Equal opportunities for hunter-gatherers?

Published in the American Journal of Play Volume 1, Number 4, Spring 2009

Play as a Foundation for Hunter-Gatherer Social Existence
Peter Gray

This paper can be accessed at: http://www.journalofplay.org/issues/28/76-play-foundation-hunter-gatherer-social-existence

The author offers the thesis that hunter-gatherers promoted, through cultural means, the playful side of their human nature and this made possible their egalitarian, nonautocratic, intensely cooperative ways of living.

They maintained playful attitudes in their hunting, gathering, and other sustenance activities, partly by allowing each person to choose when, how, and how much they would engage in such activities. Children were free to play and explore, and through these activities, they acquired the skills, knowledge, and values of their culture.

Play, in other mammals as well as in humans, counteracts tendencies toward dominance, and hunter-gatherers appear to have promoted play quite deliberately for that purpose.

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