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Hunter Gatherers Quotes

Browse 27 quotes about Hunter Gatherers.

Hunter Gatherers Quotes

“Hunter-gatherer societies have typically been egalitarian, as we'll soon see, throughout hominin history. Inequality emerged when stuff, things to possess and accumulate, was invented following animal domestication and the development of agriculture. The more stuff, reflecting surplus, job specialization, and technological sophistication, the greater the potential inequality. Moreover, inequality expands enormously when cultures invent inheritance within families. Once invented, inequality became pervasive. Among traditional pastoralists or small-scale agricultural societies, levels of wealth inequality match or exceed those in the most unequal industrialized societies. Why have stratified cultures dominated the planet, generally replacing more egalitarian ones? For population biologist Peter Turchin, the answer is that stratified cultures are ideally suited to being conquerors. They come with chains of command. Both empirical and theoretical work suggest that in addition, in unstable environments, stratified societies are better able to survive resource shortages than egalitarian cultures by sequestering mortality to the lower classes. In other words, when times are tough, the unequal access to wealth becomes the unequal distribution of misery and death.”

CultureWealthClassResourcesInequalityAgricultureWestern SocietyHunter GatherersEgalitarian
Book:Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
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“Agriculture makes people dependent on a few domesticated crops and animals instead of hundreds of wild food sources, creating vulnerability to droughts and blights and zoonotic diseases. Agriculture makes for sedentary living, leaving humans to do something that no primate with a concern for hygiene and public health would ever do: namely, living in close proximity to their feces. Agriculture makes for surplus and thus almost inevitably, the uneven distribution of surplus generating socio-economic status differences that dwarf anything that other primates cook up with their hierarchies. And from there it's just a hop, skip and a jump until we've got Mr. McGregor persecuting Peter Rabbit and people incessantly singing Oklahoma.”

WarInequalityAgricultureHunter Gatherers
Book:Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
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“Then, too, the Ju/wa men had an inherent, almost natural bravery that everyone took entirely for granted. They hunted the world’s most dangerous game with quarter-ounce arrows, they stood off lions and dealt with strangers, all without a shred of the bravado or machismo that so characterizes the men of other societies, including ours. The Ju/wa men simply did what men do without making anything of it, and didn't even think of themselves as brave.”

CourageBraveryHunter GatherersBushmenJu WasiJu HoansiZhu Wasi
Book:The Old Way: A Story of the First People
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“One could imagine that a group of anthropologists and scientists sent off to study a previously uncontacted Amazon tribe today might be bound by similar strictures [not to reproduce with natives]. But suppose some of them disagreed? Suppose some of them "went native"--as used to be said of colonialists in the days of the British Empire who allowed themselves to get too close to indigenous populations they interacted with. Is that perhaps what happened to the troop of two hundred "Watchers" on Mount Hermon? Somewhere around 10,900 BC, did they break the commandments of their own culture and "go native" among the hunter-gatherers of the Near East? And were the first chance encounters with the fragments of a giant comet a century later in 10,800 BC--encounters that devastated the world--somehow blamed upon their moral lapse?”

AnthropologyReproductionWatchersCataclysmDelugeHunter GatherersComet
Book:Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization
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“In North America the evidence is that hunter-gatherers bounced back quite successfully within less than a millennium of the onset of the Younger Dryas, and thereafter there is a thin but fairly continuous archaeological record. What is mysterious is not so much the early appearance of mound-building in this new age--perhaps as early as 8,000 years ago, as we've seen--or the sophistication of sites such as Watson Brake 5,500 years ago, nor even their obvious astronomical and geometrical connections to later vast earthworks such as Moundville and Cahokia, but that in this early monumental architecture of the New World memes of geometry, astronomy, and solar alignments consistently appear that are also found in the early monumental architecture of the Old World at iconic sites such as Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Giza. A tremendous leap forward in agricultural know-how, coupled with the sudden uptake of eerily distinctive spiritual ideas concerning the afterlife journey of the soul, also often accompanies the architectural memes. It's therefore hard to avoid the impression that some kind of 'package' is involved here.”

MysteryEvidenceLegacyAfterlifeArchaeologyHunter GatherersYounger DryasEarthworksMonumental ArchitectureMound Building
Book:America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
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“So long as we continued to attach more importance to our own narrow group membership than to the 'global village' we would propagate prejudice and ignorance. There was absolutely no harm in being part of a small group - indeed, with our hunter-gatherer band mentality it gave comfort, provided us with an inner circle of friends who could be utterly trusted, who were absolutely reliable. It helped give us peace of mind. The danger came only from drawing that sharp line, digging that ditch, laying that minefield, between our own group and any other group that thought differently.”

GivingMindLongLinesGroupsDangerIgnoranceComfortBandImportancePrejudiceHarmDrawingCirclesPeace Of MindVillageMentalityTrustedHuntersDiggingMembershipSmall GroupsCircle Of FriendsGlobal VillageMinefieldsHunter Gatherers
Author:Jane Goodall
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“There's something very terrifying about that and very primal about it. It's my belief that what horror does for people is that it provides that primal fear that, when we were wild hunter-gatherers, we had as part of our natural lives because maybe something was trying to hunt and gather you as well. We don't have that anymore in life and that's one of the things that horror films and action films provide for us.”

PeopleTryingWellsDoeActionFilmBeliefNaturalHorrorHuntersHuntsPrimalHorror FilmAction FilmsNatural LifeHunter GatherersPrimal Fear
Author:Paul W. S. Anderson
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“It's an attitude of superiority. We are superior to the rest of life. The Book of Genesis says: 'Increase and multiply and have dominion over the birds of the air and the animals and so forth.' You run it; it's yours; do what you like with it. I don't know how old that text is, but it represents an attitude that probably really got going with the beginning of agriculture. Before that, the hunter-gatherers were gentler people than the agriculture.”

PeopleKnowsBookRunningAnimalAttitudeKnow HowAirBirdIncreaseSuperiorsAgricultureSuperiorityHuntersDominionGenesisRest Of LifeHunter GatherersBook Of Genesis
Author:W. S. Merwin
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“If Adam and Eve were not hunter-gatherers, then they were certainly gatherers. But, then, consumer desire, or self-embitterment, or the 'itch,' as Schopenhauer called it, appeared in the shape of the serpent. This capitalistic monster awakens in Adam and Eve the possibility that things could be better. Instantly, they are cast out of the garden and condemned to a life of toil, drudgery, and pain. Wants supplanted needs, and things have been going downhill ever since.”

IfsWantNeedsHas BeensSelfPainDesirePossibilityShapesGardenCastsMonstersConsumersAdamToilHuntersSerpentAdam And EveDrudgeryHunter Gatherers
Author:Tom Hodgkinson
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“Twelve thousand years ago, everybody on earth was a hunter-gatherer; now almost all of us are farmers or else are fed by farmers. The spread of farming from those few sites of origin usually did not occur as a result of the hunter-gatherers' elsewhere adopting farming; hunter-gatherers tend to be conservative.... Instead, farming spread mainly through farmers' outbreeding hunters, developing more potent technology, and then killing the hunters or driving them off of all lands suitable for agriculture.”

YearsEarthResultsTechnologyLandThousandYears AgoKillingConservativeSpreadDrivingDevelopingFedsFarmersTwelveElsewhereAgricultureSiteThousand YearsHuntersFarmingSuitableAdoptingHunter Gatherers
Author:Jared Diamond
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“Only recently have we come up with the technology to turn lazing around into a way of life. We've taken our sinewy, durable, hunter-gatherer bodies and plunked them into an artificial world of leisure.”

WorldWayBodyTurnsTechnologyTakenCome UpLeisureArtificialHuntersBorn To RunHunter Gatherers
Book:Born to Run: The hidden tribe, the ultra-runners, and the greatest race the world has never seen
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“It is not as if farming brought a great improvement in living standards either. A typical hunter-gatherer enjoyed a more varied diet and consumed more protein and calories than settled people, and took in five times as much viatmin C as the average person today.”

PeopleIfsPersonsTodayFiveStandardsAverageImprovementEnjoyedDietsTypicalHuntersFarmingConsumedProteinCaloriesAverage PersonHunter Gatherers
Book:At Home: A Short History of Private Life
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“For three million years we were hunter-gatherers, and it was through the evolutionary pressures of that way of life that a brain so adaptable and so creative eventually emerged. Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty.”

WorldWayYearsHumansMadeTodayScienceThreeBrainCreativityMillionsCreativeModernEvolutionComfortablePressureFruitMiserablePlentyMidstHuntersScandalModern WorldDeprivationAdaptableInventivenessHunter Gatherers
Author:Richard Leakey
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“I do have a dominant shopping gene but, unlike a reasonable person, I never plan for what I need each season. I enjoy the thrill of the hunt, the discovery and the endless search. In another creation I was, perhaps, a hunter/gatherer. After all these years, I’ve learned that it’s not the end result or finished product but the process I most enjoy. If my experimenting, searching and juxtaposing turns into an exciting outfit well, it’s just a big fat bonus!”

IfsNeedsYearsWellsPersonsEndsBigsTurnsProcessEnjoyResultsPlansCreationProductsDiscoverySeasonsExcitingFinishedEndlessFatsI've LearnedReasonableShoppingGenesDominantThrillHuntersHuntsBonusEnd ResultsHunter Gatherers
Author:Iris Apfel
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“Humans lived for several million years as fully wild beings: only in the last 10, 000 did we invent agriculture; only in the last couple of centuries did we invent industry. We are a species that has spent 99 per cent of its history as hunter-gatherers. We haven't had time for our unconscious minds and our unconscious needs to have changed. If you like, our souls have not changed, and this is true whether or not we believe that we have them.”

IfsNeedsYearsMindBelieveHumansSoulLastsMillionsCenturyHavensChangedIndustryCoupleSpeciesUnconsciousCentsAgricultureHuntersUnconscious MindHunter Gatherers
Book:How to be Wild
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