2014-02-12
718Both the long gone prehistoric cultures and those indigenous cultures still living in what were regarded as "primitive" societies existed in a variety of forms. A simple and obvious way to classify the variety of primitive cultures is according to the types of food eaten and how they are obtained. Thus, those societies which are constantly on the move following their food sources are classified as nomadic, (кочевой), while those whose food source is stable in a single location, at least for the majority of the time, are sedentary (малоподвижный). Furthermore, societies may plant crops and develop some form of agriculture or they may domesticate animals and use them for food and other purposes, or they may simply hunt and gather foods that are available naturally in the wild. These differences in food sources impact many significant aspects of the lives of a community, from the density and size of population that can be supported to the nature of the dwellings that are used, and so forth.
Nomadic people are communities of people that move from one place to another, rather than settling down in one location. Nomadism is distinguished from migration, which involves a major and permanent move from one location to another. Nomads, on the other hand, move periodically or cyclically, in conjunction with climate or animal migration patterns, usually returning to their original location at various times.
Many cultures were traditionally nomadic. Some significant examples include the Eurasian Avars who roamed much of Eurasia due to war and environments unable to provide stable, permanent societies; the Hephthalites who developed no formalized written language, lived across central Asia in small bands, and practiced polyandry (многомужие); the Wu Hu, which were composed of various non-Chinese steppe tribes during the period from the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.E.-22 C.E.) to the Northern Dynasties, and the Plain Indians of North America, who often lived in small bands and roamed the vast wilderness of the American continent.
Hunter-gatherers (the bushmen of Africa) are foragers, dependent upon the natural availability of food. Consequently, they are relatively mobile, moving on as their food supplies become exhausted. This nomadic lifestyle, in which all possessions must be carried, led hunter-gatherers to rely on materials available in the wild to construct simple shelters. There was rarely any elaborate building of permanent housing or development of cities in such societies. Their mobile lifestyle generally meant that there was no possibility of storing surplus food and thus the society remained at a subsistence level.
The nature of the available food supplies led hunter-gatherer societies to develop different specializations. Some hunted big game, or trapped animals, while others fished in lakes, rivers, or along the coast. An older term found in Scandinavian countries is hunter-trapper instead of "gatherer," signifying their use of complex trap systems involving holes in the ground to catch elk (лось), reindeer, and such. Only a limited number of people could congregate without quickly exhausting the local food supplies, with the result that hunter-gatherer societies tend to have very low population densities. Nomadic hunter-gatherer societies usually had non-hierarchical social structures, unlike higher-order horticultural (садовый), pastoral, and industrial societies. The group usually consisted of a small number of family units, often related, comprising a band or clan. Typically, men are responsible for hunting and women for gathering. The Bushmen and Pygmies of Africa and the Innu of Eastern Québec and Labrador, Canada, are some examples of contemporary hunter-gather societies.
Horticultural societies actually grew out of hunter-gather groups that had developed a sustainable supply of food and resources allowing them to createsedentary communities. At first they cultivated a variety of crops on a small scale around their dwellings, or in specialized plots visited occasionally during migrations from one area to the next. The main distinction between horticultural societies and some of oldest civilizations in history that developed agriculture (such as the Sumerians and Egyptians) is that horticultural societies were often small bands directly transitioning from hunter-gather status and did not develop large cities and hierarchies.
In Mesoamerica, starting around the Archaic period of Mesoamerican chronology (8000-2000 B.C.E.), many of the hunter gatherer micro-bands in the region began to cultivate wild plants. The cultivation of these plants probably started out as creating known areas of fall back, or starvation foods, near seasonal camps, that the band could rely on when hunting was bad, or when there was a drought. By creating these known areas of plant food, it was easier for the band to be in the right place, at the right time, to collect them. Eventually, a subsistence pattern, based on plant cultivation, supplemented with small game hunting, became much more reliable, efficient, and generated a larger yield. As cultivation became more focused, many plant species became domesticated. These plants were no longer able to reproduce on their own, and many of their physical traits were being modified by human farmers. The most famous of these, and the most important to Mesoamerican agriculture, is maize. Maize is storable for long periods of time, it can be ground into flour, and it easily turns into surplus for future use. Maize became vital to the survival of the people of Mesoamerica, and that is reflected in their origin, myths, artwork, and rituals.
In pre-contact North America the semi-sedentary horticultural communities of the Eastern Woodlands grew maize, squash (тыква), and sunflowers while also practicing hunting and gathering.
Nomadic pastoralism based societies used a form of agriculture where livestock (such as cattle, sheep, goats, and camels), were taken to different locations in order to find fresh pastures. It was, and still is, commonly practiced in regions with little arable land. Early use of domestic animals for primary carcass products (meat) appears to have broadened to include exploitation for renewable "secondary" products (milk and its associated dairy products, wool and other animal hair, hides and consequently leather, manure for fuel and fertilizer, traction, and riding/pack transport). Many of these innovations first appeared in the Near East during the fourth millennium B.C.E. and spread to Europe and the rest of Asia soon afterward. Historically, nomadic herder lifestyles led to warrior based cultures, fearsome enemies of settled people.
