Hunting and Sustainability

Although the pervasive role of humans in causing global climate change is a modern phenomenon, drastic climatic changes also affected people of the past and the ecosystems in which they lived.

At first, hunting of wild species and livestock farming were ecologically sustainable livelihoods. But as populations of humans and their livestock grew and the climate became drier, wildlife were increasingly pushed out of their habitats and people began hunting some species to extinction.

BEAST investigates how these events unfolded and changed the Egyptian society, where people both affected, and were affected by their environment.

Are there lessons for how we can live sustainably in marginal environments during today’s climate crisis?

Image: Ostracon with sketch of a Pharaoh hunting a lion. The king spears the lion, which has already been shot full of arrows, while his dog is also involved in the hunt. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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