Only Remaining Hunter Gatherers example essay topic

Ancient Man and the Disco Ball By Charlie Bright (This paper has nothing to do with disco balls) Essay One) Thousands of years ago, primitive man walked the earth very similarly to the way he does today. We can discern this from the cultures that remain nearly intact from that time, and by analyzing what remains from those ancient peoples. Technologies change, making life easier for people, and ensuring the survival of the species (things like medicine and modern farming techniques), but the people themselves change very little. Ethnographically, people like the!

Kung bushmen are very specialized. In actuality, any and all of the remaining societies that have survived outside of mainstream culture must be very specialized. There are few places in the world untouched by civilized man (perhaps none at all), and the only places that have managed to elude him thus far are the regions that are generally unwanted. These places, like the Kalahari, Arctic Circle, and South American Jungle, are the only locations containing native people living in their traditional ways.

All of the people living in these places have to live in a very specific way, or they simply cannot survive on what the land gives them. Of, course all of the ethnographic records we have show highly specialized people, we killed all the ones that lived where they could be more generalized and still survive. The archaeological record shows us what the intelligent ethnographers preach; there is more out there than what we see, and we are constantly underestimating the cultures that came before us. The widespread use of tools like harpoons and spears, the spread of pottery and boxes, and the actual contents of ancient stomachs (like the Ice Man's) show us that ancient people were once more variable than they are now. Considering that ancient men spread from Pittsburgh to South America in an incredibly short span of time (though from whence they came is unknown), ancient people must have been very adept at adapting. Archaeologists are trying very hard to understand the ethnographers.

They do this because they want to understand just what it is that they are digging up, and the best way to find out is to ask the people who use them. Of course they are not perfect, and some archaeologists dig competitively (almost like tomb raiders), but overall, we can learn a lot about ancient people from the work of these two groups of scientists working together with the past and the present. Essay Two) Mastodon State Park is a Clovis kill site, and is one of the most famous sites in Missouri. Aside from this, it stands as proof that the Clovis point (which spread like furies 12,000 years ago) had been in this area.

Other evidence, like small bony vesicles in the ground, provide us with even more insight into what life was actually like 12,000 year ago. Clovis points are valuable archaeologically because they spread at a specific time and all that are found seem to come from that era. We can determine a lot about the people who made the famous kill at Mastodon State Park (though at that time there were neither States nor parks) by the Clovis points they left behind. The mineral, for example, in one of the points comes from a strata only found near Jefferson City, quite some distance from the Park. From this, we can tell that the people moved a lot in their lives, and the direction that they had been travelling. A Clovis point is a long sharp blade used at the end of a spear to give extra penetration when spearing an extra thick mastodon.

These points are made of one stone by cutting a flute (a groove) through the middle, and then cutting large flakes from the side. Making a Clovis point without breaking it when doing the flute is incredibly difficult and takes immense talent. Using other, larger rocks, men would strike the stones they wanted to shape until they were close to being spear points, and then finish them almost artistically with well placed strikes (lecture / video ). A Clovis cache site is simply what it sounds like, a site of Clovis people with a large cache of artifacts (mainly points). We know much about the Clovis people from these sites, and we can tell more by extrapolating from the climate from the time and the fossil record of the animals that lived near them. Clovis people were all surprisingly similar, despite the fact that they were widespread.

This is curious because in much of the primitive world, people were so specialized, that spreading to a new type of terrain would be nearly impossible. The Clovis people, like many peoples from ancient times, lived in small bands, roaming nomadically from one place to the next in search of food to gather or hunt. When Clovis people stopped in Mastodon State Park one day to kill a big mastodon with spears and spear throwers, they had no idea how historic an event it truly was. Essay Three) The hunter stalked thigh deep in the mud towards the twenty foot long sloth.

He held his atlatl back and prepared for the release when his animal instinct screamed out, BEHIND YOU! He spun quickly to see an american lion, half the sloth's size. Nine hundred pounds of teeth and fangs leapt at the hunter, as he just stood silently, awaiting the end. Over the last 12,000 years, the global environment has been changing. Currently we are in a period of low glaciation and high water levels.

12,000 years ago, when Clovis people wandered about the environment was very different. Climatically, the Midwest, was very different. Camels lived in the area, along with Bone Crusher Dogs, and tons of mosquitoes. The weather was hot, the air humid, and the fauna was deadlier than any since the days of the dinosaur. In some places the climate and terrain were more hospitable, but in others, it was even more deadly. In the far north, the Bering Land Bridge 'open' for years during periods of higher glaciation was closing.

Frozen tundras covered with herds of wool mammoths passed over treacherous reaches of ice. Food was scarce in the frozen wastes, and often, it was eat or be eaten for the animals. Between the two great remaining American glaciers was the Ice Free Corridor, which was an area even more dangerous than that of the frozen North. Imagine a frozen river stretching from horizon to horizon. A river, filled with giant swift moving chunks of ice, cut so deep into the earth that it is almost like a flowing icy sea. Imagine some guy without a boat running across this with his family so he can get to South America by 12,000 BP.

Geologically, the area called the Ice Free Corridor, which is the only real way for early Native Americans to travel south from the treacherous Bering Land Bridge, was virtually impassible. This environmental information might lead one to believe that there was another way the first American immigrants used to get to their new home. On the coastline, fish leap from the warm ocean waters surrounding lush forests teeming with game and gather able foods. With simple boat technology, it would have been a simple matter for the earliest of people to have come to America.

Furthermore, with boat technology, there would be a quick way for new arrivals to spread all throughout the coastline, and up rivers, around which the terrain is similar to that of the coastline. It is probable, in light of the environmental evidence, that ancient man made his way to the Americas by boat rather than by the Bering Land Bridge (Origins). Fossil records and skeletal structural differences between Native Americans and people from Siberia support this theory. It is interesting to note that the traditional Bering Land Bridge theory was created because ancient man was underestimated, but for it to have actually been true, he would have had to have been more resourceful than anyone has ever thought him to be. Essay Six) Archaeologists use many methods to uncover and learn about ancient peoples.

I thought at one time that archaeologists just dug holes, picked out stuff, and catalogued, but have recently realized that the job of an archaeologist is far more complicated. Most of what real archaeologists do is inside, and more often in a library than at a dig. Archaeologists analyze things from the past and put them back together. Often times, pieces of objects strewn about what was once a room are all parts of a whole, and it is up to these scientists to reconstruct the entire artifact and extrapolate from the pieces they have the appearance and function of the original item (slide show). Archaeologists also must be careful to maintain the integrity of items as they remove them from the ground. In some cases (slide show), the best way for archaeologists to uncover information about people is not just to dig, but to use other methods like spraying water to wash away mud from encrusted structures.

Also, to learn more about the people they study, they analyze their movement patterns to see where they came from. By finding out where someone came from, an archaeologist can discern a lot about a group. For example, if a band just came from an area known for its fine rock, then it is possible that they had some spear tips or tools from that place. If they came from an area that had another group particularly known for some product, then they may have picked up something in those lands during their travels.

What these people ate and killed would also be discern able from the fossil record. Since many methods of hunting particular animals are already known, we can tell much about hunting patterns from the fossil record, especially if there is a kill site nearby. One amazing thing to me is that archaeologists really do not miss much. The archaeologists at Mastodon State Park discovered small bony vesicles in the ground, things not found in the animals in the area (field trip). They gathered from these very small things (that look very much like rocks to me) that the people who came through the park had worn and discarded animal skins from beasts that grew vesicles. They then determined what kind of animals grew them, and where the hunters had gotten them.

Archaeologists are, of necessity, a perceptive and creative group of people. Essay Seven) Hunters and gatherers are almost all nomadic. It has been said that ancient man never stayed in the same place too long because wherever he lived was his bathroom. This is why many of the first sedentary groups (Mesopotamian's, Egyptians, etc.) lived near a river. There is little doubt that the help of annual flooding and regeneration of topsoil aided this too, but the fact remains that the earliest hunter / gatherers never seemed to stay in the same place for very long. The nature of the hunter / gatherer today seems to be one of constant movement.

The! Kung would not last very long in their traditional ways on the land they have remaining, the harsh desert environment couldn't support them for very long. The nature of the environment itself is responsible for the nomadic or sedentary lifestyles of its people. The prehistoric hunter / gatherers we have studied were intelligent, though highly eccentric in their beliefs. Many of their technologies have religious value to them, like the Warodani's poison chanting for stronger poisons. A shift in location that would alter greatly a band's techniques for food gathering might be seen as an affront to their religious belief.

While these prehistoric hunter / gatherers continually were on the move, they always remained in the same general type of area so they could retain their traditional ways. It is for this reason that many ancient peoples rejected the shift to agriculture that other groups embraced. To totally change lifestyles, a group would have to abandon thousands of years of tradition and create a whole new tradition of sedentary agricultural life. Today, the only remaining hunter / gatherers are people who must remain on relatively small plots of land given them by the kinder governments.

Unfortunate hunter / gatherer groups do not even have protection in small areas, and the smallness of the minds of the outsiders is what truly kills them.