Romanticizing Hunter-Gatherers
Should we do that? Should I do that?
Have you read about the white colonial settlers in the 1700s who were captured by Native people and didn’t want to return home? Have you yearned for the life of hunter-gatherers who worked way fewer hours than we do? Have you wished you’d been born in a different time so you could live in the egalitarian societies many of them enjoyed, in harmony with nature?
I have.
Sure, for every idyllic story of hunter-gatherers that makes me melt in a puddle of longing, I hear scores of cautions against romanticizing what was once considered a “nasty, brutish, and short” way of life. But most of the new shit coming to light lately — like the long-ignored stories of those kidnapped colonial settlers, which were news to me — makes me question those cautions. The more I learn, the more inclined I am to romanticize hunter-gatherers.
Recently, though, I read a book that made me wonder if the hunter-gatherers of times past were much better than the humans of my time. It made me wonder about our species.
What we don’t know about humans
Learning about humans isn’t just about shedding more light on our history. It’s also about a bigger quest: understanding our true nature. Are we fighters or lovers — or both? Do we have a natural social structure? How have our ways of living changed our nature?
Since I’m always asking these questions, I was excited to read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. It ended up bumming my trip.
Not that Sapiens is the definitive source or anything (and it’s gotten plenty of critiques, which I won’t go into here). But some of the questions it raised gave me pause:
Did Homo sapiens ruthlessly massacre Neanderthals, in the first known instance of genocide, or did we mostly interbreed them out of existence?
Was the significant toll of the Agricultural Revolution worth it?
Why is human society so male-dominated?
Spoiler: We don’t have all the answers. But what we do know doesn’t make us look great — even the hunter-gatherers.
What we destroyed
One thing seems clear: Starting sometime between 70,000 and 35,000 years ago, wherever we’ve gone, we humans have left a wake of destruction in our path. Yes, even the hunter-gatherers. Harari calls the period starting 70,000 years ago the Cognitive Revolution, because new ways of thinking and communicating emerged then that enabled us to travel farther and do more coordinated hunting and habitat destruction.
Sure, our destruction got much worse with the Industrial Revolution, which has led to the current sixth mass extinction, the first one to be caused by humans (the last one having been 65.5 million years ago, when dinosaurs vanished from the Earth). But humans have been killing off species at alarming rates well before this — for much longer than I’d realized. That’s a major bummer for a Flower Child like myself.
Till I read this book, I’d clung to the comforting illusion that at least some groups of humans have it right. At least some humans haven’t forgotten they’re part of nature.
And it’s true that, compared to the rest of us, Indigenous people around the world live in harmony with nature. I still admire and respect them, but the book left me disappointed in humanity as a whole.
I didn’t know, as I learned from Sapiens, that the humans who arrived in Australia during the Cognitive Revolution managed to kill off 23 out of the 24 large animal species there, destroying a lot of habitat in the process. When we came to the Americas, we extinguished 34 of North America’s 47 large mammal genera and 50 of South America’s 60 (some of those extinctions may have been caused by climate change, but that’s debated — and Harari argues convincingly that we played a major role).
What followed, with the Agricultural Revolution, was more control of nature; what we didn’t kill, we manipulated to our own ends, often with an extreme cruelty to animals that persists to this day.
What we gave up
I already had my doubts about the Agricultural Revolution. After reading half of the dense 526-page The Dawn of Everything (which I will finish one day! I will!), I’m convinced that the progression of human societies hasn’t been as linear as it’s usually made out to be. But even though humans were doing agriculture before the Agricultural Revolution — as the authors of that hefty tome point out — we weren’t doing it at a scale that led to population explosions, over-reliance on grains at the expense of healthier foods, and large, crowded settlements that left us susceptible to disease.
So I was predisposed to agree with Harari that the Agricultural Revolution was “history’s greatest fraud.” What did it give us? Work that was more tedious and took up more of our time. Far greater inequality. Poorer health. We got all this in exchange for growing our population. Remind me, why is that the goal? I don’t think it was a great bargain.
To be fair, I wouldn’t last a minute if you time-traveled me into a hunter-gatherer society — or dropped me into one of the few remaining ones. I’ve grown too accustomed to modern comforts and conveniences; I can’t even go camping without an air mattress.
Also to be fair, I’d miss a lot about the modern life facilitated by the Agricultural Revolution. Books, in particular. Cities like Paris. Many parts of the civilization that was celebrated in a TV series from my childhood by that name — with a British spelling, of course, and narrated by a pasty British guy — which, as it turned out, covered only Western civilization, meaning European civilization.
Yes, there’s valid stuff to celebrate there. I’ll concede that in our more recent civilizations, we humans have made great art: paintings, literature, music, sculpture, cathedrals, pyramids. But great art is starting to feel more like a consolation prize than a benefit. I mean, is it worth our current social isolation and distance from nature? Is it worth the high rates of depression in the U.S.? Is it worth global pandemics?
These questions are moot. We can’t return to living in small hunter-gatherer villages; there are too many of us, for one thing. I keep railing about things we can’t change, but I know we can’t go back.
Still, every now and then I get a glimpse into what we might be. What we might have been. That can come from learning about Indigenous cultures. It can come from spending time in nature and feeling a connection to it. It can come from an ayahuasca journey that brings me a sense of connection to something bigger than myself, something that feels positive about humanity. I seek it out wherever I can find it.
I did not find it in Sapiens. As much as I’d wanted to read it, as fascinating as I found it, the book harshed my mellow.
In light of that, can I keep romanticizing hunter-gatherers?
Just another animal
Other animals haven’t wrecked the Earth like we humans have. But would they, if they could? Maybe any creature with capabilities like ours would eventually cause some damage in its quest for survival.
The truth is, those early humans who killed off entire species and destroyed habitat didn’t know what they were doing. They were just trying to survive. Today, we know better; we have the benefit of a bigger picture that our ancestors lacked. That may not save us, it’s true, and I have my strong doubts. But some large number of humans would like to try.
Whether we save ourselves and our Earth remains to be seen, and it’s not looking good right now. In spite of this — or maybe all the more because of it — a little compassion is in order for us humans, current and past.
That’s where I’ve landed a month after finishing Sapiens. It wasn’t the best book to read while living through a climate emergency and the crumbling of democracy, and it opened a door to something I didn’t want to see. I was already feeling removed from the connection and sense of awe I always seek, and Sapiens pushed me further in that direction.
But as the past month progressed, I kept getting reminders of the need for compassion — echoes of my second MDMA therapy session a couple years ago. As I wrote in Flower Child, I was surprised that a theme emerged in each of my three sessions: grief, compassion, and humor. For some reason, it’s been easier to keep sight of the first and third. Compassion, though, is something I’ve been grappling with.
But my inner wisdom keeps nudging me to center compassion. And somehow, it’s easier to feel compassion for us as a species than to feel compassion for the individuals displaying extreme cruelty these days.
Maybe coming to terms with our nature as highly flawed but also sometimes wonderful Homo sapiens is a stepping stone on my road to compassion. Maybe if I can feel love for us humans as just another animal doing our best, I can ease into feeling compassion for any individual. Including myself.
It seems worth a try. And it brings me back to hunter-gatherers, who were doing the best they could — and who I will cling to romanticizing, despite the cautions. Even Yuval Noah Harari can’t take that away from me.
If you’ve read this far, please consider clicking the ❤️ and/or leaving a comment on this post!👇 It helps me feel like I’m not writing into the void and gets more eyes on my writing.
Perhaps a quote from Terminator 2 is apt here. Teenage John Conner asks the Terminator if people will "make it". In the background, young boys play with toy guns. The Terminator (almost playing himself as Arnold Schwarzenegger) responds: "It's in your nature to destroy yourselves." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpEDSvaP_-8
I’ve always said that I believe humans will become extinct soon, and that I believe we deserve it. I know it’s human nature to fight for survival, but I think it’s pretty futile at this point.