Ö÷²¥´óÐã

Ancient and Archaeology  permalink

Were all hunter-gatherers living in monogamous, nuclear families?

• Message 1. 

  Posted by Roysyboy (U15043028) on Friday, 2nd December 2011

  In part two of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã TV series Origins of Us, Dr Alice Roberts effectively argues that man has always lived in the monogamous, nuclear-family unit. She uses the Hadza people as an example of typical hunter-gatherers, implying that because they live in nuclear families today, they must have done this since time immemorial. This is hardly scientific. She also implies that the Hadza example can be applied to the totality of past human experience. Again, this is not scientific.
  In the program, Alice refers to what she calls "defining characteristics" of humans, i.e., that distinguish man from all other animals. This is a descriptive apology for science. One can argue that a "defining characteristic" is that no other animal, bar man, has set foot on the moon. This method is not too useful. In reality, man is distinguished from animals when he begins to produce his means of subsistence. No other animal does this in a way comparable to humans. Only humans have made a transition to pastoralism and farming, i.e., to beginning to produce their means of subsistence.
  In her method, if one can call it this, Alice fails to recognize that chimpanzees are also hunter-gatherers, albeit simple hunter-gatherers, as are the Hadza people. But chimpanzees don't live in monogamous nuclear families. The alarm bells should have rung in Alice's head.
  Alice's position appears philistine. She seems to be unaware of, for example, Frederick Engels' Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. Wikipedia says this about it:
  "This book argues that the first domestic institution in human history was not the family but the matrilineal clan. Engels here follows Lewis H. Morgan's thesis as outlined in his major book, Ancient Society. Morgan was a radical American business lawyer who championed the land rights of Native Americans and became adopted as an honorary member of the Seneca Iroquois tribe. Traditionally, the Iroquois had lived in communal longhouses based on matrilineal descent and matrilocal residence, an arrangement giving women much solidarity and power. Throughout most of the twentieth century, the Morgan-Engels theory that early human kinship was matrilineal was considered by anthropologists to have been disproved. Modern evolutionary anthropology is currently reassessing that position."
  In response to this, Alice's alternative can only be called infantile.

  Link to this forum: Were all hunter-gatherers living in monogamous, nuclear families?

  Report message1

• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Friday, 2nd December 2011

  I suppose one could also claim that a few non-human species also "gather" their food - some marmots make hay for winter, beavers stash suitable poles as reserves of palatable bark, bees make honey, squirrels, jays and others conceal food in times of plenty, and take a look at these farmers :-
  
  I would be happier if either of the models proposed for early human organisation had more in common with those of other apes.

  Link to this forum: Were all hunter-gatherers living in monogamous, nuclear families?

  Report message2

• Message 3

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 2nd December 2011

  It would be clearly quite a serious mistake to think of the Iroqouis as anything like a simple hunter-gatherer society..
  
  Francis Parkman the great North American Nineteenth Century historian, who had also spent time living with Amerindian societies, showed himself to be a man of his times by linking the large brain cavities of the Iroquois and the Aztec in order to explain why these two peoples, uniquely in North and Central America it seemed at the time he was writing, built towns and cities to live in.
  
  In both cases what is apparent is that these were two great warrior societies that had managed to settle, claim and hold on to very key and strategic pieces of territory, and both had systems of Kingships and/or Empire, with all that implies in terms of clearly defined territories.
  
  
  In both cases the water and lakes in pivotal positions were important for they were places where the centrally dominant power could profit from its control over trade- and its ability to demand trade and tribute. In the case of the Iroquois this was a nodal location in amongst the Great Lakes- and the King of The Iroquois was brought to the court of Queen Anne as an ally of the English/British crown in the wars against France and Roman Catholicism. The official portrait of him in his regal slendour on that occasion showed a true King, and no simple hunter-gatherer.
  
  It is accepted that the role of women in the Iroquois as in many Amerindian societies was quite special. And perhaps it was important for Engels who was presumably attracted to materialist philosophy like his friend Karl Marx. Women made many of the crucial decisions for the Iroquois townships probably for two reasons:
  (a) in farming communities- as theirs was- the whole of communal life really had to revolve around the weather and the crops, and the women owned the land on which the crops were grown- and were out in the fields every day looking at the signs and omens. In fact, here, and generally both in the past and the present in such mixed societies, looking after plants was a particular speciality of the women.
  
  and (b) the role of the men often involved being away from home out hunting, or, as is now understood, managing the "wilderness" , and of course making sure that there were no intruders- while at the same time making sure that those who came to trade, or render tribute, or to fight and steal, were adequately met.
  
  
  The fact that people may have slept in single sex dormitories, however, is not necessarily inconsistent with traditions of monogamous marriage. When British colonists settled in those lands it often made sense for the women and the children to group together when their menfolk were away from home, even during the day
  
  Parkman gives the story of the settler who was away in the fields with his children and his rifle, only to see smoke billowing up from where he had left his wife and baby, and a neighbour, just recovering from childbirth.
  
  Mounting his horse and racing home, he found that the house had been raided by a war-party. The baby was laying there with its head smashed in, and the women and a boy were missing. They were taken off as part of the spoils of the raid, and bided their time as the war-band disbanded, dividing up the spoils. Eventually they were with just a handfull of warriors, who made the mistake of falling asleep. The women killed them and returned with the boy plus some "Indian" scalps back to the settlement.
  
  [For balance- He also tells of another abduction, of a Presbyterian preacher's daughter, who eventually returned home dressed as a squaw. She had married one of her abductors and decided that life as an Amerindian woman was preferable to the one she had had before. Habitually she brought her children back to see their grandparents from time to time, but she stuck to her choice to the end.]
  
  There seems to have often been a clear division of labour in Amerindian societies with men mostly opting for the status of the being a "brave"- and thus having a function that demanded that he keep himself as a warrior and be prepared to die for the collective safelty of the tribe- especially that of the women and children- and those men who chose to live as "squaws"- doing women's work .
  
  But there are many examples of monogamous family systems in which the men have to be away from home for long periods. The Apartheid regime in South Africa created a situation in which largely women stayed with their children to work the family plots in the Bantustans, while the men were hostel dwellers away from home for much of the year. Another example would be those Gurkhas who continue to serve in the British Armed Forces and make the trip back to Nepal once a year- to catch up on their growing families.
  
  Living as husband and wife, however, may not have been totally conducive to being a "brave".. The Iroquois brave was expected to be just that, and they believed in "tough love". Dreams, they thought, were premonitary, or messages from the spirit world, so when you dreamed that something bad was going to happen to you, the next day you asked one of your friends to do it to you.
  
  And the Iroquois game that is now "Lacross" was very violent. I believe from a TV documentary I saw not so long ago that the Iroquois are still THE people to build New York skyscapers. Nerves of steel to wander around on those narrow steel girders way up in the air. The TV documentary featured a great Iroquois festival at which "steelers" raced against the clock to see who could climb up a vertical steel girder fastest, and other related exploits.
  
  Cass
  
  PS
  
  I think that the OP reflects the fact we no longer understand what a Society is, for the kind of materialist philosophy that came with Communism and other forms of Economism has only really looked at patterns of wealth and wealth distribution. After 1945 innovations like the Welfare State tried to treat the nuclear family as the "irreducible atom" for both the economy and the State.. Now,of course, it is not "politically correct" to take this attitude to the nuclear family. People now live in "Households" and only need access to money- apparently- in order to avoid "social excliusion".

  Link to this forum: Were all hunter-gatherers living in monogamous, nuclear families?

  Report message3

• Message 4

  , in reply to message 3.

  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 2nd December 2011

  Further to the OP- - I think that there are real problems with trying to observe any hunter-gatherers NOW as being in any way typical or indicative "en gross" of such societies in the Past.
  
  Some years ago I saw on French TV some film taken by a couple who had flown down the whole continent of Africa- landing from time to time- in the twenties
  
  One of their stops was with the Masai (?) and they filmed a lion hunt.. Of course camera technology was less advanced, but what really struck me- as the warriors tried to close-in on the lion, largely naked carrying shields and spears- was the way that the lion looked at them and surveyed this scene. from incredibly close quarters... I could see just why the Lion was called the King of the Jungle.. He was "up for a fight"
  
  
  This was a far cry from the lions that one can see in all the modern beautiful films. They know their place in the modern world. They know or sense that these man-made machines are stronger than them and that death can come to them suddenly and from afar.. Best to hide away somewhere, and keep out of the way, making the best use of the dark.
  
  So they do not live in the same state of war with man and Nature as when the Masai had huge herds that they struggled to defend, and a young would be warrior had to go off alone and kill a lion in order to prove his manhood.
  
  Surviving hunter gatherers are endangered species in shrinking or threatened habitats. As in Brazil in the past they may we wiped out by "overwhelming force" because people want to take-over and destroy their habitat.
  
  But in the day of the hunter gatherer the threat was most often from people more or less like themselves who might try to take over their "happy hunting grounds".
  
  For better of worse the "scramble for land" put almost everywhere on Earth "on the map", and the world is far more settled and sedentary than it ever was before.
  
  Cass
  
  

  Link to this forum: Were all hunter-gatherers living in monogamous, nuclear families?

  Report message4

• Message 5

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Piltdown (U6504098) on Saturday, 3rd December 2011

  "In part two of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã TV series Origins of Us, Dr Alice Roberts effectively argues that man has always lived in the monogamous, nuclear-family unit. "
  
  Well actually she did no such thing. Nowhere was it claimed or implied that ancient hunter-gatherers lived in family units or even that the Hadza did so. As I recall she followed men on a hunt and joined a group of women digging for roots and the overall impression was of a communal effort.
  
  Whilst some primitive societies do live in matrilineal clans many do not and to claim that early humans lived in such communities is just as unscientific as claiming they lived in monogamous nuclear families. The truth is that there is no evidence either way and neither is there ever likely to be.

  Link to this forum: Were all hunter-gatherers living in monogamous, nuclear families?

  Report message5

Back to top