Talk:Hunter-gatherer

message: I think this bit needs to be rewritten. It's a bit chatty, I think, but what do the rest of ya say? I don't think I should edit it as I don't know anything about hunter-gatherers, but I noticed that it sounded a tad informal; though that may or may not be worthy of editing. Robin Talbot (talk) 14:40, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Social and Economic Structure piece

message: If this article and website want to be taken seriously then why cite stuff like:
Wilmsen, Edwin (1989). Land Filled With Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 
Lee and Guenther really destory his work, which was published in a non-peer reviewed book. He has been shown to have made stuff up, on purpose. His reply, 10 years in the making, is silly. Whoever refrenced him knows nothing about hunter gathers if they are presenting Wilmsen's findings as fact. Maybe I should upload some of Philip Rushton's findings as 'fact' if that is the kinda bs people are looking for. Someone fix this, now!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.251.93.111 (talk) 21:04, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Wilmsen

message: Something could be said about how people returns to hunting-gathering.
Cases like the North American Indians after the arrival of Europeans and the subsequent fall of civilizations, the Moriori, the Western Europeans between the Carolingian Empire and the arrival of feudalism.
--Error 01:34, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: quite possibly, although I suspect proportions of sustenance obtained by different methods vary considerably from group to group, region to region, and season to season. 'Androcentric' it may be, but I've never seen the practice referred to with these reversed, so the article name will need to remain as-is.--cjllw | TALK 05:44, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Returning to hunting-gathering

message: A related topic, History of the world is currently a nomination on WP:IDRIVE. Support the article with your vote to improve its quality. --Fenice 14:18, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Improvement drive

message: The stuff on the early forms of writing clearly does not belong in this entry. the Vinca script was used in neolithic europe; they were not hunter-gatherers.
also this is not an entry on the evolution of culture or art. the stuff on the prehistoric musical instruments and rock art/cave art should go in more pertinent entries. 
everything else in this section could either be moved to a better entry or is of questionable reliability given the mistakes i mentioned above and the lack of citation of sources. i will leave it up to the original author(s) to relocate their contribution to other entries, and i will remove it from this one.--LC | Talk 23:31, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Symbolic culture section

message: *DISAGREE.  I have already written this over at the talk page for Bands, but I suppose it won't do any harm to put it here as well.  I strongly disagree with this proposed merge, on the grounds that 1. Not all hunter-gatherers operate as bands (see Northwest Coast of the United States), and 2. "Band" is a category proposed in mid-20th century anthropological theory, which has a series of characteristics, only ONE of which is hunting/gathering/foraging/collecting. For these reasons the entries should remain separate.  TriNotch 16:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed Merge with Band Society

message: IP 62.134.80.181:
I removed your addition of 09:15, 20 September 2006, revision ID 76755997, for the following reasons. First this paragraph does not belong in the social structure section. Further, there is no suggestion in the entry that hunter-gatherers were peaceful or not, so for you to begin your addition with the word "conversely" is inappropriate. If you feel that a discussion of warfare is called for in this entry, please discuss it here first, and we can devise a way to effectively fit it in.
Secondly, according to Keeley's own index, the topic of hunter-gatherers appears precicely six times dispersed throughout his 183-page book over 9 pages. The vast majority of the book concerns agriculturalists or pastoralists. If you are going to use Keeley, you need cite specific facts from his book with page numbers.
LC | Talk 23:27, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Warfare

message: This section seems problematic to me:
As the number and size of many agricultural societies increased, they expanded into lands traditionally used by hunter-gatherers and communities practicing small scale agriculture. This process culminated most recently in the European Colonization of Africa, the Americas, Australia, and Southeast Asia.
It seems to suggest that Africa, the Americas, Australia, and southeast Asia were populated by hunter-gatherers at the time of European colonization.  This may be true for Australia, but definitely not for SE Asia, Africa, or the Americas. Agriculture thrived in all three, and domesticated animals in SE Asia and Africa.  Certainly there were hunter-gatherers in all three, but there were, and still are, hunter-gatherers in Europe as well.  The section just seems overly Eurocentric.  The European colonizations are not the only example of an agricultural people spreading and colonizing regions formerly inhabited by hunter-gatherers -- cf Bantu, Austronesian people, Mississippian culture, etc.  And the claim of "most recent" seems Eurocentric as well.  There are plenty of non-European peoples colonizing the lands of hunter-gatherer peoples up to the present day. Pfly 23:47, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Have to agree that the charge of Eurocentrism there is fairly made; displacement of and conflict with HG societies by pastoralists, agriculturalists etc has been a feature of every milieu and time period, not restricted to European incursions.--cjllw | TALK 02:32, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Question, does the qualifier "most recently" change your opinion at all? Murderbike 00:09, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: European colonization

message: ... I wonder if they could be merged or if para 3 could be deleted - how do people feel? Richard holt 22:38, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Totally agreed. Almost all but the last sentence is redundant. Murderbike 20:13, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Paragraph 3 seems to restate the material from para 2 without adding much

message: Murderbike,
Sorry about the weird explanation. When I went for the apostrophe, I accidentally hit ENTER. I certainly had a reason. What I was trying to type was:
Fang 23,
I think I see what you're trying to say, but please explain what you mean by "parity". The citations don't mean anything unless there is a specific assertion to cite, e.g. women spend much more time engaged in such-and-such activity than men spend in whatever other activity. If you can be more specific perhaps I can be more constructive in my next revision.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Losecontrol (talk • contribs) 02:24, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Awesome, thanks for the explanation. Murderbike (talk) 03:00, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Sexual "parity"

message: Can someone look at this anon edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hunter-gatherer&diff=236410186&oldid=236406815
The anonymous user says that "Hunter-gatherers obtain most from gathering rather than hunting". I have it from a reliable source that the opposite is generally true (see ). Also, the anon says that "The food they gather is reliable and nutricious and available, even in times of great drought." Really?? The rest of the information added looks like it was pulled out of thin air: "As such, aldouch their way of life seems inefficient, it really isn't and is besides this also effortless and simple." and "Hunter gatherer societies are very open: individuals are not stuck to the camp and can easily join in. Food is shared equally and can be taken without strings attached. The societies dough, are not overly humane: elderly or senile men are often abandoned." --Phenylalanine (talk) 23:57, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: all of those claims are going to vary from culture to culture and environment to environment, season to season. If they're not cited, and you have a cite for an opposing claim, by all means make the change. Murderbike (talk) 22:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Most of that information was cited, should I add the cited parts of that information back into this article?--Fang 23 (talk) 00:22, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

text: In addition, we have the unsourced "The earliest humans probably lived primarily on scavenging, not actual hunting." Let me see if I can find some anthro sources besides Cordain's diet book. Kortoso (talk) 21:45, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit verification needed 

message: Wouldn't most sources say some part of the Paleolithic?  Where are the sources for Mesolithic?Levalley (talk) 04:33, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mesolithic? 

message: Violence in hunter-gatherer societies is usually rare, caused by grudges and vendettas.
This seems pretty unbelievable. I wish that we could have some idea of how "rare" the statement means. Rarer than in Ancient Rome? Than 19th century Britain? Than the contemporary USA? 173.3.125.109 (talk) 02:35, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the problem is basically distinguishing two kinds of violence: violence within hunter-gather societies (may be rare, I don't know), and violence between tribes. The latter is ubiquitous and well-established, not just chronicled by a magazine.67.164.93.1 (talk) 08:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Anyway, it's unclear where the exact numbers come from: 2/3, 90%, etc. Also, it might be worth a separate section with extensive links, e.g. "Intergroup violence" or something.BenGunn1950 (talk) 15:43, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Violence 

message: Much of the information cited here is derived from modern or historically observed hunter-gatherer societies; it's dangerous to assume that prehistoric hunter-gather socities were all exactly the same. I suggest that this should be pointed out at some point. Kortoso (talk) 19:11, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Modern H-G's versus Prehistoric H-G's

message: http://books.google.com/books?id=o1VpdrbH3BUC&pg=PA358&dq=%22hunting+and+gathering%22+fishing&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hgfTUdOjLq-xygGkhYGoCQ&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ
::And maybe a reason early humans congregated at river?  FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 17:10, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fishing 

message: Some basic sources. I haven't figured out how to integrate this. Any clues?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2175417/The-real-Neanderthal-diet-Researchers-shed-new-light-early-mans-diet--turns-ate-greens-knew-use-plants-medicine.html
:The real Neanderthal diet: Researchers shed new light on early man's diet - and it turns out he ate his greens (and knew how to use plants as medicine)
*Neanderthals ate a range of cooked plant foods.
*Nuts, grasses, greens, yarrow, chamomile, cooked starchy foods
http://www.livescience.com/24875-meat-human-brain.html
:Meat, Cooked Foods Needed for Early Human Brain
*Meat must have been an integral, and not sporadic, element of the prehuman diet more than 1 million years ago.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/10/early-human-meat-eaters-vegetarian_n_1765521.html
:Early Human Meat-Eaters Thrived As Vegetarian 'Cavemen' Died Out, Researchers Say
*The ancestral Australopithecus consumed a wide range of foods, including, meat, leaves and fruits. This varied diet might have been flexible to shift with food availability in different seasons, ensuring that they almost always had something to eat. 
*Paranthropus, according to the elemental analysis, was largely a plant eater, which matches up with previous studies of tooth morphology and wear patterns
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120808132711.htm
:Early Human Ancestors Had More Variable Diet
*Same as above.
http://humanorigins.si.edu/human-characteristics/tools-food
:New Tools, New Foods
*"Early humans used stone tools to butcher animals by at least 2.6 million years ago."
*"Control of fire provided a new tool with several uses—including cooking, which led to a fundamental change in the early human diet. Cooking released nutrients in foods and made them easier to digest. It also rid some plants of poisons."
*"The earliest hearths are at least 790,000 years old. Some researchers think cooking may reach back more than 1.5 million years."
*"By at least 500,000 years ago, early humans were making wooden spears and using them to kill large animals.
*"Early humans butchered large animals as long as 2.6 million years ago. But they may have scavenged the kills from lions and other predators. The early humans who made this spear were hunting large animals, probably on a regular basis."
*"More than 70,000 years ago, humans in Central Africa used some of the earliest barbed points to spear huge prehistoric catfish weighing as much as 68 kg (150 lbs.), enough to feed 80 people for two days. Later, humans used harpoons to hunt large, fast marine mammals."
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/human-ancestor-diet-nuts.htm
:Early Humans Skipped Fruit, Went for Nuts 
*"Our human ancestors did not eat much fruit, but instead consumed a lot of root vegetables, nuts, insects and some meat, according to a new study."
*"Australopithecus anamensis, a hominid that lived in Africa 4.2 to 3.9 million years ago"..."ate nuts, root vegetables, insects -- such as termites -- and some meat." 
PS: Extensive bibliography:
http://people.ucalgary.ca/~helmer/biblio.html
Kortoso (talk) 22:37, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diet of Early Man 

message: "The source of male power among hunter-gatherers lies in their
control of a scarce, hard to acquire, but necessary nutrient - animal
protein. When men in a hunter-gatherer society return to camp with
game, they divide the meat in some customary way. Among the !Kung
San of Africa, certain parts of the animal are given to the owner of the
arrow that killed the beast, to the first hunter to sight the game, to the
one who threw the first spear, and to all men in the hunting party. After
the meat has been divided, each hunter distributes his share to his blood
relatives and his in-laws, who in turn share it with others. If an animal
is large enough, every member of the band will receive some meal.
Vegetable foods, in contrast, are not distributed beyond the immediate
household. Women give food to their children, to their husbands,
to other members of the household, and rarely, to the occasional visitor.
No one outside the family regularly eats any of the wild fruits
and vegetables that are gathered by the women.
The meat distributed by the men is a public gift. Its source is widely
known, and the donor expects a reciprocal gift when other men return
from a successful hunt. He gains honor as a supplier of a scarce item
and simultaneously obligates others to him.
These obligations constitute a form of power or control over others,
both men and women. The opinions of hunters play an important part
in decisions to move the village; good hunters attract the most desirable
women; people in other groups join camps with good hunters; and
hunters, because they already participate in an internal system of exchange,
control exchange with other groups for flint, salt, and steel axes.
The male monopoly on hunting unites men in a system of exchange
and gives them power; gathering vegetable food does not give women
equal power even among foragers who live in the tropics, where the
food collected by women provides more than half the hunter-gatherer
diet." http://web.mnstate.edu/robertsb/110/110/Society%20and%20Sex%20Roles.pdf
"These obligations constitute a form of power or control over others,
both men and women." This even extends to decisions voters make in the hunter-gatherer democratic process.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by NiRaPa (talk • contribs) 23:29, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article Overstates Degree of Egalitarianism and Gender Equality in Hunter-Gatherer Societies 

message: This article uses Sackett's thesis for it's only source on the question of how much time Hunter-gatheres needed to allocate to "labor". However, the guide Identifying reliable sources states that one should avoid using such theses, especially if they are not available from Proquest db or Library. AFAIK Sackett's work is not available via these methods, at least not for me. His thesis does seem to be cited in some books, but not to any very high degree. Perhaps there are other additional sources that could be used here? 88.112.30.150 (talk) 19:37, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The guide does not say it should not be used, it merely says that preference should be given to secondary sources and that the impact of the thesis in question should be considered, and you yourself acknowledge that it has been cited, but yes, if anybody knows a secondary source, that is preferable.Jergas (talk) 08:33, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ok to use Sackett's thesis as a source? 

message: Data from the year 2015 — Total years: 1,802,240 — MYA: Million Years Ago, YA: Years Ago
Hunting & Gathering: 1,800,000YA–100,000YA
Agriculture: 100,000YA–225YA (The Industrial Revolution: 1790)
Industrial-technological society: 225YA–the present
If the bar_width=378 then the rendered bar would display as 1px long for label3
For a better graph, maybe  &  should be employed.
P.S. I'm fairly sure reference #15 is a reference of a reference. Not good. —User 000 name 01:42, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Not just that, but where do they get the idea that one "period" ends and the next begins? If that were the case then how come there are still hunter gatherer societies extant?Jergas (talk) 08:23, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should a graph be created? 

message: This is well documented in several studies. Statistics on these are compiled in detail (among others) by Steven Pinker in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature. There is irrefutable amounts of evidence, that homicide and warfare were the most common causes of death (outside of infant mortality) in hunter-gatherer societies from the dawn of time to todays remaining hunter-gatherers. An influential ideological and romantic, but completely false, notion of the noble savage has obscured the reality of the matter and also negatively affected epistemological standards in some academic disciplines, like cultural anthropology. The article currently, to say the least, gives a very false picture of what we know about hunter-gatherers. They were not egalitarian pacifists and advocates of gender equality. The complete opposite is much closer to the known facts. 87.93.6.209 (talk) 05:33, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Not denying Pinker's statistics, though not supporting them either, but his ideology is as biased as that of those who love hunter gatherers, he has a clear arc in his writings of using his studies to champion "civilised" societies and progress. (It is telling, and an obvious form of bias, that in these studies only violence between humans is considered. If we consider biomass consumption as a form of violence, even accepting Pinkers statistics, the case for civilisation looks less encouraging.) Nevertheless, it is obviously naive to assume that any society is without violence. Also, both comments on this section address the violence aspect, but what about the patriarchal claim? I read a case study about the !Kung San before and after contact, which is quite recent (second half of the last century), and the descriptions totally support the notion of a much more egalitarian society terms of gender. What I know of the Inuit, the Athabascan (these two cases are, again, quite recent; the former colonised during the second half of the twentieth, the latter uncolonised as far as I know) and few others seems to point in the same direction. Jergas (talk) 08:08, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hunter-gatherer societies were extremely violent and patriarchal 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Hunter-gatherer. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/marlowe_pubs/how%20marginal%20are%20forager%20habitats.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers. —cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 08:22, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This is the first time in a long while I've read an article where I've gotten to say "Wow!" Or "that is so cool!" So many times as I learned new things while reading. Big thank YOUs to those of you whom have contributed your time and brainpower to making this such a good read!
I'm looking for people to help improve on the Simple English versions of articles like these - any interest? Drop me a talk page message! DrMel (talk) 18:32, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fascinating article! Thank you to all the editors to date 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Hunter-gatherer. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.andaman-video.org
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 08:58, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Hunter-gatherer. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20130513015838/http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/new/Journal_files/journal_02.pdf to http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/new/Journal_files/journal_02.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 23:12, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Hunter-gatherer. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110501094643/https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html?era=e003 to https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html?era=e003
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://andaman-video.org/
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 18:44, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Regarding this edit by : usually Pinker would be a decent source on this, but he has been repeatedly criticised for this statement specifically, because most of the data he based it on didn't actually come from hunter-gatherers. See e.g. . However it would be great to have a section on violence in hunter-gatherer societies, based on more reliable sources (Lee's paper would be an excellent start). – Joe (talk) 18:21, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pinker and violence 

message: the citation for "Longevity Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination by MICHAEL GURVEN HILLARD KAPLAN." says that it is on page 319. The article starts on page 321. The correct page with the figure for average life expectancy is needed to verify the 21-37 year longevity statistic. Sewblon 17:46, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Never mind. I found the page that verifies the claim and changed the citation accordingly. Sewblon 17:52, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Longevity among hunter-gatherers

message: "In West Eurasia, agriculture led to widespread genetic changes" is a very misleading assertion. It implies that the adoption of agriculture either caused "genetic changes" or was caused by "genetic changes. In fact the reference cited (a press release, not the original research) makes clear that genetic changes provided evidence of migration patterns and had no cause or effect relationship to the adoption of agriculture. This paragraph is not just misleading, but also gratuitous in the introduction, so I am going to be bold and delete it. However, please feel free to discuss.
:The agricultural revolution has caused genetic changes. A search on google gave some results: Agriculture Linked to DNA Changes in Ancient Europe, How Cheese, Wheat and Alcohol Shaped Human Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution and Human Diet and Humans Still Evolving as Our Brains Shrink 84.208.233.159 (talk) 01:08, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: "Widespread Genetic Changes

message: This article discusses how this article covers gender relations, and makes the case that gender equality is overstated. Thoughts? Bellowhead678 (talk) 08:30, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Social and economic structure 

message: Can we make a reference to the wiki article on Ethnobotany please? (Please refer to that page if unfamiliar. The study of food plants. I promise you it's worth a newbie visit..) I just want to mention the discipline. We dont have to go into depth, just a causal linked reference is sufficient.
1arkspur (talk) 14:19, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ethnobotany 

message: "Peoples who forage or hunt for most or all of their food and life"
Terrible writing! 190.145.171.162 (talk) 19:08, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  This makes sense?? 

message: In lead it says in Western Eurasia, hunter-gatherers were completely replaced by agricultural societies by around 4000; is this true? Were there no hunter gatherer groups at all after roughly this point? 104.232.119.107 (talk) 00:43, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Completely replaced?