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Hunter-gatherers in the Philippines who adopt farming work around ten hours a week longer than their forager neighbours, a new study suggests, complicating the idea that agriculture represents progress. The research also shows that a shift to agriculture impacts most on the lives of women.
[...] Every day, at regular intervals between 6am and 6pm, the researchers recorded what their hosts were doing and by repeating this in ten different communities, they calculated how 359 people divided their time between leisure, childcare, domestic chores and out-of-camp work. While some Agta communities engage exclusively in hunting and gathering, others divide their time between foraging and rice farming.
The study, published today in Nature Human Behaviour, reveals that increased engagement in farming and other non-foraging work resulted in the Agta working harder and losing leisure time. On average, the team estimate that Agta engaged primarily in farming work around 30 hours per week while foragers only do so for 20 hours. They found that this dramatic difference was largely due to women being drawn away from domestic activities to working in the fields. The study found that women living in the communities most involved in farming had half as much leisure time as those in communities which only foraged.
Also, hunting comes with beer.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 22 2019, @10:17AM (3 children)
Scientists are learning now that many cultures addressed local resource scarcity by practicing permaculture. It's less labor intensive than straight up agriculture but stands up to constant harvesting better. For example, when Europeans arrived on the East Coast of North America 1 in 4 trees was a chestnut tree; it wasn't random. The natives planted them everywhere because it was an excellent food source that kept well through the winter.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday May 23 2019, @03:43AM (2 children)
Was recently reading about the clam gardens on the west coast, tastier then chestnuts.
https://clamgarden.com/clamgardens/ [clamgarden.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 23 2019, @02:52PM (1 child)
Cool link, thanks for that. I read recently that Indians on the East Coast used fish weirs [wikipedia.org] to farm the sea also. I think there's a video on YouTube of some modern fishermen who still use an old one in the Bay of Fundy to catch herring. One of its most interesting features is how sustainable it is. The catchment pond at the bottom of the "V" keeps the fish alive so they can let the little ones, or the species they don't want, go.
Permaculture is a fascinating approach to food culture. Doesn't lend itself to mass production and predictability from an industrial perspective, but it works very well from a human level.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday May 24 2019, @02:59AM
Yea, fish weirs are cool technology. Not sure if the natives used them here or just used a natural constriction but the natives used to work like hell for a couple of weeks when the salmon ran and had a years worth of food. Pretty well all the hunter-gatherers on the coast were rich when it came to food and did little actual work depending on how you define work. (Does a hunting trip for fun and/or variety count as work or fun? Same with a dugout to take a holiday in Hawaii)