Live Like a Hunter Gatherer

Ages 7 to 11

Live Like a Hunter Gatherer is an informative and immersive guide to theStone Age, written by a real-life hunter gatherer!If you imagined that all Stone Age people lived in caves, were not veryclever, not very clean and said “Ugg” a lot, then think again. Marking thestart of all human history, the Stone Age lasted around 3.5 million years (thelast part of that was only 71 grandparents ago!). Delve into that incredibletime with this book packed full of amazing facts, information, crafts,storytelling and myth debunking to find out what it was really like tolive as a hunter gatherer. 

Many of our Stone Age ancestors’ everyday needs were similar to ours –how to keep warm, where to sleep and what to eat and drink. We find out howthey met those needs, what a typical day was like, what medicine they used andeven how they had fun – all brought to life with beautifully detailedillustrations. Dotted through the book are step-by-step craft activities andrecipes that give you first-hand experience of some vital Stone Age skills –making a Mesolithic shelter, fat lamps, a digging stick, creating cave art,making a bow and arrow and a fishing hook are just a few.  

A fictional tribe member pops up throughout the book to tell us abouther life, describing the sights, sounds, smells and emotions she experiences.The safety of a warm cave with flickering firelight and other tribe membersnearby, the gnawing feeling of hunger when food is scarce and the excitedrelief when a deer is hunted.

About the Author

Naomi Walmsley runs Outback2Basics with her partner Dan Westall from their patch of woodland in Shropshire, UK. Specialising in bushcraft and Stone Age skills, they provide unique experiences for schoolchildren and teachers to connect to nature. Naomi is a qualified bushcraft instructor and Forest School Leader and believes that every child should be able to safely light a fire and have at least ten uses for a stick by the age of ten. She has also written for many magazines, including Bushcraft Survival Skills, LivingWoods and Juno.So passionate are they about the Stone Age way of life, they have actually lived and breathed it for themselves. Naomi and Dan undertook a five-month Stone Age immersion experience in the US in 2010, living in the wilderness without any modern equipment, profoundly influencing their lives and teaching.Recently (Sept 2020), they appeared in Channel 4's fascinating documentary Surviving the Stone Age. A three-part series filmed in Bulgaria with six other Stone-Age experts living as a tribe of hunter gatherers for one month. Naomi has co-authored two previous books for GMC Publications Forest School Adventure and Urban Forest School. http://www.outback2basics.co.uk/ Instagram and Twitter: @outback2basicsMia Underwood is a designer and illustrator based in Brighton, UK. She loves a creative challenge and works with traditional and digital illustration as well as creating 3D characters. Being half Danish she particularly enjoys creating scenes with characters that conjure up the dreamlike and mysterious imaginarywoodlands within Scandinavia.