Hunter-Gatherers and Art

“Procuring food in groups and making it edible would foster improved vocal and non-vocal communication, and the development of certain technical, motor, and sensory skills, such as tool making, dexterity, observing powers, appreciation of symmetry, and the development of “handedness”—a dominant, more skilled hand and eye” (110).

How has the development of these skills, in combination with the high amounts leisure time facing hunter gather societies, contributed to the development of art as an evolving behavior?

            Hunter-gatherer societies were clearly amongst the first humans to engage in the behavior of art.  The complexity of social order we have today was minimal for these small groups of people.  These societies are the basis at which our complexity in social organization has bloomed from.  First the obvious needs to be pointed out; this social structure does not need to be complex because if these societies experienced a fair amount of stratification, the longevity of that group would be highly questionable.  Within this social order of early human society, the skills that Ellen describes manifested over the expanse of hominid existence.  As time passed, communication and language developed, learning progressed over generations of knowledge being shared between people, and advancements in tool making created the skills needed for artistic expression.  The process of making tools is probably amongst the most crucial for creating art because of the expertise needed to create a well-fashioned tool (good hand-eye coordination, the selection of proper material, and a knowledge of symmetry to maximize the usefulness of the tool).  Through the mechanisms of early societal organization and the mode of production for the society, the raw materials were now present, but how did art fully manifest itself?

            The amount of leisure time within a hunter-gatherer society directly enabled the development of artistic expression.  Shortly after the selected quote above, Ellen states: “Their leisure must have been occupied with practicing and developing skills, but equally so there must have been time to idle, to chat, to dream” (101).  Clearly this statement is just speculation, but that doesn’t disprove it as it has been seen in anthropological studies of hunter-gatherer societies that modern society has encountered.  Aboriginal Australians are example of leisure time leading to complex mythology and art, which is intertwined with their culture’s religion and system of laws.  Aborigines exploited seasonal resources in different areas.  These resources often expanded great distances, so, they walked.  With these travels, there was often songs and stories that went along with this journey, as well as totems representing the physical manifestation of their spiritual world connecting with their existence, thusly making the stories true.  The presence of stories were often seen in subsistence and tool making as well, like the building of bark canoes to exploit resources along the coast (obviously this was only amongst coastal tribes).  The point of this example is to illustrate Ellen’s point about subsistence, tool making, and leisure time directly contribute to the development of the behavior of art.  The main idea that should be taken away from this is that as society develops, then the social behaviors that humanity revels in will also develop.  Through tool making, leisure time, and increased socialization, humans developed a great capacity to express themselves, and the world around because the abstract concepts need to create art gradually developed as the social mechanisms with which we organized and feed ourselves also developed.