Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living in a community, or according to an ancestrally derived lifestyle, in which most or all food is obtained by foraging,[1][2] that is, by gathering food from local naturally occurring sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, honey, bird eggs, or anything safe to eat, and/or by hunting game (pursuing and/or trapping and killing wild animals, including catching fish). This is a common practice among most vertebrates that are omnivores. Hunter-gatherer societies stand in contrast to the more sedentary agricultural societies, which rely mainly on cultivating crops and raising domesticated animals for food production, although the boundaries between the two ways of living are not completely distinct.
"Hunting and gathering" redirects here. For other uses, see Hunting and Gathering (novel) and Hunting and Gathering (film).
Hunting and gathering was humanity's original and most enduring successful competitive adaptation in the natural world, occupying at least 90 percent of human history.[3] Following the invention of agriculture, hunter-gatherers who did not change were displaced or conquered by farming or pastoralist groups in most parts of the world.[4] Across Western Eurasia it was not until approximately 4,000 BC that farming and metallurgical societies completely replaced hunter-gatherers. These technologically advanced societies expanded faster in areas with less forest, pushing hunter-gatherers into denser woodlands. Only the middle-late Bronze Age and Iron Age societies were able to fully replace hunter-gatherers in their final stronghold located in the most densely forested areas. Unlike their Bronze and Iron Age counterparts, Neolithic societies couldn't establish themselves in dense forests, and Copper Age societies had only limited success.
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In addition to men, women engage in hunting in 79% of modern hunter-gatherer societies.[6] However, an attempted verification of this study found "evidence of sample selection bias and numerous coding errors undermining the paper's conclusions...their analysis does not contradict the wide body of empirical evidence for gendered divisions of labor in foraging societies".[7] Only a few contemporary societies of uncontacted people are still classified as hunter-gatherers, and many supplement their foraging activity with horticulture or pastoralism.[8][9]
