Problems in the Study of Hunters and Gatherers

Cultural Man has been on earth for some 2,000,000 years; for over 99 per cent of this period he has lived as a hunter-gatherer. To date, the hunting way of life has been the most successful and persistent adaptation man has ever achieved. Ever since the origin of agriculture, Neolithic peoples have been steadily expanding at the expense of the hunters. Taking hunters as they are found, anthropologists have naturally been led to the conclusion that their life was a constant struggle for survival. In 10,000 B.C., on the eve of agriculture, hunters covered most of the habitable globe, and appeared to be generally most successful in those areas which later supported the densest populations of agricultural peoples. Many of the best-known studies of hunter-gatherers have relied on ethnographic reconstructions of situations that were no longer intact. Hunting and gathering refers to a mode of subsistence, and many of the conference papers discussed problems of ecology and economic organization.