foragers is uncontested, but the benefits men receive and their
motivations for hunting are the subject of lively debate. The
“show-off” hypothesis (Hawkes 1990, 1991, 1993) initially
proposed that men hunt to gain social attention and mating
benefits by widely sharing game. This hypothesis was reformulated
using costly signaling theory (see Bird 1999; Bliege
Bird, Smith, and Bird 2001; Hawkes and Bliege Bird 2002)
and is hereafter referred to as the “signaling model.” This
model proposes that hunting functions mainly to provide an
honest signal of the underlying genotypic or phenotypic quality
of hunters, which later yields a mating advantage or social
deference. Big game hunting is considered an effective means
to signal because of the large audience, as consumers will pay
attention to hunting yields in order to obtain their shares.
Hunting is thus viewed as status or mating competition, not
familial provisioning, and marriage is reinterpreted as a convention
of publicly recognized property rights that reduces
competition among men (Hawkes 2004).
Proponents of the signaling model suggest that were men
primarily concerned with familial provisioning, their subsistence
patterns would mirror those of women. Therefore, the
sexual division of labor should be most pronounced when
activities effective for signaling differ from those for producing