What If The Gendered Hunter-Gatherer Stereotype From Human History Is Wrong?

Back in school when you learned about hunter-gatherer societies, there was probably an assumption built into the lesson that the men were hunting while women were gathering. A new study reported in NPR suggests that perhaps this fundamental assumption of history isn't as universally true as we once thought. Instead, there are plenty of fossil records to indicate that women were often hunting just as much as men, and hunting large game too. So how did we miss it?

The story starts with a collective of scientists willing to look past "anecdotal impressions of the reports they'd been reading," and instead went back to the source data to rethink one of the most long-standing and fundamental beliefs about division of labor among early Homo Sapiens.

The process also revealed biased past analysis that was easy to miss at the time. For example, when the 11,000 year old remains of one female were discovered with a "pointy stone tip" under her head, it was assumed to be a kitchen utensil. Now they reclassified it as a hunting tool. As they noted, "the archaeological evidence had been available the whole time - hiding in plain sight."

All it took was a group of scientists open minded enough to question the traditional gendered assumptions about hunters and gatherers that most of their predecessors had already taken for granted.