This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: In the ancient past, when human communities were small and the only way to travel was by walking, what were the chances of meeting a stranger? And what would happen next?
We know that ancient people lived by foraging their food from wild plants and animals, but we know a lot less about their social lives. Would there be conflict as people defended territory? Or would they choose to share?
Sometimes survival depends on choosing wisely between these options. Defending a territory has a cost, and it's not always worth it. To understand how ancient people interacted with one another, we can start by looking at the food they ate.
When food resources are densely clustered in predictable ways, it makes sense to establish and maintain a territory around them. When resources are sparsely distributed, they are harder to defend. One example of territoriality in modern foraging people comes from the Okiek in the mountains of Kenya.
Here, families control the crucially important activity of honey harvesting. In contrast, foraging groups that live in places where the next meal is less predictable also tend to be less territorial. For example, until recently !Kung foragers in the arid parts of the Kalahari Desert searched for animals to hunt across wide areas, and boundaries between groups were much more fluid.
The strategies used by the Okiek and the !Kung are different solutions to the same problem: weighing the risk of going hungry against the risk of unfriendly social encounters. Applying this principle to archaeological finds can reveal clues about ancient human social organization. The problem is how to find food remains from the ancient past.
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