READ: Foraging Communities and Networks

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Modern humans have been on Earth for about 250,000 years. But most history courses, especially high school social studies classes, tend to only focus on the last 12,000 years. That's because this period of human history came after the creation farming, complex societies, and writing. It makes sense, we have the most information about this period. But what about the previous 238,000 years of human existence? How did we produce and distribute the stuff we needed—especially food—before farming and writing? We foraged for it.

Humans have been nomadic foragers for a much longer period of time than they've been sedentary (settled) farmers. For the vast majority of their existence, humans were foragers. Once people began farming, many communities still continued to forage. In fact, some foraging communities still exist in the world today. So we could infer 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 of time. But what does it mean to be a forager?

Foraging is the gathering and hunting of food. Foragers move around their environment and use what nature provides. 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 with no more than 20-50 people in their groups. 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. This may have been done naturally. Breastfeeding can sometimes reduce the chances of pregnancy. Obviously, we don't know if foraging communities intentionally limited their family size. But perhaps foraging women breastfed their children for long periods of time. That would likely have had the effect of limiting the number of children they had.

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. In addition, archaeologists have studied Paleolithic sites. These sites suggest that most 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 since hunting and fishing could be unreliable sources of regular meals. In some places women did more of the foraging, suggesting that their work was valued as much as that of men. This equal value given to the work of females and males was different than later farming societies.

This is not to say that these foraging communities were free from all forms of hierarchies. Social divisions may have existed. 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 than younger ones.

Studies of foraging groups have also shown that they had more free time because hunting and gathering did not take up the whole day. 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 be able to work for 4-6 hours and enjoy the company of our families and friends for the rest of the day.

A forager's diet was also probably healthier than that of a farmer. Anthropological 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 positive aspects of a foraging lifestyle. However, this is not meant to suggest that life as a forager did not 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 fluctuate. 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 that occurred as human history progressed. 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. As foragers shared ideas through language networks, 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 later Neolithic sites like Gobekli Tepe in Turkey and Stonehenge in England.

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 were those that happened to live in areas of abundance. These were regions like river valleys where fertile soil and fresh water provided lots of 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 sedentary way of life that would lead to the domestication 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.

Bridgette Byrd O’Connor holds a DPhil in history from the University of Oxford and has taught Big History, World History, and AP U.S. Government and Politics for the past ten years at the high school level. In addition, she has been a freelance writer and editor for the Big History Project and the Crash Course World History and U.S. History curriculums.