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.[1] 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. In West Eurasia, agriculture lead to widespread genetic changes[clarification needed] when older hunter-gatherer populations were largely replaced by Middle Eastern farmers during the Neolithic who in turn were overrun by Indo-Europeans during the Bronze Age.[2] Only a few contemporary societies are classified as hunter-gatherers, and many supplement their foraging activity with horticulture or pastoralism.[3][4] Contents

Archaeological evidence Edit

Common characteristics Edit

Variability Edit

Savanna Pumé couple on a hunting and gathering trip in the llanos of Venezuela. The man carries a bow, three steel-tipped arrows, and a hat that resembles the head of a jabiru stork as camouflage to approach near enough to deer for a shot. The woman carries a steel-tipped digging stick and a carrying basket for collecting wild tubers. (Photo by Russell D. Greaves) 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.[33] 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.[34] 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,[35] 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.[36] 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.[37] 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.[38] This anthropological view has remained unchanged since the 1960s.[clarification needed][citation needed] 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.[39]

Modern and revisionist perspectives Edit

Americas Edit

See also Edit

References Edit