Foraging Societies
Driving Question: How did foragers build and maintain their communities?
Foraging—sometimes called hunting and gathering—required a great deal of knowledge and skill. This lesson explores the communities and networks that helped foragers thrive for hundreds of thousands of years.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the characteristics of foraging communities.
- Investigate how historians can develop understandings of early human cultures.
- Evaluate the importance of language development for early human societies.
Ever been stumped by a question? Sometimes it’s less about not knowing the answer to the question than it is about understanding the question in the first place!
For this activity, you’ll need ~150 small objects, half of one type, half of another (for example, you could use a mix of coins and paper clips). Note: You will need roughly five objects per student. Make sure to check out the Lesson Guide ahead of time so you can get everything you need.
What happens when you run out of resources? Where do you go? What do you do?
Did you know: Some human foragers chewed birch pitch like gum. One 5,700-year-old chewed lump from Denmark was so well-preserved that scientists recovered a human genome from it. Imagine: You spit your gum on the ground and millennia later, your DNA become part of a homework assignment.
Did you know that people who live in cities still hunt and forage? Although foraging isn’t as common as it was back in the days of early humans, the skill may be a necessary one, depending on the availability of resources to a community.
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Guiding Questions
This is a fun activity that gets students thinking about how our species uses language and how flexible it can become when you get creative. If you have extra time or want to dig a little deeper, assign the Language Networks and Social Life video found in extension materials at the end of this lesson. It explores the long evolution of language in human history and how that story continues to influence our lives today.
Humans’ ability to communicate through symbolic language is necessary for collective learning, and it helped our species grow and expand across the globe.
Now that you’ve learned about foraging societies, it’s time to return to the prompt from the beginning of the lesson.
Have you ever wondered about the origins of our modern notions of communication? How did we develop our language and social skills? What do they mean for our survival?
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Guiding Questions
