Ancient Culture

Hunters, Gatherers, and the Agricultural Revolution

A major milestone in human history was the development of tools and skills allowing humans to become successful hunters, thus providing food for their small groups.  However, this type of food retrieval was not always a sure bet, as often times there was no game to be killed or environmental/geographical factors impeded their game collection.  Despite the dangers, when this method was successful it offered days of sustenance to the groups of nomads.  Eventually though, the hunters were forced back out into the dangerous wild to search for more food.  For more information on these hunters/gatherers, visit here.  

These hunters first paved the way for organized societies but led brief lives due to their harsh and dangerous environments.  These nomads lived in small and scattered groups, thus infectious diseases like smallpox and measles were quite rare because the microorganisms responsible for them require high population densities which provide reservoirs of organisms.  Their population was kept low due to small number of offspring being produced, as they could only birth the number of individuals that they could carry with them and feed as they traveled.  Also, these nomadic groups did not stay put long enough to pollute water sources or deposit filth which attracts disease-spreading insects.  So, diseases of an epidemic level, other than those caused by poisons or toxins from plants and animals present in the wild, were probably quite rare.  Populations were simply too small to spread any disease on a massive level.    

Ancient Culture continued: the Agricultural Revolution