Hunter Gatherer Societies

Agriculture is one of the key factors that shape your everyday life. Your time, money, nutrition, and life is dependent on agriculture. Food can be gathered by either hunting for it or producing it, however, which method is healthier for human civilization? Some people believe that producing foods and domesticating animals (agriculture in Neolithic Revolution) is more beneficial to humans. However, the reasonings for which hunting and gathering is healthier overall are abundant. Hunting and gathering (way of getting food in the Paleolithic Era) supplies a better and more varied amount of nutrients, less vulnerability to famine and disease, and good leisure time with less work.

Hunter gatherers are mobile. They move to an area to establish their camps. Once they do that, they hunt, gather, and utilize the resources in the area. When there are not any more resources to be used, they pack up their things and move on to the next area. Another characteristic of hunter gathers was the size of their group. The size of their groups was relatively small. Normally, these groups consisted of 10-50 people. One final characteristic of hunter gatherers is that they were egalitarian. They did not use the idea of having things as a means of status, due to them owning very little. They neither had social classes or formal positions of leadership.

It also takes more additional hours of food preparation to make it is suitable for consumption. It appears that hunter-gatherers have more leisure time than farmers. On the other hand, an agricultural system absorbs more labor and increased workload per capita.

The first reason of why agriculture is a better way of life, is because according to document 1 farmers were less violent. Hunters and gatherers on the other hand were in constant state of tribal warfare. This resulted in 25-30% of adult males dying from homicide. Warfare was necessary to keep population density low. This was due to the fact that a certain place only had so much food to support one person. Farmers on the other hand could use a small piece of land and plant crops that could support many people. They do not have to fight over food therefore less war and violence.

Agricultural societies allow for a greater population density, than hunter-gatherer societies. With a greater population of people, not everyone has to farm; therefore people can ‘specialize’ in other areas such as political organization. Also, people can focus on gun, steels, and ships other than just

Pastoral societies differed from their agricultural because pastoral societies supported less people, since they had generally less productive economies, and the lived in scattered areas. They also generally offered women higher status, fewer restrictions, and a greater role in public life because they were needed, since people did not tend to specialize in things. Pastoral societies were also far more mobile, whereas in agricultural societies, people would have large populations because of their environment and their ability to grow food. They also lived in one area, and had had people who specialized in different things which brought down the status of women.

Compare and contrast life in foraging societies with life in agricultural societies after the Agricultural Revolution

The main difference between these two societies is that the herders hunted and gathered their food instead

People are generally inclined to associate the Neolithic period with better stone tools. However, this period also brought a series of advancements assisting individuals go from being hunter-gatherers to being herders and farmers. "With this change came settled villages, the wheel, pottery, and more" (Mindsparks 8).

In 10,000 B.C Paleolithic hunters made a gradual change from being hunters to becoming farmers. The Paleolithic era was an era of hunting whereas the Neolithic era was an era of farming. Both of the eras had proficient, but different ways of surviving. There are contrasting views on which era was more successful. The Paleolithic era was more successful than the Neolithic era because the Neolithic era led to diseases, wars and rigid class structures.

Many of the farmers were less healthy than the hunter-gatherers, the farmers even died, on average, earlier than the hunter-gatherers. Many of the farmers had more serious diseases than the hunter-gatherers did too. Some people, including the northeastern Australian people even saw their neighbors practicing domestication and farming but did not take up what their neighbors did because they preferred the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Some hunter-gatherers did, in a way, produce food. For example some Australians burned the land they hunted on to encourage new seeds to grow so they could eat them. A reason why the hunter-gather way of living got less popular is simply because over the years less wild food was available. Over the past 13,000 years the amount of animals and edible plants has got less prevalent. The reason why many people still believe that food production was better than hunting and gathering is because food production led to more people and more technological advancements like guns and

All the mass agricultural “advancements” were only solutions to the problems agriculture rose in the first place, such as: equality and social classes, human health, and disease. Human health is one of the reasons why agriculture hurt early humans.

The social and economic structures of early foraging societies are quite different from that of later agricultural societies. However, both societies share more similarities than one might think. Typically, all Paleolithic peoples were equal, but there were sometimes members that became more respected as a result of being courageous, skilled at hunting, etc. During the Neolithic Age, social divisions became more defined due to specialized labor and accumulated wealth. Foraging societies relied on loose cooperation to hunt big game for the community. Neolithic peoples were more advanced and had a specific order within their permanent settlements. Creativity in both societies was very clear. Foragers created bone sewing needles, figurines, and

As previously stated, one of the main issues that can arise from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle is a lack of confidence in one’s food supply. This is not as much of an issue in agriculture since humans have more control over variables in the food production process. However, according to research by Michael Hermanussen, early hunter-gatherers in Europe were on average 9 to 14 cm taller than Europeans from the 19th century. (Hermanussen, 2003) As the average height of a population tends to show a correlation with nutrition, it can be be inferred that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle had a significant nutritional edge on agriculture.

A part that came with agriculture was social classes. When the Neolithic revolution came along a greater population calls for more food. So for hunter gatherers it was too hard for them to go through a forest