(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Top Comments: Women Were Hunters in Prehistoric Times [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-11-26 Here at Top Comments we strive to nourish community by rounding up some of the site's best, funniest, most mojo'd & most informative commentary, and we depend on your help!! If you see a comment by another Kossack that deserves wider recognition, please send it either to topcomments at gmail or to the Top Comments group mailbox by 9:30pm Eastern. Please please please include a few words about why you sent it in as well as your user name (even if you think we know it already :-)), so we can credit you with the find! In any lesson I ever learned about prehistoric humans, all I ever heard was that the men did the hunting, and the women did the gathering. Two recent publications (by Cara Ocobock at the University of Notre Dame, and Sara Lacy at the University of Delaware) report that there is clear evidence, both archaeological and physiological, that prehistoric women were also hunters, and that they were physiologically better suited to hunting than men. With regard to archaeological evidence, when analyzing male and female Neanderthal skeletons, both genders show evidence of injuries common to Neanderthal hunting practices. "We have constructed Neandertal hunting as an up-close-and-personal style of hunting," Ocobock said, "meaning that hunters would often have to get up underneath their prey in order to kill them. As such, we find that both males and females have the same resulting injuries when we look at their fossil records." Ocobock described those traumatic injuries as being similar to those received by modern-day rodeo clowns -- injuries to the head and chest where they were kicked by the animal, or to the limbs where they were bitten or received a fracture. "We find these patterns and rates of wear and tear equally in both women and men," she said. "So they were both participating in ambush-style hunting of large game animals." Ocobock also states that she does not believe that women would have abandoned hunting while pregnant, nursing, or carrying children. Further, some of the graves of indigenous women in Peru during the Holocene period are found with hunting weapons, indicating that these women used these implements during their lives. Regarding the physiological evidence, these involve the hormone estrogen and adiponectin, which regulate the metabolism of both fat and carbohydrates. Prehistoric hunters would have chased their prey over long distances in order to exhaust them and make them easier to kill. Women have higher levels than men of these two hormones, which grant women overall better endurance, allowing them to be better able to sustain a long chase of prey animals. So, for many decades, we have been living with a myth created by (mostly) male anthropologists where the prehistoric division of labor between the genders unremarkably reflects the traditional gendered roles we are all familiar with, and have been fighting to break for some decades. Ocobock notes that there is no evidence that any kind of strict division of labor existed in prehistoric times. So here’s another biased scientific model to toss on the trash heap. Comments are below the fold. Top Comments (November 26, 2023): Highlighted by sweetthesound (with an assist from Angela Marx): This comment by tylestyle from skralyx’ recommended post on the remarkable reproductive strategy of a certain sea worm. Top Mojo (November 25, 2023): [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/26/2208171/-Top-Comments-Women-Hunted-in-Prehistoric-Times?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/