A new study reveals that prehistoric women not only participated in hunting, but may have been physiologically suited for it. The study is based on physiological studies and archaeological evidence, highlighting women’s endurance and the lack of a strict division of labor in early societies. This study highlights the need to reevaluate long-standing prejudices about women’s abilities.
When Carla Okobock was a child, she often wondered about the images in movies, books, comics, and cartoons depicting prehistoric men and women. Accompanying her are a “man hunter” with a spear in his hand and a “female gatherer” with a spear. The baby was strapped to his back, and in his hand was a basket of crop seeds.
“This was something everyone was used to seeing,” Okobock said. “This is an assumption that we all had in our heads, and it was carried through at the Natural History Museum.”
Many years later, Ocobock, an assistant professor in the University of Notre Dame’s anthropology department and director of the Human Energetics Laboratory, realized that she was a human biologist, studying physiology and prehistoric evidence, and working with early women. I discovered that many of these notions about women are true. Men were less accurate. The accepted reconstruction of human evolution assumed that men were biologically superior, but that interpretation did not tell the whole story.
Source: scitechdaily.com
