Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):
The thing about hunter-gatherer societies is that there is a more direct link between population and sustainability. If your tribe has a certain area that can feed a certain number of people then you have clear choices to keep the population down or declare war on surrounding tribes - which would be more likely to reduce the population of your own tribe than increase the available land.
When my wife and I were recently on the island of Puerto Rico (originally a nickname; Spanish for 'rich port'), I was reading a good history of the island that started with the original human inhabitants, the Taino.[1] The Taino were an agricultural society, part of the Arawak group of peoples (and languages), and had a fairly high level of civilisation as an agricultural society. Over hundreds of years, the Taino fought a strategic retreat against another people, the Carib (source of our name 'Caribbean'), who followed them up from Central America and disputed various islands with them. As a youth I heard the Caribs described only as 'fierce' but was not told the context: It turns out that they were primarily hunter-gatherers, and had relatively little agriculture. (The women did some agriculture.) Hence, they needed large amounts of land on which to hunt and fish, leading to conflict with agricultural neighbours. The Carib were notably more patriarchial than the Taino, and more socially separate from their men, but were reported to wield more societal power than their Taino equivalents, FWIW.
I can understand Americans and other people from less developed countries having some nostalgia for hunter-gatherer societies.
Can't imagine why. On the other hand, I've always felt that Hobbes's phrase 'Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, and Short' (describing the human 'state of nature') would make an excellent name for a law firm. ;-> [1] Many Taino language elements persist, including the Puerto Ricans' own name for the island, Borinquen, from the Taino Borikén, translating to Land of the Valiant Lord.