What are four reasons hunter gatherer tribes did not lead brutish short lives?

Question

What are four reasons hunter gatherer tribes did not lead brutish short lives?

Answer 1

I'm sorry to say that you got some ignorant answers.

I would like to see the sources from the people that say Natives lived only into their 20s.  That is ridiculous.  We have always had elders.  And elder means Old!!!

Why did Natives have higher life expectancy?

I am assuming you mean precolonial Natives.

- They knew medicine so could cure illnesses

- They lived off the land, ate healthy so didn't have problems with things such as heart disease and other illnesses caused by poor diet

- There wasn't all this environmental pollution and illness at that time

- There wasn't all this violence at that time.  In fact Native people lived highly moral lives (contrary to popular stereotypes you  may have heard).

Well, thats four.  Hope this helps.  I am a Native woman.

Answer 2

fire (warmth food etc)

family (care)

opposable thumbs (use tools)

bipedalism (run like h**l)

spoken language (teach and learn)

yes, you are right, they did anyway.

Answer 3

Four. Let me think on that. Birth spacing would be about 5 years. Surviving childhood's the big hurdle. Groups of up to about 25 usually interrelated persons and mates would be cooperative, such as task sharing, groups to hunt and groups to gather, a grandmother to babysit. Group teaching of skills and sharing of lore about the past and the resource territory.

*Probably a little casual horticulture. A seasonal, cyclical migration within the same territory, perhaps 20 miles, fresh water comes to mind as the likely limiting factor. It could be expected there'd be caches of tools such as metates and manos, stuff you don't carry around, on the routes. Autumn in northern hemisphere is the usual time to get together with other local groups, timed for hunts of larger migratory fauna if hunters.

*A side note, more recent to historical hunter gatherer groups were/are found in marginal environments - semi-arid deserts, fishing, and warm rainforests.

What you have then is a family-based unit as community with common goals, interests. Sharing. Cooperation. Yeesh, that's only 3 ... Perhaps overlap of needed skills and labor's a 4th.

Answer 4

1) Their diet was quite rich

2) They didn't fight much in fact

3) They had power to sustain disease

4) They cared for themselves as we do

Answer 5

No IEDs nor Muslims, no napalm, cars and no rifles!   ;-)

That's 5 reasons.

Answer 6

Coalitional living cut down on the brutishness, though the Romanticism of the Native Americans answer is just wishful hogwash. That nonsense about the wars being ritualized between tribes is just that; nonsense. 2 deaths in a hundred person tribe is devastating. Some of the other reasons she gave are marginally true. Hunter-gatherers did not have it all that badly.

Answer 7

Hunter/Gatherers were the original Blood Type "O", and lived in tribes of 30-200...

Blood Type "O" rarely gets cancers...

Not being farmers, they are more active, and move from food source to food source...

Once they have contaminated an area, they move to a new location which is pristeen, and more healthy...

Their diet consists of fresh, mostly raw foods (No breads and few starches)...

Answer 8

they had a common goal to survive,they needed each other to carry this out, they cared for each other and love probably played a roll in there somewhere

Answer 9

On average they did. 50% infant mortality, 20% death before 20th birthday, death in child birth, death by cave bear or lion, death by tribal warfare, and when the missionaries show up, death by disease.