"Therefore, most of the time, banishment did not lead to starvation or even necessarily isolation. One just walked for some time, until one was alone or in more accepting company, and then started hunting and gathering wherever one found oneself."
Where danger can be found, banishment is death. Consider this quote from Sebastian Junger:
"What all these people seem to miss isn’t danger or loss, per se, but the closeness and cooperation that danger and loss often engender. Humans evolved to survive in extremely harsh environments, and our capacity for cooperation and sharing clearly helped us do that. Structurally, a band of hunter-gatherers and a platoon in combat are almost exactly the same: in each case, the group numbers between 30 and 50 individuals, they sleep in a common area, they conduct patrols, they are completely reliant on one another for support, comfort, and defense, and they share a group identity that most would risk their lives for." [0]
There is a lot of anthropological studies that confirm this observation.
Where danger can be found, banishment is death. Consider this quote from Sebastian Junger:
"What all these people seem to miss isn’t danger or loss, per se, but the closeness and cooperation that danger and loss often engender. Humans evolved to survive in extremely harsh environments, and our capacity for cooperation and sharing clearly helped us do that. Structurally, a band of hunter-gatherers and a platoon in combat are almost exactly the same: in each case, the group numbers between 30 and 50 individuals, they sleep in a common area, they conduct patrols, they are completely reliant on one another for support, comfort, and defense, and they share a group identity that most would risk their lives for." [0]
There is a lot of anthropological studies that confirm this observation.
[0] http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/05/ptsd-war-home-sebasti...