Who did the hunting in the stone age?

[Mercedes519]

So DD (8) today learnt that men did the hunting in the stone age.

Keen to knock down the patriarchy one brick at a time we talked about the fact that the person who decided that men hunted in the stone age was a man. And therefore could have been biased.

But before I get all exercised on the subject I shall ask the wisdom of Mumsnet - is there any evidence for the male hunter and female gatherer we all learnt at school or is it just bullshit?

At Boxgrove in West Sussex they found mounds of animal bones ..huge amounts . and at feast pits near Stonehenge ..a small amount of fat meat will keep you going far longer than a bucket of berries which are seasonal . Women appear to be responsible for smoking and preserving meat and fish while the men sat around talking bollocks..at least that's what I observed when visiting New Age Traveller camps in the eighties!

Say your man gets himself trampled on and you are back cave with 5 kids guess you would go out hunting in middle of winter if nothing else around. Unless cave man felt socially obliged to share everything with single women and families. Sorry lady you are going starve death as only men hunt.. don’t think so.

All very well pointing to physical strength being a factor, but surely human intelligence is a key part of our success as a species as a hunter.

And intelligence isn't a male/female trait.

I've read that women's eyes are able to differentiate between a wider range of colour than men's, which would lend itself to foraging. Men's eyes are better suited to tracking movements at a distance than women's, so useful for hunting. But that's only vision, so lots of other factors to consider.

Amazonian tribes... the men hunt, the women garden. Sorry to burst the revisionist bubble. I'm sure females would start hunting if there weren't enough men to do it, but otherwise, division of specialist labour is the genius of humans, it's how we got ahead of other beasties. It brings many advantages.

I've read that women's eyes are able to differentiate between a wider range of colour than men's, which would lend itself to foraging.

Excellent colour vision is needed if you pick berries ....

Is it not the argument that men have since imposed that the important job is hunting rather than gathering daily foods was the important job taken by women and the hunters were an occasional bonus. You know like nurses been paid less than HGV drivers.

Stone Age peoples were tribal and lived in communities rather than family groups like us, so it's unlikely that one woman would have been left alone with her children.

Always remember history is written by the victors.

Dinosaurs are interesting. We know size and shape from fossils, obviously. Anything else is extrapolation from modern day beasts. We have no actual idea what colour they were, whether they had scales, feathers, hair. Also we have not a clue whether they made sounds and if so, what kind of sound. There is no proof that dinosaurs looked like we think they do....

To get the best insight into ancient cultures, historians & anthropologists study societies which have changed very little in this time, so aboriginal tribes or bush folk etc. (Of course they've changed dramatically in the past 100 years or so, but you get what I mean.)

Generally men do hunt as nursing babies/toddlers would have been more practical to keep in one place.(there's one tribe in Africa where men suckle their young tho to keep them quiet while the women are off out.)

The women's roll was by no means lesser. Skinning & tanning, gathering, child rearing etc. The hunting is only one part of their daily tasks, and I'm sure women could fish, trap etc.

Just to add to the discussion there’s a very interesting theory called the Waterside Ape theory.

It really reduces the role of hunting land animals and proposes that humans foraged in water for protein sources (catfish, shellfish etc).

The human body is quite well adapted to water. Chimpanzees just drown in water but humans have a fatty layer that helps with warmth and buoyancy.

Elaine Morgan was a key proponent of this theory, she’s about as feminist as they come.

lljkk I'm not so sure that specialism would necessarily break on a definite male/female divide. I would imagine there being a great deal of pragmatism in a group of people living constantly with the prospect of starvation, so it would be a case of whoever can hunt does that, and whoever can gather does that. Certainly the preponderance of hunters will be male and the preponderance of gatherers will be female, because of biology. But that doesn't preclude females being hunters, nor males being gatherers.

It isn't so much a revisionist bubble, it's more about being careful we don't apply current norms onto the very distant past. In other words, I'm not looking at from a feminist perspective, but thinking how it would work out in practice in a small group where everybody had to contribute as best they could.

I hesitated on commenting on your mention of meat-eating because I know Hindus are exclusively vegetarian from birth; but then I thought that probably eating meat was very significant in the distant past, which is why we have canine teeth. Food for thought, if you'll forgive the pun!

Harry I think that's a very important point. And goes back to what I said about not imposing current norms on the distant past. And reminded me that when it was necessary, in war time, plenty of women drove lorries and worked in heavy industries. But after, there was a huge propaganda drive to get those women out of the workplace and that did very much rely on the notion that men went out to work and women stayed at home having babies.

Aren't brains unisex though? And any differences are forged in the neural pathways by the way brain owners use their brain and the influence of social constructs ie. gender?

There is considerable evidence that males on average have greater spatial awareness skills than females. I stress the 'on average' because there will always be exceptions and the differences within genders are greater than the difference between genders. However, that doesn't change the fact that yes, boys and men tend to have better spatial skills than women and girls, which translates into better mathematical ability, though the differences are not huge.

There's a problem with testing such things as spatial awareness and mathematical ability. It's very difficult to filter out social assumptions. There have been studies that show a bias towards boys and mathematical ability - expectations that boys are better, and that gets translated into the classroom.

And it depends on what people mean by spatial awareness. Map-reading ability or finding the car keys?

But the equivalent of map-reading is the ability to locate good food sources. And that could be migratory herds or nuts and berries. Both need an instinctive awareness of the appropriate vector.

Yes, all such tests are problematic. But it remains the case that boys consistently show greater abilities in spatial awareness from a very early age. As I've said, these are just average differences and plenty of girls are better at maths/spatial awareness than plenty of boys, but these differences do exist, and they are in fact the biggest cognitive diffferences noted between males and females.

Just to add to the discussion there’s a very interesting theory called the Waterside Ape theory. It really reduces the role of hunting land animals and proposes that humans foraged in water for protein sources (catfish, shellfish etc). The human body is quite well adapted to water. Chimpanzees just drown in water but humans have a fatty layer that helps with warmth and buoyancy.

Is that sometimes knowns as the Aquatic ape theory ? There are some oddities that set humans apart from apes when it comes to water (the fact we can swim innately, for a start) - in particular the arrangement of our airways, and the diving reflex.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis

For myself, it seems to make a lot of sense - suggesting that humans arrived where we are via a different route to our primate cousins. That said, it's not accepted as fact ...

Returning to differences between males and females ... is it not the case that as human intelligence increased, it obviated the need for such physical differences between the sexes ? After all human hunting is not done by sheer brute force, but by using an incredible intelligence to stalk and trap animals, as well as working in large groups necessitating complex communication, and the development of tools to kill at a distance.

Given that we known mankind went through a very tight squeeze evolutionarily, it's likely that there was quite a bit of diversity in hunting due to the lack of humans

The late Lyall Watson wrote a fascinating book called "Omnivore" detailing the relationship between humans and their food. I can't recommend it enough - it has a brilliantly prescient section where he notes how marketers have tapped into the primal nature of humans around feeding to increase profits.

@IcedPurple Isn't it much more nuanced than just boys are better at spatial awareness and maths than girls? I thought there were some aspects of spatial awareness that girls do better than boys, as well as the reverse, but perhaps I've misunderstood.

Plus, I have no idea how you can control for socialisation, stereotype threat and so on when conducting research.

Isn't it much more nuanced than just boys are better at spatial awareness and maths than girls?

Probably, but as I've said, there really isn't much doubt that in general, boys DO have better spatial awareness skills than girls. I read a book about sex differences in children - one which certainly wasn't slanted towards perpetuating gender stereotypes - and the upshot was that average greater male ability in maths/spatial awareness is the most striking cognitive difference between males and females.

But again I stress - the difference is average and is by no means overwhelming. But it exists. I'll see if I can remember the name of the book and post a link.

Plus, I have no idea how you can control for socialisation, stereotype threat and so on when conducting research.

They do tests on very young children, toddlers even. And sure, even by that age, children may have been socialised into gender roles, but even at a young age, the differences are there. In fact, they tend to decrease rather than increase with age, which would suggest that socilisation may not be a major factor here.

I'm not a biological determinist by any means, and do think a lot of gender differences are down to culture rather than genetics, but that doesn't mean there are NO such biological differences in cognitive abilities.

Probably, but as I've said, there really isn't much doubt that in general, boys DO have better spatial awareness skills than girls

In what sense though? I teach gymnastics and I find generally girls have better spatial awareness- they are more likely to know where they are in the air relative to the apparatus. Boys, funnily enough, are more likely to stick at it and get better- if it doesn’t come easy to the girls they give up.

I’d like to read this book if you have it. I don’t think it is possible to separate out the stereotypes- studies have shown that adults will give even very young baby boys spatial awareness puzzles while giving girls dolls. By the time they are walking even- when girls are told to be careful and slow down, boys have had months more practice with puzzles and games...

We know that women were warriors so there is no good reason to believe they were not hunters, except in societies where they were told not to by the men.
If men were the hunters by nature then proscriptions against women hunting or touching hunting implements wouldn't be needed. They just wouldn't want to.

Everyone hunted except people who were unable to because of their age, infirmity, pregnancy or breastfeeding. If they couldn't hunt they didn't just sit around doing nothing.

Here is the book:

www.liseeliot.com/pink-brain-blue-brain

As I say, the author (who is a neuroscientist) certainly isn't one to perpetuate stereotypes, but she agrees that the evidence suggests that there are differences in average spatial/mathematical ability between boys and girls. It's been a while since I read it so can't remember all the research, but it does appear that these differences aren't just down to culture and sterotyping.

Everyone hunted except people who were unable to because of their age, infirmity, pregnancy or breastfeeding.

Given shorter life-spans and the fact that girls would have started reproducing not long after puberty, women would have been pregnant or breastfeeding for quite a high proportion of their lives.

If they couldn't hunt they didn't just sit around doing nothing.

Indeed. The food gained by scavenging - usually by women - was the basis of the hunter gatherer diet. Meat was an occasional treat.

From your link:

"Boys are not, in fact, “better at math” but at certain kinds of spatial reasoning."

Yes - and if you read the book, those average better abilities in spatial reasoning often translate into higher scores on maths tests.

May have been said, but please don't devalue the work of women - pregnancy, childbirth, nursing an infant, etc. While the women were busy with all these physically demanding activities (and, imagine life without tampons!) men didn't have so much to do so they went out hunting once they'd checked that they weren't needed back at base camp to help support the child-rearing, gathering, cooking, etc.

That's probably how I would present it to my son. I don't think it's likely that the women went hunting in the same numbers as men, because without women having kids, there would have been no one to feed and kids would have taken up time and effort then the way they do now.

We did have a conversation the other day about men's attitude to risk and whether that has been effected by our genes from the old days - started by son's disgust at a couple of drivers who were men. If they weren't prepared to risk their lives then would they have gone to track a particularly tasty looking animal and do women usually have a lower risk profile because they would have perhaps been more involved in protection duties - of the camp and the children. We came to no conclusions being no experts but was interesting chat.