Editorial Introduction to Volume I 3Australia, Henrietta Fourmile of the Polidingi Tribe says: ‘Not only is it the land
and soil that forms our connections with the earth but also our entire life-cycle
touches most of our surroundings. The fact that our people hunt and gather these
particular species on the land means emphasis is placed on maintaining their pres-
ence in the future... What is sometimes called “wildlife” in Australia isn’t wild;
rather it’s something that we have always maintained’ (all quotes in Posey, 1999).
Part 1: Before Agriculture
For almost all of human history, people have been hunter-gatherers. If, as seems
likely, hominids emerged around 6 million years ago, then some 300,000 genera-
tions passed before agriculture was invented, since when some 500–600 genera-
tions passed until the emergence of the industrialized era. We must have been good
at hunting and gathering, otherwise hominids would never have made it to the
present day. Yet in recent times, hunter-gatherer societies have been characterized
as backward, uncivilized and unable to enter the modern world. After Darwin, the
concept of evolution as a linear and progressive force became widely adopted, and
remains with us today. Jean Lamarck erroneously believed in the inheritance of
acquired characteristics, and he suggested that species strove to evolve greater com-
plexity, and thus the pinnacle of evolution had to be humans.
Later, Social Darwinism came to suggest that nature was more important than
nurture, and that the development of individuals from birth to death (ontogeny)
reflected closely the evolutionary development of species (phylogeny). Such ideas
of progression (implying that the later is better, and the more complex the clev-
erer), were subsequently applied to human societies. Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient
Society, published in 1877, suggested seven stages of human cultural evolution,
beginning with lower savagery and progressing through barbarism eventually to
reach civilization. The idea was that all human societies did share a common ances-
tor, but that some groups (or races) were now higher on the ladder than others.
Such ideas fitted very well with prevailing views about the superiority of European
and North American culture, and again came to be widely accepted (though of
course still hotly contested by many). It was not until the later 20th century that
new perspectives began to emerge.
Richard Lee was one of the pioneers of the later 20th century who clearly dem-
onstrated the efficiencies and effectiveness of hunter-gatherer lifestyles. This first
paper is drawn from the classic Man the Hunter (1968), and shows how hunter-
gatherers do not have a precarious existence in which they struggle to survive – the
view that had become common. The hunter-gatherer resource base is ‘at least routine
and reliable and at best surprisingly abundant’. The chapter draws particularly on
evidence from the !Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, and illustrates in detail
the wide range of food resources used by local people in this extremely challenging
environment. A key finding (again, counter-intuitive to many at the time) was that