On hunter gatherers

Hunter-gatherers are worthy of study. They are humans as humans evolved to be. They were once regarded as primitive savages - barbaric, ignorant, and cruel. Modern opinions tend to be be very different. I argue that both opinions are wrong.

www.LloydianAspects.co.uk

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Education

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• hunter
• gatherer
• forager
• aboriginal
• aboriginee
• moari
• captain
• cook
• lloyd
• opinion
• instinct
• barbaric
• primitive
• savage
• nature
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• guardian
• hawaii
• species
• conservation
• environment

[wrisr001]

You make some good points, but when you say that Aboriginals are smaller than Maoris do you mean that they are wirier or shorter, because from my experience although there is more variation in the various Aboriginal groups, as opposed to the conquering Maoris, the Aboriginals are on average least as tall. I've even seen old pictures of some Aboriginal groups who could have a NBA basketball team.

[lindybeige]

@wrisr001 Wirier mainly, I suppose, but I've not seen tall Aboriginals, not that I've ever been to Australia.

[TOMHYLE88]

Very striking to me from my semi-native upbringing and from my extensive reading, especially of interviews with, and law arguments and political speaches by hunter gatherers, is that the line between h/g and farming is nowhere near so distinct as we are led to think. Typically h/g people view the plants and animals in their territory as their crops and herds, sometimes even naming individuals, and often taking concern to cull the weak, remove weeds and predators, and even provide winter fodder.

[lindybeige]

@TOMHYLE88 There are stages between true hunter gatherers and farmers, such as sedentary h-gs, nomadic herdsmen etc. One big divide is between people who store food and those who don't.

[lindybeige]

@MiRyRE Flawed, and would have been better in 2D. I hope they paid Roger Dean for designing half the animals and landscapes for them. It continued with the all-H-Gs-are-great theme, throwing in all-miners-and-soldiers-are-st­upid-and-evil for good measure.

[lindybeige]

@jdf1023 If we have evolved to be hunters, and are now not hunting, that would put us further away from the natural. We still have hunter instincts. All round the world men carve up large joints of meat to serve to guests, even if the meat is from a butcher's and was cooked by women. Men prefer fewer larger meals and women (gatherers) prefer more but smaller meals. Men remain competitive, and are happier to leave the home for long periods. Long distance lorry drivers are almost all men.

[KonijNx2]

She talks about the native americans with almost a tear in her eye - of how they respect nature and never take too much from the land. I'm filled with disdain for people like that. The native Americans were not kind to nature, they were every bit as idiotic as we were and are when it comes to treatment of the planet. Forcing a stampede of potentially hundreds of bison off a cliff often simply to cut out their tongues and tails because you like those bits, that's not respect.

[KonijNx2]

My girlfriends mother, an altogether ignorant and crazy woman is the example of everything that is wrong with humanity. She was raised Catholic and her family tried to force her to abort her child at 16 - which she refused to do. But instead of casting off the shackles of such supersticion, she has slowly, since I met her slipped deeper and deeper into craziness. She believes ghosts haunt her and crystals have healing powers and that these hunter gatherer socities were nature-attuned pyschics.

[1023471965]

They are just people like us> Well said as we are all related to each other through Adam & Eve.

[lindybeige]

@HazelArchery Yes, this is one way of looking at it. Another is to say that a colour TV is a naturally occurring object, or that a spider's web is not. Unfortunately, if one takes it to an extreme, then the world 'natural' becomes meaningless. No one could from scratch in one lifetime get from the stone age to modern life alone. The works of Man have changed the environment. I think that's a useful distinction.

[HazelArchery]

@lindybeige May I politely point out that to say anything humanity does is not natural is a direct violation of obvious fact. We are natural beings and therefore anything we do is also nature. Skyscrapers are as natural as a termite mound and...well...i wish i could post a video response

[TheWhoaDude]

The buffalo comment made me laugh