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The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong
(www.scientificamerican.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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Well, the theory is that persistence hunting was one of the main hunting strategies during a large portion of human evolution before ranged weapons were invented. So it may well have relevance for distribution of labor between men and women during most of human prehistory, and therefore our evolutionary psychology.
Persistence hunting only worked in areas with wide open terrain, like the African or American plains. Prey in the jungle or heavily wooded areas can just disappear into the underbrush and be gone. It doesn't matter how far you can walk at that point, because you'll never find that animal again.
Everything moving through a space leaves tracks or a trace
You can't keep a creature moving without rest if you have to stop to track it, and you can't track over rock, hard soil, through water, and a variety of other terrains.
There will certainly be areas where the trail disappears, but tracking isn’t necessarily about locating every individual footfall.
With an understanding of movement and behavior, one can make inferences about where the animal went to find and follow the next sign.
Even moving over rock or packed soil, sign is left. You may not be able to perceive it yourself, but to someone who spends hours a day reading and studying the ground over the span of years, those subtle differences are perceptible.
An animal will eventually reach a place to stop and rest, but with repeated interruption that rest won’t count for much.
I will acknowledge that things that seem impossible to me are probably easy for people who engage in those activities frequently. So, you're probably right.
Persistence hunters today do track their prey, and often have to guess where the prey may have gone when the tracks are lost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=826HMLoiE_o
How do ranged weapons invalidate persistence hunting?
If you're trying to chase down an animal till it's exhausted, I think you'd want to be throwing stuff at it to injure or at least to keep it moving.
Also, was there a time before ranged weapons? As soon as humans have weapons we have ranged weapons because we can throw. Atlatls and slings - tools to help you throw sticks and stones - wouldn't have been developed if we weren't already throwing sticks and stones at things.
Even with a modern bow it's still really difficult to sneak close enough to a deer to reliably make a kill shot. You're not going to sneak close enough to poke it with a spear and with game that size, throwing rocks is not really an option either because that wont kill it. Something like axis deer is quick enough to even dodge a modern arrow.
The reality is that the animal will notice you and it will out-sprint you as well but it wont outrun a human on a long distance. When the animal is exhausted and no more able to run, then you can then stick your spear in it.
Which is why bow hunters typically scout ahead to determine where deer frequent, then hide and use calls and scents to get the deer to come to them.