Foragers and Others 67recent years. Far from being simply the cast-offs of creation or victims of history,
the foraging peoples have become political actors in their own right, mounting
land claims cases, participating in the environmental movement, and lobbying for
their rights with governments and the UN. Also they are being sought out by spir-
itual pilgrims from urban industrial societies seeking to recapture wholeness from
an increasingly fragmented and alienated modernity.
As humanity marks the new millennium, there is an increasing preoccupation
with where we have come from and where we are going. The accelerating pace of
change and the ceaseless transformations brought about by economic forces have
had the effect of obliterating history, creating a deepening spiritual malaise. For
centuries philosophers have sought the answers to humanity’s multiple problems
in the search for the holy grail of ‘natural man’, the search for our ancestors. The
Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers does not offer simple or pat
answers to the questions of the social philosophers. Yet it is our hope that in the
documentation of foragers’ history, culture and current situation, readers will find
a rich source of ideas, concepts and alternatives to fuel the political imagination.
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