Like men, prehistoric women also hunted big game

Recent analyzes of the remains of an individual buried with stone tools, including spear points, 9,000 years ago in what is now Peru, suggest that women were actively involved in the process. hunt.

24 hunting tools discovered

Featured in the journal Science Advances, such discoveries could help to shake up our conceptions concerning the role of men and women within the ancient prehistoric communities of the Americas. According to the study’s authors, this ability to recognize women as full-fledged hunters would likely have been slowed down by the dominant sexist ideology that has held sway in Western culture for centuries.

” Women make up at least one-third, if not half, of the dedicated hunting forces in today’s hunter-gatherer communities in North and South America. “, Explain Randy Haas, researcher atuniversity of california and lead author of the study.

” However, although archaeological excavations carried out during the 20th century led to the discovery of hunting tools in the graves of prehistoric women across the Americas, it was not until scientists unearthed the remains of a young woman in the Peruvian Andes so that they put aside their unconscious prejudices on the role of the sexes within these communities. “

Haas and his colleagues performed carbon-14 dating and protein analyzes on bones and teeth less than a meter deep in a burial pit discovered in southern Peru in 2018. What they did offered “solid” confirmation that the human remains belonged to a young woman aged 17-19, who was buried there between 8700 and 9000 years ago with a hunting kit comprising 24 tools, including lance, as well as blades dedicated to butchering and tanning. While the discovery of remains of deer and butchered camels on the site suggests that it was also attacking big game.

A case far from isolated

Rather than assuming the teenager was an isolated case, Haas consulted the scientific archives in order to identify previous discoveries of human remains that were buried with hunting tools through the Americas at least 8,000 years ago. Of the 27 cases meeting these criteria, it turned out that almost half of the individuals were women. This suggests that the researchers behind these observations doubted their own analyzes, or determined that the blades and tips discovered were probably utensils dedicated to the preparation of food.

According to Haas, the active participation of women in hunting within prehistoric hunter-gatherer communities corresponds to the pattern observed in many species of carnivores. ” I think this finding is only surprising when viewed through the prism of Western stereotypes regarding the role of the sexes in our society. », Concludes the researcher.

The findings come just weeks after analysis of fossilized footprints at the New Mexico revealed the perilous journey undertaken by a woman and a child over 10,000 years ago.