Imaginary scene high in the Andes 9,000 years ago.
While the election of a woman to what s arguably the second most powerful position in the country is a newsworthy event, it s hardly unprecedented. The world has known plenty of powerful female leaders: Queen Dido (Carthage), Cleopatra (Egypt), Boadicea (Iceni, a British tribe that nearly defeated the Romans), Elizabeth I (England), Catherine the Great (Russia), Angela Merkel (Germany) and many others. Yet Kamala ( comma-la ) Harris recent election has been reported as something entirely new. Such patriarchal thinking goes back to the old, stubbornly ingrained attitude of (white male) anthropologists of the recent past who presented primitive tribal societies made up of male hunters and female gatherers: tough dudes and wimpy women. While there is some contemporary truth in this the roles of modern day hunter-gatherer people like Tanzania s Hadza and southern Africa s San are firmly gender defined the last few decades have un