Juǀʼhoansi - an affluent and egalitarian society ?
The Juǀʼhoansi are a nomadic people living in the kalahari desert. Their society model is a band, with no permanent authority figures and without role specialization. The only divide is terms of taks is between women and man, women gatherers (which amount to 70% of the calorie intake of the group) and men hunt. In the Juǀʼhoansi there is no hunger, it takes about 2 hours to collect enough food to last for one week. Another interesting fact is that when hunters return with the meat, and since the meat is a valuable item for the band, people don’t show any gratitude towards the hunters and instead claim that the meat is not good enough or not in sufficient quantity. This is to put the hunters in their place, and avoid that they gain a higher role in society.
Marshal Sahlins, author of the “original affluent society” theory argues that hunter-gatherers societies were affluent, and the switch to agriculture did not bring more affluence, it actually brought less affluence. So why would humans change to a new type of society which brings less resources to the people ? It is argued that it was because in order to have leadership it was needed to have sedentary people, and that therefore this change was because of political motives. It wasn’t more advanced societies that needed political leadership in order to appear, but it was leaders that needed a higher density of static population to be able to ascertain their authority. Archeological evidence demonstrates that early agriculture societies had worse health then hunter-gatherers, thus disproving the long held hypothesis that agriculture was adapted because it provided much more food with less work.