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Note that the dichotomy between "hunter-gatherers" and "permanently settled" is a bit overstated. - There's some evidence that various people in history have b
by kqr 4y ago
Note that the dichotomy between "hunter-gatherers" and "permanently settled" is a bit overstated.
- There's some evidence that various people in history have been seasonally permanently settled, and foraging without a fixed home part of the year.
- Other people settle for a few years and then move on, doing small-scale growing of crops when they are settled.
- Yet others encourage wild growth of food crops, and generally move around and forage in a large area that has been lightly tended to in that manner. (Meaning they don't build homes that last for centuries, but they also permanently inhabit a large area.)
- And in some societies, there are classes of people that are permanently settled but live in symbiosis with more mobile foragers, who live in the permanent settlements only a little at a time.
- inglor_cz 4y agoYes, for example the Yanomamo hunters-gatherers in the Amazon basin stay in approximately one place for years or decades, in jungle clearings they build semi-permanent "shapoons", a structure from wood and leaves that obviously does not survive in the archeologic records (nothing survives in the Amazon; there is a lack of stone there and organic structures decompose soon), plus they cultivate a lot of plants locally. The concept of a hunter-gatherer roaming the endless steppe is romantic, but it does not seem to occur that much in known history.