The Man-the-Hunter Meme
The Man the Hunter theory was largely developed by the South African hunting nut Raymond Dart and by Nazi anthropologists, partly as a misunderstanding of Darwin’s theory of struggle for survival. On archaeological sites, often the only things that survive are weapons and bones, giving the false impression that all these people did was use weapons to kill. Recently, isotope studies of prehistoric skeletons and coprolites have shown that most prehistoric peoples ate large amounts of plants and not that much meat. Some of the tools found in Africa were not used to kill animals but to dig up tubers.
Here is a anthropological research piece on sexual division of labor.
Here is Maria Mies on the man-the-hunter meme.
Robert Sussman is an anthropologist whose written a great deal on this myth.
Fire away.
Richard:
Thanks for these links. I want to say thanks, too, for the several references to Maria Mies in recent years. Earlier this month, I read her great Patriarchy & Accumulation on a World Scale, which you link to above, and I found it utterly crucial in so many ways. I hope to write about it at length on my own site, but for now, thanks again.
I’d also like to point readers to Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, which is itself indebted to, and furthers, Mies’ work.
22 February 2010, 9:39 amMichael Anderson:
Will read those links (I seem to print things out these days so I won’t be glued in front of a screen). But this came on my partner’s news feed this A.M. right after I read this post, and it seemed to fit in with patriarchy, power, inside-out abstract legality, probative masculinity; and, in the case of the Olympics going on right now, glory (Achilles?):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35516858/
Wife of slain Olympian claims ‘self-defense’
22 February 2010, 2:07 pmLawyer: ‘There won’t be any dispute she shot’ athlete who won ’84 medal
Michael Anderson:
Perhaps the meme of “Man-the-hunter” started to gain traction when we developed agriculture and tools, and started to control our environment more than before. Now it just seems like we prey on people—weaker ones, of course. We act like a buncha damn cannibals.
22 February 2010, 8:40 pmgoritsas:
This quote ‘Even Charles Darwin, inventor of “the survival of the fittest” …’ from the link to “Man the Hunter Myth Debunked”, completely devalues that post. Darwin never said any such thing. The link should be deleted. It’s worthless.
23 February 2010, 2:55 pmaskod:
The Sussmann-link goes to Mies. Mies writes well (thank you for the link), but you might not have intended to link to her twice.
23 February 2010, 4:57 pmaskod:
goritsas,
do you mean that Darwin never wrote:
“This preservation of favourable variations, and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest.” — Darwin, Charles (1869)
Then you shuld have a chat with Darwin Online for putting up false versions of his writings like this one: http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=side&itemID=F387&pageseq=121
24 February 2010, 1:56 pmm.c.:
Yesterday I was watching a news video clip about the death of the SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau by the killer whale in Orlando. She had something like 15 years experience and was SeaWorld’s most experienced swimmer/trainer. It takes a lot of bravery to get in a tank with these kind of whales. She called them her kids.
What if Orcas are smarter than we are?
26 February 2010, 2:00 pmm.c.:
Wiki says that some Orcas swim up to 100 miles/day in the wild. Who would want to live in a bath tub their whole life?
1 March 2010, 4:17 pmSteven:
The original Affluent Society
Marshall Sahlins
http://www.appropriate-economics.org/materials/Sahlins.pdf
8 May 2010, 5:10 pm