Book

Man the Hunter

Publish date:

January 1, 1968

Man the Hunter was a 1966 symposium organized by Richard Lee and Irven DeVore. The symposium resulted in a book of the same title and attempted to bring together for the first time a comprehensive look at recent ethnographic research on hunter-gatherers.

Eriksen and Nielson argue that the symposium was one of the high points of cultural ecology. They report the symposium as concentrating on contemporary hunters and gatherers and noted that the contributors were mostly American cultural anthropologists. The main point of the conference was that given that hunting was humanity's original source of livelihood, any theory of society and the nature of Man would require a deep knowledge of how hunters live. The symposium also emphasised the rivalry between cultural and materialist understanding of culture and society.

The symposium was held at the Center for Continuing Education, University of Chicago, from April 6 to the 9th, 1966 and was attended by several of the most influential figures in then contemporary anthropology. In addition to Lee and DeVore, the symposium was attended by Marshall Sahlins, Aram Yengoyan, George Peter Murdock, Colin Turnbull, Lewis Binford, and Julian Steward.

The corresponding book, containing the papers presented at the symposium, was published by Aldine Transaction in 1968.

Authors

Image	Author	Author Website	Twitter	Author Location

Topics

	Trapping, Exploring, Hunting	The sales of furs, and the exploration of new routes to new lands, and finally the hunting of animals made a significant impact in the history of the modern world, and often the people living remote to civilization would have to take advantage of the ways of the native people and eat like them. In this way, they would be carnivores by need, as fishing, hunting, and eating trapped animals would be the best way to get a meal, and animals can be processed down into high fat pemmican to get the best bang for the buck when it comes to transporting fuel as weight.
	Cannibalism	Hutton distinguished ten different motives for the eating of human flesh — It may be a matter of piety towards the dead; it may be associated with some doctrine of reincarnation; or it may be actuated by some rather crude philosophy as to the nature of life, life-matter, or soul substance. A cannibal feast may be in the nature of a sacrament; it may be a kind of a judicial proceeding; or it may be merely instigated by anger and a desire for revenge. Human flesh may be eaten, or human blood drunk, merely medicinally, or as a result of exceptional limitation in the matter of diet, or under the dictate of hunger or for pure greed
	Paleoanthropology	Understanding the early development of anatomically modern humans through fossils.
	Evolutionary Psychology	Evolutionary psychology is a field of psychology that seeks to understand human behavior and cognition through the lens of evolutionary principles. It proposes that many psychological traits and behaviors can be explained by the process of natural selection acting on our ancestors over thousands of generations. The central idea behind evolutionary psychology is that our minds, like our bodies, have been shaped by the forces of evolution. It suggests that our psychological mechanisms and patterns of thought have evolved to solve adaptive problems faced by our ancestors in their environments.
	Famine Foods	Foods that are depended upon during famines or when the preferred food isn't available. Generally, this means low quality plant foods, but could even be things like boiled leather skins used for clothing.
	Hunting methods	Early humans developed various hunting methods and techniques over millions of years to secure food for survival. Includes persistence hunting, ambush hunting, cooperative hunting, projectile hunting, trapping, fishing, scavenging, shellfish gathering.