“Man-the-Hunter” Hypothesis Debunked?

[dognose]

For centuries, historians and scientists mostly agreed that when early human groups sought food, men hunted and women gathered. However, a 9,000-year-old female hunter burial in the Andes Mountains of South America reveals a different story, according to new research conducted at the University of California, Davis.


“An archaeological discovery and analysis of early burial practices overturns the long-held ‘man-the-hunter’ hypothesis,” said Randy Haas, assistant professor of anthropology and the lead author of the study, “Female Hunters of the Early Americas.” It was published today (November 4, 2020) in Science Advances.

See full column at scitechdaily.com
“Man-the-Hunter” Hypothesis Debunked? Research Suggests Early Big-Game Hunters of the Americas Were Female
By UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - DAVIS NOVEMBER 4, 2020

Interesting.

 

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[smallfoot]

That was a good read! Thanks for posting!

 

[joshuaream]

I like it, makes absolute sense to me.

The only thing I'm not sure about is the hunter wearing a pink track suit while hunting ancient llamas. I get maybe they didn't wear camouflage, but pink?

 

[sandchip]

I'm sure there were widows back then as there are today, who had to fend for themselves. They were probably a lot better at it than most would be nowadays.

 

[Aurora1959]

My problem with this particular incident is that the diggers based their ideas on the fact that the female skeleton's grave goods included projectile points. There have been infants' graves with projectile points, including Anzick-1, so...

 

[releventchair]

A rather reaching type conclusion.

A woman with scissors in the recent past would be no shock. Today it might...
A woman with cutting tools and the means to make more in her grave does not mean her greatest activity in food acquisition depended on them.. But I can agree with the sentiment she'd need such where she was headed.

IF she had a shoulder joint or denser bone in one arm from throwing darts ...I'd be more willing to believe she was hunting more.

The picture depiction is lousy. For starters the dart ready to launch is garbage in shape/crooked bad.
And prey is not going to approach through open plain on a run to visit a hunter standing in the open.
Leastwise , I'd go hungry too often waiting for such....

 

[H.P.]

A common sense conclusion...not needing any scientific research to figure that one out.

 

[uniface]

The root problem here, and what drives this sort of nonsense, is that archaeology believes itself to be a subsidiary branch of "anthropology" (as if some separate, blanket study of people were necessary because each facet of it weren't already covered by some specialized branch).

The result is that the goal of it is supposed to be the recovery of what they thought and believed, their social interaction patterns, and the rest of it which leave no traces and can only be peoples' assumptions projected into the record.

IOW archaeology is turned into a billboard for what is, in the end, Marxist ideology.

There. I said it.

 

[Charl]

Some may wish to read the actual study:

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/45/eabd0310.full

And the relevant supplementary material:

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/suppl/2020/11/02/6.45.eabd0310.DC1/abd0310_SM.pdf

Note: the supplementary material is interesting in describing the extensive/impressive number of burials included in the study....

 

[Quartzite Keith]

Modern archaeologists/anthropologist seem obsessed with trying to "upset the apple cart". The fact that every known hunter gather societies (and historically all human societies) have had had clear gender roles is not a small point.

Wouldn't it seem just as likely (perhaps even more likely) that all we see here is a tradition at that time and place where a basket gets passed around and each member of the clan puts in one item of value as a grave offering? Let me play anthropologist: Based on that assumption I can determine not only the the size, but also the age and sex structure of that clan. For example, we have 8 "projectile points". Six are well used, resharpened down to about reject stage (Items 1-6, Figure S2), one is fairly good, looks newish (Item 26, Figure S2), and one is excellent (Item 25, figure S2). The excellent one is obviously from her husband, the good one is from her brother, and the rest are from adult uncles or adult male cousins. Tada! Is that not an equally valid thought process and theory?

 

[Aurora1959]

The root problem here, and what drives this sort of nonsense, is that archaeology believes itself to be a subsidiary branch of "anthropology" (as if some separate, blanket study of people were necessary because each facet of it weren't already covered by some specialized branch).

The result is that the goal of it is supposed to be the recovery of what they thought and believed, their social interaction patterns, and the rest of it which leave no traces and can only be peoples' assumptions projected into the record.

IOW archaeology is turned into a billboard for what is, in the end, Marxist ideology.

There. I said it.

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." - Karl Marx
"I refuse to join any club that will have me as a member." - Groucho Marx

 

[Jeff H]

Certainly women hunted....but so did men. So I would not say "Man-the Hunter" has been debunked. But women did everything men did to some degree and also a few things that man are not capable of. I can easily picture some prehistoric woman yelling at her lazy-a$$ man to get some fresh meat to feed the family, him making some drunk excuse and her going out herself with spear in hand to get supper. In some societies the women were generally physically stronger then most males because they had to do all the hard labor. The Cossack women of Russia were described that way. But yeah, I agree with Joshua, the pink suit is a bit much.

 

[southfork]

A rather reaching type conclusion.

A woman with scissors in the recent past would be no shock. Today it might...
A woman with cutting tools and the means to make more in her grave does not mean her greatest activity in food acquisition depended on them.. But I can agree with the sentiment she'd need such where she was headed.

IF she had a shoulder joint or denser bone in one arm from throwing darts ...I'd be more willing to believe she was hunting more.

The picture depiction is lousy. For starters the dart ready to launch is garbage in shape/crooked bad.
And prey is not going to approach through open plain on a run to visit a hunter standing in the open.
Leastwise , I'd go hungry too often waiting for such....

Look closer she has help driving game towards her .

 

[Tdog]

Look closer she has help driving game towards her .

Yes she does!

 

[releventchair]

Look closer she has help driving game towards her .

Yes.
And I've driven , and had deer driven towards me.
Try it in such an open area.....
Eventually you might get lucky.
Many calories burned later and on prior attempts.

A bottle neck. A funnel. A low area. A cliff. All can help.
But being where critters want to be is the best odds. More so when they are reacting to a predator harassing them.
Otherwise their innate abilities will trump a bystander out in the open.
Besides , stressed game don't die as easy. Confused at being captured prey may. But nothings captured...

 

[1320]

If anyone has spent time in a Wild Life Refuge or Protected Habitat, most of the animals have been dehumanized and it takes just a few generations. White Tail deer are especially not afraid of humans in a short amount of time. I would think that early Native Americans didn't have to work too hard at hunting initially based on my observations in Refuge's. With sparse populations of humans and large populations of animals, it likely took some time for game to learn that man was a threat. It wouldn't surprise me that there may have been some domestication of game at some point. An abandoned deer fawn is pretty easy to turn into a pet.

 

[Madmox]

My problem with this particular incident is that the diggers based their ideas on the fact that the female skeleton's grave goods included projectile points. There have been infants' graves with projectile points, including Anzick-1, so...

So obviously the infants were hunters too? ::whistle::

 

[Buckleberry]

Well obviously hunting back then was frequently a matter of life and death, eat or die, so recognizing that a female has better skills than a male to literally "bring home the bacon" would certainly be a better survival strategy.

 

[uniface]

As an abstract proposition, sure. A lot of ideas seem to make sense. But they break down when you try to find examples of them in practice because human nature is set in gender-related role patterns, and has been everywhere you look. Anyone doubting this should spring for a book published years ago by an academic called "On the Inevitability of Patriarchy" (Steven Goldberg), which everybody hated and complained about but no one ever disproved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inevitability_of_Patriarchy

 

[sandchip]

To clarify my earlier widow statement: I was by no means jumping on the feminist, liberal BS bandwagon. I just figure there had to be occasions where, due to some kind of disaster, a woman is left alone and forced to either make it or not make it. The next part of my statement referred to a woman in that time standing a much better chance of surviving than would the self-absorbed Kardashian, Facebook, TikTok females of today, excluding the country gals who can kick ass in the woods, of course.