O'Connell James F, Hawkes Kristen, Jones Nicholas Blurton
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
Departments of Anthropology and Psychiatry, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
Evol Anthropol. 2025 Jun;34(2):e70002. doi: 10.1002/evan.70002.
The hunting hypothesis holds that ancestral human males favored their own mates and children in sharing meat gained from big game hunting, a practice said to have led to the origin of nuclear families and related changes in life history. Data from East African Hadza hunter-gatherers operating in an environment like that prevalent when and where Homo evolved contradict key elements of this idea. An alternative model, the grandmother hypothesis, holds that senior women's foraging and food sharing led to life history changes that favored mate guarding, not paternal provisioning, in the formation of nuclear family-like social units. Relevant data and theory are reviewed and evaluated.
狩猎假说认为，人类男性祖先在分享大型猎物所获肉类时偏袒自己的配偶和子女，据说这种行为导致了核心家庭的起源以及生活史的相关变化。来自东非哈扎族狩猎采集者的数据与这一观点的关键要素相矛盾，哈扎族在与人类进化时期和地点类似的环境中从事狩猎采集活动。另一种模型，即祖母假说，认为老年女性的觅食和食物分享导致了生活史的变化，这些变化有利于在形成类似核心家庭的社会单位时进行配偶守护，而非父亲提供食物。本文对相关数据和理论进行了综述与评估。
