SOCI 102/122

Diversity of Peoples and Cultures

Session 3 – Patterns of Subsistence: Food

Foragers
Lecturer: Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, UG
Contact Information: kodzovi@ug.edu.gh

College of Education
School of Continuing and Distance Education
2014/2015 – 2016/2017
 Session Overview
• Humans survive in the environment they find themselves not only through
ensuring safety from threats of wild animals, but they also need food to satisfy
their hunger and water to quench their thirst;

• Survival of humans in their environment, therefore require adaptation, safety

and food security;

• This session introduces students to earliest attempts humans made to survive or

to secure a living for themselves;

• These are hunting and gathering adaptive strategies also known as foraging;

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 2

 Objectives

At the end of the session, the student should be able to:

• identify the earliest mechanisms/techniques through which humans

have tried to satisfy their survival needs—which we call adaptive
strategies

• describe the characteristic features of these adaptive strategies

• explain why these mechanisms still survive in some parts of the

modern world.

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 3

 Session Outline

In this session the following sub-topics will be treated:

• Description of hunting and gathering societies.

• Characteristic features of foraging societies.
• Location of foraging societies in the modern world.
• The Present State and Future Prospects of foraging societies.

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 4

 Reading List
• Assimeng, M. (1999), Social Structure of Ghana, Tema, Ghana Publishing Corporation.
•
• Searles, R. T. & V. L. Lee (2002), Faces of Culture, Australia: Wadsworth.

• Kottak, C. P. (2004), Cultural Anthropology, Boston, McGraw Hill Corporation.

 
• Kottak, C. P. (2004), Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity, Boston, McGraw Hill
Corporation.
  
• Nolan, P. & G. Lenski, (2004 or any of the newer editions), Human Societies: An introduction to
macrosociology, Boulder Paradigm Publishers.
 
• Nukunya, G. K. (2021), Tradition and change in Ghana: An introduction to sociology, Accra,
Ghana University Press.
 
• Sanderson, S. K. & A. S. Alderson (2005 or its newer editions), World societies: the evolution of
human life, Boston, Pearson Education Inc.
Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 5
 Topic One: Description of Hunting and
Gathering Societies
Introduction
• Over very long period of history, humans have
struggled to exist in various environments, and they
have developed multiple strategies or means of
survival with increasing sophistication to survive or
make a living;

• These various strategies to survive is what we refer

to as adaptive strategies;

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 6

 Topic One: Description of Hunting and
Gathering Societies cont’d.

• The types of adaptive strategies they have developed

are hunting-gathering, horticulture (subsistence
agriculture), pastoralism, agriculture,
industrialization and different accompanying forms of
distribution;

• The first topic is hunting-gathering adaptive strategy;

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 7

 Topic One: Description of Gathering Societies
cont’d.
• Have you ever tracked a wild animal in the forest or
bush;
• What about gathering and eating wild berries from
the forest;
• Humankind, for much of its existence, looked for food
in the wild;
• They lived in small groups enough so as to have
sufficient wild plant and animal life for their diets;
• The earliest subsistence pattern is called food
gathering or hunting and gathering;
Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 8
 Topic One: Description of Gathering Societies
cont’d.
• Those who engaged in food gathering or hunting and
gathering are called foragers;
• Foragers have a kind of lifestyle organized around
hunting, fishing, and gathering of edible plants;
• Foragers had skills for converting natural resources of
their environment to their own use;
• The groups travelled from place to place where they
could find subsistence;
• They built shelters in temporary camps;

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 9

 Topic Two: Characteristics of Foraging
Societies.
• They had the technology to make bow-and-arrows;
• They stalked game and killed it using stone knives they
created themselves;
• Women provided most food through gathering of
edible plants and able to distinguish similar plants from
poisonous ones;
• They shared food so that everyone could enjoy in the
abundance of nature;
• Although division of labour was relatively undeveloped
what they had was based on age and gender;
Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 10
 Topic Two: Characteristics of Foraging
Societies cont’d.
• They lived together and solved their problems of social
organization;
• They made collective decisions of where to hunt ;
• They provided the context in which dependent children
could grow to maturity;
• Due to their mobility, foragers have few material
possessions;
• They usually live in bands determined by kinship
relations;

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 11

 Topic Two: Characteristics of Foraging
Societies cont’d.
• Differences in environments created different
patterns of foraging;
• For example, in the hot climates, foragers have a
greater variety of plant and animal species than those
in the cold climate; or some foragers specialize in
fishing from the sea, rivers, lagoon;
• Irrespective of their environments, all foragers are
mainly dependent on what nature supplies them;
• Their small egalitarian groups lack central leader and
treat all members of the same sex and age as equal;
Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 12
 Topic Two: Characteristics of Foraging Societies cont’d.

• Hunter-Gatherers are
nomadic meaning when
resources became scarce,
the group moved to a new
area to find sustenance;
• These societies were
common until several
hundred years ago, but
today only a few hundred
remain in existence;

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 13

 Topic Two: Characteristics of Foraging Societies cont’d.

• Whatever social distinctions existed were based

mainly on age. Older people provided leadership,
and revered as having wisdom and the young ones
gave respect to them;
• Foraging societies are mostly “egalitarian” the few
social differences we can perceive are based on
differences in age and gender;
• Today, hunter-gatherer groups are quickly
disappearing as the world’s population explodes.

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 14

 Topic Three: Location of Foraging Societies in
the World.
• Historically foragers are found in many parts of the
world. For example, in Africa, Asia, Europe, North
America, South America, etc.;
• In Australian foraging tribes are referred to as the
“aborigines,”;
• In Africa, the Bambuti, are a group of pygmy - like
hunter-gatherers residing in the Democratic Republic
of Congo, and the San of the Kalahari desert;
• The Inuit are found in Alaska and across the Arctic –
some prefer to call them Eskimos;
Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 15
 Location of Foragers
• The Ayoreo are
armadillo hunters
who live in the
northern Chaco of
Paraguay
• And Santa Cruz and
Chiquitania in Bolivia;
all in South America;

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 16

Location of Foragers

• The Inuit are

found in Alaska
and hunt walrus
on frozen ice;
• This is an image
of walrus hunted
by the Inuit in
Alaska;
Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 17
 Topic Three: Location of Foraging Societies in
the World.
• One other group of foragers are the Awá of the Amazonia
rainforest;
• The Awá are the indigenous people of Brazil in the Amazon
rain forest;
• Estimated at 350 people, about 100 of them believably
never had contact with other people;
• They are endangered human species because of logging
interest in their territory in the Amazon forest;
• The Awá depend on a range of foods from the forest
including honey, papayas and Brazil nuts;
Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 18
 The Reindeer Hunters of Siberia
• There are the reindeer
herders of Siberia
called the Nenets,
• They are native to
Siberia, the north of
Russia;
• There may be other
reindeer herders across
Europe who are not
foragers by nature;

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 19

 Reindeer in Siberia
• Wild tundra reindeer in
central Siberia Yakutia
region;

• The tundra is the coldest

of the biomes, the area
receives low precipitation
making it similar to a
desert;

• Siberia is a vast Russian

province encompassing
most of Northern Russia;
Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 20
 Hunting or Foraging Societies (cont’d): In
Historical and Contemporary Times
• In contemporary times, foragers exist in many nation-
states and often their ways of life are coming under
threat from modernization and development
processes
• However, some few have held tenaciously to their
way of life either because their environment
continuous to supply their needs or governments or
colonialists have not found their environments
attractive enough for exploitation and development

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 21

 Hunting or Foraging Societies (cont’d): In
Historical and Contemporary Times
• Some so-called modern people continue to engage
in foraging;
• For example, in Africa people continue to hunt in
forest, fish in lakes, seas, rivers, lay traps for
animals, gather mushrooms, snails, mangoes, etc.;
• Even though societies are modernizing and fast
developing, gathering and hunting activities will
remain no matter its scale;

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 22

 Conclusions
In this session we have:
• tried to explain who foragers are and what foraging means;
• explained the technology the foragers used to create tools
for protection and hunting;
• touched on their social organization;
• given examples of foragers in Africa and beyond and what
they have been hunting;
• discussed where they are located in the world;
• Assessed their historical and present state;

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 23

 Questions for Discussion
1. Describe the social organization of the foragers.

2. Who are described as foragers? List four areas that

foragers are located in the world.

3. Explain why foragers do not live sedentary life.

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 24