According to new research, the roles of "man the hunter" and "woman the
gatherer" in human civilization are not nearly as gendered as
anthropologists and archaeologists have previously thought.
Ancient sites discovered in recent years all throughout the world clearly
imply that women have likely been fishing, hunting large animals, and
fighting alongside males for many centuries.
They still are, in fact.
Contrary to what gender stereotypes in today's society would have you
think, a recent research of a variety of foraging tribes throughout the
previous century has discovered some of their hunters were female.
Abigail Anderson of Seattle Pacific University is in charge of the data
evaluation, which takes into account 63 contemporary foraging societies from
the Americas, Africa, Australia, Asia, and the Oceania. According to
anthropological studies over the past 100 years, female hunting is evident
in close to 80% of those civilizations.
The bulk of those cases had unequivocal documentation that showed women
pursuing and hunting wildlife on purpose, as opposed to just shooting an
animal when the chance presented itself. Women actively participated in
hunting 100 percent of the time in communities where it was the main source
of sustenance.
Female hunters would frequently bring newborns along for the journey rather
than staying behind with the youngsters. Furthermore, female hunting
does not negatively impact parenting.
According
to the researchers, "increasing data collection and thoughtful
interpretation are lending a much richer lens to our understanding of human
mobility strategies in the idea that women are hindered by childcare and
thus cannot hunt."
Despite having children or not, women have traditionally engaged in hunting
in foraging civilizations all over the world.
The more specialists look for evidence to support the theory that males are
exclusively stalkers and hunters of prey—a theory initially put out by
anthropologists in the 1960s—the more improbable it becomes.
According to the data, women have traditionally been underappreciated
contributors to human survival, supplying much of the protein consumed by
foraging communities and raising the next generation.
In these same cultures, female hunters frequently use different tactics and
equipment from the male hunters in order to catch and kill their game.
For instance,
Agta women
in the Philippines utilize hunting equipment that is "remarkably different from Agta men," who typically adhere to bows and arrows. Women are more likely to use
knives, and they prefer to hunt in groups during the day rather than by
themselves at night like many males do.
The researchers write, "In addition to weapon preferences, women further
employ a greater flexibility of hunting strategies compared to men."
Women may go hunting alone or with a variety of companions, such as their
spouses, other women, kids, or dogs. Men, on the other hand, tend to hunt
alone, with only one other person (usually their wife), or with a dog.
Additionally, women hunters exhibit expertise in the prey they
pursue.
For instance, women frequently hunt smaller animals while males frequently
hunt larger ones in the
Tiwi civilization in Australia. Women are skilled at hunting big animals with sticks and machetes in the
Matses civilization of the Peruvian Amazon.
Science is prone to prejudice, which is a major factor in why these
incidents were ignored.
For instance, due to contemporary gender preconceptions, archaeologists
frequently believed that human bones discovered alongside Viking weaponry
belonged to men. However, recent research has revealed that's not always the
case. There may have been female fighters, but in far smaller numbers.
According
to Andersen and her coworkers, "researcher bias shapes science's
interpretation of data, and it behooves each generation of scientists to
ensure that paradigms fit the existing data."
The prevalence of tales of females using tools and weapons that are
perceived as "violent" throughout time and location indicates that such
instances are more typical of female behavior than they are isolated
incidents.
It appears that from the very beginning, women have been balancing the
responsibilities of mother, hunter, gatherer, and fisher.
The study was published in
PLOS ONE.
