D
ivision 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, ethnoantropology, 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 social lies that are told
to legitimate that life, and the 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 us a bloodthirsty, macho version of pre-history, 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
concluded that it was the key element in establishing our uniquely Homo development
at least as early as two 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 (Hamiltion
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) suggests
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 thus scantily represented
in the archaeologicval 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 basically modern brain organization. Similarly, tools older than
two million 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 laterization 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 behaviours" (Ciochon,
Olsen and Tames 1990). As Hohanson 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 pimitive, 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 speciments 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 symbolization. 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, human 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 two million years (Kempe 1988)
and might have apppeared 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 there 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 two and one-half 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 pre-historic 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 imples---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 becase 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 though, whose
advance could be universally appreciated) 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" accompaning
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
catagory, 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 artifically 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 painting 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 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
everwhere, 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 by domestication, for the earliest business transactions
and political administration (Larson 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
tthe 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 off 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 (a.k.a. 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)
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 gathers, 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 centures;
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 prehistoric 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 Hazad of East Africa, where game
is more abundant than in the Kalahari, rely on gathering for eighty 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 Anadaman 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 and '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 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 autonomy,"
similar to Wilson's finding (1988)
of "an ethic of independence" that is "common to the focused open societies."
The esteemed field anthropologist Radin (1952)
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 attitude 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,
e.g. the Tasaday of the Phillippines (Nance
1975), but while the majority certainly do hunt, "it
is not normally an aggresssive 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 fabricaed 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 betwen and 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 1979, 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 leadership.
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 the wilderness
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 (Leachck 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 of others 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 lover, 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 thay 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 foundation with
the new order, requires the firm subjugation of instinct, freedom, and sexuality.
All dis-order must be banished, the elemental and spontaneous taken firmly
in hand. Women's creativity and their very being as sexual persons are
pressured to give way to the role, expresses in all peasant religions, of
Great Mother, that is, fecund breeder of men and food.
The men of 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 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 agricultrual
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, degerative 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 with
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 terrirorial 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 amout 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 "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-gatherer." 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 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."
[It would seem
that a pre-requisite to social hierarchy is internal hierarchy wherein the
mind perceives itself separate from the restof the body, projecting
authority and thus, forfeiting wholeness. dregeye]
