The Nomadic Alternative – Page 173

of wild honey or a patch of wild vegetables, and may have to pass through the territory of its neighbours to get there. Hunters are always prepared to share with their neighbours in hard times and can rely on similar treatment in return. The Mbuti Pygmies partition the forest into territories so large that the hunting band never has to settle in the same campsite twice in a year. Streams or rivers mark the boundaries and these natural barriers effectively enclose the game animals within the sam€area. But if, for example, a wounded animal strays out of the territory, its pursuers have tacit permission from their neighbours to follow the animal providing the trespassers contribute half the meat to the trespassed.

IX

Of necessity the equilibrium of the Society of Equals relies on the equilibrium of its numbers. The hunters, who budget for the minimum, are well aware of the disrupting effects of population growth on social stability. With a nine month gestation cycle a mother can bear at least one baby a year, and perhaps four in three years. Even allowing for a high rate of infant mortality, over-population on this scale in urban, peasant and nomad communities has contributed to the world's population explosion, which in the past was held in check by epidemics and now seems, if at all, to be controlled by war. Even Catholic dogmatists would agree that population numbers are getting out of hand with advances in medicine. But the nine-month gestation cycle seems rooted in natural law and artificial controls defy this law. Abortion and infanticide are crimes against nature.

Seen from the viewpoint of the 'Children of Nature' the anguished dilemma of birth control takes on a different complexion. If she is perpetually mobile - on her own two feet and without pack animals - the mother cannot have more than one child every three, even four and five years. To rear two infants at the same time is beyond