How Women Shaped Human Evolution Through Food Processing

IT’S THE RAINY SEASON on the llanos of south-central Venezuela. Except for small rises of high ground, the savannas are flooded under several inches to several feet of water. Game has migrated out of the area, and fish are dispersed and difficult to find. But underground tubers are plump.

My husband and I have been living with the Pumé, South American hunter-gatherers, for some months. On a hungry morning, we accompany a group of women and children, walking single file to where they know the tubers are easy to dig out of the soggy, shallow sand. Even young girls under the age of 5 have their own small baskets to fill with the thumb-sized tubers that are the main source of food this time of year.

Back at camp, the men who had gone hunting and fishing that day had no luck. The women and children divvy up tasks, peeling, slicing, and soaking the roots to neutralize their bitterness. Later, after they are roasted soft in coals, people share the food out across hearths, hunger sated for another day.