The First Society: An Introduction to Hunter-Gatherers

WARNING: This video is about analytical methods in archaeology. It is also introductory, so broad generalizations are necessary to introduce these concepts. Exceptions exist.
This is effectively a summary with commentary of a paper by Peter Rowley-Conwy explaining the problems with common perceptions of hunter-gatherers and unilineal cultural evolutionary theory.
Further Reading:
Rowley-Conwy, Peter A. 2001 Time, Change and the Archaeology of Hunter-Gatherers: How Original is the 'Original Affluent Society'? In Hunter-Gatherers: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, edited by Catherine Panter-Brick, Robert H. Layton, and Peter Rowley-Conwy, pp. 39-72. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
Binford, Lewis R.
1980 Willow Smoke and Dogs' Tails: Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems and Archaeological
Site Formation. American Antiquity 45:1-17.

[@samuelmingo5090]

Good video! This leads me to think about another topic that also argues against linear technological and society development model. Specifically, the patterns of technological and institutional devolving after the collapse of a society. When America was expanding westward, they had this idea that "savage" (I hate that word) people were scattered around in small pockets, and were technologically, socially, and morally inferior. In hindsight, we know that the introduction of European diseases in the Americas devastated large swaths of indigenous populations across the entire continent right before America muscled it's way in. Some tribes would completely vanish off the face of the earth. During situations like this, you can image the amount of centuries of knowledge and institutional structures that were lost to death. That means losing scholars, engineers, healers, scientists, tacticians, governments, and all the things that structure the lives of large populations. So when America was invading westward, it was picking off the carcass of desolated societies and finishing up what the diseases started by enacting a government mandate of genocide against the remaining indigenous population. I think a good way to illustrate this is by refencing the show "The Walking Dead". You have a small portion of the population that has managed to survive, but lost the best and brightest in their society. They live in small pockets, trying to survive in a devolved state, constantly trying to defend the remaining numbers of their population from extinction. The only difference is zombies hunt slow and stupid. The United States Calvary wasn't slow or stupid. We know this type of situation has happened in other parts of the world as well, where a society will collapse and revert back to a less advanced and less organized state. I just don't feel like it's mentioned enough that in the America's, indigenous people had engineers, scientists, healers, and large organized governments. I know we had a conversation about this not to long ago, but it's worth mentioning again. The general public continues to believe that indigenous people were just playing around in the sand and woods like invalids, barely surviving off incidental nourishment. The reality is, those were the scattered populations left after their society had been desolated and collapsed. Today, in the living populations, there is still such a strong historical trauma, that we don't believe we have ever been at that the height of advancement. Rather, we continue to exists for the sake of staying alive. It's dangerous to be indigenous, but it's lit. Good Video Mr. Fosaaen, I always enjoy your presentations. They are always well organized, entertaining, and best of all they inspire some reflection into the discipline!

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Thanks for your feedback Mr. Mingo. You've really nailed down some key factors of the false narrative. If you don't mind my adding to it just a little, it wasn't JUST the disease that "paved the way" for manifest destiny. The plague(s) hit just after the Mississippian culture is though to have been destabilized due to protracted crop yield stress associated with the Little Ice Age and political dysfunction associated with the food stress. I haven't read George Milner in a while, but if memory serves the years leading up to contact were already getting pretty violent in places, so everyone was getting hit from three or four different directions when the Spanish started making moves.

[@samuelmingo5090]

@@NathanaelFosaaen, You know what's super cool? I don't know the particulars of some things, and you don't know the particulars of others. It's so awesome that we can teach each other new things!

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

@@samuelmingo5090Speaking of which, I've got some serious questions for you that you may or may not be able or willing to answer. I'll DM you.

[@MarcosElMalo2]

@@NathanaelFosaaen fascinating stuff, indeed. Culture is complicated, and untangling history and pre-history is fraught, especially as political pressures bear on our understandings. And it cuts multiple ways. New evidence creates the need to reassess and rewrite our histories, but both regressive and progressive political tendencies seek to shape the narratives. The current government of Mexico under the MORENA party seeks to shape (or “consolidate”, is the term I think they use) the Mexican identity as Aztec. This is part of a project of “decolonization”. The problem (in my estimation) isn’t so much the conservative reaction as it is other indigenous groups being unhappy with the prioritization of the Mexica. After all, it wasn’t Cortez’s steel and horses that overthrew the Three Part Alliance, but his diplomacy. To be sure, steel and horses played a part in Spain’s consolidation of power in the new world, but the initial wedge was Cortez inserting himself into pre-existing political instability). As an estadounidense in Mexico, there is a lot I don’t understand about current politics and culture. But I do enjoy the absurdity when politicians try to harness history as if it was a plow horse.

[@ferengiprofiteer9145]

I guess they had some civil engineering, but a stone age society with no domestic animals, no wheel, no water or wind driven technology to speak of, no metallurgy to speak of, no pulley or block and tackle, seems pretty primitive. I don't mean anything derogatory. They had life, liberty, and persued happiness with literally no force multipliers. That takes plenty of smarts. But when people with force multipliers showed up, they could fight and inevitably lose or embrace it and inevitably lose. I love it that we are seeing that life revealed. I envy them and admire their abilities to thrive with nature. Revealing and learning and practicing and teaching those skills is money in the bank for our species. If all else fails, there's always hunting and gathering. It's a perfectly viable alternative. Please keep up the good work and keep us posted.

[@stuartcalow737]

Thank you. I am a retired excavator from Norfolk, England. Your talks have opened up U.S. prehistory for me like no other U Tube Chanel. It's like hearing a thoroughly satisfying,professionally and intellectually,site report from a trusted Project Manager! Healthy brain food. I wish you had a million subscribers. Regards from an old blues man from the Bytham Delta (see Happisburgh ,, U. K. Natural History Museum)

[@terrymoran3705]

This topic is much more important than people realize. Well done man!

[@MogofWar]

It's interesting that you bring up the Jomon, because they represent a good example of complex societies forming without the use of agriculture, but they also present a good example of the foundations of agriculture evolving in a non-agrigultural society. They had all the skills and technology they needed to transition to farming but never did until they had to compete with neighbors who were themselves agricultural. But they also had a population decline that seemed to track with the decline of the nut trees that they relied on for subsistence. Which brings us to another point. Some people speculate that they actually did practice a form of agriculture, in the form of the nut trees themselves. When the environment was good for the trees to grow in population, the likely planted seedlings to make new stands of trees, and frequently felled trees that did not bear nuts. The Jomon were likely deliberately cultivating trees, but I would still consider them hunter-gatherers... because, aside from the tree cultivation, the rest of their habits followed hunter gatherer patterns. And planting trees with the hopes that they perhaps provide a food source later is a different dynamic than planting a field of grain that you know is going to yield a harvest the next year in the same place.

[@AncientAmericas]

There was a lot of interesting stuff in there. Thank you for explaining this all so clearly!

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

It's a damn good paper!

[@AncientAmericas]

@@NathanaelFosaaen I plan on saving a copy!

[@leepeel7129]

I didn't know Neanderthals were smoking fish and eels. Those guys had hidden depths we are only just starting to look seriously at. This video also sheds light on the different ideas used for subsistence, and their correlation to the "stages" we progress through to achieve this idea of civilization, from wild to very impressed with ourselves. Basically pointing out that discovering the flaws and assumptions in these ideas, which can be useful, we discover more about our past. Very cool and thought provoking. I feel very much improved in my education and understanding of hunter-gatherers.

[@MogofWar]

We literally don't know the half of it. The misconception is everyone lived in caves back then, because the caves presented the only habitats that stayed erect and sheltered remnants from the elements. Once located, a cave is also a very well defined site, so you pretty much know where to dig already, whereas the valley below is a much larger area, where members of the same society could be literally anywhere. I also think this gives us a misconception of how egalitarian and unstratified stone age hunter-gatherers were. The caves were where the wealth of the society tended to concentrate, so the cave people might have been the upper class of said societies.

[@jessebianchi2631]

Neandertals smoked fish and eels? how did they keep them lit? i'll let myself out now.

[@revolvermaster4939]

@@MogofWarexactly! There were millions of places full of food and no caves. Survival is about food & shelter. If your brain is powerful enough to make a relatively sophisticated tool to help you eat, I can’t image it couldn’t make a shelter of some sort.

[@leepeel7129]

@@jessebianchi2631Giant stone Zippos. Zippoliths

[@dixietenbroeck8717]

@@jessebianchi2631 Good idea...

[@samnjohnson]

Really been enjoying your videos - very helpful and informative!

[@twothreebravo]

"Noted Archaeologist & Monopoly Man Cosplayer" Thanks, I almost choked to death on my Iced Tea. I laughed so hard I'm crying.

[@rockinbobokkin7831]

So important to have these concept videos on KZbin. Great work.

[@jtrealfunny]

Always appreciate this hosts perspective...he's thought about this stuff fully and takes a nice humble approach to what is possible. Excellent.

[@ecta9604]

This was a really interesting watch, thank you very much!

[@DetroitMicroSound]

I have a beaver tail Adena atlatl spear point from the early woodland period, my grandmother uncovered in her back yard, in Clarkston Michigan. It almost tells it's own complete history. It is a very sharp new point, that took a glancing blow off a hard object. It's make-up appears to me, to match the material existing at the far west end of the Onondaga formation, in southwest Ontario.

[@johnmacgregor324]

It stands to reason that there would be a fair bit of variation within a species existing for 300,000 years in all climates and terrains. So nice to hear a bit of detail on how that played out.

[@danhoedemaker3273]

Thank you for creating educational content for all the rest of us out here to be able to understand! These topics are so incredibly fascinating and I just want to learn more! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Well done brother 👍🙂👍

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

I'm so glad you're enjoying it!

[@alfreddaniels3817]

A good and comprehensive compilation of the literature !!

[@mEmory______]

This is my first time really learning about hunter gatherers, and it is really fascinating.

[@altair458]

This is a great channel. Very educational. Please keep up the excellent work. We thank you for your efforts.👍

[@glennmiles5365]

Hello Nathanael, I enjoyed your video and have missed seeing more on KZbin that discussed our Hunter Gatherer forebears with any kind of depth or new development in thinking since the 60's. My professors in Cultural Anthropology were Richard Lee, my mentor, who spent seven years among the Kalahari Kung, and Stanley Diamond who wrote "In Search of the Primitive". I'm most interested in the social organization of foraging people, and how they resolved conflict. They had a very different mindset from "Modern" people and we could, I believe, learn much from their ability to use conceptual frameworks such as "embracing the contradiction" between the individual, and the common good that modern people seem to have so much difficulty understanding. Anyway, thanks for the update on eastern American woodland cultures. Good work!!

[@rolenbishop3757]

Logisticle sights. A concept I hadn't considered. Makes complete sense. Harvest times and wildlife migration. Thanks for the info. Hope for more.

[@terrywallace5181]

Thanks for a very interesting and informative program.

[@NickRuedig]

I found this video while researching hunter-gatherer practices to teach my 7th grade New Mexico history class about them. While some of this is a bit too advanced for them, It was very helpful to me and dispelling myths and understanding the variety and hunter-gather societies, and how our view of them has changed over time. I will definitely be including that in my lessons, as an example of how we find out more details over time, and sometimes change our prior beliefs, and how our societal biases can affect our interpretations of the past. Thanks so much!

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

That's what I'm here for!

[@dudlowdouglas4398]

Many thanks, your lectures are indispensable!

[@dixietenbroeck8717]

LOVE your videos, AND your sense of humor: *"Heinrich Schliemann..."* *"...Monopoly Man cosplayer"* 👍 🤣

[@keepinganopenmind8216]

It's great to hear your opinions and well thought professional theories. Over the years I have often wonder what many archaeologist were getting right and what they were getting wrong and why ? I'm an amateur so I use logic more then anything to establish my own opinions.

[@scmac5155]

Great channel - I appreciate your open-minded approach

[@lindahudson6685]

Thanks. I find your videos extremely helpful.

[@gg3675]

The very first lecture on the very first day of Evolutionary Bio in undergrad, my professor's first slide said in all caps "EVOLUTION IS NOT PROGRESS." People don't just see agriculture as the apex of humanity. In the popular imagination it really seems like people think we as like industrial people with the internet are somehow the teleological foregone conclusion of the evolution of life on Earth. I really think this is one of those big misconceptions our generation of academics should work really hard to break. Great video.

[@jimajello1028]

I live on the East Coast of North American. Therefore, with my hunting & gathering research time period lifeway's , this information is very well presented. Thank you for sharing your research and knowledge. Vincent James Ajello (lithic Technologist/Researcher)

[@rileycritter9286]

(thanks for the visuals!)

[@carabelas219]

I am 60 and have been an amateur lover of all early man and archaeology since I learned about Lewis Leaky when I was 6. You have an awesome understanding of how they actually lived. I have watched several of your videos. I also really enjoyed subjects relating to caves also the copper mining, arrowhead design and atlatl stones. My comment is that hunter gatherers and farmers were probably the same people for a long time, or at least there has been a lot of mixed populations. My grandparents had a farm in the 20s 30s 40s. They farmed the land and had animals but hunting and fishing was a big part of their subsistence. Laying in meat and fish during the seasons that they were available. Question: What is the difference between taming a baby animal taken from the mother and domestication?

[@susanpatterson7088]

Thank you for the wonderfully informative video! I have struggled for years with the european ideas that hunter-gathers were some how not civilized. I am very glad to see that the ideas are changing. Keep up the good work! I really enjoy your videos.

[@jessebianchi2631]

in the US our "founding fathers" swiped a few ideas for government from the Iroquois. sorry, no link. i read this a few decades pre internet.

[@ProxyMaestro]

I love your content. Thank you for sharing your perspective. Given the new acknowledgment by the academic world that the Americas were populated around 23,000 years ago, I would love to see an episode addressing what you would imagine the tools/points you would expect that far removed from Clovis. Or possibly just a breakdown of what life would have looked like at that time. The fact that the evidence of occupation 23,000 years ago was found deep in New Mexico indicates that the exodus out of Asia must have been far earlier.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Thanks for your interest! The acknowledgement of a 20-25k settlement range isn't really that new, but it's definitely noy something the average person knows about. As to your question, unfortunately we don't really know. our Pre-Clovis sites are few and far between, and the date ranges are very wide. It's hard to say what the common themes are both from a spatial and temporal perspective. The "what life would have been like" question is also REALLY obscure right now. all that survives is stone tools, so there's not much nuance there. Also, I'm an Archaic specialist, so there's a lot of environmental context that I can't really provide.

[@squatch545]

Hey Nathaneal, just 'discovered' your channel. I would really love for you to do a book review of The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow if you can. It will be released in a few weeks and is already getting lots of buzz. I'd be really curious to get your take on it. Thanks!

[@brodyhess5553]

I was wondering if you knew any sites that existed in a spot where the Laurentide sheet was Spose to be ? Iam always curious about the deglaciation and the younger dryas in general . It’d be a neat video I think haha . Thanks for the videos ! Party on Garth

[@alexandersaldivar7243]

Good analysis

[@huahindan]

Excellent! Thanks for this.

[@flyinacircle6398]

very interesting! 14:00 re quick changes in subsistence strategy and at the same time addressing the belief that societal evolution is unidirectional: i always think of the changes brought by the introduction of the horse to north america. now keep in mind it’s hard to parse out the changes because at the same time those that brought the horse were radically disrupting life in so many ways. but even if just the horses had arrived (sans europeans) there would have been radical changes. including a move “backwards” from agriculture to stage 1 or 2 hunter gatherer! indeed, we see this on the upper missouri as the newly mounted hunter gatherers begin raiding the corn growing agricultural settlements. true, the agriculturalists also had horses but a settled village in this case is at a great disadvantage. some groups realized they would be better off giving up agriculture and took to the evolving nomadic buffalo hunting culture. fascinating indeed.

[@qzh00k]

This conflicts with so many middle east fables, and I will leave this there. Thank you Nathanael

[@kwes43]

Hi Nate! Thank you for this video. It seems that living as hunter-gathers may be a more optimal way for humans to live - especially in regards to living in harmony with nature and the world around us. If this is the case, what are we to do now? Do you have any visions of how we can move back to this lifestyle or at least incorporate some of the values and ways of living into our modern culture?

[@torchape]

Yeah, I'm a believer in the all-of-the-above idea. Environment, geographics, population needs, etc. were more influential for the type of hunter-gatherer societies than a one-directional "upward" movement toward an ascended level. Movement in both directions were likely for the same reasons. From what I learned about hunter-gatherer groups, I wish I had their workday! I think I work more hours in a day!

[@altair458]

Thank you, please keep up the good work👍👍👍👍👍

[@thedwightguy]

Even WITHIN the same tribal groups there would be choice river run spearfishing and collecting areas that would belong to certain families, clam beds passed down the family line, and it's a matter of not only arch. record and diet DNA studies, but it's a matter of historical record. Nutrition within the SAME tribe varied from groups that dominated the Sockeye catch to other groups (i.e. next door) that were stuck with the lower nutrition Chum salmon. The settlements in the Fraser Canyon back 5,000 years ago show that.

[@EberHampton]

thanks for your evidence based overview. I enjoyed reading "The Dawn of Everything" last winter. i would be very interested in what you think about that particular book.

[@ked5081]

flintstones, modern stoneage family, a page right out of history

[@ecta9604]

I have a question that may be off-subject, but is still related to the way that popular conceptions about the past may be inaccurate. If this is an inappropriate q for this vid no worries on answering. I sort of get the impression that writing is often popularly thought of similarly to agriculture, like some sort of innate thing that is *supposed* to happen as soon as the economy gets complex enough. I remember reading that kind of thing in books like Guns Germs and Steel (which I do now understand is...not an amazing work for various reasons), that writing was something that would almost automatically be invented when society passed a certain threshold of complexity and it was needed for administration. Are there forms of graphic communication that are to writing as gardening is to agriculture? Do similar flexible categories for different kinds of graphic communication exist in an analogous way to the different kinds of hunter gatherers? Did any hunter-gathers invent writing, or could it have been invented and abandoned? Maybe this is a silly kind of question because I have to think that all humans make art, but intuitively I make a distinction between representational art and graphic communication.

[@Webpoodle]

Hi Nathaneal I recently stumbled across your channel and have been binge-watching earlier videos over the last couple of days. I have a question: I'm in New Zealand and before an archaeological dig is carried out at an indigenous site here, the permission, cooperation, and sometimes involvement of the local tribe is required. To go ahead without this is unthinkable. While I realise that you are dealing with vastly greater time-scales than we are here, I'm very curious to know how this issue is dealt with in the US - especially with regards to burial sites. Many thanks for your great videos, David. P.S. As a retired recording engineer, I thought I was losing my touch in that I believed I could pick a heavy metal shredder at a thousand paces. But on doing my own digging, I see that you are not just a knapper but a gifted axeman as well.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

We have a law called the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act that makes it such that the tribes have jurisdiction over human remains. We don't touch them unless instructed to do so. Most work is done under archaeological resources protection legislation, so that takes effect when infrastructure or other projects would cause damage to the sides, and the Tribal Historic Preservation Office has reviewers for that too. This is really in the last 30 years though. Before that the discipline had a less than enlightened stance on the wishes of descendant communities.

[@Webpoodle]

Many thanks for the reply. Look forward to more videos.

[@eriknelson2559]

Mobility seems to be part of many cultures, even agricultural ones, like northeastern Woodlands villages moving every so often after having exhausted the local resources, or even Mayan cities lasting longer but eventually being abandoned for (arguably) essentially similar reasons

[@barrydysert2974]

Fascinating thank you!:-) 🖖

[@jamesdunaway5518]

Can you do a video on the early Archaic Native American burial ground off the coast off Manasota Key Florida found in 2016.

[@marcsimard2723]

Moving from one system to another is still visible in the near past: french colonists frequently gave up on the farm settlement model to go into the woods and basically live in peri social contact with indigenous groups adopting their economic practices.

[@headlessspaceman5681]

Very interesting! Thanks for this video about Earthlings, specifically the behavior patterns of Homo sapiens. This video could have been called Everything You Know About Hunter-Gatherers Is Wrong. Here's a question for you: Do archaeologists notice or observe any difference in gender roles between the four different kinds of hunter-gatherer groups? Is there any trend towards male leadership or female leadership in these groups? Or would it have been more of a parity between genders? Or more of a partnership between genders? And is there any correspondence with the lifestyle of the group? Or are there just all different combinations with no particular reason to it? Specifically it seems like women would play a larger role in a group using logistical sites, as collectors of daily nourishment, and caring for infants. Cordage and basketry also seem to be fundamental technologies trending female amongst hunter-gatherers... Could some groups have been female-led? Has there been very much research in these areas?

[@ThomiX0.0]

Very good and more clear explanation of the usually taken as 'simple' early human qualities.. Using our own experiences while we make values which they have had at that time, does also mean we have to consider clear drinking water being the main reason for their movements. I really don't hear much about this major source, as if it was been found nearly everywhere? The movements of old, where mostly depending on rivers, but the connection which existed between Asia and Europe from late Neanderthal and Denisovian which can be found in genetic markers show us a different way of handling this issue, doesn't it? Just a curious thought:-)

[@DarkMoonDroid]

Have you read/listened to the travels of Lewis and Clark? Very telling.

[@ThomiX0.0]

@@DarkMoonDroid , I will search for that, thanks!

[@woodspirit98]

Interesting concept of simple to complex. When you look at ancient egypt, you'll see that the oldest period was way more complex than the more recent.

[@nokiot9]

Hey Nate, what kind of music do you listen to? You look like you’re into djenty/black metal type of stuff 👍

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Finnish melodic death metal.

[@nokiot9]

@@NathanaelFosaaen almost nailed it. Love the videos too man!

[@jamessarsgard1342]

Really great explanation. Seems like the tribes of the Pacific Northwest would be an example of type 3 or 4, no? From what I’ve read many of those groups practiced slavery as well, which is something I have typically thought of as restricted to agricultural economies

[@colinrahn7742]

your humor is so underrated in these comments "they know how seeds work" im dying. it's the sorta stuff that seems so abundantly clear when you aren't building upon a foundation of racist assumptions

[@kirasokolovskaia7524]

as there is no "better" or "worse" in evolution, same could be applied to Hunter-gatherers and agriculture. Those are just different ways to adapt to environment.

[@postictal7846]

You mentioned the low population density. Are there reliable numbers for the archaic?

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Not in terms of population counts like a census would be, but we have a good sense of site density on a landscape and we know that a band is about 20 people, and that each site we find represents only a small fraction of each band's habitation in the course of say, a decade. So it's a high number of sites, times about 20, divided by 20-60 movements per year, minus logistical sites, minus sites that aren't visited every year, minus one-off hunting or processing sites, all protracted across thousands of years. What we can see is when populations are increasing v when they are decreasing.

[@DarkMoonDroid]

I'm wondering where the practice of raiding fits into all this. And I wonder if one of the reasons to not switch to agriculture/husbandry is that if you have a bigger pile of resource than your neighboring tribe, they think you're being rude and they just come and take some (this is still a thing for some Natives. Private Property is not a given for them.). I wonder if this was a big driver to widening distribution, which - without a private army - kept pace with increasing production. Also, how does the Potlatch relate to all this?

[@lauramullaney697]

I saw your video about mast and was curious to know if chestnuts were important as well and if so how were they used. The information and argumentation you provide in your videos is a welcome advance away from the outdated archeological dogma that is still being taught in academia across the land. Thank you! I have recommended your site to my grandchildren and it has sparked their interest in the field.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Actually what I'm teaching IS what gets taught in academia. We've done a really horrible job of maintaining any kind of dialogue with people outside of our little academic bubble so I'm not surprised that what you're hearing from me seems different. Thanks for sharing!

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

About chestnuts, they're a minority resource. The two big ones are hickory and acorn. I'll ask some of our PEBot people about uses.

[@IvorMektin1701]

Monopoly cosplay!🤣 _Uses dynamite for excavation_ while describing others as savage.

[@martynhaggerty2294]

Like to hear what you think of goblekli tepi. Hunter gatherers? with advanced building techniques.

[@joshuawarner1437]

I know it’s out of your scope of practice, but I’d be interested to hear your take on the unique assemblages of western stemmed tradition and how that rivals the famously known Clovis culture. That is, if you’re familiar enough with the subject to have an opinion.

[@mjnoon3609]

Please please talk about shamanism, and why it so common at their time, and their experiments with psychedelics and the metaphysical and all that interesting stuff.

[@DogWalkerBill]

Interesting: Neanderthals were more sophisticated than we knew. And the people who built Göbekli Tepe obviously had some hierarchy going on, even though they were "just" hunter gatherers. I came across an article before that there were real costs to becoming early agrarian: the people were shorter and apparently less healthy that hunter gatherers and herder nomads that lived nearby.

[@nmarbletoe8210]

idk about hierarchy, but certainly they had archy

[@keepinganopenmind8216]

Agriculture also requires storage... as well as draws insects, bear, wolves etc... ants.. flies... little to no waste and or food storage allowed them to avoid all of the above as well.

[@MAGAman-uy7wh]

Storing smoked salmon or other smoked meats also attracts those animals and bugs, also rats and fleas. Those were some hard choices deciding to live as a hunter gatherers or sedentary crop and local resource mangers. Modern culture perceives the Quakers, Amish and Mennonites as being "backward" but they are simply living the good life according to their beliefs. Splinter groups may be an explanation for changes in an archaic societies reflected in modern times.

[@nmarbletoe8210]

@@MAGAman-uy7wh Wacha do see, is hang the smoked fish over the bear trap. Then you train the bear to keep away wolves, and train the caribou to cultivate peas. I know this is speculation, but someday, if it is true, we will have peas unearthed.

[@dooleyfussle8634]

Hey, fellow anthropologist/archaeologist/ flint knapper/ ancient technologist here. You might want to look at the now largely ignored work of Lee (Man, the Hunter), Rappaport (Pigs for the Ancestors), and Bateson (Steps to an Ecology of Mind) for a more ambitious take on anthropological theorising about hunter gatherers during the 60's and 70's (my time in grad school).

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Eventually, but you can't throw people right into the deep end.

[@Zane-It]

Very good video on this topic I am very fascinated by the stone age and precolumbian american cultures.

[@kenfalloon3186]

Some scholars hypothesise that beginnings of horticulture from which agriculture emerged was likely driven by women who were necessarily more sedentary because of child bearing, raising. Noticing that gathered plant seeds would grow better and bigger in certain places and soil types etc.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

I'd say that *most* scholars credit women with the innovation of plant domestication.

[@marcsimard2723]

Ive heard that early spanish explorers had the habit of releasing pigs to the wild to serve as food sources for subsequent expeditions and this may have impacted the growing of corn leading to famine and the abandonment of settlements

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Yep.

[@jcmartin-42]

Where have you been all my life! :D

[@bella42291]

Where would the people that live on isolated islands today be considered? They have husbandry with pigs and chickens and limited modern tools but mostly live with those old skills.

[@ThomiX0.0]

Hunting, so it seems, did never loose all it's interest, not even today. Even when the people are stationary, they could still hunt from time to time. It is therefore very difficult to make a picture of early humans, while it is very likely done both.

[@michaelmcgarrity6987]

Adult American Bison is between 1 to 2 Thousand Pounds. A small Hunter Gatherer band killing a Bison may have been able to kick it back for a few weeks while their "More Advanced" agrarian superiors were diligently weeding the Garden and picking root worms off Corn Stalks. It would be fun to go back and see which ones were working their Ass off more.

[@DarkMoonDroid]

The Voice of Sanity.

[@FacesintheStone]

They should be Hunter-gather-art creators. We totally forgot that they created wonderful pieces of art that we rarely recognize today.

[@jerlee620]

Noted archaeologist & Monopoly Man cosplayer 😂😂

[@zudwa878]

I take it that hunter-gatherer societies in general do tend to support smaller pop level then agrarian. Do we actually know how those tribes handled an unwanted growth, theoreticaly? I assume nobody tried to limit an actual birthrate, if it was even possible. I can only assume that the most obvious solution was for a part of that tribe to secede and migrate somewhere new, or maybe to try and use the excessive population to expropriate resources of other tribes.

[@johnkaelin903]

Some spanish histories of being taken as slaves to the natives speak of seasonal travels to whatever food sources were in season. They would forage on whatever was available heavily then move to the next. Something to think about.

[@DarkMoonDroid]

I would imagine that this pattern was learned by following the herd animals. Doing what they did would guarantee enuf food to survive. Then, because humans had more imagination than animals, it complexified from there. Or not. Depending on how much you were willing to deal with the complexities.

[@johnlawshe7714]

One of the foraged foods in the southeast was the saw palmetto berries. "Somewhere," I have read about some older male captives stating how they hadn't been able to pee like that in years!

[@lairdhaynes1986]

Maybe you're in part referencing Cabeza de Vaca's account of his time along what is now the Texas gulf coastal region. From my reading of his tale, it seemed a harsh environment in general with significant times of lean resources during the year. One notable exception to this was a long journey inland to gorge on the fruit of prickly pear cacti when the were in season. From his telling, I get the impression that region was a tough place to survive due to seasonality of resources. The irony of their servitude is they basically begged the tribe to let them be slaves, to which the tribe begrudgingly accepted but later freed them due to the burden it was just to keep them fed.

[@MAGAman-uy7wh]

@@lairdhaynes1986 Interesting bit of history, where can I read more about it?

[@missourimongoose7643]

Is there a email address I can reach you at? I have some pictures of some bluffs on my families property that have native paintings on them that I'd like to show you and the stone tools we have found around it

[@missourimongoose7643]

Ok I think I found it, is it the kzbin.info?

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Contact the Missouri Archaeological Society. I don't do rock art, but they'll know who you should talk to.

[@missourimongoose7643]

@@NathanaelFosaaen ok cool beans thank you

[@keepinganopenmind8216]

Farming would have put many of the tribes in a situation that they would now need to guard their crops.. if they had to flee.. for any reason they would have to leave all or much of their crops behind..making their work and time and affords futile... I think they were much smarter.. and if other tribes did not pose a risk then they may have taken up farming more so... then living a life that allowed them to move quickly when ever needed.

[@MogofWar]

Well, you only have to guard the crop for a season, where you're likely going to be staying in on place for said season anyway. So it really depended on a few different factors. Again, for advantages to outweigh the risks a variety of factors had to be in place.

[@jtrealfunny]

If you live with subsistence level people you learn that they sort of do what they do to survive, with all the knowledge/illusion/prejudice that they've inherited. We do what's been done to us. Jaja. It's fascinating how we want to project our way of thinking onto people who live in totally different circumstances. Regarding cultural evolution an interesting story is the north american colonial era where a lot of europeans chose to live in native communities and NO (zero) indigenous people chose to live in the new european communities. People learned how to live in our world over a crazy long time. And there's no way the analytical complexity and insight we attribute to ourselves was lacking in our ancestors. Take it from the man.

[@josephzimmerman6367]

Great vids , Ok ,, Waching from Iraq, I would like to see you make some snail soup and eat it ,

[@asahelsmith9490]

Hunter gathering requires territory without other hunter gatherers. Was life harder as a hunter gatherer or was it more difficult with an agricultural based group?

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

There's no one answer to either your statement or your question. every H-G group is different, and interacts with its neighbors in its own ways. some groups can have bands that occupy the same territory at different times during seasonal rounds, and others will converge and disburse at various times throughout the year, so bounded territory isn't necessarily a requirement.

[@thedwightguy]

Looking at the Supply Chain prices on cereals, meat, and staples in 2021 it looks like my "society" may be forced to return to the hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Fortunately, I took archery in college and am surrounded by big game. !!!

[@spacelion6318]

👏

[@Chris-us6pk]

Yup

[@cheapvodka9942]

hey is the rockwall in rockwall tx man made have u worked there? just read about it but dont turst that kinda stuff wondering ur thoughts on the matter ty

[@operaguy1]

I have a strictly self-generated hypothesis that syncs with 'can't carry valuables ... ' thing. The high value might have been personal friendships, family, cooperative work, and especially celebration of mating. Sex with love. Seriously. Now that's original affluence.

[@emilywong4601]

Are the homeless hunter gathers? What about migrant ariculutural workers or "nomad" Amazon fullfillment centers employees?

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Not quite, but there are aspects of their lifeways that might make for useful analogies. Archaeologists have some interesting parallels with some hunter-gatherer groups too, because we usually have to follow the excavation and survey work wherever it's going on at the time, just like some hunting groups have to follow herds.

[@revolvermaster4939]

I once wanted to be a hunter/ gatherer until I got hungry, went to the fridge and had some good sand and dirt free food in minutes

[@libertyfp]

Ngl, this makes me yearn for egalitarianism. I'm extremely over hierarchy and want to bring back the egalitarianism some hunter gatherers had. I want liberty, equality, and direct consensus democracy. I want cooperation and the gift economy. I want an end to all forms of hierarchy. That would be really nice.

[@fintonmainz7845]

Did Europeans really recognize North American natives as being human?

[@anthonytindell7617]

i have a question'' do you '''BOWHUNT'' or just practice archery in any form''' you are one hell of a flint knapper, reason im asking is that i am a bowhunter, dont really give a shit bout huntin with a gun'' i was never interested in archaeology untill i went hunting with a bow, and i kill'ed a deer on my 1st hunt,,,' that was over 30 years ago and today i hunt mostly with flint tippet arrows and ive took bear, deer, turkey and all kinds of small game, i started researching the area i live in here in southeast KY, And ive found alot of arrow heads,bone tools, grooved axe and we found a womans and a babys skeleton under a big cliff over hang under a big ass flat rock that we had hell tryin ta turn over,, me and the coroner and the state police come to the conclusion that the woman and child were killed when the rock broke loose from the top of the over hang' but you can never be sure,, '''With the bodys were a few arrow heads some beeds and a small almost rounded grooved axe,, the bodys were turned over to the department of indian affairs ,, we found out later that that they were over 500 years old,, all the cliff over hangs that i find stuff under are hard as fuckin hell to get to some times cuz there so high up on the MNT. now i dont do alot of diggin these days i find alot of flint on top of the ground under these over hangs and i just leave it be and camp there mostly during hunting season,, but now there doing alot of MNT. TOP removel and they just blow the over hang cliff dwellings up and haul them off with ery thang else in the area''' Now i no a few good places that i no have alot of artifex still under the ground that aint ben touched' but they want be there long''' just wonderin if you might be interested in exavating or just lookin at them while there still here' i would love ta no more of the history of the natives that lived in this area,, i would be glad to take you if your interested, we have ta yuse ATVs ta get close and walk the rest of the way'' if you read this post let me no what you think'' keep the video's comin,, really learnin alot thanx,, my e-mail is [e-mail]

[@havenbastion]

The fact remains that as you add scale, more intentionally controlled methods of food production are increasingly necessary, leading inevitably to full scale agriculture.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Tell that to the Calusa, who didn't engage in agriculture when all their neighbors of similar population size did.

[@eighthgate1420]

I read that hunter gatherers and also Shepherd’s in their travels would steal from others and eventually killing other humans for their food or valuables. When these certain hunter gatherers started to find gold they grew very fast! Some became the Roman legionnaires, vikings and all the other tribes that would take from others.

[@staceykirkpatrick1880]

Do you know of the Bat Creek Stone? Found in East Tennessee ,Written in Block Hebrew , outside of the Village Echota / City of Peace in one of 8 Mounds . Echota Now lyes beneath the waters of Tellico lake Since 1979 😔🙏. There IS A Lot More To THIS that I know. I also find it Strange How Much of Our History Has Been Erased and Then the Georgia Guide Stones were Erected in 1980 .

[@thewuurm]

Mainfort and Kwas in a 2004 paper (The Bat Creek Stone Revisited: A Fraud Exposed, available on libgen) identified the inscription as having been copied (poorly) from an 1870 reference work on freemasonry, which itself was a reproduction of coin script from the First Jewish Revolt. Unfortunately, archaeology - especially early archaeology - had no shortage of hoaxes and fraudsters

[@staceykirkpatrick1880]

@@thewuurm Funny How Stories LAST Throughout Ancestry WAY BEFORE " Fraud" is ever exposed ☺️ And IN ♥️ These Long Ago Stories Leave A Trail Of Multiple PLACES For Only A FEW To Find TRUTH 🙏👋

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Some of those are certainly words.

[@staceykirkpatrick1880]

@@NathanaelFosaaen 🙏🕯️Do You Believe Of A People , That Has Always Been The Hunted ... I Do

[@staceykirkpatrick1880]

@@NathanaelFosaaen And I Also Believe in Pole Shifts 🙏 Isaiah 24 and my Ancestors stories Say we're Due one .

[@ThursonJames]

The hippy stuff is all well and good until you need to defend your tribe against some Giga Chad steppe nomads. Hence, history.

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

By the time they showed up there weren't many hunter-gatherers in Europe anymore, and the other places they spread didn't have a conquest situation going on as far as I'm aware.

[@ThursonJames]

@@NathanaelFosaaen I was more referring to the social dynamics with no clear leader.

[@alphabears6342]

We had two ways of looking at hunter gatherer. Hobbesian were hunter gather were killers, violent cannibalism and Rousseau who states that human in nature are kind and non violent but with the advent of agriculture, we became caged, violent and dangerous.

[@lesjones5684]

Are you drunk today 😂😂

[@orlandosantos406]

The idea that the San world of Namibia is echoed in the Americas, begs the question. Central Mexico has thousands of years of organized, urban civilization. Next door, really. Then Mound Builder civilization develops north of Mexico. Hunter gatherers as the "savage stone age stuff" : is this world evidence of collapse, of de post De Soto world of urban density, collapsing, perhaps arising from Diamond's germ induced collapse theory?

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

Mound building in North America predates the Olmec, so that construction is somewhat backwards. There were several coalesce events and collapses in the 6000 years of monumentality north of Mexico, but I don't know that any of those have been connected to disease.