Free Why is Sex Fun?: the evolution of human sexuality by Jared Mason Diamond Page A

male strategy.
    My first objection was that Kristen Hawkes's calculations of hunting returns were measured in calories. In reality, any nutritionally aware modern reader knows that not all calories are equal. Perhaps the purpose of big-game hunting lies in fulfilling our need for protein, which is more valuable to us nutritionally than the humble carbohydrates of palm starch. However, Ache men target not only protein-rich meat but also honey, whose carbohydrates are every bit as humble as those of palm starch. While Kalahari San men (“Bushmen”) are hunting big game, San women are gathering and preparing mongongo nuts, an excellent protein source. While lowland New Guinea hunter-gatherer men are wasting their days in the usually futile search for kangaroos, their wives and children are predictably acquiring protein in the form of fish, rats, grubs, and spiders. Why don't San and New Guinea men emulate their wives?
    I next began to wonder whether Ache men might be unusually ineffective hunters, an aberration among modern hunter-gatherers. Undoubtedly, the hunting skills of Inuit (Eskimo) and Arctic Indian men are indispensable, especially in winter, when little food other than big game is available. Tanzania's Hadza men, unlike the Ache, achieve higher average returns by hunting big game rather than small game. But New Guinea men, like the Ache, persist in hunting even though yields are very low. And Hadza hunters persist in the face of enormous risks, since on the average they bag nothing at all on twenty-eight out of twenty-nine days spent hunting. A Hadza family could starve while waiting for the husband-father to win his gamble of bringing down a giraffe. In any case, all that meat occasionally bagged by a Hadza or Ache hunter isn't reserved for his family, so the question of whether big-game hunting yields higher or lower returns than alternative strategies is academic from his family's point of view. Big-game hunting just isn't the best way to feed a family.
    Still seeking to defend my fellow men, I then wondered: could the purpose of widely sharing meat and honey be to smooth out hunting yields by means of reciprocal altruism? That is, I expect to kill a giraffe only every twenty-ninth day, and so does each of my hunter friends, but we all go off in different directions, and each of us is likely to kill his giraffe on a different day. If successful hunters agree to share meat with each other and their families, all of them will often have full bellies. By that interpretation, hunters should prefer to share their catch with the best other hunters, from whom they are most likely to receive meat some other day in return.
    In reality, though, successful Ache and Hadza hunters share their catch with anyone around, whether he's a good or hopeless hunter. That raises the question of why an Ache or Hadza man bothers to hunt at all, since he can claim a share of meat even if he never bags anything himself. Conversely, why should he hunt when any animal that he kills will be shared widely? Why doesn't he just gather nuts and rats, which he can bring to his family and would not have to share with anyone else? There must be some ignoble motive for male hunting that I was overlooking in my efforts to find a noble motive.
    As another possible noble motive, I thought that widespread sharing of meat helps the hunter's whole tribe, which is likely to flourish or perish together. It's not enough to concentrate on nourishing your own family if the rest of your tribe is starving and can't fend off an attack by tribal enemies. This possible motive, though, returns us to the original paradox: the best way for the whole Ache tribe to become well nourished is for everybody to humble themselves by pounding good old reliable palm starch and collecting fruit or insect larvae. The men shouldn't waste their time gambling on the occasional peccary.
    In a last effort to detect family values in men's hunting, I reflected on hunting's relevance to