Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
remember as a 3 year old or so my grandfather placing me on one of these huge horses),
farming was not as efficient. Large families were required to maintain the farms and both my
parents came from families of 10 siblings on each side. Similarly, our nearest neighbor in
Africa, a Boer farmer some ten miles away across the Hlabanyati River, had 10 children to run
his large farm, all with assigned duties. Unfortunately, this process also meant farms were
divided into smaller units among sons and eventually they became hardly viable. This led to
the more recent encouragement by the Swedish government to consolidation of old family
farms as mentioned earlier, and indeed my father sold his to my cousin who has created larger,
more viable farms of even larger size than the original. Another cousin still keeps my
grandparent's small farm on which he can intensely farm dairy cattle with modern monitoring,
breeding, and importation of feed. Hunting of moose continues, although the introduction of
some 200 wolves in southern Sweden has reduced the moose population. Hunting and guns do
however take a toll - my grandfather died duck hunting, an uncle was shot supposedly
accidently and died while duck hunting, although the conditions were somewhat suspicious,
two cousins have died from guns and our Afrikaner neighbor and my brother's friend died from
a gun injury.
Returning to the question as to why many Nguni tribes ended up as pastoralists in the
Bushveld Lebombo plains and Natal-Zululand? Modern zoologists and anthropologists put
much stock on minimizing energy expenditure in obtaining food and energy conservation.
Hunting requires a fair amount of walking and energy expenditure to acquire meat, even if it is
only five to six miles for each trip, and it is not always successful. Also, hauling the meat back
to the clan requires a considerable amount of effort. So much so that many hunter gatherers,
like San hunting for large antelope, Inuits for bears, and pygmies for bongos, would not
outright kill an animal but instead herd the animal back to nearer the clans base and then kill it.
Indeed, even elephants are described as being herded by some early African hunters such as
Roualeyn Gordon-Cumming and William Charles Baldwin to areas where killing them was
more practical, as it's been with culling or darting using helicopters. Baldwin probably learnt
this from the Zulus because Shaka would have his impi warriors herd elephant onto narrow
mountain trails where they would then fall on the elephants with axes and cut their leg tendons
and hamstring as mentioned before. Once a leg is injured, an elephant cannot run on three, and
the warriors would then kill the elephants with spears.
So while hunter-gathering does result in a prolonged period of relaxation, recovery, and
socializing, there is the sacrifice of energy expenditure. The same is true for modern American
hunters who return quite tired from a hunt of a few days, or any hard working physical or
stressful profession. And just as tribesmen would remove themselves from the hunt as they got
older, modern professionals remove themselves from the “hunt,” such as transplant surgeons
when they get into middle age, if the perceived rewards no longer exist.
The stress of the modern day “hunt” affects many occupations and professions. When I was
in Houston, the surgeons were essentially in private practice and earned high reimbursements
for every case they performed. As a result, surgeons did not hesitate to accept high risk
patients. Just like other professions, long and high risk operations took a personal toll on the
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