A team of anthropologists at University College London interviewed hundreds of couples in two hunter-gatherer tribes, the Palanan Agta of the Philippines and Congo’s Mbendjele BaYaka, as well as the Filipino farming tribe the Paranan, which is a patriarchal society. These people offer a strong approximation of the lifestyles and communities of our oldest ancestors and their survival strategies.  The anthropologists studied cooperation between strangers and acquaintances and concluded that our hunter-gatherer ancestors, before they took up farming, believed that men and women were equal.

Members of current hunter-gatherer tribes say they prefer to live close to their kinfolk so that siblings and grandparents can help with child care.  But even though that’s what they say, it’s not what they do. In fact, the tribes live in camps that are heavily populated with those to whom they’re not related.  This seems to be because the wife wants to live with her kin and the husband with his.  They end up living with a constantly changing group of strangers instead. This works because the members cooperate. “Sharing and cooperation is crucial to survival,” explains Andrea Migliano, the paper’s senior author. “So [tribe members] evolved mechanisms to cooperate with unrelated individuals.”  For example, hunters need only find food about 75 percent of the time, because unrelated neighbors share their food. (Thomas K. Grose, May 2015, adapted from an article on the NPR website).

Some aspects of Epicureanism were not new even in the lifetime of Epicurus.  They were in full flower among the then hunter-gathering peoples of the Earth. What Epicureanism can do is to help restore those levels of empathy, courtesy, cooperation, sharing, and equality between the sexes. Life has become too fragmented, lonely, stressful, uncooperational and “me-orientated”. We can set an example by trying to lead civilised lives, ironically re-learning from the hunter-gatherers.