriculture.

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

• Mobility according to the seasons, that is, nomadism.
• Lack of centralized authority structures.
• Hunter-gatherer economy.

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

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Many vegetables, but few animals

Although these cultures have generally been called hunter-gatherers, 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 this expression is still used today to refer to cultures where more than 40% meat is rarely incorporated into their diet.

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

Furthermore, in the wild an animal cannot be killed as easily as a domesticated animal would, accustomed to the human presence and which does not suspect where it is going to end up. It should be said that the location of wild animals is changing, as do hunter-gatherers themselves.

On the other hand, the plants are there, stuck to the ground and without, unless someone picks them up, they change their place. They are an easy source of resources to obtain, since they do not involve a great expenditure of energy compared to hunting animals, which implies having to chase them, study their behavior patterns, what they eat, how dangerous they are ...

The sedentary nature of the vegetables and the certainty that each year they grow in the same place are the explanation of why most of the hunter-gatherer diet leans toward plants.

Do women gather, do men hunt?

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

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

There are several researchers who have debunked this belief that has its roots in a fairly marked anthropological sexism. In both present-day and prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies there have been many cases in which women and men, although they do not share all the same roles, they do interpenetrate in several functions, and among them is the hunting.

According to Harris and Ross (1991), during the Paleolithic, since hunting strategies implied a high mortality and dangerousness, it shouldn't make sense to have only the male half of the adults in the group take care of from this.

The involvement of the more people the better was necessary, and women were not excluded from this activity. An excessive division of labor based on sex could be synonymous with a lack of foods of animal origin, foods which, as we have already said, are not abundant or easy to find.

Nomadism in these societies

One of the main characteristics of these societies is their mobility. Both prehistoric and current, in many cases, change their place of settlement, especially depending on the season of the year and the availability of resources. It should also be said that the size of the group varies depending on 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 towns are clustered in macro-populated areas, close to predictable and relatively abundant sources of water.

As there is little water and everyone is aware of where it is, they are more likely to get together, sharing it and managing it to avoid deficiencies. On the other hand, when the rainy season arrives and the vegetation flourishes again, the macropopulation disintegrates, settling in various places.

It goes without saying that, although most hunter-gatherers are nomads, present 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 close to their preferred resources until they are exhausted or relocated, as is the case with the! Kung.

On the other hand, there are others who are moving 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 forced to have to change their habitat with Relatively often they are forced to do without wearing 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.

It seems that there is a correlation between how nomadic the culture is and the sophistication of its tools, together with the amount of material properties possessed by individuals and families. An example of this are the Eskimos, who have relatively low mobility and their populations are often stable. This has allowed them to spend more time developing their technology, which has become more valuable and less expendable.

Based on this, one might think that material property in the most nomadic cultures, far from being a symbol of power or something to brag 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 generalist.

This is easily refutable considering that, no matter how nomadic they are, there are many cultures that bury their dead with trousseau. Among this trousseau there are objects associated with the deceased, used by him. In essence, his material properties, since it would not make sense to bury something that belongs to everyone and lose it in a burial if the idea of ​​property did not exist.

However, what there is no doubt about is the idea that food belongs to everyone. It is usually very frowned upon not to share hunting, even though it was thanks to the action of a single hunter. Although the products collected are usually consumed by the family nucleus, hunting is something that is distributed throughout the group. Sharing these resources is not done as a value, which is also done, but because of the extreme need to increase group survival.

It is through sharing food that social ties 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 ancient times. immemorial.

Bibliographic references:

• Binford, L. R. (1994) In search of the past: Deciphering the archaeological record. Barcelona, ​​Criticism.
• Cashdan, E. (1991) Hunters and gatherers: The economic behavior of gangs, in S. Plattner (ed.), Economic Anthropology. México, Alianza Editorial: 43-78.
• Harris, M. and E. B. Ross (1991) Population regulation among early human gatherers ", in Death, Sex, and Fertility: Demographic Regulation in Preindustrial and Developing Societies. Madrid, Alianza Editorial: 30-45.
• Read. B. (1981) Livelihood of the! Kung Bushmen: An input-output analysis ", in J. R. Llobera (ed.), Economic Anthropology: Ethnographic Studies. Barcelona, ​​Anagram: 35-64.
• Arce Ruiz, Ó. (2005) Hunters and gatherers. A theoretical approach. In: Gazeta de Antropología, Nº 21, Article 22.