While it is undisputed that early humans were hunters, the importance of this fact for the final steps in the emergence of the genus Homo out of earlier australopithecines, with its bipedalism and production of stone tools (from about 2.5 million years ago), and eventually also control of fire (from about 1.5 million years ago), is emphasized in the "hunting hypothesis", and de-emphasized in scenarios that stress the omnivore status of humans as their recipe for success, and social interaction, including mating behaviour as essential in the emergence of language and culture.
As societal evidence David Buss cites that modern tribal population deploy hunting as their primary way of acquiring food.
[1] The Aka pygmies in the Central African Republic spend 56% of their quest for nourishment hunting, 27% gathering, and 17% processing food.
Plant collecting can be a physically demanding task so strength, endurance, or patience does not explain why women do not regularly hunt large game.
[4] Though the hunting hypothesis is still being debated today, many experts have theorized the impact that women had concerning their involvement with hunter-gatherers being primarily males, was much larger than previously thought.
[4] The majority of human's evolutionary history consisted of being hunter-gatherers as such women evolved the necessary traits needed for hunting such as endurance, movement coordination, and athleticism.
[7] Hunting big game requires a collaborative effort, thus participation from all abled-bodies was encouraged which included females.
[4] The women's expertise with hunting was further shown with mixed groups of male and female hunters being the most successful, coming home with kills 41 percent of the time.
Buss purports that the hunting hypothesis explains the high level of human male parental investment in offspring as compared to primates.
Thus, the act of hunting and the required transportation of the kill in order to feed offspring is a reasonable explanation for human male provisioning.
In this situation Buss suggests that there are low costs to giving away meat that cannot be eaten by the individual hunter on his own and large benefits from the expectation of the returned favor in a week where his hunting is not successful.
[2] Also the success of hunting is unpredictable whereas berries and fruits, unless there is a drought or a bad bush, are fairly consistent in seasonality.
Kristen Hawkes argues that women favor neighbors opting for men who provide the advantageous, yet infrequent meat feasts.
Hawkes suggests that it would be beneficial for women to reward men who employ the “show-off strategy” by supporting them in a dispute, caring for their offspring, or providing sexual favors.
[5] It's suggested by David Buss that stone tools were invented not strictly for hunting, but for gathering plants and used for digging them up.
[5] Though women weren't strictly hunters, a woman's time investment in foraging depended on how much food her husband brought back.
[5] Gathering plant foods allows a person to return to camp when necessary, but hunting may require an overnight stay so as to continue tracking the animal in the morning.
[5] Locating and gathering edible nuts, berries, fruit, and tubers would require a different set of spatial skills.
[5] The high prevalence of male hunters and female gatherers among traditional societies, although not conclusive evidence, provides one more clue that both activities are part of the human pattern of procuring food.