With limited resources, these hunter-gatherers worked to gather enough food to survive and make a basic shelter. Basic, temporary shelters were made in caves and other areas with protective rock formations, as well as open-air settlements where possible. Early hunter-gatherers were nomadic (they had no permanent homes and moved around). They moved when the environment forced them to. A lack of food, predators, or deadly storms would force humans to move to an area with more resources. By 50,000 years ago, huts made from wood, rock, and bone were becoming more common, fueling a shift to semi-permanent homes in areas with a lot of resources. The remains of man’s first known year-round shelters did not appear until 23,000 years.

From their earliest days, the hunter-gatherer diet included various grasses, tubers, fruits, seeds, and nuts. Lacking the means to kill larger animals, they procured meat from smaller animals or through scavenging. With the introduction of spears, dating back at least 500,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers became capable of tracking larger prey to feed their groups. Since the work was divided by gender. Men typically went out hunter larger animals while the women gathered food like grasses, tubers, fruits, seeds, and nuts.