Gender and Social Roles in Hunter-Gatherer Societies
The Leakey Foundation - California Academy of Sciences
Beginning my ethnographic work with hunter-gatherers I assumed that most distinctive human features evolved as a consequence of ancestral females pairing with hunting males to form nuclear families with men provisioning their wives and dependent offspring. Challenges to that “hunting hypothesis” have mounted in paleoanthropology and archaeology, but it was behavioral findings that forced my own paradigm shift. I’ll review some of those findings, including evidence of the important role of grandmothers, and some life history comparisons between humans and chimpanzees."