“The hunter-gatherer mind is humanity’s most sophisticated combination of detailed knowledge and intuition. It is where direct experience and metaphor unite in a joint concern to know and use the truth. The agricultural mind is a result of specialised, intense development of specific systems of intellectual order, with many kinds of analytical category and exacting uses of deductive reasoning. The hunter-gatherer seeks a relationship with all parts of the world that will be in both personal and material balance. The spirits are the evidence and the metaphors of this relationship. If they are treated well, and are known in the right way, and are therefore at peace with human beings, then people will find the things they need. The farmer has the task of controlling and shaping the world, making it yield the produce upon which agricultural life depends. If this is done well, then crops will grow. Discovery by discovery, change by change, field by field, control is increased and produce is more secure. The dichotomies of good and evil, right and wrong express this farmer project: control comes with separating manipulable resources form the rest of the environment and working with determination and consistency against all that might undermine this endeavor” (Brody 2001, p. 306-7).
The starkest differences between hunter-gatherers and farmers, as described by Hugh Brody. Brody also stresses the importance of not seeing hunter-gatherer : farmer as a clear-cut dichotomy, but instead realizing that there is a spectrum of possible livelihood strategies between these two lifestyles.
References:
Brody, H. 2002 [2001]. The Other Side of Eden: Hunter-Gatherers, Farmer and the Shaping of the World. London: Faber and Faber Limited
“After some time, octopus fishing became popular among the youth. They made a competition. I went to my corner, the other boy to his own corner, and we would see who was going to find the most fe’e [octopus]. It was like a game. I was the champion, the champion of hunting octopus. If you don’t believe me it’s not my fault, but it isn’t a tikoi [lie]. After, there were some kids that came to see me. They were a little younger than me, and they wanted to know how I do it. ‘Well,’ I said to them, ‘There is no secret. The secret that I can give you is to catch your breath. You must have a lot of breath. Do not waste it.’ What I meant was, when you dive, you have to avoid moving too much. If you move too much, you are wasting your breath. Voila. And also, there is a technique – when the octopus comes out, you must catch it quick, pull it in quick. Don’t wait until he grabs hold of a rock, because then it will be difficult. If he holds onto a rock, it is then that you will really need your breath. Pull, pull, pull, pull.” – Tehei of Vaitahu, Age 31.
Tehei shows a young boy how to dive for sea urchins, a common snack food (2018).
“After, when my father went during the daytime to the quai to fish for octopus, I always went with him. And sometimes I was afraid. But my dad sensed this, he could sense it. If a shark was near both of us it could sense my fear too. And my dad said this: ‘You must never have fear. If you are afraid the shark will not leave.’ I was crying then and said, ‘Ah, no, I don’t want this, no!’ Little by little, sometimes after I practiced and practiced and practiced I began to get good at diving. Sometimes I went all by myself. If I told my dad this, he would say, “No, no, no, you must never go alone, it isn’t good.’ But I didn’t listen to him. I would watch my father and if he wasn’t paying me any attention this is what I did: I took the mask and the speargun with the flippers and everything and I went. And when he saw that I wasn’t there he went to look at the fishing materials. When he would see the materials missing he would say, ‘Ah, no, Tehei went diving again!’ I did this all the time.” – Tehei of Vaitahu, Age 31
The Edited Jottings of an Amateur Anthropologist 