Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Women pay attention: Men are still hunters

Man has been a hunter since he first walked the earth, no one will argue with this concept. Man is still a hunter today, many will disagree. Because man has been hunting for thousands of years why would he stop today? Well he has not stopped hunting, it just looks different today. I am not talking about the political incorrect hunting of birds and animals that take place every fall around the world. I am talking about hunting behavior.

Yes man still hunts for food, but in most big cities traditional hunting has fallen out of popularity. In small towns all across America hunting in the fall of the year is still a tradition that has not changed. Fathers taking sons hunting and teaching them the traditions of the hunt has been going on for thousands of years and most likely will not change. Big city people, on the other hand, are not exposed to hunting and don’t understand why someone would want to go hunting; yet they are hunters also.
 
Man, the big city hunter does not go out and bring back a deer for his family he hunts in other ways. He hunts for a cab, hunts for a mate (or two, or more), hunts for tickets to the ball game, hunts for a better job. Hunting is a concentrated effort to survive by providing food for the family group.

Let’s take a look at hunting behavior; it has two basic parts, the hunt and the kill. For the big city hunter step one is hunting for a cab, which is followed by step two the “kill” or finally getting the cab. Hunting always takes patience and skill but the “kill” is like finding tickets to a playoff game and can be a thrill. Men, everyday in our society play out this two-step process. They even teach these rites of passage to their male children.

For early man to be successful at hunting for food; skill and patience were required. Sitting still for many hours waiting for that wild animal to come along was normal behavior. Men would hunt in small groups for safety and to help each other. They would sit quietly for hours not talking just waiting, watching and moving slowly. They would have food and drink but could not make any noise that would scare away the animals.

Today modern men can sit with each other and watch football on TV for hours and not talk with each other. When I grew up the men in our family always gather in the den after a big family and watched sports on TV. The women usually sat in the kitchen and talked. I could only cope so long with the men in the den; they could sit for hours and not say a word. I am much too social so I would go into the kitchen and sit with the women and talk. As I got older I realized I was the only male in the family who sat with the women in the kitchen.

Men have the ability to bond without saying a word. This type of bonding is very strong but since men never talk much, they never learn much about each other. They just bond for the next ball game (or hunt). Men can spend hour after hour on the couch watching TV with such concentration that they never hear their mate. Men can spend years together in the work place and never know much about each other. Women on the other hand can meet someone new and have a complete life history in five minutes or less.

Sound familiar? All those years of hunting has helped to mold modern man.

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist