bushman

 This is one of the better articles I've read lately. It addresses serious errors common to works that cite the Paleolithic and foraging societies at being an apex of human welfare. Some of these errors include 

• the idea that hunter-gatherers worked very little to support themselves and spent most of their time in leisure
• the idea of the Khoisan !Kung San peoples as examples of "Stone Age" foragers

For example Lee wrote that the San "worked" only 20 hours a week. Unfortunately, his definition of work was a little questionable. Turns out they work as much as I do:

investigation revealed that what he defined as subsistence activities occupied adult !Kung for about 2.4 days per week on the average, or for about 20 hours. This rather leisurely work schedule, it is claimed, managed to yield an abundant and nutritionally well-balanced diet. These findings were somewhat puzzling to some anthropologists who have conducted similar investigations in similar societies. Hawkes and O'Connell (1981) observed that the Bushmen figures were one-half to one-fifth of the time required by the Alyawarra, a central Australian foraging group. They expressed some surprise because the !Kung and Alyawarra are very similar in habitat as well as technology. The difference, it turned out, was explainable by Hawkes and O'Connell's definition of work: in their calculations of work, they included time spent in processing food as well as hunting and gathering it...."In addition there are the important tasks of manufacturing and maintaining their tool kit and, of course, housework-for the !Kung this involves food preparation, butchery, drawing water and gathering firewood, washing utensils, and cleaning the living space. These tasks take many hours a week" (Lee 1984:51-52).6 When these tasks are added to "subsistence work," the estimate per week is 44.5 hours for men and 40.1 hours for women. Lee is quick to add that these figures are well below the 40 or so hours per week that people in our own society spend above their wage-paid job doing housework, shopping, and other household chores. What seems to be at issue here is what we mean by terms such as "work" and "leisure" in the context of hunting-gathering societies---or, indeed, in the context of any society.

What about all that time spent lounging about?

And then there are the G/wi Bushmen, who reside in the central Kalahari. According to Silberbauer (1981:274- 78), they spend a good part of the day (from about 10 A.M. to about 4 P.M.) resting in the shade, not because they have "chosen" leisure over work or have limited wants, but because to venture out in the blistering sun for any time would expose them to dehydration and heatstroke. Throughout much of the year, there is little cloud cover to provide some relief from the withering heat; unshaded temperatures can reach 60'C (140'F), and sand temperatures as high as 720C (161 F) have been recorded. During the early summer months, all the G/wi lose weight and complain of persistent hunger and thirst (Silberbauer 1981:274). Hardly a "picnic outing on the Thames."

Also sheds further doubt on how well humans are actually adapated to the savanna. 

What about using the !Kung diet to make inferences about what a healthy Paleolithic diet was?

Truswell and Hansen (1976:189-90) cite a string of biomedical researchers who have raised doubts about the nutritional adequacy of the !Kung diet, one going so far as to characterize one Bushmen group as being a "clear case of semi- starvation." Truswell and Hansen (1976:190-91) themselves have concluded that the data suggest "chronic or seasonal calorie insufficiency may be a major reason why San do not reach the same adult stature as most other people."... although he softened his opposition somewhat by conceding that the smallness of the !Kung might have something to do with undernutrition during childhood and adolescence, and he went on to note that !Kung raised on cattle posts on a Bantu diet of milk and grain grow significantly taller (Lee 1979:291).

This paper also mentions the fact that the vast majority of the !Kung consider mongongo nuts an undesirable fallback food. People who want to exploit the !Kung to talk about the Paleolithic tend to believe that they have been foraging since the Paleolithic and the nearly agropastoral people have had little effect on their lifestyle. I will address more of this myth in later posts, but needless to say, the evidence points to the fact that the !Kung have had trading relationships with agropastoralists and their current state is much more precarious nutritionally than it was in the past.

What is mainly missing from their foraging diet these days is fat:

We hear so much these days about the overconsumption of fat in the modern industrial diet that we sometimes forget how important some level of fat consumption is to normal human growth and the maintenance of healthy bodily functions. Animal fat, says Reader (1998:124) is "the proper measure of affluence.".... Hayden's (1981:421) observation is especially relevant here: "I was astounded the first time I saw Western Desert Aborigines ... kill a kangaroo, examine the intestines for fat, and abandon the carcass where it lay because it was too lean. Upon making a kill, Aborigine hunters always open the intestinal cavity and check the fat content. Virtually every ethnographer with whom I have discussed this observation confirms it, yet such details are seldom reported in the literature."

But at least they all love to share with each other...right? 

Here, we were told, in the more marginal areas of the world were societies that were depicted as just the opposite of the industrial West, societies characterized by egalitarianism, widespread sharing of resources, an indifference to material possessions, societies whose members seemed to live in harmony with nature and one another and whose wants were modest and easily satisfied....sharing that goes on seems to be as much motivated by jealousy and envy as it is by any value of generosity or a "liberal custom of sharing." In his survey of foraging societies, Kelly (1995:164-65) notes that "Sharing... strains relations between people. Consequently, many foragers try to find ways to avoid its demands .... Students new to anthropology..,. are often disappointed to learn that these acts of sharing come no more naturally to hunter- gatherers than to members of industrial societies."...(1982:55) recounts the incident of an elder Bushman who asked him for a blanket. When Lee responded that he would just give it away, the elderly Bushman replied, "All my life I've been giving, giving; today I am old and want something for myself." Lee adds that the sentiments expressed by this elder were not unique. Perhaps "human nature" is not as different from society to society as we have been led to believe.

 

Perhaps there was a golden age, where fatty game was more abundant and sharing came easily. But the Bushman don't tell us much about that and overall it remainds a speculation.