Vivek V. Venkataraman @vivek_vasi Twitter profile

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

22 days

Our paper on the women's hunting debate has finally been published in @EvolHumBehav Our point is simple: women sometimes hunt in foraging societies, but gendered divisions of labor still exist.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

Our new pre-print: A methodological critique of the Anderson et al 2023 women’s hunting paper in PLoS ONE. 🧵below 1/13

Woman the Hunter? Female foragers sometimes hunt, yet gendered divisions of labor are real

Gendered divisions of labor are a feature of every known contemporary hunter-gatherer (forager) society. While gender roles are certainly flexible, and prominent and well-studied cases of female...

www.biorxiv.org

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

2 years

My new article is out in The Conversation today, check it out!

The origins of human society are more complex than we thought

When, how, where and why did complex hierarchical societies evolve? Understanding how we got to this point in time may help us address global challenges, like climate change.

theconversation.com

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

A new paper synthesizes existing reports on the context of women’s hunting in foragers. The big takeaway: women hunt in roughly 80% of foragers. We need to view this estimate with skepticism, and here’s why. A thread (1/12)

The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts

The sexual division of labor among human foraging populations has typically been recognized as involving males as hunters and females as gatherers. Recent archeological research has questioned this...

journals.plos.org

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

I’ve just published some comments on the Anderson et al (2023) PLOS paper on women’s hunting. A thread below.

Blog — The Venkataraman Lab

www.vivekvenkataraman.com

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

As someone who studies foraging societies and divisions of labor (DOL), a few comments on this article. Some refs don’t seem to support the claims.

Forget ‘Man the Hunter’ – physiological and archaeological evidence rewrites assumptions about a...

Female bodies have an advantage in endurance ability that means Paleolithic women likely hunted game, not just gathered plants. The story is written in living and ancient human bodies.

theconversation.com

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

Happy to share our new paper in Hunter Gatherer Research! The ecological and social context of women’s hunting in small-scale societies

The ecological and social context of women’s hunting in small-scale societies | Hunter Gatherer...

Women participate in hunting in some foraging societies but not in others. To examine the socioecological factors that are conducive to women’s hunting, we conducted an ethnographic survey using the...

www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

1 year

My new essay in @aeonmag A critical reflection on ‘The Original Affluent Society’ and what it tells us about modern work. Thread below.

What hunter-gatherers demonstrate about work and satisfaction | Aeon Essays

Hunter-gatherers don’t live in an economic idyll but their deep appreciation of rest puts industrialised work to shame

aeon.co

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

In conclusion, no recent paper has overturned consensus views of gendered divisions of labor in modern hunter-gatherers. In foragers, men and women generally do different things, and the flexibility of this division has been recognized for decades. 13/13

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

In foraging societies, men not only hunt; they also gather. As @sheinalew points out, this is more understudied than women's hunting. Here's an example from the Batek of Malaysia

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

@datepsych great summary!

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

First, biased sampling. See our flow chart. Blue=original methods Red and orange = issues uncovered by our analysis 4/13

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

2 years

The energetics of uniquely human subsistence strategies. Efficiency leads to leisure. Our new article in @ScienceMagazine w/ @HermanPontzer @briwood1 and others

The energetics of uniquely human subsistence strategies

Human hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers spend more energy but less time on subsistence than other great apes.

www.science.org

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

A good general review of the new paper on women's hunting. "To delude oneself about the alleged lack of a division of labor among hunter-gatherers will not make today's world more inclusive."

Les femmes, la chasse et le cherry-picking

Un récent article paru dans Plos One , assez largement repris dans la presse internationale et qui s'inscrit dans une veine désormais bi...

www.lahuttedesclasses.net

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

Along with a diverse group of hunter-gatherer scholars, we have produced a formal reproduction of their analysis. We argue that biased sampling and miscoding undermine the claims of the paper. 3/13

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

We highlight that the fundamental issue with the paper is that women’s hunting is not a binary phenomenon. Treating it as such obscures the nuance that makes women’s hunting an interesting example of the flexibility of gendered divisions of labor. 8/13

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

2 months

A well-argued piece just out in American Anthropologist adds to the women's hunting debate (along with a response by the authors of the original piece)

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

There is an over-representation of studies with evidence of women’s hunting. Many relevant studies with hunting data were excluded, few of which showed evidence of female hunting. Thus, the 79% estimate is likely inflated. 5/13

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

The paper claims to oppose “the traditional paradigm that women exclusively gather and men exclusively hunt” But no one thinks this. It does not do justice to the intellectual history of forager studies, nor to more recent nuanced work on divisions of labour. (7/12)

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

I want to make clear that we don’t think any of these errors intentional on the part of the authors. They were trying to tackle a tough research question to which we still don’t have the answer. I hope the dialogue around this will be respectful. 9/13

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

Here is the link to the original paper: By pointing to instances of women's hunting, the authors believe their findings “dramatically shift stereotypes of labor in hunter-gatherer societies.” 2/13

The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts

The sexual division of labor among human foraging populations has typically been recognized as involving males as hunters and females as gatherers. Recent archeological research has questioned this...

journals.plos.org

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

Second, miscoding. In our re-analysis, we included a variable for frequency of women’s hunting. In most cases women’s hunting occurred infrequently or there was no evidence. 7/13

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

For a behavioral ecology approach to women’s hunting, see our recent paper in Hunter-Gatherer Research: 11/13

The ecological and social context of women’s hunting in small-scale societies | Hunter Gatherer...

Women participate in hunting in some foraging societies but not in others. To examine the socioecological factors that are conducive to women’s hunting, we conducted an ethnographic survey using the...

www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Geladas and hamadryas baboons hanging out together on grazing lawns at Borena Sayint, Ethiopia. Work by Chadden Hunter 20+ yrs ago showed that geladas harvest grass at twice the rate of hamadryas. Pic by Hussein Ibrahim, prof at Wollo University

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

Moreover, little evidence that female foragers conduct big-game hunting (prey size defined here as >45kg). The 33% estimate for big-game hunting is also inflated. 6/13

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

2 months

Very proud of undergrad and master's students in my lab who presented their research at #AABA2024 in Los Angeles! @_jordanhoffman_ Topics included gender inequality, sleep culture, primate foraging, and gelada multi-level sociality.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

All of our data and code are available for reproduction. We encourage everyone to take a look and provide feedback. 12/13

GitHub - grasshoppermouse/anderson_critique

Contribute to grasshoppermouse/anderson_critique development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

🧵New pre-print just posted! "The ecological and social context of women’s hunting in small-scale societies"

The ecological and social context of women's hunting in small-scale societies

Women participate in hunting in some foraging societies but not in others. To examine the socioecological factors that are conducive to women’s hunting, we conducted an ethnographic survey using the...

osf.io

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

We hope this critique will serve as a building block to more robust cross-cultural work on this topic. 10/13

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

How long have we known about reports of women's hunting in foragers? Answer: a long time! This shows the number of paragraphs for given time periods (from HRAF)

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Our new paper is out today in the journal Primates. Feeding ecology of hamadryas baboons in a highland habitat. Turns out to be quite different than in arid lowland habitats. Congrats to Hussein Ibrahim and an excellent team led by Ethiopian scholars!

Feeding ecology of a highland population of hamadryas baboons (Papio hamadryas) at Borena-Sayint...

Primates - Studying the diet and feeding behavior of primates is essential to understanding their ecology and designing effective conservation plans. Despite decades of study on the hamadryas...

link.springer.com

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Introducing the Orang Asli Health and Lifeways Project (OAHeLP)! With the support of an @NSF grant and our Malaysian collaborators, we’re up and running! Here’s our website: And a paper describing our research: A thread (1/n)

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

4 months

A baffling article about the role of hunting vs gathering in human evolution.

Hunter-gatherers were mostly gatherers, says archaeologist

Researchers reject ‘macho caveman’ stereotype after burial site evidence suggests mostly plant-based diet

www.theguardian.com

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Along with students in my lab ( @_jordanhoffman_ and Kyle Farquharson), we scrutinized the ethnographic sources at the heart of this study. The takeaway: we cannot replicate many aspects of the study.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

My takeaway: It is by no means clear when gendered DOL’s emerged in human evolution. But hypotheses that put the timing before agriculture are not Paleofantasies. They are hypotheses subject to testing and each version has its own strengths and weaknesses.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

From the paper: “Fathers only provide 5.5%–5.7% of each of the three forms of care to children under 1.5 years old. Among 1.5- to 4-year-olds, fathers provide 3.5% of close care and holding, and 8.4% of physical contact.” In other words, childcare is mostly done by women.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Lots of cases of women’s participation in hunting in subtle yet important ways: ritualistic, symbolic, logistical. Some great lit in cultural anthro that has been neglected by bio anthros, including me.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

Also about Neanderthals, citing Fox and Frayer 1997 Int J Osteoarch: “ Tooth wear that results from using the front teeth as a third hand, likely in tasks like tanning hides, is equally evident across females and males.” Can't find mention of male vs female diffs in the paper.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

I can’t find any mention of male vs female differences in the paper.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

2 years

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in Alberta. Incredible place. Across thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of bison were run over the cliffs here by hunters.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

That being said, it’s good to see the attempt. Reports of women’s hunting have been around for decades. Many cases must go unreported. It may be easy to overlook, and the majority of old-school ethnographers were male. I suspect 80% is too high, and 13% is too low. (6/12)

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

I’m not saying these claims are necessarily false, but this literature is much more complicated and contains more viewpoint diversity than is indicated here.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

No arguments are presented to support this idea, even though it could be testable. The authors don’t grapple with clear counter-examples, such as Australian Aboriginals and their distinct pre-contact situation. Even early post-contact reports consistently mention gendered DOL’s.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

3 months

A great piece on hunter-gatherer mobility in the 21st century Nice work @padillaccc !

The hunter-gatherers of the 21st century who live on the move | Aeon Essays

Why do hunter-gatherers refuse to be sedentary? New answers are emerging from the depths of the Congolese rainforest

aeon.co

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

For more, see my piece in @TheConversationCA about the relationship between Man the Hunter and divisions of labour in foraging societies. Also, my own group’s paper on this topic, led by @_jordanhoffman_ , will be appearing soon. Stay tuned! (12/12)

Women were successful big-game hunters, challenging beliefs about ancient gender roles

Anthropologists believed that before the implementation of agriculture, men hunted and women gathered, but new evidence suggests that this might not have been the case.

theconversation.com

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

We provide frequency estimates that are more defensible than the 80% value. These range between 1% and 16%.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Re: sampling bias. There are many sources of detailed foraging behavior, and few are included in this study. Hard to escape the conclusion that the sample isn’t biased toward reports of women’s hunting.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

As an aside, we should be cautious in drawing conclusions about behavior from skeletal robusticity. Too much going on, and too much missing from archaeological samples. From: Wallace, I.J., Demes, B. and Judex, S., 2017.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

In summary: not much about the Anderson et al 2023 paper holds up. But to me, it raises new questions: what does it really mean to participate in hunting?

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

The other (Holt and Formicola 2008) doesn’t seem to make any strong claim about DOL’s. They just note female bone robusticity was higher in the Upper Paleolithic compared to recent foragers.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

One of the refs for this statement (Sparacello et al 2017) finds skeletal evidence for DOL’s in the late Pleistocene.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

These inferences are based on life history and behavioural ecology. We can surmise that women hunted in the past without it needing to be true that women hunt in the majority of modern foragers. Otherwise we are manufacturing our own tyranny of the ethnographic record. (11/12)

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

One more thing: widespread hunting by women is interpreted as evidence of hunting specialization. This is precisely the opposite of explanations when archaeologists infer women’s hunting in ancient contexts. Less need to specialize = more involvement by women.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

In this paper, we found that Batek in the 1970s moved camps based on their rattan returns. When I converted their rattan return to calories, this resource had the highest return rate of any resource.

Hunter-gatherer residential mobility and the marginal value of rainforest patches | Proceedings of...

The residential mobility patterns of modern hunter-gatherers broadly reflect local resource availability, but the proximate ecological and social f...

www.pnas.org

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

The authors write: “Foragers are not living fossils.” No anthros think foragers are living fossils. We study foragers using behavioral ecology to understand how patterns of behavior emerge in response to ecological and social pressures.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

“Upper Paleolithic modern humans leaving Africa and entering Europe and Asia show very few sexed differences in trauma and repetitive motion wear. One difference is more evidence of “thrower’s elbow” in males than females, though some females shared these pathologies.”

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

7 months

Happy to see our new paper on the Ethiopian wolf published: "The Ethiopian wolf can act as a flagship and umbrella species to protect the Afroalpine ecosystem and foster sustainable development." Led by @KassieAddisu

The Ethiopian wolf can act as a flagship and umbrella species to protect the Afroalpine ecosystem...

The Ethiopian wolf can act as a flagship and umbrella species to protect the Afroalpine ecosystem and foster sustainable development - Volume 51 Issue 1

www.cambridge.org

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

Mbendjele hunter-gatherers exhibit a pretty classic gendered DOL.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

About the Efe: ”The part women played in the hunt was symbolic and ritual rather than practical.” No evidence of large-game hunting.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

On the other hand, it’s complicated. !Kung women do play an important role in hunting, particularly around ritual and information. Here’s an awesome paper on that by Biesele and Barclay.

[PDF] Ju/'Hoan Women'S Tracking Knowledge And Its Contribution To Their Husbands' Hunting Success |...

fieldwork in the Nyae Nyae area of northeastern Namibia identified a substantial contribution to their husbands' hunting success by Ju/'hoan women. This contribution came from a more active use of...

www.semanticscholar.org

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

On Neanderthals: “Fossil evidence shows females and males experienced the same bony traumas across their bodies – a signature of a hard life hunting deer, aurochs and wooly mammoths.” Ref: Trinkaus, E., 2012. Neandertals, early modern humans, and rodeo riders in J Arch Sci

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Next, we examined cases of putative large-game hunting by women. There were 17 in the Anderson et al paper. We were able to verify about six of these.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

A note on methods : the data were coded at the society level. Ideally, this would be a paragraph-level analysis so that we could see how coding decisions were made. As it stands, the analysis is not replicable.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Final note: This was a lot of literature. I'm sure we missed things. Happy to receive feedback and revise our conclusions if we missed or mischaracterized anything.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

So in a way this replaces women's labor, and women become involved in rattan collection. This is a collaborative gathering activity between the genders. Men climb the trees and do the risky work; women help to locate, coordinate, help to carry, and process.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Overall, women’s hunting occurs in 13% (50/391) of foragers. Hunting almost certainly occurs in the other 328 societies they didn’t examine. Is it likely that it occurs in 80% of the rest? That's hard to imagine. At present, the data don't support the 80% estimate. (5/12)

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

How did the authors of this new paper get 80%? Of 391 foraging societies in the D-PLACE ethnographic database, the authors found detailed reports of hunting in 63. Of these 63, women participated in hunting in 50. That’s ~80 %. (4/12)

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

We focus on two things: First, sampling bias Second, reports of women’s participation in large-game hunting.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

7 months

Happy to share my new pre-print about the history of participant observation in anthropology: "Nikolai Mikluho-Maclay’s ethnographic methods in New Guinea (1871-1873)"

Nikolai Mikluho-Maclay’s ethnographic methods in New Guinea (1871-1873)

The invention of the ethnographic method of participant observation is typically attributed to the Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, but there is increasing recognition of pre-Malinowskian...

osf.io

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

Check out the Dawn of Everything, or other sources, for examples of stratified economic systems/monopolizable resources prior to agriculture.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

See the Supporting Information of this paper for a large-scale compilation of societies with good quantitative descriptions of foraging behavior.

The energetics of uniquely human subsistence strategies

Human hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers spend more energy but less time on subsistence than other great apes.

www.science.org

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

2 years

Come join the Orang Asli Webinar series! We are hosting a series of talks and discussions by experts. The first (on Culture and Land Rights) is this Tuesday, October 11, 8-10pm Malaysia time (that's 8-10am EST).

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Why do we think that women’s hunting was probably more common in the past? 1. Game was larger and more abundant than in recent times. This would have changed the riskiness of hunting (i.e. probability of failure). If hunting is less risky, women are more likely to hunt. (8/12)

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

2 years

Our new paper on African Wolf ecology in Ethiopia. We compared the foraging habits of Ethiopian wolves and African wolves in two locations where they are sympatric.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

A 2020 study described a 9 kya hunter-gatherer site in Peru with evidence of hunting implements buried alongside female skeletons. So perhaps women were hunting more in the past compared to what we see among modern foragers. (2/12)

Female hunters of the early Americas

A 9000-year-old hunter burial and meta-analysis reveal nongendered labor in the early Americas with females as big-game hunters.

www.science.org

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

There's a lot of room for interdisciplinary work in this area. And many are doing it now. This is an important topic, and far more complicated than a simple binary.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

What do we see among modern foragers? From Gurven and Hill (2009): “Men and women hunt in 13 societies, and in none do women alone hunt, whereas women are the main gatherers in two-thirds of these societies.” This corresponds to <10 % of societies in which women hunt. (3/12)

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

1 year

My new piece in @SAPIENS_org : How the early battle of race science was lost.

How the Early Battle Over Race Science Was Lost

19th-century biologist Ernst Haeckel pushed race science but his little-known protégé Nikolai Miklucho-Maclay defended Indigenous rights.

www.sapiens.org

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

7 months

@sciam See a thorough critique of the methods of this paper here:

Debunking a debunking — The Venkataraman Lab

A critique of Anderson et al.’s (2023) PLoS ONE paper on Women’s hunting We present a critique of the methodology employed by Anderson et al (2023) in their study of women’s hunting in foraging...

www.vivekvenkataraman.com

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

“... no sexed differences in how Neanderthals or modern humans buried their dead, or the goods affiliated with their graves. These indicators of differential gendered social status do not arrive until agriculture, with its stratified economic system and monopolizable resources.”

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

The Batek converted rattan proceeds to rice calories almost immediately via trade. When there's more rice in camp, less need to dig for tubers.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

In reference to modern foragers (who universally show divisions of labor), it is argued that DOL’s might have come from “patriarchal agricultural neighbors and colonial administrators.”

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

As support for the hypothesis of nongendered activities among Paleolithic people, the authors cite this paper when they write: “Individual mothers are not solely responsible for their children; in foragers, the whole group contributes to child care.”

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Iñupiaq of Alaska. A very interesting case based on a cool paper by Bodenhorn. Women play an important ritualistic role in hunting in terms of attracting animals, sharing meat, and offering logistical assistance.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

7 months

@sciam A new manuscript on women's hunting shows that this claim is not what it seems:

The ecological and social context of women's hunting in small-scale societies

Women participate in hunting in some foraging societies but not in others. To examine the socioecological factors that are conducive to women’s hunting, we conducted an ethnographic survey using the...

osf.io

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

10 months

@NYTScience Speaking as an anthropologist: readers should be very skeptical about this article's scientific validity. See an in-depth critique here:

Blog — The Venkataraman Lab

www.vivekvenkataraman.com

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

A resource like rattan exhibits a set of properties that mixes the attributes of hunting and gathering. Sessile resource, but very high return rate, with elements of comparative advantage in terms of the need for strength and sensitivity to risk (climbing tall trees).

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

21 days

@danwilliamsphil @mnvrsngh I write a bit about this (and review some of the evidence for nomadic egalitarian bands as a modal social org) in a critique of The Dawn of Everything, which makes some similar points

The origins of human society are more complex than we thought

When, how, where and why did complex hierarchical societies evolve? Understanding how we got to this point in time may help us address global challenges, like climate change.

theconversation.com

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

5 months

A claim in the article: “There’s no evidence of this social structure or gendered labor roles during the 2 million years of evolution for the genus Homo until the last 12,000 years, with the advent of agriculture.”

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

About the Mbuti: a well-known case in which women participate focus in communal hunting, focusing on duikers and other small game.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Now for some details on big game hunting. !Kung: in Nisa, Marjorie Shostak says “!Kung women cannot be considered hunters in any serious way.”

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

The Batek cooperative foraging strategy responds to the properties of rattan.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

4 months

From Marlowe's highly-cited 2005 review paper on hunter-gatherers. Gathering contributes a larger proportion of the diet around the equator. More from hunting at higher latitudes.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Rattan is a climbing vine that is highly prized because it's valuable for trade. This is a pic of men bundling some rattan.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

The reasoning used to infer that women hunted in the past is the same reasoning that explains why it’s relatively uncommon in the present.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

Ainu: An interesting case. Watanabe mentioned women’s hunting in the original Man the Hunter volume. Women in Ainu society conduct individual hunts of large mammals ‘very rarely.’

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

11 months

2. Earlier technologies like atlatls are relatively easy to learn and use. This reduces the tradeoffs women face between other kinds of skill-intensive specialization (e.g. gathering) and what’s required for hunting. (9/12)

American Anthropologist | AAA Anthropology Journal | Wiley Online Library

Self-bows replaced spear throwers as primary terrestrial hunting weapons on nearly all continents at different time periods throughout human prehistory. Many scholars have debated whether this...

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

8 months

With the challenges of war in Ethiopia over the past few years, it's great to see that Guassa's Indigenous conservation system is prevailing!

Tested by COVID and war, an Indigenous conservation system in Ethiopia prevails

GUASSA COMMUNITY CONSERVATION AREA, Ethiopia — On an early misty morning in July, Worku Mekonen, 39, one of the scouts at the Guassa Community Conservation Area in Ethiopia’s central highlands,...

news.mongabay.com

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

2 years

Addisu Mekonnen is an Ethiopian conservation scientist who has done pioneering work to understand the biology of the Bale monkey in southern Ethiopia. Addisu has done great things in promoting conservation science and capacity-building in Ethiopia. Welcome Addisu!

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Vivek V. Venkataraman

@vivek_vasi

7 months

The Orang Asli Health and Well-being Symposium returns next week! Registration link and schedule here. If you're interested in EvMed and foraging/horticultural societies, please join us!

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