hunter-gatherers

In a famous essay, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins called hunter-gatherers “the original affluent society” because the simplicity of their material wants, needs and diet left them with so much leisure time on their hands.

The Fruit Hunters

Up until their early adulthood, they were hunter-gatherers.

The Bushman Way of Tracking God

The original people, the first hunter-gatherers, say that it all comes down to hunting, cooking, and eating, which get you ready to make love.

The Bushman Way of Tracking God

Trade is much older than farming: Australian aborigines used to trade stone axes for sting-ray barbs over long distances, showing that hunter-gatherers can benefit from exchange.

For Democracy, Bet on Peas Over Pineapples

But there are still a few of us who, recognizing our inner state of brokenness and permanent feeling of inadequacy, want to stop being hunter-gatherers -- impressing the world with our flashy possessions -- and instead light up the world with the luminescence of our souls.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Anthony Weiner and Why Powerful Men Self-Destruct

He also studied the emergence of agriculture, a classic problem for researchers examining why people stopped being hunter-gatherers.

Archaeologist Dug Beyond Artifacts

He later did fieldwork with hunter-gatherers in Australia and northwest Alaska, where Eskimos taught him to butcher caribou according to their traditions.

Archaeologist Dug Beyond Artifacts

None of the other societies cited by Pinker are even arguably immediate-return hunter-gatherers like our ancestors.

Christopher Ryan: Pinker's Dirty War on Prehistoric Peace

This is crucial, because societies are far more likely to wage war when they have things worth fighting over pigs, gardens, settled villages, but tend to be far less conflictive when living as nomadic hunter-gatherers, with little to plunder or defend.

Christopher Ryan: Pinker's Dirty War on Prehistoric Peace

The richest and most socially stratified cultures of hunter-gatherers in recent times were consequently marine ones: the coastal tribes of Peru, California, Oregon, British Columbia and some Pacific islands being prime examples.

We Are the Apes Who Took to the Sea