The first time I encountered the the Moken, I met a single Moken boy as he was walking to look for his food. In general, I noticed that the Moken often seemed to get exercise like this but Walking was the most common form of exercise as it is for most hunter/gatherers.
The second day I came into contact with the Moken, I was swimming through a channel between two islands when I came into contact with an old, tanned, sea gypsy fishermen rowing a small boat. He looked like Hemingway's character in the Old Man and the Sea. The old man noticed me swimming around and motioned me over to swim up to his boat and talk to him. After a few failed attempts at communication, the fisherman noticed that I could not speak his language, so with a partly toothless smile and hand gestures he offered a ride in his boat. He waved me on and offered his hand so that I could jump in. Bobbing in the water, I tried to heave my body on to the boat. He laughed as I fell off and splashed back into the sea. I tried a second time and lifted myself with more strength. I finally heaved myself onto his boat where I landed in the hull like a beached seal. The old mans toothy smile broadened as he laughed. He had thin facial hair on a happy but wrinkled face. He said something in Moken as he grabbed the paddles of the boat and began to row. The paddles splashed into the water creating clear liquid jewels reflecting the sun's rays. I didn't know where he was taking us but I didn't mind. I pointed at myself, gesturing as I said my name "Rome." He smiled and then began to speak in his own language as if I was going to understand him. I tried again and said "Rome" as I pointed at myself. He seemed to understand this time as he pointed at himself and said "Moken." I immediately understood that he was not telling me his own name but the name of his people, the "Moken." The striking thing about the man was the fact that he clearly was about 70 years old, yet he was in perfect physical condition. It was easy to see how he kept so fit as he rowed his boat. His lean build was clearly a sign that he did this often. I then noticed that a spear was laying flat inside the boat. I pointed at the spear and gestured as if I were throwing it. The old man nodded, laughed and mimicked me, as if he were throwing the spear. I realized that we were probably on a fishing trip, as I knew that the Moken do, in fact, gather their food from nature, the sea and forest. This old man was continuing a tradition passed down by his ancestors. He was continuing a tradition of exercise, a tradition of physical movement. As kids, our ancestors did not sit in school all day nor, as adults, did they sit in the office. They were "gone fishing," gone mammoth hunting, or gathering berries in the forest, walking around in the wilderness. This old fishermen's body was doing exactly what it was designed to do. It was built to move. This old mans lean, healthy body is evidence that it was in harmony with its own nature. We adapted into beings that ran after food and now our bodies require motion just to stay healthy.
Walking is a big part of the daily lives of the African Bambuti pygmies of the Congo. Of course, the Bambuti pygmies are nomadic and they often pick up all of their belongings and move campsites in the jungle. The Belgian explorer of the Congo, Alyette De Munck, describes how the pygmies set up their new camp. "Tomorrow we are going to shift camp. Not for a dispute, but because the hunters are returning empty handed; the game is timid, the mushrooms are scarce, the women have to go farther and farther to fill their baskets. The camp has been here for two months, the huts are getting leaky, and it's boring to stay long in the same place...packing is easy. First the weapons-every man carries his bow and arrows. Often he has his flute hung around his neck and his spear in his hand - no other baggage.... (The Pygmies walk through the forest and look for a new a new camp) As they walk they cut down fruits or leaves or dig out edible tubers or larvae. Children follow the adults...after about an hour of walking...we come to a new camp sight near the Isehe River. The men set a clearing where the forest is not too dense...meanwhile the women look for long limber sticks. These they plant in a circle and weave into a dome shaped trellis. To this frame they attach large leaves for a watertight roof. Leafy branches piled on the ground serve as beds." The forest is their home, their grocery store, and their pharmacy, so whatever they need they must walk into the forest to get it. Probably the most important need is water. Water is easily found by just walking to the river. If it were not for their legs they obviously would be no way to get the water.
The women often gather together with children. They walk everyday into the forest and look for wild mushrooms, medicinal plants, fruits, roots, leaves, insects such as caterpillars, and honey. As they daily walk around and locate and eat the mushrooms and other vegetables closest to the camp they have to walk deeper and deeper into the forest to find food until they move camps again.
This is the way they "make their living". Walking and looking for food makes up a large part of their lives. Searching for food really is a comfortable task of social daily work in which they walk together and unconsciously follow their instincts to find food in the wilderness. This is what our species did for thousands of years and our genus homo ancestors have been doing for millions of years and as other organisms that were their ancestors have been doing for even longer.
The older male pygmies wake up in the warm morning jungle every day, and sometimes they organize briefly to begin a day of communal hunting. To begin the hunt the hunters must take the first step away from the camp sight. They set off and walk into the forest in a single file march to search for deer, elephant or other animals to catch. Step after step they will walk deeper and deeper away from camp. Sometimes they will take only a couple of hours long hike and other times they will follow an elephant for days and hunt and eat smaller animals along the way. Whatever the distance they walk, they are only using their bodies the way they their bodies and our own bodies are designed, by evolution, to be used.
On other days a man may set off by himself. It is not uncommon for a man to hunt with a dog and take only his weapon with him. Together, dog and man, walk in union as species and co-species in the long and enduring walking adaptation to the land on which they walk upon. In all these examples foragers are getting obvious exercise in a natural functional way. In "What hunters do for a living1" a well known ethnography among anthropologists, Richard Lee, in the 1960s', systematically, studied and statistically analyzed the hunting and gathering behavior of the San Bushmen of the Kalahari in southern Africa.
All of the people of the San walked and searched for their main source of food the Mongongo nut year round. Because it is in such large supply, the Mongongo nut makes up 50 percent of their diet. When a Bushmen once was asked why he had not become agricultural and had begun to grow plants he replied, "Why should we plant when there are so many Mongongo nuts in the world"
The nut is also drought resistant, importantly enough in the warm dry desert of the Bush. The San also search for fruits, berries, melons, roots, and leafy greens, and of course the men hunt. With their bare feet Lee explains that in his calculations the San Bushmen walked in their search for food an average of 2.5 days a week. He explains that the average day of walking is 6 hours. On average they spend about 12 to 19 hours per week walking and gathering food. That creates an average working day of a little more than 3 hours. This is much less work than we do in industrial society, as Lee points out, but it is also much more exercise than many of us get.
Plenty of walking in general is a universal behavior of hunter/gatherers in the present and in the past.
The Australian aborigines inhabited the whole territory of Australia, including the outback and along the coasts. They, of course, also needed to walk daily. They collected fruits and vegetables and also hunted the well-known kangaroo with their weapons and their interesting and exotic spear. The excursions and treks for the various animals they found also took various amounts of walking time. Sometimes, if they were close to a body of water, they would just walk to the source of water where an animal that could be captured may be drinking. They speared fish and collected shellfish. According to the University of Melbourne introductory web site on aborigine hunting and gathering, they also had the help of co-species animals in their hunting, just as the pygmies use dogs.
"Aboriginal people of Moreton Bay in South-Eastern Queensland enlisted the aid of dolphins to drive fish. When a school of fish was seen, the people struck the water with their spears to signal to the dolphins. The dolphins then surrounded the fish and drove them close to shore where they could be speared and netted1".
Another example of hunter-gatherers that walk is the Eskimo. or specifically the Koyukon Native Americans that live in the cold forests of Central Alaska above the Arctic Circle on the top of our planet. They are known to be whale and sea hunters. Eskimos also eat bear, which sometimes the men will walk for many days to catch, much like the above mentioned pygmies who follow elephants for days.
Of course the tribal hunter-gatherers of Europe did a lot of big game hunting, as they used to eat whatever they could find, especially deer. At one point they used to eat Wooly Mammoth and even horse. Even after agriculture was invented, people still often lived in Nomadic tribes and hunted much of their food. Yet even as pastoralist tribes were nomadic with their herds of sheep, goats or even camels. These raisers of livestock, or shepherds, would always take their herds to warmer weather where the animals could find vegetation to eat. In this circumstance we see that moving is also a part of our biological heritage. Moving was our adaptation in order to survive, and is now necessary for proper physiological function.
If 99 percent of human history has been spent hunting and gathering then we should see support of this in our human anatomy. Surely this foraging culture and everything that it entails has influenced our genetic makeup and it should reveal itself in our psychology here in the industrial age.
In fact, half of the human body is legs. This is one proof. Humans are designed to look for food and resources. We are designed to walk and run after food that may run away from us. Now, for health, we must express this part of us as astronauts do when they run on stationary exercise treadmills in mid-space flight just to keep their muscles from atrophying.
Fred Allen said "I like long walks especially when they are taken by people who annoy me" Psychologists have always recommend going for walks whenever they are angry because it has been noticed that when people do this the anger decreases. This behavior of avoiding conflict by literally walking away from people is one of the oldest and most prevalent observed behaviors in hunting and gathering culture. The anthropologist calls this behavior 'diffusion'. When conflict arises in a group the people fighting just walk away and spread out and away from each other for a while. Obviously this is a way to allow time to let anger and emotion release and dissipate. It is therapy to go for a walk since walking effects our bodies and our bodies affect our minds. When we are walking we are connecting to a need to spend our physical energy. What better way to spend our need for aerobic exercise than walking with our legs? It requires no extra equipment, just what we were born with and what we inherited. Erma Bombeck said "The only reason I would take up jogging is to hear heavy breathing again." People have been including jogging as a form of physical therapy in their modern lives for a couple of decades now and suburbanites run around their blocks early in the morning to get daily doses of "runners' high". Runners' high is a consequence of many different biochemical brain reactions. For one thing, if a runner runs hard and long enough they will experience an endorphin high. Endorphins' are natural opiates that create the feeling of pleasure. We experience these endorphins that flow through our brain cells whenever we are experiencing long strenuous exercise. Endorphins are described as chemical similar to morphine.
When a Koyukon hunter in Alaska hikes through heavy snow for days to catch a bear in the cold forest he may be experiencing endorphin highs. Adrenaline would also create the stimulated effect that the hunter would feel after this walk. He would also experience a stimulating effect from the increase in heart rate and breathing and elevated sugar levels and oxygen delivered to his brain. All of this creates the psychological sensation of feeling good that one gets from exercise.
Of course using our bodies to walk or to run is probably the most convenient and usual technique for exercise. In numerous studies it is shown that aerobic exercise can improve mood and decrease depression. There's now an abundance of accelerating evidence in academic psychology journals proving that regular exercise such as hiking, running, or bicycling can ease cases of depression by raising the levels of neurotransmitters (endorphins, etc.) responsible for mood. These chemicals that are affected by exercising and walking in general are the same brain chemicals that are affected by antidepressants. Now it is proven what we all intuitively knew. Most all of us have experienced runners high or walkers high. A short daily 20-minute walk can improve mood. A cure for a lack of energy, lack of stimulation, and depression apparently can be to follow our natural function and go on hikes. It is simply one of the easiest ways to alter consciousness in a healthy and positive way.
Aerobic exercise can also improve learning, possibly because it increases oxygen to the brain and raises the sugar level or glucose metabolism. which in turn gives us an improvement in mood and energy, which has a direct effect on our intelligence. Mood is, in fact, the master aptitude. Depression can decrease intelligence and happiness can improve intelligence. Studies at the University of Pennsylvania reveal that when people consistently get exercise they do not show the same mental decline associated with aging as someone who does not exercise. For example, Jeanne Calment the 122-year-old woman (the oldest woman in history) who did daily calisthenics every morning, bicycled into her 90's. In tests of rapid decision making, such as how fast a person could jump out of the way of a car in the city, researchers observed that older men who had exercised were better at quick decision making than older men that had not exercised. Neurobiologists and psychologists also hypothesize that exercise might also slow the decline in the central nervous system as well. Basically it may help maintain and preserve the brain.
Moving with our legs is an instinct created by tribal hunting and gathering, and even has evolved into a physical and psychological need. Moving with the use of our legs was an adaptation to an environment of food that is hard to find and scattered in the ecosystem.
When parents see their babies walk for there first time, it is a remembered moment. It is essentially a moment that shows that our infant creatures are becoming human and they're growing and becoming capable.
In contrast this may be a reason why it is unhealthy to live with out much exercise in sedentary industrial lifestyles. This sedentary lifestyle, notably of industrial society, is an effect of our high tech industrial civilization and it is not expressing our genuine identity and natural function. To sit in a chair all day at work only to drive home to sit on a couch and watch TV is an adaptation to an industrial culture, but it is not healthy and it is self-abuse just as the overuse of drugs is self-abuse. This too much sitting and not enough moving is an adaptation that may not be worth attempting. Watching the technology of television and only walking to the refrigerator once or twice for large blocks of time is not beneficial to our health, and the reason why is because it doesn't allow an outlet for our need, created by our past, to walk and exercise in general.
We have always known that this sedentary lifestyle is bad for us but the reason why is revealed through the study of our past and the way we were designed to act. This study of our walking past holds answers to other ways of living that with technology will help us advance the living expectancy and the quality of these long lives.
The number one cause of death in the U.S. is heart disease. The advice medical professionals give is to get exercise and to eat a certain way. In fact hunting and gathering cultures such as the aborigines and San were not experiencing this type of death, yet they were, on average, living long lives. In fact the above-mentioned ethnography of the San Bushmen, Lee also does a statistical abstract on age and longevity where he proves that the San of Africa life expectancy "compares favorably to the percentages of elderly in industrial populations. Exercise is needed only because it is our natural function.
To a degree, some of us in industrial societies are connected to our inner hunter/gatherer. The well known explorer and Anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss once said to a group of American Anthropologists: "it would be foolish (not to pay attention to) some of the direct experience we have had in our own societies of hunting or gathering behavior. Although my example may not strike home to Americans, I suggest for example that we study the 'psychological' experience of people in France, Russia, and elsewhere who are fond of gathering mushrooms. In many parts of Europe this is a fully-fledged behavior available to our study."
I found myself, by coincidence, in an ethnographic situation in the following account. I felt a sense of seeing a fresh lifestyle very different from the culture I grew up in.
In the French countryside I observed this particular behavior that Levi Strauss speaks of. A friend invited me to visit her family in the center of France in a province known as Limoges. Because of this I was able to get a first hand cultural ethnographic contact with my friend's grandparents Mr. and Mrs. Laleve. I stayed with them numerous times within a three-year period. They were a healthy, traditional, elderly couple in their mid 70s, and there also was my friend's great-grandmother who was a vital woman for being in her mid 90s.
Limousin, France, which has a somewhat wet climate, is a forested region of woods and has an especially wet spring, which covers the forest with green moss. The rains often turn the forest into a thick green enchanted land that hides lots of small mammals such as squirrels and other rodents. On sunnier days, Mrs. Laleve would walk into the forest for hours. She not only gathered mushrooms, as the anthropologist Levi Strauss spoke of, but she gathered hazel nuts, chestnuts, apples, blueberries and blackberries. My friend, the grand-daughter, tells me that she sees in her grandmother a sort of intoxicated mental state and altered consciousness when ever her grandmother begins this instinctive process of walking and searching for forest products.
The Frenchmen would often, as his favorite form of entertainment, take his dogs into the countryside to hunt pheasant, rabbits and other small birds. Even though it is a long tradition of the Europeans to hunt larger animals, such as wild boars, he did not do it because, with his superior technology of guns, he found it too easy to catch them.
This family is one of many that still compliment their modern diverse diet with hunting and gathering natural whole foods while living in economically "developed" country. Within their industrial "developed" nation, Mr. Laleve, at the age of 70, was not behind with forms of technology either. In fact, he used email and Internet telephone software to communicate with his granddaughter in our American college. He was also watching television on his computer. This was the early 2000's, and so this is something that most young people in contact with this pioneering technology were not doing yet. Yet he was always connected to the forefront of technology. He began his life as an electrical technician while sailing around the world. As a young man in his twenties he eventually returned to the countryside. Here he taught himself the mechanics of the interior of a television and started a profitable television repair business within the local community. While he did this he never pulled his own roots from nature. He always stayed connected, as he now still lives in the same province with his hunting dogs. So he was mixing his lifestyle of following his instincts of walking and foraging for food and living in nature along with his lifestyle of technology.
Not only did the Laleve family also supplement their lives with this hunter/gatherer foraging behavior but also with growing their own garden. So they were not only practicing the ancient behavior of foraging but also the more modern behavior of controlling nature with agriculture. Before the idea of eating "organic" many country side people were doing this. Their source of food was without pesticides and pure.
Exercise is not only physical therapy but it's also psychotherapy. Exercise that allows us to enjoy the outdoors and explore nature is even better psychotherapy.
A recommendation for exercise therapy is in Dr. S Boyd Eaton's Book "The Paleolithic Prescription." He explains that according to paleontological evidence and studies of tribes living today "our ancestors were much like current professional athletes...they were strong, much stronger than people today." Dr. Eaton says the best way to exercise is to imitate the exercise patterns of hunter/gatherers and that the basic general pattern includes the following: generally he saw that hunter/gatherers had periods of high levels of physical exertion throughout the life span. Activities of Daily Life promoted both endurance and strength. Days of exertion were alternated with days of rest. (Hunter/Gatherers take breaks between periods of lots of exercise) Dr Eaton lastly explains that these patterns can be translated into a "Paleolithic prescription" of exercise therapy.

1. Including sport or any physical activity into our weekly schedules.
2. Exercise should include both aerobic and strenuous exercise or resistance training.
3. Exercise should be alternated with rest.
4.Lastly, many different types of exercise are appropriate for aerobic and resistance training. Bicycling, running, walking, swimming, rowing, skiing, or rock climbing.

Exercise Therapy

For the purist the most natural way to get exercise, the way we were designed to get it, would be in the wilderness where one can get a dose of fresh air and natural surroundings. Fast hiking in nature with a friend or two is probably the closest thing to our physiological and psychological need. Longer backpacking treks' with groups of friend and family are even better. Walking no matter where you do it is easy and it is tuning in to your natural psychology and anatomy, and if you like hiking in the forest then go for hikes. As Goethe would say, "Whatever you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius and magic in it"