What it comes down to is that the most dominant race at the time spreads throughout the world through colonialism, globalization, industrialization, imperialism, and cultural revolution is a consequence of that race, be it the government, political agenda, the clergy, the royalty and/or the aristocracy. This is the truth; power hungry tyrants/psychopaths beat into you their message, the right way to live life, and the wrong way, the proper way to speak, the proper god to worship. So now that I am here, fortunate enough to be born in this country, I am lucky. I am right. Right?
It is common ignorance to believe that we have it better off. The belief that change occurs from a desire to progress is well entrenched in our western society. Contrary to the stereotype that Lewis Henry Morgan (the father of the western anthropology) perpetuated, the life of a foraging society, was a sort of lost paradise.
Apparently they had plenty of food and did not have to work hard to get it.
Studies in the 1960s with the Hadza and Ju/hoansi tribes has shown a prosperous and happy people. James Woodburn described their territory as rich in food and resources.
They only worked two hours a day to gather food. For the Hadza to have gone hungry back that, was inconceivable. Plant life was so abundant, there was no need to preserve it, and zebra and gazelle provided an unlimited supply of protein. How unfortunate that the only threat NOW to the Hadza people is encroachment. The most perfect example to my argument: The Datooga. The Datooga are the fastest-growing group in Tanzania. This is due to pastoralism and agriculture.
"The Datooga are clearing the Hadza lands on either side of the now fully settled valley for pasture for their goats and cattle. They hunt out the game, and the clearing destroys the berries, tubers, and honey that the Hadza rely on, and watering holes for their cattle causes the shallow watering holes the Hadza rely on to dry up."
Oh but then there's the local government, and the UAE. Those psychopaths.
"In 2007, the local government controlling the Hadza lands adjacent to the Yaeda Valley leased all of this, 6,500 km², to the Abu Dhabi royal family of the United Arab Emirates, for use as a "personal safari playground", and both the Hadza and Datooga were evicted, with some Hadza resisters imprisoned. However, after negative coverage in the international press, the deal was rescinded."
The Ju/hoansi peoples of the Kalahari Desert are another foraging society that has been widely studied to show that they had never exhausted their food supply. The major food source was the mongongo nut. With 1300 calories and 50 grams in what would consist of a cereal bowl for us, they had five times more nourishment then what we would get per cereal bowl.
So why the transition from foraging to agriculture? Swidden and irrigation wasn’t any easier than foraging. In fact it was much harder. It was a
necessary consequence of population growth. Not necessarily a consequence from a magical mechanical machine that made life better.
Anthropologist Mark Cohen explains to us how agriculture didn’t make life easier or better, it made life worse: Land cultivation can only remain productive for as long as population and amount of land remains constant. After a plot is farmed for two or three years, it must lie fallow for over three decades for the brush and trees to grow back. More land, and more sophisticated techniques are required, and as a result, more labour.
John H. Bodley explains that the modern industrial societies where 95 percent of the population is concentrated in or around urban centres, the energy expended in distributing the food now exceeds the energy expended in producing it. Taking farm machinery, trucks, and fertilizer; irrigation projects;food processing;packaging;transportation;manufacturing of trucks;industrial and domestic food preparation and refrigeration-the U.S. food industry expends 8 to 12 calories of energy to produce a single calorie of food! Sure, in the grand scheme of things, in the United States and Canada, we are using less calories to put out a shit ton of calories per human consumption. But at the same time we decrease human labour, we vastly increase the amount of nonhuman energy required to make food in the form of fossil fuels like coal and oil.
Robert L. Carneiro explains that the increase of people relative to land creates conflict and war between people for resources. Then there’s the problem of more sophisticated society giving way to intensified work efforts, specializations, and a social step ladder to a stratified society, denying those lower on the ladder resources. As population grew, the need to maintain order, and organize labour amoung growing people also grew. And as cultural complexity grew, our exposure to infectious agents also grew.
Take for example:
Chagas Disease in Ancient Hunter-Gatherer Population, Brazil
"the current epidemiologic scenario concerning Chagas disease in indigenous populations involves ecologic aspects of their settlements, along with nomad habits, which prevent triatomine nesting and, therefore, the infection. "
Their change in life style from nomadic foragers, a great way to avoid one area with too many triatomine, (the insect that spreads the parasite), to produce settlers has had a direct correlation as to why they currently have a surge in Chagas. (Settling in one place with too many triatomine.)
Large settlements attract and sustain a large amount of vermin, like insects and rats. Large settlements also result in the buildup of human wastes. Schistosomiasis is a disease caused by worms and snails that thrive on irrigation agriculture. The domestication of dogs and cats, cattle, pigs, other characteristics in our advanced society, increases the contact with people and disease causing microorganisms. Food processing and storage is a guaranteed way to spread.
Of course, one can point out that the greatest accomplishment of our industrialized society is the treatment and curing of these diseases. However, citizen access to these cures is determined by the degree in economic inequality in their country, and not by how rich their country is. With the largest income gap, the United States ranks 49th in life expectancy even though it ranks six (boy did it go down) in overall wealth.
The destruction of small egalitarian societies has, in recent years, accelerated largely because of what is termed "globalization", the expansion into virtually all areas of the world of a culture that assumes that economic trade is the source of all well-being. Equally involved in the dilemma are the so-called civilized societies that are responsible for driving small-scale societies to the edge of extinction or forcing them to enter civilization through its dark side of poverty, disease, and forced labour.
Mexico, along with most Central American countries, has lost vast amounts of its rainforests. At the beginning of the century, Mexico had 13 million hectares of rain forest. Today only 2.4 million hectares remain. Of the total destroyed, 5.5 million hectares were converted to pasture, and over half of that is in an advanced stage of degradation and erosion. Furthermore, while 60 percent of Mexico's productive land is devoted to pasture or forage for animals, more than 50 percent of its population never consumes animal products.
In the 1970s, Paraguay, as most developing countries, enjoyed an economic boom fueled by loans from the world bank. Increased agriculture production in crops, soy, wheat and cattle fuelled the boom. The economic miracle was accomplished by bringing new areas of land under cultivation;this involved cutting down the forests, selling timber, and converting the rain forest into farm land or pasture. From 1970 to 1976 Paraguayn rain forests were reduced from 6.8 to 4.2 million hectares. Half the rain forest was cut by 1984, and an additional 5 percent a year is being cut. At this rate the entire Paraguayan rain forest will be gone by 2020.
Do we assume that we can explain the division of wealth in the world by saying that some nations have progressed and others have not? Or is the concept of progress-the idea that human history is the story of a steady advance from a life dependant on the whims of nature to a life of control and domination over natural forces- a fabrication of contemporary societies based on ethnocentric notions of technological superiority?
*Most of these points come directly from "Cultural Anthropolgy a problem-based approach" Richard H.Robbins and Sherrie N. Larkin.
