人类学与部落民族研究——过去的经验及未来的模式

Anthropology and the Study of Aboriginal and Tribal Peoples——Lessons Learned from the Past, Models for the Future

对狩猎-采集部落民族的研究为现代人对我们是谁以及我们作为人类能够成为什么样的人提供了最佳的了解。狩猎和采集是世界上200万年前自从人类制造出来第一批石器的旧石器时代就具有的生活方式。从历史角度来看,狩猎和采集构成了人类99.5％的经验。换言之,我们95％的先人是狩猎和采集者。对部落民族的研究不仅仅告诉我们,作为人,我们是谁;同时,研究也为我们提供了如何能够成功地适应未来的方式。

Studies of hunter - gatherers and tribal peoples give modern Homo sapiens our best look at who we are and who we can be as human beings. Hunting and gathering, the world's first and oldest remaining subsistence mode, emerged two million years ago with the dawn of the Paleolithic Era and the invention of the first stone tools. Historically, hunting and gathering has comprised 99.5 percent of the human experience. Ninety-five percent of all people who have ever lived, did so as hunters and gatherers. Studies of hunters and gatherers from around the world have produced a cogent body of cultural theory than links the social, political, economic structures and religious cosmology of these societies directly to the constraints or limitations inherent in a foraging subsistence. Studies of aboriginal and tribal peoples not only tell us who we are as human being but give us models for our species' successful adaptation to the future.