From hunting gathering to growing food

Introduction

Hunter-gatherers were people who lived in the subcontinent over 2 million years ago. They are named so because their life depended on hunting wild animals, fish, birds and gathering fruits, seeds, and eggs, among others, by moving from one place to the other for survival. Archaeologists have recovered several tools used by such people in the past made of stone, bone, and wood to prove how efficient they were in what they did. 

How Did We Get to Know About Hunter-Gatherers?

 There are quite a few instances that showcase the existence of hunter-gatherers and how they survived. Some of these include:

1. Seeing the people’s tools used to cut bones and meat, scrape bark, or chop roots and fruit. 
2. Rivers and lakesides where good quality stones were available quickly to make stone tools. 
3. Sighting of the caves where such people lived with beautiful paintings on the walls, especially those in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. 
4. Traces of ashes were found near Kurnool caves, which meant fire by those people to roast meat, bring light, or scare away animals. 
5. Major changes in the climate showed a shift to warmer conditions which ultimately led to the development of grasslands. This also came with an increase in sheep, cattle, antelope, or goats (herbivores). The people then started learning about their food habits and breeding season to herding these animals themselves. 

What Marked the Beginning of Herding and Farming?

Back then, there was a time when grain-bearing grasses such as barley, rice, and wheat grew naturally in various parts of the subcontinent. People probably collected them as food and learned more about them as time went on. This might have given them the idea of growing their plants, making them farmers. 

The herding part maybe came into effect when they learned to attract and tame various animals by leaving food near the shelters. The very first animal to be tamed was a wild dog. Since animals such as pigs, cattle, and goats lived in herds and more often than not ate grass, people started protecting them and slowly became herders.

What Did Evolution Look Like for Hunter-Gatherers?

We see that these people started domesticating plants as and when time progressed. Through this process, they selected the plants prone to disease for domestication. The seeds from the plants were preserved and sown for new plant growth to have the same qualities. 

Now, it takes a long time to grow when you plant a seed. While some might happen in days, others might take weeks, months, or years to see any growth. This made them take a step back and settle down at one place to look after the plants by watering and weeding them till the time the grain ripened.

Since animals multiply naturally through reproduction, these people ensured they were well looked after when they realised the animals could provide two important food sources – milk and meat. This brought to the fore the concept of rearing the animals. 

Domestication was a prolonged and gradual procedure in several parts of the world, starting over 12,000 years ago. Interestingly, all the animal and plant products used today as food are a by-product of domestication. 

The earliest plants to be domesticated include:

1. Barley 
2. Wheat 

The earliest animals to be domesticated were:

1. Goat
2. Sheep

The Slow Change of Hunter-Gatherers to a Settled Life

Through research, archaeologists have found several traces of pit-houses or huts in sites such as Burzahom (a part of the present-day Kashmir) dug into the ground. 

These houses were meant to provide shelter during the winter months and often featured cooking hearths both outside and inside. This automatically suggested that the people had started to cook food either outdoors or indoors based on the weather. 

The stone tools found during the early days of research were polished to derive a fine cutting-edge to be used to build the house. 

During this time, several earthen pots were also found, which were typically decorated and used to store items. This suggested that people had started to use the pots for cooking and has since become an integral part of the current-day kitchen facilities as well. The people slowly began weaving cloth with materials such as cotton that could be easily grown. 

The transition was rocky to start with but ended up being very smooth as it kept on spreading. Initially, though there were quite a few of the hunting and gathering, while the others adopted the farming lifestyle, the rest tried to combine the activities based on the season. 

 From Hunting Gathering to Growing Wood – A Study on Mehrgarh

Mehrgarh is a fertile plain near the Bolan Pass, a crucial route into Iran. It is one of the places where people started learning how to grow wheat and barley, rear goats and sheep as it was one of the earliest villages known to man. 

Archaeologists found several animal bones, majorly pig, deer, goat, and sheep, in the area, along with remains of rectangular and square houses with more than four compartments each. Along with this, several burial sites have also been spotted at Mehrgarh. The burial sites had human bones and goat bones in them, which probably meant they believed in the afterlife and served food to the dead in the next world. 

Conclusion

Hunter-Gatherers were nomadic people who liked to hunt for their meal and other requirements to survive. Evolution, however, happened as they kept discovering the multi-use of plants, seeds, animals, and fire. This ultimately made them grow to become farmers and herders in the long run, before finally reaching the civilised human form that we find ourselves in today.