Maybe minimalism. Part of the hunter-gatherer/ancestral thing seems to be that people only kept what was absolutely necessary. Very different today with people mindlessly accumulating stuff. Beyond a certain point it becomes a burden. To my mind, a big obstacle to positive interactions in the world is wanting new and wanting more. Hunter-gatherers would primarily have cared about that which works and that which is enough. That's minimalism, more or less.

Another focus might be active engagement in physical skills, a broad category that would include everything from sports to wood carving to live theater. Basically, various types of play to be readily shared with others. I want to emphasize "physical;" we're physical beings and experience life with our senses, not our imagination. It's important to share the experiences too; play allows individual expression but also bonds a group.

I think the real struggle for a paleo community would be for everyone to become reliant on and trusting of other people when there's not really anything forcing them to do so. For the most part hunter-gatherers were depending on each other for survival, whereas today people aren't in that situation. Minimalist living with an enormous focus on games, performance, and skilled physical activity might simulate hunter-gatherer life enough to keep us socially and psychologically healthy.

Eating paleo is in a way, tremendously subversive. When you reject neolithic foods like grains, legumes, or possibly dairy from your diet it's intuitive to then ask "why did we ever begin eating these foods in the first place?" This is an important question, in fact it's a dangerous question. It forces you to rethink assumptions about civilization itself. When you question the practice of monocrop agriculture, you question the very substructure of the civilized way of life. This is possibly why the knee-jerk reaction to Paleo that some people have is so narrow-minded or outright vitriolic.

An intentional Paleo movement must come to terms with this. We will never be able to isolate our food from the politics surrounding it. The foods we profess people to avoid are the flagship foods of imperialism, colonialism, and the industrialized drawdown economy. Those who profit most from this system will probably not like us very much.

I'm pretty new to paleo, but I've been living in intentional communities since 1993.

Living in a group is a lot more fun that living alone or living in a nuclear family - there is nothing on TV as interesting as what happens almost every day in our kitchen. I like the 'play as a foundation' paper/idea - the group I've lived in since 2000 focuses on pleasurable group living - its an ongoing social experiment that has been running since 1968. We use a form of consensus called 'the one no vote.'

Groups are powerful - together you can really get stuff done - if - you pull together. The question is: what do you want to do? A pretty standard idea is that together you can have a far higher quality of life. But that alone doesn't seem to be enough to keep a group together. There are groups who get together around diet - vegetarian, vegan, whatever. You could view it that way.

FYI the failure rate among intentional communities is really high - the half life seems to be something like 5 years.

If you want to know about the nuts & bolts - check out Diana Leafe Christian's book - Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities. Its THE book.

Beyond that, IC.org is a very useful site.

Lots of people are really into farming - its a lot harder than it sounds. But the bigger question is how do you want the group to work in terms of economics. A really fun thing is to have a 'family business' that you work in/at together - especially if it means you can 'work at home' That is mostly what we do.

*I'm assuming y'all know that the nuclear family was an idea created after WWII to keep the economy going - Levittown and the GI bill (home ownership) and all that. Sell more cars, more washing machines.

Why would you want to create such a community? What is the value?

Are you proposing some kind of experiment like Biosphere 2, where you isolate from the predominant culture for a set period of time?

Do you know someone who will donate a huge game reserve next to the ocean?

If you aren't going to step (as much as possible) out of a neolithic context, I fail to see how you will be able to question neolithic assumptions.

In 7 years of living in an intentional community (Findhorn ecovillage), I failed to see any significant shift in challenging status quo assumptions when survival was at stake (re: food/money.)

Something I would add to that list: Ritual

Rituals are necessary within a group that is governed by the order of custom as opposed to the rule of law. They are a way to exorcise interpersonal tensions, and reinforce group integrity.

Rituals probably need to evolve based on the nature of the group, but some options might be things like fighting (akin to Maasai stick fighting), sports, music, theater, storytelling, etc.

They used to think some Amazon tribes were a nirvana of personal happiness. In fact 30% of them had committed murder usually over a girl, plus ca change.

I certanily prefer living in my fairly large family group structure here than if I were entirely alone or with a partner alone but if someone wanted a paleo life the best way is make a fortune, buy a tract of rain forest or land or huge bit of the Scottish highlands (or just go there and camp/rent) and move across your domain (or join the British gypsies or travellors I suppose if you can find any still able to live a travelling life). That will not be much fun.

I do own a small island near the equator (they are not expensive) so I suppose more than some people I have that chance to live fairly wild as it were although I don't want to live there.

There is no doubt that the transition from a hunter gatherer to settled agriculturalist has impacted greatly on more than food sources. For a solid treatise I suggest Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning, Guns Germs and Steel.

In my view the defining characteristic of our species is that we are driven by a desire to explore. It has shaped our evolution and cultural history. It has brought us into conflict with each other and our environment. Inevitably, it will see our civilisation explore beyond the bounds of our planet and transform our own physiology in ways that we cannot at this time conceive.

If there is a master "paleo" behavioural driver, then the drive to explore, both outwards and inwards, would be it.

It would therefore be of interest for the author of this question, who has indicated he is an advocate of a return to a hunter gatherer lifestyle - as a solution to the problems that he says are manifest in a neolithic lifestyle - to reconcile the force of this drive against his vision of an ideal human community.

I would say shared activities, meeting and community is the total centre point. You want your community to have regular contact with each other.

Lots of walking and sunshine would be another.

Theres no reason to eschew technology in my beleif (humans have always been tool users, makers and thinkers), but technology, in terms of form, function and use, should be adapted for the human, rather than the human adapted for the technology.

Agriculture has benefits such as a connection to nature and the seasons (and bringing people together). Its not something to regect outright. In fact I would deepen its benefits by trying to establish said community very close to native forest/bush, where the community can learn about local plants and animals, connect to nature etc.

I would also suggest that a paleo community should be connected under some kind of philosophy connecting them to the natural world. A sense of mystery, awe and also a spiritual connection to life and living things is part of our old way of life. Now in the modern day, we kind of preclude superstition and metaphysics, but philosophy is not precluded. What that might mean, ill leave up to you.

Of course outright huntergathering and survival skills arent nessasary anymore. But thats no reason not to have someone there to teach these skills a little, just to deepen the connection with nature. In this respect, it may also help to have a herbalist, who is familiar with local plants.

In terms of psychology, the are three pillars of subjective wellbeing - freedom from undue restrictions, a sense of place and purpose, and community. Recreating that closer community and a role in it, and also a connection to the world around them will be key IMO to forfilling our emotional needs.

Considering paleo in the larger contexts of evolution, lifestyle, psychology, and hunter-gatherer anthropology, what concepts to you think should be included in an intentional paleo community?

There is definitely scope and, in my view benefit, in considering paleo for more than a dietary template. Other aspects include sleep/rest patterns, immune enrichment, acute versus chronic stressor exposure, hormonal considerations (particularly for women, who for health purposes should simulate the hormonal effects of pregnancy) and exercise.

These are all physiological functions that are hard coded by genes with some transient modification by epigenetic effects.

The functioning of the human mind is not so rudimentary. Its exquisite and extensive ability to adapt means that the role of environment dwarfs the contribution of genes and epigenetics. The framework of the mind is not just encoded in genes but also in memes - in culture, books, electronic media, etc.

In contrast to synthetic food, which adversely impacts metabolism, exposure to the synthesis of information results in new levels of human experience and cognitive processing and positively impacts brain physiology by increasing neural and glial network density.

Consider an accomplished pianist, violinist or maestro. Consider a theoretical physicist that can visualize and predict the function of the subatomic universe with mathematical equations or a poet whose weaving of words triggers the contemplation of wondrous worlds for his readers. These and more are aspects of the neolithic.

Personally I have no interest in simulating paleolithic aspects of lifestyle other than what is beneficial to physical health. From a cognitive perspective I am far more interested and excited to contemplate about where we are going rather than dwelling for too long on where we have come from.

I know a lot of this has been said, but I'd like to add something my wife and I were discussing the other day. Having just moved to a new city, and having joined a CSA here, found organic food stores, etc, we were talking about how Paleo as a way of eating can take some of the best elements of other "food movements".

For example, locavores. There's a lot of local, sustainable agriculture around here. While not 100% paleo, the paleo community as a whole (or an intentional paleo community like the one envisioned here) would benefit greatly from a local, farm-to-table outlook on whatever was grown.

Or another example, raw foods. There's also lots of raw food options here. Again this isn't all paleo, but certain things like raw honey we find to be much more useful and enjoyable in our food.

As my wife and I see it, having an awareness of what other people around us are doing contributes to how we approach our own eating. It means also that when we meet people who eat raw, local, organic, and/or vegetarian, we can find a common ground.

So if we seek to be intentional about our food practices, with it must come a level of awareness, not only of what other paleos are doing, but how we can interact with others around the subjects of food and living. This in turn would allow for us to be the self-reliant individuals that many paleos seem to be (and certainly those of us who would join an intentional community), while also having a spirit of openness and mutual aid which would define communitarian living.

meeting/socialising and actual human contact. whilst the web has been an amazing hub for bringing paleo communities together (and the #AHS12 hashtag really made me feel a connection with likeminded individuals) to embrace a paleo lifestyle means getting back to bare bones social situations. Real human contact is a must. From here a true forum based approach can happen that explores ideas and concepts organically and freely, rather than sitting at a computer and having the time to formulate an answer before unleashing it.

Based on this thread I think the first order of business ought to be anthropological education on hunter-gatherer/indigenous peoples. There are beautiful and vibrant examples of modern hunter-gatherer societies all over the world (almost all of which are threatened by civilization) whom we can work to emulate in a respectful, non-relativist way. If we try to create communities based on whatever quasi-racist relativistic image of cavemen people have in their minds this will never work.

The next thing might be to adopt tribal political structures. By that I mean limiting the groups to sizes that are small enough to allow egalitarian decision making by absolute consensus on almost every issue.

This is a great post, and its a great vision. Land, a bunch of animals, everybody helps. Go in to it heart first, brain second, sense of humor and take nothing too seriously. The vision of a community apart from the machine is so dear to my heart. Nearest I've come is Rainbow Family. Transient, utopian.

I am creating a website for this type of sentiment/community. Any help here with getting it going would be helpful and useful. It would not focus on food or exercise but on other important aspects of life.

This is in response to Carson's post.

Please let me know what you think.

Edited to be more specific.

Ok let me ask you a question in return: if we had a community, what would we do? have 8 hour smoked brisket potlucks? MovNat Monday Meet-ups? I mean, are we going to have a novelty community? How much are we rejecting neolithica? Are we supposed to be like, Amish with MacBooks? We can tackle the philosophical stuff all day but its the practical, tangible, economic acts that will define the "community". Trust me, I am all about community building. Actually, I am about to start a "primitive skills' intensive in my area and I think the paleo community and the primitive skills community might have some overlap. Maybe that could be a potential solution about how to structure your next "paleo mixer" - fire making and/or flint mapping workshops along side the paleo brownies.

Has anyone read Sex at Dawn?

While I'm not necessarily suggesting a full-blown return to the paleolithic polyamory this book suggests was the case, perhaps an unwillingness to accept CW's views on love, marriage, and monogamy in favor of a shift toward a more tribal system of relationships would benefit a Paleo Community. More of a network of interdependent human relationships rather than monogamous pairs? Thoughts?