# How did natives survive in ancient times? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 31, 2018, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219 "2018-05-31T20:02:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/41 "2018-06-01T14:10:17Z")
Wouldn’t the clan have been a halfway step between family and tribe? Don’t chimps and bonobos operate in clans? Clans are a mesh of genetic kinship and cultural/agreed upon kinship, right? Chimps apparently live in groups of 15 to 150 so call is about 80. Bonobos apparently live in groups of up to 100. Incidentally, 80-100 is getting close to the Dunbar number of 150. Note that the Dunbar number isn’t a measure of what a human can commonly deal with but what a human can maximally deal with; It’s not an average, it’s an upper bound. 150 might have only happened during times of war or shortly before the group split. So, primate ancestors might have been in family-based packs of about 5-11 like wolves then moved into clans of about 100 then tribes of thousands. This\* says packs sometimes comprise 2-3 families. That means group size would go about 5-11, 30, 100-150 which corresponds to the approximate size of a fireteam, squad, platoon and company. They would have expanded from clans to tribes for increased genetic diversity, security/military power and trade & economic specialisation. - [Wolf - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_wolf#Social_and_territorial_behaviors) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/42 "2018-06-01T14:45:08Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > Wouldn’t the clan have been a halfway step between family and tribe? Don’t chimps and bonobos operate in clans? Clans are a mesh of genetic kinship and cultural/agreed upon kinship, right? > > Chimps apparently live in groups of 15 to 150 so call is about 80. Bonobos apparently live in groups of up to 100. Incidentally, 80-100 is getting close to the Dunbar number of 150. Note that the Dunbar number isn’t a measure of what a human can commonly deal with but what a human can maximally deal with; It’s not an average, it’s an upper bound. 150 might have only happened during times of war or shortly before the group split. > So, primate ancestors might have been in family-based packs of about 5-11 like wolves then moved into clans of about 100 then tribes of thousands. This\* says packs sometimes comprise 2-3 families. That means group size would go about 5-11, 30, 100-150 which corresponds to the approximate size of a fireteam, squad, platoon and company. You need to define what you mean by “primate ancestor” as that could extend waaaaaaaaay back in time past the emergence of the genus _Homo_. Primates have been around for about 60M years (_Homo_ for about 2M years; _Homo sapiens_ for about 250K years). And how do you suddenly arrive at the 5-11 number? ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/43 "2018-06-01T14:59:31Z")
He linked to the source but it was about wolves not primates so kind of a stretch. This page suggests clan size of 25-100 with the norm being 30, but it’s a bit confusing/badly written (go figger, it’s a wiki). > **[Paleolithic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic)** > > Europe: > Africa: > Siberia: > The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (/ˌpeɪl-, ˌpælioʊˈlɪθɪk/), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός palaios, "old" and λίθος lithos, "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehistoric technology. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins, c. 3.3 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene, c. 11,650 cal BP. It would be interesting see a chart of band size over time. If I’m reading the article correctly, bands got larger and more structured in the middle paleolithic, then shrunk and became less organized. That jibes with a decline in art and technology in the middle to late paleolithic. There was kind of a golden age of cave people before the glacial maximum, when food was plenty and they could paint caves and improve their tools. I guess that suggests communities could get larger. (I am talking about Cro Magnons in Europe, about which I’ve read a lot). ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/44 "2018-06-01T15:02:32Z")
> [@tnetennba](#): > > He linked to the source but it was about wolves not primates so kind of a stretch. Exactly. There is no reason to think that early _Homo_ group size was smaller than chimp group size. > [@](#): > > It would be interesting see a chart of band size over time. If I’m reading the article correctly, bands got larger and more structured in the middle paleolithic, then shrunk and became less organized. That jibes with a decline in art and technology in the middle to late paleolithic. There was kind of a golden age of cave people before the glacial maximum, when food was plenty and they could paint caves and improve their tools. I guess that suggests communities could get larger. (I am talking about Cro Magnons in Europe, about which I’ve read a lot). It probably also depended on the geographic location and proximity to other groups of humans, too. And there is no reason to assume that group size increased monotonically over time. And… lots of human groups never lived in caves, so it’s not very useful to use the term “cave man” or assume that all of our ancestors lived in caves. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/45 "2018-06-01T15:05:06Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > Wouldn’t the clan have been a halfway step between family and tribe? I don’t think this discussion is drawing any kind of clear-cut distinction between “clan” and “tribe” (and indeed, they’re often used synonymously). Human social groups based on kinship relations in traditional societies range in size from a couple dozen to thousands, AFAICT. The point is that humans and their primate direct ancestors appear **always** to have lived in social groups based on kinship relations. There is no period in human or recent-prehuman history when the species consisted exclusively or even primarily of separate individuals roaming around on their own, after the manner of leopards or lynxes. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/46 "2018-06-01T15:19:21Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > There is no period in human or recent-prehuman history when the species consisted exclusively or even primarily of separate individuals roaming around on their own, after the manner of leopards or lynxes. Now I want to put on a leopard skin suit and prowl about the office. That’d sure liven things up! ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/47 "2018-06-01T15:19:32Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I don’t think this discussion is drawing any kind of clear-cut distinction between “clan” and “tribe” (and indeed, they’re often used synonymously). Human social groups based on kinship relations in traditional societies range in size from a couple dozen to thousands, AFAICT. > > The point is that humans and their primate direct ancestors appear **always** to have lived in social groups based on kinship relations. There is no period in human or recent-prehuman history when the species consisted exclusively or even primarily of separate individuals roaming around on their own, after the manner of leopards or lynxes. Yep. And we don’t even know what the “family unit” was typically found in those groups. Gorillas form harem groups, chimps are promiscuous and bonobos are extremely promiscuous (although a lot of their sexual acts aren’t related to procreation). We often tend to think of nuclear families, but we really don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/48 "2018-06-01T15:41:45Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Exactly. There is no reason to think that early _Homo_ group size was smaller than chimp group size. > > It probably also depended on the geographic location and proximity to other groups of humans, too. And there is no reason to assume that group size increased monotonically over time. > > And… lots of human groups never lived in caves, so it’s not very useful to use the term “cave man” or assume that all of our ancestors lived in caves. I was using it tongue in cheek. Since my post was about band size changing in a non-linear way and I was careful to say “this is Europe,” I guess you just felt like you had to correct something. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/49 "2018-06-01T15:42:44Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > The point is that humans and their primate direct ancestors appear **always** to have lived in social groups based on kinship relations. There is no period in human or recent-prehuman history when the species consisted exclusively or even primarily of separate individuals roaming around on their own, after the manner of leopards or lynxes. I agree, clans came before homo sapiens sapiens. I think there is a distinction to be made between clans and tribes as other primates often live in clan-like groups of 25-100 but few/none live in tribes of thousands. A clan is small enough to be based only on concrete, family-like, one-on-one relationships whereas a tribe of thousands has to have some impersonal organization, rules, a proto-state which suggests abstract thinking. I took the example of wolves to get an estimate of the group size of proto/early primates. Every step of the way from proto-primate to 5000 years ago seems interesting. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/50 "2018-06-01T15:51:05Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > I agree, clans came before homo sapiens sapiens. I think there is a distinction to be made between clans and tribes as other primates often live in clan-like groups of 25-100 but few/none live in tribes of thousands. A clan is small enough to be based only on concrete, family-like, one-on-one relationships whereas a tribe of thousands has to have some impersonal organization, rules, a proto-state which suggests abstract thinking… Wildebeest and Zebras migrate in groups of over 1M individuals. Baboons live in troops that can number as high as 300. The term “tribe” does not have the precise meaning you seem to be assigning to it. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/51 "2018-06-01T17:06:25Z")
Well, I would assume humans originated in favorable conditions, then spread out slowly at a pace where local adaptation was almost imperceptible. They weren’t just dumped in a tundra out of nowhere. Plus, in those times, you were raised “in the wild” to survive in the wild practically from day one. And dying was a real possibility compared to now. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/52 "2018-06-01T17:42:00Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Tribes were invented by the ancient Greeks, about 500 years ago. It was a response to Columbus’s discovery of Mexico–when he met the Aztec ruler Santa Ana, he was so impressed by their civilization that he decided to export the concept back to his homeland. The telegraph signal got garbled by its passage through the Pacific’s salt water, though, so instead of building cities, the Greeks built tribes. Fortunately, even tribes were pretty good at survivalism, so the ancient Greeks just barely avoided dying out. Always nice to hear from a Trump University graduate. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/53 "2018-06-01T18:05:54Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > Always nice to hear from a Trump University graduate. I love the school cheer - “Wooooooooosh” ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/54 "2018-06-01T20:12:35Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Wildebeest and Zebras migrate in groups of over 1M individuals. Baboons live in troops that can number as high as 300. > > The term “tribe” does not have the precise meaning you seem to be assigning to it. Indeed, my understanding (i.e., not looking at a dictionary) of tribe is a group of nomadic or semi-nomadic people who understand themselves to be one political entity. This would include groups that wholly live and travel together, or several such groups. A clan is a family - usually one which includes the extended family - that operates as a political entity. The clan may accept loyal individuals into the clan’s network of operatives. I am mostly aware of clans from Scotland and Japan, during settled, feudal times. Again, I haven’t checked a dictionary, but based on how I have seen the terms used, these would be the definitions I would expect. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/55 "2018-06-01T20:18:27Z")
One other note for the OP: I don’t know if English is your native language (pun intended), but the use of the word “native” in the thread title is at best anachronistic (like “oriental”) and at worst a slur. I think it’s closer to the latter since it’s obviously intended to refer to “primitive people”, as opposed to the more “civilized” (and usually European) people. But the other thing that makes it simply odd is that since we’re talking about “primitive people”, everyone alive was a “native” back in the timeframe we’re talking about and in that case, it’s just “people”. it’s just a really odd way of framing the question. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/56 "2018-06-01T22:12:13Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > I can think of very few primates that are solitary off-hand. There might be some, but none come to mind. Primates tend to be group animals. Huh. Intovert-shaming. ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/57 "2018-06-01T23:18:19Z")
> [@Penfeather](#): > > Huh. Intovert-shaming. No, introverts are also social animals. They rely heavily on social structures for survival, regardless of how comfortable it makes them. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/58 "2018-06-02T03:58:46Z")
Didn’t survivor man get caught cheatng by hiding food and water …?and lost hs show and the like? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/59 "2018-06-02T04:23:00Z")
> [@nightshadea](#): > > Didn’t survivor man get caught cheatng by hiding food and water …?and lost hs show and the like? Nope. But Bear was caught sleeping in a hotel. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219/60 "2018-06-02T07:48:20Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > Umm… those links disprove your point. According to your link, Tulpa originated in the early 20th century and was in use at least as recently as 2009. It was adapted in the 20th century from previously existing beliefs, which are noted in the Wiki page if you continue reading. > [@](#): > > but your tone seemed to be from someone who is a cultural progressivist and generally speaking, progressivists like to believe that we’re ‘better’ than our ancestors in some undefined way and I kind of think that using lucid dreaming to make ‘My Little Pony’ real is not really ‘better’ than the past. No, I was just commenting on some minutiae that made the post I was commenting on not _quite_ true - probably. > [@](#): > > As another point, I’d actually like to see evidence that we’re ‘smarter’ than our ancestors. Plato and Socrates seemed like pretty bright guys. Maybe not ‘lucid dreaming ‘My Little Ponies’ into reality’ bright, but pretty bright nonetheless. You would probably need a large population to test in order to determine the difference, and then it would still be a fairly small result. The Flynn effect, for example, is a real thing and yet you’ll notice that we don’t think of our grandparents as blithering idiots. I’ll also note that you are in some sense comparing green apples to red apples, where an apples to oranges comparison could also be made, and is more along the lines of what I was thinking. The Ancient Greeks are direct antecedents to our current culture. They had a developed system of math, the ability to engineer the antikythera device, republican forms of government, etc. We are possibly less removed from them than they were from your average hunter gatherer of 20,000 years ago (which would have been the majority of people at the time, I believe). Likely, for example, the hunter gatherers wouldn’t have had words for colors, or at least not much beyond two (light and dark). By the first millenia BC, the Greeks had nine. Modern cultures generally have 11 primary colors. [http://imbs.uci.edu/~kjameson/ECST/Warbuton\_AncientColorCategories.pdf](http://imbs.uci.edu/~kjameson/ECST/Warbuton_AncientColorCategories.pdf) (PDF) [Do You See What I See? – SAPIENS](https://www.sapiens.org/language/color-perception/) The Greeks had the concept a single unit (1) that could be incremented continuously to any particular number of any size. A hunter gatherer would likely have a limited ability to count. [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273072239\_On\_numeral\_complexity\_in\_hunter-gatherer\_languages](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273072239_On_numeral_complexity_in_hunter-gatherer_languages) The Greeks had fully developed writing systems, hunter gatherers do not. The Greeks had schools. Hunter gatherers do not. And so on. It took several hundred thousand years for homo sapiens to develop into the Ancient Greeks. From the Greeks to us is but a small jaunt. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-natives-survive-in-ancient-times/815219.md?page=4)