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. 2018 Apr;165(4):777-800.
doi: 10.1002/ajpa.23403.

Hunter-gatherer studies and human evolution: A very selective review

Kristen Hawkes  1 , James O'Connell  1 , Nicholas Blurton Jones  2
Affiliations

Hunter-gatherer studies and human evolution: A very selective review

Kristen Hawkes et al. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2018 Apr.

Abstract

The century long publication of this journal overlapped major changes in the sciences it covers. We have been eyewitnesses to vast changes during the final third of the last century and beginning of this one, momentous enough to fundamentally alter our work separately and collectively. One (NBJ) from animal ethology, another from western North American archaeology (JOC), and a third (KH) from cultural anthropology came to longtime collaboration as evolutionary ecologists with shared focus on studying modern hunter-gatherers to guide hypotheses about human evolution. Our findings have radically revised hypotheses each of us took for granted when we began. Our (provisional) conclusions are not the consensus among hunter-gatherer specialists; but grateful that personal reflections are invited, we aim to explain how and why we continue to bet on them.

Keywords: grandmother hypothesis; optimal foraging models; showoff hypothesis; supplying public goods; tolerated theft.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Hadza scavenging a giraffe. (Late dry season, 1988) Copyright JF O’Connell.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Hadza youngster too small to be effective at digging deeply buried under ground storage organs, but trying. (Late dry season, 1988) Copyright JF O’Connell.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Hadza grandmother sharpens her digging stick surrounded by grandchildren while her daughter with new baby watches. (Late dry season, 1986) Copyright JF O’Connell.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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