EDUCATION
Sovereign Magazine
Modern hunter-gatherer children could tell us how human culture evolved and inspire new ways of teaching By Gul Deniz Salali British Academy Research Fellow and Lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology/Medicine, UCL
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hen Eteni, a 13-month-old baby living in the dense rainforests of Congo, attempts to cut freshly hunted meat with a sharp knife, no one interferes. In fact, Eteni can often be found playing with sharp tools and imitating her nine-yearold aunt, Bwaka, who is already efficient at digging wild yams and cutting bush meat with her machete. As Eteni and Bwaka interact with each other and other community members, they provide a glimpse into how Mbendjele hunter-gatherer children acquire skills that are crucial for survival in the forest. I’m an evolutionary anthropologist and I’m interested in how hunter-gatherer children learn because these observations might tell us how humans transmitted skills and knowledge before the dawn of agriculture. By observing hunter-gatherers as they share knowledge about the world around them today, we get a glimpse of how human culture developed in ancient huntergatherer communities. Human culture is unprecedented because it is cumulative. We build on our existing stock of skills and information, recombine them and generate new ones. This process, over time, results in complex phenomena like the internet. At the beginning, there was language and speech, then came the written word and printing, radio communication and telephone, then computers and the internet. But culture only accumulates and evolves over time if information can be passed on accurately. In our study, my colleagues and I watched more than 100 video recordings from time I spent with the Mbendjele BaYaka Pygmies to understand how huntergatherer children develop skills such as using knives, caring for infants, and gathering wild plants when they are as young as three years old. Most infants and toddlers learn by freely exploring their environment, observing and copying others. This way of learning through imitation is a great way of transmitting skills accurately and likely explains how the earliest concepts and processes were first learned and communicated among ancient hunter-gatherer groups. Teaching is another great way of ensuring information is passed on correctly. But compared to the years of formal education children receive in societies like the UK – where a strict hierarchy is enforced between them and the teacher – teaching is rare for hunter-gatherer children like the Mbendjele. Hunter-gatherers encourage children to be self-reliant and are less likely to intervene in their actions, because independence is crucial in their environment where a person needs to look for food each day. Does this mean that teaching isn’t necessary? Not at all. Our observations suggest that teaching in humans is universal and has evolved as cultures have evolved. When skills and knowledge become more sophisticated – as information and complex interdependent relationships stack up – learning through being taught becomes crucial. You can’t learn mathematics by simply observing someone solving problems after all.
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Mbendjele children learn to use tools like machetes from a very young age. Photo credit: Gul Deniz Salali, Author provided
