So... anyone know about cave people and how their societies were organised?

the worlds current tribal societies have a decent variety of arrangmenets depending onthe specific circs -

bhuan has single women marrying groups of men, and the men doing the food production so she gets to look after kids, andweaving etc..

that strong man programme showed a group in East Timor where men and women lived fairly separate - women fishing, gathering sogo and men hunting..both gathering foods.

i've heard of African tribes where the women own all land and animals, and farm it, and the men are more like drones...

depending on how far back you want to look, and where...

ancient Crete was thought to be matriarchal as the worship is of largely female idols....but again...big conjecture on that one!

I think that's right Snorbs, but it doesn't prove anything either way about who did the hunting....

I'm pretty sure that it was mentioned on Radio 4's "A History of the World in 100 Objects" that some of the oldest statues ever found are of fertility goddesses.

Not found any stick people with protrusions on their upper chest

And the other side to this is, if the men did go hunting, and killed a (say ) deer, that would feed the cave dwellers for a few days. But the ones who gathered the fruit/veg/crops, used them to make meals, preserved them, etc etc etc, probably fed the families a lot more for a lot longer.ie women, children, the older men who survived the hunting.
Sorry, probably preaching to converted here, bit of bugbear of mine [how sad am I emoticon...]

or young fit people hunt, pregnant and elderly women and old men stay with the children....

we simply don't know.

Well it is very likely that males would do the majority of the hunting, by the way hunting was not something that took 1hr it could take days in order to be able to obtain the meat needed for their group. Which would normally leave females and young males to care for the 'camp' gather etc

There are many old tribes that exist today and have been found to still live in the manner of their ancestors. I am trying to remember the name of one but can't at the moment but the one I am thinking about are believed to still live in the way their ancestors did before people even left Africa (that's before cavemen).

Also it is important to remember that survival was key, so everyone would fulfil their role in order to promote the success of their group.

So pretty pointless talking about it really...

it's waaaaay vaguer than Classics!
often our identification of male/female skeletons is uncertain anyway (according to an ex-flatmate of mine who was doing her Masters on it).

Don't know but I do know that history is written in a way that makes sense in the present, so I don't really buy into any 'this is the way it was' stuff.

I don't think people can really tell that much. If it's as vague as Classics (which is obviously later) then it's mostly conjecture

I don't think we do know (not an expert but have discussed in the past with people who are).
Some people use the analogy of contemporary hunter-gatherers and look at how they are organised in different tribes.
Then there is skeletal evidence and IIRC once farming starts you get noticeably different wear patterns in male and female skeletal remains suggesting that women by that time spent time on repetitive tasks like grinding corn but I don't know if there is anything substantial from before the Neolithic.

don't know much about cave paintings but from what I can remember the figures are generally so simple that you can't tell if they're men or women.