To understand human nature, history and psychology, we must find a way to go back to the minds of those ancestors who hunted and gathered and see what they thought.
Evolutionary psychology believes that various social and psychological characteristics of human beings have been formed long before the agricultural era. Even now, our brains and hearts are still thinking in a hunting and gathering lifestyle.
For example, our ancestors lived in grasslands or forests, and high-calorie sweets were very scarce and always in short supply. Now we still can't resist the sweetest and oiliest food, and this instinct to gobble up high-calorie food has been deeply rooted in our genes.
In terms of marriage, the ancestors believed that if you want to be a good mother, you have to have sex with several different men, especially when you are pregnant. You have to find the best hunters, the best storytellers, the strongest fighters and the most considerate lovers, so that children can have the best quality.
Therefore, some historians believe that modern marriage is often plagued by infidelity, and the high divorce rate is precisely because our "monogamy" is completely forced by modern society.
Of course, it is still very difficult to infer the ancient hunting and gathering life from the existing cultural relics, and there will be great deviations:
First of all, all the modern gathering societies have been influenced by the nearby agricultural or industrial societies to some extent, so it is difficult to assume that the present situation is the same as that of tens of thousands of years ago.
Secondly, modern gathering societies are mainly located in areas that are not suitable for agriculture, such as kalahari desert in southern Africa, where the climate is bad and the terrain is steep. Some societies have adapted to this extreme condition.
Finally, the most striking feature of the hunter-gatherer society is that each has its own characteristics and is quite different.
Therefore, observing the modern collection society with anthropological methods can help us understand the possibility of some ancient collection societies, but this is by no means the whole picture, and most of them are still unknown.
So what are the phenomena we can be sure of?
First of all, there is sufficient research evidence that dogs were the earliest domesticated animals by Homo sapiens, and they had domestic dogs about 15000 years ago.
Secondly, in terms of knowledge, today's human cognition far exceeds that of ancient humans in the past. But at the individual level, ancient gatherers are the most diverse human beings in history.
Because Homo sapiens collected not only food and raw materials, but also "knowledge". In order to survive, Homo sapiens needs to know his position like the back of his hand. They not only have a deep understanding of animals, plants and various objects around them, but also know their own body and sensory world. They will carefully observe the branches and leaves of trees and find out the fruits, hives and nests. They always act in the most labor-saving and quiet way, and they also know how to sit, walk and run is the most flexible and efficient.
Besides, the life of our ancestors seems to be more comfortable and meaningful. They only need to hunt once every three days and collect for three to six hours a day, which is enough to feed the whole tribe. Compared with our agricultural society and even industrial society, it is much easier.
Our ancestors' health is not as bad as we thought. They have a variety of foods, and even if a certain food source is cut off, the impact will not be too great. But if it is an agricultural society, once drought, fire and earthquake come, destroying all the rice or potatoes of that year will lead to serious famine.
Compared with agriculture and industrial society, the permanent living environment is usually very close, but the sanitary conditions are not good, which is an ideal hotbed of diseases. However, the vagrancy of collectors protects them from infectious diseases.
It is precisely because these gatherers before the agricultural era had a healthy and diversified diet, relatively short working hours and fewer infectious diseases that many experts defined this society as "the original affluent society".
So what can we know about the spiritual and psychological life of ancient hunters?
Ancient collectors generally believed in pantheism. Pantheism holds that almost any place, any animal, any plant and any natural phenomenon has its consciousness and emotion, and can communicate directly with human beings.
But if we want to describe the ancient spirituality in depth, it will become a hypothetical guess, because there is almost no evidence to prove it; Even those cultural relics and rock paintings can be interpreted in various ways.
Our understanding of the social and political world of the gatherers is also close to zero, and even the most basic aspects, such as private property, nuclear family, monogamy and so on, can't be reached.
Next, let's talk about "war". What role does it play in the society of gatherers?
Some scholars believe that the ancient hunter-gatherer society should be a peaceful paradise, because it was not until after the agricultural revolution that people began to accumulate private property, and war and violence began. However, some scholars believe that as early as the ancient collection era, all kinds of cruel and violent things have appeared.
There are two opposite views, mainly because there were no fortifications, no city walls, no shells, and even no swords or shields. Although the ancient spearhead may be used in war, it may also be used only for hunting.
There have been three studies on 400 bones that died on the eve of the agricultural revolution. In the first study in Portugal, only two people apparently died of violence. Second, in Israel, all the evidence related to man-made violence is that only one skull is cracked, that's all. But the third study is some places in the Danube River basin. Among these 400 bodies, * * * 18 shows that they were injured by violence. 18/400 may not sound like much, but in fact this ratio is quite high. Assuming that 18 people really died of violence, it means that about 4.5% of the mortality rate in the ancient Danube River basin was caused by man-made violence. Now even if war and crime are added together, the average death toll caused by man-made violence in the world is only 1.5%.
Collecting societies may have many different religious and social structures, and it can be predicted that they also have different violent tendencies. Perhaps in some periods, some areas are calm and peaceful, but in others, they are turbulent.