Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The nomadic way of life was essentially a response to prevailing circum-
stances, as opposed to a matter of conviction. Nevertheless, a nomadic jour-
ney is in many ways a more flexible and adaptive response to life than is
living in a settlement.
This element of mobility was also an important component of their poli-
tics, because they “voted with their feet” by moving away from an unpopu-
lar leader rather than submitting to that person's rule. Further, such mobility
was a means of settling conflicts, something that proved increasingly dif-
ficult as people became more sedentary.
Nomads were in many ways more in harmony with the environment than
a sedentary culture, because the rigors and uncertainties of a wandering
lifestyle controlled, in part, the size of the overall human population while
allowing little technological development. In this sense, wandering groups
of people tended to be small, versatile, and mobile.
Although a nomadic people may in some cases have altered a spring of
water for their use, dug a well, or hid an ostrich egg filled with water for
emergencies, they were largely controlled by when and where they found
water. Put differently, water brought nomads to it. On the other hand, the
human wastes were simply left to recycle in the environment as a reinvest-
ment of biological capital each time the people moved on.
In addition, nomads, who carried their possessions with them as they
moved about, introduced little technology of lasting consequence into the
landscape, other than fire and the eventual extinction of some species of
prey. Even though they may, in the short-term, have depleted populations
of local game animals or seasonal plants, they gave the land a chance to
heal and replenish itself between seasons of use. Finally, the sense of place
for a nomadic people was likely associated with a familiar circuit dictated
by the whereabouts of seasonal foods, and later pastures for their herds.
Domestication of animals was arguably the beginning of
surplus
.
Although hunter-gatherers had the right of personal ownership, it applied
only to mobile property, that which they could carry with them, such as their
hunting knives or gathering baskets. On the other hand, things they could
not carry with them, such as land, were to be shared equally through rights
of use but could not be personally controlled to the exclusion of others or
abused to the detriment of future generations.
In traditional systems of common property, the land is held in a kinship-
based collective, while individuals owned movable property. Rules of recip-
rocal accesses made it possible for an individual to satisfy life's necessities
by drawing on the resources of several territories, such as the shared rights
among the indigenous Cherokee peoples of eastern North America.
In the traditional Cherokee economic system, both the land and its
abundance would be shared among clans. One clan could gather, another
could camp, and yet a third could hunt on the same land. There was a
fluid right of common usage rather than a rigid individual right to private
property. The value was thus placed on sharing and reciprocity, on the
Search WWH ::
Custom Search