At the time of the symposium new research by anthropologists, such as Richard B. Lee's work on the ǃKung people of southern Africa, challenged popular notions that hunter-gatherer societies were always near the brink of starvation and continuously engaged in a struggle for survival.
[2] Sahlins gathered the data from these studies and used it to support a comprehensive argument that states that hunter-gatherers did not suffer from deprivation, but instead lived in a society in which "all the people's wants are easily satisfied.
This he calls the "Zen road to affluence, which states that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate" (Sahlins, Original).
[4] Through his thesis on the affluent society, Sahlins deconstructed the then popular notions that hunter-gatherers are primitive and constantly working hard to ward off starvation.
Sahlins' argument partly relies on studies undertaken by McCarthy and McArthur in Arnhem Land, and by Richard Borshay Lee among the ǃKung.
Other scholars also assert that hunter-gatherer societies were not "affluent" but suffered from extremely high infant mortality, frequent disease, and perennial warfare.
David Kaplan collected references to several problems with the "Original Affluent Society" theory and especially the McCarthy and McArthur and Lee studies, including the definitions of "affluence," "work," and "leisure," the nutritional adequacy of the hunter-gatherer's diet, and the occurrence of "demand-sharing," the constant pressure to share as a disincentive to increased effort.