The Hunter-Gatherer pursuit

Reillym

Hey. How should I begin...well basically I started thinking pretty deeply about life and came to the conclusion that we're not living the way we are designed to live and because of that we face all the problems of modern life. Everything from depression to obesity to murderers and rapists to war just to name a few. I compare these problems to the problems hunter-gatherers face/ed. Depression? nope Obesity? well no obviously! Malnutrition? Nope! Muderers/rapists etc.? nope! war? nope! small conflicts with other tribes? nope!

Have a look at these links: I had to take out the links because I'm a new user but look up hunter-gatherers.org, relax like a hunter-gatherer and hunter-gatherers: examples of healthy omnivores.

Lets look at the modern life on a broad scale: School -> college -> job -> retired( if you make it that far) -> death. And for what? so you could spend 48 weeks every year hating your stressful life, coping with depression, weight problems, mental disorders, addiction or whatever just so you can relax for the four weeks you get off? or just so you can have a few pints at the weekend? Well that's not a life I see worth living. Well there's another problem! suicide... no hunter-gatherer ever committed suicide. I'd rather be happy for the majority of the time I spend here. I'd rather find out what it's like to actually LIVE as a real human being, a real homo sapiens. Everything from the thrill of hunting game hunter-gatherer style, not shooting it from half a kilometer away to grabbing honey from a bee-hive. Sitting around a fire every night making music with anything we find and voices and dancing. Just generally being happy.

Now don't get me wrong I know that living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle would be extremely tough at the beginning and wouldn't just be fun and games the whole time but I can assure you with overwhelming confidence that we would be happy. How long d'ya reckon hunter-gatherers had to work a day? Most paleo-anthropologists reckon 3-4 hours a day. And guess what? They don't consider it work! It's not stressful to them. Come to think of it I doubt they have a word that means work although don't quote me on that!

I'm not sure if I've gotten my point across or if this sounded a lot better in my head but anyway I'll continue...

What's the point of all this hunter-gatherer talk? After all we don't live in a society which accepts it as an appropriate pursuit in life. Try telling your parents at 16 you want to go live in a forest somewhere. They ain't gonna be pleased. However that's where I come in or at least I hope to. I want to make the hunter-gatherer lifestyle an accepted pursuit in life. I want teenagers like me to be able to walk into their career's guidance counsellor and say, 'I want to be a hunter-gatherer.'

The only problem is that's all I've got, well along with a burning hot passion but I need people out there with web design skills, people who know how to set up organisations etc. or at least people who can show me how. Most of all though I need someone who shares the same beliefs I do, someone who knows that the modern world is completely f***ed up for lack of a better word and who wants to change it.

Now I know we can't have 7 billion hunter-gatherers running around but we can make a start. Eventually the human population will decrease and hopefully by the time it reaches reasonable levels we will have all realized the benefits of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

The basic aim of this organization will be to improve the lives of humans with the amazing by-product of reducing climate change and as a result improving the lives of all animals and ecosystems etc. I'm thinking of the home page of the web site saying something like, Aim: To show humans that the Hunter-Gatherer lifestyle is more beneficial and fulfilling than the modern/western lifestyle and to help them find a way to live the H&G lifestyle in their region.

It's scary I know, it's crazy I know but revolutionary perhaps? anyway if anyone is interested at all send me a message and we can have a chat and see where we go from there. No worries. Also I know many people can't just give up there whole life and everything they've done to go live as a hunter-gatherer but I've got ideas for that. In fact that's all I have, a huge bunch of ideas.

Hopefully I've got my message across but please if you read this at least start thinking, about life and whatnot. Don't just be a person who regrets everything on their death bed. I certainly won't.

Hopefully this is the right section to post in...but anyway hakuna matata!

lostboy75

Reillym wrote: »

I compare these problems to the problems hunter-gatherers face/ed. Depression? nope Obesity? well no obviously! Malnutrition? Nope! Muderers/rapists etc.? nope! war? nope! small conflicts with other tribes? nope!

how does anyone know this?

Reillym wrote: »

suicide... no hunter-gatherer ever committed suicide.

how does anyone know this?

Reillym wrote: »

Most paleo-anthropologists reckon 3-4 hours a day.

not heading down the dismissing line, but i really don't think this would ever work. where would you be based? where would you get the land? would it already be stocked? how much knowledge would you require to start this up. would you wear fur exclusively? what happen with an illness, you fall break your ankle. do you deal with this yourself? or is it to the hospital? if you need treatment how to you get there, how do you pay for it? we don't have a barter system that covers x-rays AFAIK.
there is no way that this can safely be done in this country.
there is not the area of land available without people that has huntable animals.
forget about going full "hunter-gather" thats pie in the sky dreams really.
the closest you could manage would be find an area you can purchase some land / house etc. for low money (you have to earn that money to even begin this remember)
sow a good garden, raise rabbits etc for meat. get a hobby that earns you some money. or a part-time style job. that covers the items you cont deal with yourself. and live a quite stress-free life that way. if you invite other to join you, you then have a commune, and thats potentially a whole different thing to try organise.

Lost

Reillym

lostboy75 wrote: »

how does anyone know this?


how does anyone know this?



where would you be based? where would you get the land? would it already be stocked? how much knowledge would you require to start this up. would you wear fur exclusively? what happen with an illness, you fall break your ankle. do you deal with this yourself? or is it to the hospital? if you need treatment how to you get there, how do you pay for it? we don't have a barter system that covers x-rays AFAIK.
there is no way that this can safely be done in this country.
there is not the area of land available without people that has huntable animals.
forget about going full "hunter-gather" thats pie in the sky dreams really.
the closest you could manage would be find an area you can purchase some land / house etc. for low money (you have to earn that money to even begin this remember)
sow a good garden, raise rabbits etc for meat. get a hobby that earns you some money. or a part-time style job. that covers the items you cont deal with yourself. and live a quite stress-free life that way. if you invite other to join you, you then have a commune, and thats potentially a whole different thing to try organise.

Lost

If we look at modern hunter-gatherer societies none of them suffer from depression. There has been significant research to show that when going from hunter-gatherers to farmers, our health was compromised mainly due to a change in diet. We, as a species have changed very little since the agricultural evolution meaning our diet should have changed very little. We are designed to eat a diet which nature provides us not which we provide ourselves. Hunter-gatherers were never malnourished because they ate what they are designed to eat. When was the last time you saw a wild animal, who's habitat has not been affected by humans, die of malnourishment?

We know H&G's didn't have conflicts with other tribes because they need other tribes to sustain a healthy population. If you didn't have good relationships with other tribes, I would imagine there would be a significant amount of inbreeding going on within you own tribe...

Murderers/rapists have only become a problem since taking care of your child has become a choice so to speak. No longer is taking care of a child an INSTINCT for many mothers around the world and when a child doesn't get the proper care it needs, it can often lead to psychopathic traits often seen in rapists and murderers and the likes. It is my opinion that every child got this instinctive care in the days of H&G's so there were next to no murderers etc.

I invite you to read this paper and decide for yourself whether modern practices, such as marriage, lead to suicide among hunter-gatherers. The evidence is overwhelming.
Crap still can't post links: search up 'Suicide among the Mla Bri Hunter-Gatherers of Northern Thailand'.

As for everything else and where would we go and all, well that's what I'm debating myself. That's why I need people to help raise awareness about all this, to help get something, anything started and then we just slowly start to gather popularity and social interest. A new phenomenon. We could go to America maybe? Somewhere in Europe? Anywhere there is some natural places left and I know that won't be Ireland.

As for breaking a leg and needing to go to the hospital. Well first of all it's very rare for a hunter-gatherer to break their leg. There diet as I've said before tailors to all their needs so their bones are very sturdy. Also they are born and raised in the 'wild'. I imagine they are very sure-footed and know how to traverse their landscape. Many sicknesses that you can come across in the wild have natural remedies nearby. Trust me, if I ever got this started breaking a leg would be the least of my worries!

I know this might sound impossible but what if we got enough people to support and join this organization. Governments would hopefully open their eyes and realize that, first of all they need more natural areas and second of all they should let these people live in these areas. It could take ten years or it could take a few hundred but I'm sure people will eventually realize the benefits of living this lifestyle.

Of course it's pie in the dreams sky but it's the best way we can live and it's shockingly obvious to me. Bottled water would be pie in the dreams sky to people living a hundred thousand years ago but look where we are now aye?

BreadnBuddha

'The Hunter Gatherer Pursuit'

Jesus.

Survivalism and Self Sufficiency needs to be grounded on a solid foundation of cop-the-feck-on.

Not on daydreams and L&H debating materials.

Watch Ryder

I consider the Hunter-Gatherer to be working his way up out of the cave, not as a vocation for the millennia to come.

Having said that I don't fully disagree either. Modern society is gravely out-of-touch and we've been moving away from the natural ways and more towards the unnatural for a long time now.

I'd say the balance between H-Gs and urban centers started to be lost when the Roman's conquered most of Europe and spread their ways, later reinforced by Christianity who made Rome the leader and not the individual tribes.

mister gullible

Lifespan in bronze and iron ages (not even stone age) was 26 (source wikipedia). That's all we need to know.

aaakev

mister gullible wrote: »

Lifespan in bronze and iron ages (not even stone age) was 26 (source wikipedia). That's all we need to know.

Wohoo I'm 29! #winning......


Sorry..........

Watch Ryder

mister gullible wrote: »

Lifespan in bronze and iron ages (not even stone age) was 26 (source wikipedia). That's all we need to know.

No it wasn't, that's what you need to know.

One more thing, if you take Wikipedia as a trusted source I've got some great beachfront property worth selling in outer Mongolia.

Watch Ryder

If you didn't hit the alcohol hard, go fight in the wars and kept to yourself you'd easily live to your 60s all things being equal.
If you broke a leg or a limb it was tough **** but even then if a tribal system is in place it didn't automatically mean a death sentence either. Our ancestors were NOT dumb or stupid, in fact they probably knew more back then than we've forgotten now.

People were much fitter and healthy back then. It's only because of all the drugs and treatments around now that life is extended.

I really detest arguments about 'it was so bad back then'. Unless you were in a conquered territory being pillage by the romans or a war was going on you'd be living pretty well.

Tribes looked after there own, in rome it was the rule of the mob and the whims of an emperor (after the republic).

Gaul for example was as flourishing up until Caesar came and wrecked it (we're talking six-figure body count).
Feudal populations saw a poorer and abused population of lower-classes who were not getting the right nutrition, hence the life expectancy shrunk until just prior to the early renaissance.

All in all an active life to your 50s and 60s, raising the new generation etc would be much preferred than a controlled, toiling drudgery for the state giving you another ten to twenty years.

lostboy75

Think this all depends on what era we define as Hunter gather though. Yes it extended for quite some time but when I hear it I think well over two thousand years ago. Regardless of that, it's not some thing that can be replicated in this time and age.
agree about simple living, and I mentioned that in my post.

sheesh

where to start?

If we look at modern hunter-gatherer societies none of them suffer from depression.

Given that depression is the brains reaction to sudden change we can assume that individuals in hunter gather societies did actually suffer from depression on occassion. remember that it can be a change like a change in status within the group a bad crop or less animals to feed on. Remember also modern life has removed certain stresses, women don't die in childbirth child mortality is very low we are our food is relatively free from disease and biological agents due to storage, we have certainty of supply of food for nearly all budgets.

Hunter-gatherers were never malnourished because they ate what they are designed to eat.

why do you think this if hunter gatherers were never malnourished they would have filled the world by now obviously something was keeping their numbers down and that was occasional starvation and disease, death in childbirth and of course winter. All animals in the wild eventually succumb to disease and starvation or predation that is the circle of life.

Although really thats not a circle but thats what we call it.

Also how in the name of god did a primate species the arose in Africa (hot)
end up being designed to eat wooly mammoth?

we are generalists if the guy next to you tries something new and does not die we will try it too.

Also if farming was so bad for us how come all the farmers survived and the hunter gatherers didn't?

We know H&G's didn't have conflicts with other tribes because they need other tribes to sustain a healthy population. If you didn't have good relationships with other tribes, I would imagine there would be a significant amount of inbreeding going on within you own tribe...

where is your source for this ??? You really think that there was not competition for resources? what about in winter?

aaakev

As a conversation I think its a great topic! Iv spent many a sunny afternoon lying in a ditch hunting iv thought of the same thing!

I think the op might be young, think we should keep that in mind. ...

It wouldn't be possible in ireland anyway, all the land is owned first off! But... you can hunt here pretty freely if you go through the process, you can provide an awful lot for yourself, food wise, by hunting (ill take you out hunting if you want) but you cant really live like that here.

If your interested in this sort of stuff and living like that take ir a step at a time, buy a gun to do some hunting, get collecting water, go camping as much as you can ect..... dont get too hung up on trying to completely separate from us all!

If you are really mad for that lifestyle check out yukon men! Thats probably as close as you will get but they still rely on some technology along the way!!

Watch Ryder

sheesh wrote: »

where to start?


Also if farming was so bad for us how come all the farmers survived and the hunter gatherers didn't?

The HGs became farmers, as well as the growing city populations saw the wildlife couldn't support such a population growth.

In the days of the HGs the carrying capacity of the wildlife was respected, even the towns that the HGs supported this carrying capacity.

lostboy75

Watch Ryder wrote: »

The HGs became farmers, as well as the growing city populations saw the wildlife couldn't support such a population growth.

In the days of the HGs the carrying capacity of the wildlife was respected, even the towns that the HGs supported this carrying capacity.

Not sure respected is the right word, they were held back by it, otherwise there was not the food to go around, lead to starvation, disease etc

Pat Mustard

mister gullible wrote: »

Lifespan in bronze and iron ages (not even stone age) was 26 (source wikipedia). That's all we need to know.

Wikipedia isn't a good source because anyone can edit the information on it. However, Wikipedia often takes its information from better sources.

The info from the wikipedia article is taken from a seminar paper on the London School of Economics website, by Galor (Brown University and Hebrew University) and Moav (Hebrew University, Shalem Center).

The proposition of the paper is:

This research advances an evolutionary growth theory that captures the pattern of life expectancy in the process of development, shedding new light on the sources of the remarkable rise in life expectancy since the Agricultural Revolution. The theory suggests that social, economic and environmental changes that were associated with the transition from hunter-gatherer tribes to sedentary agricultural communities and ultimately to urban societies affected the nature of the environmental hazards confronted by the human population, triggering an evolutionary process that had a significant impact on the time path of human longevity

I only skimmed over the seminar paper "Natural Selection and the Evolution of Life Expectancy", as it was pretty dull stuff, but there is a chart showing life expectancies from the Epipaleolithic period to the Iron Age.

It is my understanding that a person's life expectancy changes as they age. For example male life expectancy at birth may be (say) 72. However, for males who survive to age 20, life expectancy might increase to a higher figure, like 80.

At birth, the authors state that life expectancies in each period were (just taking the higher examples from the chart):

Epipaleolithic Mesolithic: 39.88
Neolithic: 24.92
Copper Age: 36.37
Bronze Age: 28.97
Iron age: 44.03

I also thought that this excerpt from the article was interesting:

Most comparisons between hunter-gatherers and farmers (e.g., Cohen (1989)) suggest that, in the same locale, farmers suffered higher rates of infection due to the increase in human settlements in size and permanence, poorer nutrition due to reduced meat intake and greater interference with mineral absorption by the cereal-based diet. Consequently, Neolithic farmers were shorter and had a lower life expectancy relative to Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Although it is difficult to draw reliable conclusions about relative life expectancy in these periods, because skeletal samples are often distorted and incomplete, available evidence suggests that prehistoric hunter-gatherers often fared relatively well in comparison to later populations, particularly with reference to the survival of children. The Illinois Valley provides life tables for hunter-gatherers which confirm the assessment that their life expectancies matched or exceeded those of later groups. Additional evidence mostly from the Old World, are [sic] provided in Table1, and are depicted in Figure 1.

Reillym

mister gullible wrote: »

Lifespan in bronze and iron ages (not even stone age) was 26 (source wikipedia). That's all we need to know.

I can tell you it was significantly higher during the stone age, at least the paleolithic era anyway. Estimates of about 60 years of age. I'm completely against living how we lived during the bronze age and obviously the iron age. I thought it was obvious I was talking about before the agricultural revolution (pre bronze age)

Reillym

sheesh wrote: »

where to start?



Given that depression is the brains reaction to sudden change we can assume that individuals in hunter gather societies did actually suffer from depression on occassion. remember that it can be a change like a change in status within the group a bad crop or less animals to feed on. Remember also modern life has removed certain stresses, women don't die in childbirth child mortality is very low we are our food is relatively free from disease and biological agents due to storage, we have certainty of supply of food for nearly all budgets.

Well I'm talking about H&G's that didn't grow crops. Also one of the websites I directed people to in my original post talked about how there was NO status among H&G's and that they were egalitarian societies. I take your point about there being less animals to feed on sometimes though. You say 'we' have certainty of food supply. No we don't. The following statistics are from the World Food Programme: Some 805 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That's about one in nine people on earth.
One out of six children -- roughly 100 million -- in developing countries is underweight.

Poor nutrition causes nearly half (45%) of deaths in children under five - 3.1 million children each year.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the highest prevalence (percentage of population) of hunger. ONE person in FOUR there is undernourished.

You seem to be talking about Ireland, a very developed country when we should be looking at this on a global scale.

sheesh wrote: »

why do you think this if hunter gatherers were never malnourished they would have filled the world by now obviously something was keeping their numbers down and that was occasional starvation and disease, death in childbirth and of course winter. All animals in the wild eventually succumb to disease and starvation or predation that is the circle of life.

Although really thats not a circle but thats what we call it.

Also how in the name of god did a primate species the arose in Africa (hot)
end up being designed to eat wooly mammoth?

we are generalists if the guy next to you tries something new and does not die we will try it too.

Also if farming was so bad for us how come all the farmers survived and the hunter gatherers didn't?



where is your source for this ??? You really think that there was not competition for resources? what about in winter?

Not many things were keeping their numbers down and that's why we've spread from Africa and across the rest of the world. Not many animals at all suffer from starvation unless their habitat has been affected by us and their food source has been reduced. The hunter gatherers didn't just die and all the farmers lived. No, all the hunter-gatherers became farmers!

There was competition for resources but they didn't fight each other, they just left for new lands that weren't occupied.

lostboy75

The hunter gatherers didn't just die and all the farmers lived. No, all the hunter-gatherers became farmers

Why?

Reillym

lostboy75 wrote: »

The hunter gatherers didn't just die and all the farmers lived. No, all the hunter-gatherers became farmers

Why?

In the short term it seemed to them like a good idea. You get all this food that you can just store up for the year. It seemed easier. Sadly they had no idea that they were overworking the land and crop failure would eventually come into play.

In a way stored food was the first type of valuable material possession. Something worth fighting for which in my opinion is what led to the first outbreaks of 'war'. Other people would see this stored food and decide to take it obviously.

Tabnabs

Reillym wrote: »

I can tell you it was significantly higher during the stone age, at least the paleolithic era anyway. Estimates of about 60 years of age.

Can you show us some sources for this claim?

Last_Minute

I think you would be best just trying to eliminate as much stress from your life as you can.

Get a job that has limited responsibilty and pays 300 - 400 a week, thats more than enough to by on if you want a simple life.

laoch na mona

lostboy75 wrote: »

The hunter gatherers didn't just die and all the farmers lived. No, all the hunter-gatherers became farmers

Why?

it allowed for population growth, and because less people could produce more food society was able to advance and human civilisation evolved.

it's worth pointing out Rousseau's philosophy that as well as the benefits of civilisation it also created conflict and inequality because it gave rise to private property, which gave rise to feudalism, feudalism gave rise to capitalism, capitalism gave rise to neoliberalism

but I personally don't think we could simply regress backwards to the stone age we've changed to much from the state of nature (hunter gathers, no property) and a regression would look more like Hobbes state of nature which is based of putting modern man (with his concept of ownership) into a war of all against all (like mad max)

in short human nature has changed (been altered) by the economic forces which have evolved throughout history, which make going backwards impossible

Reillym

Tabnabs wrote: »

Can you show us some sources for this claim?

Should've said up to 60 years of age. My bad. The reason life expectancy seems very low for HG is because they had a relatively high infant mortality rate. However if you lived to be 5 as a HG you would have an increased life expectancy. As you got older your life expectancy would increase. I would imagine that if you live to be 10 as a HG you would have a decent chance at 60. Also HG would be very fit during old age (compared to the elderly these days), most likely still being able to aid in hunting and such.