Will We Become Hunter-Gatherers Again?

I imagine that as you read that headline, you had an image of rather unkempt humans with wild hair, wearing animal skins, picking berries on a warm summer day. Or maybe running away from a lion? Thanks to Western colonialism and it’s so-called “Enlightenment” which has in some ways, proven to be rather dim, we tend to view our ancestors and even modern-day hunter-gatherer societies as dim-witted and rather simple. They were neither.
So could we in fact, become hunter-gatherers again? Does that imply a dystopian future? Does it even seem at odds with our modern, digital society? Perhaps not. And perhaps, how we define hunter-gatherer will be evolutionary and thought of in a different way.
If you want to skip the history, scroll down a wee bit to Hunter-Gatherers 2.0.
Many decades from now we will consider much of today’s digital technologies to be rather primitive. We might even consider them as blunt as a neanderthals wooden club. Our modern communications tools like smartphones even as simple a cave drawings.
If we want to look ahead, we have to understand our past. Especially when it comes to what it means to be human. As we integrate more technologies into our societies and eventually, our bodies, we are going to be rethinking every facet of of our cultures, societies and all the bits and pieces, systems and even our understanding of the universe. And our place in all of that. As it has always been with humans, it will be messy.
Back to the future. Anthropological research (by the way, anthropologists don’t just look at ancient humans. We also look at humanity today and into the future, like I do), is shining new light on our ancestors and it is revealing that they in fact had far more complex cultures and societies than we originally thought. Keeping in mind that much of the first century of anthropological and archeological knowledge is based on a very Western European mindset. Fortunately, this is changing.
Hunter-Gatherers 1.0 had more play time than we do today. Especially their children. We still see this in hunter-gatherer societies that exist today in parts of Africa and South America. So, who’s dummer?
They also lived in greater harmony with nature. We know too that even more modern societies that were once considered “primitive” such as Indigenous North Americans, Aborigines, Andean societies, were very philosophical and had highly complex cultures.
They had little to no concept of property rights. While there was violence when various tribes and social groups met, trade was preferred. Some ancient sites dating back to hunter-gatherer periods have proven to be centres of trade, games and spirituality. Humans like to play, which I wrote about in my prior post.
Hunter-Gatherers 2.0
While it may seem odd now, as digital technologies evolve, they will become largely invisible. The most interesting things happen when technologies recede into the background. The telephone being a prime example. You don’t really give it much consideration. It’s there. On our smartphones, it is even secondary to what we use those devices for.
The more we automate manufacturing, bureaucracies, mundane repetitive work, cities and perhaps much of healthcare, legal and accounting work, the more these technologies will become invisible. We will use them in the same way we use shoes.
So what does this mean in terms of hunter-gatherer societies? Are we all going to wander around in nature picking berries and hunting for dinner again? Yes. And no.
Let’s re-imagine the idea of what it means to be a hunter. Very few of us in the world need to go out hunting for dinner and as we increasingly automate agriculture, hunting in terms of finding food will become even less of a need. Hunting in the future may mean looking for experiences. With more time on our hands, we will want and need, to play more. Hunting for experiences and ways to play could be powerful ways to unleash our creativity.
“the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” — David Graeber, Anthropologist
So what then, will we gather? Ideas, knowledge. Through hunting, we will also want to gather knowledge that contributes to our creativity desires. We may also be able to explore nature in new and novel ways.
As we improve transportation networks and infrastructure and move towards a planet powered entirely by renewable energies, we may be able to re-wild many parts of our planet. We may become more nomadic too and redefine property to be more communal in nature.
A key element of hunter-gatherer societies is that they also tend to be more egalitarian. In many such societies even today, wealth inequality is strongly discouraged. To those of a Libertarian mindset, this will sound like socialism or communism. But the original meaning of communism is community.
In a highly automated, digital first society, the current system of capitalism with huge gaps in wealth distribution, privatised healthcare and even highly bureaucratised systems, cannot be sustained.
These systems are already starting to change. One signal of this is the growth in participatory budgeting in many democracies. This is where citizens gain the power to oversee how public budgets are spent, not politicians and bureaucrats. When implemented, it has proven to be very powerful and results in people being more democratically engaged.
While it may seem like we’re headed to a utopian ideal and a socialist society, that is not the case. But we are starting to re-imagine how our societies are structured. Let’s go pick some berries.