Band (anthropology)
In anthropology, bands are the tiniest societies, consisting typically of 5-80 people, most or all of them close relatives by birth or by marriage. In effect, a band is an extended family or several related extended families. Today, autonomous bands are almost confined to the most remote parts of New Guinea and Amazonia, but there were many others that have only recently fallen under state control or been assimilated or exterminated. They include many or most African Pygmies, southern African San hunter-gatherers (so-called Bushmen), Aboriginal Australians, Eskimos (Inuit), and Native Americans of some resource-poor areas of the Americas such as Tierra del Fuego and the northern boreal forests; all these modern bands are or were nomadic hunter-gatherers rather than settled food producers.  Until at least 40,000 years ago, probably all humans lived in bands, and most still did as recently as 11,000 years ago.