Hunter-gatherer groups are much less egalitarian than they appear

It’s a trope so well known that it has become a cliché: hunter-gatherers share their spoils equally among the tribe with a noble generosity absent from high-income societies. Only, it’s not an accurate picture, according to a review of the anthropological evidence.

“There is no society where there is true equality,” says team member Chris von Rueden, an anthropologist at the University of Richmond in Virginia. What appears to be equality is actually just practical, even selfish, behavior.

Observations of the seemingly equal distribution of wealth in traditional subsistence societies have led some researchers to conclude that the default framework of human beings is one of altruism and equality. For example, the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Engels – friend of Karl Marx and staunch defender of Marxism – based some of his ideas on reports of the egalitarian nature of traditional cultures.

“But it’s not just about sharing whatever happens with anyone,” says von Rueden.

After reviewing the existing evidence, Von Rueden and his colleague Duncan Stibbard Hawkes of the University of Durham, UK, say that some anthropologists have confused equality of wealth in a community as a sign that it is driven by a desire for equality. And although some traditional subsistence societies place a strong emphasis on equality, this may be driven more by individuals’ fears that their personal choice may be restricted, rather than by an egalitarian philosophy. For example, the Mbendjele, a group living in the Republic of Congo, have a grievance procedure called boat where people demand the attention of the entire camp, then loudly express how their rights have been violated.

“People don’t like intimidation. They don’t like coercion. They don’t like ‘big men,'” says Manvir Singh, an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the study. He thinks von Rueden and Stibbard Hawkes are right to point out that a society built around the protection of individual autonomy might resemble an egalitarian society.

Researchers found that in addition to the desire for autonomy, equality could also be the product of self-interested behavior. Rather than distributing the rewards of a hunt out of generosity, the meat could be distributed because the hunter does not want to be endlessly harassed for it. To support this idea, von Rueden and Stibbard Hawkes note that frequent and “vehement” demands for hunters to share food have been documented in many hunter-gatherer societies. For example, observations have shown that among some !Kung communities – a culture found in Angola, Botswana and Namibia – about 34 percent of daytime conversations are devoted to complaining about greed.

Likewise, a society in which individuals are willing to share resources and help each other is not necessarily a society without social hierarchy. In some cultures, status is given to those who are more cooperative and community-minded than others. For example, the Tsimané people of Bolivia view displays of humility and helpfulness as the sign of a worthy individual. Thus, von Rueden and Stibbard Hawkes argue that the equality documented by anthropologists in traditional subsistence societies may be the result of keen competition to be the most impartial person in the group.

This study is “an important contribution that brings together a range of different ethnographic examples to show the extent and diversity of egalitarianism,” says Jerome Lewis, an anthropologist at University College London. He says Engels’ 19th-century image of the “noble savage” living in idyllic, principled groups is an outdated view, “highly discriminatory and biased.” Like any human group, hunter-gatherers clash, disagree, and figure out how to resolve their differences.

Lewis points out that people living in traditional subsistence societies around the world have developed “striking alternatives” to the way high-income countries organize their culture and justice. Some traditional subsistence societies have existed for more than 50,000 years and continue today, which he says provides “very powerful lessons and alternative ways of thinking about how we organize ourselves.”