Differences between Farming and Foraging Societies

Cultural devolution of societies through competitive ex­clusion from the fluvial zone was added to the aforementioned concepts of cultural evolutionism by Donald Ward Lathrap. The flood-plain zone is very limited. After the initial occupation in pre-Columbian times, Lathrap believes that a natural increase in the human population on the flood plains eventually led to resource competition resulting in warfare. Weaker groups were expelled from the fluvial /one and took refuge in the deep interior of the forest. In this poorer habitat they were re­duced to scattered, small, and mobile bands of hunter-gatherers. Consequently their horticulture was rudimentary, inefficient, and unproductive. These societies reverted to a much lower level of cultural complexity.

Lathrap's argument is very enlightening and convincing in its broad outlines, but there are several problems. Lathrap charac­terizes interior cultures using ethnocentric terms such as devol­ution, degradation, and wreckage of former agricultural societies.

Secondly, from the perspective of biological evolution and ecology (rather than cultural evolutionism) these sylvan foragers merely made a shift in their adaptive strategy after exclusion by more politically powerful and aggressive riparian societies. From this perspective, survival, maintenance, and reproduction of a population are the most significant parameters of adaptation, whereas increasing population density, sedentariness, and socio-cultural complexity are relevant only to the degree that they affect these parameters, however important they might be to the cultural evolutionist. Similarly, Bennett suggests that such shifts have a double meaning. From a cultural and historical view they imply a social breakdown, but from an ecological view they imply restoration of equilibrium.

There are other problems with Lathrap's study. For instance, agriculture along the floodplain is limited to short-cycle crops which are subject to the hazards of the irregularities in the timing and intensity of flooding. In the supposedly rich fluvial zone, large ex­panses of forest are flooded during the wet season; fish and game therefore disperse widely and are not readily accessible.

Even in riverine zones the wet season may be a period of hardship and hunger, in comparison to the glut during portions of the dry season. In addition, insects are more abundant in riverine areas, not only as pests, but also as vectors of diseases such as malaria. Higher human population densities provide a reservoir for some diseases and in other ways enhance the transmission of diseases. Riparian societies were also more vulnerable to the multiple-level disruptions from European contact, in comparison to the scattered, mobile, and small sylvan societies deep in the in­terior and headwaters (cf. Bunker 1984).

In spite of these and other problems with Laihrap's cultural evolutionist argument, he raises the very important question of whether or not sylvan foraging societies are survivors of a pre-agricultural period, or the result of cultural devolution from farming to foraging through competitive exclusion from the riparian to the sylvan zones (1968:29). As a biological and cultural ecologist, prefer to consider such sylvan foraging societies as refugees who shifted their adaptive strategy.

Questionnaire:

• Explain the different between Farming and Foraging Societies