To the hunter go the spoils? No evidence of nutritional benefit to being or marrying a well‐reputed Hadza hunter

Abstract

ObjectivesThe incentives underlying men's hunting acquisition patterns among foragers are much debated. Some argue that hunters preferentially channel foods to their households, others maintain that foods are widely redistributed. Debates have focused on the redistribution of foods brought to camp, though the proper interpretation of results is contested. Here we instead address this question using two nutritional variables, employed as proxies for longer‐term food access. We also report on broader patterns in nutritional status.Materials and MethodsWe measured male hunting success, hemoglobin concentration and body fatness among bush‐living Hadza. Hunting success was measured using an aggregated reputation score. Hemoglobin concentration, a proxy for dietary red meat, was measured from fingerprick capillary blood. Body fatness, a proxy for energy balance, was measured using BMI and bioelectrical impedance.ResultsWe find no statistically significant relationship between a hunter's success and any measure of his nutritional status or that of his spouse. We further find that: women are, as elsewhere, at greater risk of iron‐deficiency anemia than men; men had slightly lower BMIs than women; men but not women had significantly lower hemoglobin levels than in the 1960s.DiscussionThe absence of an association between hunting reputation and nutritional status is consistent with generalized food sharing. Null results are difficult to interpret and findings could potentially be a consequence of insufficient signal in the study measures or some confounding effect. In any event, our results add to a substantial corpus of existing research that identifies few nutritional advantages to being or marrying a well‐reputed Hadza hunter.

What Are the “Costs and Benefits” of Meat-Eating in Human Evolution? The Challenging Contribution of Behavioral Ecology to Archeology

“…Hadza populations consider carcasses of large sized animals as public goods. There are few nutritional advantages to being an efficient hunter, and the benefits to the generous sharers might only be their hunter reputation (Kaplan et al, 1985;Stibbard-Hawkes et al, 2020).…”

Free to choose: Mutualist motives for partner choice, proportional division, punishment, and help

“…To test this, in the first instance, we tested if mutualism predicted attitudes to sharing using vignettes in which subjects chose preferred sharing of food in imagined hunting situations. This scenario was chosen as being able to be used in other populations and because food sharing and distribution of large resource packages has been common since hunter-gatherer groups where such distributions can be so extensive that successful hunters and their families may make no extra dietary gain from their hunting ability [ 24 ]. Based on mutualist motives to keep rewards proportional to contribution, we predicted that mutualism scores would be negatively related to sharing with division into equal shares regardless of contribution.…”

Some omissions, few confusions. A reply to Pinheiro 2021

“…However, Pinheiro makes several claims that misrepresent our 2020 publication (Stibbard-Hawkes et al, 2020), and work by Wood and Marlowe (2013) and by Hawkes et al (2014Hawkes et al ( , 2018. In this reply, we raise three points of disagreement: First, it is inaccurate to characterize our 2020 paper as being framed "within the narrow context of the debate between household provisioning and signaling theories" (p. 3).…”

“…We reported these findings because publication bias toward positive findings has many unfortunate outcomes (Ioannidis, 2005;Scargle, 2000). However, it is also important to be clear about their limitations which we discuss fully in our paper (Stibbard-Hawkes et al, 2020).…”