Introduction

History textbooks often overlook early humans. Instead, they talk about the last 12,000 years. Farming, writing, and societies grew in that time. But what about the groups before them? Humans like us have been around for 250,000 years. How did we produce food before farming? We foraged for it. That means we hunted and gathered it.

Humans have been roaming foragers for much longer than they’ve been farmers. Once people began farming, many communities still kept foraging. Some foraging communities still exist today. But what does it mean to be a forager?

The foraging way of life

Humans aren’t the only foragers. Many animal species gather resources from the environment. Some eat other animals that have died. Other animals hunt their prey. Foraging means taking what you need from your environment in order to survive.

In foraging communities, humans generally lived in family units. These contained around 20-50 people. Sometimes food and water sources dried up. So foragers had to move around. Because of this constant roaming, human communities kept their group numbers low. It’s much easier to organize a smaller group of people. They can all move somewhere faster at the same time.

Foraging communities also seemed to space out the birth of children in a family. They may have tried to limit the number of small children. That way they wouldn’t have to carry too many on their journeys. This may have been done naturally or purposely. We don’t know for sure. But foraging women may have breastfed their children for long periods. Breastfeeding can sometimes lower the chances of pregnancy.

The population growth rate remained extremely low for the period from 1,000,000 to 5000 BCE. Population data adapted from the World Bank and Kremer, Michael. “Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 108, no. 3 (2017): 683.

Foraging communities may have divided up their work by gender. Men would hunt and women would gather. The work of both was necessary for survival. To the group, their work was likely seen as equal. Studies have been done of today’s foragers. It appears most foragers relied mainly on plant-based diets.1 Meat was enjoyed, but rare. Hunting and fishing were harder. They were not steady food sources. In some places women did more foraging. This suggests that their work was valued as much as that of men. This was different from later farming societies. These communities usually ranked people based on wealth or gender.

However, foraging communities still probably had social divisions. They just looked a bit different. Your age decided your standing. Older members of the community may have been given more respect or power. Foraging groups also likely had more free time. It took just about 4-6 hours to gather most of the community’s resources. So, foragers had more time to share stories by the fire. Farmers had to work more. Twenty-first-century humans work between 8-9 hours per day.

A forager’s diet was also probably healthier than that of a farmer. Studies show that modern-day foragers eat a more mixed diet. They do more exercise compared to modern-day non-foragers. A healthy diet and more free time certainly are nice. However, life as a forager was not totally easy.

For example, they did not live long. The average forager lived between 21 and 37 years. The average person today lives 66 years. But these numbers move up and down. For example, life expectancy in Japan is 82 years. In Zambia, the African country, it’s 39 years (Gurven and Kaplan 2017). One of the main reasons for longer lifetimes is because of medicine. It improved over time. It appears there was violence in foraging communities as well. Also, foragers had to keep moving. So, sometimes, they left behind people who were too old or too sick to keep up.

Foragers also had more time to meet up with nearby communities. They could create small networks. They shared food, tools, weapons, and ideas. Foraging groups built early trade networks. They also may have met up for spiritual or religious purposes. Some probably had shared rituals and practices. Stonehenge in England may have been such a sacred site.

A transition to a more settled way of life

Human communities foraged for over 200,000 years. But soon humans started to spread around the Earth. Some began to move to a more settled way of life. Some of the earliest communities to change lived in fertile areas like river valleys. Rich soil and fresh water were available. About 12,000 years ago, the climate warmed. This marked the end of the last ice age. After that, these areas became lush. As a result, some human groups no longer had to move around as much to find food. These groups were among the first to make slowly move to a settled way of life. Soon they would mostly tend to animals and plants. Many communities continued to forage long after climates warmed. Still, some did try farming. It was a remarkable life change.

1 Some foraging communities depended on meat. People in the Americas certainly did. In these areas, there were plenty of mammoths and buffalo. Such big animals were easy to hunt. This may have changed the roles of men and women in those areas, some believe. Others disagree. They say men and women were still equal in hunting-based communities.