All through the Paleolithic, which constitutes 99% of human history, humans lived in small, more or less nomadic communities of hunter-gatherers, in anthropological terms: in bands, egalitarian groups of fewer than 100 individuals. The carrying capacity of a territory is strictly limited for hunters-gatherers: the land can feed only so many people. This is certainly the case for the sub-Arctic lowland zone of northwestern Europe during the fourth Ice Age, during the Late Paleolithic, when the lands between the Meuse and the Oder rivers could provide for an estimated 1200 people. Models derived from anthropology may throw some light on the life of Paleolithic bands from about 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, that is bands of members of the genus Homo sapiens. It is doubtful whether such models also hold good for the Neanderthal and other early humans. A community of hunters-gatherers must have employed clever strategies to survive: they tried to provide food and other essentials such as animal skins for clothing and tents and raw materials for tool making with a minimum of effort and a minimum of risk. We know something of their food patterns from the analysis of refuse at their campsites and a study of the wear of tools. Factors such as food taboos that might have interfered with the rational choices being made are difficult or impossible to reconstruct, but nevertheless have to be kept in mind.
Mobility was most important: hunter-gatherers must have been on the move from the one camp to the other in order to profit from seasonal changes across several ecological zones. They must also have ranged beyond their own economic territory, into what we may call their social territory, in order to come into contact with other bands, especially to exchange marriage partners. To reproduce successfully, the single band was too small: a human group that can reproduce itself must be at least some 175 individuals large. Probably the females were the ones who were exchanged between bands, and who were incorporated into the bands of their male partners. It seems likely that the bands who shared a social territory were a homogenous group as far as dialect and certain elements of their culture were concerned, though scattered across a huge area.
World History
