Moving peacefully in the desert of Andes Mountains, Ancient hunter-gatherers stocked the herd of Visua. The hunters easily threw stone projectile points, hitting some of the animals and scattering the rest. The Wakuas, the wild ancestors of the Alpacas, fell and skilled hunters – both male and female – went to investigate their victory.
This somewhat fictional account contrasts with the accepted history of such hunter-gatherers: ancient males hunted the big game, while females gathered herbs and plants. But a recently discovered 9,000-year-old female hunter’s burial, and an analysis of other hunter burials, suggest that early American hunter-gatherers hunted as large a game as men, according to a study published in Nov. 4 in the journal Science progress.
“These findings underscore the notion that gender roles we accept in society today – or not as natural as many may accept – may be what some have thought,” said lead author Randy Haas. Anthropology at the University of California, Davis.
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In 2013, Haas was working on various excavations in the Andes Mountains when a local from Mulla Fasiri in the nearby South Peruvian community said there were hundreds of ancient artifacts scattered nearby. Five years later, after receiving funding and with the cooperation of locals, Haas and his team began digging the site, known as Vilamaya Patjaksa.
In 2018, researchers discovered six human burials at Vilamaya Patjaksa (later they discovered more in 2019). Two of the six burials also had hunting equipment, but one was particularly interesting.
“At the sixth burial about 9,000 years ago, we began to unveil this truly rich artifact assemblage,” Hase told Live Science, which includes a hunting toolkit in projectile points and pieces. The burial is believed to have been found by a hunter who died between the ages of 17 and 19 based on an investigation into tooth development. “Continuing to dig,” people began to speculate that wow, he would have been a great hunter, a really important person in the community. “I do not know.
Prejudice that colors history
James Watts, an associate professor of ethnography at the University of Arizona and co-author of the study, suggested that he was not a man. Watts examined the bones of hunter-gatherers and said that because they were smaller than others found in the region, the skeleton could be female. Indeed, a detailed analysis of it Protein The young hunter’s teeth confirmed that she was a woman.
But then Haas and his team began to wonder: Is this a one-woman hunter, or is it part of a larger behavioral pattern among Native Americans? To estimate this, they used literature for burial reports of other hunters from the end. Pleistocene (Which ended about 11,700 years ago) and early Holocene (Which began about 12,000 to 11,500 years ago.)
The team identified 429 skeletons from 107 ancient cemeteries across America; Of these, 27 persons – 11 females (including newly discovered females) and 15 males – were buried with large hunting equipment. Further statistical analysis suggests that 30% to 50% of the hunters in this population are female. “What we’ve seen is that female and male burials are just as likely to be associated with large game hunting equipment,” Haas said.
Related: Photos: Human skeletons will shed light on the first Americans
“The authors make a compelling argument that the female skeleton in question was probably a large game hunter and that such a discovery is not entirely uncommon in the indigenous population,” said Marin Piloud, an associate professor in the university’s Department of Ethnology. Nevada, Reno, which was not part of this study. “If these same artifacts had been associated with a male skeleton, no questions would have been raised about whether that person was a hunter.”
In many cultures, “and dominate our modern Western culture,” gender is not binary – and still is not, Biloud told LiveScience. “When we go back to our own race-based bias we can explore the data in a cultured way that is more accurate than culture.”
It is not clear whether hunter women in other parts of the world also regularly participate in hunting, but it is entirely possible to find similar findings elsewhere, he said. She added that this woman’s diet is compared to other women on the site or similar sites to determine if she eats more similar foods for other men or other women.
“This study should help people understand that women are involved in big game hunting,” said Kathleen Sterling, an associate professor of ethnography at Binghton University in New York, who was not part of the study.
In fact, the methods used for hunting at that time and the size of the social groups at that time, “meant that we would have to run most of the older children and adults on rocks or in traps, or” throw fireballs at the crowds moving in the same direction. ” , “Sterling told Live Science.
Age was probably more important than gender when it comes to who hunts in this society, but “our race standards are so strong that not everyone will be convinced,” he said.
However, if a person is buried with hunting equipment, it does not mean that the person was a hunter, it means that their society considered it appropriate to bury the objects with them, Sterling said. But when hunting tools are found in men’s burials, they are generally considered to be hunters. Therefore, “unless we have a good reason to say otherwise, we should form a similar belief about hunting equipment buried with women.”
Published on Original Living Science.
