Introduction

One of the most intriguing scientific discoveries has been that of the great variety in the modes and ranges of behavior of human beings as members of organized societies, what anthropologists refer to as culture. Even as late as the 19th to the 20th centuries, when the science of anthropology evolved, many human populations still lived in a great variety of biotic and physical environments, with economies based on the exploitation of wild food resources, both plant and animal. The entire continent of Australia, for example, was inhabited by peoples with this type of exploitation when the continent was colonized by Europeans. Much of North and South America was occupied by hunters and gatherers in the 16th century, and in many areas they survived as late as the 19th. Scattered groups of hunters and gatherers were also found in a number of regions of the Old World. With a few exceptions, recent hunters and gatherers were organized into very small bands that shifted residence seasonally in response to factors affecting their food supply and had an essentially egalitarian social structure.

An even greater number of food producers, organized into relatively smallscale societies with an essentially egalitarian social structure, have also survived into the recent past. Many societies consisted of a single settlement, in this case, a permanent village rather than a nomadic band. In others, sets of villages were organized into larger, but still egalitarian societies, called tribes by anthropologists.