People hunted wild game, collected plants and adapted successfully to diverse — and often inhospitable — habitats. Today, however, their lives are in danger. The issues they are forced to cope with on a daily basis have nothing to do with their innate strength and resourcefulness as a people, but stem from oppressive external threats to their lands, health and ways of life. Largely a colonial myth, this theory has been used over millennia to justify the theft of tribal territories , says Stephen Corry, Director of Survival International.
Some hunter-gatherer societies have failed to survive changes in their environment, but others have flourished, and will continue to thrive, if their human rights are respected and their land rights recognised. They have adapted to changing climates and eco-systems and developed an extraordinary repertoire of tactics and tools that probably bear little resemblance to the way prehistoric peoples lived 10, years ago.
Hunting demands agility, patience, knowledge and intricate skills passed down the generations. It provides sustenance for families, is often the well-spring of male prestige and can determine the collective identity of a people.
We hunt and trap , said Innu Elder, Joe Pinette. Great ingenuity is required , says Stephen Corry. A hunting tribesman combines the skills of master craftsman, consummate athlete and astute strategist.
And universal to all hunters is the prestige inherent in the hunt. Hunters love hunting , says Corry. It is far more than about finding food.
Young Bushman boys in Botswana are given toy bows and arrows to hunt rats and small birds, and are taught to kill hare or make blankets from gemsbok skin. Girls as young as five help their mothers gather plants, berries and tubers.
All our boys and men were hunters. Over generations, the lives of many hunter-gatherer tribes have been devastated by invading colonists, racist governments and corporations determined to profit from their lands.
The Innu of north-eastern Canada spent thousands of years as nomadic hunter-gatherers, following great herds of migrating caribou across Nitassinan , their vast sub-arctic homeland. Much of their land was confiscated, and hunting for caribou — the essence of their identity as a people — was strictly regulated. Several years ago, when an Innu man was asked his occupation, he said hunter , said Jean Pierre Ashini, an Innu man from Canada.
Similarly, the Bushmen — the indigenous peoples of Southern Africa — lived on their lands as hunter-gatherers for tens of thousands of years. You set a trap or go with bow and spear says Bushman Roy Sesana. You track the antelope. It can take days. He knows you are there. But he runs and you have to run. It can last hours and exhaust you both. The Bushmen of the reserve have been persecuted by the Botswana government for many decades.
Their right to live and hunt on their ancestral lands has been denied them. In three big clearances between and , virtually all the Bushmen were evicted by force out of the reserve into resettlement camps.
Today, they are rarely able to hunt. In , hunting was banned in Botswana, which is causing additional hardship for the Bushmen: those who try to hunt are routinely arrested and beaten. You think how hard Kudu is working. You feel it in your own body. You see it in the footprints, she is with you and your legs are not so heavy. When you feel Kudu is with you, you are now controlling its mind. Its eyes are no longer wild. In general, hunter-gatherer groups have low levels of relatedness Hill et al.
It is theorized that nomadic populations may need a wider network of kin who might be able to provide residential options in times of fluctuating resources. The songs of hunter-gatherers are less wordy and characterized by more nonwords, repetition, and relaxed enunciation Lomax , — As discussed further in the Arts module , Lomax theorizes that songs reflect the way people in a society work.
In less complex societies people learn by observation and gradual instruction, and therefore explicit verbal instruction is not needed. Softer foods lead to the teeth formation most of us are used to—the top front teeth come down in front of the bottom front teeth when the mouth is closed. However, harder foods that hunter-gatherers traditionally ate prevented this overbite; the edge of the top teeth simply met with the edge of the bottom teeth.
It is widely agreed that, compared to food producers, hunter-gatherers fight less Ember and Ember But why? Perhaps it is because in contrast to food producers, hunter-gatherers are less prone to resource unpredictability, famines, and food shortages Textor ; Ember and Ember , 10; Berbesque et al. And resource unpredictability is a major predictor of increased warfare in the ethnographic record Ember and Ember , But fighting less than food producers does not necessarily mean that hunter-gatherers are typically peaceful.
For example, Ember reported that most hunter-gatherers engaged in warfare at least every two years. But another study found that warfare was rare or absent among most hunter-gatherers Lenski and Lenski ; reported in Nolan Why are there these contradictory answers to the question about the peacefulness of hunter-gatherers?
How we define terms will affect the outcome of a cross-cultural study. When asking if hunter-gatherers are typically peaceful, for example, researchers will get different results depending upon what they mean by peaceful, how they define hunter-gatherers, and whether they have excluded societies forced to stop fighting that is, pacified by colonial powers or national governments in their analyses.
Most researchers contrast war and peace. If the researcher views peace as the absence of war, then the answer to whether hunter-gatherers are more peaceful than food producers depends on the definition of war. Anthropologists agree that war in smaller-scale societies needs to be defined differently from war in nation-states that have armed forces and large numbers of casualties. Also, within-community or purely individual acts of violence are nearly always distinguished from warfare.
However, there is controversy about what to call different types of socially organized violence between communities. For example, Fry , 88, —74 does not consider feuding between communities warfare, but Ember and Ember do.
In the warfare section below, we discuss predictors of variation in warfare amongst hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherers vary in many ways, but cross-cultural research has focused on variations in the environment and types of subsistence, contributions to the diet by gender, marital residence, the degree of nomadism, and the frequency and type of warfare.
The closer to the equator, the higher the effective temperature, or the more plant biomass, the more hunter-gatherers depend upon gathering rather than hunting or fishing Lee and DeVore , 42—43; Kelly , 70; Binford , The lower the effective temperature, the more hunter-gatherers rely on fishing Binford , As the growing season lengthens, hunter-gatherers are more likely to be fully nomadic Binford , In New Guinea, foragers with a high dependence on fishing tend to have higher population density and large settlements.
Males contribute more to the diet the lower the effective temperature or the higher the latitude Kelly , ; Marlowe , As we saw above, gathering is a more important subsistence activity closer to the equator. In higher quality environments with more plant growth , men are more likely to share gathering tasks with women. Greater division of labor by gender occurs in lower quality environments Marlowe Amongst hunter-gatherers, how much males and females contribute to primary production predicts rules of marital residence—more specifically, when male contribution is high, patrilocal residence is likely; when not that high, matrilocal residence is likely.
Not surprisingly, the more a foraging society depends upon gathering, the more likely the society is to be matrilocal.
The more dependent upon fishing, the more likely a society is to be patrilocal. However, degree of dependence on hunting does not predict marital residence Ember This finding is contrary to the general worldwide trend when all types of subsistence economies are considered—gender contribution to subsistence does not generally predict marital residence Ember and Ember ; Divale ; Ember Why hunter-gathering societies are different is not clear.
Bilocal residence , where couples can live with either set of relatives in contrast to matrilocal or patrilocal residence , is predicted by small under 50 community size, high rainfall variability, and recent drastic population loss Ember High rainfall variability is an indicator of resource unpredictability. Theory suggests that residential movement is a way to flexibly adapt to variability of resources over time—couples can move to places that have more abundance Ember Finally, when communities are very small, the ratio of marriageable males to marriageable females can fluctuate greatly.
Following a unilocal residence rule might mean that all marriageable men have to leave if residence were matrilocal, or all marriageable women would have to leave if residence were patrilocal. Small communities would not be able to maintain a consistent size. Bilocality allows flexibility. Hunter-gatherers with higher population densities have more warfare than those with lower population densities.
Similarly, more complex hunter-gatherer societies have more warfare than simpler hunter-gatherers Nolan , 26; Kelly , 51—52; Fry , Hunter-gatherers with a high dependence on fishing are more likely to have internal warfare than external warfare Ember Amongst prehistoric hunter-gatherers in central California, resource scarcity predicts more violence as indicated by sharp force skeletal trauma in burial sites Allen et al.
This parallels worldwide research on a sample including all subsistence types that finds that unpredictable food-destroying disasters is a major predictor of higher warfare frequency Ember and Ember Among foragers, as in other societies, patrilocal residence is predicted by internal within society warfare or a high male contribution to subsistence; matrilocality is predicted by a combination of purely external warfare and a high female contribution to subsistence Ember Why do some foraging societies share more than others?
Is meat consistently shared more than plants? Does sharing differ by gender? Why should division of labor predict residence amongst hunter-gatherers, but not among food-producing cultures? See Ember Do foragers with a high dependence on fishing tend to have higher population density and large settlements, as is the case in New Guinea? See Roscoe How do complex hunter-gatherers differ from simpler hunter-gatherers in the ways we have discussed here—child-rearing values, marital residence, subsistence strategies, division of labor, etc.
San gathered together, photo by AinoTuominen via pixabay. Hadza with bow and arrow, photo by alexstrachan via pixabay. Carol R. Ember, ed. Explaining Human Culture. What is known from descriptions written by observers, usually anthropologists, who have lived in and carried out fieldwork on a culture in the present and recent past. A pattern in which married couples live with or near one specified set of relatives patrilocal, matrilocal, or avunculocal.
Risk, mobility or population size? Drivers of technological richness among contact-period western North American hunter—gatherers. Freeman, Jacob, and John M. The socioecology of hunter—gatherer territory size. Halperin, Rhonda H. Ecology and mode of production: Seasonal variation and the division of labor by sex among hunter-gatherers. Journal of Anthropological Research 36, Langley, Michelle, and Mirani Litster.
Is it ritual? Or is it children? Current Anthropology 59 5 Lozoff, Betsy and Gary Brittenham Infant care: Cache or carry. The Journal of Pediatrics 95, Often nomadic, this was the only way of life for humans until about 12, years ago when archaeologic studies show evidence of the emergence of agriculture. Human lifestyles began to change as groups formed permanent settlements and tended crops.
There are still a few hunter-gatherer peoples today. Explore the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers in your classroom with these resources. Check out these images of modern people who still use aspects of hunter-gatherer culture. What allows some societies to flourish while others to plateau or disappear?
Join Pulitzer Prize winning author and National Geographic Explorer Jared Diamond as he travels to one of the last remaining populations of Hunter Gathers as he researches this important question. Join our community of educators and receive the latest information on National Geographic's resources for you and your students. Skip to content. Image Hunting for Game The Hadza people of Tanzania rely on hunting wild game for meat, a task that requires great skill in tracking, teamwork, and accuracy with a bow and arrow.
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