Most history lessons teach students that during prehistory times, men were hunters while women were nurturers and gatherers. However, there has been compiling evidence that early societies had an egalitarian nature with evidence of fierce women hunters.
Researchers from the University of California Davis describe the burial of an ancient female hunter thousands of years ago which was recently published in the journal Science Advances. The discovery in the Andes Mountains, shared Professor Randy Haas, "overturns the long-held 'man-the-hunter' hypothesis."
During the study, the team analyzed 10 other female hunter burials in comparison to male hunter burials. The findings revealed nongendered labor practices where "hunter-gatherer females were big-game hunters." wrote the authors.
Gender-Based Roles
The team believes their research is "particularly timely in light of contemporary conversations surrounding gendered labor practices and inequality." Since modern hunter-gatherer societies have clear gender distinctions, it has led to the general belief that sexist inequalities like ranking or salary are somehow "natural," said Haas. History tells us an alternative narrative - that division of labor was more equal and not assigned as gender roles.
During archaeological excavations in 2018, a team at the Wilamaya Patjxa site discovered an ancient burial that had hunting tools, such as pointed weapons, with a total of over 20,000 artifacts. Some of the weapons included a flaked stone, a backed knife, and "large scrapers/choppers to extract bone marrow or process hides," wrote the authors.
Osteologist James Watson determined that the hunter was female, which he confirmed from dental protein. Wilamaya Patjxa individual 6 (WMP6) was also dated back to the Early Holocene period and was around 17 to 19 years old.
Included in the burial site were large mammals such as deer and camelids, most like the endemic species vicuña (Vicugna vicugna) and taruca (Andean deer). WMP6 was also compared to WMP1, a male hunter with a similar toolkit. The team then wondered if WMP6 was an isolated case "or part of a broader behavioral pattern."
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Female Hunters
The researchers then turned their attention to public records of burials in the Americas during that period of over 400 individuals across 107 sites. 27 individuals, 11 of whom were female, were linked to big-game hunting tools.
Statistically, between 30% and 50% of hunters were female in South America. In comparison, Middle Holocene burials at the Indian Knoll site in Kentucky state had a 17:63 female to male ratio of big-game hunting. European Paleolithic artifacts have also revealed that societies were heavy meat eaters and lacked plant-processing tools.
At the time, females were able to hunt due to alloparenting, wrote the authors. Communal hunting also encouraged contributions from men, women, and even children.
Meanwhile, recent farming, capitalist, and hunter-gatherer societies had a higher percentage of gender roles. Further research includes understanding how gender-roles in labor has evolved since the early hunter-gatherer societies in North and South America.
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