End of an era?

IQALUIT — A famous American biologist is predicting that hunter-gatherer cultures will die out by the end of the decade.

According to Jared Diamond, a professor at the University of California Medical Center in Los Angeles and the bestselling author of Guns, Germs and Steel, “the few remaining bands of hunter-gatherers will abandon their ways, disintegrate or die out, thereby ending our millions of years of commitment to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.”

Diamond made the comments in an article last week in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

According to scholars, hunting and gathering is the main way people acquired food for most of human history.

Agriculture arose about 10,000 years ago in the Middle East. Since then, agricultural societies have swept across the world, largely displacing and conquering hunter-gatherers.

Only a few hunter-gatherer societies remain in the world, in Africa, Australia, the Amazon and the circumpolar North.