Hunting & Gathering

Relevance for Hunter-Gatherers

We are all hunter-gatherers. Recent studies have shown “the existence, some 300,000 years ago, of mental ability equivalent to that of modern man” (Gamble, 1980, p. 522). Gamble also posits that information, not simply the human brain, has been evolving since the existence of our earliest ancestors; humans, of course, are the contributors to this form of evolution. This is not to say that we have not physically evolved in appearance over the past 300,000 years. We have. Our brains, however, have long had the capacity to achieve, analyze, think, and plan in the manner we do today.

Whether thousands of years ago or today, hunter-gatherers have suffered anomalous states of knowledge and sought relevance. Perhaps thousands of years ago Cro-Magnon (modern hunter-gatherers—us) wondered when the herd would next migrate, so that they might hunt and then gather food for their families. The anomalous state was the uncertainty about the next meal. They sought relevance by employing the technology of weaponry, tools, and communication and harvesting the kill. Modern hunter-gatherers are not dissimilar. The anomalous state could range from Where is the bathroom? to What is for supper? to How do I unclog the drain? to How do I prove the hypothesis of my dissertation? Relevance is achieved by foraging for answers.

Our anomalous states can be anything that we feel is missing from our knowledge stores. Our anomalous states could be the same as that of early hunter-gatherers. For example, we have a need to ingest and digest food. How we choose to satiate this need is situationally relevant. Fortunately, we do not have to achieve gaining our food calories in the same manner as Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal—though some may choose to, usually as a hobby. We can go to the grocery store. Grocery shopping is optimal foraging. Just about anything that we need is located at the grocery store. We use the same hunting and gathering strategies and tactics that humans have been using for thousands of years, and this is no coincidence.

Many times we also have needs that are not so basic and fundamental to our physical survival. For instance, students, scholars, and professionals have information needs. Depending on the depth of the knowledge we are seeking, our relevance for these situations varies.

Foraging

Describing why we hunt and gather is challenging. For our purpose, which does not include the explanation of the anatomy and physiology of the human brain that drives our natural instincts, we hunt and gather because we have a particular need that we are attempting to fill. Describing how we accomplish this is simpler because we can observe hunting and gathering behaviors in ourselves.

To clarify with the help of the Oxford English Dictionary, foraging is “roving in search of provisions.” This definition is consistent with what appears to be a recurring theme among those who talk about the forage for relevance. Carl Sagan notes that ancient Egyptians called the library “nourishment for the soul” (Sagan, 1989); others talk about the “flavors of relevance” (Pai, in O’Connor, 1996); and still others pilgrimage toward feeding a spiritual hunger. Foraging and relevance seem to somehow be linked to an inherent need for nourishment. One could say foraging provides sustenance for body, mind, and soul. Optimizing the nourishment is a task that has challenged hunter-gatherers since our beginning.

Optimal Foraging

Optimal foraging is an established biological and anthropological theory that plots searching and handling curves on cost and benefits axes to determine their relationship. It surmises that we are continuously looking for ways to optimize searching techniques. The search is considered the time the forager spends looking for prey. Handling begins with the forager’s decision to pursue, and includes the capture, the processing, and the consumption (Sandstrom, 1999). Cost is considered the number of calories expended in the forage for a particular item. Benefits are considered the number of calories gained by the use of the item. In Cro-Magnon’s life, search cost would have been high after spending two days hunting and coming home with a single rabbit. Benefits would have been low, since many calories were expended for this harry (or hairy) return.

The cost-benefit idea also applies to library research. If a student spends three hours searching through literature databases for articles on a certain topic, and very few hits are returned, search cost is high and benefits are low. Or when several hits result from a quick database search, and the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) tells the student that the item is “available.” An hour may be spent navigating through the stacks trying to locate the desired item. Finally the student determines the item is missing, despite what the OPAC indicated. The student leaves the library with nothing. Search cost was high; benefits were low.

Suppose the search had been successful. The student’s first search returned several hits and each item was indeed in the collection. Then search cost was low and benefits were high. The 1980s saw the change from card-catalog searching to OPAC searching. During card-catalog searching, one had no option to use keywords to articulate a search query. Patrons were accustomed to searching by subject, and most continued to do so on the online catalog. At first, very few ventured to try keyword searching. Within a decade, keyword searching increased and subject searching became as useless to patrons on OPACs as keyword searching was to patrons in the card catalog. This is not surprising, since keyword searching and OPACs have on the whole provided a better cost-to-gain ratio.

Optimal foraging attempts to expend the fewest calories possible for the greatest benefit during the combined efforts for searching and handling. The idea is to bring the apex (indicated with the arrow) to such a position that benefits for searching and handling are high and cost is low (Churchill, 1998). While such optimization may be the goal of automation, it has yet to be achieved (Borgman, 1996).

In the literature of evolutionary ecology and anthropology, optimal foraging contains the same fundamental elements:

1. 
   an actor (defined as an individual organism) that pursues or chooses alternative strategies and tactics;
   
2. 
   a strategy that identifies available options;
   
3. 
   a currency that defines and analyzes the cost-benefit structure and measurement of gain available;
   
4. 
   a set of constraints in which the strategies and payoffs are determined (Smith and Winterhalder, 1992).
   

This method can be seamlessly applied to hunter-gatherers who are seeking any type of resource, or attempting to fill a gap in their knowledge stores. Depending on the particular need, an actor may be on a general search for something that will fill the gap. Other times, the forager is on a more determined quest and will bypass many other types of information, food, calories, and so on, in order to satisfy a more specific or articulated need.