Human advancement was due to feminisation of the species.

That makes sense TeiTetua - the hierarchy within farming is still with men at the top!

The European tradition is that agriculture is men's work, with women called on to fill in at times of the year, like haying, when there was work for everyone, though dairying was one area where there was year-round employment for women. But then rural life had a lot of jobs which weren't directly on the soil and didn't relate to crops raised for sale, and women did a lot of that peripheral work.

Somewhere I read that in societies where the population was limited by the amount of productive land, like Europe or China, land was the most valuable asset and men worked on it. In other places, like Africa or North America, there was plenty of land, so farming was low-status work and women did it. Furthermore, in those places where land was scarce, women were considered so peripheral that a family would have to pay a dowry to a husband in order to make him willing to let a woman live on his precious land, whereas among Africans or American Indians, at least a wife was a useful labourer, and a husband would have to pay a bride-price for her.

The Chinese ideogram for "man" is field-strength. It's explained here ("husband" is also fun):
www.themaninchina.com/readingchinesecharacters.htm

Garlick's image "English women stack hay with children playing" actually features "while men actually cut the hay in the background and it doesn't need to be mentioned". Quite clearly visible.

If we look at what happened when living in settlements began I think that can give us quite a lot of clues. Agriculture was actually harder work than hunter/gatherers were used to. If we look at a lot of religions we see the same fall from paradise where we lived a life of ease at one with the earth. In the Bible, people are punished by having to toil in the fields. I'm bringing this up because folk tales come from somewhere and can give us clues to the stories people headed down.

Agriculture was more reliable in the long term, but required more man hours in the field - literally in this case, as women had to have more and more children. Society also seems to have moved towards family groups rather than tribal at this point, as land/possessions could be handed down like never before. This may have been the point women's role changes further as the paternity of children became a much more pressing issue. The birth of Eve at this point in history came after Lilith disappeared in the tale.

A massive tangent, but I find it interesting anyway! But the article is surely talking about an time before civilisation. Let's not forget the importance of language, while tool making is of course crucial, passing on knowledge in an efficient way, as well as the ability to think and plan in abstract ways must have been key at this point.

Do you know, Copper, I think you might be onto something there.

Sometimes the reason why you can't find evidence is because THERE ISN'T ANY EVIDENCE. HTH.

Would you please answer my question, Karbon? Which "modern hunter gatherer" societies are you basing your opinions on? Because your assertions don't accord with my experiences or indeed the evidence I've read in any way.

Or is it just more fun for you to come and make wildly inaccurate assertions and then, when unable to prove them, suggest that women who have investigated those claims, and found them to be insupported, are thinking with some form of confirmation bias?

Oh, this was image searches, because I'm too impatient to read today, plus they're pretty obvious evidence.

So, I'm no historian, but I can google.

So I googled the first 2, largely manual, farming styles that came to mind - paddy fields, and tea - and those were pretty much all women doing the work.

So then I thought, but that's biased, lets look at some others

Wheat farming - once I got out of the mechanised stuff, I found 'Wheat Farming in the Punjab' and there were both women and men hand harvesting.

So I thought some more. Grapes, Oranges - fruit harvesting - women and men again

Ploughing - the one that requires strength apparently (I know almost nothing about this) - finally mainly men... no.. hangon, plenty of men, but also a fair few boys and old men (so strength can't be all-important then), and when no animals or tractors where involved, there it was, women with the picks and hoes.

So, my googling leads me to disbelieve you karbon.

But you are coming out with opinion not facts karbon. You are providing no evidence to support what you are saying. We are countering your arguments with figures and texts to support our arguments. You are just basically saying "Wah! It's true coz I say so". And no we don't have much interest in finding sources for amateurish evo psych. You are the one spouting it with no credibility. We don't have to accept or believe it just because you say it is so. We're not going to do your work for you. Bring the evidence or you are just talking shit basically.

Here is an interesting paper. Even the picture on the front belies what karbon is opinionating on.

"Anyone would think you have decided what you want the truth to be, and are only looking sources that support the conclusions you have already settled on"

The same comment could be addressed to you, karbon!

"women do the lighter work, and need men to do the heavier stuff."

Karbon, i've read that the move to men taking over agriculture was less to do with being lighter and more to do with being compatible with childcare. Up until recently women took their children with them to work whether it was gathering, weaving, cooking, or going into the fields with them on their backs. Agriculture was (and still is in many non industrialised areas) the domain of women.

What changed things, as you rightly point out, was machinery, but less to do with the ability to operate (I expect our foremothers were tough as nails) and more to do with the fact that it would be dangerous to have toddlers running around a plough.

May I suggest "Woman's Work the first 20,000 years" by Elizabeth Barber. It's very good to get a non androcentric view of history.

As I said, all the evidence is there if you want it, you clearly don't. Why not? Anyone would think you have decided what you want the truth to be, and are only looking sources that support the conclusions you have already settled on.

women do the lighter work, and need men to do the heavier stuff. Anthropologist reckon that sexism took off with reliance on the plough, which men could handle more productively than women

I fort that was horses?

Which modern hunter gatherer societies are you referring to, Karbon? Because, and I realise living within a couple of them doesn't make me an expert, I saw zero evidence of your evopsych based claims.

You make claims, back them up!

And what scallops said, which anthropologists don't know the division of agricultural labour?

Thanks for the video garlick, I didn't know it was called an atlatl.

And women do 70% of the farming around the world. I'm pretty certain they don't stick to "the lighter work".

You are the one making all the claims karbon. You back it up.

I don't need to google any speculation random posters make up on the Internet.

Ah right. Thanks for clarifying.