The ethnographic record shows that women do hunt, sometimes for big game. Does that mean that 'Man the Hunter' was a myth all along? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @vivek123.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/is-man-the-h...

1. Attempted cancellations of prominent scholars as proxy wars on ideas one doesn't like: the case of Margaret Mead...and a mea culpa 🧪 #AcademicSky

This is a great episode - fascinating paper and topic, and Kensy does a good job of pushing beyond the paper for some frank discussions about things like the responsibility of scientists for how academic research is (mis)represented in the popular consciousness.

Really enjoyed this chat with @vivek123.bsky.social! We work through the history of Man the Hunter ideas, the current status of the evidence (archaeological, ethnographic, etc.), and three splashy recent "debunkings." Also, of course, some fun detours along the way.

Good episode

While I've seen both men and women building Hadza huts, much more often it is women (pictured). The sexual division of labour lit has zeroed in on hunting-vs-gathering; but much less is said about women's differential contributions to water-fetching, food-preparation, cooking, and house-building.

This podcast interview with Vivek Venkataraman (@vivek123.bsky.social) explores work coauthored by Baylor Anthropology's own @dstibbardhawkes.bsky.social. Well worth a listen!

This episode focuses on a paper by @vivek123.bsky.social and colleagues, 'The Meanings and Dividends of Man the Hunter,' available here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Commentaries on the article are available here: www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

New episode!! 🎙️🎉 A conversation w/ @vivek123.bsky.social about Man the Hunter. The idea that male hunting propelled our evolution is old and contested. Yet it endures, especially in the popular imagination. Is it merely a "paleofantasy," or is there more to it? Listen: disi.org/is-man-the-h...

The sexual division of labour regarding house construction shows a very consistent pattern cross-culturally: women usually construct the shelters in nomadic societies, while in sedentary societies men do it.

💙 Call for contributions! 💙 To mark 60 years since the Man the Hunter conference (1966), Hunter Gatherer Research is curating a two-part special issue on “Lessons and Reflections from Hunter-Gatherer Research” www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journal/hgr A thread on the two issues & formats👇

The first issue aims to curate a collection of reminiscences and interviews from senior hunter-gatherer scholars. The second will focus on local perspectives and hunter-gatherer voices, which have long been central to the production of knowledge but remain underrepresented in academic publication.

🚨NEW SPECIAL ISSUE SERIES OF HUNTER-GATHERER RESEARCH🚨Celebrating and critically reflecting on the history and methodologies of the field, co-edited by @haneuljang.bsky.social and I. More info, check the submissions page of our website: www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journal/hgr or get in touch!

The grandmother hypothesis is seen as the "feminist" version of human evolution, but if so it's a dark version. At its heart is the recognition that despite higher male mortality, menopause sharply restricted the pool of fertile women relative to fertile men👇 intensifying male-male competition 🧪🧵1/4

Why did many ancient civilizations believe the human body has 365 bones — one for each day of the year? My new paper in Evolution and Human Behavior explores the cognitive roots of "numerological correspondence." 👇 sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New Open Access study out in EvoDevo: link.springer.com/article/10.1... Some study findings below:

👉Very happy to share a new preprint w/ Matteo Bedetti, forthcoming in Biology & Philosophy. We examine how evidential standards are negotiated in funerary #archaeology debates, using the Homo #naledi burial controversy as a case study in epistemological practice.🧪🏺 #evosky #philbio #philsky

“The foraging economy is not organized by only two types of actors, nor captured by a simple sex-by-age matrix, but by a multi-actor network of individuals whose roles are shaped by the intersection of biological parameters, accumulated embodied capital, and current time-allocation demands…”

Our new commentary is out: "More than the sum of its sexes" — on embodied capital & age-structured labor in forager economies. Big thanks to Venkataraman et al. for their excellent "Man the Hunter" piece that clarifies much. Link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Why do menstrual taboos--restrictions on food prep, ritual participation, and social contact--recur and persist in diverse human societies? In this new paper in Evolution and Human Behavior, I propose a new framework: sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🌴🌞🌊 We are recruiting 🌊🌞🌴 UCSB seeks a lecturer broadly trained across anthropological fields to teach anthropological approaches to health. More info: recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF03100 UCSB is an Equal Opportunity Employer Expected salary range: $70,977–$98,249

From diversity to flexibility: Seasonality as the forgotten dividend of Man the Hunter🏺🧪 @ceciliapad.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 60 years later, Venkataraman et al have done something important: they have rescued MTH from misconceptions that have followed from its own title.

🚨New paper!🚨 I really enjoyed @vivek123.bsky.social & colleagues' article reflecting on the diversity of perspectives within the Man The Hunter conference. My commentary out today discussing not only diversity across societies but within them🤩: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Thoughts welcome!

For a century, this theory of human origins has died and returned. To free it from limbo, we must disentangle its many meanings. An Essay by @vivek123.bsky.social

I can't access this (can anyone send?), but I think I agree with what it probably says! Anthropology is needed now more than ever.

Not up for a 15,000 word manuscript about the intellectual history of Man the Hunter? Fair enough! Instead, check out my popular article published today in @aeon.co aeon.co/essays/why-m...

Thanks to the Baylor media office for doing a nice write-up of my recent PNAS Nexus article with @kris-smith.bsky.social. Of course, we also saw tremendous generosity in these economic experiments (!), but "life-like" sharing patterns only occurred when people took from peers in surplus.

New paper out in ProcB! Congrats to lead author Rachel Peterson and the Orang Asli Health and Lifeways Project (OAHeLP) team! "Early life environments shape adult cardiometabolic health during rapid lifestyle change"

Our new paper is out in Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health! Led by the amazing @marinawatowich.bsky.social What drives worsening cardiometabolic health during urbanization in Indigenous populations? We expected it to be diet. But actually, it was the built environment.

There is a fully-funded PhD position at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to pursue dissertation research among the Mayangna of Nicaragua, expanding a longitudinal study of subsistence strategies and behavioral ecology. Please share the posting! www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...

1. In this paper, we included this word cloud of the top 200 words in the volume Man the Hunter. A reader wondered how could the top 200 words in a book with the title "Man the Hunter" include "woman" but not "man"? Doh! 🧪 #rstats #BioAnth #AcademicSky 🧵

From the SAPIENS.org archive. www.sapiens.org/biology/labo...

I really enjoyed this paper. I wish more people wrote these kinds of intellectual histories of complex debates quoting both sides in their own words. Bravo! That said, I have two issues I'd love to see discussed in the promised commentaries:

Our review of the import of the Man the Hunter conference and volume, which contrary to recent media coverage actually expressed diverse views on hunter-gatherers and inspired decades of research, is now published 🧪 #BioAnth authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

I’m happy to announce that our paper "The Meanings and Dividends of Man the Hunter" has now been published in Evolution and Human Behavior. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"Man the Hunter" is often conflated with Dart's "killer ape theory"; A pity because, though imperfect, the MTH conference was a departure from previous Hobbesian colonial Hunter-Gatherer narratives. In this new Target Article we map out some of that intellectual history.

I’m happy to announce that our paper "The Meanings and Dividends of Man the Hunter" has now been published in Evolution and Human Behavior. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Priceless interview for all anthropologists and fieldworkers. Thank you, @ilarimakela.bsky.social & RB Lee!! Lee’s discussions on establishing new field sites closely parallel my experiences in the Omo in Ethiopia with the @omovalleyresearchproject.org

I've been using this image for years to illustrate prestige bias in my lecture on cultural evolution, assuming everyone would recognize him. This year I asked the class if they knew who this was, and the only student who did was the one black student. He was shocked that no one else did. 🧪 #BioAnth

Women’s mental health: current status and evolutionary perspectives by Carol Worthman | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core - www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

New episode (1218), with Dr. Edward Hagen. We discuss whether sex is binary, the distinction between sex and gender, and more. #Anthropology #Biology #Science YouTube: youtu.be/DjIqDREBOqI Podcast: bit.ly/4avxMHW

1. After I posted my critical review of @anthrofuentes.bsky.social Sex is a Spectrum, a colleague pointed out that his figure of adult heights by sex (bottom panel👇) can't be right: there aren't that many US adults shorter than 4' or taller than 7' Turns out Fuentes' data are made up 🧪 #BioAnth 🧵

A much-needed critique of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) as applied to human evolution, by @evoroseman.bsky.social and Ben Auerbach (2026). Evolving a Field: Can Evolutionary Theory Provide What the Study of Human Evolution Requires? 🧪 #BioAnth onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

The International Society for Hunter-Gatherer Research are delighted to announce that CHAGS 14 will take place in Belém, Brazil Mon 12 - Fri 16 July 2027. Events/trips immediately before/afterwards. Tx to hosts: Goeldi Museum & Federal Univ. of Pará. More details to follow. Please share widely!

A new podcast interview by @ilarimakela.bsky.social with Richard B. Lee about Man the Hunter! Should be fascinating. onhumans.substack.com/p/the-origin...

As we've argued in a recent preprint, Ardrey might have benefited from paying more heed to the anthropologists. osf.io/preprints/os...

Everyone should read the Spandrels paper. But too often it's discussed without context of the other contributions. Esp. Clutton-Brock & Harvey on how the comparative method can be used to test adaptive hypothesis, and Cain’s final critique (which SJG called “tame” compared to the oral remarks).

Our new paper in Hunter-Gatherer Research! We explored women’s decision-making power within households in two subsistence communities with different gender norms (BaYaka foragers & Bandongo fisher-farmers) in the Congolese rainforest ✨ www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3...

Latest crop of early online papers at HGR includes some bangers - if I do say so myself. Not just this report on BaYaka Women's autonomy and my own article about cage traps, but also Sterelny on quasi-darwinian mechanisms in cultural evolution. www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3...

"The problem...which recurs throughout 'Spandrels', is not that this criticism is wrong, it’s that Gould & Lewontin...make only cursory and superficial remarks about how test those alternatives, or about how to pursue an alternative research programme built on different conceptual foundations"