Why hunt? Why gather? Why share? Hadza assessments of foraging and food-sharing motive

Over the last half century, anthropologists have vigorously debated adaptive motivations underlying food acquisition choices and food-sharing among hunter-gatherer groups. Numerous explanations been proposed to account for high-levels of generosity in food-sharing, including self- family-provisioning, reciprocity, tolerated theft pro-social- or skill-signaling. However, few studies asked foragers directly systematically about their foraging sharing decisions. We recruited 110 Hadza participants employed a combination free-response, yes/no, ranking forced-choice questions do just this. In free-response answers, respondents typically gave outcome-oriented accounts motive (e.g., get food) moralistic I good heart). tasks, precedence reciprocity as beyond household. found small but clear gender differences motive, line with previous predictions: women were more likely than men rank family-provisioning highly whereas skill-signaling highly. despite these differences, relative importance different was similar across genders skill-signaling, most important motivators activity both women. Contrary expectations theft, peer complaints requests ranked very low. There are several compelling reasons that evolutionary thinkers, interested ultimate-level processes, traditionally eschewed direct explicit investigations motive. data may yet provide insights.