Nb i like how in jail he started sounding like Noam Chomsky - "I have written him several letters asking for evidence of these claims, but he has not responded."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3927691&forum_id=2#35677350)

Concluding Note

List of Works Cited

Works Listed Alphabetically by Author’s Last Name

Works Without Named Author

Periodicals

1. As the Industrial Revolution proceeded, modern society created for itself a self-congratulatory myth, the myth of “progress”: From the time of our remote, ape-like ancestors, human history had been an unremitting march toward a better and brighter future, with everyone joyously welcoming each new technological advance: animal husbandry, agriculture, the wheel, the construction of cities, the invention of writing and of money, sailing ships, the compass, gunpowder, the printing press, the steam engine, and, at last, the crowning human achievement-modern industrial society! Prior to industrialization, nearly everyone was condemned to a miserable life of constant, backbreaking labor, malnutrition disease, and an early death. Aren’t we so lucky that we live in modern times and have lots of leisure and an array of technological conveniences to make our lives easy? Today I think there are relatively few thoughtful, honest and well-informed people who still believe in this myth. To lose one’s faith in “progress” one has only to look around and see the devastation of our environment, the spread of nuclear weapons, the excessive frequency of depression, anxiety disorders and psychological stress, the spiritual emptiness of a society that nourishes itself principally with television and computer games ... one could go on and on.

The myth of progress may not yet be dead, but it is dying. In its place another myth has been growing up, a myth that has been promoted especially by the anarchoprimitivists, though it is widespread in other quarters as well. According to this myth, prior to the advent of civilization no one ever had to work, people just plucked their food from the trees and popped it into their mouths and spent the rest of their time playing ring-around-the-rosie with the flower children. Men and women were equal, there was no disease, no competition, no racism, sexism or homophobia, people lived in harmony with the animals and all was love, sharing and cooperation.

Admittedly, the foregoing is a caricature of the anarchoprimitivists’ vision. Most of them — I hope — are not quite as far out of touch with reality as that. They nevertheless are pretty far out of touch with it, and it’s high time for someone to debunk their myth. Because that is the purpose of this article, I will say little here about the positive aspects of primitive societies. I do want to make clear, however, that one can truthfully say about such societies a great deal that is positive. In other words, the anarchoprimitivist myth is not one hundred percent myth; it does include some elements of reality.

2. Let’s begin with the concept of “primitive affluence”. It seems to be an article of faith among anarchoprimitivists that our hunting-and-gathering ancestors had to work an average of only two to three hours a day, or two to four hours a day ... the figures given vary, but the maximum stated never exceeds four hours a day, or 28 hours a week (average). [1] People who give these figures usually do not state precisely what they mean by “work”, but the reader is led to assume that it includes all of the activities necessary to meet the practical exigencies of the hunter-gatherers’ way of life.

Characteristically, the anarchoprimitivists usually fail to cite their source for this supposed information, but it seems to be derived mainly from two essays, one by Marshall Sahlins (The Original Afluent Society [2]), and the other by Bob Black (Primitive Afluence [3]). Sahlins claimed that for the Bushmen of the Dobe region of Southern Africa, the “work week was approximately 15 hours.” [4] For this information he relied on the studies of Richard B. Lee. I do not have direct access to Lee’s works, but I do have a copy of an article by Elizabeth Cashdan in which she summarizes Lee’s results much more carefully and completely than Sahlins does. [5] Cashdan flatly contradicts Sahlins: According to her, Lee found that the Bushmen he studied worked more than forty hours per week. [6]

In a part of his essay that many anarchoprimitivists have found convenient to overlook, Bob Black acknowledges the forty-hour work-week and explains the foregoing contradiction: Sahlins followed early work of Lee that considered only time spent in hunting and foraging. When all necessary work was considered, the work-week was more than doubled. [7] The work omitted from consideration by Sahlins and the anarchoprimitivists was probably the most disagreeable part of the Bushmen’s work-week, too, since it consisted largely of food-preparation and firewood collection. [8] I speak from extensive personal experience with wild foods: Preparing such foods for use is very often a pain in the neck. It is far more pleasant to gather nuts, dig roots, or hunt game than it is to crack nuts, clean roots, or skin and butcher game — or to collect firewood and cook over an open fire.

The anarchoprimitivists also err in assuming that Lee’s findings can be applied to hunter-gatherers generally. It’s not even clear that those findings are applicable on a year-round basis to the Bushmen studied by Lee. Cashdan cites evidence that Lee’s research may have been done at the time of year when his Bushmen worked least. [9] She also mentions two other hunting-and-gathering peoples who have been shown quantitatively to spend far more time in hunting and foraging than Lee’s Bushmen did, [10] and she points out that Lee may have seriously underestimated women’s working time because he failed to include time spent on childcare. [11]

I’m not familiar with any other exact quantitative studies of hunter gatherers’ working time, but it is certain that at least some additional hunter-gatherers worked a great deal more than the forty-hour week of Lee’s Bushmen. Gontran de Poncins stated that the Eskimos with whom he lived about 1939–1940 had “no significant degree of leisure”, and that they “toiled and moiled fifteen hours a day merely in order to get food and stay alive.” [12] He probably did not mean that they worked fifteen hours every day; but it’s clear from his account that his Eskimos worked plenty hard.

Among the Mbuti pygmies principally studied by Paul Schebesta, on days when the women did not fetch a supply of fruits and vegetables from the gardens of their village-dwelling neighbors, their gathering excursions in the forest lasted between five and six hours. Apart from their food-gathering, the women had considerable additional work to do. Each afternoon, for example, a woman had to go again into the forest and come back to camp panting and bowed under a huge load of firewood. The women worked far more than the men, but it seems clear from Schebesta’s account that the men nevertheless worked much more than the three or four hours a day claimed by the anarchoprimitivists. [13] Colin Turnbull studied Mbuti pygmies who hunted with nets. Due to the advantage conferred by the nets, these Mbuti only needed to hunt about twenty hours per week. But for them: “Netmaking is virtually a full-time occupation... in which both men and women indulge whenever they have both the spare time and the inclination.” [14] The Siriono, who lived in a tropical forest in Bolivia, were not pure hunter-gatherers, since they did plant crops to a limited extent at certain times of the year. But they lived mostly by hunting and gathering. [15] According to the anthropologist Holmberg, Siriono men hunted, on average, every other day. [16] They started at daybreak and returned to camp typically between four and six o’clock in the afternoon. [17] This makes on average at least eleven hours of hunting, and at three and a half days a week it comes to 38 hours of hunting per week, at the least. Since the men also did a significant amount of work on days when they did not hunt, [18] their work-week, averaged over the year, had to be far more than 40 hours. And but little of this was agricultural work. [19] Actually, Holmberg estimated that the Siriono spent about half their waking time in hunting and foraging, [20] which would mean roughly 56 hours a week in these activities alone. With other work included, the work-week would have had to be far more than 60 hours. The Siriono woman “enjoys even less respite from labor than her husband”, and “the obligation of bringing her children to maturity leaves little time for rest.” [21] Holmberg’s book contains many other indications of how hard the Siriono had to work. [22]

In The Original Affluent Society, Sahlins gives, in addition to Lee’s Bushmen, other examples of hunting-and-gathering peoples who supposedly worked little, but in most of these cases he either offers no quantitative estimate of working time, or he offers an estimate only of time spent in hunting and gathering. If Lee’s Bushmen can be taken as a guide, this would be well under half the total working time. [23] However, for two groups of Australian Aborigines Sahlins does give quantitative estimates of time spent in “hunting, plant collecting, preparing foods and repairing weapons.” In the first group the average weekly time each worker spent in these activities was about 26 1/2 hours; in the second group about 36 hours. But this does not include all work; it says nothing, for example, about time spent on child care, in collecting firewood, in moving camp, or in making and repairing implements other than weapons. If all necessary work were counted, the work-week of the second group would surely be over 40 hours. The work-week of the first group did not represent that of a normal hunting-and-gathering band, since the first group had no children to feed. Sahlins himself, moreover, questions the validity of inferences drawn from these data. [24] Of course, even if occasional examples could be found of hunting-and-gathering peoples whose total working time was as little as three hours a day, that would matter little for present purposes, since we are concerned here not with exceptional cases but with the typical working time of hunter-gatherers. Whatever hunter-gatherers’ working hours may have been, much of their work was physically very strenuous. Siriono men typically covered about fifteen miles a day on their hunting excursions, and they sometimes covered as much as forty miles. [25] Covering such a distance in trackless wilderness [26] requires far more effort than covering the same distance over a road or a groomed trail.

“In walking and running through swamp and jungle the naked hunter is exposed to thorns, to spines, and to insect pests... While the food quest is differentially rewarding because food for survival is always eventually obtained, it is also always punishing because of the fatigue and pain inevitably associated with hunting, fishing and collecting food.” [27] “Men often dissipate their anger toward other men by hunting. ... Even if they do not kill anything they return home too to be angry.” [28]

Even picking wild fruit could be dangerous[29] and could take considerable work[30] for the Siriono. [31] The Siriono made little use of wild roots, [32] but it is well known that many hunter-gatherers relied heavily on roots for food. Usually, gathering edible roots in the wilderness is not like pulling carrots out of the soft, cultivated soil of a garden. More typically the ground is hard, or covered with tough sod that you have to hack through in order to get at the roots. I wish I could take certain anarchoprimitivists out in the mountains, show them where the edible roots grow, and invite them to get their dinner by digging for it. By the time they had enough yampa roots or camas bulbs for a halfway square meal, their blistered hands would disabuse them of any idea that primitives didn’t have to work for a living . Hunter gatherers’, work was often monotonous, too. This is true for example of root-digging when the roots are small, as is the case with many of the roots that were used by the Indians of western North America, such as bitterroot and the aforementioned yampa and camas. Picking berries is monotonous if you spend many hours at it.

Or try tanning a deerskin. A raw, dry deerskin is stiff, like cardboard, and if you bend it, it will crack, just as cardboard will.

In order to become usable as clothing or blankets, animal skins must be tanned. Assuming you want to leave the hair on the skin, as for winter clothing, there are only three indispensable steps to tanning a deerskin. First, you must carefully remove every bit of flesh from the skin. Fat in particular must be removed with scrupulous care, because any bit of fat left on the skin will rot it. Next, the skin must be softened. Finally, it must be smoked. If not smoked it will dry stiff and hard after a wetting and will have to be softened all over again. By far the most time-consuming step is the softening. It takes many hours of kneading the skin in your hands, or drawing it back and forth over the head of a spike driven into a block of wood, and the work is very monotonous indeed. I speak from personal experience. An argument sometimes offered is that hunter-gatherers who survived into recent times lived in tough environments, since all of the more hospitable lands had been taken over by agricultural peoples. Supposedly, prehistoric hunter-gatherers who occupied fertile country must have worked far less than recent hunter-gatherers living in deserts or other unproductive environments. [33] This may be true, but the argument is speculative, and I’m skeptical of it.

I’m a bit rusty now, but I used to have considerable familiarity with the edible wild plants of the eastern United States, which is one of the most fertile regions in the world, and I would be surprised if one could live and raise a family there by hunting and gathering with less than a forty-hour work-week. The region contains a wide variety of edible plants, but living off them would not be as easy as you might think. Take nuts, for example. Black walnuts, white walnuts (butternuts), and hickory nuts are extremely nutritious and often abundant. The Indians used to collect huge piles of them. [34] If you found a few good trees in October, you could probably gather enough nuts in an hour or less to feed yourself for a whole day. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Yes, it does sound great — if you’ve never tried to crack a black walnut. Maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger could crack a black walnut with an ordinary nutcracker — if the nutcracker didn’t break first — but a person of average physique couldn’t do it. You have to whack the nut with a hammer; and the inside of the nut is divided up by partitions that are as thick and hard as the outer shell, so you have to break the nut into several fragments and then tediously pick out the bits of meat. The process is time-consuming. In order to get enough food for a day, you might have to spend most of the day just cracking nuts and picking out the bits of meat. Wild white walnuts (not to be confused with the domesticated English walnuts that you buy in the store) are much like black ones. Hickory nuts are not as difficult to cack, but they still have the hard internal partitions and they are usually much smaller than black walnuts. The Indians got around these problems by putting the nuts into a mortar and pounding them into tiny bits, shells, meats, and all. Then they would boil the mixture and put it aside to cool. The fragments of shell would settle to the bottom of the pot while the pulverized meats would settle in a layer above the shells; thus the meats could be separated from the shells. [35] This was certainly more efficient than cracking the nuts individually, but as you can see it still required considerable work. The Indians of the eastern U.S. utilized other wild foods that required more-or-less laborious preparation to make them edible. [36] It is hardly likely that they would have used such foods if foods that were more easily prepared had been readily available in sufficient quantity.

Euell Gibbons, an expert on edible wild plants, reported an episode of living off the country in the eastern United States. [37] It’s difficult to say what his experience tells us about primitive people’s working hours, since he did not give a quantitative accounting of the time he spent in foraging. In any case, he and his partners only foraged for food and processed it; they did not have to tan skins or make their own clothing, tools, utensils, or shelter; they had no children to feed; and they supplemented their diet with high-calorie store-bought foods: cooking-oil, sugar, and flour. On at least one occasion they used an automobile for transportation.

But let’s assume for the sake of argument that in the fertile regions of the world wild foods were once so abundant that it was possible to live off the country year round with an average of only, say, three hours of work per day. With such abundant resources it would not be necessary for hunter-gatherers to travel in search of food. One would expect them to become sedentary, and in that case they would be able to accumulate wealth and form well-developed social hierarchies. Hence they would lose at least some of the qualities that anarchoprimitivists value in nomadic hunter-gatherers. Even the anarchoprimitivists do not deny that the Indians of the Northwest Coast of North America were sedentary hunter-gatherers who accumulated wealth and had well-developed social hierarchies. [38] The evidence suggests the existence of similar hunting-and-gathering societies elsewhere where the abundance of natural resources permitted it, for example, along the major rivers of Europe. [39] Thus the anarchoprimitivists are caught in a bind: Where natural resources were abundant enough to minimize work, they also maximized the likelihood of the social hierarchies that anarchoprimitivists abhor.

However, I have not been trying to prove that primitive man was less fortunate in his working life than modern man is. In my opinion the contrary was true. Probably at least some nomadic hunter-gatherers had more leisure time than modern employed Americans do. It’s true that the roughly forty-hour work-week of Richard Lee’s Bushmen was about equal to the standard American work-week. But modern Americans are burdened with many demands on their time outside their hours of employment. I myself, when working at a forty-hour job, have generally felt busy: I’ve had to shop for groceries, go to the bank, do the laundry, fill out income-tax forms, take the car in for maintenance, get a haircut, go to the dentist ...there was always something that needed to be done. Many of the people I now correspond with likewise complain of being busy. In contrast, the male Bushman’s time was genuinely his own outside of his working hours; he could spend his non-working time as he pleased. Bushman women of reproductive age may have had much less leisure time because, like women of all societies, they were burdened with the care of small children.

But leisure is a modern concept, and the emphasis that anarchoprimitivists put on it is evidence of their servitude to the values of the civilization that they claim to reject. The amount of time expended in work is not what matters. Many authors have discussed what is wrong with work in modern society, and I see no reason to go over that ground again. What does matter is that, apart from monotony, what is wrong with work in modern society is not wrong with the work of nomadic hunter-gatherers. The hunter-gatherer’s work is challenging, both in terms of physical effort and in terms of the level of skill required. [40] The hunter-gatherer’s work is purposeful, and its purpose is not abstract, remote, or artificial but concrete, very real, and directly important to the worker: He works to satisfy the physical needs of himself, his family, and other people to whom he is personally close. Above all, the nomadic hunter-gatherer is a free worker: He is not exploited, he is subservient to no boss, no one gives him orders; [41] he designs is own work-day, if not as an individual then as a member of a group that is small enough so that every individual can participate meaningfully in the decisions that are made [42]. Modern jobs tend to be psychologically stressful, but there are reasons to believe that primitive people’s work typically involved little psychological stress. [43] Hunter-gatherers’ work often monotonous, but it is my view that monotony generally causes primitive people relatively little discomfort. Boredom, I think, is largely a civilized phenomenon and is a product of psychological stresses that are characteristic of civilized life. This admittedly is a matter of personal opinion, I can ‘t prove it, and a discussion of it would take us beyond the scope of this article. Here I will only say that my opinion is based largely on my own experience of living outside the technoindustrial system. How hunter-gatherers felt about their own work is difficult to say, since anthropologists and others who visited primitive peoples (at least those whose reports I’ve read) usually do not seem to have asked such questions. But the following from Holmberg’s worth noting: “They are relatively apathetic to work (taba taba), which includes such distasteful tasks as housebuilding, gathering firewood, clearing, planting, and tilling of fields. In quite a different class, however, are such pleasant occupations as hunting (gwata gwata) and collecting (deka deka, ‘to look for’), which are regarded more as diversions than as work.” [44]

This despite the fact that, as we saw earlier, the Siriono’s hunting and collecting activities were exceedingly time-consuming, fatiguing, strenuous, and physically demanding.

3. Another element of the anarchoprimitivist myth is the belief that hunter-gatherers, at least the nomadic ones, had gender equality. John Zerzan, for example, has asserted this in Future Primitive [45] and elsewhere. [46] Probably some hunter-gatherer societies did have full gender equality, though I don ‘t know of a single unarguable example. I do know of hunting-and-gathering cultures that had a relatively high degree of gender equality but fell short of full equality. In other nomadic hunter-gatherer societies male dominance was unmistakable, and in some such societies it reached the level of out-and-out brutality toward women. Probably the most touted example of gender equality among hunter-gatherers is that of Richard Lee’s Bushmen, whom we mentioned earlier in our discussion of the hunter-gatherer’s working life. It should be noted at the outset that it would be very risky to assume that Lee’s conclusions concerning the Dobe Bushmen could be applied to the Bushmen of the Kalahari region generally. Different groups of Bushmen differed culturally; [47] they didn’t even all speak the same language. [48] At any rate, relying largely on Richard Lee’s studies, Nancy Bonvillain states that among the Dobe Bushmen (whom she calls “Ju/’hoansi”), “social norms clearly support the notion of equality of women and men,” [49] and that their “society overtly validates equality of women and men.” [50] So the Dobe Bushmen had gender equality, right?

Well, maybe not. Look at some of the facts that Bonvillain herself offers in the same book: “Most leaders and camp spokespersons are men. Although women and men participate in group discussions and decision making, ...men’s talk in discussions involving both genders amounts to about two-thirds of the total.” [51]

Much worse are the forced marriages of girls in their early teens to men much older than themselves. [52] It’s true that practices that seem cruel to us may not be experienced as cruel by people of other cultures on whom they are imposed. But Bonvillain quotes words of a Bushman woman that show that at least some girls did experience their forced marriages as cruel: “I cried and cried”; [53] “I ran away again and again. A part of my heart kept thinking: ‘how come I’m a child and have taken a husband?’” [54] Moreover, “because seniority confers prestige..., the greater age, experience, and maturity of husbands may make wives socially, if not personally, subordinate.” [55] Thus, while the Dobe Bushmen no doubt had some of the elements of gender equality, one would have to stretch a point pretty far to claim that they had full gender equality. On the basis of his personal experience, Colin Turnbull stated that among the Mbuti pygmies of Africa, a “woman is in no way the social inferior of a man,” [56] and that “the woman is not discriminated against. [57] That sounds like gender equality ...until you look at the concrete facts that Turnbull himself offers in the very same books: “ A certain amount of wife-beating is considered good, and the wife is expected to fight back; [58] “He said that he was very content with his wife, and he had not found it necessary to beat her at all often,” [59]; Man throws wife to the ground and slaps her; [60] Husband beats wife; [61] Man beats sister; [62] Kenge beats his sister; [63] “Perhaps he should have beaten her harder, Tungana [an old man] said, for some girls like being beaten,” [64]; “Amabosu countered by smacking her firmly across the face. Normally Ekianga would have approved of such manly assertion of authority over a disloyal wife.” [65] Turnbull mentions two instances of men giving orders to their wives. [66] I have not found any instance in Turnbull’ s books of wives giving orders to their husbands. Pipestem obtained by wife is referred to as husband’s property. [67] “[A boy] has to have [a girl’s] permission before intercourse can take place. The men say that once they lie down with a girl, however, if they want her they take her by surprise, when petting her, and force her to their will.” [68] Nowadays we would call that “date rape”, and the young man involved would risk a long prison sentence.

For the sake of balance, let’s note that Turnbull found among the Mbuti no instance of what we would call “street rape” as opposed to “date rape”; [69] husbands were not supposed to hit their wives on the head or in the face; [70] and in at least one case in which a man took to beating his wife too frequently and severly, his campmates eventually found means to end the abuse without the use of force and without overt interference. [71] It should also be borne in mind that the significance of a beating depends on the cultural context. In our society it is a great humiliation to be struck by another person, especially by one who is bigger and stronger than oneself. But since blows were commonplace among the Mbuti, [72] it is probably safe to assume that they were not felt as particularly humiliating . Nevertheless it is quite clear that some degree of male dominance was present among the Mbuti. Among the Siriono: “A woman is subservient to her husband”; [73] “The extended family is generally dominated by the oldest active male”; [74] “[Women] are dominated by the men”; [75] “If a man is out in the forest alone with a woman, ...he may throw her to the ground roughly and take his prize [sex] without so much as saying a word”; [76] Parents definitely preferred to have male children; [77] “Although the title ererekwa is reserved by the men for a chief, it one asks a woman: ‘who is your ererekwa?’ she will invariably reply: ‘my husband’.” [78] On the other hand, the Siriono never beat their wives, [79] and “Women enjoy about the same privileges as men. They get as much or more food to eat, and they enjoy the same sexual freedom.” [80] According to Bonvillain, Eskimo men “dominate their wives and daughters. Men’s dominance is not total, however......” [81] She describes gender relations among the Eskimos in some detail, [82] which may or may not be slanted to reflect her feminist ideology.

Among the Eskimos with whom Gontran de Poncins lived, husbands clearly held overt authority over their wives [83] and sometimes beat them. [84] Yet, through their talent for persuasion, wives had great power over their husbands: “It might seem ... that the native woman lived altogether in a state of abject inferiority to the male Eskimo, but this is not the case. What she loses in authority, as compared to the white woman, she makes up, by superior cunning, in many other ways. Native women are very shrewd, and they almost never fail to get what they want”; “ It was a perpetual joy to watch this comedy, this almost wordless struggle in which the wife... inevitably got the better of the husband. There does not exist an Eskimo woman untrained in the art of wheedling, not one unable to repeat with tireless and yet insinuating insistence the mention of what she wants, until the husband, worn down by her persistence, gives way”; “ Women were behind everything in this Eskimo world”; [85] “It is not necessary to be a feminist to ask: ‘but what of the status of Eskimo women?’ Their status suits them well enough; and I have indicated here and there in these pages that they are not only the mistresses of their households but also, in most Eskimo families, the shrewd prompters of their husbands’ decisions.” [86] However, Poncins may have overstated the extent of Eskimo women’s power, since it was not sufficient to enable them to avoid unwanted sex: Wife-lending among these Eskimos was determined by the men, and the wives had to accept being lent whether they liked it or not. [87] At least in some cases, apparently, the women resented this rather strongly. [88] The Australian Aborigines’ treatment of their women was nothing short of abominable. Women had almost no power to choose their own husbands. [89] They are described as having been “owned” by the men, who chose their husbands for them. [90] Young women were often forced to marry old men, and then they had to work to provide their aged husbands with the necessities of life. [91] Not surprisingly, a young woman frequently resisted a forced marriage by running away. She was then beaten severely with a club and returned to her husband. If she persisted in running away, she might even have a spear driven into her thigh. [92] A woman trapped in a distasteful marriage might enjoy the consolation of having a lover on the side, but, while this was “semitolerated”, it could lead to violence. [93] A woman might even go to the length of eloping with her lover. However: “They would be followed, and if caught, as a punishment the girl became, for the time being, the common property of her pursuers. The couple were then brought back to the camp where, if they were of the right totem division to marry, the man would have to stand up to a trial by having spears thrown at him by the husband and his relations... and the girl was given beating by her relatives. If [the couple] were not of the right totem division to marry, they would both be speared when found, as their sin was unforgivable.” [94]

Although there was “real harmony and mutual understanding in most Aboriginal families”, wife-beating was practiced. [95] According to A. P. Elkin, under some circumstances-for example, on certain ceremonial occasions-women had to submit to compulsory sex, which “implies that woman is but an object to be used in certain socially established ways.” [96] The women, says Elkin, “may often not object,” [97] but: “They sometimes live in terror of the use which is made of them at some ceremonial times.” [98] Of course, no claim is made here that all of the foregoing conditions prevailed in all parts of aboriginal Australia. Culture was not uniform across the continent. Coon says that the Australians were nomadic, but he also states that in parts of southeastern Australia, namely “The better-watered parts, particularly Victoria and the Murray River country”, the aborigines were “relatively sedentary.” [99] According to Massola, in the drier parts of southeastern Australia the aborigines had to cover long distances between fast-drying wells in times of drought. [100] This corresponds with the high degree of nomadism described for other arid parts of Australia, where “Aboigines moved from waterhole to waterhole along well-defined tracks in small family groups. The whole camp moved and rarely established bases.” [101] In stating that in “the better-watered parts” the aborigines were “relatively sedentary”, Coon doubtless means that “in fertile regions there were well-established camping areas, close to water, where people always camped at certain times of year. Camps were bases from which people made forays into the surrounding bush for food, returning in the late afternoon or spending a few days away.” [102] Coon says that in part of the well-watered Murray River country each territorial clan had a headman and a council consisting mainly of men, though in a few cases women were also elected to the council; whereas, farther to the north and west, there was little formal leadership and “control over the women and younger males was shared between” the men aged from thirty to fifty. [103] Thus Australian women had very little overt political power. Yet, as among Poncins’s Eskimos, certainly in our society, and probably in every society, the women often exercised great influence their menfolk [104].

The Tasmanians also were nomadic hunter-gatherers (though some were “relatively sedentary”), [105] and it’s not clear that they treated women any better than the Australians did. “In one account we are told that a band living near Hobart Town before the colonists’ arrival was raided by neighbors who killed the men who tried to stop them and took away their women. And there are other accounts of individual cases of marriage by capture. Sometimes when a man from a neighboring band had the right to marry a girl, but neither she nor her parents liked him, it is said that they killed the girl rather than give her up”; [106] “The other tribes considered [a certain tribe] cowards, and raided them to steal their women”; [107] “Woorrady raped and killed a sister-in-law.” [108]

Here I should make clear that it is not my intention to argue against gender equality. I myself am enough a product of modern industrial society to feel that women and men should have equal status. My purpose at this point is simply to exhibit the facts concerning the relations between the sexes in hunting-and-gathering societies.

4. There is a problem involved in any attempt to draw conclusions about original, “pure” hunter-gatherer cultures from reported observations of living hunter-gatherer societies. If we have a description of a primitive culture, it ordinarily will have been written by some civilized person. If the description is detailed, then, by the time it was written, the primitive people described very likely will have had significant contact, direct or indirect, with civilization, and such contact can bring about dramatic changes in a primitive culture. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, in the epilogue to the 1989 edition of her book The Harmless People, [109] describes the catastrophically destructive effect of civilization on the Bushmen she knew. Harold B. Barclay has pointed out that (for example) modern Eskimos “are quite pleased with their high powered rifles, motorboats and so forth.” [110] “So forth” would include snowmobiles. Hence, Barclay says, “hunter gatherers today are in no sense identical to hunter gatherers of a thousand or ten thousand year ago.” [111] According to Cashdan, writing in 1989, “all hunter-gatherers in the world today are in contact, directly or indirectly, with the world economy. This fact should caution us against viewing today’s hunter-gatherers as ‘snapshots’ of the past.” [112] Of course, in seeking evidence of the way human beings lived prior to the advent of civilization, no one in his right mind would turn to peoples who used motorboats, snowmobiles, and high-powered rifles, [113] or to peoples whose cultures had obviously been grossly disrupted by the intrusion of civilized societies. We look for accounts of hunter-gatherers written (at least) several decades ago and at a time when — as far as we can tell — their cultures had not been seriously altered by contact with civilization. But it’s not always easy to tell whether contact with civilization has altered a primitive culture. Coon is clearly aware of this problem, and in his excellent survey of hunter-gatherer cultures he gives the following example of how seemingly slight interference from civilization can have a dramatic effect on a primitive culture: When “well-meaning missionaries handed out steel axes” to the Yir Yoront aborigines of Australia, the “Yir Yoront world almost came to an end. The men lost their authority over their wives, a generation gap appeared,” and a system of trade stretching over hundreds of miles was disrupted. [114] Richard Lee’s Bushmen are perhaps the favorite example for anarchoprimitivists and leftish anthropologists who want to present a politically-correct image of hunter-gatherers, and Lee’s Bushmen were among the least “pure” of the hunter-gatherers we’ve mentioned here. They may not even have always been hunter gatherers. [115] In any case they had probably been trading with agricultural and pastoral peoples for a couple of thousand years. [116] The Kung Bushmen whom Mrs. Thomas knew had metal acquired through trade, [117] and the same apparently was true of Lee’s Bushmen. [118] Mrs. Thomas writes: “In the ten to twenty years after we started our work, many academics [this presumably includes Richard Lee] developed an enormous interest in the Bushmen. Many of them went to Botswana to visit groups of Kung Bushmen, and for a time in Botswana, the anthropologists/Bushmen ratio seemed almost one to one.” [119] Obviously, the presence of so many anthropologists may itself have affected the behavior of the Bushmen. In the 1950’s, [120] when Turnbull studied them, still more in the 1920’s and 1930’s [121] when Schebesta studied them, the Mbuti apparently had not had much direct contact with civilization, so that Schebesta went so far as to claim that “the Mbuti not only racially, but also psychologically and in terms of cultural history, are a primeval phenomenon (Urphanomen) among the races and peoples of the Earth.” [122] Yet the Mbuti had already begun to be somewhat affected by civilization a few years before Schebesta’s first visit to them. [123] And for centuries before that, the Mbuti had lived in close contact (which included extensive trade relations) with non-civilized, village-dwelling cultivators of crops. [124] As Schebesta wrote, “The belief that the Mbuti have been hermetically sealed off from the outer world has been laid to rest once and for all.” [125] Turnbull goes farther: “’This is in no way to say that the [social] structure to be found among the Mbuti is representative of an original pygmy hunting and gathering structure; in fact probably far from it, for the repercussions of the invasion of the forest by the village cultivators have been enormous.” [126]

Though some of Gontran de Poncins’s Eskimos were “purer” than others, [127] it appears that all of them had at least some trade goods from the whites. If any reader cares to take the trouble to track down the earliest primary sources — perhaps some of Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s work — so as to approach as closely as possible to an original and “pure” Eskimo culture, I would be interested to hear of his or her findings. But it is possible that even long before European contact the Eskimos’ culture may have been affected by something that they received from a non-hunting society; for their sled dogs may not have originated with hunter-gatherers. [128]

With the Siriono we come closer to purity than we do with the Bushmen, the Mbuti, or Poncins’s Eskimos. The Siriono did not even have dogs, [129] and even though they cultivated crops to a limited extent anthropologists regarded their culture as Paleolithic (Old Stone Age). [130] Some of the Siriono studied by Holmberg had had little or no contact with whites prior to Holmberg’s arrival [131] and, among those Siriono, European tools were rarely encountered [132] until Holmberg himself introduced them. [133] Instead, the Siriono made their tools of naturally-occurring local materials.[134] The Siriono moreover were so primitive that they could not count beyond three. [135] Nevertheless, Siriono culture might have been affected by contact with more “advanced” societies, since Holmberg thought the Siriono were “probably a remnant of an ancient population that was exterminated, absorbed, or engulfed by more civilized invaders.” [136] Lauriston Sharp even suggested that the Siriono might have “degenerated” [sic] “from a more advanced technical condition,” though Holmberg rejected this view and Sharp himself considered it “irrelevant.” [137] In addition, the Siriono might have been affected indirectly by European civilization, since probably at least some of the diseases from which they suffered, e.g., malaria, had been brought to the Americas by Europeans. [138] It’s not surprising that most of the hunter-gatherers I’ve mentioned here — like those cited by the anarchoprimitivists and the politically-correct anthropologists — were affected by direct or indirect contact with agricultural or pastoral peoples even long before their first contact with Europeans, because outside of Australia, Tasmania, and the far west and north of North America “populations which remained faithful to the old hunter-gatherer way of live were small and scattered.” [139] Consequently, with the possible exception of some who lived on small islands, they necessarily had some form of contact with surrounding non-hunter-gatherer populations.

Probably the Australian Aborigines and the Tasmanians were the hunter-gatherers who were purest when Europeans first found them. Australia was the only continent that was inhabited exclusively by hunter-gatherers until the white man’s arrival, and Tasmania, an island just to the south of Australia, was even more isolated. But Tasmania may have been visited by Polynesians, and in the north of Australia there was some limited contact with people from Indonesia and New Guinea prior to the arrival of Europeans. [140] Still earlier contact with outsiders, who mayor may not have been hunter-gatherers, is probable. [141] Thus we have no conclusive proof that hunter-gatherer cultures that survived into recent times had not been seriously affected by contact with non-hunter-gatherers by the time the first descriptions of them were written. Consequently, more or less uncertainty is involved in using reports on recent hunter-gatherer societies to draw conclusions about gender relations among prehistoric hunter-gatherers. And any conclusions drawn from archaeological remains about the social relationships between men and women can only be highly speculative. So, if you like, you can reject all evidence from descriptions of recent hunter-gatherer cultures, and in that case we know almost nothing about the gender relations of prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Or (with the necessary reservations) you can accept the evidence from recent hunter-gatherer societies, and in that case the evidence clearly points to a significant degree of male dominance. In either case, there is no evidence to support the anarchoprimitivists’ belief that all or most human societies had full gender equality prior to the advent of agriculture and animal husbandry some ten thousand years ago.

5. Our review of the facts concerning gender relations in recent hunter-gatherers societies helps to reveal something of the psychology of the anarchoprimitivists and that of their cousins, the politically-correct anthropologists.

The anarchoprimitivists, and many politically-correct anthropologists, cite any evidence they can find that hunter-gatherers had gender equality, while systematically ignoring the abundant evidence of gender inequality found in eyewitness reports of hunter-gatherer cultures. For example, the anthropologist Haviland, in his textbook Cultural Anthropology, states that an “important characteristic of the food-foraging [hunther-gatherer] society is its egalitarianism.” [142] He acknowledges that the two sexes may have had different status in such societies, but claims that “status differences by themselves do not imply any necessary inequality”, and that in “traditional food-foraging societies, nothing necessitated special deference of women to men.” [143] If you check the pages listed in Haviland’s index for the entries “Bushmen”, “Ju/’hoansi” (another name for the Dobe Bushmen), “Eskimo”, “Inuit” (another name for Eskimos), “Mbuti”, “Tasma-nian”, “Australian”, and “Aborigine” (the Siriono are not listed in the index), you will find no mention of wife-beating, forced marriage, forced sexual intercourse, or any of the other indications of male dominance that I’ve cited above. Haviland does not deny that these things occurred. He does not claim, for example, that Turnbull merely invented his stories of wife-beating among the Mbuti, or that such-and-such evidence shows that Australian Aboriginal women were not subjected to involuntary sex before the arrival of Europeans. He simply ignores these issues, as if they didn’t exist. And it’s not that Haviland isn’t aware of the issues. For example, he quotes from A. P. Elkin’s book, The Australian Aborigines, [144] an indication that he not only is familiar with the book but considers it a reliable source of information. Yet Elkin’s book, which I cited earlier, provides ample evidence of Australian Aboriginal men’s tyranny over their women [145] — evidence that Haviland fails to mention. It’s pretty clear what is going on: Equality of the sexes is a fundamental tenet of the mainstream ideology of modern society. As highly-socialized members of that society, politically-correct anthropologists believe in the principle of gender equality with something akin to religious conviction, and they feel a need to give us little moral lessons by holding up for our admiration examples of the gender equality that supposedly prevailed when the human race was in a pristine and unspoiled state. This portrayal of primitive cultures is driven by the anthropologists’ own need to reaffirm their faith, and has nothing to do with an honest search for truth.

To take another example, I’ve written to John Zerzan four times inviting him to back up his claims about gender equality among hunter-gatherers. [146] The answers he gave me were vague and evasive. [147] I would gladly publish here Zerzan’s letters to me on this subject so that the reader could judge them for himself. However, I wrote to Zerzan requesting permission to publish his letters, and he denied me that permission. [148] With his letters he sent me photocopies of pages from a few books that contained vague, general statements ostensibly supporting his claims about gender equality; for instance, this statement by John E Pfeiffer, who is neither a specialist nor an eyewitness of primitive behavior, but a popularizer: “For reasons unknown sexism arrived with settling and farming, with the emergence of complex society.” [149]

Zerzan also sent me a photocopy of a page from Bonvillain’s book containing the following statement: “In foraging band [hunter-gatherer] societies, the potential for gender equality is perhaps the greatest...” [150] But Zerzan did not include copies of the pages on which Bonvillain said that male dominance was evident in some hunter-gatherer societies such as that of the Eskimos, or the pages on which she gave information that cast gave doubt on her own claim of gender equality among the Dobe Bushmen, as I discussed above.

Zerzan himself acknowledged that the material he sent me was “obviously not definitive”, though he asserted that it was “completely representative in general.” [151] When I pressed him for further backing for his claims, [152] he sent me a copy of his essay Future Primitive, from the book of the same name. [153] In this essay he cites most of his sources by giving only the authors’ last names and their publications’ dates; the reader presumably is expected to look up further information in a table of references provided elsewhere in the book. Since Zerzan did not send me a copy of the table of references, I had no way of checking his sources. I pointed this out to him, [154] but he still failed to send me a copy of his table of references. In any case, there is good reason to suspect that Zerzan was uncritical in selecting his sources. For example, he quotes the late Laurens van der Post; [155] but in his book Teller of Many Tales, J. D. F. Jones, a former admirer of Laurens van der Post, has exposed the latter as a liar and a fraud.

Even if taken at face value, the information in Future Primitive gives us nothing solid on the subject of gender relations. Vague, general statements are of little use. As I pointed out earlier; Bonvillain and Turnbull made general assertions about gender equality among the Bushmen and the Mbuti respectively, and those assertions were contradicted by concrete facts that Bonvillain and Turnbull themselves reported in the same books. On subjects other than gender equality, some of the statements in Future Primitive are demonstrably false. To take a couple of examples:

Zerzan, relying on one “De Vries”, claims that among hunter-gatherers childbirth is ’without difficulty of pain.” [156] Oh, really? Here’s Mrs. Thomas, writing from her personal experience among the Bushmen: “Bushmen women give birth alone ... unless a girl is bearing her first child, in which case her mother may help her, or unless the birth is extremely difficult, in which case a woman may ask the help of her mother or another woman. A woman in labor may clench her teeth, may let her tears come or bite her hands until blood flows, but she may never cry out to show her agony.” [157]

Since natural selection eliminates the weak and the defective among hunter-gatherers and since primitive women’s work keeps them in good physical condition, it is probably true that childbirth, on average, was not as difficult among hunter-gatherers as it is for modern women. For Mbuti women, according to Schebesta, delivery was usually easy (though this does not imply that it was free of pain). On the other hand, breech deliveries were much feared and usually ended fatally both for the mother and the for child. [158]

Relying on one “Duffy”, Zerzan claims that the Mbuti “look on any form of violence between one person and another with great abhorrence and distaste, and never represent it in their dancing or their playacting.” [159] But Hutereau and Turnbull independently have provided eyewitness accounts according to which the Mbuti did indeed playact violence between human beings. [160] More important, there was plenty of real-life violence among the Mbuti. Accounts of physical fights and beatings are scattered throughout Turnbull’s books, The Forest People and Wayward Servants. To cite just one of the numerous examples, Turnbull mentions a woman who lost three teeth in fighting with another woman over a man. [161] I’ve already mentioned Turn-bull’s statements about wife-beating among the Mbuti.

It’s worth noting that Zerzan apparently believes that our ancestors were capable of mental telepathy. [162] But particularly revealing is Zerzan’ s quotation of “Shanks and Tilley”: “The point of archaeology is not merely to interpret the past but to change the manner in which the past is interpreted in the service of social reconstruction in the present.” [163] This is virtually open advocacy of the proposition that archaeologists should slant their findings for political purposes. What better evidence could there be of the massive politicization that has taken place in American anthropology over the last 35 or 40 years? In view of this politicization, anything in recent anthropological literature that portrays primitive peoples’ behavior as politically correct must be viewed with the utmost skepticism.

After citing to Zerzan some of the examples of gender inequality that I’ve discussed above, I questioned his honesty on the ground that he had “systematically excluded nearly all of the evidence that undercuts the idealized picture of hunter-gatherer societies” that he wanted to present. [164] Zerzan answered that he “did not find many credible sources that contradicted his outlook. [165] This statement strains credulity. Some of the examples that I cited to Zerzan (and have discussed above) were from books on which he himself had relied-those of Bonvillain and Turnbull. [166] Yet he somehow managed to overlook all of the evidence in those books that contradicted his claims. Since Zerzan has read widely about hunter-gatherer societies, and the Australian Aborigines are among the best-known hunter-gatherers, I find it very difficult to believe that he has never come across any accounts of the Australians’ mistreatment of women. Yet he never mentions such accounts-not even for the purpose of refuting them.

One does not necessarily have to assume any conscious dishonesty on Zerzan’s part. As Nietzsche said, “The most common lie is the lie one tells to oneself; lying to others is relatively the exception.” [167] In other words, self-deception often precedes deception of others. An important factor here may be one that is well known to professional propagandists: people tend to block out — to fail to perceive or to remember — information that they find uncongenial[168]. Since information that discredits one’s ideology is highly uncongenial, it follows that people will tend to block out such information. A young anarchoprimitivist with whom I’ve corresponded has provided me with an amazing example of this phenomenon. He wrote to me: “there is no question about the persistence [sic] of patriarchy in all other oceanic societies, but none seems apparent in the [Australian] Aborigines — According to A. P. Elkin’s The Australian Aborigines wives were not held in a restrictive marriage at all.” [169] It was apparent that my anarchoprimitivist friend had read Elkin’s discussion of women’s position in Australian Aboriginal society. I’ve cited above some of the relevant pages of Elkin’s book, such as those on which he states that Australian Aboriginal women sometimes lived in terror of the compulsory sex to which they were subjected at some ceremonial times. Any reasonably rational person who will take the trouble to read those pages [170] will find himself hard-pressed to explain how my anarchoprimitivist friend could have read that material and then claimed in all seriousness that no patriarchy seemed apparent in Australian Aboriginal society — unless my friend simply blocked out of his mind the information that he found ideologically unacceptable. My friend did not question the accuracy of Elkin I s information; in fact, he was relying on Elkin as an authority. He simply remained oblivious to the information that indicated patriarchy among the Australian Aborigines. But this time it should be sufficiently clear to the reader that what the anarchoprimitivists (and many anthropologists) are up to has nothing to do with a rational search for the truth about primitive cultures. Instead, they have been developing a myth.

6. I’ve already had occasion at several points to mention violence among nomadic hunter-gatherers. Examples of violence, including deadly violence, among hunter-gatherers are abundant. To mention only a few such examples: “One account has been published of a mortal battle between an inland band of Tasmanians having access to ochre, and a coastal band who had agreed to exchange seashells for the other’s product. The inland people brought their ochre, but the coastal people arrived empty handed. Men were killed because of a breach of faith over the two materials, neither of which was edible or of any other practical use. In other words, the Tasmanians were just as ‘human’ as the rest of US.” [171] The Tasmanians made their spears “in two lengths...the shorter ones were for hunting, the longer ones for fighting.” [172] Among the hunter-gatherers of the Andaman Islands, “grievances were remembered, and revenge might be taken later. The raiders either crept through the jungle or approached in canoes. They leaped on their victims by surprise, quickly shot [with arrows] all the men and women unable to escape, and took away any uninjured children, to adopt them...”; “If enough members of the group survived to reconstitute the band, they might eventually grow numerous enough to seek revenge, and a lengthy feud might arise. [Peace efforts were] initiated by the women because it was they who had kept the hostilities alive, egging on their men.” [173]

Among at least some groups of Australian Aborigines, women at times would provoke their menfolk to deadly violence against other men. [174] Among the Eskimos with whom Gontran de Poncins lived, there was “a good deal of killing”, and it was sometimes a woman who persuaded a man to kill another man. [175] Paintings made in rock shelters by prehistoric hunter-gatherers of eastern Spain show groups of men fighting each other with bows and arrows. [176]

One could go on and on. But I don’t want to give the impression that all hunter-gatherer were violent. Turnbull refers to numerous nonlethal fights and beatings among the Mbuti, but in those of his books that I’ve read he mentions not a single case of homicide. [177] This suggests that deadly violence was rare among the Mbuti at the time when Turnbull knew them. Siriono women sometimes fought physically, striking each other with sticks, and there was a good deal of aggression among the children, even with sticks or burning brands used as weapons. [178] But men rarely fought each other with weapons, [179] and the Siriono were not warlike. [180] Under extreme provocation they did kill certain whites and missionized Indians, [181] but among the Siriono themselves intentional homicide was almost unknown. [182] Among the Bushmen whom Mrs. Thomas knew aggression of any kind was minimal, though she makes clear that this was not necessarily true of all Bushman groups. [183]

It is important, too, to realize that deadly violence among primitives is not even remotely comparable to modern warfare. When primitives fight, two little bands of men shoot arrows or swing war-clubs at one another because they want to fight; or because they are defending themselves, their families, or their territory. In the modern world soldiers fight because they are forced to do so, or, at best, because they have been brainwashed into believing in some kook ideology such as that of Nazism, socialism, or what American politicians choose to call “freedom”. In any case the modern soldier is merely a pawn, a dupe who dies not for his family or his tribe but for the politicians who exploit him. If he’s unlucky, maybe he does not die but comes home horribly crippled in a way that would never result from an arrow- or a spear-wound. Meanwhile, thousands of non-combatants are killed or mutilated. The environment is ravaged, not only in the war zone, but also back home, due to the accelerated consumption of natural resources needed to feed the war machine. In comparison, the violence of primitive man is relatively innocuous. That, however, it isn’t good enough for the anarchoprimitivists or for today’s politically correct anthropologists. They can’t deny altogether the existence of violence among hunter-gatherers, since the evidence for it is incontrovertible. But they will stretch the truth as far as they think they can get away with in order to minimize the amount of violence in the human past. It’s worthwhile to give an example that illustrates the silliness of some of the reasoning that they use. In reference to Homo habilis, a physically primitive ancestor of modern man, the anthropologist Haviland writes: “They obtained their meat not by killing live animals but by scavenging Homo habilis got meat by scavenging from carcasses of dead animals, rather than hunting live ones. We know this because the marks of stone tools on the bones of butchered animals commonly overlie marks the teeth of carnivores made. Clearly, Homo habilis did not get to the prey first.” [184]

But, as Haviland certainly ought to know, many or most predatory animals engage both in hunting and in scavenging. For example, bears, African lions, martens, wolverines, wolves, coyotes, foxes, jackals, hyenas, the raccoon dog of Asia, the Komodo dragon, and some vultures both hunt and scavenge. [185] Thus, the fact that Homo habilis engaged in scavenging provides no evidence whatsoever that he did not also hunt. I emphasize that I do not know or care whether Homo habilis hunted. I see no reason why it should be important for us to know whether our half-human ancestors two million years ago were bloodthirsty killers, peaceful vegetarians, or something in between. The point here is simply to show what kind of reasoning some anthropologists will resort to in their effort to make the human past look as politically correct as possible. Since political correctness has warped the portrayal not only of the human past but of wild nature generally, it should be pointed out that deadly violence among wild animals is not confined to predation of one species upon another. Killing of one member of a species by another member of the same species does occur. For example, it is well known that wild chimpanzees often kill other chimpanzees. [186] Elephants sometimes kill one another in fights, and the same is true of wild pigs. [187] Among the sea birds called brown boobies, two eggs are laid in each nest. After the eggs are hatched, one of the chicks attacks the other and forces it out of the nest, so that it dies. [188] Komodo dragons sometimes eat one another, [189] and there is evidence that cannibalism occurred among some dinosaurs. [190] (Evidence of cannibalism among prehistoric humans is controversial.) [191]

I do want to make clear that it is by no means my intention to exalt violence. I prefer to see people (and animals) get along smoothly with one another. My purpose is only to expose the irrationality of the politically-correct image of primitive peoples and of wild nature.

7. An important element of the anarchoprimitivist myth is the belief that hunter-gatherer societies were free of competition and were characterized instead by sharing and cooperation. Collin Turnbull’s early writings on the Mbuti pygmies seem to be quite frank, but his work leaned increasingly toward political correctness as time went by. [192] Writing in 1983 (18 and 21 years, respectively, after he had published Wayward Servants and The Forest People), Turnbull noted that Mbuti children had no competitive games, [193] and after referring to the high value that he claimed modern society placed on “competition” and “economic independence,” [194] he contrasted these with “the well-tried primitive values of family-writ-large: interdependence, cooperation, and reliance on community ...rather than on self...” [195]

But according to Turnbull’s own earlier work, physical fighting was commonplace among the Mbuti. [196] If a physical fight isn’t a form of competition, then what is? It’s clear in fact that the Mbuti were a very quarrelsome people, and, in addition to physical fights, there were many verbal disputes among them. [197] Generally speaking, any dispute, whether it is settled physically or verbally; is a form of competition: the interests of one person conflict with those of another, and their quarreling is an effort by each to promote his own interests at the other’s expense. The Mbuti’s jealousies also were evidence of competitive impulses. [198]

Two things for which the Mbuti competed were mates and food. I’ve already mentioned a case of two women who fought over a man, [199] and quarreling over food apparently was common. [200] It’s worth noting that Turnbull, in his early work, described the Mbuti as “individualists.” [201] There is abundant evidence of competitiveness and/or individualism among other primitive peoples. The Nuer (African pastoralists), the pagan Germanic tribes, the Carib Indians, the Siriono (who lived mainly by hunting and gathering), the Navajo, the Apaches, the Plains Indians, and North American Indians generally have all been described explicitly as “individualistic.” [202] But “individualism” is a vague word that may mean different things to different people, so it’s more helpful to look at definite facts that have been reported. Some of the works that I cite in Note 202 do back up with facts their application of the term “individualistic” to the peoples mentioned. Holmberg writes:

“When an Indian [Siriono] has reached adulthood he displays an individualism and apathy toward his fellows that is remarkable. The apparent unconcern of one individual for another-even within the family-never ceased to amaze me while I was living with the Siriono. Frequently men would depart for the hunt alone-without so much as a goodbye-and remain away from the band for weeks at a time without any concern on the part of their fellow t

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