Hunter Gatherers
300,000 – 10,000 years ago
Mobility, diet, and the social structures that preceded permanent settlement.
Every claim in this period carries its evidence with it.
Open-air and cave sites, portable and parietal art, burials with grave goods, and the earliest monumental construction.
- 01
Complex social organisation, long-distance material exchange and monumental building all predate farming.
- 02
Late Pleistocene and early Holocene foragers managed landscapes with fire and selective harvesting.
- 03
Art traditions run deep in time and across continents, not from one centre.
Each row states the method, what is actually measured, and — the part usually skipped — what the result does not settle.
| Method | Material | What it constrains |
|---|---|---|
| Radiocarbon dating | Charcoal, bone collagen and plant remains in occupation layers | Dates the material sampled, which may be older than the layer that contains it. |
| Zooarchaeology and archaeobotany | Faunal assemblages and macro-botanical remains | Reconstructs diet and season of occupation. Population size stays an estimate. |
| Isotopic sourcing | Obsidian, shell and stone traced to geological sources | Demonstrates movement of material, not necessarily movement of people. |
How egalitarian were forager societies?
Rich burials and monumental labour argue against a single uniform model.
What role did foragers play in megafaunal extinctions?
Human predation and rapid climate change overlap in most regions.
“Hunter-gatherers lived hand to mouth with no spare capacity.”
Monumental sites and elaborate burials require organised surplus labour before agriculture.
“Foragers had no effect on their environment.”
Fire management and selective harvesting reshaped landscapes at scale.
- How much coastal evidence was lost to postglacial sea-level rise?
- How were monumental projects organised without permanent hierarchy?
- What social structures preceded the first villages?
Upper Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic site reports
Antiquity / Journal of World Prehistory
Palaeolithic art dating studies
Science / PNAS
Where Hunter Gatherers connects to the rest of the ancient record — the worlds it belongs to, the chapters it sits in, the documents that record it, and the questions still open.
Evidence Files
All evidence files →Göbekli Tepe
Şanlıurfa, Turkey · c. 9500 – 8000 BCE
Did monumental construction precede agriculture — and if so, what does that do to the standard model of civilization?
Open question in Hunter Gatherers
Doggerland
North Sea · c. 18,000 – 6,000 BCE
How much human history is sitting under post-glacial sea level rise?
Open question in Hunter Gatherers
Yonaguni Monument
Okinawa, Japan · Disputed
Is the Yonaguni formation carved, natural, or natural rock modified by people?
Open question in Hunter Gatherers