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The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong
(www.scientificamerican.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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Meh...call me when a woman holds the world record for a marathon. It might happen in the next 100 years, but I strongly doubt it.
What bugs the shit out of me about all this...of course women hunted in times of need. They also hunted small game to help the tribe as needed.
I don't think that disrupts the overarching narrative of the male hunter and female gatherer. It's a general rule rather than a law.
This makes sense, but do you have any readings or evidence on the matter?
Idk, i don't really care, men hunted women hunted, whatever. But what i don't understand is that there are still tribes around that hardly have any outside connection and they are always as shown that men hunt and women did everything else. I remember seeing a documentary where one of the guys stayed with the women to see what their day looked like and the other tribes people made jokes about him being a "women". I'm the first one that is for equality, but there is a reason you hardly see any women working in construction. I don't think i have ever seen a women taring a road. I have not once seen a women laying bricks. This has nothing to do with toxic masculinity, i'd rather sit in a village and collect berries and cook than go hunting.
Evidence shows that women have better endurance for long distances. They tend to be less susceptible to fatigue and beyond 195 miles are actually faster than men. Considering humans were better at outlasting their prey and chasing them to exhaustion rather than burst speed, this data indicates that women are at least as capable as men at those tasks if not better.
So your theory is that women were the hunters, because they're faster after 200 miles? These people walked like 10-20 miles a day, and had to carry the food back home so that everyone else could eat. You imagine them going on month-long expeditions, carrying dead animals for 2 weeks back home? Are they also carrying mini fridges to keep the meat from spoiling?
I'm trying to even, but I can't.
Yeah long term endurance hunting sounds like "bad hunting". You use up more calories, the prey expends more calories, you waste a whole day walking around in dangerous terrain and then you have to carry back the meat all the way back.
So even if their claims of greater female stamina bears out this would presumably only show that women can hunt better in certain worst case disciplines.
How does this make sense or am I missing something?
That's not my theory. That's the data.
One interpretation could be that women were constantly engaged in strenuous endurance activities and so through evolution built up tolerances against exhaustion that at least rivals if not exceeds that of men. And one historical activity that used a lot of stamina and took a lot of tolerance against fatigue was the way in which ancient humans hunted.
That's not what a theory is, it's a hypothesis at best, hope that helped.
I just don’t think the evidence that supports this idea is very strong at all. Like maybe men on average did more hunting than women, but I haven’t seen any evidence to support this framing that women only hunted in times of need.
Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to know much for certain about the culture of prehistoric humans. But there is strong circumstantial evidence, like women buried with hunting implements, etc. which suggests that female hunters were prominent in at least some cultures.