Chapter one and two

While reading about the beginning of humans, I read a quote from the British navigator, Captain James Cook, that I found interesting.  While he was having his first encounter with a group from Australia, he was quoted saying:

                         "They live in a Tranquility which is not disturb'd by the Inequality
                           of Conditions: Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them
                           with all the things necessary for life, they covet not Magnifcient houses,
                           Household-stuff...In short they seem'd to set no value upon any thing we
                           gave them...They think themselves provided with all the necessarys of Life."
                           (Strayer, pg. 21).

This quote was from 1770, and this explorer probably thought that he was bringing the gatherers and hunters an eye-opening experiencing and giving them wonderful new technologies for survival; when in reality they probably taught him more on how to live with what little that they had.  They were able to survive off of the land, without any of the comforts of big houses with beds filled with goose feathers.


      As I continue to go through more of the reading I keep turning back to the area in which I found the above quote.  

Reading around the chapters, like we discussed in class, we spoke about the term gatherer hunters instead of the hunter gatherers term.  Growing up, it always sounded like the hunters played the major role in the tribe because they would be hunting and that had to provide for the families more then the gatherers.  The reality is, according to Strayer, the gatherers provided the bulk.  The book says that 70% of the food consumed actually came from those brought by the gatherers.  The tribes of the time probably did not even see it that way since it sounds like that there was a good deal of equality going on between the men and the women.  It seems a bit funny that the more educated a society becomes, the more in equal we become.  With all of the technology and knowledge we have learned and experienced through history, the bigger the label becomes.  There really is something in learning about the earliest form of humans, who knew that gender equality would be one of them.