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The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong
(www.scientificamerican.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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Persistence hunting only worked in areas with wide open terrain, like the African or American plains. Prey in the jungle or heavily wooded areas can just disappear into the underbrush and be gone. It doesn't matter how far you can walk at that point, because you'll never find that animal again.
Everything moving through a space leaves tracks or a trace
You can't keep a creature moving without rest if you have to stop to track it, and you can't track over rock, hard soil, through water, and a variety of other terrains.
There will certainly be areas where the trail disappears, but tracking isn’t necessarily about locating every individual footfall.
With an understanding of movement and behavior, one can make inferences about where the animal went to find and follow the next sign.
Even moving over rock or packed soil, sign is left. You may not be able to perceive it yourself, but to someone who spends hours a day reading and studying the ground over the span of years, those subtle differences are perceptible.
An animal will eventually reach a place to stop and rest, but with repeated interruption that rest won’t count for much.
I will acknowledge that things that seem impossible to me are probably easy for people who engage in those activities frequently. So, you're probably right.