Are there still hunter-gatherers today?
Presented by ClearTrust Free for classrooms, newsrooms and the curious.
Yes. A small number of societies still get much of their food by hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants. They include the Hadza of Tanzania, San groups of southern Africa, forest peoples of the Congo Basin, the Jarawa and Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands, and some peoples of the Amazon and the Arctic.
All humans were hunter-gatherers until farming began roughly 12,000 years ago. Today only a tiny fraction of people live mainly this way, and very few rely on wild foods alone. Most combine foraging with trade, small gardens, wage work or government support.
Well-known examples include the Hadza near Lake Eyasi in Tanzania, the Ju/'hoansi and other San of the Kalahari, the Mbuti and Baka of Central African forests, the Agta of the Philippines and the Batek of Malaysia. Most of these peoples number only a few thousand.
In the Arctic, Inuit and other peoples still hunt seal, whale and caribou and fish for much of their food, alongside modern jobs and technology. Hunting there is both a food source and a core part of culture, and wild food is shared widely among families.
These are present-day societies, not survivals from the past. Their way of life depends on access to large areas of land, and the main threats to it are loss of territory to farms, ranches, mines, parks and settlement, along with policies that press them to settle.