The Nomadic Alternative – Page 147

all-important to the Tasmanian and informed him when to burn the

forest in game drives, when to walk along the beach for shellfish

and when to swim to an offshore island to collect nesting sooty

petrels.

"Hunting", writes the American anthropologist William Laughlin,

"is the master behaviour pattern of the human species." - master

behaviour pattern, that is, for men and men only, because the

women gather. Hunting does not necessarily demand a complex technical

equipment; though, in the actively hostile surroundings of the

Northern Ice, the Eskimoes have invented one. It does demand a highly

skillful knowledge of how to hunt, a scientific attitude to animal

behaviour and anatomy, and practical decisions what to do with the

animal once it is dead. "A man", Laughlin continues, "can run down

a horse in two or three days, and decide whether to eat it, ride

it, pull a load with it, wear it or worship it."* The Kalahari

Bushmen, for example, distinguish more external parts of an animal

than we do and have a working knowledge of internal anatomy, while

before the coming of the Whites, the Aleutian Islanders knew the

difference between venal and arterial blood and had guessed at its

circulation. The Siberian Tungus keep young animals as pets to

educate their aspiring hunters - a practice which also probably

contributed to the domestication of some species.

The hunter must know the seasonal migrations of birds and

animals, the effects of wind and weather on their behaviour, when

they are easy to approach and when dangerous. He must know the age,

sex, size and speed of animals in a herd, and whether the animal

of his choice will flee from or attack the attacker. Hunters can

trap animals, drive them over cliffs, spear them, stone them,

shoot them with arrows, or hunt them with dogs. Some they can even

run down and kill with their own bare hands. Each of these alternatives

demands variations in organization and equipment.

*William S. Laughlin, Hunting - An Integrating Biobehaviour System and
its Evolutionary Importance, in Lee and Devore, eds., Man the Hunter.