One of the reasons hunting and gathering cannot support much polygamy is that luck, more than skill, plays a large part in hunters’ success. Even the best hunter would often return empty-handed and would be reliant on his fellow men to share what they had killed. This equitable sharing of hunted food is characteristic of these people (in most other social hunting species there is a free-for-all) and is the clearest example of a habit of “reciprocal altruism” on which the whole of society sometimes appears to be based.
