Before 8 am Mon., send me one idea for our discussion of the chapter by Sahlins. Please include a page reference.
Sahlins tends to assume familiarity with a couple of distinctions:
• Hunter-gatherers obtain food in the way the label indicates rather than by agriculture (through either crops or domesticated animals).
• The paleolithic era (“Old Stone Age”) began to end around 12,000 years ago with the rise of agriculture and was followed by the neolithic era (“New Stone Age”). Both of these eras precede the use of metal tools, which is the reason for the label ‘stone age’.
Much of Sahlins’ discussion will involve the use of evidence concerning recent hunter-gatherer societies to get a sense of the economic conditions in the paleolithic era, when all human societies were hunter-gatherers.