A hunter-gatherer is a person who lives in a society where food is collected by hunting wild animals or by searching for wild, edible plants. Until the earliest development of agriculture, hunting and gathering was the way that humans had survived since prehistoric times. Here are some key characteristics of hunter-gatherer societies:
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Food: Most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local naturally occurring sources. Hunter-gatherers rely on hunting animals and foraging for food, such as wild vegetation and other resources.
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Lifestyle: Most hunter-gatherers are nomadic or semi-nomadic and live in temporary settlements. Mobile communities typically construct shelters using impermanent building materials, or they may use natural rock shelters, where they are available.
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Culture: Hunter-gatherer culture is a type of subsistence lifestyle that relies on hunting and fishing animals and foraging for wild vegetation and other resources. Anthropologists have paid a great deal of attention to recent hunter-gatherer societies in the quest to explain human culture.
Today, only a few contemporary societies of uncontacted people are still classified as hunter-gatherers, and many supplement their foraging activity with horticulture or pastoralism.
