- Also called:
- forager
Hunter-gatherer
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What is a hunter-gatherer?
A hunter-gatherer is any person who relies primarily on wild plants and animals for sustenance. Until around 12,000 to 11,000 years ago, all people were hunter-gatherers. Their strategies varied based on the local environment, from hunting big game to gathering insects, shellfish, fruits, seeds, and nuts. Most combined several strategies for a balanced diet.
Hunter-gatherers require extensive land, roughly 7 to 500 square miles per capita, depending on the environment. Permanent settlements are possible only with abundant, reliable food sources like the rivers of the Pacific Northwest, which provided plentiful acorns and fish.
Foraging economies require mobility, possessions are limited to what can be carried, housing is simple, and social groups are small, typically comprising extended families or bands of related families.
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How do hunter-gatherers get their food?
Hunter-gatherers obtain food through diverse strategies, primarily relying on wild foods for sustenance. Their methods include hunting or trapping animals, fishing, and gathering wild plant foods like fruits, vegetables, seeds, and nuts.
Most combine these strategies to ensure a balanced diet, with men typically hunting larger game, while women and children gather plants, shellfish, and insects. Food resources and equipment varied depending on the landscape.
Hunter-gatherers move when local food supplies dwindle, limiting possessions to what can be carried. Social groups are small, comprising families in a band, connected through kinship and reciprocity across a wide area.
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What kinds of tools did hunter-gatherers use?
Hunter-gatherers used a variety of tools suited to their nomadic lifestyles, with the specific tools varying by terrain, available materials, and prey.
Hunters used weapons such as sticks and stones, specially shaped clubs, throwing sticks like the Australian boomerang, and spears with sharpened stone, bone, or metal heads. Bows and arrows were common, and the blowpipe, or blowgun, with poisoned darts was among the deadliest weapons.
Hunter-gatherers also used knives, snares, traps, pits, decoys, baits, and poisons. Oldowan pebble tools, dating back approximately 2 million years, were all-purpose tools used for chopping, scraping, or cutting. Flakes remaining from tool work were also employed as tools.
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How did hunter-gatherers live and organize their groups?
Hunter-gatherers, who subsisted primarily on wild foods, existed before the emergence of agriculture and animal domestication, approximately 12,000 to 11,000 years ago. Their strategies varied based on the local environment, including hunting, trapping, fishing, and gathering wild plants.
Most hunter-gatherers combined strategies to ensure a balanced diet. A foraging economy demanded extensive land, from 7 to 500 square miles per capita, depending on conditions. Social groups were small, typically comprising extended families or bands of related families, usually with no more than 30 individuals on foot or around 100 with transportation.
Where hunting and gathering were both practiced, adult men typically hunted larger game, while women and children gathered plants, shellfish, and insects. Some groups were sedentary, enabled by reliable and storable food resources, and could reach higher population densities.
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How did the environment affect hunter-gatherer lifestyles?
Hunter-gatherer societies relied heavily on their environment for survival. Their lifestyles and cultures were directly shaped by the climate, available food sources, and geographical landscape.
In areas with abundant and reliable food sources like the Pacific Northwest, hunter-gatherers could establish permanent villages and support higher population densities due to plentiful resources like acorns and fish. However, most groups had to move frequently as local food supplies dwindled, limiting their possessions to what they could carry. Social groups were small, typically consisting of extended families or bands, to avoid exhausting resources in a given area.
Different climates also led to specific physical adaptations. For example, people in extremely cold environments developed shorter, rounder bodies to minimize heat loss.
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How did the rise of farming change hunter-gatherer societies?
The rise of farming led to significant changes in hunter-gatherer societies. Agriculture, combined with animal herding and metalworking, allowed for larger, settled communities and more complex social and political structures. This sedentary lifestyle spurred social stratification, new labor divisions, and the accumulation of wealth.
While some groups transitioned from hunting and gathering to herding or agriculture, others resisted or assimilated partially, leading to diverse interactions and hybrid practices. Agriculture made diets less varied, motivating people to find ways to improve the taste and variety of their food. The development of agriculture freed some people to experiment with cooking.
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Hunter-gatherer, any person who depends primarily on wild foods for subsistence. Until about 12,000 to 11,000 years ago, when agriculture and animal domestication emerged in southwest Asia and in Mesoamerica, all peoples were hunter-gatherers. Their strategies have been very diverse, depending greatly upon the local environment; foraging strategies have included hunting or trapping big game, hunting or trapping smaller animals, fishing, gathering shellfish or insects, and gathering wild plant foods such as fruits, vegetables, tubers, seeds, and nuts. Most hunter-gatherers combine a variety of these strategies in order to ensure a balanced diet.
Many cultures have also combined foraging with agriculture or animal husbandry. In pre-Columbian North America, for instance, most Arctic, American Subarctic, Northwest Coast, and California Indians relied upon foraging alone, but nomadic Plains Indians supplemented their wild foods with corn (maize) obtained from Plains villagers who, like Northeast Indians, combined hunting, gathering, and agriculture. In contrast, the Southwest Indians and those of Mesoamerica were primarily agriculturists who supplemented their diet by foraging.
A foraging economy usually demands an extensive land area; it has been estimated that people who depend on such methods must have available 7 to 500 square miles (18 to 1,300 square km) of land per capita, depending upon local environmental conditions. Permanent villages or towns are generally possible only where food supplies are unusually abundant and reliable; the numerous rivers and streams of the Pacific Northwest, for instance, allowed Native Americans access to two unusually plentiful wild resourcesāacorns and fish, especially salmonāthat supported the construction of large permanent villages and enabled the people to reach higher population densities than if they had relied upon terrestrial mammals for the bulk of their subsistence.
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Conditions of such abundance are rare, and most foraging groups must move whenever the local supply of food begins to be exhausted. In these cases possessions are limited to what can be carried from one camp to another. As housing must also be transported or made on the spot, it is usually simple, comprising huts, tents, or lean-tos made of plant materials or the skins of animals. Social groups are necessarily small, because only a limited number of people can congregate together without quickly exhausting the food resources of a locality. Such groups typically comprise either extended family units or a number of related families collected together in a band. An individual band is generally small in number, typically with no more than 30 individuals if moving on foot, or perhaps 100 in a group with horses or other means of transport. However, each band is known across a wide area because all residents of a given region are typically tied to one another through a large network of kinship and reciprocity; often these larger groups will congregate for a short period each year.
Where both hunting and gathering are practiced, adult men usually hunt larger game and women and their children and grandchildren collect stationary foods such as plants, shellfish, and insects; forager mothers generally wean their children at about three or four years of age, and young children possess neither the patience nor the silence required to stalk game. However, the capture of smaller game and fish can be accomplished by any relatively mobile individual, and techniques in which groups drive mammals, birds, and fish into long nets or enclosures are actually augmented by the noise and movement of children.
The proportion of cultures that rely solely upon hunting and gathering has diminished through time. By about 1500 ce, many Middle and South American cultures and most European, Asian, and African peoples relied upon domesticated food sources, although some isolated areas continued to support full-time foragers. In contrast, Australia and the Americas were supporting many hunting and gathering societies at that time. Although hunting and gathering practices have persisted in many societiesāsuch as the Okiek of Kenya, some Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia, and many North American Arctic Inuit groupsāby the early 21st century hunting and gathering as a way of life had largely disappeared.