Hunter-gatherers
For most of human history everyone lived by hunting, fishing and gathering wild foods. You will learn how this way of life works, who practises it today, and what is often misunderstood about it.
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Hunter-gatherers, also called foragers, get their food from wild plants and animals instead of from crops or herds. Farming began only about 12,000 years ago. Before that, every human being was a forager. Today very few people live entirely this way, but a number of peoples still get an important part of their food, and much of their identity, from hunting and gathering.
Who are they?
- Africa: the Hadza of northern Tanzania, the San peoples of the Kalahari, and forest peoples such as the Mbuti and Baka.
- Asia: the Jarawa and Onge of India's Andaman Islands, the Batek of Malaysia, the Agta of the Philippines.
- Australia: Aboriginal peoples such as the Martu of the Western Desert, who hunt and burn country in customary ways.
- The Arctic: Inuit and Yupik hunters of seal, whale, walrus and caribou.
- South America: peoples such as the Aché of Paraguay, and several groups living in isolation in the Amazon.
How it works
Foragers do not wander at random. Each band has a home territory that its members know in great detail: every water source, fruit tree and animal trail. They move through it on a regular yearly circuit, called a seasonal round, arriving at each place when its food is ready. The diagram shows one such year.
- Dry season camp. Begin in the dry season. Among the Ju/'hoansi San of the Kalahari, described by researchers in the 1960s, several bands camped near the few waterholes that never dried up.
- First rains. The rains change the map. Shallow pans fill with water, grasses sprout and antelope scatter. Places that were too dry to live in a month ago become usable.
- Bands disperse. Bands split into small family groups and spread out. Moving lets the land near the permanent water rest. Nobody owns the food before it is collected.
- Plants ripen. Plant foods usually supply most of the calories. Women and men know hundreds of species and when each ripens. For the Ju/'hoansi the mongongo nut is a staple.
- Hunting and honey. Hunters track game, often for days. Meat is shared widely by custom, so that a lucky hunter cannot become a rich one. Honey is a prized seasonal food.
- Return to water. When the pans dry, groups walk back towards lasting water. The big dry season camp is the time for marriages, healing dances and trade. Then the round begins again.
Work is usually divided, though not rigidly. In many groups women gather plant foods and small animals, and men hunt larger game. Gathered food is often the bulk of the diet, because it is more reliable than the hunt. Among the Agta of the Philippines, women also hunt. Children learn by joining adults from an early age.
Sharing as a rule of life
Most mobile foragers are strongly egalitarian, meaning that no one is allowed to rise far above others. Meat from a large animal is shared through the whole camp by fixed rules. Boasting is discouraged. People own few things, because everything must be carried. A person who tries to give orders is likely to be laughed at or left behind.
Three common mistakes
The first mistake is to think foragers are always on the edge of starvation. Studies in the 1960s found that Ju/'hoansi adults spent only a few hours a day getting food. One scholar called foragers 'the original affluent society', because their wants were few and easily met. Later researchers argued that this was too rosy, but the old picture of constant hunger was also wrong.
The second mistake is to see today's foragers as living fossils who show us the distant past. They are modern peoples with their own histories. Most have traded with farmers and herders for centuries. Many were pushed into deserts and deep forest by stronger neighbours. The third mistake is to think all foragers are alike.
- Small bands that move often
- Few possessions, little storage
- Strong equality
- Example: Hadza, Ju/'hoansi
- Large permanent villages
- Stored food such as dried salmon
- Ranked families and chiefs
- Example: peoples of the Pacific North-west coast
The peoples of the north-west coast of North America, such as the Haida, Tlingit and Kwakwaka'wakw, lived by fishing, hunting and gathering, yet built large plank houses and had hereditary chiefs. Rich salmon runs let them stay in one place. They show that farming is not the only path to settled, complex societies.
Pressures today
The main threat to foragers is loss of land. Hunting grounds have been turned into farms, ranches, mines and wildlife parks. In several countries, people have been moved out of their territories in the name of conservation and then arrested as poachers for hunting as they always had. Many foragers now combine hunting and gathering with wage work, small gardens, crafts and tourism. Their right to their land remains the central question.