Embers of society: Firelight talk among the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen

Abstract

Much attention has been focused on control of fire in human evolution and the impact of cooking on anatomy, social, and residential arrangements. However, little is known about what transpired when firelight extended the day, creating effective time for social activities that did not conflict with productive time for subsistence activities. Comparison of 174 day and nighttime conversations among the Ju/'hoan (!Kung) Bushmen of southern Africa, supplemented by 68 translated texts, suggests that day talk centers on economic matters and gossip to regulate social relations. Night activities steer away from tensions of the day to singing, dancing, religious ceremonies, and enthralling stories, often about known people. Such stories describe the workings of entire institutions in a small-scale society with little formal teaching. Night talk plays an important role in evoking higher orders of theory of mind via the imagination, conveying attributes of people in broad networks (virtual communities), and transmitting the "big picture" of cultural institutions that generate regularity of behavior, cooperation, and trust at the regional level. Findings from the Ju/'hoan are compared with other hunter-gatherer societies and related to the widespread human use of firelight for intimate conversation and our appetite for evening stories. The question is raised as to what happens when economically unproductive firelit time is turned to productive time by artificial lighting.

Fig. 1.

Topics of day and night conversations compared.

Fig. 2.

Location of people who are protagonists in stories told by people from four different bands based at /Kae/kae. (Two stories about anthropologists not included). Number of stories from villages shown on map: Qangwa (n = 2), Dobe (n = 2), G!ooce (n = 4), Bate (n = 2), !Ubi (n = 1), Mahopa (n = 1), Sehitwa (n = 6), Nokaneng (n = 2), Tsumkwe (n = 9), G!anisha (n = 1), /Du/da (n = 2), Nxau Nxau (n = 1), Kaudum (n = 2), N = ama (n = 3), Due (n = 1), Eiseb (n = 1), G/am (n = 4), /Aotsha (n = 3), Bense Kamp (1), Gura (n = 2), /Uihaba (n = 1), N!omdi (n = 2), N=amdjoha (n = 1).