The Meanings and Dividends of Man the Hunter

The phrase Man the Hunter is associated with disparate meanings across communities of scholars, journalists, and the public, which has led to unnecessary scientific disagreement and popular misunderstanding. In this paper, we ask: what does Man the Hunter mean? We distinguish three historical meanings of Man the Hunter. First, in the early-to-mid 20th century, popular writers propagated ideas of human evolution that focused on hunting, men, aggression, rigid sexual divisions of labor, and immutable sex differences. These ideas gained widespread acceptance in popular circles and continue to be influential, but were rejected by anthropologists as early as the 1950s. Second, the Man the Hunter conference (1966) and resulting volume (1968) brought together hunter-gatherer scholars to synthesize how contemporary hunter-gatherers inform human prehistory. Third, Man the Hunter has referred to the field of hunter-gatherer behavioral ecology that studies how human behavior has adapted to local environmental contexts, and has offered a critical foundation for present-day knowledge about hunting and gathering lifeways and human origins, which we summarize. In the final section of the paper, we trace the historical development of these three meanings of Man the Hunter, situating their origins in evolutionary biology, ethnology, feminist studies, ethology, genetics, and other disciplines. While the latter two meanings were strongly intertwined, there was little intellectual exchange, and mostly antagonism, between these two and the earlier but still influential popularized meaning. Based on these disparate histories, conflating the three meanings of Man the Hunter should be avoided. We offer suggestions for improving scientific and popular discourse regarding Man the Hunter.