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From Tierra del Fuego to Hudson Bay, if the world's 3,000,000 surviving hunter-gatherers provide any clue, man's distant past probably was more placid and, in some ways, more rewarding than his present. In their hostile environment, the Kalahari Bushmen find enough to eat with less effort than most civilized peoples. Anthropologist Lee estimates that the Bushman's daily diet averages 2,140 calories and 93.1 grams (3.26 oz.) of protein—well in excess of the estimated daily allowance for people of their vigor and size (1,975 calories, 60 grams of protein). The Bushmen have about the same proportion of people over 60 in their society as are found in Western nations.
"This was, when you come to think of it, the original affluent society," says University of Michigan Anthropologist Marshall D. Sahlins. He credits the hunter-gatherers with a Zen-like philosophy about scarcity and plenty. Implicitly, they accept as a fact of the human condition that "material ends are few and finite and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty, though perhaps only a low standard of living."
End of Innocence. Happy, gentle and accepting, the hunter-gatherer asks of life only what it provides, and his manner of existence suggests that for uncounted thousands of years life provided more than enough. Unfortunately, the hunter-gatherer is doomed. Of the 45,000 Bushmen in the Kalahari, only 5,000 or so follow the ancient ways; and the number dwindles each year. Like many Eskimos, Australian aborigines and other surviving hunter-gatherers, the rest have attached themselves to the new ways of civilization.
By surveying this primordial and dying form of society, anthropologists hope to learn what the hunter-gatherer can tell of man's earliest history. Writes University of Chicago Anthropologist Sol Tax: "We should study the reasons for the persistence of these peoples in light of all the conditions militating against their persistence. I think that the case of the North American Indians is especially significant. They seem to be waiting for us to go away."