Freedom to Learn

The roles of play and curiosity as foundations for learning

Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology at Boston College, is a specialist in developmental and evolutionary psychology and author of an introductory textbook, Psychology. See full bio

June 11, 2009, Child Development

Comments on "Play Makes Us Human II: Defeating Dominance and Achieving Equality"

Play Makes Us Human II: Defeating Dominance and Achieving Equality

By Peter Gray on June 11, 2009 in Freedom to Learn

We human beings have two fundamentally different ways of governing ourselves in social groups. One is the method of hierarchy, or dominance, or force. The other is the method of play. In this essay I explain how hunter-gatherers employed play and humor to keep order and maintain their highly egalitarian, highly cooperative mode of existence. We have much to learn from them. Read More

Hunter Gatherer Societies

Submitted by Twinkle on June 14, 2009 - 2:29pm.

I appreciate the conclusions you draw about play and the freedoms children need and read your blog regularly. Can you please reconcile the image of hunter gatherer societies as you describe them and the image I gleaned from a cursory study of the social sciences at school and university?

For instance, if the hunter gatherer societies were so successful at integrating play and defeating dominance, then why was there still gender inequity, the one example you gave in a previous post aside? Why were women given the work that the men didn't want to do? If they were so playful, why were older children given the task of rearing weaned children, while nursing children were carried on backs and in some cultures barely even spoken to while their mothers went about their work?

The Aztecs, I presume, grew out of a previous hunter gatherer society, but they became a bloody and dominating group which practiced human sacrifice and frequently warred with neighboring bands. I was under the impression that hunter gatherer bands often, if not frequently, participated in blood feuds with neighboring bands, like the stories I studied of tribes in Papua New Guinea. Or are you making a distinction between hunter gatherer societies and more settled tribalism?

It is obvious you have researched this at depth. I often encourage my friends who are moms with small children about the importance of play by referring them to your blog. But if the best of hunter gatherer societies is extolled idealistically without qualification or explanation of the history we lay people were taught, it belies the message. Could you please clear this up for us lay people?

Hunter-gatherers

Submitted by Peter Gray on June 14, 2009 - 3:51pm.

Dear Twinkle,

Thank you for your question. I am sure that many others are wondering about this too. Notice that I specified that I am talking about band societies, or so-called immediate-return societies. These are the classic hunter-gatherer societies that do not rely on a stationary food resource and do not have any means to store food over a long period. Some societies exist that are technically hunter-gatherer societies, but are in many ways more like primitive agricultural societies. Those are groups that have a stable source of food (such as a ready supply of fish for the Northwest Coast Native Americans). These are often called collector societies to distinguish them from the classic hunter-gatherers. Archeological evidence suggests that the immediate-return hunting and gathering way of life long predated the collector way of life.

The Aztecs were not hunter-gatherers. They were an agricultural society. They grew maize as their main crop. Similarly, the natives of Papua, New Guinea have long had agriculture--in fact, there is reason to believe that agriculture there goes back as far as it does in the Fertile Crescent.

Very often people--including some who teach college courses--lump all "primitive peoples" together and don't distinguish between hunter-gatherer people and agricultural people or collector societies. In many cases the difference is night and day. Tribes of agricultural people are often highly hierarchical in organization, are often brutal, sometimes make human sacrifices to their gods (their religions are not playful), and treat women miserably. Not all agricultural people are that way; some retain some hunter-gatherer qualities; but in general there is a very sharp distinction.

With agriculture comes increases in the birth rate; children then need to take care of their younger siblings and help feed them. Whereas hunting and gathering are skill intensive (require great intelligence and independence of thought) farming is work intensive--requiring lots of unskilled labor. It is with farming that the concept of labor--and then of slavery--first arose.

-Peter

That was incredibly helpful!

Submitted by Twinkle on June 14, 2009 - 6:54pm.

That was incredibly helpful! Thank you for responding, Peter.

BTW, I also found this link helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_societies

What evidence is there (or is there) about the collaborative versus the competitiveness of the societies of the neanderthal or early homo sapiens? I thought there was evidence of cannibalism and inter-band violence. Or would they be considered a different sort of society altogether?

So all the hunter gatherer/band societies that have been studied by anthropologists in person have the governmental system you described, compared to every other system which all use some form of hierarchy - the strong dominating the weak? And they successfully use that collaborative, group-focused, playful mentality to curtail the drive to dominate, to keep peace with outsiders, and to discourage improper behavior? Really? Because that's just incredible!