Ancient Societies: Hunter-Gatherer Societies PDF

HISC-401. ANCIENT SOCIETIES UNIT- I HUNTER GATHERING SOCIETIES A) SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SUBSEQUENT TRENDS Social evolution is a process of directional social change, and evolutionary theories attempt to describe and explain this process. Theories of social evolution go back to the second half of...

HISC-401. ANCIENT SOCIETIES UNIT- I HUNTER GATHERING SOCIETIES A) SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SUBSEQUENT TRENDS Social evolution is a process of directional social change, and evolutionary theories attempt to describe and explain this process. Theories of social evolution go back to the second half of the nineteenth century to Spencer, Morgan, Tylor, and Marx and Engels. After a lapse, evolutionary theorizing revived in the 1930s and 1940s with the work of Childe, White, and Steward, and continued into the 1960s and 1970s with the work of Sahlins, Service, Carneiro, Lenski, and Harris. Important typologies of stages of evolutionary development have been developed by most of these thinkers. Although there is far from complete consensus regarding the most important dimensions of social evolution, virtually everyone recognizes the Neolithic Revolution and the rise of civilization and the state as two extremely important evolutionary transformations. The former began about 10,000 years ago, the latter around 5,000 years ago, and both occurred on an independent basis in several regions of the world. The rise of the capitalist world economy in the sixteenth century is regarded by many as the third and most recent great social transformation. Others regard the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century as the third great transformation. Modern Homo sapiens first appeared about 200,000 years ago; however, socio-cultural evolution only began about 10,000 years ago, when early hunter–gatherer societies began to change their simple forms of segmentary social differentiation during the so-called Neolithic revolution, which was mainly caused by the invention of agriculture and cattle breeding. In mathematical terms, one could say that human biological evolution created an attractor: a stable state impervious to change. Various mathematical models of biological evolution, namely the genetic algorithm (Holland, 1975), show that the generation of such an attractor is the usual result of evolutionary processes (Klüver, 2000). Nevertheless, socio-cultural evolution did not end biological evolution; in fact, for most of the time that Homo sapiens has existed, socio-cultural evolution has been so slow that it could not have affected biological evolution. Sociocultural evolution(ism) is an umbrella term for theories of cultural evolution and social evolution, describing how cultures and societies have developed over time. Although such theories typically provide models for understanding the relationship between technologies, social structure, the values of a society, and how and why they change with time, they vary as to the extent to which they describe specific mechanisms of variation and social change. Most 19th century and some 20th century approaches aimed to provide models for the evolution of humankind as a whole, arguing that different societies are at different stages of social development. At present this thread is continued to some extent within the World System approach (especially within its version produced by Andre Gunder Frank). Many of the more recent 20th-century approaches focus on changes specific to individual societies and reject the idea of directional change, or social progress. Most archaeologists and cultural anthropologists work within the framework of modern theories of sociocultural evolution. Modern approaches to sociocultural evolution include neoevolutionism, sociobiology, theory of modernization and theory of postindustrial society. Early sociocultural evolution theories—the theories of August Comte, Herbert Spencer and Lewis Henry Morgan—developed simultaneously but independently of Charles Darwin’s works and were popular from the late 19th century to the end of World War I. These 19th-century unilineal evolution theories claimed that societies start out in a primitive state and gradually become more 1riticize over time, and equated the culture and technology of Western 1riticized1n with progress. Some forms of early sociocultural evolution theories (mainly unilineal ones) have led to much 1riticized theories like social Darwinism, and scientific racism, used in the past to justify existing policies of colonialism and slavery, and to justify new policies such as eugenics. Sociocultural evolutionism and the idea of progress 1 While sociocultural evolutionists agree that the evolution-like process leads to social progress, classical social evolutionists have developed many different theories, known as theories of unilineal evolution. Sociocultural evolutionism was the prevailing theory of early sociocultural anthropology and social commentary, and is associated with scholars like August Comte, Edward Burnett Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, Benjamin Kidd, L.T. Hobhouse and Herbert Spencer. Sociocultural evolutionism represented an attempt to formalise social thinking along scientific lines, later influenced by the biological theory of evolution. If organisms could develop over time according to discernable, deterministic laws, then it seemed reasonable that societies could as well. They developed analogies between human society and the biological organism and introduced into sociological theory such biological concepts as variation, natural selection, and inheritance— evolutionary factors resulting in the progress of societies through stages of savagery and barbarism to civilisation, by virtue of the survival of the fittest. Together with the idea of progress there grew the notion of fixed "stages" through which human societies progress, usually numbering three— savagery, barbarism, and civilisation—but sometimes many more. The Marquis de Condorcet listed 10 stages, or "epochs", the final one having started with the French Revolution, which was destined, in his eyes, to usher in the rights of man and the perfection of the human race. Some writers also perceived in the growth stages of each individual a recapitulation of these stages of society. Strange customs were thus accounted for on the assumption that they were throwbacks to earlier useful practices. This also marked the beginning of anthropology as a scientific discipline and a departure from traditional religious views of "primitive" cultures. The term "Classical Social Evolutionism" is most closely associated with the 19th-century writings of Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer (who coined the phrase " survival of the fittest") and William Graham Sumner. In many ways Spencer's theory of " cosmic evolution" has much more in common with the works of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and August Comte than with contemporary works of Charles Darwin. Spencer also developed and published his theories several years earlier than Darwin. In regard to social institutions, however, there is a good case that Spencer's writings might be classified as 'Social Evolutionism'. Although he wrote that societies over time progressed, and that progress was accomplished through competition, he stressed that the individual (rather than the collectivity) is the unit of analysis that evolves, that evolution takes place through natural selection and that it affects social as well as biological phenomenon. Nonetheless, the publication of Darwin's works proved a boon to the proponents of sociocultural evolution. The world of social science took the ideas of biological evolution as an attractive solution to similar questions regarding the origins and development of social behaviour and the idea of a society as an evolving organism was a biological analogy that is taken up by many anthropologists and sociologists even today. Both Spencer and Comte view the society as a kind of organism subject to the process of growth— from simplicity to complexity, from chaos to order, from generalisation to specialisation, from flexibility to organisation. They agreed that the process of societies growth can be divided into certain stages, have their beginning and eventual end, and that this growth is in fact social progress—each newer, more evolved society is better. Thus progressivism became one of the basic ideas underlying the theory of sociocultural evolutionism. August Comte, known as father of sociology, formulated the law of three stages: human development progresses from the theological stage, in which nature was mythically conceived and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from supernatural beings, through metaphysical stage in which nature was conceived of as a result of obscure forces and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from them until the final positive stage in which all abstract and obscure forces are discarded, and natural phenomena are explained by their constant relationship. This progress is forced through the development of human mind, and increasing application of thought, reasoning and logic to the understanding of the world. 2 Herbert Spencer, who believed that society was evolving toward increasing freedom for individuals; and so held that government intervention ought to be minimal in social and political life, differentiated between two phases of development, focusing is on the type of internal regulation within societies. Thus he differentiated between military and industrial societies. The earlier, more primitive military society has a goal of conquest and defence, is centralised, economically self- sufficient, collectivistic, puts the good of a group over the good of an individual, uses compulsion, force and repression, rewards loyalty, obedience and discipline. The industrial society has a goal of production and trade, is decentralised, interconnected with other societies via economic relations, achieves its goals through voluntary cooperation and individual self-restraint, treats the good of individual as the highest value, regulates the social life via voluntary relations, values initiative, independence and innovation. Regardless of how scholars of Spencer interpret his relation to Darwin, Spencer proved to be an incredibly popular figure in the 1870s, particularly in the United States. Authors such as Edward Youmans, William Graham Sumner, John Fiske, John W. Burgess, Lester Frank Ward, Lewis H. Morgan and other thinkers of the gilded age all developed similar theories of social evolutionism as a result of their exposure to Spencer as well as Darwin. Lewis H. Morgan, an anthropologist whose ideas have had much impact on sociology, in his 1877 classic Ancient Societies differentiated between three eras: savagery, barbarism and civilisation, which are divided by technological inventions, like fire, bow, pottery in savage era, domestication of animals, agriculture, metalworking in barbarian era and alphabet and writing in civilisation era. Thus Morgan introduced a link between the social progress and technological progress. Morgan viewed the technological progress as a force behind the social progress, and any social change—in social institutions, organisations or ideologies have their beginning in the change of technology. Morgan's theories were popularised by Friedrich Engels, who based his famous work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State on it. For Engels and other Marxists, this theory was important as it supported their conviction that materialistic factors—economical and technological—are decisive in shaping the fate of humanity. Emile Durkheim, another of the "fathers" of sociology, has developed a similar, dichotomal view of social progress. His key concept was social solidarity, as he defined the social evolution in terms of progressing from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity. In mechanical solidarity, people are self- sufficient, there is little integration and thus there is the need for use of force and repression to keep society together. In organic solidarity, people are much more integrated and interdependent and specialisation and cooperation is extensive. Progress from mechanical to organic solidarity is based first on population growth and increasing population density, second on increasing "morality density" (development of more complex social interactions) and thirdly, on the increasing specialisation in workplace. To Durkheim, the most important factor in the social progress is the division of labour. Anthropologists Sir E.B. Tylor in England and Lewis Henry Morgan in the United States worked with data from indigenous people, whom they claimed represented earlier stages of cultural evolution that gave insight into the process and progression of evolution of culture. Morgan would later have a significant influence on Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who developed a theory of sociocultural evolution in which the internal contradictions in society created a series of escalating stages that ended in a socialist society (see Marxism). Tylor and Morgan elaborated the theory of unilinear evolution, specifying criteria for categorising cultures according to their standing within a fixed system of growth of humanity as a whole and examining the modes and mechanisms of this growth. Theirs was often a concern with culture in general, not with individual cultures. 3 Their analysis of cross-cultural data was based on three assumptions: contemporary societies may be classified and ranked as more "primitive" or more "civilised"; There are a determinate number of stages between "primitive" and "civilised" (e.g. band, tribe, chiefdom, and state), All societies progress through these stages in the same sequence, but at different rates. Theorists usually measured progression (that is, the difference between one stage and the next) in terms of increasing social complexity (including class differentiation and a complex division of labour), or an increase in intellectual, theological, and aesthetic sophistication. These 19th-century ethnologists used these principles primarily to explain differences in religious beliefs and kinship terminologies among various societies. Lester Frank Ward developed Spencer's theory but unlike Spencer, who considered the evolution to be general process applicable to the entire world, physical and sociological, Ward differentiated sociological evolution from biological evolution. He stressed that humans create goals for themselves and strive to realise them, whereas there is no such intelligence and awareness guiding the non- human world, which develops more or less at random. He created a hierarchy of evolution processes. First, there is cosmogenesis, creation and evolution of the world. Then, after life develops, there is biogenesis. Development of humanity leads to anthropogenesis, which is influenced by the human mind. Finally, when society develops, so does sociogenesis, which is the science of shaping the society to fit with various political, cultural and ideological goals. Edward Burnett Tylor, pioneer of anthropology, focused on the evolution of culture worldwide, noting that culture is an important part of every society and that it is also subject to the process of evolution. He believed that societies were at different stages of cultural development and that the purpose of anthropology was to reconstruct the evolution of culture, from primitive beginnings to the modern state. Ferdinand Tönnies describes the evolution as the development from informal society, where people have many liberties and there are few laws and obligations, to modern, formal rational society, dominated by traditions and laws and are restricted from acting as they wish. He also notes that there is a tendency of standardisation and unification, when all smaller societies are absorbed into the single, large, modern society. Thus Tönnies can be said to describe part of the process known today as the globalisation. Tönnies was also one of the first sociologists to claim that the evolution of society is not necessarily going in the right direction, that the social progress is not perfect, and it can even be called a regress as the newer, more evolved societies are obtained only after paying a high cost, resulting in decreasing satisfaction of individuals making up that society. Tönnies' work became the foundation of neoevolutionism. Although not usually counted as a sociocultural evolutionist, Max Weber's theory of tripartite classification of authority can be viewed as an evolutionary theory as well. Weber distinguishes three ideal types of political leadership, domination and authority: charismatic domination (familial and religious), traditional domination (patriarchs, patrimonalism, feudalism) and legal (rational) domination (modern law and state, bureaucracy). He also notes that legal domination is the most advanced, and that societies evolve from having mostly traditional and charismatic authorities to mostly rational and legal ones. Critique and impact on modern theories The early 20th century inaugurated a period of systematic critical examination, and rejection of the sweeping generalisations of the unilineal theories of sociocultural evolution. Cultural anthropologists 4 such as Franz Boas, and his students like Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, typically regarded as the leader of anthropology's rejection of classical social evolutionism, used sophisticated ethnography and more rigorous empirical methods to argue that Spencer, Tylor, and Morgan's theories were speculative and systematically misrepresented ethnographic data. Theories regarding "stages" of evolution were especially criticised as illusions. Additionally, they rejected the distinction between "primitive" and "civilised" (or "modern"), pointing out that so-called primitive contemporary societies have just as much history, and were just as evolved, as so-called civilised societies. They therefore argued that any attempt to use this theory to reconstruct the histories of non-literate (i.e. leaving no historical documents) peoples is entirely speculative and unscientific. They observed that the postulated progression, which typically ended with a stage of civilisation identical to that of modern Europe, is ethnocentric. They also pointed out that the theory assumes that societies are clearly bounded and distinct, when in fact cultural traits and forms often cross social boundaries and diffuse among many different societies (and is thus an important mechanism of change). Boas introduced the culture history approach, which concentrated on fieldwork among native peoples to identify actual cultural and historical processes rather than speculative stages of growth. This "culture history" approach dominated American anthropology for the first half of the 20th century and so influenced anthropology elsewhere that high-level generalisation and "systems building" became far less common than in the past. Later critics observed that this assumption of firmly bounded societies was proposed precisely at the time when European powers were colonising non-Western societies, and was thus self-serving. Many anthropologists and social theorists now consider unilineal cultural and social evolution a Western myth seldom based on solid empirical grounds. Critical theorists argue that notions of social evolution are simply justifications for power by the elites of society. Finally, the devastating World Wars that occurred between 1914 and 1945 crippled Europe's self-confidence. After millions of deaths, genocide, and the destruction of Europe's industrial infrastructure, the idea of progress seemed dubious at best. Thus modern sociocultural evolutionism rejects most of classical social evolutionism due to various theoretical problems: The theory was deeply ethnocentric—it makes heavy value judgements on different societies; with Western civilisation seen as the most valuable. It assumed all cultures follow the same path or progression and have the same goals. It equated civilisation with material culture (technology, cities, etc.) It equated evolution with progress or fitness, based on deep misunderstandings of evolutionary theory. It is greatly contradicted by evidence. Many (but not all) supposedly primitive societies are arguably more peaceful and equitable/democratic than many modern societies, and tend to be healthier with regard to diet and ecology. Because social evolution was posited as a scientific theory, it was often used to support unjust and often racist social practices—particularly colonialism, slavery, and the unequal economic conditions present within industrialised Europe. Social Darwinism is especially criticised, as it led to some philosophies used by the Nazis. Neoevolutionism Neoevolutionism is the first theory of the series of modern multilineal evolution theories. It emerged in 1930s and extensively developed in the period following the Second World War and was incorporated into both anthropology and sociology in the 1960s. It bases its theories on the empirical evidences from areas of archaeology, palaeontology and historiography and tries to eliminate any 5 references to system of values, be it moral or cultural, instead trying to remain objective and simply descriptive. While 19th-century evolutionism explained how culture develops by giving general principles of its evolutionary process, it was dismissed by the Historical Particularists as unscientific in the early 20th century. It was the neoevolutionary thinkers who brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to contemporary anthropology. The neoevolutionism discards many ideas of classical social evolutionism, namely that of social progress, so dominant in previous sociology evolution-related theories. Then neoevolutionism discards the determinism argument and introduces probability, arguing that accidents and free will have much impact on the process of social evolution. It also supports the counterfactual history— asking "what if" and considering different possible path that social evolution may (or might have) taken, and thus allows for the fact that various cultures may develop in different ways, some skipping entire stages others have passed through. The neoevolutionism stresses the importance of empirical evidence. While 19th-century evolutionism used value judgment and assumptions for interpreting data, neoevolutionism relied on measurable information for analysing the process of sociocultural evolution. Leslie White, author of The Evolution of Culture: The Development of Civilization to the Fall of Rome (1959), attempted to create a theory explaining the entire history of humanity. The most important factor in his theory is technology: Social systems are determined by technological systems, wrote White in his book , echoing the earlier theory of Lewis Henry Morgan. As measure of society advancement, he proposed the measure of a society's energy consumption. He differentiates between five stages of human development. In first, people use energy of their own muscles. In second, they use energy of domesticated animals. In third, they use the energy of plants (so White refers to agricultural revolution here). In fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas. In fifth, they harness the nuclear energy. White introduced a formulae, P=E*T, where E is a measure of energy consumed, and T is the measure of efficiency of technical factors utilising the energy. This theory is similar to Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev's later theory of the Kardashev scale. Julian Steward, author of Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution (1955, reprinted 1979), created the theory of "multilinear" evolution which examined the way in which societies adapted to their environment. This approach was more nuanced than White's theory of "unilinear evolution." Steward on the other hand rejected the 19th-century notion of progress, and instead called attention to the Darwinian notion of "adaptation", arguing that all societies had to adapt to their environment in some way. He argued that different adaptations could be studied through the examination of the specific resources a society exploited, the technology the society relied on to exploit these resources, and the organisation of human labour. He further argued that different environments and technologies would require different kinds of adaptations, and that as the resource base or technology changed, so too would a culture. In other words, cultures do not change according to some inner logic, but rather in terms of a changing relationship with a changing environment. Cultures would therefore not pass through the same stages in the same order as they changed—rather, they would change in varying ways and directions. He called his theory "multilineal evolution". He questioned the possibility of creation of a social theory encompassing the entire evolution of humanity; however, he argued that anthropologists are not limited to description of specific existing cultures. He believed it is possible to create theories analysing typical common culture, representative of specific eras or regions. As the decisive factors determining the development of given culture he pointed to technology and economics, and noted there are secondary factors, like political system, ideologies and religion. All those factors push the evolution 6 of given society in several directions at the same time; thus, this is the multilinearity of his theory of evolution. Marshall Sahlins, author of Evolution and Culture (1960), divided the evolution of societies into 'general' and 'specific'. General evolution is the tendency of cultural and social systems to increase in complexity, organisation and adaptiveness to environment. However, as the various cultures are not isolated, there is interaction and a diffusion of their qualities (like technological inventions). This leads cultures to develop in different ways (specific evolution), as various elements are introduced to them in different combinations and on different stages of evolution. Gerhard Lenski in his Power and Prestige (1966) and Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology (1974) he expands on the works of Leslie White and Lewis Henry Morgan. He views the technological progress as the most basic factor in the evolution of societies and cultures. Unlike White, who defined technology as the ability to create and utilise energy, Lenski focuses on information—its amount and uses. The more information and knowledge (especially allowing the shaping of natural environment) a given society has, the more advanced it is. He distinguished four stages of human development, based on the advances in the history of communication. In the first stage, information is passed by genes. In the second, when humans gain sentience, they can learn and pass information through by experience. In the third, the humans start using signs and develop logic. In the fourth, they can create symbols, develop language and writing. Advancements in the technology of communication translates into advancements in the economic system and political system, distribution of goods, social inequality and other spheres of social life. He also differentiates societies based on their level of technology, communication and economy: (1) hunters and gatherers, (2) simple agricultural, (3) advanced agricultural, (4) industrial (5) special (like fishing societies). Talcott Parsons, author of Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (1966) and The System of Modern Societies (1971) divided evolution into four subprocesses: (1) division, which creates functional subsystems from the main system; (2) adaptation, where those systems evolve into more efficient versions; (3) inclusion of elements previously excluded from the given systems; and (4) generalisation of values, increasing the legitimisation of the ever more complex system. He shows those processes on 3 stages of evolution: (1) primitive, (2) archaic and (3) modern. Archaic societies have the knowledge of writing, while modern have the knowledge of law. Parsons viewed the Western civilisation as the pinnacle of modern societies, and out of all western cultures he declared United States as the most dynamic developed. SOCIAL EVOLUTIONISM BASIC PREMISES In the early years of anthropology, the prevailing view of anthropologists and other scholars was that culture generally develops (or evolves) in a uniform and progressive manner. The Evolutionists, building upon the success of Darwin’s theory of evolution, but not drawing much inspiration from his central contribution of the concept of natural selection, sought to track the development of culture through time. Just as species were thought to evolve into increasing complex forms, so too were cultures thought to progress from simple to complex states. Initially it was thought by many scholars that most societies pass through the same or similar series of stages to arrive, ultimately, at a common end. Change was thought to originate principally from within the culture, so development was thought to be internally determined. The evolutionary progression of societies had been accepted by some since the Enlightenment. Both French and Scottish social and moral philosophers were using evolutionary schemes during the 18th century. Among these was Montesquieu, who proposed an evolutionary scheme consisting of three stages: hunting or savagery, herding or barbarism, and civilization. This tripartite division became 7 very popular among the 19th century social theorists, with figures such as Tylor and Morgan adopting one or another version of this scheme (Seymour-Smith 1986:105). By the middle of the nineteenth century, Europeans had successfully explored, conquered and colonized many heretofore unknown (to them) parts of the globe. This global movement led to novel products and peoples that lived quite different lifestyles than the Europeans proved politically and scientifically problematic. The discipline of anthropology, beginning with these early social theories arose largely in response to this encounter between the disparate cultures of quite different societies (Winthrop 1991:109). Cultural evolution – anthropology’s first systematic ethnological theory – was intended to help explain this diversity among the peoples of the world. The notion of dividing the ethnological record into evolutionary stages ranging from primitive to civilized was fundamental to the new ideas of the nineteenth century social evolutionists. Drawing upon Enlightenment thought, Darwin’s work, and new cross-cultural, historical, and archaeological evidence, a whole generation of social evolutionary theorists emerged such as Tylor and Morgan. These theorists developed rival schemes of overall social and cultural progress, as well as the origins of different institutions such as religion, marriage, and the family. Edward B. Tylor disagreed with the contention of some early-nineteenth-century French and English writers, led by Comte Joseph de Maistre, that groups such as the American Indians and other indigenous peoples were examples of cultural degeneration. He believed that peoples in different locations were equally capable of developing and progressing through the stages. Primitive groups had “reached their position by learning and not by unlearning” (Tylor 2006:36). Tylor maintained that culture evolved from the simple to the complex, and that all societies passed through the three basic stages of development suggested by Montesquieu: from savagery through barbarism to civilization. “Progress,” therefore, was possible for all. To account for cultural variation, Tylor and other early evolutionists postulated that different contemporary societies were at different stages of evolution. According to this view, the “simpler” peoples of the day had not yet reached “higher” stages. Thus, simpler contemporary societies were thought to resemble ancient societies. In more advanced societies one could see proof of cultural evolution through the presence of what Tylor called survivals – traces of earlier customs that survive in present-day cultures. The making of pottery is an example of a survival in the sense used by Tylor. Earlier peoples made their cooking pots out of clay; today we generally make them out of metal because it is more durable, but we still prefer dishes made of clay. Tylor believed that there was a kind of psychic unity among all peoples that explained parallel evolutionary sequences in different cultural traditions. In other words, because of the basic similarities in the mental framework of all peoples, different societies often find the same solutions to the same problems independently. But, Tylor also noted that cultural traits may spread from one society to another by simple diffusion – the borrowing by one culture of a trait belonging to another as the result of contact between the two. Another nineteenth-century proponent of uniform and progressive cultural evolution was Lewis Henry Morgan. A lawyer in upstate New York, Morgan became interested in the local Iroquois Indians and defended their reservation in a land-grant case. In gratitude, the Iroquois adopted Morgan, who regarded them as “noble savages.” In his best-known work, Ancient Society, Morgan divided the evolution of human culture into the same three basic stages Tylor had suggested (savagery, barbarism, and civilization). But he also subdivided savagery and barbarism into upper, middle, and lower segments (Morgan 1877: 5-6), providing contemporary examples of each of these three stages. Each stage was distinguished by a technological development and had a correlate in 8 patterns of subsistence, marriage, family, and political organization. In Ancient Society, Morgan commented, “As it is undeniable that portions of the human family have existed in a state of savagery, other portions in a state of barbarism, and still others in a state of civilization, it seems equally so that these three distinct conditions are connected with each other in a natural as well as necessary sequence of progress”(Morgan 1877:3). Morgan distinguished these stages of development in terms of technological achievement, and thus each had its identifying benchmarks. Middle savagery was marked by the acquisition of a fish diet and the discovery of fire; upper savagery by the bow and arrow; lower barbarism by pottery; middle barbarism by animal domestication and irrigated agriculture; upper barbarism by the manufacture of iron; and civilization by the phonetic alphabet (Morgan 1877: chapter 1). For Morgan, the cultural features distinguishing these various stages arose from a “few primary germs of thought”- germs that had emerged while humans were still savages and that later developed into the “principle institutions of mankind.” Morgan postulated that the stages of technological development were associated with a sequence of different cultural patterns. For example, he speculated that the family evolved through six stages. Human society began as a “horde living in promiscuity,” with no sexual prohibitions and no real family structure. In the next stage a group of brothers was married to a group of sisters and brother- sister mating was permitted. In the third stage, group marriage was practiced, but brothers and sisters were not allowed to mate. The fourth stage, which supposedly evolved during barbarism, was characterized by a loosely paired male and female who lived with other people. In the next stage husband-dominant families arose in which the husband could have more than one wife simultaneously. Finally, the stage of civilization was distinguished by the monogamous family, with just one wife and one husband who were relatively equal in status. Morgan believed that family units became progressively smaller and more self-contained as human society developed. His postulated sequence for the evolution of the family, however, is not supported by the enormous amount of ethnographic data that has been collected since his time. For example, no recent society that Morgan would call savage indulges in group marriage or allows brother-sister mating. Although their works sought similar ends, the evolutionary theorists each had very different ideas about and foci for their studies. Differing from Morgan, for example, Sir James Frazer focused on the evolution of religion and viewed the progress of society or culture from the viewpoint of the evolution of psychological or mental systems. Among the other evolutionary theorists who put forth schemes of development of society including different religious, kinship, and legal institution were Maine, McLellan, and Bachofen. It is important to note that most of the early evolutionary schemes were unilineal. Unilineal evolution refers to the idea that there is a set sequence of stages that all groups will pass through at some point, although the pace of progress through these stages will vary greatly. Groups, both past and present, that are at the same level or stage of development were considered nearly identical. Thus, a contemporary “primitive” group could be taken as a representative of an earlier stage in the development of more advanced types. The evolutionist program can be summed up in this segment of Tylor’s Primitive Culture which notes: “The condition of culture among the various societies of mankind…is a subject apt for the study of laws of human thought and action. On the one hand, the uniformity which so largely pervades civilization may be ascribed, in great measure, to the uniform action of uniform causes; while on the other hand its various grades may be regarded as stages of development or evolution, each the outcome of previous history, and about to do its proper part in shaping the history of the future (Tylor 1871:1:1).” 9 POINTS OF REACTION One debate arising from the evolutionist perspective was whether civilization had evolved from a state of savagery or had always coexisted with primitive groups. Also, the degeneration theory of savagery (that primitives regressed from the civilized state and that primitivism indicated the fall from grace) had to be fought vigorously before social anthropology could progress. Social evolutionism, therefore, offered an alternative to the contemporary Christian/theological approach to understanding cultural diversity. As a result 19th century social evolutionism encountered considerable opposition in some quarters.. This new view proposed that evolution was a line of progression in which the lower stages were prerequisite to the upper. This idea seemed to completely contradict traditional ideas about the relationships between God and humankind and the very nature of life and progress. Evolutionists criticized the Christian approach as requiring divine revelation to explain civilization. In short, social evolutionism offered a naturalist approach to understanding sociocultural variation within our species. As already suggested social evolutionism was a school of thought that admitted much divergence of opinion. Tthere were debates particularly concerning which sociocultural complex represented the most primitive stages of society. For example, there were many arguments about the exact sequence of emergence of patriarchy and matriarchy. Karl Marx was struck by the parallels between Morgan’s evolutionism and his own theory of history. Marx and his collaborator, Friedrich Engels, devised a theory in which the institutions of monogamy, private property, and the state were assumed to be chiefly responsible for the exploitation of the working classes in modern industrialized societies. Marx and Engels extended Morgan’s evolutionary scheme to include a future stage of cultural evolution in which monogamy, private property, and the state would cease to exist and the “communism” of primitive society would re-emerge albeit in a transformed state. The beginning of the twentieth century brought the end of evolutionism’s initial reign in cultural anthropology. Its leading opponent was Franz Boas, whose main disagreement with the evolutionists involved their assumption that universal laws governed all human culture. Boas argued that these nineteenth-century individuals lacked sufficient data (as did Boas himself) to formulate many useful generalizations. Thus, historicism and, later, functionalism were reactions to nineteenth century social evolutionism. But a very different kind of anthropological evolutionism would make a comeback in the late 20th century as some scholars began to apply notions of natural selection of sociocultural phenomena. LEADING FIGURES Johann Jacob Bachofen (1815-1887). Swiss lawyer and classicist who developed a theory of the evolution of kinship systems. He postulated that primitive promiscuity was first characterized by matriarchy and later by patrilineality. He linked the emergence of patrilineality to the development of private property and the desire of men to pass property on to their children. Morgan (Seymour- Smith 1986:21) concurred with Bachofen’s postulation that a patrilineal stage followed matrilineality. Sir James George Frazer (1854 – 1873). Educated at Cambridge, he was the last of the great British classical evolutionists. Frazer was an encyclopedic collector of data (although he never did any fieldwork himself), publishing dozens of volumes including one of anthropology’s most popular works, The Golden Bough. Frazer summed up this study of magic and religion by stating that “magic came first in men’s minds, then religion, then science, each giving way slowly and incompletely to the other” (Hays 1965:127). First published in two volumes and later expanded to twelve, Frazer’s ideas from The Golden Bough were widely accepted. Frazer subsequently studied the value of superstition in the evolution of culture arguing that it strengthened respect for private property and for marriage, and contributed to the stricter observance of the rules of sexual morality. 10 Sir John Lubbock (1834-1914; Lord Avebury). A botanist and antiquarian who was a staunch pupil of Darwin. He observed that there was a range of variation of stone implements from more to less crude and that archaeological deposits that lay beneath upper deposits seemed older. He coined the terms ‘Paleolithic’ and ‘Neolithic’. The title of Lubbock’s influential book, Prehistoric Times: As Illustrated by Ancient Remains and the Customs of Modern Savages, illustrates the evolutionists analogies to “stone age contemporaries.” This work also countered the degenerationist views in stating “It is common opinion that savages are, as a general rule, only miserable remnants of nations once more civilized; but although there are some well-established cases of national decay, there is no scientific evidence which would justify us in asserting that this is generally the case (Hays 1965:51- 52).” Lubbock also advanced a gradual scheme for the evolution of religion, summarized in terms of five stages: atheism, nature worship (totemism), shamanism, idolatry, and monotheism. Sir Henry James Sumner Maine (1822-1888). English jurist and social theorist who focused on the development of legal systems as the key to social evolution. His scheme traces society from systems based on kinship to those based on territoriality, from status to contract and from civil to criminal law. Maine argued that the most primitive societies were patriarchal. This view contrasted with the believers in the primacy of primitive promiscuity and matriarchy. Maine also contrasted with other evolutionists in that he was not a proponent of unilinear evolution (Seymour-Smith 1986:175-176). John F. McLellan (1827-1881). A Scottish lawyer who was inspired by ethnographic accounts of bride capture. From this he constructed a theory of the evolution of marriage. Like others, including Bachofen, McLellan postulated an original period of primitive promiscuity followed by matriarchy. His argument began with primitive peoples practicing female infanticide because women did not hunt to support the group. The shortage of women that followed was resolved by the practice of bride capture and fraternal polyandry. These then gave rise to patrilineal descent. McLellan, in his Primitive Marriage, coined the terms ‘exogamy’ and ‘endogamy’ (Seymour-Smith 1986:185-186). Lewis Henry Morgan (1818 – 1881). One of the most influential evolutionary theorists of the 19th century, he has been called the father of American anthropology. An American lawyer whose interest in Iroquois Indian affairs led him to study their customs and social system, giving rise to the first modern ethnographic study of a Native American group, the League of the Iroquois in 1851. In this work, he considered ceremonial, religious, and political aspects of Iroquoian social life. He also initiated his study of kinship and marriage which he was later to develop into a classica comparative theory in his work, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity (1871). This latter work is widely considered to be a milestone in the development of anthropology, establishing kinship and marriage as central areas of anthropological inquiry and beginning an enduring preoccupation with kinship terminologies as the key to the interpretation of kinship systems. His Ancient Society is the most influential statement of the nineteenth-century cultural evolutionary position, to be developed by many later evolutionists and employed by Marx and Engels in their theory of social evolution. Adopting Montesquieu’s categories of savagery, barbarism, and civilization, Morgan subdivided the first two categories into three sub-stages (lower, middle, and upper) and gave contemporary ethnographic examples of each stage. Importantly, each stage was characterized by a technological innovation that led to advances in subsistence patterns, family and marriage arrangements and political organization (Seymour-Smith 1986:201). Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832 – 1917). A British anthropologist, who put the science of anthropology on a firm basis and discounted the degeneration theory. Tylor formulated a most influential definition of culture: “Culture or civilization is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” He also elaborated the concept of cultural “survivals.” His major contributions were in the field of religion and mythology, and he cited magic, astrology, and witchcraft as clues to primitive religion. In Tylor’s best known work, Primitive Culture, he attempts to illuminate the complicated aspects of religious and magical phenomena. It was an impressive and well-reasoned analysis of primitive psychology and far more general in application than anything which had been 11 earlier suggested. Tylor correlates the three levels of social evolution to types of religion: savages practicing animism, barbarians practicing polytheism, and civilized people practicing monotheism. Another notable accomplishment of Tylor was his exploration of the use of statistics in anthropological research. KEY WORKS Frazer, James George. 1890. The New Golden Bough. 1 vol, abr. Lubbock, John. 1872. Prehistoric Times: As Illustrated by Ancient Remains and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages. New York: Appleton. Maine, Henry. 1861. Ancient Law. McLellan, John. 1865. Primitive Marriage. Morgan, Lewis Henry. 1876. Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family. Morgan, Lewis Henry. 1877. Ancient Society or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress rom Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr. Tylor, Edward B. 1871. Primitive Culture. 2 vols. New York: Harper Torchbook. PRINCIPAL CONCEPTS These terms are added only as a supplement; more elaborate understandings can be discerned from reading the above basic premises: unilinear social evolution – the notion that culture generally develops (or evolves) in a uniform and progressive manner. It was thought that most societies pass through the same series of stages, to arrive ultimately at a common end. The scheme originally included just three stages (savagery, barbarism, and civilization), but was later subdivided in various manners to account for a greater amount of sociocultural diversity. psychic unity of mankind – the belief that the human mind was everywhere essentially similar. “Some form of psychic unity is …implied whenever there is an emphasis on parallel evolution, for if the different peoples of the world advanced through similar sequences, it must be assumed that they all began with essentially similar psychological potentials” (Harris 1968:137). survivals – traces of earlier customs that survive in present-day cultures. Tylor formulated the doctrine of survivals in analyzing the symbolic meaning of certain social customs. “Meaningless customs must be survivals. They had a practical or at least a ceremonial intention when and where they first arose, but are now fallen into absurdity from having been carried on into a new state in society where the original sense has been discarded” (Hays 1965: 64). primitive promiscuity – the theory that the original state of human society was characterized by the lack of incest taboos and other rules regarding sexual relations or marriage. Early anthropologists such as Morgan, McLellan, Bachofen and Frazer held this view. It was opposed by those scholars who, like Freud, argued that the original form of society was the primal patriarchal horde or, like Westermark and Maine, that it was the paternal monogamous family (Seymour-Smith 1986:234). stages of development – favored by early theorists whoembraced a tripartite scheme of social evolution from savagery to barbarianism to civilization. This scheme was originally proposed by Montesquieu, and was further developed by the social evolutionists, most influentially by Tylor and Morgan. METHODOLOGIES The Comparative Method Harris (1968:150-151) has an excellent discussion of this approach. “…The main stimulus for [the comparative method] came out of biology where zoological and botanical knowledge of extant organisms was routinely applied to the interpretation of the structure and function of extinct fossil forms. No doubt, there were several late-nineteenth-century anthropological applications of this principle which explicitly referred to biological precedent.In the 1860’s, however, it was the paleontology of Lyell, rather than of Darwin, that was involved. … John Lubbock justified his attempt to “illustrate” the life of prehistoric times in terms of an explicit analogy with geological practices: 12 “… the archaeologist is free to follow the methods which have been so successfully pursued in geology – the rude bone and stone implements of bygone ages being to the one what the remains of extinct animals are to the other. The analogy may be pursued even further than this. Many mammalia which are extinct in Europe have representatives still living in other countries. Our fossil pachyderms, for instance, would be almost unintelligible but for the species which still inhabit some parts of Asia and Africa; the secondary marsupials are illustrated by their existing representatives in Australia and South America; and in the same manner, if we wish clearly to understand the antiquities of Europe, we must compare them with the rude implements and weapons still, or until lately, used by the savage races in other parts of the world. In fact, Van Diemaner and South American are to the antiquary what the opossum and the sloth are to the geologist (1865:416).” All theorists of the latter half of the nineteenth century proposed to fill the gaps in the available knowledge of universal history largely by means of a special and much-debated procedure known as the “comparative method.” The basis for this method was the belief that sociocultural systems observable in the present bear differential degrees of resemblance to extinct cultures. The life of certain contemporary societies closely resembled what life must have been like during the Paleolithic, Neolithic, or early state-organized societies. Morgan’s view of this prolongation of the past into the present is characteristic: “…the domestic institutions of the barbarous, and even of the savage ancestors of mankind, are still exemplified in portions of the human family with such completeness that, with the exception of the strictly primitive period, the several stages of this progress are tolerably well preserved. They are seen in the organization of society upon the basis of sex, then upon the basis of kin, and finally upon the basis of territory; through the successive forms of marriage and of the family, with the systems of consanguinity thereby created; through house life and architecture; and through progress in usages with respect to the ownership and inheritance of property.” (1870:7) To apply the comparative method, the varieties of contemporary institutions are arranged in a sequence of increasing antiquity. This is achieved through an essentially logical, deductive operation. The implicit assumption is that the older forms are the simpler forms. ACCOMPLISHMENTS The early evolutionists represented the first efforts to establish a scientific discipline of anthropology (although this effort was greatly hampered by the climate of supernatural explanations, a paucity of reliable empirical materials, and their engagement in “armchair speculation”). They aided in the development of the foundations of an organized discipline where none had existed before. They left us a legacy of at least three basic assumptions which have become an integral part of anthropological thought and research methodology, as outlined by Kaplan (1972: 42-43): the dictum that cultural phenomena are to be studied in naturalistic fashion the premise of the “psychic unity of mankind,” i.e., that cultural differences between groups are not due to differences in psychobiological equipment but to differences in sociocultural experience; and the use of the comparative method as a surrogate for the experimental and laboratory techniques of the physical sciences CRITICISMS Morgan believed that family units became progressively smaller and more self-contained as human society developed. However, his postulated sequence for the evolution of the family is not supported by the enormous amount of ethnographic data that has been collected since his time. For example, no recent society that Morgan would call savage indulges in group marriage or allows brother-sister mating. In short, a most damning criticism of this early social evolutionary approach is that as more data became available, the proposed sequences did not reflected the observations of professionally trained fieldworkers. A second criticism is for the use by Tylor, McLellan, and others of ‘recurrence’ – if a similar belief or custom could be found in different cultures in many parts of the world, then it was considered to 13 be a valid clue for reconstructing the history of the development, spread, and contact among different human societies. The great weakness of this method lay in the evaluation of evidence plucked out of context, and in the fact that much of the material, at a time when there were almost no trained field workers, came from amateur observers. The evolutionism of Tylor, Morgan, and others of the nineteenth century is rejected today largely because their theories cannot satisfactorily account for cultural variation. Why, for example, are some societies today lodged in “upper savagery” and others in “civilization.” The “psychic unity of mankind” or “germs of thought” that were postulated to account for parallel evolution cannot also account for cultural differences. Another weakness in the early evolutionists’ theories is that they cannot explain why some societies have regressed or even become extinct. Also, although other societies may have progressed to “civilization,” some of them have not passed through all the stages. Thus, early evolutionist theory cannot explain the details of cultural evolution and variation as anthropology now knows them. Finally, one of the most common criticisms leveled at the nineteenth century evolutionists is that they were highly ethnocentric – they assumed that Victorian England, or its equivalent, represented the highest level of development for mankind. “[The] unilineal evolutionary schemes [of these theorists] fell into disfavor in the 20th century, partly as a result of the constant controversy between evolutionist and diffusionist theories and partly because of the newly accumulating evidence about the diversity of specific sociocultural systems which made it impossible to sustain the largely “armchair” speculations of these early theorists” (Seymour-Smith 1986:106). SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Barnard, Alan 2000 History and Theory in Anthropology. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 2. Carneiro, Robert L. 2003 Evolutionism in Culture: A Critical History. Westview Press: Boulder, CO. 3. Ellwood, Charles Abram 1927 Cultural Evolution: A Study of Scoial Origins and Development. The Century Co.: New York. 4. Evans-Pritchard, Sir Edward 1981 A History of Anthropological Thought. Basic Books, Inc.: New York. 5. Feinman, Gary M. And Linda Manzanilla 2000 Cultural Evoltution: Contemporary Viewpoints. Plenum Publishers: New York. 6. Frazer, James George 1920 The Golden Bough. MacMillan and Co.: London. 7. Harris, Marvin 1968 The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture. Thomas Y. Crowell: New York. 8. Hatch, Elvin 1973 Theories of Man and Culture. Columbia University Press, New York. 9. Hays, H. R. 1965 From Ape to Angel: An Informal History of Social Anthropology. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 10. Kaplan, David and Robert A. Manners 1972 Culture Theory. Waveland Press, Inc., Prospect Heights, Illinois. 11. Kuklick, Henrika 1991 The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 1885-1945. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 12. Lubbock, John 1868 On the Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man. 13. Maine, Henry Sumner 1861 Ancient Law. The Crayon, 8:77-80. 14. McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms 1996 Anthropological Thought: An Introductory History. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Pub. Co. 15. Moore, Jerry D. 2008 Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. AltaMira Press. 16. Ogburn, William F. And Dorothy Thomas 1922 Are Inventions Inevitable? A Note on Social Evolution. Political Science Quarterly, 37:83-98. 17. Ritchie, David G. 1896 Social Evolution. International Journal of Ethics, 6:165-181. 14  18. Tylor, Edward B. 1874 Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Customs. Holt: New York 19. Tylor, Edward B. 2006 The Science of Culture. In Readings for a History of Anthropological Theory. Paul A. Erickson and Liam D. Murphy, eds. Pp. 29-41. Canada: Broadview Press. 20. Seymour-Smith, Charlotte 1986 Macmillan Dictionary of Anthropology. Macmillan, New York. 21. Stocking Jr., George W. 1968 Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology. The Free Press, New York. 22. Stocking Jr., George W. 1995 After Tylor: British Social Anthropology 1888-1951. The University of Wisconsin Press. 23. Winthrop, Robert H. 1991 Dictionary of Concepts in Cultural Anthropology. Greenwood Press, New York. The fundamental presumption of evolutionary theory, which has dominated social thought in the last half of the nineteenth century, is the notion that civilization has progressed by a series of stages from a backward to an advanced state. The characteristics of the stages differ from theorist to theorist—Comte, Maine, Bachofen, etc.—but the central idea of progress informs them all. To distill out the essential themes of this approach, I sketch the line of argument taken up in Lewis Henry Morgan's Ancient Society ( 1963). The subtitle of Ancient Society reveals its essence: Researches in Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization. Morgan, like other evolutionists, regarded human history as advancing through several stages. These stages constitute "a natural as well as a necessary sequence of progress" ( 1963, 3). The main defining characteristic of each stage is the type of inventions that society used to gain its subsistence. Thus, the lower stage of savagery extends from the beginnings of the human race to the time that people began to rely on fish for subsistence; the middle stage of savagery began with fish subsistence and the use of fire and moved into the upper status of savagery with the invention of the bow and arrow. The analysis continues in a similar fashion through three stages of barbarism to the state of civilization, which began with the use of a written alphabet. In addition to technology, other institutions also developed by stages. In the period of savagery government was organized into gentes, or clans, and "followed down, through the advancing forms of this institution, to the establishment of political society" ( 1963, 5). And a parallel story of progress is to be found in religion, architecture, property, kinship, and other institutions. B) LIVELIHOOD ACTIVITIES OF HUNTER GATHERS What did hunter gatherers do? Hunter-gatherer culture is a type of subsistence lifestyle that relies on hunting and fishing animals (fishes were also hunted) and foraging for wild vegetation and other nutrients like honey, for food. Until approximately 12,000 years ago, all humans practiced hunting-gathering. What was the hunter gatherer way of life? A hunter-gatherer is a human living in a society in which most or all food is obtained by foraging (collecting wild plants and pursuing wild animals). Hunter-gatherer societies stand in contrast to agricultural societies, which rely mainly on domesticated species. What are some characteristics of a hunter-gatherer society? Obtain food through hunting /fishing and gathering for survival, small groups; less than 50 people, and they travel frequently. What do you mean by hunter gatherers? Definition of hunter-gatherer. : a member of a culture in which food is obtained by hunting, fishing, and foraging rather than by agriculture or animal husbandry. Hunter-gatherer culture was the way of life for early humans until around 11 to 12,000 years ago. The lifestyle of hunter-gatherers was based on hunting animals and foraging for food. Hunter-gatherers were prehistoric nomadic groups that harnessed the use of fire, developed intricate knowledge of plant life and refined technology for hunting and domestic purposes as they spread 15 from Africa to Asia, Europe and beyond. From African hominins of 2 million years ago to modern- day Homo sapiens, the evolution of humans can be traced through what the hunter-gatherers left behind—tools and settlements that teach us about the hunter-gatherer diet and way of life of early humans. Although hunting and gathering societies largely died out with the onset of the Neolithic Revolution, hunter-gatherer communities still endure in a few parts of the world. ▪ Who Were the Hunter-Gatherers? Hunter-gatherer culture developed among the early hominins of Africa, with evidence of their activities dating as far back as 2 million years ago. Among their distinguishing characteristics, the hunter-gatherers actively killed animals for food instead of scavenging meat left behind by other predators and devised ways of setting aside vegetation for consumption at a later date. The culture accelerated with the appearance of Homo erectus (1.9 million years ago), whose larger brain and shorter digestive system reflected the increased consumption of meat. Additionally, these were the first hominins built for long-distance walking, pushing nomadic tribes into Asia and Europe. Hunting and gathering remained a way of life for Homo heidelbergensis (700,000 to 200,000 years ago), the first humans to adapt to colder climates and routinely hunt large animals, through the Neanderthals (400,000 to 40,000 years ago), who developed more sophisticated technology. It also spanned most of the existence of Homo sapiens, dating from the first anatomically modern humans 200,000 years ago, to the transition to permanent agricultural communities around 10,000 B.C. ▪ Hunter-Gatherer Tools and Technology The early hunter-gatherers used simple tools. During the Stone Age, sharpened stones were used for cutting before hand-axes were developed, marking the onset of Acheulean technology about 1.6 million years ago. Controlled use of fire for cooking and warding off predators marked a crucial turning point in the early history of these groups, though debate remains as to when this was accomplished. Use of hearths dates back almost 800,000 years ago, and other findings point to controlled heating as far back as 1 million years ago. Evidence of fire exists at early Homo erectus sites, including 1.5 million-year-old Koobi Fora in Kenya, though these may be the remains of wildfires. Fire enabled hunter-gatherers to stay warm in colder temperatures, cook their food (preventing some diseases caused by consumption of raw foods like meat), and scare wild animals that might otherwise take their food or attack their camps. After Homo heidelbergensis, who developed wooden and then stone-tipped spears for hunting, Neanderthals introduced refined stone technology and the first bone tools. Early Homo sapiens continued to develop more specialized hunting techniques by inventing fishhooks, the bow and arrow, harpoons and more domestic tools like bone and ivory needles. These more specialized tools enabled them to widen their diet and create more effective clothing and shelter as they moved about in search of food. ▪ Hunter-Gatherer Diet From their earliest days, the hunter-gatherer diet included various grasses, tubers, fruits, seeds and nuts. Lacking the means to kill larger animals, they procured meat from smaller game or through scavenging. As their brains evolved, hominids developed more intricate knowledge of edible plant life and growth cycles. Examination of the Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov site in Israel, which housed a thriving community 16 almost 800,000 years ago, revealed the remains of 55 different food plants, along with evidence of fish consumption. With the introduction of spears at least 500,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers became capable of tracking larger prey to feed their groups. Modern humans were cooking shellfish by 160,000 years ago, and by 90,000 years ago they were developing the specialized fishing tools that enabled them to haul in larger aquatic life. ▪ Hunting and Gathering Society Studies of modern-day hunter-gatherers offer a glimpse into the lifestyle of small, nomadic tribes dating back almost 2 million years ago. With limited resources, these groups were egalitarian by nature, scraping up enough food to survive and fashioning basic shelter for all. Division of labor by gender became more pronounced with the advancement of hunting techniques, particularly for larger game. Along with cooking, controlled use of fire fostered societal growth through communal time around the hearth. Physiological evolution also led to changes, with the bigger brains of more recent ancestors leading to longer periods of childhood and adolescence. By the time of the Neanderthals, hunter-gatherers were displaying such “human” characteristics as burying their dead and creating ornamental objects. Homo sapiens continued fostering more complex societies. By 130,000 years ago, they were interacting with other groups based nearly 200 miles away. ▪ Where Did The Hunter-Gatherers Live? Early hunter-gatherers moved as nature dictated, adjusting to proliferation of vegetation, the presence of predators or deadly storms. Basic, impermanent shelters were established in caves and other areas with protective rock formations, as well as in open-air settlements where possible. Hand-built shelters likely date back to the time of Homo erectus, though one of the earliest known constructed settlements, from 400,000 years ago in Terra Amata, France, is attributed to Homo heidelbergensis. By 50,000 years ago, huts made from wood, rock and bone were becoming more common, fueling a shift to semi-permanent residencies in areas with abundant resources. The remains of man’s first known year-round shelters, discovered at the Ohalo II site in Israel, date back at least 23,000 years. ▪ Neolithic Revolution to Modern Day With favorable conditions supporting permanent communities in areas such as the Middle East’s Fertile Crescent and the domestication of animals and plants, the agriculture-based Neolithic Revolution began approximately 12,000 years ago. The full-time transition from hunting and gathering wasn’t immediate, as humans needed time to develop proper agricultural methods and the means for combating diseases encountered through close proximity to livestock. Success in that area fueled the growth of early civilizations in Mesopotamia, China and India, and by 1500 A.D., most populations were relying on domesticated food sources. 17 Modern-day hunter-gatherers endure in various pockets around the globe. Among the more famous groups are the San, a.k.a. the Bushmen, of southern Africa, and the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, known to fiercely resist all contact with the outside world. If there is one thing that palaeoanthropologists understand, it is the continuum between species, genera, and all forms of life. Human beings are defined by their relationships with (and divergence from) other primates, living and historical, and primates by their relationship with other mammals, and so on. Therefore, when considering who are hunter-gatherers and then who are the first of these hunter-gatherers, palaeoanthropologists are one of the few types of archaeologist whose job is not to think immediately of Homo sapiens communities, but of creatures who are positively not Homo sapiens. It is tempting to think of hunter-gatherer behaviour as the first version of human food- getting strategy: that ‘the first hunter-gatherers’ is the same as ‘the first eaters’. If this were true then, given the unbroken continuum of the evolution of humans from primate ancestors, it would be impossible to identify the first creature to get its own food: any species that you picked out as a possible ‘first’ would itself have an ancestor. Moreover, once we get back further than hominins, archaeologists and anthropologists tend to lose interest. However, we do not need to stretch our brains back to the primordial soup. The first hunter- gatherers are not the same as the first eaters. For one thing, it appears reasonably certain that the earliest hominins were vegetarians, with hunting coming on board much later, having gone through a stage of scavenging before hunting. We might characterize the development of human subsistence as: gathering, then scavenger-gathering, then hunter-scavenger-gathering with scavenging probably reducing in importance as hunting increased. Having said that, whether you then characterize very early vegetarian ancestors as ‘gatherers’ depends very much on the definition you use. Does ‘gatherer’ equal ‘plant eater’ (and thus include a huge range of living herbivores, frugivores, and folivores—or prey, as they are otherwise known)? Or does it imply a certain level of sociology: division of labour, planning, mapping, or sharing? How would these aspects be evidenced in the fossil record? More pragmatically, is there a physical and cognitive difference between gathering (collecting, carrying, hoarding, delayed consumption) and simply grazing as you go? If so, we exclude most non-human animals—and quite a few hominins—who eat plants from the term ‘gatherer’, yet it would be difficult to exclude carnivores such as raptors and cats from the term ‘hunter’. A question about who the first hunter was would surely involve an (p. 178) animal predator. And, humans are not the only omnivore: a significant minority of living non-human animals, including our closest relative the chimpanzee, our best friend the dog, and our usual taphonomic body double, the pig, are also omnivores. Disentangling the non-human animals from those human ancestors is difficult simply because subsistence behaviour is a fundamentally natural, animalistic behaviour. Hunter-gathererism might be considered a human behaviour now, but it is not unique. It did not appear at the same time as hominins appeared, it did not appear as a package deal, and however culturally complex it might be today, it is derived from the need to eat, which is common to all life. This chapter goes on to examine the emergence of the component parts of hunting and gathering as a human behaviour, having noted its relationship to the subsistence behaviours of other animals. This semantic nit-picking might be annoying, but it is necessary if we are to answer any questions regarding ‘firsts’ in human behaviour. If hunting and gathering is defined in terms of a modern human behaviour then this can only extend to Homo sapiens, and this chapter should be written about the first examples of this species, occurring in Africa at sites like Omo (Butzer 1969; McDougall et al. 2005), Blombos Cave (Grine et al. 2000, Jacobs et al. 2006), Herto (White et al. 2003), and Klasies River Mouth (Churchill et al. 1996; Rightmire and Deacon 1991; 2001) around 200–100 kya (thousand years ago), and in the Upper Palaeolithic of Europe from 40 kya (Lartet 1868; Trinkaus et al. 2003; Wild et al. 2005). There is even disagreement over which fossil should be called 18 the earliest example of Homo sapiens, because it is not clear how far we should allow anatomical variation to be tolerated within one species. Modern humans are extremely uniform in their appearance and genetic codes, but there may have been more variability in the deep past, as there is more variability in other modern animal species. If we are extending our interest in the history of human behaviour to ancestral hominins then we can certainly talk about the food-getting behaviour of Neanderthals. As the most recent non-sapiens hominin, we have a relative wealth of archaeological record from them, and it seems certain that they were collecting, storing, and cooking plant foods (Henry et al. 2011) as well as hunting and butchering large game (Richards and Trinkaus 2009). We have enough evidence to at least debate the subsistence strategy of Homo erectus and possibly some transitional Homo, and to a certain extent of Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Evidence for the diets of these hominins exists archaeologically (as stuff, primarily stone tools and animal bone debris), chemically (the analysis of isotopic signatures in tooth enamel and bone), and anatomically (as skeletal form indicating function, and microscopically, as wear patterns on teeth). In some cases there is evidence for butchery sites, ‘home-base’ sites where food was brought for eating and sharing, and fire and/or cooking traces on animal bones. However, our evidence is always sparse even compared to the evidential luxuries available to archaeologies of later, much shorter periods, let alone in proportion to the time period covered. This makes this chapter largely a biological or subsistence one: readers should note that there is little scope for discussing how subsistence was culturally regarded by early hominins. Who, When, and Where? A Potted Guide Some context of when and who we are talking about is necessary, but this chapter is not intended to be a thorough guide to the many species that populate our lineage prior to Homo (p. 179) sapiens. Not only would this information fill whole books (great examples of which are Aiello and Dean (2002), Bilsborough (1992), and Foley and Lewin (2003)), but any account would be out of date by the time you read this. New discoveries are being announced all the time, scholars differ in how many species they accept as biological likelihoods, and, with such a tiny assemblage, a small amount of new information can change the whole picture. Instead, this part offers a rough guide to hominins, sensu Wood and Lonergan (2008), who offer a superb guide to the names and types of hominins currently known, as well as an explanation of why there is disagreement about the number of species, and which is strongly recommended to the reader. They talk of grades of hominins; groups of species grouped together by major characteristics, which is easier (and shorter) than trying to list every species. The earliest grade defined by Wood and Lonergan (2008) is that of possible or probable hominins, which includes two genera that are doubtful, and one which is a likely candidate for hominin-ship. The fragmentary nature of the evidence and similarity of appearance of other primate groups means that, at the time of writing, some fossils cannot be established as those of upright walking hominins. The broad dates for the very early, unlikely candidates is 5.7–7 mya (million years ago), while the probable candidate, genus Ardipithecus, dates to 5.8–4.3 mya. These fossils are all from East Africa: Chad, Kenya, and Ethiopia. The second grade is archaic hominins, and this includes well-known as well as newly recognized species of the genus Australopithecus (referred to in lay terms as australopithecines), a genus defined by Dart (1925), plus the one known member of a recently established additional genus, Kenyanthropus (Leakey et al. 2001). This group dates 4.5–2.4 mya and represents creatures that were 19 definitely bipedal but with relatively small bodies and brains. Some members show signs of remaining comfortable in tree environments as well as being bipeds on the ground. In this grade, Australopithecus is known from both South African and East African locales whilst the aptly named Kenyanthropus is currently known only from Kenya. The third grade, megadont archaic hominins, includes those species who exhibit significant specialization in their dentition and masticatory anatomy (and presumably in their diets, of which more below). These species were initially categorized as Australopithecus, but most workers now use a different genus name, Paranthropus, to distinguish them, although most people agree that Paranthropus is likely to be ancestrally derived from Australopithecus. These hominins had bodies and brains almost as small as the previous group, but bigger faces and teeth, and date 2.5–1.4 mya. Again, species from both East and South African locales are recognized. Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Kenyanthropus are genus names, on an equivalent level with Homo. The beginnings of Homo are characterized by Wood and Lonergan (2008) first as transitional hominins, a grade containing long-established but scantily evidenced species from East Africa that may or may not be reclassified when more evidence is uncovered, dating around 2.4–1.6 mya. Following the transitional homins are pre-modern Homo, a large grade containing the famous faces of our more recent ancestry, some thoroughly well known and established such as Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis, and other newer ones such as Homo floresiensis. The timeline here is 1.9 mya to 28 kya. This grade is first seen in East Africa (H. ergaster: there are some South African fossils assigned to early Homo but not currently classifiable beyond that), then develops into H. erectus which later moves into Asia and Europe, giving rise to the Neanderthals in Europe (and some transitional (p. 180) forms) but keeping the classic H. erectus form in the Far East. Finally— for now—comes the grade ‘anatomically modern humans’, which contains only one species, Homo sapiens (sensu stricto) from about 200 kya onwards. Note that the time zones overlap for most grades, and that these broad dates are judged on the fossil finds that we have. Since it is unlikely that our fossil collections contain the very first and very last member of any species or genus, we can assume that each time zone is a minimum, and the overlap was probably more extensive. The fact that for the majority of hominin history it has been the norm for several species and/or genera to be sharing resources and landscape, including Homo sapiens for the majority of its tenure, is at odds with our experience of the world, but of course has strong implications for the evolution of diet and subsistence strategy. The sections below outline the evidence, circumstantial (i.e. anatomical) and direct (chemical or archaeological), for the development of the various components of the human diet. Each section is formatted in accordance with the history of investigation: for earlier hominins, anatomy first and direct evidence later, as the latter relies heavily on recent scientific techniques. For Homo, archaeological investigations came first, largely because there just is more archaeology available for them, and anatomical modelling came later. Plant-Based Subsistence: Archaic Hominins (5.8–1.4 mya) Circumstantial Evidence: Form Indicates Function Information about the diet of very early hominins is based on fragmentary skeletal evidence which has been examined on the basis that form indicates function. Where the function is not obvious, analogies are drawn from closely related living animals, or from animals with analogous diets (e.g. Constantino et al. 2011) where we can see what something is for. It is a case of examining the fossil remains of hominin teeth and bodies and reverse-engineering their diets and behaviours from the physical adaptations made to them. As we are dealing with biological function there is little concern 20 in the literature with the philosophical rightness of using this kind of analogy. It is well understood that analogy generates assumptions, not facts, which are often broader than we would like—but, for some small scraps of hominins, that is all we can get. For example, when Ardipithecus was first announced in 1994, its thin tooth enamel (thin compared to that of Australopithecus) was cited as evidence for fruit adaptation. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have especially thin enamel on the occlusal (biting) surface of their incisors which is considered an adaptation to a heavy reliance on ripe fruits (Suwa et al. 2009), and so the same was applied to Ardipithecus. However, the more recent publications have argued that the enamel on Ardipthecus teeth is not as thin as in chimps, just thinner than in Australopithecus, so is not necessarily indicative of reliance on ripe fruit (or sharing special traits with Pan), but of generalized woodland plant eating (Suwa et al. 2009; White et al. 1994), reminding us to avoid relying too heavily on analogy. (p. 181) Another example of form indicating function is in one of the best-established Australopithecus species, Au. afarensis. This hominin dates between 3 and 2 million years, and includes the famous specimen ‘Lucy’ or AL-288-1 (Johanson and Maitland 1981), a 40 per cent complete skeleton. This hominin’s teeth are indicative of generalized vegetarianism (Bilsborough 1992), with neither molars nor incisors dominating. Coupled with recent evidence that the East African landscape in which it lived was more heavily forested than originally thought, it is likely that this species was a fruit and plant eater, taking advantage of all and any plant foodstuffs without specialization. Au. afarensis was a biped but was probably also comfortable climbing trees, with mobile shoulder joints and long, curved fingers. A life spent in forested environments would be consistent with a vegetarian diet emphasizing fruit, and chimes well with research on possible home- base sites (see below). In contrast, the paranthropines (the megadont grade) show strong specialization in their reduced anterior dentition and expanded, powerful molars—indeed, the first specimen of the East African megadonts was nicknamed ‘Nutcracker Man’ (Leakey 1959; Lee-Thorp 2011). This level of dental specialization indicates a dietary specialization, unlike the generalized Au. afarensis, and investigations into this specialization have resulted in lines of direct evidence. Direct Evidence for Plant-Based Foods Megadont archaic hominins, or paranthropines if one prefers, are the robust-faced group comprised of the species P. robustus from South Africa, and P. boisei and (much earlier and probably ancestral) P. aethiopicus from East Africa. These hominins exhibit a markedly specialized dentition of large square molars of the crushing-grinding type seen in herbivorous chewers like sheep and horses, with very small, flat incisors. The enamel on their teeth was very thick, in contrast to Ardipithecus. Combined with this are faces that are wide and flat, small braincases, flared cheekbones accommodating very large chewing muscles, and in some cases (probably males, according to living ape analogies) a sagittal crest. The whole skull is heavy, buttressed, flattened, and strong, which looks very aggressive but probably indicates reinforcement against powerful chewing rather than fast sharp snapping of jaws. As noted above, this anatomy was initially taken to indicate the need for powerful crushing of hard-cased food items such as nuts or seeds. Although this seems a simple case of form indicating function (Rak 1983), recent attempts to determine the hardness of the food items eaten by these creatures from scratches and striations on their teeth demonstrate how advances in scientific technique can overturn these assumptions. Using high-resolution microwear analysis, Ungar et al. (2008) showed that in seven P. boisei specimens there was no evidence, from tooth wear at least, that the individual had eaten anything especially hard in the few days prior to death. These authors posited that paranthropines had the ability to eat rock-hard seeds and tough plants when necessary, but that it was an emergency fallback ability rather than a usual choice. This is an example of Liem’s paradox, which states that very derived (specialized) 21 adaptations do not necessarily indicate the preferred day-to-day habits of a creature, but its last resorts (Liem 1990). Therefore paranthropines may have been eating a much softer diet than has been traditionally considered, while preserving the ability to eat very hard foods in times of crisis. A special edition of American Journal of Physical Anthropology (2009) devoted to fallback foods and their importance in primate and hominin evolution highlights the increasing interest in this topic as a key force in evolutionary change. (p. 182) Isotopic analysis by Sponheimer and Lee-Thorp (2006) on P. robustus specimens supports the idea that paranthropines were not limited to crunching tough food items, or perhaps not crunching them at all. This study indicated that the diet of these hominins was more variable than had been previously thought. The isotopic evidence from this study indicated a high level of grasses or sedges in the diet, but the authors also noted that this could have occurred not only by P. robustus eating grasses, but also from P. robustus preying on animals that ate grasses, although there is no other evidence for meat eating at this time. This study was superseded (Cerling et al. 2011) by further investigations into the carbon isotope ratios of both P. robustus and P. boisei. Here, dental enamel samples of both species were analysed, and revealed that P. boisei was eating a diet almost entirely composed of C3 plant stuffs (grasses and sedges) with little input from C4 plants (nuts, seeds, berries, fruits), and moreover, that the very high levels of C3 could only come from a diet directly reliant on eating grasses—eating animals that ate grasses could not produce high enough levels. This means that the species formerly known as ‘Nutcracker Man’ should really be nicknamed ‘Grass-grazer Man’! In contrast, P. robustus showed a more varied diet including C3 and C4 foods. Of interest here is the fact that the facial and dental anatomy of the two species is very similar, but they occupy different territories (P. boisei known from East Africa, P. robustus from South Africa). If we take the assumption that form indicates function then these two similar forms should be eating a similar diet, but evidently the East African group went down the route of a dietary specialism to the exclusion of other foods whilst the South African group retained a generalized vegetarian diet common to many primates in similar environments. Here we can see that whilst form = function works broadly (we can see that neither of these two were snapping carnivores) it should not be assumed that it works down to the detail of being able to distinguish between two different, equally viable, African vegetarian diets. The Invention of Meat Eating: Pre-Modern Homo (1.9 mya–28 kya) In hindsight, it seems that the inception of meat eating amongst hominins ought to be a big fanfare, a marked leap in human evolution. After all, most other animals are strongly specialized to either carnivory or herbivory, and changing from the primate norm of vegetarian food to a mixed diet, and the behavioural changes that must go alongside, could rightly be described as a big deal. In terms of the bodily changes that seem to go with meat eating (see below), changes are quite impressive, but of course we are viewing the effect in a very few fossilized individuals. The archaeological record shows changes coming in slowly, with meat eating creeping in as an extension of gathering behaviour at first. Direct Evidence for Animal-Based Foods: Small Animal Protein The classic archaic hominins, then, have been characterized as devoted vegetarians of various types. It is tempting to link the appearance of animal protein in the diet with the (p. 183) appearance of Homo as either a cause or a symptom. However, this is not strictly true: there is direct evidence that Au. africanus was eating at least a little animal protein and, given the immense time depth and 22 archaeological paucity of this period, we might assume that which we have evidence for is only a small part of hominins’ repertoire. Au. africanus is the South African australopithecine (2.8 mya), a small-brained, small-statured biped who was probably prey more often than predator (Brain 1981). This species has slightly smaller front teeth than Au. afarensis, but there is nothing particularly indicative or specialized about its dentition and it was assumed to be a general vegetarian primate whose diet was governed by what was available in its dry, grassy Transvaal landscape. However, modern investigations have shown that long thin slivers of animal bone found on Au. africanus sites bear the microscopic marks of termite bites (Backwell and d’Errico 2001). This might be a mystery if it were not for the analogy of chimps: the Gombe chimpanzee group were famously witnessed ‘fishing’ for termites by probing specially prepared long slim sticks into termite mounds, causing the termites to clamp their jaws onto the stick, and then pulling out the stick and eating the termites (Goodall 1986). From this analogy it seems perfectly likely that Au. africanus was at least partially insectivorous, was deliberately modifying items in order to get termites, and was probably learning and passing on this behaviour through observation of each other. The fact that Au. africanus was ingesting termite protein has been corroborated by studies of stable isotope in the tooth enamel which shows that animal protein contributed a portion of their diet (Lee-Thorp and Sponheimer 2006). Au. africanus is, then, the first hominin for whom we have evidence that animal protein was being eaten. Whether fishing for termites counts as hunting, or fishing, or gathering remains debatable. Large Animal Protein During the 1980s the idea that scavenging, not hunting, had been the first mode of meat eating in human ancestors became popular, although it had first been voiced by Leakey in 1967 (Blumenschine 1987). Cut marks on bones at Olduvai Gorge and Koobi Fora (Bunn 1981; Potts and Shipman 1981) were matched with Acheulian hand axes: symmetrical, uniform, teardrop-shaped tools flaked on both sides, sharp and heavy, probably for hand-held work such as butchering and smashing, rather than throwing. These hand axes are strongly associated with H. erectus, meaning that this hominin was pronounced to be eating meat taken from carcasses after a carnivore had eaten from it. However, it is hard to say that H. erectus is the first and only toolmaker or butcher: at Olduvai it is unclear whether P. boisei, H. habilis, or H. erectus is the maker of the Oldowan industry, and there is association at Olduvai of P. boisei fossils with animal bones. An important example here is the hippopotamus butchery site at Koobi Fora, documented by Glynn Isaac (1978a) which shows that more than diet can be inferred from this type of archaeology. Here, Isaac demonstrated that 119 stone flakes associated with a hippo carcass (presumed to have died naturally) were transported from at least three kilometres away and knapped at the site (Isaac 1978a). The transport of materials in this manner is perhaps the first archaeological evidence of this extent of planning depth in relation to food. Isaac (1971; 1978a; 1978b) developed models of landscape use by hominins who were transporting food and stone around the landscape: to butchery sites, and to notional (p. 184) home-base sites: specified areas where hominins returned repeatedly, bringing food back either to share and/or to defend it from other predators, in the case of meat. These sites were typically around streams and so would have had vegetation and perhaps shady trees. This has implications for our concept of plant- food gathering (as opposed to grazing) as well as meat eating: Isaac postulated that carrying food, saving it for later, bringing it back to a home, to a group, was a meaningful development that marked out hominin behaviour as different from other animals. He envisioned dragging carcasses back, but also discussed the issue of carrying plant foods such as berries and shoots in two hands, and suggested that non-fossilizing items such as a simple tray of bark could have been used to make this possible. He further suggested that the division of labour originated here, with females too 23 encumbered with young to range far from the home-base (but able to carry a bark tray) and males transporting meat from the wider landscape back to the home-base to provision females and young. Notably, Isaac did not pinpoint the origin of meat eating, home-basing, or provisioning to any specific hominin, but the temporal range of his sites made P. boisei and H. erectus likely candidates. Isaac’s work was reviewed by Rose and Marshall (1996), whose research in primatology was brought to bear on the issues Isaac had suggested were unique to humans. Their paper combined several fields of research and is worth seeking out for the bibliography alone. They refuted the division of labour idea and of defensible homesteads, but supported the idea of home-base sites generally. They agreed that transport of resources and delayed consumption were only seen amongst humans. Amongst both positive and negative respondents were Fruth and McGrew, who suggested that the assemblages of stone and bones on the ground near watercourses were not evidence of hominins living on the ground under trees, but perhaps building platforms in the trees, as chimps do, as this would form a much better protection against most carnivores if meat was indeed being brought back to the home-base. In this scenario, the archaeological debris would have dropped onto the ground as the platform disintegrated, not been originally laid there. Fruth and McGrew also provided examples of bonobos transporting fruit for several hundred metres by walking either bipedally or tripedally to free one or more front limbs for carrying, and outlined more extensive examples of food sharing in chimps, but agreed that delayed consumption had no parallel in the non-human world (Fruth and McGrew 1996). Other respondents included Bunn, who noted that local plant resources would rapidly become depleted in any scenario where hominins were staying close to one spot. Circumstantial Evidence: Anatomy and Dentition The advent of meat eating is supported by changes in the hominin skeleton around the time of Isaac’s butchery sites and the appearance of the Acheulian. In many ways H. ergaster, the early African version of Homo erectus dating from 1.9 mya, and H. erectus from 1.6 mya, mark