In the high valleys of northern Tanzania lives a tribe called the Hadza. Like other hunters and gatherers who have roamed the Rift valley for tens of thousands of years, the Hadza move to different camps as the seasons change, building new homes of branches and grass several times each year. The men hunt. The women pick berries and nuts, collect honey and dig for tubers with sharpened sticks.
In the modern Western world we think of tribal life as being somehow the core of society, human behavior at its most natural. In the tribe, we believe, men and women marry young and stay together forever, children grow up at their parents' side, the burden of work eases as people age and the oldest in the tribe become honored artists and storytellers.The Hadza do it differently. After studying them for seven years, University of Utah anthropologist Kristen Hawkes says, "The Hadza challenge our Western views of child-raising and of aging."
To Hawkes, the independence of the children is striking. Here they are, living right in the middle of lion country, she says, yet children ages 2 to 8 are left alone in the camp for a good part of the day while adults and older children go out foraging.
She's not heard of any of any toddlers being eaten by wild animals yet, she says. The little ones spend their days playing and digging for roots. "They provide themselves with snacks." By the age of 5, they are unearthing half their own food.
The older women impress her, too. She marvels at their muscles. "Post-menopausal women are extremely active and enormously productive," Hawkes says. They do help care for their grandchildren, as one might expect. But they also labor. They probe the rocky soil for potato-like vegetables, producing more than anyone else in the tribe.
Anthropologists calculate that older women dig for tubers for 71/2 hours a day, while women of child-bearing age dig five or six hours and teenage girls dig less than three hours a day. (Girls devote more time to beauty - plucking eyelashes and scarring their cheeks - and to visiting neighboring tribes.)
Hawkes is part of a team from the University of Utah and the University of California. Supported by the National Science Foundation, they live with the Hadza for months at a time. The team studies demographics and work - the amount of energy the Hadza expend in getting food and raising children.
Last year, living in Tanzania, Utah anthropologist James O'Connell photographed native life. His pictures are on display this summer at the Utah Museum of Natural History.
These are simple photos. In one, children grin and loop arms around each other's necks. In another, women squat as they work. A small boy warms himself in the sun. A baobab tree stands alone against the sky.
Such simplicity tugs at the imagination. Occasionally, one of the research anthropologists will come to the museum to talk about the photos and about the Hadza. From the questions local audience ask, it seems they want to understand the rhythm of the Hadza life, want to compare it to their own.
They ask: Do the Hadza live in nuclear families? How old are they when they marry? Do women ever hunt? Do men ever dig for roots or pick berries? How many children do they have? Do they ever eat grain?
Each answer leads to more questions, says Hawkes. "We are making a lot of progress in confusing ourselves."
One easy answer is that Hadza do live in nuclear families, says Hawkes. Mother, father and children can often be found sleeping together in one hut.
Yet a more accurate, and more confusing answer is, "Hadza families are fluid."
Marriages dissolve quite regularly. Hadza children are as likely to live in a single-parent home as they are in a two-parent home.
Whether or not their parents live together, children sometimes live with other relatives. Or they live with each other in a hut all their own. Or they join with a friend's family for several months at a time.
During a one-month observation, of the 24 children in one tribe, only five were living with both mother and father and two of those children were babies.
The ultimate goal of all this research is to be able to compare the Hadza to other hunters and gatherers to learn how different environments mold different societies. Scientists can already make some comparisons between the Hadza and another group of African hunters and gathers, the !Kung.
Ethnographer Richard Lee, in his ground-breaking studies during the 1960s, learned the Botswana bushmen, the !Kung tribe, only work 15 or 20 hours a week and spend lots of time nurturing and caring for children.
The environment molds !Kung behavior as surely as it molds the Hadza, Hawkes says. In Botswana the food source is usually quite far from the water. Camp must be made near water. Thus it's not too practical for children to forage on their own; there is little food close to camp.
It's tempting to generalize, says Hawkes - to think that if we study native practices, we will learn something about our most basic selves. Comparing various societies of hunters and gatherers shows us just how little is "basic" human behavior.
Whatever can be learned from hunters and gatherers, it is good scientists are learning it now. Opportunities for study may not last.
During the past decade the Tanzanian government tried several times to get the Hadza to give up hunting for farming. Hawkes says, "This is the pattern of state societies, trying to adjust the behavior of hunters and gatherers. Certainly we've seen this in North America. Now it's going on in Africa.
"Hunting and gathering may not have much of a future on this planet."
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(Additional information)
Photo exhibit continues through Sept. 2 at museum
The photo exhibit, Children of the Baobab: Growing Up Hadza, continues at the Dumke Gallery, Utah Museum of Natural History, through Sept. 2. The photographer, anthropologist James O,Connell, will speak about Hadza men and hunting on Sunday, Aug. 18, at 3 p.m.
Regular museum hours are 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays and holidays. The museum is located on the University of Utah.