Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Foraging Societies - Stephanie Reynolds

Forgaging societies have played a large part in the developement of later societies seen today. Our ancestors survivied on foraging or hunting for food, and had to learn new survival skills in order to adapt to the changing environment. Anthropologists can gain a wealth of information from foraging societies since they learn when "true humans" evolved and what the world was like back then. Not only did these socieities give anthropologists a good timeline of evolution, but they were also widespread across the continents. Because of this, it makes it much easier for anthropologists to compare various socieities, found both in North America and Africa, and find the similarities between them. Societies who remained as foragers, even to this day, need to be studied as well to find out why they did not evolve into more complex social forms. To truly understand technology, no matter how advanced it's become, anthropologists must also understand where it all began. It's similar to the saying "in order to understand the future, we must not forget to understand our past and where we came from [foraging societies.]

Anthropologists can learn so much from these groups, especially what factors led to Revolution and innovation. Also, we learn about evolution of a species, and how it affected the surrounding environment, or how the environment affected evolution. When the tools and artifacts associated with foraging were found centuries later, anthropologists discovered even more about an individual foraging society. For example, with the discovery of a spear, an anthropologist learns: (1) the society relied on hunting for survival, (2) what kinds of materials were needed to make the spear and where they were found, and (3) what types of animals could be huntied during that time. By compiling all of this information together across all of the continents, except Antartica, anthropologists get a better idea if how our original foraging society compares to those all over the world.

1 comment:

  1. I love the connection you made to an anthropologists research and the history of tools and weapons. It's amazing to me how much you can learn about a culture just by a piece of something from their world. These people were so resourceful in finding the things they needed to make their lives easier. They had to experiment with many things (that I'm sure) failed at first, until they found just the right thing for the job. It's brilliant really.

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