Author : Frances Dahlberg
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 40,50 MB
Release : 1981-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780300029895
Essays discuss chimpanzees as an evolutionary model, modern examples of hunter-gatherer tribes, women's and men's roles in prehistoric times, and primitive human adaptations
Author : Heather Heying
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 50,39 MB
Release : 2021-09-14
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0593086880
A provocative exploration of the tension between our evolutionary history and our modern woes—and what we can do about it. We are living through the most prosperous age in all of human history, yet we are listless, divided, and miserable. Wealth and comfort are unparalleled, but our political landscape is unmoored, and rates of suicide, loneliness, and chronic illness continue to skyrocket. How do we explain the gap between these truths? And how should we respond? For evolutionary biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein, the cause of our troubles is clear: the accelerating rate of change in the modern world has outstripped the capacity of our brains and bodies to adapt. We evolved to live in clans, but today many people don’t even know their neighbors’ names. In our haste to discard outdated gender roles, we increasingly deny the flesh-and-blood realities of sex—and its ancient roots. The cognitive dissonance spawned by trying to live in a society we are not built for is killing us. In this book, Heying and Weinstein draw on decades of their work teaching in college classrooms and exploring Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystems to confront today’s pressing social ills—from widespread sleep deprivation and dangerous diets to damaging parenting styles and backward education practices. Asking the questions many modern people are afraid to ask, A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century outlines a science-based worldview that will empower you to live a better, wiser life.
Author : Barry S. Hewlett
Publisher : Transaction Publishers
Page : 486 pages
File Size : 29,18 MB
Release :
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0202366669
In the vast anthropological literature devoted to hunter-gatherer societies, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the place of hunter-gatherer children. Children often represent 40 percent of hunter-gatherer populations, thus nearly half the population is omitted from most hunter-gatherer ethnographies and research. This volume is designed to bridge the gap in our understanding of the daily lives, knowledge, and development of hunter-gatherer children. The twenty-six contributors to Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods use three general but complementary theoretical approaches--evolutionary, developmental, cultural--in their presentations of new and insightful ethnographic data. For instance, the authors employ these theoretical orientations to provide the first systematic studies of hunter-gatherer children's hunting, play, infant care by children, weaning and expressions of grief. The chapters focus on understanding the daily life experiences of children, and their views and feelings about their lives and cultural change. Chapters address some of the following questions: why does childhood exist, who cares for hunter-gatherer children, what are the characteristic features of hunter-gatherer children's development and what are the impacts of culture change on hunter-gatherer child care? The book is divided into five parts. The first section provides historical, theoretical and conceptual framework for the volume; the second section examines data to test competing hypotheses regarding why childhood is particularly long in humans; the third section expands on the second section by looking at who cares for hunter-gatherer children; the fourth section explores several developmental issues such as weaning, play and loss of loved ones; and, the final section examines the impact of sedentism and schools on hunter-gatherer children. This pioneering volume will help to stimulate further research and scholarship on hunter-gatherer childhoods, thereby advancing our understanding of the way of life that characterized most of human history and of the processes that may have shaped both human development and human evolution. Barry S. Hewlett is professor of anthropology at Washington State University, Vancouver. Michael E. Lamb is professor of psychology in the social sciences, Cambridge University.
Author : Robert K. Hitchcock
Publisher : Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
Page : 387 pages
File Size : 10,97 MB
Release : 2011-12-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 193877020X
Information and its Role in Hunter-Gatherer Bands explores the question of how information, broadly conceived, is acquired, stored, circulated, and utilized in small-scale hunter-gatherer societies, or bands. Given the nature of this question, the volume brings together a group of scholars from multiple disciplines, including archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, and evolutionary ecology. Each of these specialties deals with the question of information in different ways and with different sets of data given different primacy. The fundamental goal of the volume is to bridge disciplines and subdisciplines, open discussion, and see if some common ground-either theoretical perspectives, general principles, or methodologies-can be developed upon which to build future research on the role of information in hunter-gatherer bands.
Author : Graeme Warren
Publisher : Oxbow Books
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 13,68 MB
Release : 2022-02-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1789256844
Explores the Irish Mesolithic - the period after the end of the last Ice Age when Ireland was home to hunter-gatherer communities, mostly from about 10,000-6,000 years ago. At this time, Ireland was an island world, with striking similarities and differences to its European neighbours - not least in terms of the terrestrial ecology created by its island status. To understand the communities of hunter-gatherers who lived there, it is essential that we consider the connections established between people and the other beings and materials with which they shared the world and through which they grew into it. Understanding the Mesolithic means paying attention to the animals, plants, spirits and things with which hunting and gathering groups formed kinship relationships and in collaboration with which they experienced life. The book closes with a reflection on hunting and gathering in Ireland today. The overriding aim of the book is to provide a point of entry into the lives of the Irish Mesolithic, to show the different ways in which people have lived on this island, and to show how we might narrate those lives.
Author : Marjorie Shostak
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 413 pages
File Size : 12,22 MB
Release : 2014-01-21
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1134157665
Married at twelve, then separated, divorced and widowed, Nisa is the mother of four children, none of whom survived. She is strong, capable of foraging on her own in one of the world's most hostile environments, not dependent on any man for her daily sustenance and ready to talk to anyone as her equal. Wise, full of humour at the absurdities of life and courageous in the face of its defeats, she is bawdy, practical and incurably romantic. She is a woman of the !Khung people who live by means of humanity's oldest survival strategy - gathering and hunting. This book is the remarkable story of Nisa's life, told in her own words to Marjorie Shostak. It is a story full of echoes from a female past that we can never know directly. But it is also Nisa's unique story, her own voice, her own dignity. In anyone's culture, she is a remarkable woman.
Author : Kerry G. Brock
Publisher : BRIT Press
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 34,39 MB
Release : 2013
Category : Health & Fitness
ISBN : 1889878405
"We want to examine what the scientific evidence suggests is really going on when we eat food, and how we can eat and live in a way that best gives us the health benefits of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle while living in and enjoying the advantages of the modern world. We also hope to use the evidence to explore how we can increase our chances of avoiding chronic diseases, obesity, and other health problems -- the "Diseases of Civilization."--P. 7.
Author : Tom Güldemann
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 747 pages
File Size : 10,35 MB
Release : 2020-02-27
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1107003687
Offers a linguistic window into contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, looking at how they survive and interface with agricultural and industrial societies.
Author : Robert L. Kelly
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 383 pages
File Size : 11,22 MB
Release : 2013-04-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1107024870
Challenges the preconceptions that hunter-gatherers were Paleolithic relics living in a raw state of nature, instead crafting a position that emphasizes their diversity.
Author : Megan Biesele
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 31,83 MB
Release : 2000-04-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1782381589
In an age of heightened awareness of the threat that western industrialized societies pose to the environment, hunters and gatherers attract particularly strong interest because they occupy the ecological niches that are constantly eroded. Despite the denial of sovereignty, the world's more than 350 million indigenous peoples continue to assert aboriginal title to significant portions of the world's remaining bio-diversity. As a result, conflicts between tribal peoples and nation states are on the increase. Today, many of the societies that gave the field of anthropology its empirical foundations and unique global vision of a diverse and evolving humanity are being destroyed as a result of national economic, political, and military policies. Although quite a sizable body of literature exists on the living conditions of the hunters and gatherers, this volume is unique in that it represents the first extensive east-west scholarly exchange in anthropology since the demise of the USSR. Moreover, it also offers new perspectives from indigenous communities and scholars in an exchange that be termed "south-north" as opposed to " north-north," denoting the predominance of northern Europe and North America in scholarly debate. The main focus of this volume is on the internal dynamics and political strategies of hunting and gathering societies in areas of self-determination and self-representation. More specifically, it examines areas such as warfare and conflict resolution, resistance, identity and the state, demography and ecology, gender and representation, and world view and religion. It raises a large number of major issues of common concerns and therefore makes important reading for all those interested in human rights issues, ethnic conflict, grassroots development and community organization, and environmental topics.
