Man the Hunter is the name of 1968 book which highlighted the central role of hunting in human evolution. Although ‘Man’ here refers to ‘mankind’ rather than ‘males’, the title embodies the common assumption that hunting is a largely male activity. Indeed, the authors, Richard Lee and Irven DeVore, argued that the sexual division of labour in hunter-gatherer societies is such that men specialise in hunting and women specialise in gathering.
And this makes sense. We know men are both faster and stronger than women – attributes that would obviously give them an advantage in clubbing seals, arrowing wildebeests and spearing woolly mammoths.
