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2024-11-11

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The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong (www.scientificamerican.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/15901115

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It seems obvious that some of the women would be better hunters than some of the men. But that only suggests that too much specialization was bad, not that there wasn't any specialization at all. So headline seems wrong.

Also persistent hunting seems like the most inefficient type of hunting. You exhaust yourself and the prey and loose calories, the time it takes, traveling far over unknown terrain and then having to carry it all the way back and beware other predators. Is the argument that women are best at "shitty hunting"?

I imagine you'd track an animal, get close, throw spear, miss, keep tracking the animal. And if they haven't invented the spear yet, can they even be called human?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Running an animal to death is just one method. Useful on a hot day when your prey is far more susceptible to heat exhaustion/stroke than you are. And the calories gained from the animal outweigh the calories expended to gain them.