Rachel Reckin

This chapter focuses on two changes that may have had important ramifications for the transition from egalitarianism to non-egalitarianism among hunter-gatherers. To discuss this transition, we synthesize existing cross-cultural data from small-scale societies to consider how the processes of children’s learning differ between more mobile and more settled peoples. First, researchers suggest that more child-appropriate labour among settled communities, including tasks like cleaning, maintenance of possessions, food processing, and tending to animals or gardens leads to settled children being assigned more chores than their mobile peers (Bock 2002; Morelli 1997; Munroe et al. 1983). In particular, girls may experience earlier and more intensive chore assignment, placing them in the home and calcifying gender roles overall (Whiting and Whiting 1975). These cross-cultural observations suggest that when mobility decreases, gender inequality develops thanks partially to increasingly gendered regimes of chore assignment for children. Second, research suggests that the transition from multi-age and multi-gender playgroups in small, mobile societies to same-age, same-gender playgroups in more settled societies provides children with more opportunities to play competitive games (e.g. Draper 1976). We argue that this trend toward increased competitive play among children with larger peer groups fosters a competitive ethos that follows children into adulthood.  In the end, we argue that changes in mobility, economy and work also change children’s learning contexts, contributing to a decreased cultural emphasis on personal autonomy, and an increased emphasis on gender inequality and competition.

Hunting and gathering is, evolutionarily, the defining subsistence strategy of our species. Studying how children learn foraging skills can, therefore, provide us with key data to test theories about the evolution of human life history, cognition, and social behavior. Modern foragers, with their vast cultural and environmental diversity, have mostly been studied individually. However, cross-cultural studies allow us to extrapolate forager-wide trends in how, when, and from whom hunter-gatherer children learn their subsistence skills. We perform a meta-ethnography, which allows us to systematically extract, summarize, and compare both quantitative and qualitative literature. We found 58 publications focusing on learning subsistence skills. Learning begins early in infancy, when parents take children on foraging expeditions and give them toy versions of tools. In early and middle childhood, children transition into the multi-age playgroup, where they learn skills through play, observation, and participation. By the end of middle childhood, most children are proficient food collectors. However, it is not until adolescence that adults (not necessarily parents) begin directly teaching children complex skills such as hunting and complex tool manufacture. Adolescents seek to learn innovations from adults,

Forager societies tend to value egalitarianism, cooperative autonomy, and sharing. Furthermore, foragers exhibit a strong gendered division of labor. However, few studies have employed a cross-cultural approach to understand how forager children learn social and gender norms. To address this gap, we perform a meta-ethnography, which allows for the systematic extraction, synthesis, and comparison of quantitative and qualitative publications. In all, 77 publications met our inclusion criteria. These suggest that sharing is actively taught in infancy. In early childhood, children transition to the playgroup, signifying their increased autonomy. Cooperative behaviors are learned through play. At the end of middle childhood, children self-segregate into same-sex groups and begin to perform gender-specific tasks. We find evidence that foragers actively teach children social norms, and that, with sedentarization, teaching, through direct instruction and task assignment, replaces imitation in learning gendered behaviors. We also find evidence that child-to-child transmission is an important way children learn cultural norms, and that noninterference might be a way autonomy is taught. These findings can add to the debate on teaching and learning within forager populations.