Foragers
Page 51
Geoff Landis, Steve Swiniarski‚ Brian Yamauchi‚ Andre Williams, and Jay Williams offered commentary and answered questions. Bonita Kale, Maureen McHugh, Mary Turzillo‚ and Sarah Willis offered commentary and discussion beyond the call of duty. Kevin Ho and Veronica Lee answered medical questions. Vickie Wright, Becky Thomas, and Joe Heinen provided last minute help. Lou Aronica offered important early suggestions, Ralph Vicinanza went to bat for the novel, and Jennifer Hershey has been more supportive and helpful an editor than any writer could ask for. Lise Rodgers was an impeccable copy editor. Karen Fowler saved the day, as usual. April Stewart-Oberndorf gave her usual, impeccable editorial support. Andrew reduced the trips to the attic when he asked me if I’d take a break.
Meg Lynch, who in 1992 was assistant to Irven DeVore‚ of Harvard’s Department of Anthropology, introduced me to the work of John Tooby and Leda Cosmides‚ to Current Anthropology‚ and to Irven DeVore and Terry Deacon’s printed course notes on Human Behavioral Biology. For the creation of the slazans‚ I am indebted to primate research by Frans de Waal, Birute Galdikas‚ J. C. Mitani‚ Peter Rodman, and Barbara Smuts. Greg Laden suggested that the slazan social scale might be larger than is perceptible to humans. The evolutionary description of slazans is drawn from Chapter 3 of Melvin Konner’s The Tangled Wing. My ideas on human physical and social evolution are shaped by Konner‚ Marvin Harris, Robert Trivers‚ and The Adapted Mind‚ a collection edited by Barkow‚ Cosmides‚ and Tooby. For territoriality, I relied on Elizabeth Casdam. For language evolution, I turned to Derek Bickerton and Steven Pinker. The idea of a U curve in human evolution belongs to Bruce Knauft. Some readers of the above material might start looking for genetic explanations for human behaviors that are more adequately explained by environmental factors. Richard Lewontin’s engaging Biology as Ideology should be read as a necessary corrective.
My primal Utopians’ re-creation of Ju/’hoansi culture is based extensively on the work of anthropologist Richard Lee. The statement by the Ju/’hoan informant on pages 122-123 is not a fictional creation, but rather words spoken by ≠omazho‚ a Ju/’hoan healer, to Professor Lee. A full explanation of the context for those words can be found in Lee’s very fine The Dobe Ju/’hoansi. The education of a hunter section relies heavily on Lee’s presentation in The !Kung San: Men, Women‚ and Work in a Foraging Society. I have also relied on Marjorie Shostak’s Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman. The description of the healing dance is based on accounts by Konner‚ Lee, Shostak‚ Megan Biesele‚ Richard Katz, Loma Marshall, and the film N/um Tchai by John Marshall. Marshall’s film, N!ai‚ the Story of a !Kung Woman is the source of the epigraph by ≠oma Word. Other work by the above, as well as the work of Patricia Draper, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, and Pauline Weissner‚ has shaped my understanding of Ju/’hoansi culture when there was enough land to support gathering and hunting as a way of life. All errors and misrepresentations are mine or Pauline Dikobe’s.
Author’s Concluding Note
Since the early 1970’s fewer and fewer Ju/’hoansi have been able to sustain themselves through gathering and hunting. Their land has slowly been taken away by others. The Ju/’hoansi and their culture persist, but in new circumstances, facing new, difficult challenges. Anthropologists who had worked with the Ju/’hoansi established the Kalahari Peoples’ Fund in Botswana and the Nyae Nyae Development Foundation in Namibia to help the Ju/’hoansi create new lives. For example, with such help, the Ju/’hoansi in Namibia formed the Nyae Nyae Farmers’ Cooperative, which went on to write a dictionary, and Nyae Nyae children are now learning to read and write in their native language. In both countries, wells have been dug, gardens started, and corrals built for small herds of cattle. If you would like to offer financial support for these endeavors, contributions can be sent to:
Kalahari Peoples’ Fund (Botswana)
c/o Dr. James Ebert
3100 9th Street, NW
Albuquerque, NM 87107
—and—
Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia
P. O. Box 9026
Windhoek, Namibia
(or)
c/o Cultural Survival
46 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
About the author
Charles Stewart-Oberndorf is the author of Sheltered Lives and Testing. A graduate of Dartmouth College and the Clarion Writers’ Workshop (1987), he lives in Cleveland Heights with his wife and eight-year-old son. He teaches English at University School and is at work on his next novel.
Books by Charles Oberndorf
SHELTERED LIVES
TESTING
FORAGERS
copyright
FORAGERS
A Bantam Spectra Book/April 1996
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1996 by Charles Oberndorf.
Cover photos copyright © 1996 by Don Landwehrle and Steven Hunt/The Image Bank.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
ISBN 0-553-29695-7
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
OPM 098765432
Anticopyright
Title: Foragers
Author: Charles Oberndorf
Genre: science fiction
Source: Bantam Spectra paperback edition, published April, 1996
Process: Scanned, OCR'd and proofed.
Date of e-text: October 8, 2013
Prepared by: Antwerp
Comments: As far as I know, this is the only existing e-text of this book.
Notes about scanning:
I'm hardly an expert, but for what it's worth here's what I've learned so far:
1. The hardest part of scanning a book is steeling yourself to unbind your book. It may help to remember that standard mass-market paperbacks were never made to last. If your bookshelf is anything like mine, paperbacks more than ten years old are already showing signs of age. At fifteen to twenty years, the pages are yellowing and the binding is starting to crack and loosen. They won't last much longer as a readable book, and may no longer be available in any format.
Sometimes you really do have to destroy the village in order to save it.
2. The trick to unbinding a standard paperback is heat (even if you're careful, cutting can damage the text, especially with an old cheap paperback). A heavy cast-iron skillet works well. Pre-heat the skillet to "medium". Place just the binding edge on the surface of the skillet for a couple of seconds. The pages should start to loosen enough to gently pull free. Be careful not to over-heat - you only want to soften the binding glue, not liquefy or vapourise it. I don't know the flash-point of binding glue or what it's made of, but it's probably not something you want to breathe. Carefully separate out the individual pages, re-heating the binding edge as needed. Don't neatly re-stack the pages, leave them in a loose pile until they've fully cooled. Watch out for glue strings and blobs.
3. Make sure your scanner will do at least 600dpi. I know all the OCR guides say 300 dpi, but the
text in paperbacks is pretty small and you have contend with cheap fibrous paper and background discolouration, not to mention tea stains and such. 600 dpi gives you and your software something to work with. I find that scanning in Photo mode, greyscale, dark (underexposed), at high contrast seems to get the best results. Play around with your scanner's settings until you get something that works for your OCR program.
4. "Obtain" a real OCR program, not Acrobat's built-in ocr or some freeware app. No offence intended - I use lots of freeware and shareware myself - but OCR is something that requires a high-end program to get the job done right.
5. Proofing is a tedious pain in the ass, but it's really the most important part. To avoid burning out, I suggest limiting yourself to scanning-and-proofing 50 or so pages a day. It'll take around a week per book, but it's worth taking the time to do the job right. Remember, yours may well be the only e-copy of your favourite book that will ever be made. Proof responsibly.
Anticopyright 2013. All rights reversed.
Table of Contents
FORAGERS Author's Note
Introduction to the Second Alternative Edition
Foragers
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Acknowledgments
Author’s Concluding Note
About the author
copyright