A Guide to Hunting and Gathering Period

By: Lou Escuyos

Historians are often asked: what is the use or relevance of studying History? Why on earth does it matter what happened long ago? The answer is that History is inescapable. It studies the past and the legacies of the past in the present. Far from being a 'dead' subject, it connects things through time and encourages its students to take a long view of such connections.

All people and peoples are living histories. To take a few obvious examples: communities speak languages that are inherited from the past. They live in societies with complex cultures, traditions and religions that have not been created on the spur of the moment. People use technologies that they have not themselves invented. And each individual is born with a personal variant of an inherited genetic template, known as the genome, which has evolved during the entire life-span of the human species. So understanding the linkages between past and present is absolutely basic for a good understanding of the condition of being human. That, in a nutshell, is why History matters. It is not just 'useful', it is essential.

In line with this, the hunting and gathering period allowed us to transcend from having incomplete materials to modern technological things and programs that enable us to survive in an easier way. People in this era used to rely only on the environment, thus utilizing the natural resources. This period is a clear depiction that human origins survived because of the materials and animals that surrounded them, unlike now, people survive and live longer due to the inventions such as the medicines and machines.