The state of nature: lessons from hunter-gatherers | Janis Strods | TEDxRiga

If you want your policy to work, your ideas to be as influential as possible, you should ask one simple question — on which every policy, of every politician (and teacher) all over the world is based on.

Watch Janis Strods' talk to discover that question and start looking for the answers — by learning from hunter-gatherers.

Janis Strods is currently a researcher with the Hunter-Gatherers Resilience project at University College London. While his colleagues work closely with hunter-gatherers in Congo and the Philippines, Janis listens to their stories and builds mathematical models to understand why hunter-gatherers share food the way they do (trying to get a Ph.D along the way).

When he is not busy translating human behaviour to computer code, Janis is crunching numbers with Edurio, a company that helps schools improve themselves, and playing board games. He can also occasionally be found hiking and teaching biological anthropology at Riga Stradins University.

[abhijitbanerjee]

lack of hierarchy, equity in the group, living for today, sense of timelessness (resulting in low stress) are the hallmarks of a hunter-gathers lifestyle

[IzzyLaMacchia]

An unfortunate comment towards the end: “Humanity isn't like hunter-gatherers but humanity can be like hunter-gatherers”. Thus, implying hunter-gatherers are NOT within the fellowship of human beings. A better term may be to refer to the "us" in mind as an agriculturalists civilization or "food producers" - there is a difference in the method of securing food. No human is outside humanity.

[nakajimahiro]

8 years old:
I hate humanities. Humanities is the worst.
11 years old:
Humanities is the best. It’s better than Xbox.

[alfreddaniels]

He could have mentioned that people always live in families. They are surrounded by neighbouring families. These families are related to eachother trough marriages. That is what is called a band or a tribe when its a much bigger group. Suppose you would go camping with your family and with the families that are related to you by mariages,

[shamtradtam]

The hunter-gatherers of North Sentinelese island are so peaceful and non-xenophobic that whenever anyone from outside goes near their island, they shower them with peaceful, non-hierarchical arrows and show them the equity of death

[Social_Mechanic]

I keep hearing from different anthropologists that "hunter/gatherers are monogamous" and then some say "hunter/gatherers are polyamorous". WTF xD

[simulacrum]

In such a condition, it was the quest for self-preservation that dictated the lives of individuals and based on their personal judgments individuals were entering into an all-out war with one another

[theresbob]

The question is simple: what are people's basic needs? The ability to provide it is the age old conundrum.

[duckbizniz]

I have no idea what is Mr. Janis Strods' point is. So what are people like? What is this question asking? He ends with this egalitarianism. Is he saying we should share everything with others? I recently heard another anthropologist talk about his research in hunter-gatherers. Because hunter-gatherer society is egalitarian each member is fiercely independent. Because hunter-gatherers are egalitarian they do not listen to others. They are fiercely independent. When there is a disagreement it leads to violence. In fact this other anthropologist says that violent death occur at a rate of 12% vs 1% for people who live in an large, sedentary agricultural society where you have hierarchy or institutions of authority where people can go to settle disputes. In hunter-gatherer society disputes escalate into violence and sometime deaths. Egalitarian hunter-gatherer are fiercely independent and they do not listen to other people who try to intervene to settle disputes. So is Mr. Janis Strods suggesting we should be more egalitarian and not allow an institution of authority to settle our disputes. To be egalitarian we should do what we want to do even if it leads to violence?

[Appleblade]

So if you gave the ring of power to Frodo of the hunter gatherers, he would just pass it around to any of the members and trust everyone would remain equal?

[jimrutin]

Enjoyed the video but detected both idealist/ideological influence and that's okay, I expect that from youth. That said, I am certain we could learn and benefit greatly from hunter gatherers.

[amvCBG]

Most of these Tribes that exist today were very isolated from the rest of civilisation. Perhaps this caused them to be peaceful?

War was often fought for food.
Land gave food.
And villages often hunted as well as farmed.

Yet hunting didn't wield a lot and was often dangerous.

The fact that no one fought over each other makes me question if humans are part of the animal kingdom at all and are some divine creature that is the embodiment of peace

In the book the war before civilisation
He said war was was the norm and peaceful Tribes were the exception.
Typically isolated nomadic Tribes.
Like today. Which gives us our warped sense of view of ancient tribal life
That we automatically take as truth because we are so desperate to believe that humans are very rarely dictated from nature and we can socialise them to be the perfect communist society

But here is my question? Why were they peaceful?
Why did suddenly the rise of agriculture that people became warlike?
Were people not fighting over food before?
No starvation? No food or hunting spots other Tribes were using to survive?
Greed never existed? No one was trying to survive?

Was life a garden of Eden? Filled with abundance of food and water and fruits.
Never going hungry or struggling to find food? Never fighting over food and hunting spots with other Tribes?

If so I am surprised they survived and all didn't die out of starvation.
From what I read. People struggled for food.

Hunting and gathering was not a reliable way to get staple amounts of food.

Which was why they often moved
And other Tribes were just happy that some unknown tribe started to hunt and take food from areas they were using?

I read about Australian Tribes.

And Tribes often distrusted each other.
Food was fought over. agriculture brought multitudes of food that hunters and gatherers couldn't normally get.
It united people through the concept of kingdoms.
If agriculture brought more problems and war. Why would people eagerly accept it? Why wouldn't they go back?

There are armish and old agricultural areas that still don't accept technology (the amish have a few exceptions)
Yet they are peaceful.
So war never really happened in the agricultural Times?

U see the point. The rest of the world has moved on. And war with it. Since Tribes are a rarity they obviously not going to constantly fight each other over food

Plus they have lots of contact with civilisation and barter.

So this could have influenced them? Could it not?

Population increased. And so did the average life expectancy.

They didn't have to worry about constant attacks from animals.

So suddenly during a time where food was incredibly hard to get a stable supply of.
Everyone was peaceful and lived in harmony and no heirachies? (there was hierarchies. Just not political or economical. There were competince heirachies. Someone who was competent in a field was more highly looked upon.)
And suddenly the dark ages of agriculture brought death and war and hatred and greed.

And many cultures were war like.

There are thousands of archaeological bones dating back of men covered in what looks like to be wounds from weapons.
All across Africa, Asia, Europe and the americas.

There is also the book Demonic Males

Book by Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham

I get the feeling u hope that a utopian society is possible and ur looking for one in Tribes to confirm it.

Tribes in hunter gatherer societies obviously are very different today than they were thousands of years ago.

Typically because these ones have lived away from the progression. Of other Tribes and civilisations.

And war often brings advancement.

The desire to be able to have more advantage or survival chance over ur peers.

Like when the ottomans surrounded the byzantine in constantinople.

An engineer came to the emporer and said he would build him a bronze canon that can break any wall.

He couldn't afford it and so he went to the ottomans.

The ottomans grew wealthy from the lands they conquered.

People ate and slept with bellies of food.

If hunter gatherers never had this problem. Then why change their ways?

[TomahAwkDJ]

I'm sorry but theres some stuff that are false, there are numerous hunter gatherer tribes with polygamous relationships. Yes woman sometimes hunt or fish this is true but they are not responsible for the hunt for big games, women only hunt small stuff near camps like rabbits for exemple. There are always division of work between the sexes. But this is normal due to biology, nothing immoral with that.
What is true is yes they share everything.
What is false is that it's not 100% equality, most of the time there's a chief of the village but he dosn't act like a boss he acts as a leader.

[djhellion]

The idea that Hunter Gatherers were egalitarian with no status hierarchies is a complete fantasy. Give me a break.

[Francisqolito]

"Camping is spending alot of money to be homeless for a while"

Hunter-gatherers: hold my fish!

[prajnasword]

Nothing deep here. He said nothing different from an Anthropology 101 class, and he used half his time setting up his talk. Blah!

[squatch]

I'm fascinated by my own flatulence.

[paulcunnane]

My God you lefties never rest, do you?

[patriciaoffer]

Polyamory and polyandry are options, too...!!!

Game Theory made schizophrenia look better....

talk makes Game Theory look bad, and maybe rightly so.