I think that anthropologists study foraging cultures because it is important to know how they hunt, farm, and gather food. Due to the fact that they most likely learned these traditions over many, many years from their ancestors, learning the ways that these people find food can give us a hint or even a full view of they way that the primitive peoples from that place hunted, gathered, and farmed themselves. The societies and cultures that forage today are very intelligent and have great wisdom and knowledge regarding their environment and the geography surrounding them.
Anthropologists are aware that this is only credit of the thousands and thousands of years of practice- trial and error, rinse and repeat- and that we can study the ways of modern foraging societies in order to gather a decent amount of information about their previous ancestors' societies and cultures.
As you said, what foraging societies we have left are extremely intelligent and have such an amazing gift for knowing their land and being in touch with what surrounds them. It's sad that many people from our own society consider these people ignorant or to to be under-cultured savages. They don't even realize how much more cultured those people are than them due to their connection with the earth. Earth is mother to us all and those few societies sprinkled around the world still know that. Many of us have lost that knowledge...
ReplyDeleteI like your description of "trial and error, rinse and repeat", because it's so true. Reading the Eskimo story of how the elders have learnt to detect the patterns of nature was quite stunning and impressive, becuase I know they would have only known these skills if they had watched, studied, and practiced them. They are extremely gifted, but it just comes naturally to them because that's the enviroment and culture they were born to... and that's pretty amazing.
ReplyDeleteBecca I think you're describing animism, which these people have to believe in to participate in ritualistic hunting maneuvers and slaughtering practices. I would love to observe people that are foragers with my own eyes.
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