A hunter-gatherer is a human living in a society
in which most or all food is obtained by foraging
(collecting wild plants and pursuing wild
animals).
Hunter-gatherer societies stand in contrast
to agricultural societies, which rely mainly
on domesticated species.
Hunting and gathering was humanity's first
and most successful adaptation, occupying
at least 90 percent of human history.
Following the invention of agriculture, hunter-gatherers
who did not change have been displaced or
conquered by farming or pastoralist groups
in most parts of the world.
Only a few contemporary societies are classified
as hunter-gatherers, and many supplement their
foraging activity with horticulture or pastoralism.
== Archaeological evidence ==
In the 1970s, Lewis Binford suggested that
early humans were obtaining food via scavenging,
not hunting.
Early humans in the Lower Paleolithic lived
in forests and woodlands, which allowed them
to collect seafood, eggs, nuts, and fruits
besides scavenging.
Rather than killing large animals for meat,
according to this view, they used carcasses
of such animals that had either been killed
by predators or that had died of natural causes.
Archaeological and genetic data suggest that
the source populations of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers
survived in sparsely wooded areas and dispersed
through areas of high primary productivity
while avoiding dense forest cover.According
to the endurance running hypothesis, long-distance
running as in persistence hunting, a method
still practiced by some hunter-gatherer groups
in modern times, was likely the driving evolutionary
force leading to the evolution of certain
human characteristics.
This hypothesis does not necessarily contradict
the scavenging hypothesis: both subsistence
strategies could have been in use – sequentially,
alternating or even simultaneously.
Hunting and gathering was presumably the subsistence
strategy employed by human societies beginning
some 1.8 million years ago, by Homo erectus,
and from its appearance some 0.2 million years
ago by Homo sapiens.
Prehistoric hunter-gatherers lived in groups
that consisted of several families resulting
in a size of a few dozen people.
It remained the only mode of subsistence until
the end of the Mesolithic period some 10,000
years ago, and after this was replaced only
gradually with the spread of the Neolithic
Revolution.
Starting at the transition between the Middle
to Upper Paleolithic period, some 80,000 to
70,000 years ago, some hunter-gatherers bands
began to specialize, concentrating on hunting
a smaller selection of (often larger) game
and gathering a smaller selection of food.
This specialization of work also involved
creating specialized tools such as fishing
nets, hooks, and bone harpoons.
The transition into the subsequent Neolithic
period is chiefly defined by the unprecedented
development of nascent agricultural practices.
Agriculture originated as early as 12,000
years ago in the Middle East, and also independently
originated in many other areas including Southeast
Asia, parts of Africa, Mesoamerica, and the
Andes.
Forest gardening was also being used as a
food production system in various parts of
the world over this period.
Forest gardens originated in prehistoric times
along jungle-clad river banks and in the wet
foothills of monsoon regions.
In the gradual process of families improving
their immediate environment, useful tree and
vine species were identified, protected and
improved, whilst undesirable species were
eliminated.
Eventually superior introduced species were
selected and incorporated into the gardens.Many
groups continued their hunter-gatherer ways
of life, although their numbers have continually
declined, partly as a result of pressure from
growing agricultural and pastoral communities.
Many of them reside in the developing world,
either in arid regions or tropical forests.
Areas that were formerly available to hunter-gatherers
were—and continue to be—encroached upon
by the settlements of agriculturalists.
In the resulting competition for land use,
hunter-gatherer societies either adopted these
practices or moved to other areas.
In addition, Jared Diamond has blamed a decline
in the availability of wild foods, particularly
animal resources.
In North and South America, for example, most
large mammal species had gone extinct by the
end of the Pleistocene—according to Diamond,
because of overexploitation by humans, one
of several explanations offered for the Quaternary
extinction event there.
As the number and size of agricultural societies
increased, they expanded into lands traditionally
used by hunter-gatherers.
This process of agriculture-driven expansion
led to the development of the first forms
of government in agricultural centers, such
as the Fertile Crescent, Ancient India, Ancient
China, Olmec, Sub-Saharan Africa and Norte
Chico.
As a result of the now near-universal human
reliance upon agriculture, the few contemporary
hunter-gatherer cultures usually live in areas
unsuitable for agricultural use.
Archaeologists can use evidence such as stone
tool use to track hunter-gatherer activities,
including mobility.
== Common characteristics ==
=== 
Habitat and population ===
Most hunter-gatherers are nomadic or semi-nomadic
and live in temporary settlements.
Mobile communities typically construct shelters
using impermanent building materials, or they
may use natural rock shelters, where they
are available.
Some hunter-gatherer cultures, such as the
indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest
Coast, lived in particularly rich environments
that allowed them to be sedentary or semi-sedentary.
=== Social and economic structure ===
Hunter-gatherers tend to have an egalitarian
social ethos, although settled hunter-gatherers
(for example, those inhabiting the Northwest
Coast of North America) are an exception to
this rule.
Nearly all African hunter-gatherers are egalitarian,
with women roughly as influential and powerful
as men.
Karl Marx defined this socio-economic system
as primitive communism.
The egalitarianism typical of human hunters
and gatherers is never total, but is striking
when viewed in an evolutionary context.
One of humanity's two closest primate relatives,
chimpanzees, are anything but egalitarian,
forming themselves into hierarchies that are
often dominated by an alpha male.
So great is the contrast with human hunter-gatherers
that it is widely argued by palaeoanthropologists
that resistance to being dominated was a key
factor driving the evolutionary emergence
of human consciousness, language, kinship
and social organization.Anthropologists maintain
that hunter/gatherers don't have permanent
leaders; instead, the person taking the initiative
at any one time depends on the task being
performed.
In addition to social and economic equality
in hunter-gatherer societies, there is often,
though not always, sexual parity as well.
Hunter-gatherers are often grouped together
based on kinship and band (or tribe) membership.
Postmarital residence among hunter-gatherers
tends to be matrilocal, at least initially.
Young mothers can enjoy childcare support
from their own mothers, who continue living
nearby in the same camp.
The systems of kinship and descent among human
hunter-gatherers were relatively flexible,
although there is evidence that early human
kinship in general tended to be matrilineal.One
common arrangement is the sexual division
of labour, with women doing most of the gathering,
while men concentrate on big game hunting.
In all hunter-gatherer societies, women appreciate
the meat brought back to camp by men.
An illustrative account is Megan Biesele's
study of the southern African Ju/'hoan, 'Women
Like Meat'.
Recent archaeological research suggests that
the sexual division of labor was the fundamental
organisational innovation that gave Homo sapiens
the edge over the Neanderthals, allowing our
ancestors to migrate from Africa and spread
across the globe.To this day, most hunter-gatherers
have a symbolically structured sexual division
of labour.
However, it is true that in a small minority
of cases, women hunt the same kind of quarry
as men, sometimes doing so alongside men.
The best-known example are the Aeta people
of the Philippines.
According to one study, "About 85% of Philippine
Aeta women hunt, and they hunt the same quarry
as men.
Aeta women hunt in groups and with dogs, and
have a 31% success rate as opposed to 17%
for men.
Their rates are even better when they
combine forces with men: mixed hunting groups
have a full 41% success rate among the Aeta."
Among the Ju'/hoansi people of Namibia, women
help men track down quarry.
Women in the Australian Martu also primarily
hunt small animals like lizards to feed their
children and maintain relations with other
women.
At the 1966 "Man the Hunter" conference, anthropologists
Richard Borshay Lee and Irven DeVore suggested
that egalitarianism was one of several central
characteristics of nomadic hunting and gathering
societies because mobility requires minimization
of material possessions throughout a population.
Therefore, no surplus of resources can be
accumulated by any single member.
Other characteristics Lee and DeVore proposed
were flux in territorial boundaries as well
as in demographic composition.
At the same conference, Marshall Sahlins presented
a paper entitled, "Notes on the Original Affluent
Society", in which he challenged the popular
view of hunter-gatherers lives as "solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish and short", as Thomas
Hobbes had put it in 1651.
According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated
that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours
and enjoyed more leisure than typical members
of industrial society, and they still ate
well.
Their "affluence" came from the idea that
they were satisfied with very little in the
material sense.
Later, in 1996, Ross Sackett performed two
distinct meta-analyses to empirically test
Sahlin's view.
The first of these studies looked at 102 time-allocation
studies, and the second one analyzed 207 energy-expenditure
studies.
Sackett found that adults in foraging and
horticultural societies work, on average,
about 6.5 hours a day, where as people in
agricultural and industrial societies work
on average 8.8 hours a day.Researchers Gurven
and Kaplan have estimated that around 57%
of hunter-gatherers reach the age of 15.
Of those that reach 15 years of age, 64% continue
to live to or past the age of 45.
This places the life expectancy between 21
and 37 years.
They further estimate that 70% of deaths are
due to diseases of some kind, 20% of deaths
come from violence or accidents and 10% are
due to degenerative diseases.
Mutual exchange and sharing of resources (i.e.,
meat gained from hunting) are important in
the economic systems of hunter-gatherer societies.
Therefore, these societies can be described
as based on a "gift economy."
== Variability ==
Hunter-gatherer societies manifest significant
variability, depending on climate zone/life
zone, available technology, and societal structure.
Archaeologists examine hunter-gatherer tool
kits to measure variability across different
groups.
Collard et al. (2005) found temperature to
be the only statistically significant factor
to impact hunter-gatherer tool kits.
Using temperature as a proxy for risk, Collard
et al.'s results suggest that environments
with extreme temperatures pose a threat to
hunter-gatherer systems significant enough
to warrant increased variability of tools.
These results support Torrence's (1989) theory
that risk of failure is indeed the most important
factor in determining the structure of hunter-gatherer
toolkits.One way to divide hunter-gatherer
groups is by their return systems.
James Woodburn uses the categories "immediate
return" hunter-gatherers for egalitarian and
"delayed return" for nonegalitarian.
Immediate return foragers consume their food
within a day or two after they procure it.
Delayed return foragers store the surplus
food (Kelly, 31).
Hunting-gathering was the common human mode
of subsistence throughout the Paleolithic,
but the observation of current-day hunters
and gatherers does not necessarily reflect
Paleolithic societies; the hunter-gatherer
cultures examined today have had much contact
with modern civilization and do not represent
"pristine" conditions found in uncontacted
peoples.The transition from hunting and gathering
to agriculture is not necessarily a one way
process.
It has been argued that hunting and gathering
represents an adaptive strategy, which may
still be exploited, if necessary, when environmental
change causes extreme food stress for agriculturalists.
In fact, it is sometimes difficult to draw
a clear line between agricultural and hunter-gatherer
societies, especially since the widespread
adoption of agriculture and resulting cultural
diffusion that has occurred in the last 10,000
years.
This anthropological view has remained unchanged
since the 1960s.Nowadays, some scholars speak
about the existence within cultural evolution
of the so-called mixed-economies or dual economies
which imply a combination of food procurement
(gathering and hunting) and food production
or when foragers have trade relations with
farmers.
== Modern and revisionist perspectives ==
In the early 1980s, a small but vocal segment
of anthropologists and archaeologists attempted
to demonstrate that contemporary groups usually
identified as hunter-gatherers do not, in
most cases, have a continuous history of hunting
and gathering, and that in many cases their
ancestors were agriculturalists or pastoralists
who were pushed into marginal areas as a result
of migrations, economic exploitation, or violent
conflict (see, for example, the Kalahari Debate).
The result of their effort has been the general
acknowledgement that there has been complex
interaction between hunter-gatherers and non-hunter-gatherers
for millennia.Some of the theorists who advocate
this "revisionist" critique imply that, because
the "pure hunter-gatherer" disappeared not
long after colonial (or even agricultural)
contact began, nothing meaningful can be learned
about prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies
of modern ones (Kelly, 24-29; see Wilmsen)
Lee and Guenther have rejected most of the
arguments put forward by Wilmsen.
Doron Shultziner and others have argued that
we can learn a lot about the life-styles of
prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies
of contemporary hunter-gatherers—especially
their impressive levels of egalitarianism.Many
hunter-gatherers consciously manipulate the
landscape through cutting or burning undesirable
plants while encouraging desirable ones, some
even going to the extent of slash-and-burn
to create habitat for game animals.
These activities are on an entirely different
scale to those associated with agriculture,
but they are nevertheless domestication on
some level.
Today, almost all hunter-gatherers depend
to some extent upon domesticated food sources
either produced part-time or traded for products
acquired in the wild.
Some agriculturalists also regularly hunt
and gather (e.g., farming during the frost-free
season and hunting during the winter).
Still others in developed countries go hunting,
primarily for leisure.
In the Brazilian rainforest, those groups
that recently did, or even continue to, rely
on hunting and gathering techniques seem to
have adopted this lifestyle, abandoning most
agriculture, as a way to escape colonial control
and as a result of the introduction of European
diseases reducing their populations to levels
where agriculture became difficult.
There are nevertheless a number of contemporary
hunter-gatherer peoples who, after contact
with other societies, continue their ways
of life with very little external influence
or with modifications that perpetuate the
viability of hunting and gathering in the
21st century.
One such group is the Pila Nguru (Spinifex
people) of Western Australia, whose habitat
in the Great Victoria Desert has proved unsuitable
for European agriculture (and even pastoralism).
Another are the Sentinelese of the Andaman
Islands in the Indian Ocean, who live on North
Sentinel Island and to date have maintained
their independent existence, repelling attempts
to engage with and contact them.
The Savanna Pumé of Venezuela also live in
an area that is inhospitable to large scale
economic exploitation and maintain their subsistence
based on hunting and gathering, as well as
incorporating a small amount of manioc horticulture
that supplements, but is not replacing, reliance
on foraged foods.
== Americas ==
See also: Paleo-Indians period (Canada) and
History of Mesoamerica (Paleo-Indian)Evidence
suggests big-game hunter gatherers crossed
the Bering Strait from Asia (Eurasia) into
North America over a land bridge (Beringia),
that existed between 47,000–14,000 years
ago.
Around 18,500–15,500 years ago, these hunter-gatherers
are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct
Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors
that stretched between the Laurentide and
Cordilleran ice sheets.
Another route proposed is that, either on
foot or using primitive boats, they migrated
down the Pacific coast to South America.Hunter-gatherers
would eventually flourish all over the Americas,
primarily based in the Great Plains of the
United States and Canada, with offshoots as
far east as the Gaspé Peninsula on the Atlantic
coast, and as far south as Chile, Monte Verde.
American hunter-gatherers were spread over
a wide geographical area, thus there were
regional variations in lifestyles.
However, all the individual groups shared
a common style of stone tool production, making
knapping styles and progress identifiable.
This early Paleo-Indian period lithic reduction
tool adaptations have been found across the
Americas, utilized by highly mobile bands
consisting of approximately 25 to 50 members
of an extended family.The Archaic period in
the Americas saw a changing environment featuring
a warmer more arid climate and the disappearance
of the last megafauna.
The majority of population groups at this
time were still highly mobile hunter-gatherers.
Individual groups started to focus on resources
available to them locally, however, and thus
archaeologists have identified a pattern of
increasing regional generalization, as seen
with the Southwest, Arctic, Poverty Point,
Dalton and Plano traditions.
These regional adaptations would become the
norm, with reliance less on hunting and gathering,
with a more mixed economy of small game, fish,
seasonally wild vegetables and harvested plant
foods.
== See also ==
=== Modern hunter-gatherer groups ===
Contrary to common misconception, hunters
and gatherers are mostly well fed, rather
than starving.
=== Social movements ===
Anarcho-primitivism, which strives for the
abolishment of civilization and the return
to a life in the wild.
Freeganism involves gathering of food (and
sometimes other materials) in the context
of an urban or suburban environment.
Gleaning involves the gathering of food that
traditional farmers have left behind in their
fields.
Paleolithic diet, which strives to achieve
a diet similar to that of ancient hunter-gatherer
groups.
Paleolithic lifestyle, which extends the paleolithic
diet to other elements of the hunter-gatherer
way of life, such as movement and contact
with nature
== References ==
== Further reading ==
== 
External links ==
Media related to Hunter-gatherers at Wikimedia
Commons
The Association of Foragers: An international
association for teachers of hunter-gatherer
skills.
A wiki dedicated to the scientific study of
the diversity of foraging societies without
recreating myths
Balmer, Yves (2013).
"Ethnological videos clips.
Living or recently extinct traditional tribal
groups and their origins".
Andaman Association.
Archived from the original on January 11,
2014.
