is not a kind of tool use but a type of social organization that supports  cooperative action—that is, a system where two or more people accomplish together what no one person can do alone. Humans differ from other primates by dependence on a social system that assumes cooperative production and reciprocal exchange in a face-to-face context, coordinated by a shared goal. Such groups are called task groups.




In the photo above, some men cut bamboo poles to the same length and split them, while others tie them in place. These are Batek, a hunting and gathering people on the Malay Peninsula.

Task groups are often confused with "the division of labor in society" and "task specialization." In the former, a task is assigned to a specific category of person (e.g. small boys herd the cattle), whereas a specialist is someone with the skills or authority to do a specific task (e.g., a tailor). But task groups are defined by the   shared goal, not by the personnel.

The photo below shows another task group on the opposite side of the world, in Costa Rica. One man paints the white line while the other two paint the green. The activities are instrumental to a shared goal.



When one member of a task group makes one part of something and another person produces its complement, this type of cooperative action is called complementation.

For example, I once videotaped two Australian aborigines making stone knives. One man chipped the quartzite while the other attached the handles. Complementation is definitive of Homo sapiens as a species, and it occurs in all cultures, in language and art as well as in technology.

Because the complementation theory of human origins is incompatible with the competitive, atomistic individual of modern capitalist culture and the disembodied machines of industrial technocracy, it has been ignored by "serious science" and scholarship. ""B

Technologies that facilitate face-to-face complementation are sustainable, whereas much modern technology is alienating.ibliography