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Anderson A, Chilczuk S, Nelson K, Ruther R, Wall-Scheffler C. The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women's contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts. PLoS One 2023; 18:e0287101. [PMID: 37379261 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287101] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/10/2023] [Accepted: 05/30/2023] [Indexed: 06/30/2023] Open
Abstract
The sexual division of labor among human foraging populations has typically been recognized as involving males as hunters and females as gatherers. Recent archeological research has questioned this paradigm with evidence that females hunted (and went to war) throughout the Homo sapiens lineage, though many of these authors assert the pattern of women hunting may only have occurred in the past. The current project gleans data from across the ethnographic literature to investigate the prevalence of women hunting in foraging societies in more recent times. Evidence from the past one hundred years supports archaeological finds from the Holocene that women from a broad range of cultures intentionally hunt for subsistence. These results aim to shift the male-hunter female-gatherer paradigm to account for the significant role females have in hunting, thus dramatically shifting stereotypes of labor, as well as mobility.
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Affiliation(s)
- Abigail Anderson
- Department of Biology, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
| | - Sophia Chilczuk
- Department of Biology, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
| | - Kaylie Nelson
- Department of Biology, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
| | - Roxanne Ruther
- Department of Biology, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
| | - Cara Wall-Scheffler
- Department of Biology, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
- Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
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Thompson JC, Carvalho S, Marean CW, Alemseged Z. Origins of the Human Predatory Pattern: The Transition to Large-Animal Exploitation by Early Hominins. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 2019. [DOI: 10.1086/701477] [Citation(s) in RCA: 53] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
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Pruetz JD, Bertolani P, Ontl KB, Lindshield S, Shelley M, Wessling EG. New evidence on the tool-assisted hunting exhibited by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in a savannah habitat at Fongoli, Sénégal. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2015; 2:140507. [PMID: 26064638 PMCID: PMC4448863 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.140507] [Citation(s) in RCA: 50] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/05/2014] [Accepted: 03/19/2015] [Indexed: 06/04/2023]
Abstract
For anthropologists, meat eating by primates like chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) warrants examination given the emphasis on hunting in human evolutionary history. As referential models, apes provide insight into the evolution of hominin hunting, given their phylogenetic relatedness and challenges reconstructing extinct hominin behaviour from palaeoanthropological evidence. Among chimpanzees, adult males are usually the main hunters, capturing vertebrate prey by hand. Savannah chimpanzees (P. t. verus) at Fongoli, Sénégal are the only known non-human population that systematically hunts vertebrate prey with tools, making them an important source for hypotheses of early hominin behaviour based on analogy. Here, we test the hypothesis that sex and age patterns in tool-assisted hunting (n=308 cases) at Fongoli occur and differ from chimpanzees elsewhere, and we compare tool-assisted hunting to the overall hunting pattern. Males accounted for 70% of all captures but hunted with tools less than expected based on their representation on hunting days. Females accounted for most tool-assisted hunting. We propose that social tolerance at Fongoli, along with the tool-assisted hunting method, permits individuals other than adult males to capture and retain control of prey, which is uncommon for chimpanzees. We assert that tool-assisted hunting could have similarly been important for early hominins.
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Affiliation(s)
- J. D. Pruetz
- Department of Anthropology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
- Ecology and Evolutionary Biology program, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
| | - P. Bertolani
- Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
| | - K. Boyer Ontl
- Department of Anthropology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
- Ecology and Evolutionary Biology program, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
- Department of Social Sciences, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931, USA
| | - S. Lindshield
- Department of Anthropology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
- Ecology and Evolutionary Biology program, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
| | - M. Shelley
- Department of Statistics, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
- Department of Political Science, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA
| | - E. G. Wessling
- Department of Primatology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
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