this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] Smith6826@sopuli.xyz 26 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Did women also hunt? Yes.

"As much as men"?

No, beyond any shadow of doubt. Stop trying to white wash over history and verifiable evidence to try and push your personal agenda of stoking culture-wars.

Unless we're talking about tribes where the men took care of the children, the above statement is exaggerated at best and borders on anti-history/anti-anthropology nonsense at worst.

You might as well post that the men spent as much time taking care of the children than the women. And if you can admit that is false for the majority of human history, then you can clearly see how this being false also disqualifies the "women spent as much time hunting" statement.

Again, there is no debate on the fact that many women were great hunters and not just gatherers, but you also can't deny that most of the women took care of the kids.

Looks like I took the bait, didn't I...smh lol

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

Yeaaah... the whole "We were matriarchs!" myth...

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[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 164 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (8 children)

As an indigenous Canadian I can confirm this.

Both of my parents were born and raised in the wilderness. I don't mean that they were born in a modern hospital and later raised in the bush. They were born in the 40s in a teepee with the help of traditional midwives.

Dad was a great hunter and trapper and did all the things you could imagine a hunter and gatherer could do.

Mom did the same as well, not as much or as well as dad but good enough to survive on her own or with children. She hunted birds, fished and could bring down gut clean prepare butcher moose, caribou, bear, wolf, lynx and any other large animal if she had to .... when she was a young woman that is. She could also travel, walk, snowshoe, use dog team, paddle a canoe, portage, sail, and survive alone in the bush for weeks or months on her own. In her prime, she was a far better hunter and gatherer than most men I know now including myself.

It only makes sense .... prehistoric hunters and gatherers didn't sit around and relegate women to only do certain things. Everyone no matter what gender had to be capable of doing everything in order to ensure and secure the survival of everyone.

[–] theneverfox@pawb.social 2 points 22 hours ago

I think this is just whitewashing history... Even if you look to the ancient Western world, they had goddesses like Artemis

Generally, men fought wars. Like a lion pride - the males are the defenders because they're bigger and stronger. Hunting doesn't require raw strength - it requires diligence, patience, and/or endurance

But they all hunt. Lionesses are known for it, but lions do it too. Complete division of responsibilities is an insect thing

[–] Xttweaponttx@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

Absolutely badass. Crazy to think that folks just a coupla generations up from us had lives without modern medicine and stuff (eg birth in a teepee!) Incredible. I guess sometimes it feels like modern medicine has been around longer than it has.

[–] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 50 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Early enough in human history we weren't even relying on weapons to hunt as much as the fact that despite not having as high of a top speed as our prey, we could literally chase them until they died of exhaustion, that doesn't seem like gender would make too much of a difference in it. We all get out ran by prey in the short term, and we all have the stamina and speed to catch up.

[–] rockerface@lemm.ee 43 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Stamina and precision are universal human traits, yep. Nobody can toss a rock and then run a marathon like an angry hairless ape

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[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 24 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Literally just walk down animals and eat them, like a paleolithic terminator. We could carry water and possibly some jerry/nuts, so could literally go for days without stopping.

Horses can gallop for like a mile or two and maybe go for like 20 without stopping.

And we have tracking abilities. There was some meme about that paleolithic terminator thing. Like an animal would see these weird naked apes in the distance and that's it, they're done. Doesn't matter if they run or not, death is coming.

And we definitely still have that ability, physically.

Check this out.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete)

Albert Ernest Clifford Young OAM (8 February 1922[1] – 2 November 2003[2]) was an Australian[2] athlete from Beech Forest, Victoria. A farmer, he became notable for his unexpected win of the inaugural Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon in 1983 at 61 years of age.[3][4]

In 1983, now aged 61 years old, Young won the inaugural Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, a distance of 875 kilometres (544 mi). The race was run between what were then Australia's two largest Westfield shopping centres: Westfield Parramatta in Sydney and Westfield Doncaster in Melbourne.[8] Young arrived to compete in overalls and work boots, without his dentures (later saying that they rattled when he ran).[9] He ran at a slow and loping pace and trailed the pack by a large margin at the end of the first day. While the other competitors stopped to sleep for six hours, Young kept running. He ran continuously for five days, taking the lead during the first night and eventually winning by 10 hours. Before running the race, he had told the press that he had previously run for two to three days straight rounding up sheep in gumboots.[10] He said afterwards that during the race he imagined he was running after sheep trying to outrun a storm. The Westfield run took him five days, fifteen hours and four minutes,[1] almost two days faster than the previous record for any run between Sydney and Melbourne, at an average speed of 6.5 kilometres per hour (4.0 mph).

And what a sportsman:

All six competitors who finished the race broke the old record. Upon being awarded the prize of A$10,000 (equivalent to $36,011 in 2022), Young said that he did not know there was a prize and that he felt bad accepting it, as each of the other five runners who finished had worked as hard as he did—so he split the money equally between them, keeping none.[11] Despite attempting the event again in later years, Young was unable to repeat this performance or claim victory again.

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[–] clark@midwest.social 19 points 2 days ago (17 children)

I thought everyone knew this. Tasks based on sex were not so prevalent until high cultures formed and people started settling down instead of being nomadic.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago

Not just nomadic. Many sedentary societies lack strong gender divisions in labor as well.

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[–] canihasaccount@lemmy.world 56 points 3 days ago (3 children)

This study this meme is based on is completely incorrect and should be retracted. Here's a lay summary of its issues:

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/03/04/new-paper-debunks-the-prevalence-of-women-hunting-in-early-societies/

And the published article detailing the problems with that study's issues:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513824000497

[–] Murvel@lemm.ee 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I remember reading this simply terrible article in Scientific American; the entire article was based on this research paper referred to the meme above.

The paper was a complete fraud, and people just guzzled the cool-aid. He'll they still do, looking at this thread.

[–] Cypher@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

I refuted this article when it was published based on their incredibly biased and cherry picked data sources which were entirely baseless.

I wish more people were willing to apply critical thinking and analysis to such claims. All falsified claims are a setback and detriment to humankind's comprehension of the universe.

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[–] uis@lemm.ee 15 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

No, you don't understand, this is all communist propaganda! /j

[–] InverseParallax@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago

Yes, octomom has a baby.

[–] Emmie@lemm.ee 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

My mom would puke at these, even I feel some nausea. It just was such a horrible time to be alive. I wouldn’t wish these times on my worst enemy

[–] BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 32 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I urge everyone to look up the book Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez. The cultural patriarchy is crazy.

Nobody questions how archeology is influenced by contemporary culture. When archeologists find a grave and goes "the body is buried with weapons and a shield, therefore it must be a warrior and thus a man. And they still fucking note how it's weird that this definitely-a-man is smaller than other men from this culture, and his hips are wide, almost like a woman... But he's a dude, he's got weapons after all!" smh

[–] wildflowertea 13 points 2 days ago

I got the audiobook and I couldn’t finish it. I just couldn’t. I felt so much anger.

But what I managed to get through was fantastic. The part about public transport during winter was so eye opening.

[–] TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 12 points 2 days ago

The only thing that might predispose women is when they get pregnant. Most forms of hunting don't require excessive strength. This is not speculation, prehistoric people do not give a shit about your value system or how it imposes itself on science. Animals in animal world be animals.

[–] DimFisher@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

In any way all of those are just speculations, it's very hard to be sure about anything when you go more than 10000 years back in time, all I know is that in school they teach mostly lies

[–] keepthepace 11 points 2 days ago (11 children)

Personally I find it weird that we do generalities about a this population as it is very likely that they had all different cultures on the tribe level.

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[–] Pistcow@lemm.ee 49 points 3 days ago (2 children)

So you're saying women are capable of taking out the garbage and recycling?

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[–] Jumpingspiderman@reddthat.com 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I grew up in Da Yoop. In my high school, our head cheer leader was an expert bow hunter. This "discovery" is not in any way a surprise to me.

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[–] Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Would be a nice plot twist, but do you habe any sources for your claim? If this is real I would like to know more

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10306201/

This paper has a lot of back and forth. Another commenter posted a rebuttal.

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[–] BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's why when you see documentaries about tribes that had little to no contact to the outside world, women are often hunting and do the heavy lifting and men are at home raising kids and taking care of the village while the women are out there. I mean i haven't seen it, but according to this one weird paper they must exist.

[–] ynazuma@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)
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[–] SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world 35 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I hate to break it to you, but She-Ra is less about hunter gatherers and more about interstellar empires with magitech

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 27 points 3 days ago (1 children)
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