This paper essentially replicates Wood & Hill's (2000) study, but here with the Hadza (of Tanzania) rather than the Ache (of Paraguay). It also queried both men and women. Basically, they were asked:
You come across two camps of Hadza, one of which you (and your family, if any) will join for 2 months. Both are identical and have unmarried young women and other male hunters. Camp A has better hunters, Camp B has poor hunters. Which do you choose?
This tests two hypotheses:
1. Provisioning hypothesis. Individuals should choose Camp A because is means more food for themselves and their family.
2. Prestige hypotheses: Individuals should choose Camp B because they will be relatively more prestigious and be better equipped to compete for women.
2. Prestige hypotheses: Individuals should choose Camp B because they will be relatively more prestigious and be better equipped to compete for women.
Among the Ache, men without dependent children chose Camp B, while men with dependent children chose Camp A. This effect was not found among the Hadza. Pretty much everyone wanted to be in Camp A, including 100% of the women interviewed, as predicted, as well as all the unmarried men. Some married men did choose Camp B, some for reasons of prestige ("I will go there to teach them to hunt") some with a "desire" to help ("The camp right now needs lots of help") and some with other motives - apparently camps with lots of good hunters tend to be bigger and noiser ("Camps with lots of meat have lots of noise and fighting" and "They will like e and there is less noise and bickering").
Importantly, this result shows little conflict of interest between the sexes in terms of prestige and provisioning related to hunting.
