Hunting Prey and Gathering Edibles

When a group of people live together and do not have farmland or animals, they survive by hunting and collecting edible plants. There are still areas of the world where hunting and gathering is the lifestyle of choice or necessity. The hunters and gatherers work as a team and still do. One strength of the early hunters and gatherers was their ability to adapt to different climates and environments.

A Mutual Goal

Hunters and gatherers have the same goal: to survive. The only difference is that the hunters hunt while the gatherers gather. The group subsists on the resources they find in the area where they. Hunter-gatherers frequently move to take advantage of various foods as they become available in certain places. Hunter-gatherers take advantage of the resources available in any given territory.

Sexual Division

There is usually a sexual division between the hunters and gatherers. The men hunt and the women gather, but this isn't always the case. In some cultures, the women hunt with the men. One way women participated in hunting was to track down prey for the men.

Evolution

According to an article in The Telegraph in the UK, the reason men were and are hunters and women were and are gatherers is because of the kind of brain that each sex has, which is the result of evolution. Men, the hunters, needed to observe from afar while hunting prey. Women became skilled at searching immediate areas within reach of food. The pathways in the brain for processing near visual information are better in women, whereas the pathways for far visual information processing are better in men. Psychologist Helen Stancey of Hammersmith and West London College explains that these differences in the visual process in men and women may be due to the hunter-gatherer evolutionary legacy.

Mothers

Another good reason for the sexual division among hunters and gatherers is that women take care of the children and must stay close to them or take them along. It is easier to gather berries and other edibles with a baby in your arms or strapped to your back than it is to hunt prey and carry it home.