Subsistence Patterns And Cultural Systems

536 Words3 Pages
What food is available and how it is acquired clearly has a lot to do with worldview, which in turn affects a cultural system. Subsistence patterns are how a society gets its food. We can use subsistence patterns as meaningful categories to organize our examination of cultural variation and make some generalizations about other aspects of cultural systems within each category. Subsistence patterns are divided into two main types; food collecting, or foragers, and food producing, which include horticulture, pastoralism, and agriculture. Acquisition of food is a central concern to our species and to the individual populations within our species. Humans were foragers for 96% of our time on earth; food producers have only existed for the last 12,000 years. There are a few characteristics which are distinctive of foragers. They lack formalized status and wealth differences, and there are no differences in access to resources. This is known as egalitarianism, which is the practice of not recognizing and even eliminating differences in social status and wealth. Generally, in terms of religion they are polytheistic, recognizing multiple supernatural beings. Foraging cultures are fairly small, with individual units averaging about 50 persons. Groups are small because it’s difficult to support large numbers using only what nature provides. Groups of foragers are called bands, usually made up of several related nuclear families. Family relationships are the basis for social organization. They are a nomadic people, moving around following the animals and plants they rely on for food. To remain egalitarian social organizations, foraging societies distribute important resources equally among their member, usually along kinship lines. Foragers often display division of labor; women gather and men hunt. The San, or Bushmen of Angola, Namibia, and Botswana are an
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