Biologists have studied the gender differences in foraging strategies of African boys and girls when foraging. article about it published Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
Hunting and gathering were the earliest forms of obtaining food from humans. In different periods, the vast majority of Earth’s peoples have switched to a productive agriculture-based economy, but some African tribes still maintain their traditional lifestyle. It is important for evolutionary biology to understand exactly how humans developed these behaviors.
Dutch and German scientists decided to use the example of such tribes to investigate whether foraging strategy is influenced by an individual’s biological factors—for example, gender differences. They accompanied 27 African children from the Republic of the Congo at the year-round meeting. In this country, people are sent to the collection from the age of five.
It turned out that gender differences in this activity were noticed from an early age. Groups of males tended to collect fruit and seeds, which required climbing trees at risk. Girls, on the other hand, tended to pick up the edible roots growing in the soil. At the same time, the search for roots requires a certain skill – the vines that lead to them are extremely confusing, and it is easy to lose the “trace”.
“This early onset of gender-based foraging skills, coupled with the tradition of sharing food in foraging communities, likely resulted in a more stable source of energy and food for the human species. Eventually, it was able to allow us to have brains that were significantly larger than our closest living relatives,” the authors summarize.