The Wonder-Gatherer by Anonymous6/3/2023 ![]() ![]() We walked hard for an hour through a pathless, rolling sea of golden, waist-high grass, dotted with brush and thorny acacia trees, directly to the bloody patch where the giraffe was struck. It certainly beat the prospect of a long day in camp spent fiddling with research equipment. ![]() As anthropologists who study human ecology and evolution, we jumped at the opportunity to tag along-Hadza men’s tracking abilities are legendary. Mwasad had invited us along as a friendly gesture and for the extra help to carry the butchered animal back to camp should our search effort succeed. Dave and I were of little use in this endeavor. Mwasad led our party-Dave Raichlen from the University of Arizona, a 12-year-old Hadza boy named Neje and me-out of camp just after daybreak. An animal that size would feed his family and his camp for a week- but only if he could locate it. Mwasad had let the giraffe run to give the poison time to work, hoping to find it dead in the morning. They know the landscape and its residents better than you know your local Trader Joe’s. Hadza are traditional hunter-gatherers who live off wild plants and animals in the dry savanna wilderness of northern Tanzania. He hit it in the base of the neck from about 25 yards with a steel-tipped, wood arrow smeared with powerful, homemade poison. Four of us had been walking half the day, tracking a wounded giraffe that Mwasad, a Hadza man in his late 30s, shot the evening before. ![]()
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