Historical Culture of Anthropology - Research Paper Example

?Culture of Anthropology: Foragers and Cultivators Introduction Time has evolved. Lifestyles changed. Cultures across different countries may vary, but they were generally questionable of how it all started. Cultural differences of different people from various countries may have something in common. The common qualities of these countries could be the question to when and how the people lived customarily in the historic and prehistoric times. With this, the present paper will significantly define the meaning of culture that affected and influenced the way of living of the ancient people. The ancient people were generally classified with their ways of living, such as the foragers and the cultivators, who will be compared in this paper. Hence, the classification of the foragers and the cultivators in this present paper will serve as a remedy to the mystery of the native people regardless of the differences in place, nationalities, and race. Definition of Culture Culture is replicated in the personalities of different individuals whose context in life depends on such structural concept (Zou et al. 579). Accordingly, culture is the “common sense” that everybody could instantly act, say and conform to their own community. Culture represents one’s social mannerisms, and it even serves as an identifier to one’s nationalism. Culture could mold one’s character, values, personality, emotions, thoughts, mannerisms, and morale (Zou et al. 579). Moreover, culture is often dispensing to one’s stewardship to others. Culture pervades one to experience the background knowledge of traditional genealogies. It pertains to custom practices in which other groups could understand and comprehend how others will perceive someone’s membership to a certain group or race (Kyrou and Rubinstein 515). Ferrari and Andreatta added that a culture is usually composed of an interconnection between the education, family, religion, government, art, medicine, marriage, and technological factors (44). These things serve as aspects that could influence from one to the other in order to form a mental structure to one’s set of mind, which could represent one’s way of knowing what behavioral standards to do. Foragers Foraging is like hunting for food. This type of activity made the traditional ancestors of every country to survive, especially when they hunted animals and used them as food. This is related to the anthropological cultural studies because the present paper would like to know how the foragers before in a certain country survived with foraging. Kent (4) has even emphasized that the different groups of foragers had differences, which could be based on the social demographic ways of the different ancestors. Therefore, foragers, no matter what race they were, had initiated the evolutionary aspects of anthropology that could be greatly considered as one of its benefits. With evolutionary, foragers have been understood with their adaptive way to survive (Wolford). Accordingly, foraging was the most prominent way of living 10,000 years ago. For instance, African culture was one of the best known cultures in the twentieth century that used foraging as means of living (Kent 1). However, it was also emphasized that it was not only the African people who used this kind of living way back before the time of the modern ways of survival. There were also Ju or ‘Hoansi, who were tribes of the Kalahari Desert (Wolford). This group was the best known foragers in the world before. Women of this group would gather nuts, vegetables, roots, and fruits (Ferraro and Andreatta 155). Men of this tribe were the ones who hunted for animals may it big or small as long as they knew they could handle the animals that could also risk their lives. Therefore, the way of living of the foragers like this group could be dangerous as they would attack some wild animals that they used to hunt. However, since they were already used to such life, the adventures that they took in their way of foraging could be somehow admirable as they learned how to be brave with good endurance of exercise for they run back and forth to look for food. Their physical bodies were exercised with strengths, especially the male Ju foragers. Their sense of hearing, smell, and sight could also be enhanced as they practiced and used their kinesthetic skills in searching for food. Foraging has been really accounted to hunting and gathering. In fact, Belovsky has studied and measured the percentage of efforts that foragers would account to hunting and gathering (29). Accordingly, the study has used a linear programming approach to know how much time would the foragers spend to hunt and gather foods, how much time would their foods in their stomach would easily digest to push them for foraging once again. Moreover, Belovsky has indicated how foraging could lead them to be aversive from the risky animals or foods that they primarily found as dangerous or somehow poisonous (29). In addition, the study also indicated how the foods that were hunted and gathered by the foragers would be kept in the storage. The findings of the study found that linear programming model was adequate enough to be used as a model in the study because it allowed the recent people to discover and understand in a wider scope how the foragers have lived before especially with regard to the kind environment and physical health of people with foraging as a kind of living. Moreover, the model was also able to detect the physical nutritional diets of the foragers. The physical diets of the foragers in accordance to their livelihood style are accounted to their family size where reproduction of children is vast, their body sizes were stiffly short, their diets change across different environments that they live, how the women and men divided their tasks (hunt for the latter and gather of food for the former). Ancient foragers also comforted each other with harmonious relationship. Foraging had affected and had influenced the social roles of males and females, the oneness or interactional sharing, and the place or territory’s centralization trademark (Wolford). When it comes to gender differences, men were assigned for hunting as part of foraging while women had the responsibility of gathering. Men were the ones assigned to kill the animal that they hunted, and women were the ones who will cook or prepare the animal dishes. Men tend to work rarely than women (Wolford). When it comes to sharing of socialization, ancient people were used to share their foods to others, especially for those who belong within their group. They shared their food to people whom they had also shared the habitats that they had, the ones whom they shared with their territorial premises, the ones whom they were together with when it comes to eating and sleeping times. There was a proposal of theory relative to the foraging ways of the ancestors before--the optimal foraging theory (Ferraro and Andreatta 152). This theory suggest that foragers picked out their food (animals or plants) that could make them full and could make them satisfied as they liked to have the energy for hunting and gathering. Ferraro and Andreatta have indicated that the ancient foragers included the Eskimos, Subarctic Indians, Northwest Coast Indians, Plateau Indians, California Indians, Great Basin Indians, Pygmies, and the Native Australians (154). These foragers were commonly small in their group size. They were nomadic as they transfered from one place to other. They often called their group as a band or family (Ferraro and Andreatta 154). These races and tribes found solace and food in their own territory or place. They hunted and gathered animals in their own habitat of resources (Wolford). Cultivators On the other hand, cultivators were found to start during the neolithic period. Cultivators were generally “sedentary” because they only stayed in one place aside from migrating (Ferraro and Andreatta 161). Cultivators took time to produce crops and plant in order to have something to eat or something to economically trade for themselves. Cultivators were more likely termed as farmers. However, there were other cultivators who hunted and gathered food like the way the foragers do (Ferraro and Andreatta 161). Accordingly, cultivators have been evolved from being foragers, especially after the civil wars in the twentieth century. It is during the emergence of cultivators when minimal technological envisions were slowly flourishing. There were already tools and machines that were invented to help the cultivators’ way of work be easier and more comfortable. Through cultivation, agricultural and environmental concerns were already highlighted. With this, cultivators were used to have the “horticulture” in which people had small area of land where they could apply their technological system (Ferraro and Andreatta 163). Accordingly, cultivators also had the practice of burning the plants, grass, or herbs of an abandoned land to allow the ashes of the burned plants fertilized the soil that could make the land healthier over the span of time and over the flow of years. They called this method as “swidden cultivation or slash-and-burn method” (Ferrari and Andreatta 165). Agriculture was used in cultivation where food will be produced with the source of animals that can help in plowing the land. Therefore, cultivators did the horticulture and the way of agriculture. However, Ferrari and Andreatta added that the cultivators could also serve as pastoralist as they could take care some cattles, goat, carabaos, and cows that could benefit their way of living (173). However, the recent negative implications of cultivation as a source of livelihood are its questionable effect to how it could lead the people to have the strategy of deforestation (Seidenberg, Mertz, and Kias 71). Cultivators who are like farmers may shift themselves to such activity especially when they have no other resources to get and to depend on except on the remaining trees that are resorted in the lands where they lived. One of the determining factors that could be considered to how cultivation could alternate the livelihood style of the people that may hamper and risk the security of the environment is the overpopulation where lots of people would depend on one environmental area that could make everything scarce, which may lead the people to have limited areas where they could cultivate their farming areas. Indeed, this could lead their lives to destruction especially if their only option would be to cut down the trees and would be unable to replace them into a new one. Cultivation is good yet it could lead the livelihood ways of people to illegality especially when they could not think of anything else aside from deforestation. Regardless of how the study of Seidenberg, Mertz, and Kias made an unclear findings of the study based on how cultivation could be used to destroy the environment, the study did not fail to emphasize how such livelihood had helped the people to be creative in terms of doing their job without risking too much for the environment (78). Apparently, the study is opening the ideas of future researchers to explore and validate the hypothesis of the study which was invalidated by their findings. Hence, the study challenges the people of today to rethink of ways other than cultivation as a source of livelihood because even when it could serve as helpful to the people, it could also lead the people to overuse such way of living by threatening the nature when deforestation could serve as its sample especially when people are now becoming lazy to farm, plant, or to generally cultivate. Comparisons to Foragers and Cultivators Similarities Foragers and cultivators are both ways of living of the civilized citizens in the twentieth century. Both natives had almost the same population because the horticulturalist and the pastoralist who were partly cultivators had small group size (Ferraro and Andreato 173). The pastoralist was somewhat nomadic like the foragers, who would migrate from time to time, especially when a certain place was already experiencing a famine. Foragers could be like the horticulturalist cultivators who did not much require themselves with time pressure in doing their livelihood tasks because both groups would do their tasks if they already needed food to search or to prepare (Ferraro and Andreatto 173). Therefore, both groups were also the same in terms of not much taking their time to pressure themselves for the source of trading because both would tend to take on their roles (foragers for hunting and horticulturalists for burning plants) in order to live and survive for their own means. Horticulturalists may had adopted some ways of the modern cultivators, but it was somewhat minimal like the foragers as well as with their level of economic status in which horticulturalists were contented to live a decent life no matter how they struggled to find their means of livelihood like the foragers. Differences Foragers were mainly called as hunters and gatherers while cultivators could be specified as horticulturalist (the one who burned plants, lands, shrubs, or herbs), pastoralist (the one who chose to make a livelihood taking good care of cattle animals), and the cultivators who were into agricultural terms of planting crops, plants, vegetables, fruits, and trees (Ferraro and Andreatta 173). Accordingly, foragers and cultivators could differ in sizes, especially when it comes to the group of agricultural sectors that were larger than the foragers, who were used to have the small units. Ferraro and Andreatta have clearly emphasized that foragers and cultivators also differed in the stability of their settlement because foragers were “nomadic,” who transferred from one place to the other, especially when a certain place would already be scarce with food and water while the cultivators specifically the agriculturalists and the horticulturalists were permanent because they had to take on guards to their lands and crops (173). Moreover, foragers would just rarely hunt for food while cultivators, like the agriculturalists, would often monitor and care for their lands to crop the best products of food that they could harvest. The industrial trade for foragers were not that much important because they searched food only for themselves while the cultivators (agriculturalists) were more concerned of trading because it was during their times when the source of money was already important as part of living (Ferrari and Andreatta 173). Forages did not experience the specialization of technologies because they only depended to their handmade spears while the cultivators (agriculturalists) became depended with the specialization of technologies that could make their way of living efficient and more effective. Ferrari and Andreatta have also added that foragers and cultivators differed in their class systems because foragers lived in the times when social caste system was not yet known in which every native were the same with the low status that they had while the cultivators have different social classes as there were some agriculturalist who were poor and others were rich (173). Conclusion With the definitions of culture, one could comprehend and understand how it is important to know the historical ways of living of the ancient people. The ancient people could be categorized with their livelihood means if they were foragers or members of cultivators. The comparisons of the foragers and the cultivators could lead one’s mind to realize the most ancient ones. One could learn that the foragers were the oldest group while the cultivators were the people who were closer to the modern times. The comparisons made one to realize that the horticulturalists and the pastoralists, who were classified under the group of cultivators, could also be classified as foragers. Therefore, horticulturalists and pastoralists stand between the gap of the foragers and the agriculturalists, the group who was more in line to how cultivators were more depicted with their trademarks of livelihood systems. Conclusively, the present paper opens the historical evolutionary aspect of the ancient people who strived ways to survive in the different span of time. Foragers, indeed, initiated the following generations to evolve and cognitively transform to horticulturalists, to pastoralists, and to agriculturalists, which were now commonly pervading to divert the natural ecological ways of foragers into a more diverse technological and systematic ways of life. Works Cited Belovsky, Gary E. “Hunter-Gatherer Foraging: A Linear Programming Approach.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 6 (1987): 29-76. Print. Ferraro, Gary, and Susan Andreatta. Cultural Anthropology: An Applied Perspective. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Kent, Susan, ed. Cultural Diversity among Twentieth-century Foragers: An African Perspective. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Kyrou, Christos N., and Robert A. Rubinstein. “Cultural Anthropology Studies of Conflict.” Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict. 2nd ed. Print. Wolford, John. “Week 9: Anthropology 11--Introduction to Cultural Anthropology: Lecture Notes for Chapter 6: Patterns of Subsistence (148-179).” University of Missouri. Seidenberg, Charlotte, Ole Mertz, and Morten Bilde Kias. “Fallow, Labour, and Livelihood in Shifting Cultivation Implications for Deforestation in Northern Lao PDR.” Danish Journal of Geography 103 (2): 71-80. Print. St. Louis. 2002. Web. 21 November 2012. . Zou, Xi, Michael Morris, Ivy Yee-Man Lau, Kim Pong Tam, Sau-Lai Lee and Chi-yeu Chu. “Culture as Common Sense: Perceived Consensus Versus Personal Beliefs As Mechanisms of Cultural Beliefs.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 4 (2009): 579-597. Print. Read More