i. Primitive hunters share many characteristics with gatherers. Both groups know how to use fire, prepare food, manufacture tools and implements, and construct shelters. They are cognisant of local conditions and have the ability to exploit food resources.
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ii. Hunters and gatherers generally do not have domesticated food plants, domesticated animals (except dogs), permanent settlements, or high population densities.
iii. Hunters differ from gatherers in that they employ more sophisticated methods to secure food and depend much more on animals,
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iv. Hunting is primarily a communal activity, often requiring planned, large-scale expeditions and a very well developed division of labour. Almost every hunting group recognises this method of obtaining food as a co-operative venture and mobilises most of its members to help capture the prey.
Tracking down wild animals and protecting families against enemies can be conducted more efficiently in- groups.
v. The tools and implements utilised by hunters include a variety of traps, snares, and lethal weapons (i.e., bows and arrows and spears).
vi. Even though hunting requires a higher level of technology than that required by gathering, many of those who practice this economic activity today still have relatively low food productivity level and often live precariously close to starvation.
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vii. As it exists today, hunting occurs primarily in high-latitude zones, particularly in the arctic. In the middle of the nineteenth century, however, specialised hunters could be found throughout the Americas, in southern Africa, and in the interior of Australia.
viii. Typical of the people today who make a livins by hunting are the North American from skins and harpoons from bones. They display remarkable ingenuity in adapting animal products to satisfy their physical needs.
Farther south, in a few parts of Canada, occasional Indian tribes remain essentially at the hunting stage.
These Indians are lands men whose main targets are deer. Another high-latitude people who still subsist mainly on the harvest of wild animals are the Yukaghirs of Siberia.
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ix. The barren land of the centre, called tundra, is comprised of meagre vegetation (mosses, lichens, and shrubs).
This tundra vegetation provides an adequate diet for caribou and musk-ox, and these and other animals, in turn, furnish food for the humans who range over these large expanses in search of animal prey.
x. Primitive hunters can -be credited with maintaining a fine balance between the supply and the harvest of animal resources.
When it is realised that they killed only what they needed and wasted nothing (i.e., they used skins for shelter, tendons for cord, and bones for tools), they must be recognised for their conservation of natural resources.
xi. Primitive gatherers and hunters seem never to have destroyed their economic base by overharvesting the existing food supply, except when the techniques or tools for doing so (e.g., firearms) were introduced from other cultures.
xii. Only a few thousand People still make their living exclusively by hunting.
xiii. Many are under pressure to change their way of life and enter the commercial occupation of raising animals.
Those Eskimo who have abandoned hunting altogether find employment with private companies or with the Canadian or U.S. government, and often live in permanent coastal settlements.
Distribution
The Amazon basin (Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela), together with a few stretches within tropical
Africa, the northern fringe of Australia, the interior of New Guinea, and the interior portions of Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Thailand, and China)