SOCI 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Amazon Rainforest, Traditional Medicine, San People
Document Summary
About 10,000 years ago we became the only human species. Tens of thousands of human societies have existed. But some happen to develop and many conquer absorb neighbors on the long run. Hunted animals and gathered wild food (plants and berries) People used to imagine rich chiefs = wrong. Virtually no inequality, everyone is the same (little to no private property) Affluence (but destructive to animals)(wealthy but not consumerists) Fluid social ties (not stuck in one place) Animism: religious view (everything has thoughts, feelings, spirits: and can be communicated with) Way of life is rapidly disappearing (yet we retain traces) No safety net (no hospitals, medicine, rescuers, etc . Hunted animals to extinction (had to find other food source) Began to cultivate crops that grew wild (wheat) All agricultural societies can be placed on a continuum from more simple (horticulture) complex (agrarian) Good: agriculture brought a new way of life.