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Female warriors hunted and slaughtered big game in the Andes some 9,000 years ago, a graveyard containing projectile points and butchery tools revealed.
The remains of the 17- to 19-year-old huntress and her artifacts were found in a tomb at the high-altitude archaeological site of Wilamaya Patjxa, in what is now Peru.
They found her with tools that included stone projectile points for cutting down large animals, a knife, and implements for gutting an animal and scraping or tanning skins.
It had long been assumed that, among early human hunter-gatherer societies, it was men who did the former, while women did the latter.
However, the finding, coupled with an analysis of early burial practices more broadly, “nullifies the long-held ‘man-hunter’ hypothesis, the US researchers said.
It is possible that nine millennia ago the hunters of Wilamaya Patjxa hunted vicuñas, animals related to llamas and camels, that still roam the Andes today.
Warrior women hunted and slaughtered big game in the Andes around 9,000 years ago, as shown, a burial site containing projectile points and butchery tools has revealed
“We believe these findings are particularly timely in light of contemporary conversations about gender workplace practices and inequality,” said article author and anthropologist Randy Haas of the University of California at Davis.
“Labor practices among recent hunter-gatherer societies are highly gendered, which might lead some to believe that sexist inequalities in things like pay or rank are somehow ‘natural,’ ” he said.
“ But it is now clear that the sexual division of labor was fundamentally different, probably more equitable, in the deep hunter-gatherer past of our species. ”
Professor Haas and colleagues: with in collaboration with the local community of Mulla Fasiri – discovered the warrior woman’s burial, complete with her hunting ‘toolkit’, during excavations at Wilamaya Patjxa in 2018.
The researchers noted that the objects that accompany people to their graves in death tend to be the ones they used in life as well.
The team determined that the hunter’s remains were likely those of a female based on the structure of the bones, a conclusion that was later validated by analyzing proteins found in samples of the individual’s teeth.
Analysis of the woman’s bones also found isotopic evidence of meat consumption, which the researchers say supports the conclusion that she was a hunter.
The team also found the burial site of another hunter, this one occupied by the remains of a man, believed to be between 25 and 30 years old.
“Our findings have made me rethink the most basic organizational structure of ancient hunter-gatherer groups,” said Prof Haas.
“Among historical and contemporary hunter-gatherers, it almost always happens that the males are the hunters and the females the gatherers.
“ Because of this, and probably because of sexist assumptions about the division of labor in Western society, the archaeological finds of women with hunting tools simply did not fit the prevailing world views. ”
“It took a strong case to help us recognize that the archaeological pattern indicated actual hunting behavior of the females.”
The remains of the huntress and her artifacts were found in a tomb at the high-altitude archaeological site of Wilamaya Patjxa, in what is now Peru, pictured
It had long been assumed that, among early human hunter-gatherer societies, it was men who did the former, while women did the latter. In the image, tools unearthed from the burial pit, among which are projectile points (numbers 1-7), unmodified scales (8-10), retouched scales (11-13), a possible rear knife (14 ), nail scrapers (15 and 16), scrapers / picks (17-19), burnishing stones (17, 20 and 21) and red ocher nodules (22-24)
The unexpected discovery that one of the hunters’ graves belonged to a woman prompted the team to investigate whether this case was unique or whether female warriors were actually more common than initially thought.
Looking at similar late Pleistocene and early Holocene burial records that had been excavated in North and South America, the researchers counted 429 individuals who had been buried at 107 different sites.
Of these people, 27 had been buried next to hunting tools, 11 being women and 15 men.
Hunters in Wilamaya Patjxa may have hunted vicuñas (pictured), animals related to llamas and camels, that still roam the Andes today.
The finding, along with an analysis of early burial practices more broadly, “nullifies the long-held ‘man-hunter’ hypothesis, the US researchers said. In the photo, the site of Wilamaya Patjxa
This sample, the researchers concluded, is sufficient to “warrant the conclusion that female participation in early big game hunting was probably not trivial.”
Statistical analysis of the record of ancient hunter collections concluded that between 30 and 50 percent of hunters in these populations were women, a result in stark contrast to the same numbers of recent hunter collections, which are usually lower.
Even in agricultural and capitalist societies, hunting is often a male-dominated activity with low levels of participation by women.
The researcher’s review also revealed that the woman buried at Wilamaya Patjxa represents the oldest known hunter burial in the Americas.
“We believe these findings are particularly timely in light of contemporary conversations around gender workplace practices and inequality,” said article author and anthropologist Randy Haas of the University of California, Davis. In the image, researchers search for remains at the Wilamaya Patjxa excavation site in the Andes.
According to the researchers, their findings may shed light on the division of labor in primitive human societies, but this also raises new questions that need answers.
With their initial study complete, the team is now looking to explore how the sexual division of labor, and the consequences of this, varied among the earliest hunter-gatherer populations of the Americas and how it changed over time.
The full study findings were published in the journal Science Advances.
The remains of the huntress and her artifacts were found in a tomb at the high-altitude archaeological site of Wilamaya Patjxa, in what is now Peru.
