Furthermore, peak proficiency in atlatl use can be achieved at a young age, potentially before females reach reproductive age, obviating a sex-biased technological constraint that would later intensify with bow-and-arrow technology ( 17). Pooling labor and sharing meat are necessary to mitigate risks associated with the atlatl’s low accuracy and long reloading times ( 16). Moreover, the primary hunting technology of the time-the atlatl or spear thrower-would have encouraged broad participation in big-game hunting. Communal hunting, which also appears to have deep evolutionary roots ( 15), would have encouraged contributions from females, males, and children whether in driving or dispatching large animals.

Alloparenting, which appears to have deep evolutionary roots in the human species ( 14), would have freed women of child care demands, allowing them to hunt.

Early subsistence economies that emphasized big game would have encouraged participation from all able individuals. However, a number of scholars have theorized that such division of labor would have been less pronounced, altogether absent, or structurally different among our early hunter-gatherer ancestors ( 5– 13). Such observations would seem to suggest that this gendered behavioral pattern is an ancestral one, ostensibly stemming from life history traits related to pregnancy and child care, which constrain female subsistence opportunities ( 3, 4). Big-game hunting is an overwhelmingly male-biased behavior among recent hunter-gatherer societies ( 1, 2).

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