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An older discussion of the more general observation about caloric production was published in 2000: https://www.unm.edu/~hkaplan/KaplanHillLancasterHurtado_200

An older discussion of the more general observation about caloric production was published in 2000: https://www.unm.edu/~hkaplan/KaplanHillLancasterHurtado_2000_LHEvolution.pdf https://www.unm.edu/~hkaplan/KaplanHillLancasterHurtado_2000... The cultures surveyed are in Africa, Australia, India... The article you link is an analysis of a burial mound in the Andean highlands and surveys a few other excavations in the Americas. It concludes "The sample is sufficient to warrant the conclusion that female participation in early big-game hunting was likely nontrivial—greater than the trace levels of participation observed among ethnographic hunter-gatherers and contemporary societies.". This leaves several questions open -- their survey is of the Americas, and we do have to acknowledge that widespread female participation in hunting is very unusual to find in hunter-gatherer societies today. Which one represents the ancestral state? At present, it seems that in most societies, males contribute most of the calories.

Retric 5y ago
That study is looking at a very different population than primitive hunter gathering. Food acquisition data have been collected since the early 1980s among the Northern Ache of eastern Paraguay, shortly after peaceful contact. All ethnographic evidence suggests that the Northern Ache were hunter-gatherers without horticulture before contact in the 1970s (Hill & Hurtado, 1996; Clastres, 1998). Since then the Ache fre- quently trek into the forest with family groups and return to a permanent reser- vation settlement after several days to a month. The Ache have exclusive use rights to the Mbaracayu Reserve where they are allowed to hunt with hands, machetes, and bows and arrows but not using firearms or dogs. In 1998, the Ache at the Arroyo Bandera settlement, where most of the data in this study were collected, spent 14% of all person days (range 0–50% for individuals) on trek (McMillan, 2001). During the pre-contact period (i.e., prior to the mid 1970s), hunters spent almost every healthy day of their lives hunting, with the exception of bad weather days. On the reservation today, school and then horticul- tural activities and wage labor compete with hunting for a young man’s time. Thus, by the year 2000, most young men had very little hunting experience. In May 2000, a selected group of 11 men, ages 14–37, who were relatively inexperienced at hunting, agreed to participate in a hunting experi- ment. https://www.unm.edu/~robwal/achehunt.pdf https://www.unm.edu/~robwal/achehunt.pdf
- solidsnack9000 5y ago
  It looks at several peoples. None of them are primitive enough, to your thinking? What are the peoples we should be looking at? Unfortunately, we can't go back in time to see what those people in the Americas, in the study you linked to, were actually doing, 9000 years ago. One of the points of the study is that men provide a majority of calories in many types of societies -- that it is a relatively common finding. We'll never be able to visit people in the ancestral state -- starting 200000 years ago -- but this idea does dovetail with what we know about other species where there's long term pair bonding. Typically, the male in those species contributes a great deal of calories to the offspring.
  - Retric 5y ago
    We can look at historic documentation of primitive cultures and archaeological evidence, which is of course biased but hardly useless. Single parents with children are documented as being at a significant disadvantage, but that’s true after the loss of either parent. Food sharing between tribe members is also common, skilled labor like napping is rewarded. Food gathering is also highly variable with excess food is of limited value in times of plenty, significant amounts go to waste. Making food preservation a major long term benefit. Calculating lifetime contributions is therefore tricky especially if you try to account for lifespans. Hunting large animals is flat out dangerous.
    - solidsnack9000 5y ago
      So in your opinion, it is not correct to say that men did the majority of the hunting, or that men usually contribute a majority of calories? "skilled labor like napping"?

Retric 5y ago

That study is looking at a very different population than primitive hunter gathering. Food acquisition data have been collected since the early 1980s among the Northern Ache of eastern Paraguay, shortly after peaceful contact. All ethnographic evidence suggests that the Northern Ache were hunter-gatherers without horticulture before contact in the 1970s (Hill & Hurtado, 1996; Clastres, 1998). Since then the Ache fre- quently trek into the forest with family groups and return to a permanent reser- vation settlement after several days to a month. The Ache have exclusive use rights to the Mbaracayu Reserve where they are allowed to hunt with hands, machetes, and bows and arrows but not using firearms or dogs. In 1998, the Ache at the Arroyo Bandera settlement, where most of the data in this study were collected, spent 14% of all person days (range 0–50% for individuals) on trek (McMillan, 2001). During the pre-contact period (i.e., prior to the mid 1970s), hunters spent almost every healthy day of their lives hunting, with the exception of bad weather days. On the reservation today, school and then horticul- tural activities and wage labor compete with hunting for a young man’s time. Thus, by the year 2000, most young men had very little hunting experience. In May 2000, a selected group of 11 men, ages 14–37, who were relatively inexperienced at hunting, agreed to participate in a hunting experi- ment. https://www.unm.edu/~robwal/achehunt.pdf https://www.unm.edu/~robwal/achehunt.pdf

solidsnack9000 5y ago
It looks at several peoples. None of them are primitive enough, to your thinking? What are the peoples we should be looking at? Unfortunately, we can't go back in time to see what those people in the Americas, in the study you linked to, were actually doing, 9000 years ago. One of the points of the study is that men provide a majority of calories in many types of societies -- that it is a relatively common finding. We'll never be able to visit people in the ancestral state -- starting 200000 years ago -- but this idea does dovetail with what we know about other species where there's long term pair bonding. Typically, the male in those species contributes a great deal of calories to the offspring.
- Retric 5y ago
  We can look at historic documentation of primitive cultures and archaeological evidence, which is of course biased but hardly useless. Single parents with children are documented as being at a significant disadvantage, but that’s true after the loss of either parent. Food sharing between tribe members is also common, skilled labor like napping is rewarded. Food gathering is also highly variable with excess food is of limited value in times of plenty, significant amounts go to waste. Making food preservation a major long term benefit. Calculating lifetime contributions is therefore tricky especially if you try to account for lifespans. Hunting large animals is flat out dangerous.
  - solidsnack9000 5y ago
    So in your opinion, it is not correct to say that men did the majority of the hunting, or that men usually contribute a majority of calories? "skilled labor like napping"?