<P> Most hunter - gatherers are nomadic or semi-nomadic and live in temporary settlements . Mobile communities typically construct shelters using impermanent building materials, or they may use natural rock shelters, where they are available . </P> <P> Some hunter - gatherer cultures, such as the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, lived in particularly rich environments that allowed them to be sedentary or semi-sedentary . </P> <P> Hunter - gatherers tend to have an egalitarian social ethos, although settled hunter - gatherers (for example, those inhabiting the Northwest Coast of North America) are an exception to this rule . Nearly all African hunter - gatherers are egalitarian, with women roughly as influential and powerful as men . Karl Marx defined this socio - economic system as primitive communism . </P> <P> The egalitarianism typical of human hunters and gatherers is never total, but is striking when viewed in an evolutionary context . One of humanity's two closest primate relatives, chimpanzees, are anything but egalitarian, forming themselves into hierarchies that are often dominated by an alpha male . So great is the contrast with human hunter - gatherers that it is widely argued by palaeoanthropologists that resistance to being dominated was a key factor driving the evolutionary emergence of human consciousness, language, kinship and social organization . </P>

Hunting and gathering is primarily associated with what political system