Hunter-gatherer

A hunter-gatherer is a human living in a society in which most or all food is obtained by collecting wild plants and pursuing wild animals, in contrast to agricultural societies, which rely mainly on domesticated species.

Hunting and gathering was humanity's first and most successful adaptation, occupying at least 90 percent of human history. Following the invention of agriculture, hunter-gatherers have been displaced or conquered by farming or pastoralist groups in most parts of the world.

Only a few contemporary societies are classified as hunter-gatherers, and many supplement their foraging activity with horticulture and/or keeping animals.

Archaeological evidence

In the 1950s, Lewis Binford suggested that early humans were obtaining meat via scavenging, not hunting. Early humans in the Lower Paleolithic lived in forests and woodlands, which allowed them to collect seafood, eggs, nuts, and fruits besides scavenging. Rather than killing large animals for meat, according to this view, they used carcasses of such animals that had either been killed by predators or that had died of natural causes. Archaeological and genetic data suggest that the source populations of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers survived in sparsely wooded areas and dispersed through areas of high primary productivity while avoiding dense forest cover.