#42: Primal City (Part 1): Why Urbanists Should Study Hunter Gatherers

This episode is part 1 of a series about  human evolution, our prehistory and Hunter Gatherer ways of life. Why should urbanists be interested in this? In this episode I make the argument that:We evolved over 2 million years as foragers and it is the only environmentally and socially sustainable way of life we know of.Living this way, embedded within ecosystems, is what what we are optimised for and therefore how human beings thrive.Life in our prehistoric past (and in modern hunter gatherer bands) is not nearly as awful as we think. In fact we can learn a lot from their approach to life, work, play and community.This means that our pre-history should be a key design consideration in architecture and urban design. In part 2 (and maybe 3) I will set out specifically what this means for urban design.Sources:Civilised to Death, Christopher Ryan Sapiens, Yuval Noah HarariUncivilised Genes, Gustav Milnehttps://theconversation.com/hunter-gatherers-live-nearly-as-long-as-we-do-but-with-limited-access-to-healthcare-104157https://phys.org/news/2016-07-hunter-gatherers-fundamental-human-social-networks.htmlGreen Urbanist website: https://greenurbanistpod.com/Follow the Green Urbanist:https://twitter.com/GreenUrbanPodhttps://www.instagram.com/greenurbanistpodhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/green-urbanist-podcast- - -Subscribe to the Green Urbanist NewsletterPodcast WebsiteWork TogetherGet in touchUrban Wilding HubGatherMap - Interactive crowdsource mapping toolThe Green Urbanist podcast is created by Ross O'Ceallaigh.