Praise the poor fisherman, for he worked for you

Fishing societies in history

Dec 27, 2023

Fishing societies are a type of society that produces the majority of its calories from either:

Fishing
Hunting sea mammal
Gathering shellfish

Famous examples of Fishing societies include the Inuit (incorrectly called “Eskimos” in the Arctic, the tribes of the American Pacific Northwest, and the Polynesians. Because of the unique character of these types of food, Fishing societies were very different from other types of societies.

See also my other articles on Society Types and related topics:

Most of the rest of the following is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. It is part of a series of excerpts that I am publishing on Substack. You can purchase discounted copies of my book at my website, or pay full prize at Amazon.

Fishing Societies

Fishing societies were the accidental outcomes of the Hunter-Gatherer migrations. As they migrated across the planet, Hunter-Gatherer bands encountered large bodies of water such as coastlines, rivers, and lakes. In these areas, humans discovered opportunities to fish, gather shellfish, and hunt marine mammals.

Most likely, it took them some time to figure out how to most effectively exploit those new resources, but humans had a strong incentive to do so. Fish and marine mammals are much denser sources of energy than plants or land animals. And many of them can be harvested with relatively little physical effort.

Take a look at the bottom right and the bottom left of the graphic above. You can find Fishing societies in the white box with a black border. Note that Fishing societies were restricted to only a few types of biomes:

Riverine (the easiest biome for fishing because the fish move by you)
Coastal (which includes lakes)
Oceanic (such as the Polynesians)
Polar (who typically subsisted on marine mammals, such as Aleuts)
Tundra (who were only where Tundra biomes reach the ocean)

Each of the above types of biomes led to the evolution of unique sub-types of Fishing societies.

Key technologies enabled Fishing societies to do the following:

Catch wild fish (using hooks, nets, and weirs)
Transport themselves and their catch over large bodies of water (using kayaks and boats)
Hunt wild sea mammals (using harpoons)

Note that many researchers also use the term “Foraging societies” to mean Hunter-Gatherer societies and Fishing societies together, but I think that this causes more confusion than clarity for all reasons that follow.

Fishing societies had much larger populations that were more densely populated than Hunter-Gatherer societies. Those with stable food sources had a strong incentive to stay there, so the settlements became the first villages. While it has long been thought that the sedentary lifestyle started with agriculture, more and more archeological digs are turning up evidence of fishing villages that preceded agriculture by millennia. The larger population sizes, greater population density, and sedentary lifestyle probably accelerated technological innovation in Fishing societies.

As the first Fishing societies evolved, they presumably expanded rapidly along the original body of water. Because Fishing societies have larger populations, it was probably fairly easy for them to displace Hunter-Gatherer societies along the body of water. This probably continued until the entire body of water that possessed adequate fishing resources was filled with separate Fishing societies.

Fishing societies were probably also the first society to evolve the chiefdom, a highly personalized style of leadership. With increased food production and a population that was tied to a specific water source, chiefs could extract surplus food for their own needs and disperse that surplus to their loyal followers. This created the first political inequality.

Particularly in areas where the fish were abundant and highly seasonal, for example, salmon in the Pacific Northwest of North America, year-round food storage became important. Chiefs gained control over these storage locations, giving them greater control over the rest of the population.

By the Metrics

Compared to Hunter-Gatherer societies, Fishing societies had:

Sedentary population (because of boats and fish in the river coming to them)
Higher levels of technological complexity
Higher levels of long-term food storage, particularly in areas with seasonal fish runs.
Much higher levels of population
Much higher population density, particularly where fish was plentiful
Much greater levels of economic and political inequality (chiefdoms who controlled the food storage were common)
Much higher rates of forced labor (slavery was common)
Higher rates of warfare (as societies competed for the best fishing spots)
Were highly restricted to geographies with abundant fish

All of the above were the direct outcome of the much higher energy density of fish compared to other animals and plants. It is important to note that later society types surpassed Fishing societies on almost every metric listed above.

Examples of Fishing societies

Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest
Aleuts and Inuits of northern polar regions
Native American tribes of the Andean coast
Native American tribes of the Amazon
Aborigines near Shark Bay Australia
many, many other cultures that have since vanished in the mists of time.

Progress and Fishing societies

So did Fishing societies experience progress? While there might have been a burst of progress when Hunter-Gatherer bands first encountered bountiful fishing spots and learned to innovate technology to capture, store, and prepare this new type of food, it is doubtful that it could have lasted for very long.

Because Fishing societies were sedentary and lived in more densely populated villages, there were greater opportunities for innovation. But given the very small technology base, it is difficult to believe that members of Fishing societies would experience noticeable progress within one generation.

If our planet had an unlimited number of fishing spots with an unlimited number of edible fish, Fishing societies might have generated a fair amount of progress for humanity. Unfortunately, regions that can support Fishing societies are relatively rare, generally small in geographic extent, and available fish stocks are finite. Fishing became a niche society type rather than a true pathway to progress.

Because Fishing societies were heavily constrained by their need to remain near large bodies of water, they were unable to expand beyond very narrow geographic confines. This meant that Hunter-Gatherer societies and Fishing societies coexisted for tens of thousands of years in separate areas.

Fishing Societies Today

Just as with Hunter-Gatherer societies, Fishing societies have been in relentless retreat for the last 10,000 years. Fortunately for them, Fishing societies have been able to maintain some semblance of their traditional ways. Many have gradually transformed into semi-autonomous fishing villages within a larger agricultural society. Most, however, have long since been absorbed into more populous societies without a hint of their prior existence.

Fishing societies have been driven back to the Arctic regions, the Pacific Northwest, and small coastal, river, and lake locations. Many of them have been engulfed by more complex agricultural societies, but because their traditional lifestyle required very little land, they could maintain their ways.

And just as the descendants of Hunter-Gatherer societies experience a much lower standard of living even when they live within modern Industrial societies, so do the descendants of Fishing societies. I can think of no ethnic group descendant from Fishing societies in the year 1500 that is above average in socio-economic status in any nation of the world.

Fishing societies are not primitive

In his outstanding book The Secret of Our Success Joseph Henrich gives a compelling example of how difficult it is for people living in one society type to transfer their success to another environment. You can find a summary of this outstanding book in my online library of book summaries, or you can go to my podcast/video summary.

In 1845, two British ships searching for the Northwest Passage were shipwrecked on King William Island in northern Canada. No one knows their full story, but we do know that none of them survived.

The sailors on the ship were members of the richest and most technologically dynamic society at that time. Their ancestors had innovated an incredible number of technologies, learned new skills, and cooperated in highly complex organizations.

The British at that time were at the pinnacle of human achievement. But the skills, technology, values, and organizations that enabled the British to prosper in London or onboard ships were almost useless to survive on an island in northern Canada. None of the crew of 129 survived the ordeal.

At first impressions, this should not be a surprise. Northern Canada is a very hostile environment. No one could survive such a hostile environment without help from outside.

One might think so, but the local Inuits had survived and prospered in that land for about 800 years. The technologies, skills, social organizations, and values of the Inuits were very simple in comparison to what the British had innovated, but that did not matter.

What mattered was that the Inuit technologies, skills, social organizations, and values were perfectly adapted to that polar environment. Inuits were neither inferior nor superior to the British. If Inuits had suddenly been transported to Britain, they would have struggled as well. Perhaps they would have been able to survive better than the shipwrecked British crew, but it is doubtful that they would have done as well as a typical British person.

Every Inuit child was taught from birth the skills, social interactions, and values needed to survive and reproduce in that polar environment. This made each child the benefactor of centuries of trial-and-error experimentation by their ancestors that led to key technological innovations such as kayaks, snow houses, and cold-weather clothing.

Inuit boys were taught by their fathers how to hunt seals, build and repair kayaks and spears, predict the weather, and a myriad of other skills. Inuit girls were taught how to preserve and prepare food and tailor cold-weather clothing. Both girls and boys learned how to cooperate in the types of social groups necessary to survive in the polar environment.

Over the generations, Inuits built Fishing societies adapted to survive in environmental conditions that would terrify most other people. This did not make them superior, just better adapted to a specific local environment.

If forced to live in a very different natural or social environment, the Inuits would have had a very difficult time surviving. Even if they somehow were able to survive and thrive, it would be because they were able to rapidly copy members of a society that were already better adapted to the new environment.