Hunter Gatherers - People Who Live on the Land

Hunter gatherers, with or without a dash, is the term used by anthropologists and archaeologists to describe a specific kind of lifestyle: simply, hunter-gatherers hunt game and collect plant foods (called foraging) rather than grow or tend crops. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle was what all human beings followed from the Upper Paleolithic of some 20,000 years ago, until the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Not every group of us on the planet embraced agriculture and pastoralism, and there are still small, relatively isolated groups today who practice hunting and gathering to one extent or another. Shared Characteristics Hunter-gatherer societies vary in many respects: how much they relied (or rely) on hunting for game versus foraging for plants; how often they moved; how egalitarian their society was. Hunter-gatherer societies of the past and present do have some shared characteristics. In a paper for the  Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) at Yale University, which has collected ethnographic studies from all types of human societies for decades and ought to know, Carol Ember  defines hunter-gatherers as fully or semi-nomadic people who live in small communities with low population densities, do not have specialized political officers, have little defines hunter-gatherers as fully or semi-nomadic people who live in small communities with low population densities, do not have specialized political officers, have little status differentiation, and divide up required tasks by gender and age. Remember, though, that agriculture and pastoralism werent handed to humans by some extraterrestrial force: the people who began the process of domesticating plants and animals were hunter-gatherers. Full-time hunter-gatherers domesticated dogs, and also maize, broomcorn millet and wheat. They also invented pottery, shrines, and religion, and living in communities. The question is probably best expressed as which came first, domesticated crop or domesticated farmer? Living Hunter-Gatherer Groups Up until about a hundred years ago, hunter-gatherer societies were unknown and unbothered by the rest of us. But in the early 20th century, Western anthropologists became aware of and interested in the groups. Today, there are very few (if any) groups who are unconnected to modern society, taking advantage of modern tools, clothing, and foods, being followed by research scientists and becoming susceptible to modern diseases. Despite that contact, there are still groups who get at least a major portion of their subsistence by hunting wild game and gathering wild plants. Some living hunter-gatherer groups include: Ache (Paraguay), Aka (Central African Republic and Republic of the Congo), Baka (Gabon and Cameroon), Batek (Malaysia), Efe (Democratic Republic of the Congo), G/Wi San (Botswana), Lengua (Paraguay), Mbuti (eastern Congo), Nukak (Colombia), !Kung (Namibia), Toba/Qom (Argentina), Palanan Agta (Phillippines), Ju/hoansi or Dobe (Namibia). Hadza Hunter-Gatherers Arguably, the Hadza of eastern Africa are the most studied living hunter-gatherer groups today. Currently, there are about 1,000 people who call themselves Hadza, although only about 250 are still full-time hunter-gatherers. They live in a savanna-woodland habitat of about 4,000 square kilometers (1,500 square miles) around Lake Eyasi in northern Tanzania--where some of our most ancient hominid ancestors also lived. They live in mobile camps of about 30 individuals per camp. The Hadza move their campsites about once every 6 weeks and camp membership changes as people move in and out. The Hadza diet is made up of honey, meat, berries, baobab fruit, tubers and in one region, marula nuts. The men search for animals, honey and sometimes fruit; Hadza women and children specialize in tubers. The men typically go hunting every day, spending between two and six hours hunting alone or in small groups. They hunt birds and small mammals using ​bow and arrow; hunting large game is assisted with poisoned arrows. The men always carry a bow and arrow with them, even if theyre out to get honey, just in case something turns up.​​​ Recent Studies Based on a quick peek into Google Scholar, there are thousands of studies published each year about hunter-gatherers. How do those scholars keep up? Some recent studies I looked at (listed below) have discussed systematic sharing, or the lack of it, among hunter-gatherer groups; responses to the ebola crisis; handedness (hunter-gatherers are predominantly right-handed); color naming (Hadza hunter gatherers have fewer consistent color names but a larger set of idiosyncratic or less common color categories; gut metabolism; tobacco use; anger research; and pottery use by Jomon hunter-gatherers. As researchers have learned more about hunter-gatherer groups, theyve come to recognize that there are groups who have some characteristics of agricultural communities: they live in settled communities, or have gardens when they tend crops, and some of them have social hierarchies, with chiefs and commoners. Those types of groups are referred to as Complex Hunter-Gatherers. Sources The Human Relations Area Files is an excellent place for conducting research on ethnographic studies on hunter-gatherers (or really any human society, past or present). See Carol R. Embers paper linked below. Berbesque JC, Wood BM, Crittenden AN, Mabulla A, and Marlowe FW. 2016. Eat first, share later: Hadza hunter–gatherer men consume more while foraging than in central places. Evolution and Human Behavior 37(4):281-286.Cavanagh T, Berbesque JC, Wood B, and Marlowe F. 2016. Hadza handedness: Lateralized behaviors in a contemporary hunter–gatherer population. Evolution and Human Behavior 37(3):202-209.de la Iglesia HO, Fernà ¡ndez-Duque E, Golombek DA, Lanza N, Duffy JF, Czeisler CA, and Valeggia CR. 2015. Access to electric light is associated with shorter sleep duration in a traditionally hunter-gatherer community. Journal of Biological Rhythms 30(4):342-350.Dyble M, Salali GD, Chaudhary N, Page A, Smith D, Thompson J, Vinicius L, Mace R, and Migliano AB. 2015. Sex equality can explain the unique social structure of hunter-gatherer bands. Science 348(6236):796-798.Eerkens JW, Carlson T, Malhi RS, Blake J, Bartelink EJ, Barfod GH, Estes A, Garibay R, Glessner J, Greenwald AM et al. 2016. Isotopic and genetic analyses of a mass grave in central California: Implications for precontact hunter-gatherer warfare. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 159(1):116-125.Ember CR. 2014. Hunter-Gatherers (Foragers). Human Relations Area Files. Accessed 19 June 2016.Hewlett BS. 2016. Evolutionary Cultural Anthropology: Containing Ebola outbreaks and explaining hunter-gatherer childhoods. Current Anthropology 57(13):S000-S000.Lindsey Delwin  T, Brown Angela  M, Brainard David  H, and Apicella Coren  L. 2015. Hunter-gatherer color naming provides new insight into the evolution of color terms. Current Biology 25(18):2441-2446.Lucquin A, Gibbs K, Uchiyama J, Saul H, Ajimoto M, Eley Y, Radini A, Heron CP, Shoda S, Nishida Y et al. 2016. Ancient lipids document continuity in the use of early hunter–gatherer pottery through 9,000 years of Japanese prehistory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(15):3991-3996.Rampelli S, Schnorr Stephani e  L, Consolandi C, Turroni S, Severgnini M, Peano C, Brigidi P, Crittenden Alyssa  N, Henry Amanda  G, and Candela M. 2015. Metagenome sequencing of the Hadza hunter-gatherer gut microbiota. Current Biology 25(13):1682-1693.Roulette CJ, Hagen E, and Hewlett BS. 2016. A biocultural investigation of gender differences in tobacco use in an egalitarian hunter-gatherer population. Human Nature 27(2):105-129.