Talk:Gathering hypothesis

Wikipedia initiative
I created this page as a part of the APA's Wikipedia Initiative and for a class I'm taking at my University. I am open to suggestions or edits. This is meant to be a summary of the research out on the gathering hypothesis. Thanks for all the help in advance! Katherinegaffney —Preceding undated comment added 15:59, November 28, 2012‎


 * well, Hawkes does not seem to be using the term "gathering hypothesis", and it is completely unclear in what way "Hawkes furthers the argument for the gathering hypothesis".
 * It is a rather unremarkable observation that "women obtain larger fitness benefits by tending to their offspring, thus they provision, because it is simpler to coordinate gathering and offspring care"
 * Yes, this explains why men hunt and women gather. It is completely unclear how this is supposed to support either the hunting or the supposed "gathering hypothesis". --dab (𒁳) 07:51, 30 November 2012 (UTC)


 * alright, quick googling seems to suggest that this is just 1970s second-wave-feminism.
 * At the time, people insisted to sort of turn every field on its head, because if all science had been poisoned by patriarchy, you only needed to invert all conclusions to arrive at the feminist truth. --dab (𒁳) 07:54, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Some newer sources would be better, to indicate the discussion is ongoing (or even to indicate the issue was considered settled at a certain point in time).
 * This reminds me of the aquatic ape hypothesis, with feminism shading into paleoanthropology. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 11:27, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

I am not saying a hypothesis is automatically bad because it was proposed by feminists, but it is extremely difficult to make any progress if your entire field is powered by ideology. It tends to get in the way of the scientific method. E.g. Gimbutas' early work was groundbreaking, but once she decided that it was all about "feminist archaeology", she more or less went from research to providing inspirational literature for her fellow ideologists. it's the same here, there is a lot to be said for hypotheses that e.g. speculate about the role of women in the emergence of language ('grandmother hypothesis'), but if your idea of feminism is just 'take some established hypothesis and just claim the opposite' (as in s/hunting/gathering/) your chances of making real progress are rather limited.

In all this "human evolution" stuff, it is very important to be specific which stage your hypothesis is even supposed to address. The "advent of modern humans" is a process that spans about three million years. That is to say, the duration of the process leading towards the "product" is by far longer than the lifetime of the "product" so far. This is easily overlooked. So, the aquatic ape hypothesis and the hunting hypothesis are by no means mutually exclusive. The AAH would apply, I suppose, to about five million years ago (e.g. the move from undifferantiated Pan-Homo ancestors to Australopithecines), while the hunting hypothesis would apply to about two million years ago, i.e. Three Million Years later. The evolution of language may or may not have started around 2Mya, but the emergence of fully developed language dates more likely to about 0.1 to 0.07 Mya, so you have two million years to fill with various hypotheses about various stages in this process. There is a lot of room there. But this also means you need better evidence than "it sounds like a good idea" to make your hypothesis plausible.

--dab (𒁳) 08:46, 1 December 2012 (UTC)