Not by lacking the urge to dominate, but by refusing to tolerate it. Hunter-gatherer bands kept themselves equal through a ladder of sanctions against anyone who grew too big, from teasing and ridicule to shaming, refusal to cooperate and, in the end, casting out; through sharing food on demand and owning little that could be stored up; through leadership that was temporary and tied to the task in hand; and through raising children to have power-from-withinPower-from-within. Starhawk’s term for the healthy mode of power, as against power-over. Egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands held power this way; practising shamanism from power-over is ‘just more Fall’. More about this, with no wish to dominate and no willingness to submit. That is why the anthropologist Richard Lee called them fiercely egalitarian.
Were hunter-gatherers simply equal by nature? #
No. Equality had to be kept. The anthropologist Christopher Boehm, comparing hunter-gatherers with our closest relatives, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas, found little evidence that humans are simply more egalitarian than other apes; many humans want power, and most dislike being dominated. What hunter-gatherers had was a different outcome to the power struggles every ape society has: instead of a stable hierarchy, the group came together to stop anyone imposing themselves on the rest.1 Boehm’s name for this is the reverse dominance hierarchy; see What did Christopher Boehm find about how early humans kept power in check? and What is a reverse dominance hierarchy?
Hunter-gatherers did not just practise and embody genuine equality, they fiercely protected it, which is where the phrase ‘fiercely egalitarian’ comes from.1 See What does fiercely egalitarian mean?
How did they stop people from dominating? #
Step by step, and seriously. In many tribes, anyone who started to get too cocky or arrogant would be teased to take them down a peg or two. If that did not work they would be told off; if it still did not work they would be called to council and shamed in front of the whole tribe, knowing that the next step was being cast out. In hunter-gatherer times, being cast out of the tribe was sooner or later, in effect, a death sentence.2 The same ladder appears as teasing, then ridicule and shaming, then disobedience, people simply refusing to cooperate with the would-be dominator, and finally ostracism.3
Behind the ladder lay something harder. Hunter-gatherers were not warlike, but they were not pacifists either. An attempt to dominate the tribe was treated as an attack, because it threatened the harmony and cooperation everyone’s lives depended on, so a person who persisted, once every other option was exhausted, could be killed to protect the tribe.3 Nobody is suggesting that today; the point is how seriously our ancestors took dominance, and how well they understood what tolerating it would lead to. Among the !Kung of the Kalahari, mainly hunter-gatherers when they were studied, even a successful hunter’s meat was mocked, to keep his heart cool; see What did Richard Lee learn from the !Kung about sharing?
How did sharing keep people equal? #
By leaving nothing to build power on. Hunter-gatherers were Leaver cultures, taking what they needed at any given time and leaving the rest.4 The anthropologist James Woodburn described the small mobile bands that eat food soon after it is found and store little as immediate-return societies, and the anthropologist Jerome Lewis, who has worked for decades with the Mbendjele BaYaka of the Congo forest, explains why they stay equal: nobody can build up more than others or control what others need, anyone can simply walk away from someone who tries, and in such societies “pressure is not put on people to produce, but on them to share whatever they have produced.”5
Sharing works by asking. People request what they need and the one asked is expected to give it, so the giver does not get to choose and gains no standing by giving. A man who hunts so much that the camp is always eating his meat gets teased and gossiped about until he eases off.5 See Who is Jerome Lewis, and what can the BaYaka teach us about equality?
Did they have no leaders at all? #
They had leadership, but no rulers. There were no permanent leaders or followers in hunter-gatherer communities: people temporarily took the initiative, or were temporarily given authority, by consensus and according to the task at hand, and the order a mobile life depended on came from respectful discussion and agreement.6 EldersElder (True Elder). The rarer stage beyond Adulthood. Adults decide; Elders advise. More about this guided, but did not command: “Adults decide and Elders advise.”7 Decisions tended to be taken by the tribe as a whole, with the elders holding the space for discussion so that everyone could be heard.8
Consensus of that kind was possible because the people involved were Adults, guided by Elders. No band would have survived if it were chaotic, so the order was real; it simply grew from the bottom up instead of being imposed from above.9 See How does animism understand power and hierarchy?
How was equality passed on to children? #
By how they were raised. Hunter-gatherer children were not hit or shouted at, but shown trust, respect and kindness, and their instincts were trusted. Among the !Kung, the anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas saw children who rarely cried because they had very little to cry about. Adults, too, had an extraordinary respect for one another’s autonomy; they did not tell other people what to do, and rarely offered advice nobody had asked for.10
Children raised without being dominated grow into adults with power-from-within: no wish to have power over others, and no willingness to hand their own power to anyone else. That relationship to power is a large part of why hunter-gatherer cultures could work so well without leaders.10 See What was hunter-gatherer life really like?
Did equality extend to men and women? #
On the whole, yes, though roles usually differed. Hunter-gatherer cultures tended to have different roles for men and women, with men more often the hunters and women the gatherers, though how strictly this held varied enormously from tribe to tribe. Even so there was usually equality and mutual respect between the sexes; these cultures tended to be neither patriarchal nor matriarchal, and no one section of society held power over and oppressed another.11 Difference, in other words, did not mean rank.
Was every hunter-gatherer society equal? #
No, and the exceptions are revealing. Where wild food was so plentiful that people could stay in one place, complex hunter-gatherers such as the peoples of the Pacific North-West coast of America became settled and developed hierarchy, inequality, slavery and chiefs without farming. They were extremely rare, which is why anthropologists mean the egalitarian band peoples when they say ‘hunter-gatherers’ without qualification.12 What those exceptions share, settled ground and food that could be stored, show what the band peoples’ way of life was protecting them from.
Is the picture of hunter-gatherer equality disputed? #
Yes, in part. The anthropologist Manvir Singh says that ‘primitive communism’, the idea that foragers owned nothing and shared everything according to need, is wrong: all hunter-gatherers had private property, from bows and tools to stands of trees, ownership was enforced by punishment, and some hunters shared meat selectively, to win friends. His main cases are the Aché of Paraguay, recently settled at a mission when they were studied, and the Hiwi of Venezuela, who lived in villages for much of the year.13
The books do not discuss Singh. Their own claim is about power, not property: being fiercely egalitarian means that nobody was allowed to dominate anyone else, by the ladder of sanctions above, and the books do not say that foragers owned nothing.14 Some of the evidence Singh draws on is about other things again: among the Aché, the killing or abandonment of orphans and of people who had become a burden, and among the Hiwi, families who received nothing when food came into the village, which concern sharing and survival among peoples in transition more than one person ruling others. The wider debate, including Graeber and Wengrow’s reading of hunter-gatherers who built hierarchies and then took them apart again, is in Who was David Graeber, and what does The Dawn of Everything say about the Fall? and Isn’t the Fall just “noble savage” romanticism?
