What did hunter-gatherers eat

Before talking about what a hunter-gatherer eats it’s important to know what one actually is. As the name suggests it is a person who lives by obtaining food through the methods of hunting animals and gathering wild food, because of this way of living this means that farmed crops were out the question and so were many of the products associated with them such as plant oil and linen.

Living by hunting and gathering has been much more popular in the world for longer than conventional farming, but since the early iron age farming took over as the most popular method as it was not only more productive, but also necessary to sustain the population growth. With growing societies the only way to feed everyone was to produce your own food in bulk, as local wildlife supplies would become exhausted and did not guarantee food like farming did, and so the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was gradually forced out as populations grew.

When did hunter-gatherers exist exactly?

The earliest stone tools date from around 2.5 million years ago and have included spear heads and knives, but as for modern day humans the history of hunting and gathering societies started as soon as there were people, or whoever modern day people evolved from at least. During this time the world would have been very different, sea levels would have been much lower and the population would have been tiny, with the global population in 2000 BCE estimated at under 30 million people.

This would mean an enormous amount of wild land complete with its range of plants and animals who flourished in the rich wilds and all completely untouched by mankind and its creations. This is how people could survive living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the first place as animals would have massively outnumbered humans and fish populations would have next to no one reducing them.

What they would have eaten exactly would depend on where in the world they lived, but for the purpose of this answer i will use hunter-gatherer societies in the British isles during the early iron age as an example, which started around 800 BCE.

Hunting Animals

Hunting would have been done using spears and bows and would have mostly happened in large groups. Deer, goat, sheep, boar and wild cows would have been the intended catch, but smaller game such as birds, squirrels, beavers and rodents would have also been hunted or trapped.

There are many sites across the British isles that include bones of these animals, and even though animals such as bears, wolves and mountain lions were present in the country they were normally not hunted for food as meat eating animals are much more prone to ailments such as intestinal parasites amongst other things, and in an age when there’s no such thing as medicine eating such an animal could be a death sentence. There is evidence of these animals being eaten occasionally, but often when people had a choice they would only kill such creatures for their hide or their societies protection.

Gathering from the Sea

Shellfish and seafood was a massive part of their diet and its no coincidence these early communities clung to coastlines. Shellfish was always and still is in abundance around the coast of Britain and was the only way to guarantee meat for dinner without having to hunt.

There are still huge ancient mounds of empty shells around the coast of Britain were these communities are known to have lived with some of the biggest ones in Scotland, and since they are available all year round they were a major part of the diet of early people.

The shellfish they mostly ate were beach dwelling mollusc’s, such as crab, limpets, cockles, mussels and winkles, with the more exotic types like scallops and oysters being too much trouble to dive for in a time when scuba gear didn’t exist.

Fish was also a popular choice for the hunter-gatherer, with most fishing being done with a spear as iron age fishing lines weren’t exactly the best. Salmon, trout, flounder, pike, perch and basically any fish that’s in water deep enough to stand up to your waist in was on the menu. Unlike with land animals, no one brought river fish or shellfish here from other countries like the Romans did by bringing rabbits to Britain, and so the seafood diet of our ancestors remains largely the same with the only difference being the size of local fish populations.

Plants

Plants would have been relied on heavily throughout the year and especially during the winter. Animals can migrate and you aren’t guaranteed to be able to catch any fish, but a tree or bush isn’t going anywhere. Even today plants like blackberries and nettles can be found almost anywhere and in a time when the wilderness would have been 99% of the country you wouldn’t struggle to find something to eat.

Even though hunter-gatherers didn’t farm they still had access to grains growing in the wild, with barley and rye being the most common as wheat is believed to have been introduced from an eastern country at some point during the mid to late bronze age.

Wild food is largely seasonal and would have been gathered whenever available. Spring would see mostly salad type leaves and edible root vegetables like cat-tails and burdock, summer would mostly consist of berries and the fall would be all about grain and nuts. Acorns would be high on the list of things to gather as they can be found in huge quantities and dried to last the winter. After washing the tannin out by soaking in running water they can be dried again and crushed into a flour to be baked into biscuits on a hot stone or mixed into other dishes.

All types of herbs and even edible flowers such as primrose and wild garlic flowers were consumed at stages through the year whenever they were in season, but the most important thing to remember is that no one can be certain exactly what they ate as plant matter would long have decomposed and turned into soil since the days of our ancestors.

Hunter-gatherer cooking methods

During the bronze and iron ages, people could make metal cooking pots which allowed them to boil things, which was the preferred method of cooking meat. Roasting chunks of meat on a stick over an open fire was the easiest method, but archeological digs around the country have revealed time and time again the use of cooking pots, which suggests it to be the preferred method.

Since no one had any kind of written language in the British Isles during the Iron Age, there are no records of any kind that detail how people cooked their food, so we can only speculate as to how they would have done this. One interesting find from central Europe shows evidence of a ground oven dating back to around 29,000 BCE, but these kinds of finds are extremely rare due to the evidence not being able to survive in most conditions for thousands of years.