Seems that throughout history the women would go out and hunt, and the men stayed home watching the kids. He ate the food, he didn’t hunt it. This is also proven out in wildlife! The women were in charge, always, of feeding the kids, so she hunted and gathered when she couldn’t hunt. Amazon women is only one example, he gave hundreds of examples of this. The women, if they wanted to eat, had to hunt, because the men didn’t or wouldn’t. That’s just how it was, and is, for that matter.

Point of fact; HOW MANY MEN ACTUALLY FEED THE KIDS NOW? Very few can claim to do this. Visit a grocery store and keep count of how many shoppers are women and men. The result will be that the women get the food, unless the man is single and taking care of the food himself. The rule now is, men won’t shop unless they absolutely have to. So the women do it. (using shopping for food as the modern form of ‘hunting’.)

If you will also notice, women do the cooking as well. There are some excellent male cooks, but usually only if they can make money at it. At home they let or make the women cook. That’s just how it is. I’m stating the facts, not trying to skew them to suit my purpose.

While we are at it, how many men actually clean up after the meal, or clean house, or watch the kids?

Women do it all, because throughout history we have had to. If we didn’t do it, it certainly didn’t get done!!! Men have made us strong by insisting it wasn’t their place to do this kind of work. Note the comment, the woman’s place is in the home, barefoot and pregnant, etc. THIS HAS MADE US STRONG.

So if the men want to blame someone because women are strong, they should look in the mirror! They made us strong, so don’t complain about it. Enjoy it!!

Tianca

You’ll have to ask the chimps “why?” but in fact this is what they tend to do with other forms of tool use. All forms of tool making and tool use by chimps are far more commonly done by females. The reason suggested by Linton, Tanner, and Zihlman was that females have more nutritional stress due to having and caring for kids, and that males just don’t have to use tools to get enough of the harder to get, generally higher fat, foods that tools are used to obtain. It’s a matter of why do it if you don’t have to? Trying to save time or be more productive, have more free time? To do what? Scratch more? Stop thinking like a western human and start thinking like a chimp.

Human/Chimp split may have occured only 4 million yrs ago

And if they’ve only learned to use spears in the last couple of years, then the place they most likely learned it from is, from us, from Man. And given that they’ve had tens of thousands of years to do so already — years where one would have thought the likelihood of learning from us would be much greater than now, seeing as how we do so much less of our hunting-for-subsistence with spears nowadays — my guess is the specific people they learned from are anthro–oops, sorry, aperopologists deliberately trying to create the sensational news we are commenting on here.

(Yeah, so call me a cynic, be my guest.)

This is my site on the “aquatic ape” idea.

Elaine Morgan alternative is BS for a variety of reasons (which I’ve documented here)

But there was actual, accurate, and interesting alternative, and it did change the way things were thought about (although the principles have never gotten the kind of credit I think they deserve). This discovery further cements the ideas of the “Woman the Gatherer” model regarding females and tool use. And idea, BTW, that dates back now 35 years, to Sally Linton’s paper with that title (she was a grad student at the time, I believe) and carried through the work (1974 and later) of Nancy Tanner and Adrienne Zihlman (who I see has been quoted re the story in some of the news pieces). BTW, the paper that got Sally Linton thinking was Richard Lee’s paper about the !Kung in the book, “Man the Hunter”. Sort of ironic, the title, but Lee’s paper was not male-biased stuff.

Although unlikely, perhaps this is a distinct species of chimpanzees as are bonobos.

Chimpanzee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee
Bonobo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo

What Derek is all cranky about is his fear that early female humans might actually be shown to have an important role to play in something, anything. And then that might mean that present-day women have an important role to play in something, anything. Which makes Derek feel a whole lot less important just by virtue of being Man. Who is Hunter. Amen.

Gahhh. Take a deep breath, Derek. Female primates can have active roles to play in chimpanzee society, or even human society, and it doesn’t mean your balls are going to be cut off. People can look for positive things to say about the history of female primates without it equalling male-bashing. I swear, some males are so touchy. Is it hormonal, or what?

And now that they’re going to turn on a dime and say women hunted, does this mean women are useless and lazy, or does it mean hunting is now rehabilitated, reverse Stalin style? I can’t wait to learn what the new party line is, and see how fast people can reverse their former opinions.

Such a perspective makes is useless to try to generalise from any observations of how people have lived in the far past. With culture, each situation is historically unique and cannot be taken to stand for any other less well known situation.

In all that tiresome Man The Mighty Hunter stuff by Ardrey and Morris, to whatever degree some of it might be true, I don’t recall any mention of women being the logical inventors of weaving and pottery so they’d have some way of carrying all those roots and nuts…. Elaine Morgan has an interesting alternative and is a lot more fun to read.

And before I get zinged by all you women scientists and bloggers …and you know who you are… I am kidding! Give me a break! Some of my best friends are women! Take my wife…Please!