I'm a nomadic hunter gatherer...Get me out of here!

Home sweet home?  A settled (sedentary) lifestyle which replaced nomadism.

A major theme of this blog is what happens to organisms that are trapped or confined and unable to adapt to the situation they find themselves in.

A recent lecture by distinguished archaeologist Prof. Robert L. Kelly of Wyoming University outlined some of the reasons that led humans to give up their nomadic (roaming) way of life and become sedentary (staying in one place). 

Why is this line of enquiry important? Because historically humans have dealt with problems such as overcrowding, stresses related to food security and social inequality by simply getting up and moving on to some place new.  But if you can't change your environment you are forced to live in a situation where the pressures and stresses are ongoing - perhaps with no hope in sight.  

In such cases young organisms are especially vulnerable to psychological and physiological stresses that can produce self-directed behaviours. 

The main reason humans gave up on their roaming way of life is that we ran out of space - it was impossible to move on without encroaching on the territory of another group or tribe, according to Professor Kelly.  So you would have to be in a fairly desperate state (i.e. starving) for the conflict that comes with taking new lands to be worth the risks involved.

Robert Kelly outlined another major problem of having to remain in one location - you have to work harder to maintain the same standard of living.  Resources become more scarce and the land less fertile over time.  As a result women (who did the gathering) had to work harder and children were reared by their siblings and peers whilst mum was out labouring.  In time, slavery and loss of autonomy would follow as more and more labour was needed to keep production high.  This meant forcing people to remain in a situation that tested them to the psychological limits.  Another aspect of remaining in one place was that over time the population rose and with population pressure people became more aggressive and competitive towards the resources that were available.

Of course, the loss of the nomadic lifestyle had benefits too.  There would be less disease, food production would be streamlined and cultural advances would follow too.  But at a cost...

In modern life humans trapped in psychologically stressful situations can rarely solve the problem by walking away and starting afresh some place new.  Ongoing stresses relating to mortgage payments and job security mean families under pressure usually suffer a lot. Also families and social support networks are less strong once people are not living in smaller groups where people are more dependent on one another for survival.  In large settled towns people can come to feel isolated, powerless and insecure.  It also means that adaptive mechanisms that served our survival and well-being are less effective.  Regulating safety and comfort via approach v. withdraw behaviour is much more difficult if the dangers are embedded within an environment that you cannot escape from, e.g. a ghetto or a slum.  Social life means goal states (such as seeking comfort, safety, food security etc.) need to be negotiated socially, which places greater stress on attachments and social bonds.  If these relationships go wrong, due to illness or poverty there is a greater chance of self-directed behaviours emerging in my view. 

A sedentary lifestyle is clearly a source of great stress and though this state of affairs may be historically inevitable it must be remembered that our psychology was shaped by our nomadic past. This mismatch between where we historically came from and where we are now is fertile ground for evolutionary psychologists wishing to understand many abnormal behaviours that fall under the label of obsessive compulsive disorder, displacement behaviour, eating disorders etc.

References:
Prof. Robert L. Kelly,  (2013):  The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum (Cambridge University Press)