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HUNTER GATHERER SOCIETY

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2011

The hunter gatherer society is the earliest form of human society and still persisting to some extent in remote regions of the world. 

The hunter gatherer societies have an economic base that rests on the use of the naturally occurring animal and plant resources of the environment. 

The hunter gatherer society does not practice agriculture or raise and herd animals. Social structure is usually egalitarian with little economic and gender inequality. Private property is minimal.

The hunter gatherer society is among the early societies believed to have had a matriarchal tribal system.

Hunting and gathering was subsistence strategy of human societies for more than two million years. In a hunter-gatherer society the primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, foraging and hunting without significant recourse to the domestication of either. The Hunter-gatherers obtain most from gathering rather than hunting.

Originally, hunter-gatherers lived exclusively in open savanna and were generally meat scavangers than hunters. They used carcasses of large animals killed by other predators or carcasses from animals that died by natural cause.

Ethnographic studies and historical information, provide information about hunter-gatherers. Interdisciplinary fields such as ethnohistory, ethnoarchaeology, human behavioral ecology, paleoanthropology and paleoethnobotany also throw light on hunter-gatherers.

Hunter-gatherer societies have non-hierarchical, egalitarian social structures. Hunter gatherer societies there is sexual parity.  Egalitarianism is common in hunter-gatherer groups. Hunters will share meat with the rest of the group.

In hunter-gatherer societies war is caused by grudges and vendettas rather than for territory or economic benefit.

Some Marxists have theorised that hunter-gatherers would have used primitive communism and anarcho-primitivists elaborate the mechanics further by asserting it would have been a gift economy, (although this would not have applied for all hunter-gatherer societies.) Mutual exchange and sharing of resources (I.e. meat gained from hunting) are important in the economic systems of Hunter gatherer societies. - Thomas M. Kiefer "Anthropology E-20". Subsistence, Ecology and Food production. Harvard University.

Upper Palaeolithic figures as a reflection of human morphology and social organization
Duhard, Jean-Pierre
Antiquity 67. 254 (March, 1993): 83 (9 pages). © Antiquity Publications Ltd.
Abstract: An analysis of Upper Palaeolithic figures indicated a sexual social differentiation in the hunter-gatherer society and showed the priviledged role accorded to women in the primitive community. This was exemplified by the depiction of women in a majority of the Palaeolithic figures and apparent underrepresentation of men and children. It was sugge sted that women were priviledged due to the importance of their physiological role: as mothers, sexual and social partners.

Biogeography and Long-Run Economic Development
Ola Olsson and Douglas A. Hibbs, Jr.
Working Papers in Economics no 26 August 2000 (corrected version)
Department of Economics, Göteborg University
Abstract: The transition from a hunter-gather economy to agricultural production, which made possible the endogenous technological progress that ultimately led to the industrial revolution, is one of the most important events in the thousands of years of humankind’s economic development. In this paper we present theory and evidence showing that exogenous geography and initial condition biogeography exerted decisive influence on the location and timing of transitions to sedentary agriculture, to complex social organization and, eventually, to modern industrial production. Evidence from a large cross-section of countries indicates that the effects of geographic and biogeographic endowments on contemporary levels of economic development are remarkably strong. - swopec.hhs.se/gunwpe/papers/gunwpe0026.pdf

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