The extent to which men’s food contributions serve to
provision families or display status is important for interpreting
archaeological signs of hunting in the fossil record,
understanding the evolution and maintenance of long-term
pair-bonds, and understanding how fundamental human lifehistory
traits (delayed childhood, long postmenopausal life
spans, and large brains) evolved (Hawkes et al. 1998; Kaplan
et al. 2000).3
The first section of this article assesses four key assumptions
of the signaling model: (1) men forage for large-package-size
items even when alternative foraging strategies yield a higher
long-term average food value, (2) high-variance daily acquisition
activities cannot effectively provision offspring, (3) food
transfers by hunters are not paid back later in currencies
directly affecting familial welfare, and (4) women prefer gathering
over hunting only because of its higher reliability and
productivity.
The second section explores men’s and women’s foraging
and reproductive decisions by incorporating bargaining theory
in economics, recognizing the potential for cooperation
due to shared fitness interests of men and women and for
conflict under changing conditions and disparities in bargaining
power. While Washburn’s and Lovejoy’s original depiction
of the nuclear family was simplistic, we choose no to abandon the notion of a complementary, advantageous
sexual division of labor. Our graphic model emphasizes that
underprovisioning, mixed mating and parental investment,
and desertions are all possible outcomes in human marriage.