Hunter Gatherers Quotes

• For three million years we were hunter-gatherers, and it was through the evolutionary pressures of that way of life that a brain so adaptable and so creative eventually emerged. Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty.

  Richard Leakey

  Creativity, Science, Years

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• We used to be hunter-gatherers, now we're shopper-borrowers.

  Robin Williams

  Hunters, Used, Shoppers

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• We were hunter-gatherers of information, and we moved from that to becoming farmers and cultivators of information.

  J.P. Rangaswami

  Hunters, Information, Becoming

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• The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.

  Jared Diamond

  Agriculture, Adoption, Way

  "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" by Jared Diamond, discovermagazine.com. May 01, 1999.

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• Once humans traded their hunter-gatherer existences for more settled communities, we began a quest to make our lives better and more comfortable, but we've also been sucking precious finite resources from our environment ever since.

  Naveen Jain

  Community, Hunters, Quests

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• Humans lived for several million years as fully wild beings: only in the last 10, 000 did we invent agriculture; only in the last couple of centuries did we invent industry. We are a species that has spent 99 per cent of its history as hunter-gatherers. We haven't had time for our unconscious minds and our unconscious needs to have changed. If you like, our souls have not changed, and this is true whether or not we believe that we have them.

  Simon Barnes

  Couple, Believe, Years

  Simon Barnes (2008). “How to be Wild”, p.39, Short Books

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• Twelve thousand years ago, everybody on earth was a hunter-gatherer; now almost all of us are farmers or else are fed by farmers. The spread of farming from those few sites of origin usually did not occur as a result of the hunter-gatherers' elsewhere adopting farming; hunter-gatherers tend to be conservative.... Instead, farming spread mainly through farmers' outbreeding hunters, developing more potent technology, and then killing the hunters or driving them off of all lands suitable for agriculture.

  Jared Diamond

  Technology, Agriculture, Years

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• Only recently have we come up with the technology to turn lazing around into a way of life. We've taken our sinewy, durable, hunter-gatherer bodies and plunked them into an artificial world of leisure.

  Christopher McDougall

  Taken, Technology, Hunters

  Christopher McDougall (2010). “Born to Run: The hidden tribe, the ultra-runners, and the greatest race the world has never seen”, p.243, Profile Books

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• Human beings thrive on action. Stagnation does not wear well with us. We are said to have our origins as hunter-gatherers. We run and we chase. We are problem-solvers. We must be continuously tested and we continuously test ourselves. And it will not end until our lives end because of life itself.

  Art Buchwald

  Running, Tests, Doe

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• There's something very terrifying about that and very primal about it. It's my belief that what horror does for people is that it provides that primal fear that, when we were wild hunter-gatherers, we had as part of our natural lives because maybe something was trying to hunt and gather you as well. We don't have that anymore in life and that's one of the things that horror films and action films provide for us.

  Paul W. S. Anderson

  People, Trying, Doe

  Source: collider.com

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• The flute is traditionally the property of the male side of matrilineal hunter-gatherer societies and was used as a means of communication and personal expression.

  R. Carlos Nakai

  Communication, Mean, Expression

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• It is not as if farming brought a great improvement in living standards either. A typical hunter-gatherer enjoyed a more varied diet and consumed more protein and calories than settled people, and took in five times as much viatmin C as the average person today.

  Bill Bryson

  Average, People, Typical

  Bill Bryson (2010). “At Home: A Short History of Private Life”, p.66, Random House

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• What do women do when they get together? We sit around and talk! Men, not so much. My theory is that this difference is genetic and dates back to the hunter-gatherer societies, when the men had to be quiet as they hunted, lest they scare away the bison and then everyone starved to death and it was all their fault.

  Jenna McCarthy

  Men, Differences, Together

  "Did You Say Something, Dear?" by Jenna McCarthy, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 6, 2011.

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• So long as we continued to attach more importance to our own narrow group membership than to the 'global village' we would propagate prejudice and ignorance. There was absolutely no harm in being part of a small group - indeed, with our hunter-gatherer band mentality it gave comfort, provided us with an inner circle of friends who could be utterly trusted, who were absolutely reliable. It helped give us peace of mind. The danger came only from drawing that sharp line, digging that ditch, laying that minefield, between our own group and any other group that thought differently.

  Jane Goodall

  Ignorance, Circles, Drawing

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• I do have a dominant shopping gene but, unlike a reasonable person, I never plan for what I need each season. I enjoy the thrill of the hunt, the discovery and the endless search. In another creation I was, perhaps, a hunter/gatherer. After all these years, I’ve learned that it’s not the end result or finished product but the process I most enjoy. If my experimenting, searching and juxtaposing turns into an exciting outfit well, it’s just a big fat bonus!

  Iris Apfel

  Discovery, Years, Shopping

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• It's an attitude of superiority. We are superior to the rest of life. The Book of Genesis says: 'Increase and multiply and have dominion over the birds of the air and the animals and so forth.' You run it; it's yours; do what you like with it. I don't know how old that text is, but it represents an attitude that probably really got going with the beginning of agriculture. Before that, the hunter-gatherers were gentler people than the agriculture.

  W. S. Merwin

  Running, Attitude, Book

  "An Interview with W. S. Merwin, Poet Laureate". Interview with Ed Rampell, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. October 25, 2010.

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• If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.

  Noam Chomsky

  Children, Growing Up, Boston

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• In every human society of which we know - prehistoric, ancient or modern, whether hunter-gatherer, pastoral, agricultural or industrial - at least some form of art is displayed, and not only displayed, but highly regarded and willingly engaged in.

  Ellen Dissanayake

  Art, Culture, Hunters

  Ellen Dissanayake (1992). “Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why”

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• We estimate that there are perhaps 20,000 prehistoric hunter-gatherers frozen up in those glaciers. Now, if they simply thaw and wander around, it's not a problem, but if they find a leader - a Captain Caveman, if you will - we'll be facing an even more serious problem.

  John Hodgman

  Leader, Hunters, Frozen

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• If Adam and Eve were not hunter-gatherers, then they were certainly gatherers. But, then, consumer desire, or self-embitterment, or the 'itch,' as Schopenhauer called it, appeared in the shape of the serpent. This capitalistic monster awakens in Adam and Eve the possibility that things could be better. Instantly, they are cast out of the garden and condemned to a life of toil, drudgery, and pain. Wants supplanted needs, and things have been going downhill ever since.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Pain, Garden, Self

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• People have been looking for love potions since hunter-gatherer societies.

  Helen Fisher

  People, Hunters, Looking For Love

  "Pharmaceutica L Love Potion Not yet..." by Brandon Keim, www.wired.com. January 7, 2009.

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• Childhood is not dead. Children were worse off when we were hunter-gatherers; they were threatened in medieval times and exploited during the Industrial Revolution. Was it any better in the time of Charles Kingsley or Charles Dickens?

  Robert Winston

  Children, Childhood, Hunters

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