Hunter-Gatherer Societies
Learn about hunter-gatherer societies — the way humans lived for 95% of our species' history, with egalitarian bands, shared resources, and deep ecological knowledge.
For roughly 95% of Homo sapiens' existence, every human being lived as a hunter-gatherer. These societies — typically organized in bands of 20 to 50 closely related individuals — sustained themselves by hunting wild animals, fishing, and gathering wild plants. Far from the brutish existence often imagined, ethnographic evidence suggests that many foraging peoples enjoyed more leisure time, better nutrition, and greater social equality than early farming communities.
Hunter-gatherer societies were remarkably diverse, ranging from the Arctic Inuit to the Australian Aborigines to the San of southern Africa. But they shared certain features: egalitarian social structures that actively resisted hierarchy, extensive ecological knowledge, flexible residence patterns, and rich traditions of oral storytelling, music, and ritual. Resources were typically shared through networks of reciprocal obligation — a social insurance system that preceded any formal institution.
The transition away from hunting and gathering was neither inevitable nor universally beneficial. Early farmers worked longer hours, suffered more nutritional deficiencies, and experienced greater social inequality than their foraging ancestors. Understanding hunter-gatherer societies is essential not just for comprehending our past but for recognizing how recently — in evolutionary terms — humans adopted the sedentary, hierarchical way of life we now take for granted.