Any person that depends primarily on wild foods for substance is referred to as a hunter-gatherer or forager. The hunter-gatherers' strategies were very diverse, an aspect that was mainly affected by the local environment they originated. The different strategy included trapping or hunting both the small and big animals, fishing, gathering shellfish, insects, vegetables, seeds, tubers, seeds, and nuts. To ensure the family takes a balanced diet, the hunters had to combine a variety of these strategies when hunting and gathering.
When going about hunting and gathering, individuals needed to occupy large pieces of land. The large areas provided a variety of animals and plants to get as food that would also last them for long, even though the drought periods. So for the hunters and gatherers to construct permanent structures, they had to be sure of a constant supply of food and water. Also, another important aspect was that they had to ensure they do not exhaust food that quickly. Therefore, they had to have small social groups. Members of the extended families or individual related were the individuals that comprised the social groups
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The men, women, and children took part in the hunting and gathering process. While adult women and children focused on stationary foods like plants and insects, the adult men concentrated in hunting the larger game. The young children of the forage mothers had to get weaned during the hunting and gathering escapades. These because young children lacked the patience required during the process of stalking as well as they did not possess the silenced needed. But again the children's noise and movement helped a lot and was used as a technique when it came to driving birds, mammals and fish into large enclosures or nets. Also, any relatively mobile individual was able to capture the small game and fish. By around 1500 CE, the proportion of cultures that depended solely on hunting and gathering had begun getting diminished.
Despite all the above ways that the hunters strived to survive in a right way, they also had a bad side. The environment that hunters and gatherers happened to populate, they were able to inhabit and dominate. The bad side of the hunter-gather extended to not only having a group that was known as the bushman but also brought adverse effects to the environment they habited. The bushman operated in an uncivilized manner, soothing that lead to numerous fights. Due to these, there was security issues that made the hunters and gathers never feel safe when hunting or moving to new locations.
On the environment side, hunting and gathering are said to be the leading practice that leads to the extinction of rare species over 100,000 years ago. Since these individuals depended on hunting, both the small and large game was at risk because they were the primary source of food. Another aspect that leads to the extinction of some species is the overhunting of the hunters that concentrated on a particular species. In every continent, the flightless birds and the mega faunal animals diminished as a result of the human action. Apart from the animals, the various plants were never spared either. The gatherers uprooted the entire flora that was deemed undesirable in the process, promoting the growth of the specific plant. These also led to the diminishing of the wild plants. Some of the effects witnessed currently date back to the practice that was done by the hunters and gatherers. This includes the alteration on their habitat in a significant way. Before they mastered the art of domesticating plants, the early humans found numerous methods that affected the ecosystem.
