Food Sharing Among Ache Foragers: Tests of Explanatory Hypotheses [and Comments and Reply]

TLDR

Food sharing has been widely regarded as a fundamental feature of hunter‑gatherer societies and is hypothesized to have influenced the evolution of language, intelligence, and the sexual division of labor. The study seeks to describe and explain food sharing among Ache hunter‑gatherers of eastern Paraguay, addressing what factors drive its evolution and how group variation in sharing extent can be accounted for. The authors review and analyze five competing hypotheses—kin selection, tolerated theft, temporal reciprocity, cooperative acquisition of resources, and conservation of resources—regarding the evolution of adult‑adult food sharing. Data on meat and honey sharing support the tolerated‑theft and temporal‑reciprocity hypotheses, while long‑term productivity differences suggest reciprocity is not fully balanced, informing a broader theory of food sharing.

Abstract

This paper aims to describe and explain aspects of food sharing among Ache hunter-gatherers of eastern Paraguay. Food sharing has been widely held to be a fundamental feature of the hunting and gathering way of life and has been hypothesized to have played a major role in the evolution of language, intelligence, and the sexual division of labor. The very general question that guided the research is: What factors are responsible for the evolution of food sharing among adult conspecifics, and how can we account for the variation among groups in the extent to which food is shared? Five alternative hypotheses concerning the evolution of adult-adult food sharing are reviewed and analyzed in terms of the competing predictions they generate. These hypotheses invoke (1) kin selection, (2) tolerated theft, (3) temporal reciprocity, (4) cooperative acquisition of food resources, and (5) conservation of resources. For meat and honey, the resources the Ache share most, the data conform to the predictions of the tolerated-theft and temporal-reciprocity hypotheses, with some qualifications. Long-term differences in productivity between foragers suggest that reciprocity is not completely balanced. The implications of these results for a general theory of food sharing are discussed.