Family Provisioning Is Not the Only Reason Men Hunt

Gurven and Hill (2009) ask, “Why do men hunt?” As they say, “The observation that men hunt and women gather supported the simplistic view of marriage as a cooperative enterprise. Greater sophistication suggests that males may often be motivated by mating and status rather than offspring investment” (p. 60). We agree (e.g., Hawkes 1990, 1991; Hawkes et al. 1991, 2001a, 2001b). This is the revision we first proposed nearly 20 years ago (Hawkes 1990) and have elaborated several times since. Having endorsed our point, Gurven and Hill then reject it, expressing continuing confidence in the idea that “men’s food production efforts are mainly motivated by a concern for familial welfare” (p. 68). Their rejection of our argument and related reaffirmation of conventional wisdom stem from a misunderstanding of data from the Paraguayan Ache and Tanzanian Hadza and a failure to appreciate the importance of other sources of information. We elaborate this critique on four key points.