Raichlen, who has conducted extensive studies of some of the world’s remaining hunter-gatherer tribes, points out that this way of life is both physically and cognitively demanding. Foraging requires vigorous, sustained physical activity; it also makes demands on attention, memory, spatial navigation, motor control, and executive functions like planning and decision making. Hunting, too, poses both a mental and a physical challenge: the hunter has to locate the animal and track its unpredictable movements even while mustering the energy to outrun it. Such are the conditions under which the
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