Hunting and gathering culture, also called foraging culture, any group of people that depends primarily on wild foods for subsistence. Until about 12,000 to 11,000 years ago, when agriculture and animal domestication emerged in southwest Asia and in Mesoamerica, all peoples were hunters and gatherers. Their strategies have been very diverse, depending greatly upon the local environment; foraging strategies have included hunting or trapping big game, hunting or trapping smaller animals, fishing, gathering shellfish or insects, and gathering wild plant foods such as fruits, vegetables, tubers, seeds, and nuts. Most hunters and gatherers combine a variety of these strategies in order to ensure a balanced diet. Where both hunting and gathering are practiced, adult men usually hunt larger game and women and their children and grandchildren collect stationary foods such as plants, shellfish, and insects; forager mothers generally wean their children at about three or four years of age, and young children possess neither the patience nor the silence required to stalk game. However, the capture of smaller game and fish can be accomplished by any relatively mobile individual, and techniques in which groups drive mammals, birds, and fish into long nets or enclosures are actually augmented by the noise and movement of children.