This is not completely the case. Bonobos share food but it is a female dominated society and they share food only between bonobo females and the favored males of those females. But here is where you find the exception that explains bonobo food sharing. The bonobo social structure is based on maintaining a high level of female alliance and keeping males out of such alliances for dominance.... (Chimpanzees make male alliances for dominance....) Thus food sharing is one part of alliance maintenance. At least this is the hypothesis.
Also, among some species in the sub family of primates "callitrichidae" (marmosets and tamarins) there is high amount of food sharing between the class of caretaking adults and immature non-adults. This seems to be because tamarins seem to be cooperative in raising youth to maturity, which allows for a longer length of time for development than in other non-hominid primates. (This is according to S. Hrdy.) Again the reason for the exception is interesting. Among bonobos the reason for sharing has something to with female alliance, i.e. social structure. With tamarins the reason for food sharing seems to have something to do with how non-biological mothers cooperate in child caretaking tasks; i.e. again it has to do with a particular kind of social structure.
It is significant that humans, and probably early hominids - though we can't be sure -, shared these both of these qualities. We cooperate in child rearing to a level much greater than tamarins and we make inter-kinship political alliances to much greater degree than bonobos. The social structure effects on hominid hunter gatherers of these two qualities might possibly "explain" the high level of food sharing that all hunter gatherer groups maintain. Hominid hunter gatherers would have not survived without a high level of cooperation.
This can be put in "Marxist" terms. Hunter-gatherer lifeways are a "mode of production" and reproduction that requires a high level of cooperation for child rearing and for the supplemental benefits of hunting. Cooperation in child rearing allows the mother to forage for herself and her cooperators thus freeing her to give birth sooner than otherwise and preventing population collapse in a dangerous, subsistence environment. Cooperation for the specific purpose of foraging is not necessary but cooperation for childcare givers who also need to forage is necessary. On the other hand hunting is an enterprise where cooperation is always necessary. In hunter-gatherer societies foraging results in food sharing among caregivers and hunting results in food sharing equally with all. Those hunter-gatherers who don't participate in this cooperative mode of production soon disappear. Well, that's the hypothesis at least.
Jerry
Also
>
> Jenny Brown
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: Yes, and I forgot the big one, very critical : very long period of
> helpless childhood.
>
> The no food sharing among non-human primates really supports my thesis
that
> our species should be renamed _homo communis_.
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
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