Introduction

When history and social studies classes discuss modern humans, they tend to only look at the last 12,000 years. However, modern humans have been on Earth for about 250,000 years. We’re more likely to talk about recent humans because this period came after the creation of farming, complex societies, and writing. It makes sense, we have the most information about this period. But what about the older groups? How did we produce and distribute the stuff we needed—especially food—before farming and writing? We foraged for it, meaning we hunted and gathered it.

Humans have been nomadic (roaming) foragers for a much longer period of time than they’ve been sedentary (settled) farmers. Once people began farming, many communities kept foraging. In fact, some foraging communities still exist today. So we could say that foraging must have been a pretty good way to obtain resources and nourish the body if humans lived as foragers for such a long period. But what does it mean to be a forager?

The foraging way of life

Foraging is the gathering and hunting of food. Humans aren’t the only ones who forage. Many animal species gather resources from the environment. Some scavenge for food by eating other animals that have died. Other animals are predators who hunt their prey. The basic definition of foraging is taking what you need from your environment in order to survive.

In foraging communities, humans generally lived in family units. Usually these groups included no more than 20- 50 people. Foragers had to move around in order to obtain more resources once one area had been picked over. Because of this nomadic lifestyle, human communities tended to keep their group numbers low. It’s much easier to organize a small group of people than it is to make sure that 100 or more people are all moving in the same direction at the same time.

One way to ensure that foraging communities didn’t become too large and unmanageable was to try to space out the birth of children in a family. Since foraging families had to move around often, they may have tried to naturally limit the number of small children that would have to be carried on their journeys. We don’t know if foraging communities limited their family size on purpose. But perhaps foraging women breastfed their children for long periods of time. Breastfeeding can sometimes reduce the chances of pregnancy. That would likely have limited the number of children they had.

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.

Labor in foraging communities may have been divided based on gender. Men would hunt and women would gather. But the work of both was necessary for survival and was probably viewed as equal in the eyes of the group.

Anthropologists are experts who study human societies and cultures. They’ve studied modern foraging societies and concluded that tasks such as gathering and hunting were essential for survival. Other studies show foragers relied mainly on plant-based diets.1 Meat was valuable, but rare. In fact, gathering probably supplied the community with most of its food. Hunting and fishing, on the other hand, could be unreliable sources of regular meals. In some places women did more of the foraging. This suggests that their work was valued as much as that of men. This view of equality was different from later farming societies.

Still, these foraging communities probably weren’t free from all forms of social divisions, or ranking each other. But instead of being based on wealth or gender, as they usually were in farming communities, they were probably based on age. Older members of the community may have been given more respect or positions of power.

Studies of foraging groups have also shown that they had more free time. Most of the community’s resources could be gathered in about 4-6 hours of the day. In turn, foragers had more time to sit by the fire and share stories of the day than those who would later become farmers. Twenty-first-century humans work on average between 8-9 hours per day. Of course, I’m sure most of us would love to simply work for 4-6 hours and enjoy the company of our families and friends at other times.

A forager’s diet was also probably healthier than that of a farmer. Studies show that modern-day foragers eat a more varied diet and do more exercise compared to modern-day non-foragers. A healthy diet and more free time are certainly positives. However, life as a forager did have its difficulties.

For example, foragers had much shorter life expectancies. The average forager lived between 21 and 37 years. In comparison, the average person today lives 66 years. But these numbers move up and down. For example, life expectancy in Japan is 82 years while in Zambia it’s 39 years (Gurven and Kaplan 2017). One of the main reasons for this extended life expectancy is due to the advancement of medicine. There’s also evidence of violence in foraging communities. In addition, some members of foraging groups were left behind if they were too old or too ill to keep up with the nomadic lifestyle.

Less work hours meant that foragers also had more time to meet up with other communities in their area. They could create small networks. They shared food, tools, weapons, and ideas. These interactions led foraging groups to establish early trade networks between small communities of people. Foraging communities also may have met up for spiritual or religious purposes. They may have also shared beliefs about spiritual matters, including shared rituals and practices. Archaeologists think that this may have been one of the purposes of historic sites like Gobekli Tepe in Turkey and Stonehenge in England.

A transition to a more settled way of life

Human communities lived exclusively as foragers for over 200,000 years. But as humans started to spread around the Earth, some began to transition from foraging to a more settled way of life. Some of the earliest communities to make this transition lived in areas of abundance—regions like river valleys. Here, fertile soil and fresh water provided many resources. As the climate warmed toward the end of the last ice age—about 12,000 years ago—these areas became lush. As a result, some human groups no longer had to move around as much to follow their food sources. These groups were some of the first to make a slow, gradual transition from foraging to a settled way of life that would lead to the tending of animals and plants. While many communities continued to forage long after climates warmed, some did embark on a new path of farming. This new way of getting food presented challenges. But this change to farming does mark a significant transition in human history.

1 Some foraging communities, in particular those in the Americas, relied more heavily on meat-based diets. This was the result of having many big animals around that were easy to hunt, such as mammoths or buffalo. Some archaeologists have suggested that this may have changed the gender roles in those areas. However, other scholars have argued that the relative equality between genders may have remained even in hunting-based communities.