So why are there still primitive societies?

In many cases the remaining primitive societies exist because the more technologically advanced states have decided to let them be (for the most part). The culture of the advanced societies has changed.

Amazonian tribes are protected by laws that (mostly, sort of) keep modern society from encroaching on them. Several primitive tribes on islands in India are protected the same way. Three hundred years ago, the dominant cultural movement in those protective states would have been “We need to go civilize those backwards natives. Bring them guns and religion and processed foods”. Now they are mostly left to do their thing.

And it’s not obvious to them that the technologically advanced way is better. Sure, there are certain aspects of modern civilization they’d like to have, but not the whole kit and caboodle.

I read an enjoyable book called Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes about a missionary/linguist who spent many years living with an Amazonian tribe that was pretty remote and not connected to modern society. He was for the most part unable to convince them that the benefits of modern society were worth having. He didn’t manage to convert anyone, his efforts at helping them set up more efficient industry (even though it was just learning how to build the dug-out canoes that neighboring tribes made) failed, and he observed that they seemed to be quite happy and content. Sure, their lives were more violent, and people died earlier, but that didn’t bother them the way it seems to bother us.

In one of the more memorable sections, he described how they reacted when he said how important his faith was to him when his mother had committed suicide. It took him a while to explain the concept of suicide, and when they finally got it, they laughed. They thought he was joking! They couldn’t comprehend the modern concept of social disconnection and alienation that leads to depression and suicide.

Simply, access to resources, likely in part due to their out-of-the-way location. They can’t afford to live a modern lifestyle.

ETA: Seconding “Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes” - though at its core, it’s a book about a person’s journey to atheism.

Haven’t read the sleepy-snake book, but I’m reminded of a book about the three Tierra del Fuegans taken taken to England by Fitzroy on the Beagle. When they were returned to TdF, there was an attempt to set up the Fuegan “Jemmy Button” with a farm plot, but the other Fuegans insisted on eating the seed crops immediately rather than having the delayed gratification of the harvest. (Of course, the environment probably wasn’t right for the crops in the first place.) (Here is some information on them straight from the journals of Darwin, and here is an article based on Darwin plus other sources.)

Common myth. Not true - lots of the land you’re talking about is perfectly suited to cows, sheeps or goats - pastoralism is a form of agriculture.

Now, yes, because it’s where they were forced to - after (in the case of the Bushmen) sometimes being *literally *headhunted in other, more hospitable environments.

Here’s the Wikipedia article about the Sentinelese people … in a nut shell we don’t know why they attack outsiders … only that they do … no one’s lived long enough to ask them …

I’m trying to think of agricultural or pastoral lands that were not already being exploited in that manner by locals in, say, 1800. Unless suitable domesticated livestock (i.e. goats) were not yet available there… Or, as the example with American natives, they did not have the (metal) tools to adequately clear land for farming.

On a related note, I once saw a fascinating story of an anthropologist who married a Yanomami tribeswoman and brought her back to civilization, but she eventually preferred to return to the rainforest (leaving behind a son, who tracked her down years later).

Random cite: Return to the rainforest: A son's search for his Amazonian mother - BBC News

Other Andamanese peoples which decided to embrace limited contaxt with outsiders have suffered very high mortality due to disease- they lived in isolation for so long that they never developed resistance to diseases common in the rest of the world. I have no idea why the Sentinelese fiercely resist contact, but maybe they have a historical memory associating outsiders with massive plagues, which wouldn’t necessarily be incorrect.

Australia, I guess (or maybe a bit earlier than 1800, I’m not sure when Europeans first got there). As Blake has pointed out though, Australia is a decent place to introduce already established agriculture (although who knows, global warming might change that), but it’s not a good place for agriculture to get started, due to the low and variable rainfall.

Possibly some parts of the Amazon rain forest, but it isn’t great for agriculture, and anyway there are claims that much of it was already being farmed in the Precolumbian era, by cultures which later went extinct due to introduced disease.

One thing I read about the Andaman Islanders is that a few hundred years of slave raids and such have made them hostile to outsiders. (Same thing happened to the Easter Islanders - they were mostly enslaved once nearby mainlanders realized there was an unsupervised population ripe for the taking.

The problem with Australia, or the Andaman Islands or anywhere like that - unless there’s a good candidate for agricultural exploitation or an animal for domestication, it may be difficult for a smaller population to begin agriculture. This was the one main thesis of *Guns, Germs, and Steel *that a few lucky breaks in terms of choice of plants and animals led to many of the agricultural progress of certain areas of the world. Too small an ecosystem limits the choices so an ideal choice may not be found.

Then, the lucky ones carry their chosen plants and animals with them and use that advantage to drive out the local hunters from good land.

I saw once a show whose concept is to drop a celebrity in the middle of some really exotic people. That time , the celebrity was dropped in a village of African pastoralists living what seemed to be an almost untouched traditional lifestyle : clothes, customs, lodging, etc…

At some point, they went to the nearest town to buy stuff at the local supermarket. That was already quite a contrast : women in traditional (half naked) garb, skin covered with some sort of red earth, pulling a cart amongst customers in western attire who were oogling them.

A bit later in the show, it was briefly disclosed that these people had in fact deliberatly chosen to keep this lifestyle. Those other people in western garb at the supermarket could be their cousins who had left saying “the fuck with you red earth, cow manure and thatched roofs. I’m going to move to the next village where sensible people watch TV and get their beef in cans”. Basically, those “primitive” people were the local equivalent of the American Amish, and despised people who had abandoned traditions.

I believe there are a number of Amazonian tribes whose members similarly made the conscious decision to, for the most part, not join the modern world (for the most part because they might still use convenient modern items, ship someone to an hospital, etc…), rather than being unable to join it due to poverty or similar reasons.

There were farming communities all over the Americas pre-contact. Not sure what you are referring to. Disease wiped out the overwhelming number of Native Americans before the mass migrations of Europeans began so the continents only looked empty because they been emptied a century of more before.

I well aware. It makes my point. Despite the difficulty of clearing sufficient fields with stone tools and fire, there were substantial agricultural settlements anywhere across the continent where terrain, climate, or herds of bison did not interfere. I don’t doubt that if they had had the (metal) tools, Europe would have found a land already as cleared as it is today.

And, continent-wide, the major crop was imported from the south-west; corn was developed in a more hospitable environment and then taken everywhere it could be raised. If the northeast, or Ohio or the Mississippi valley did not have mexico’s corn, would there have been agriculture?

Australia does have some candidates for agriculture. Some wild yams, the wild progenitor of rice (the world’s biggest food crop currently), and a few fruits and vegetables.

Yep. Here’s a pretty comprehensive list: Uncontacted Peoples

I wasn’t thinking of uncontacted people, but of people in relatively regular contact with the outside world, while electing to keep their lifestyle and refusing changes or modern technologies, even potentially benefecial ones (say, modern tools, generators, radio sets…)

Well, obviously the answer is yes, since they had agriculturealready before they *switched *to maize.

Jerusalem artichoke, and its close relative sunflowers, are native to eastern North America (as are some fruits and vegetables), so yes they were able to (and did) develop agriculture before they had corn.

To live primarily on agricultural products, a high-volume starch staple seems to be generally needed. For societies like the Cherokee and Iroquois, they relied on corn which IIRC was a product of the Mexican inhabitants, but subsequently spread to any area of north and south America where it could be grown. The resultant native societies were as much or more agricultural than hunter, although hunting was a major role for providing meat protein. And, yes, they did raise some local plants also. Further north, beyond the climate where corn could grow, the locals were primarily hunter-gatherers.

My point (and Diamond’s) being that a large area of land implied a variety of plants - by luck, a few - wheat, rice, corn, potatoes, etc. - could be grown and harvested and stored in quantities that allowed societies to abandon nomadic life. The variety of ecosystems and plants that meant one lucky (for us) plant could be found more easily when the source was "somewhere in a continent’ vs., say, the Andaman islands or that narrow strip of relatively wet Australia along the east coast. Even the Polynesians brought most of their crops and animals with them.

The same logic applies to domestic animals. It’s no surprise that the list of seriously productive domestic food animals is quite short. Someone brought dogs to Australia millennia ago, but not goats or chickens, it seems.

Also, the plants used in agricultural societies tended to be the result of selective breeding to the point where they were far more productive than their wild counterparts. Corn, for example, cannot survive without humans planting it, and the prototype is long lost. Once a plant has extraordinary yields, it can be taken to less convenient ecologies where it could still produce adequate food.

The people migrating to those new locales then tend to push the existing non-agricultural inhabitants into the less agriculture-friendly fringes, where we find them today.

As to the OP’s question - once there’s an economic incentive, or sufficient surplus, the benefits of modern society will make their way to the fringes. Without WWII, the Alaska highway would not be built. Presumably the same logic applies to the Amazon basin, the upcountry of northern South America, the mountains, etc. - resources that can be exploited will bring civilization’s encroachment. Then slowly, economics permitting, the additional benefits of the 20th century will follow. Most countries where you find “primitive societies” simply do not have the money to provide welfare, education, housing, medicine and other benefits to illiterate poor citizens the way the USA and the first world do.

Says who? Seriously, you’ve been given a cite for the *actual *agricultural practices of the Eastern Woodlands, for many centuries pre-corn. Yet you still seem to be saying that they weren’t True Agriculturalists. With absolutely nothing to back that up.