Re: Does the hunting instinct control many of our actions?

There has been a great deal of historical controversy in anthropology
about the importance of hunting as compared to scavenging, and general
foraging in human evolution, and in shaping the nature of human social and
cognitive intelligence. I am not expert on the hypothesis of "Man the
Hunter" but  in general, the idea that hunting has shaped our nature seems
to have fallen out of favor among many anthropologists, as a general
explanation of human nature. Its importance in human life and human nature
is great, but it does not explain all aspects of hour nature.

I attach some refs I have handy which deal with hunting from an
evolutionary or ecological perspective, and some of which deal with the
social and cognitive aspects of hunding.

If none of these refs suit you exactly, do a search on a search engine
specializing in anthropological literature, and you should find plenty of
both recent and older references having to do with the cognitive side of
hunting.

In particular, from the list below, I would direct your atention to
Altmann (1979), Flinn (1996), Hill (1982), Boesch & Boesch (1989),
Maryanski and Turner (1992), Winterhalder (1981), Lee & Devore (1968),
Shostak (1983), van den Berghe (1979), Ingold, Riches,& Woodburn (1988),
roughly in that order.

Altmann, S.A., and J. Altmann (1979). Demographic constraints on behavior 
and
social organization. In I.S. Bernstein and E.O. Smith (Eds.), Primate 
Ecology
and Human Origins:  Ecological Influences on Social Organization (pp. 
47-63).
STPM.

Biesele, M. (1986). How hunter-gatherers' stories "make sense": semantics 
and
adaptation.  Cultural Anthropology, 1(2), 157-170.

Boesch, C., and H. Boesch (1989). Hunting behavior of wild chimpanzees in 
the
TaÔ National Park.  American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 78, 547-73.

Flinn, M.V. (1996). Culture and the Evolution of Social Learning.  
Evolution
and Human Behavior, 18, 23-67.

Hegmon, M., and L.E. Fisher (1991). Information strategies in 
hunter-gatherer
societies. In Foragers in Context: Long-term, Regional, and Historical
Perspectives in Hunter-Gatherer Studies Ann Arbor : Department of
Anthropology, University of Michigan.

Hill, K. (1982). Hunting and human evolution.  J Hum Evol, 11, 521-44.

Hill, K. (1989). Hunter-gatherers of the New World.  American Scientist,
77(5), 437-43.

Ingold, T., D. Riches, and J. Woodburn (Ed.). (1988).  Hunters and 
Gatherers,
Vol. 1:  History, Evolution, and Social Change. London:   Berg.

Lee, R.B., and I. DeVore (Ed.). (1968).  Man the Hunter. Chicago:   Aldine.

Marks, S.A. (1976). Large Mammals and a Brave People:  Subsistence Hunters
in Zambia. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Marshall, J. (1956). The Hunters.  In Somerville, MA: Center for
Documentary Anthropology.

Maryanski, A., and J.H. Turner (1992).  The Social Cage:  Human Nature and
the Evolution of Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Service, E.R. (1966). The Hunters. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Shostak, M. (1983). Nisa: The Life and  Words of a !Kung Woman. New York:
Vintage Books, a Division of Random House.

Testart, A. (1987). The hunter gatherers:  between prehistory and
ethnology. In Histoire et Archeologie (pp. 8-17).

van den Berghe, P.L. (1979). Human Family  Systems:  An Evolutionary View.
Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc.

Volkman, T.A. (1986). Hunter-gatherer myth  in southern Africa.  Cultural
Survival Quarterly, 10(2), 25-32.

Winterhalder, B., and E.A. Smith (Ed.).  (1981).  Hunter Gatherer Foraging
Strategies:  Ethnographic and Archaeological Analyses.  Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

Worthman, C.M., and M.J. Konner (1987). Testosterone  Levels Change With
Subsistence Hunting Effort in !Kung San Men.  Psychoneuroendocrinology.,
12(6), 449-458.


BTW, the concept of an "instinct" has been largely abandoned by
developmental psychobiologists. For more on that, and the concept of
"epigenesis" which is in many ways counterposed against the fallacious
concepts of learned, versus instinctual behavior, try the following:

Flinn, M.V. (1996). Culture and the Evolution of Social Learning.  
Evolution
and Human Behavior, 18, 23-67.

Maier, R.  (1998). Comparative Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary and
Ecological Approach. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Tudge, J., S.  Putnam, and J. Valsiner (1991). Culture and cognition in
developmental  perspective:  Reading asa co-constructive process. In
Carolina Consortium on Human Development,  .

Worthman, C.M.  (1992). Cupid and Psyche: investigative syncretism in
biological and  psychological anthropology. In T. Schwartz, C.A. Lutz, and
G.M. White (Eds.), New Directions in Psychological Anthropology (pp. 
150-178).