Abstract
It has often been assumed that peoples living today as foragers in tropical rain forests are remnants of paleolithic populations that have been subsisting in their forest habitats for millennia and have only recently come into contact with sources of domesticated plants and animals. Independently, the two of us have published articles that challenge this view and propose the hypothesis that hunter- gatherers could never have lived in tropical rain forest without direct or indirect access to cultivated foods. This article serves as an introduction to six articles in this issue of Human Ecology, all devoted to this hypothesis. To provide background for this journal's readers, we summarize here our original articles.
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Headland, T.N., Bailey, R.C. Introduction: Have hunter-gatherers ever lived in tropical rain forest independently of agriculture?. Hum Ecol 19, 115–122 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00888742
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00888742