A hunter-gatherer society is one whose primary subsistence method involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild, foraging Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment in which the animal lives. Foraging theory considers the foraging behavior of animals in reference to the payoff that an animal obtains from different foraging options. Foraging theory predicts that the foraging options and hunting Hunting is the practice of pursuing living animals for food, recreation, or trade. In present-day use, the term refers to lawful hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species contrary to applicable law. The species which are hunted are referred to as game and are usually mammals and without significant recourse to the domestication Domestication or taming is the process whereby a population of animals or plants, through a process of selection, becomes accustomed to human provision and control. A defining characteristic of domestication is artificial selection by humans. Some species such as the Asian Elephant, numerous members of which have for many centuries been used as of either. Up to 80% of the food is obtained by gathering.^[2] The demarcation between hunter-gatherers and other societies which rely more upon domestication (see agriculture Agriculture is the production of food and goods through farming. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of human civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and stratified societies. The study of agriculture is known as and pastoralism Pastoralism or pastoral farming is the branch of agriculture concerned with the raising of livestock. It is animal husbandry: the care, tending and use of animals such as camels, goats, cattle, yaks, llamas, sheep, and so forth. It may have a mobile aspect, moving the herds in search of fresh pasture and water and neolithic revolution The Neolithic Revolution was the first agricultural revolution—the transition from hunting and gathering communities and bands, to agriculture and settlement. Archaeological data indicate that various forms of domestication of plants and animals arose independently in at least seven or eight separate locales worldwide, with the earliest known) is not clear-cut, as many contemporary societies combine both strategies to sustain their population.

History

The earliest human species, Homo habilis Homo habilis is a species of the genus Homo, which lived from approximately 2.3 to 1.4 million years ago at the beginning of the Pleistocene period. The discovery and description of this species is credited to both Mary and Louis Leakey, who found fossils in Tanzania, East Africa, between 1962 and 1964. Homo habilis (or possibly H. rudolfensis) is, beginning some 2.5 million years ago probably lived primarily on scavenging Scavenging, or necrophagy, is a carnivorous feeding behaviour in which a predator consumes corpses or carrion that were not killed to be eaten by the predator or others of its species. Scavengers play an important role in the ecosystem by contributing to the decomposition of dead animal remains. Decomposers complete this process, by consuming the, not actual hunting. Early humans in the Lower Paleolithic The Lower Paleolithic is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 2.5 million years ago when the first evidence of craft and use of stone tools by hominids appears in the current archaeological record, until around 300,000 years ago, spanning the Oldowan ("mode 1") and Acheulean (" lived in mixed habitats which allowed them to collect seafood, eggs, nuts, and fruits besides scavenging. Rather than killing large animals themselves for meat, they used carcasses of large animals killed by other predators or carcasses from animals that died by natural causes.^[3]

Hunting and gathering was presumably the subsistence strategy employed by human societies beginning some 1.8 million years ago, by Homo erectus Homo erectus is an extinct species of hominid that originated in Africa—and spread as far as China and Java—from the end of the Pliocene epoch to the later Pleistocene, about 1.8 to 1.3 million years ago. There is still disagreement on the subject of the classification, ancestry, and progeny of H. erectus, with two major alternative hypotheses:, and from its appearance some 0.2 million years ago by Homo sapiens Archaic Homo sapiens is a loosely defined term used to describe a number of varieties of Homo, as opposed to anatomically modern humans , in the period beginning 500,000 years ago. The term is typically taken to include Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis, Homo neanderthalensis and sometimes Homo antecessor. It remained the only mode of subsistence until the end of the Mesolithic The Mesolithic or "Middle Stone Age" was a period in the development of human technology in between the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age and the Neolithic or New Stone Age, in which farming appeared. The term was introduced by John Lubbock in his work Pre-historic Times, published in 1865. The term was, however, not much used until V. Gordon period some 10,000 years ago, and after this was replaced only gradually with the spread of the Neolithic Revolution The Neolithic Revolution was the first agricultural revolution—the transition from hunting and gathering communities and bands, to agriculture and settlement. Archaeological data indicate that various forms of domestication of plants and animals arose independently in at least seven or eight separate locales worldwide, with the earliest known.

Starting at the transition between the Middle to Upper Paleolithic period, some 80,000 to 70,000 years ago, some hunter-gatherers bands began to specialize - concentrating on hunting a smaller selection of (often larger than had previously been hunted) game and gathering a smaller selection of food. This specialization of work also involved creating specialized tools like fishing nets and hooks and bone harpoons.^[4] The transition into the subsequent Neolithic The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in the Middle East that is traditionally considered the last part of the Stone Age. The Neolithic followed the terminal Holocene Epipalaeolithic period, beginning with the rise of farming, which produced the " period is chiefly defined by the unprecedented development of nascent agricultural practices. Agriculture originated and spread The Neolithic Revolution was the first agricultural revolution—the transition from hunting and gathering communities and bands, to agriculture and settlement. Archaeological data indicate that various forms of domestication of plants and animals arose independently in at least seven or eight separate locales worldwide, with the earliest known in several different areas including the Middle East The Middle East is a region that encompasses southwestern Asia and Egypt. In some contexts, the term has recently been expanded in usage to sometimes include Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and North Africa. It's often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East. The corresponding adjective is Middle-Eastern, Asia Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population. During the 20th century Asia's population nearly quadrupled, Mesoamerica Mesoamerica or Meso-America is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the Andes The Andes are the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continuous chain of highland along the western coast of South America. The range is over 7,000 km long, 200 km (120 mi) to 700 km (430 mi) wide (widest between 18° to 20°S latitude), and of an average height of about 4,000 m (13,000 ft) beginning as early as 10,000 years ago The 10th millennium BC marks the beginning of the Mesolithic and Epipaleolithic period, which is the first part of the Holocene epoch. Agriculture, based on the cultivation of primitive forms of millet and rice, occurred in Southwest Asia. Although agriculture was being developed in the Turkish Highlands and the Fertile Crescent, it would not be.

Many groups continued their hunter-gatherer ways of life, although their numbers have perpetually declined partly as a result of pressure from growing agricultural and pastoral communities. Many of them reside in arid regions and tropical forests in the developing world. Areas which formerly were available to hunter-gatherers were -and continue to be- encroached upon by the settlements of agriculturalists. In the resulting competition for land use, hunter-gatherer societies either adopted these practices or moved to other areas. In addition, Jared Diamond Jared Mason Diamond is an American scientist and author whose work draws from a variety of fields. He is currently Professor of Geography and Physiology at UCLA. He is best known for the award-winning popular science books The Third Chimpanzee; Guns, Germs, and Steel; and Collapse has blamed a decline in the availability of wild foods, particularly animal resources. In North and South America, for example, most large mammal species had gone extinct by the end of the Pleistocene The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2.588 million to 12,000 years BP covering the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek πλεῖστος (pleistos "most") and καινός (kainos "new"), according to Diamond, because of overexploitation Overexploitation, also called overharvesting, refers to harvesting a renewable resource to the point of diminishing returns. If sustained, it can lead to the destruction of the resource. The term can be applied to various natural resources such as wild medicinal plants, grazing pastures, fish stocks, forests and water aquifers by humans,^[5] although the overkill hypothesis The Quaternary period saw the extinctions of numerous predominantly larger species, many of which occurred during the transition to the Holocene epoch in what is termed the Holocene extinction[citation needed]. Among the main causes hypothesized by paleontologists are natural climate change and overkill by humans, who appeared during this epoch. A he advocates is strongly contested.

As the number and size of agricultural societies increased, they expanded into lands traditionally used by hunter-gatherers. This process of agriculture-driven expansion led to the development of complex forms of government A form of government, or form of state governance, refers to the set of political institutions by which a government of a state is organized in order to exert its powers over a house in the congress body politic. Synonyms include "regime type" and "system of government" in agricultural centers such as the Fertile Crescent The Fertile Crescent is a region in Western Asia. It includes the comparatively fertile regions of Mesopotamia and the Levant, delimited by the dry climate of the Syrian Desert to the south and the Anatolian highlands to the north. The region is often considered the cradle of civilization, saw the development of many of the earliest human, Ancient India The history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago hominids from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent from c. 3300 to 1300 BCE, was the first major civilization in India. A sophisticated and, Ancient China Chinese civilization originated in various regional centers along both the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valleys in the Neolithic era, but the Yellow River is said to be the Cradle of Chinese Civilization. The written history of China can be found as early as the Shang Dynasty . Oracle bones with ancient Chinese writing from the Shang Dynasty, Olmec The Olmec were a Pre-Columbian civilization living in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, near the modern-day cities of Veracruz and Tabasco, and Norte Chico The Norte Chico civilization was a complex Pre-Columbian society that included as many as 30 major population centers in what is now the Norte Chico region of north-central coastal Peru. It is the oldest known civilization in the Americas and one of the six sites where civilization separately originated in the ancient world. It flourished between.

As a result of the now near-universal human reliance upon agriculture, the few contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures usually live in areas unsuitable for agricultural use.

Americas

See also: Paleo-Indians period (Canada) Aboriginal peoples in Canada comprise the First Nations, Inuit and Métis. The descriptors "Indian" and "Eskimo" are falling into disuse. Old Crow Flats and Bluefish Caves are some of the earliest archaeological sites of human habitation in Canada. The Paleo-Indian Clovis, Plano cultures and Pre-Dorset pre-date American and History of Mesoamerica (Paleo-Indian) In the History of Mesoamerica, the stage known as the Paleo-Indian period is the era in the scheme of Mesoamerican chronology which begins with the very first indications of human habitation within the Mesoamerican region, and continues until the general onset of the development of agriculture and other proto-civilization traits. The conclusion of

Evidence suggests big-game hunter gatherers crossed the Bering Strait The Bering Strait , known to natives as Imakpik,[citation needed] is a sea strait between Cape Dezhnev, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia, the easternmost point (169°43' W) of the Asian continent and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, USA, the westernmost point (168°05' W) of the North American continent, with latitude of about 65° 40' north, from Asia (Eurasia) into North America North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and in the western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific Ocean; South America lies to the southeast over a land bridge (Beringia The Bering land bridge was a land bridge roughly 1,000 miles north to south at its greatest extent, which joined present-day Alaska and eastern Siberia at various times during the Pleistocene ice ages. It was not glaciated because snowfall was extremely light due to the southwesterly winds from the Pacific Ocean having lost their moisture over the), that existed between 47,000 – 14,000 years ago.^[6] Around 18,500 – 15,500 years ago, these hunter-gatherers are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct pleistocene The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2.588 million to 12,000 years BP covering the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek πλεῖστος (pleistos "most") and καινός (kainos "new") megafauna In terrestrial zoology, megafauna are "giant", "very large" or "large" animals. Their original and most common definition is 100 lb, often rounded in the metric system to 40 or 45 kg. This thus includes many species not popularly thought of as overly large, such as white-tailed deer and red kangaroo, as well as humans along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide The Laurentide Ice Sheet was a massive sheet of ice that covered hundreds of thousands of square miles, including most of Canada and a large portion of the northern United States, between c. 95,000 and c. 20,000 years before the present day. Its southern margin included the modern sites of New York City and Chicago, and then followed quite and Cordilleran ice sheets.^[7] Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats A boat is a watercraft of modest size designed to float or plane, to provide passage across water. Usually this water will be inland or in protected coastal areas. However, boats such as the whaleboat were designed to be operated from a ship in an offshore environment. In naval terms, a boat is something small enough to be carried aboard another, they migrated down the Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east coast to South America South America is the southern continent of America, situated in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east by the Atlantic Ocean; North America and the Caribbean Sea lie to the northwest.^[8][9] Hunter-gatherers would eventually flourish all over the Americas, primarily based in the Great Plains The Great Plains are the broad expanse of prairie, steppe and grassland which lie west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming, and the Canadian of the United States ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language and Canada The land occupied by Canada was inhabited for millennia by various groups of Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored, and later settled, along the Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three, with offshoots as far east as the Gaspé Peninsula The Gaspésie or also Gaspé Peninsula or the Gaspé is a peninsula constituting part of the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River, in Quebec, Canada. It extends into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and is separated from New Brunswick by the baie des Chaleurs and the Restigouche River.Gaspesie is a touristic region of Quebec on the Atlantic coast The Atlantic Coast is any coast fronting the Atlantic Ocean. The term differentiates the coasts of countries or continents with coastlines on more than one body of water, such as North America, South America, Africa and Europe, and as far south as Chile Chile (traditional English pronunciation /ˈtʃɪli/, also pronounced /ˈtʃiːleɪ/ ), officially the Republic of Chile (Spanish: República de Chile [reˈpuβlika ðe ˈtʃile] ( listen)), is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders, Monte Verde.^[10] American hunter-gatherers were spread over a wide geographical area, thus there were regional variations in lifestyles. However, all the individual groups shared a common style of stone tool production, making knapping Knapping is the shaping of flint, chert, obsidian or other conchoidal fracturing stone through the process of lithic reduction to manufacture stone tools, strikers for flintlock firearms, or to produce flat-faced stones for building or facing walls, and flushwork decoration styles and progress identifiable. This early Paleo-Indian period lithic reduction Lithic reduction involves the use of a hard hammer precursor, such as a hammerstone, a soft hammer fabricator , or a wood or antler punch to detach lithic flakes from a lump of tool stone called a lithic core (also known as the "objective piece"). As flakes are detached in sequence, the original mass of stone is reduced; hence the term tool adaptations have been found across the Americas, utilized by highly mobile bands consisting of approximately 20 up to 60 members of an extended family.^[11][12] The Archaic period in the Americas saw a changing environment featuring a warmer more arid climate and the disappearance of the last megafauna.^[13] The majority of population groups at this time were still highly mobile hunter-gatherers; but now individual groups started to focused on resources available to them locally, thus with the passage of time there is a pattern of increasing regional generalization like, the Southwest, Arctic, Poverty, Dalton and Plano traditions. This regional adaptations would become the norm, with reliance less on hunting and gathering, with a more mixed economy of small game, fish, seasonally wild vegetables and harvested plant foods.^[14][15]

Common characteristics

Habitat and population

Hunter-gatherer societies tend to be relatively mobile, given their reliance upon the ability of a given natural environment to provide sufficient resources in order to sustain their population and the variable availability of these resources owing to local climatic and seasonal conditions. Individual band societies tend to be small in number (10-30 individuals), but these may gather together seasonally to temporarily form a larger group (100 or more) when resources are abundant. In a few places where the environment is especially productive, such as that of the Pacific Northwest coast or Jomon-era Japan, hunter-gatherers are able to settle permanently.^{[citation needed]}

Hunter-gatherer settlements may be either permanent, temporary, or some combination of the two, depending upon the mobility of the community. Mobile communities typically construct shelters using impermanent building materials, or they may use natural rock shelters, where they are available.^{[citation needed]}

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