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
Recent studies show that man was not always the hunter.
By Annalee Newitz
Jan. 1, 2021
Credit.Claire Merchlinsky
Though it’s remarkable that the United States finally is about to have a female vice president, let’s stop calling it an unprecedented achievement. As some recent archaeological studies suggest, women have been leaders, warriors and hunters for thousands of years. This new scholarship is challenging long-held beliefs about so-called natural gender roles in ancient history, inviting us to reconsider how we think about women’s work today.
In November a group of anthropologists and other researchers published a paper in the academic journal Science Advances about the remains of a 9,000-year-old big-game hunter buried in the Andes. Like other hunters of the period, this person was buried with a specialized tool kit associated with stalking large game, including projectile points, scrapers for tanning hides and a tool that looked like a knife. There was nothing parti