Robin
Posts: 1431
Joined: Sep. 2009
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| Quote (Verbena @ Dec. 01 2011,15:32) | | Quote (Robin @ Dec. 01 2011,14:51) | | Quote (Verbena @ Dec. 01 2011,14:15) | | Quote (Robin @ Dec. 01 2011,14:08) | | Quote (fnxtr @ Dec. 01 2011,13:20) | | Okay, so why do hunting and meat have higher status? |
Because hunting and attaining meat is generally more risky than gathering, requires skills that usually require more practice and teaching, and had a low enough success rate that those who were successful were often celebrated. |
I don't know about being more risky. An unarmed woman is at a greater risk from a predator than a group of armed men. |
While that might be true, there are now and where then few animals that viewed humans as prey. There was (and still is) far more danger facing most large prey. Elephants, rhinos, whales, hippos, buffalo, etc. represent deadly opponents when threatened.
This isn't to say that herbivores didn't present a problem for gatherers as well. Clearly they like many of the same plant food we do. But the incidents of gatherers facing large herbivores seems to be less than than the hunters that put themselves in such situations.
Of course, there are some other elements to consider. Division of work was not discrete in a number of hunter-gatherer societies; men and women both gathered when plants/berries/nuts were abundant and women and men both hunted when the prey herds were near - the women contributing by tracking. So I don't know who black and white that celebration of hunting was in all societies, but there certainly was some. |
I respectfully disagree. We still have highly attuned anti-predation instincts, which tells us that in the EEA, predation was a signifcant threat. Once homo sapiens made the step to making throwing weapons and began to hunt collectively, we may have reduced that threat slightly and that over vast amounts of time, even hunting some species to extinction (including other proto-humans!) but predation in primitive cultures is still a high mortality risk - and this includes other humans, especially rogue males.
The Vandermassen paper is very good at uncovering the bias and wishful thinking that has permeated many past social and social anthropological studies. |
While I don't wholly disagree with Vandermassen or your assessment, I think there's some disconnect here. Humans have been apex predators for well over a million years. The moment we gained tool making skills we were pretty much off the menu of most other animals. A lone, naked human is a pretty weak target to be sure, but by and large we tend to clump in groups. Even when we are nomadic we travel in groups.
That said, if you have links to information on predation in primitive cultures as a high mortality risk, I'd be interested in reading about it. I've just never seen any indication that predation was a major factor in human mortality.
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we IDists rule in design for the flagellum and cilium largely because they do look designed. Bilbo
The only reason you reject Thor is because, like a cushion, you bear the imprint of the biggest arse that sat on you. Louis
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