The Myth Of Man The Hunter: Human Locomotion & The Diversity Of Foraging Societies / Cara Wall-Scheffler

Biological anthropologist Dr. Cara Wall-Scheffler joins me to discuss the evolution of human locomotion and how it dovetails into the findings and conclusions of the research article she co-authored, The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts, published last month in PLOS ONE.

The data gathered and examined across numerous foraging societies by the authors of this ethnographic review points to the incredible diversity of labor males and females typically engage in to acquire food and other resources. Simultaneously, the findings and conclusions in this study upend stereotypical and essentialist notions about what the commonly understood sexual divisions of labor are—the “man as hunter” and “woman as gatherer” myth—with implications for not only anthropology as a field of study, but for contemporary discourse on topics of gender and sex. 

As the authors write in the summary of this article:

Women in foraging societies across the world historically participated and continue to participate in hunting regardless of child-bearing status. The collected data on women hunting directly opposes the traditional paradigm that women exclusively gather and men exclusively hunt and further elucidates the diversity and flexibility of human subsistence cultures [96]. Because the hunter/gatherer paradigm has prevented the recognition of contributions by women to hunting, a new framework would enable past and future discoveries to be evaluated in the context of female hunters. Furthermore, the term “forager,” as suggested by Brightman [24], should be used to acknowledge the non-sexual division of labor concerning hunting and gathering, in order to develop an inclusive framework for understanding human culture [9].

A major takeaway from this dialogue with Dr. Wall-Scheffler is that the Euro- and male-centric conceptions of the origins of Homo sapiens are breaking down. The diversity of human social arrangements and adaptation to our environments upsets colonialist and patriarchal assumptions of how we came to be, and provides openings in how we can imagine a more diverse and adaptive future for our species.

Bio:

Cara Wall-Scheffler is Professor and Co-Chair of Biology at Seattle Pacific University. Her research focuses on the evolution of human sexual dimorphism, particularly in the context of balancing the pressures of thermoregulation and long-distance locomotion. She has been working on this problem for over 10 years and has published numerous papers along with her students. Her work shows very clearly that different selection pressures have acted on men and women, and that women in particular have a rare (among mammals) ability to work both efficiently (energy per unit mass) and economically (total energy) when carrying loads. Women’s abilities are due in part to their relatively small body size, relatively high surface area, relatively broader pelves, and unique methods of thermoregulating.

Episode Notes:

Read The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts, published at PLOS ONE.

Follow and learn more about Dr. Wall-Scheffler and their work at their website and on social media @WallScheffler

Music featured: “Journey To Ascend" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License