“The result of a typical hunting-and-gathering social organization is a simple and effective system of human relationships, and this is what so strongly appeals to many of those who have worked with them. If we can learn about the nature of society from a study of small-scale societies, we can also learn about human relationships, and that seems fully as valuable and valid. The smaller the society, the less emphasis there is on the formal system, and the more there is on inter-personal and inter-group relations, to which the system is subordinated. Security is seen in terms of these relationships, and so is survival. The result, which appears so deceptively simple, is that hunters frequently display those characteristics that we find so admirable in man: kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity and others. This sounds like a formidable list of virtues, and so it would be if they -were- virtues, but for the hunter they are not. For the hunter in his tiny, close-knit society, these are necessities for survival: without them society would collapse.”

— Colin Turnbull, The Mountain People, 1972