Hunter-gatherers were the original affluent society

[Jim Cross]

In both of Suzman’s books, a great deal rests on Richard Lee’s Ju/’hoansi study from the 1960s, which is the sole authority Suzman cites for his vaunted 15-hour figure. Is he on solid ground?

No.

There’s really no other way to say it. James Suzman’s marquee fact, upon which the edifice of his 300,000-year history precariously balances, is astonishingly squishy. Seeing how he got there shows how much caution is required in writing of the distant past. Caution, unfortunately, is not one of Suzman’s strengths.

Perhaps it’s the difficulty of writing history at the scale of the species that has left the field open for corner-cutters like Suzman. If so, that’s a pity. We could use good histories of Homo sapiens—reliable ones that culminate in something more than diet tips or life hacks. A 300,000-year history of work, done well, could ask probing questions about gender, slavery, inequality, the wage system, ideology, and workers’ political power. It might yield conclusions that would be more uncomfortable than encouraging to our ascendant elite. It might, indeed, offer insights as to how to dismantle that elite.

But Suzman’s Work is not that book. It uses the distant past—in its fun-house mirror way—to highlight some pathologies of our age, yet without giving much understanding of how to cure them. As Suzman doesn’t recommend returning to foraging and hasn’t pointed to any levers with which to change things, his book ends with a weak injunction to think creatively. Here, blue-sky thinking collapses into something near fatalism. Maybe there’s nothing to be done. Sometimes the gods are just crazy.

https://newrepublic.com/article/161593/ ... mes-suzman

[Lou Gold]

Jim - It's an error to equate hunter-gatherers with older civilizations. Hunter-gatherer survival was based in large part on mobility and population control. Civilizations are sedentary and experience population booms and busts. Also, there's quite a bit of variance in how civilizations used fire. For example, the Amazonian Terra Preta civilizations used fire to enhance soil productivity and sustain large sedentary populations across long periods of time.

Lou, it isn't just civilizations. You saw my links demonstrating hunters and gatherers had booms and busts too with natural variations in food supply. During bust cycles, violence between competing groups is common. The problem with many of the studies of hunter gatherer labor is they have been conducted during times of relative plenty.

Hunter-gatherers being non-sedentary typically limited family size to two children with whom they could be mobile. Yes, they could be busted by catastrophic conditions like climate change of a volcanic eruption but this is not what is meant by population boom-and-bust. And, of course hunter-gatherers inhabited regions of plenty and left in times of scarcity. That's what hunter-gatherers do. Surely, there would have been the violence of raids and competition of territory but it wasn't the dominant lifestyle. If they caused any scarcity it would have be temporary. And, obviously, the studies of hunter gatherers in the Kalahari Desert or Australian Outback surely cannot be portrayed as studies of populations in areas of plenty.

The Amazonians had amazing technology to sustain agriculture in what would naturally be a rainforest but keep in mind that those civilizations had to destroy the rainforest too to accomplish what they did. We really don't know for sure whether they had boom and bust cycles or warfare. Many of the Terra Preta fields and their associated settlements were surrounded by a palisades. Those probably weren't constructed for decorative purposes but for defensive ones. That probably means population pressure, resource competition, and warfare were present at various points in ancient Amazonia too.

Current thinking is that much of the Amazon Basin is a manufactured paradise of biodiversity because of the ways that humans were intimately involved in the processes of nature. It's not a question of humans vs nature but rather a matter of how humans choose to participate in nature. There are extractive-exploitive ways and there are renewing-regenerative ways. Terra Preta ways supported long-term high-density populations in-place and therefore limited the spread of agricultural conversion much beyond the high population zones. Highly mobile hunter-gatherers spread seeds and planted "lunch spots" along their trails, which definitely contributed to the biodiversity in the niche. Overall, humans both mobile and sedentary contributed to the astounding diversity found across Amazonia.

I presume the "palisades" of which you speak refer to the large mounded geoglyphs of Southwestern Amazonia. These were not defensive structure protecting fields or villages as no middens or concentrations of pottery shards are found near them. Quite contrary to a notion that they were defensive in times of scarcity, recent research argues for spiritual purpose of the geoglyphs:

“People did not distinguish themselves from nature, but non-humans enabled and produced life.”
The geoglyphs were especially used by the experts of that era, who specialized in the interaction with the non-human beings.
“The sites were important for members of the community at certain stages of life, and the various geometric patterns acted as ‘doors’ and ‘paths’ to gain the knowledge and strength of the different beings of the environment,” the researchers said.
“Visualization and active interactions with nonhuman beings were constructive for these communities.”

Also the geoglyphs are found in a transition region which has moved back and forth between forest and savanna. It is believed that the mounds were built during drier times of less forest and that it was a cooling climate change combined with the great plague of european diseases, which devastated local human population that brought an expansion of forest hiding the no longer maintained geoglyphs from view until the recent surge of deforestation caused by modern agriculture and ranching. It's also noteworthy that this region is not a terra preta area and that the terra preta areas of the central Amazon Basin show no geoglyphs.

[Jim Cross]

Palisades are wooden defensive walls intended to fortify an area. Ditches and earthen mounds also sometimes served that function, although they could serve other functions. The palisades are, of course, all gone now since they were constructed of wood. Walled villages were noted by earliest European explorers.

Ancient Amazonian communities fortified valuable land they had spent years making fertile to protect it from conflict, excavations show.

Farmers in Bolivia constructed wooden defences around previously nutrient-poor tropical soils they had enriched over generations to keep them safe during times of social unrest.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 151802.htm

The most likely function of the Itenez ring ditches is
defence (Prumers € et al., 2006). Erickson (2010) has also
suggested that these defensive ditches were enhanced by
wooden palisades, citing descriptions of palisade villages in
the contemporary accounts of early European explorers (Eder,
1985).

https://www.joseiriartearchaeology.net/ ... Island.pdf

Hunters and gatherers didn't chose to keep families small from some wisdom or birth control planning. Mortality was high. Food was frequently scarce. Surprisingly fertility is also low because of food scarcity.

The myth about the ease of life among hunters and gatherers has been based off a single study that happened to be done in a good year. No doubt there were good years, although with bad years, but overall it wasn't the "original affluent society".

[Lou Gold]

Palisades are wooden defensive walls intended to fortify an area. Ditches and earthen mounds also sometimes served that function, although they could serve other functions. The palisades are, of course, all gone now since they were constructed of wood. Walled villages were noted by earliest European explorers.

Ancient Amazonian communities fortified valuable land they had spent years making fertile to protect it from conflict, excavations show.

Farmers in Bolivia constructed wooden defences around previously nutrient-poor tropical soils they had enriched over generations to keep them safe during times of social unrest.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 151802.htm

The most likely function of the Itenez ring ditches is
defence (Prumers € et al., 2006). Erickson (2010) has also
suggested that these defensive ditches were enhanced by
wooden palisades, citing descriptions of palisade villages in
the contemporary accounts of early European explorers (Eder,
1985).

https://www.joseiriartearchaeology.net/ ... Island.pdf

Hunters and gatherers didn't chose to keep families small from some wisdom or birth control planning. Mortality was high. Food was frequently scarce. Surprisingly fertility is also low because of food scarcity.

The myth about the ease of life among hunters and gatherers has been based off a single study that happened to be done in a good year. No doubt there were good years, although with bad years, but overall it wasn't the "original affluent society".

Jim -- I think we're going in endless circles in which you equate early farming with hunter-gathering. For example, you cite research about farmers in Bolivia and palisade-fortified villages despite the obvious fact that farmers and sedentary villagers are not hunter gatherers. There are small village-based hunter-gatherer populations in biomes extraordinarily rich in biodiversity. Consider the first peoples of the North American Pacific NW where hunting and gathering shifted seasonally. Also, central Amazonian agriculture did not face strong seasonal challenges as elsewhere. Yes, warfare and defense surely occurred over established territories and increased as the balance between population and native abundance shifted, but this is not a comparison of hunter-gatherer mobile or small-scale village life and a large sedentary agricultural civilization.

PS: How bountiful do you think a "good year" in the Kalahari desert or Australian outback might have been?

[Lou Gold]

PSS: Jim, I liked the Daniel Immerwahr article, which raises IMHO the deeper relevant issues. My own quarrels with modern agricultural practices are based on the research strongly suggesting that Central Amazonian agricultural was vastly more sustainable of large populations than modern methods and that earlier human presence in Amazonia contributed to it's amazingly bountiful biodiversity. No, I do not see a return to hunter-gathering as a modern solution. However, a good dose of less-is-more thinking is surely a big part of the remedies for runaway affluenza.

The critique that "MEDITATE" is a non-threatening solution can find a parallel in the assertion that Idealism allows for many possibilities rather than compelling any earthly "solution." Personally, I find it interesting that the life-science trained researchers (example: Rupert Sheldrake) seem to be more concerned about the future of the earthly system than are the hard-core Idealists who seem to me to be more steeped in the abstractions of math and physics.

[Lou Gold]

Palisades are wooden defensive walls intended to fortify an area. Ditches and earthen mounds also sometimes served that function, although they could serve other functions. The palisades are, of course, all gone now since they were constructed of wood. Walled villages were noted by earliest European explorers.

Ancient Amazonian communities fortified valuable land they had spent years making fertile to protect it from conflict, excavations show.

Farmers in Bolivia constructed wooden defences around previously nutrient-poor tropical soils they had enriched over generations to keep them safe during times of social unrest.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 151802.htm

The most likely function of the Itenez ring ditches is
defence (Prumers € et al., 2006). Erickson (2010) has also
suggested that these defensive ditches were enhanced by
wooden palisades, citing descriptions of palisade villages in
the contemporary accounts of early European explorers (Eder,
1985).

https://www.joseiriartearchaeology.net/ ... Island.pdf

Hunters and gatherers didn't chose to keep families small from some wisdom or birth control planning. Mortality was high. Food was frequently scarce. Surprisingly fertility is also low because of food scarcity.

The myth about the ease of life among hunters and gatherers has been based off a single study that happened to be done in a good year. No doubt there were good years, although with bad years, but overall it wasn't the "original affluent society".

Jim -- I stand corrected. This Feb, 2021 research report is new to me and, YES, it is both about terra preta soil enhancement and defensive fortification in a region near Acre, Brazil with which I'm more familiar. Of course, these are more marginal savanna/forest transition areas than the terra preta regions of the central Amazon and it would make sense for the human-nurtured fertile areas to be defended in these areas.

[SanteriSatama]

more steeped in the abstractions of math

To heal the math god that forces quantitative growth beyond good proportion, at the cost to qualitative well-being, it seems we need to get deeply steeped in hard core foundational math to intuit and write a better god.

As we can observe in natural language, more-less relation and comparative expressions generally speak endless variety of qualia, not just quantitative qualia.

[Jim Cross]

Palisades are wooden defensive walls intended to fortify an area. Ditches and earthen mounds also sometimes served that function, although they could serve other functions. The palisades are, of course, all gone now since they were constructed of wood. Walled villages were noted by earliest European explorers.

Ancient Amazonian communities fortified valuable land they had spent years making fertile to protect it from conflict, excavations show.

Farmers in Bolivia constructed wooden defences around previously nutrient-poor tropical soils they had enriched over generations to keep them safe during times of social unrest.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 151802.htm

The most likely function of the Itenez ring ditches is
defence (Prumers € et al., 2006). Erickson (2010) has also
suggested that these defensive ditches were enhanced by
wooden palisades, citing descriptions of palisade villages in
the contemporary accounts of early European explorers (Eder,
1985).

https://www.joseiriartearchaeology.net/ ... Island.pdf

Hunters and gatherers didn't chose to keep families small from some wisdom or birth control planning. Mortality was high. Food was frequently scarce. Surprisingly fertility is also low because of food scarcity.

The myth about the ease of life among hunters and gatherers has been based off a single study that happened to be done in a good year. No doubt there were good years, although with bad years, but overall it wasn't the "original affluent society".

Jim -- I think we're going in endless circles in which you equate early farming with hunter-gathering. For example, you cite research about farmers in Bolivia and palisade-fortified villages despite the obvious fact that farmers and sedentary villagers are not hunter gatherers. There are small village-based hunter-gatherer populations in biomes extraordinarily rich in biodiversity. Consider the first peoples of the North American Pacific NW where hunting and gathering shifted seasonally. Also, central Amazonian agriculture did not face strong seasonal challenges as elsewhere. Yes, warfare and defense surely occurred over established territories and increased as the balance between population and native abundance shifted, but this is not a comparison of hunter-gatherer mobile or small-scale village life and a large sedentary agricultural civilization.

PS: How bountiful do you think a "good year" in the Kalahari desert or Australian outback might have been?

Lou, I thought you were the one to bring up the Amazon.

There are a great many nuances on subsistence patterns in prehistoric and early historic times. Early humans may have been exclusively hunters and gatherers, probably living as much or more off root and starchy vegetables as meat. The Pacific NW is particularly unique because of its huge abundance of fish. People in the Amazon may have early on become (and some still are in isolated areas) slash and burn agriculturalists that moved from spot to spot every year or two as the soil became depleted. In some places, they figured out a way to maintain fertility. I wonder even here if an abundance of fish really was what enabled the large populations.

What we really know about early hunters and gatherers is very little. The study from which the "original affluent society" meme arose was from a single study of one people in what may have been a good year. Researchers who went back later found something different - hunger, malnutrition, low fertility, and violence.