Dr Paul Eastwick

you know, forced, for lack of a better word, to interact with people, which happens in a lot of contexts, then, again, there's going to be some amount of increase in opportunity, but it's not so dramatic.

It's like we over-indexed on like, oh, mating success was getting with the most desirable people.

Instead, we could think about mating success was about forming an interdependent relationship that was effective at raising these extremely costly offspring.

So it's not really about getting somebody with the best traits.

It's about forming the best relationship that allows us to work together over time doing this like impossibly difficult task.

Yes, it's complicated by the fact that in a lot of hunter-gatherer groups, the spoils that these men would be able to provide are shared widely.

So in some ways, again, all of these things get very mushy because what you're actually getting, if you get with a great hunter, for example, is you're getting some prestige from the community.

You're also getting a little bit of assurance that if something happens, the rest of the community is going to be looking out for you.

Right, exactly, stuff like that.

But there can be other forms of provisioning that matter too.

So this guy, let's say he's not the best hunter in the world, but you know what he does?

He knows where the honey's at, okay?

I'm talking about like literal honey.

And he goes and finds the honey and brings that back for you.

I think there's some, but I think, again, what that sidelines is the fact that a lot of what these guys would have been needed for are things surrounding protection of my offspring.

Why was it in the first place?

that a couple of million years ago women seemed to start wanting men to be around i mean they started selecting for the men that were less aggressive around kids right that they could trust around their own kids and this is why we start to see like we don't have the sharp canines anymore we men human men are pretty docile compared to you know what you see in our closest ape relatives

And that's because we were being selected to be good caregivers as well.

I mean, it's weird to think about today.

We don't think about that as being a particularly manly activity.