• IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
    1747·
    2 months ago

    As an indigenous Canadian I can confirm this.

    Both of my parents were born and raised in the wilderness. I don’t mean that they were born in a modern hospital and later raised in the bush. They were born in the 40s in a teepee with the help of traditional midwives.

    Dad was a great hunter and trapper and did all the things you could imagine a hunter and gatherer could do.

    Mom did the same as well, not as much or as well as dad but good enough to survive on her own or with children. She hunted birds, fished and could bring down gut clean prepare butcher moose, caribou, bear, wolf, lynx and any other large animal if she had to … when she was a young woman that is. She could also travel, walk, snowshoe, use dog team, paddle a canoe, portage, sail, and survive alone in the bush for weeks or months on her own. In her prime, she was a far better hunter and gatherer than most men I know now including myself.

    It only makes sense … prehistoric hunters and gatherers didn’t sit around and relegate women to only do certain things. Everyone no matter what gender had to be capable of doing everything in order to ensure and secure the survival of everyone.

    • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      522·
      2 months ago

      Early enough in human history we weren’t even relying on weapons to hunt as much as the fact that despite not having as high of a top speed as our prey, we could literally chase them until they died of exhaustion, that doesn’t seem like gender would make too much of a difference in it. We all get out ran by prey in the short term, and we all have the stamina and speed to catch up.

      • rockerface 🇺🇦@lemm.eeEnglish
        43·
        2 months ago

        Stamina and precision are universal human traits, yep. Nobody can toss a rock and then run a marathon like an angry hairless ape

      • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        24·
        2 months ago

        Literally just walk down animals and eat them, like a paleolithic terminator. We could carry water and possibly some jerry/nuts, so could literally go for days without stopping.

        Horses can gallop for like a mile or two and maybe go for like 20 without stopping.

        And we have tracking abilities. There was some meme about that paleolithic terminator thing. Like an animal would see these weird naked apes in the distance and that’s it, they’re done. Doesn’t matter if they run or not, death is coming.

        And we definitely still have that ability, physically.

        Check this out.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete)

        Albert Ernest Clifford Young OAM (8 February 1922[1] – 2 November 2003[2]) was an Australian[2] athlete from Beech Forest, Victoria. A farmer, he became notable for his unexpected win of the inaugural Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon in 1983 at 61 years of age.[3][4]

        In 1983, now aged 61 years old, Young won the inaugural Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, a distance of 875 kilometres (544 mi). The race was run between what were then Australia’s two largest Westfield shopping centres: Westfield Parramatta in Sydney and Westfield Doncaster in Melbourne.[8] Young arrived to compete in overalls and work boots, without his dentures (later saying that they rattled when he ran).[9] He ran at a slow and loping pace and trailed the pack by a large margin at the end of the first day. While the other competitors stopped to sleep for six hours, Young kept running. He ran continuously for five days, taking the lead during the first night and eventually winning by 10 hours. Before running the race, he had told the press that he had previously run for two to three days straight rounding up sheep in gumboots.[10] He said afterwards that during the race he imagined he was running after sheep trying to outrun a storm. The Westfield run took him five days, fifteen hours and four minutes,[1] almost two days faster than the previous record for any run between Sydney and Melbourne, at an average speed of 6.5 kilometres per hour (4.0 mph).

        And what a sportsman:

        All six competitors who finished the race broke the old record. Upon being awarded the prize of A$10,000 (equivalent to $36,011 in 2022), Young said that he did not know there was a prize and that he felt bad accepting it, as each of the other five runners who finished had worked as hard as he did—so he split the money equally between them, keeping none.[11] Despite attempting the event again in later years, Young was unable to repeat this performance or claim victory again.

          • Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            6·
            2 months ago

            Huh. Can’t help but wonder if this is connected to why a significant amount of people find asses sexually attractive across gender lines - something about signs of a good persistance hunter (likely quite overstated by base monkey brain), and therefore ability to provide for spawn.

            Probably not, but makes ya think. I also accept that I’m thinking about it from a heteronormative, sex as biological imperative for spreading genes POV - so limited and overall probably wrong.

    • cybermass@lemmy.caEnglish
      24·
      2 months ago

      Ayo fellow Canadians here though not indigenous. Thanks for sharing your story!

      It makes me sad how overlooked the stories and lessons of the indigenous people are in Canada and the discrimination still present to this day.

    • xttweaponttx@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      Absolutely badass. Crazy to think that folks just a coupla generations up from us had lives without modern medicine and stuff (eg birth in a teepee!) Incredible. I guess sometimes it feels like modern medicine has been around longer than it has.

    • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
      21·
      2 months ago

      I think this is just whitewashing history… Even if you look to the ancient Western world, they had goddesses like Artemis

      Generally, men fought wars. Like a lion pride - the males are the defenders because they’re bigger and stronger. Hunting doesn’t require raw strength - it requires diligence, patience, and/or endurance

      But they all hunt. Lionesses are known for it, but lions do it too. Complete division of responsibilities is an insect thing

    • Murvel@lemm.eeEnglish
      10·
      2 months ago

      I remember reading this simply terrible article in Scientific American; the entire article was based on this research paper referred to the meme above.

      The paper was a complete fraud, and people just guzzled the cool-aid. He’ll they still do, looking at this thread.

      • Cypher@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 months ago

        I refuted this article when it was published based on their incredibly biased and cherry picked data sources which were entirely baseless.

        I wish more people were willing to apply critical thinking and analysis to such claims. All falsified claims are a setback and detriment to humankind’s comprehension of the universe.

    • kersplomp@programming.devEnglish
      82·
      2 months ago

      To say it’s “completely incorrect” is an exaggeration at best. The paper you cited is far more nuanced than that.

      • canihasaccount@lemmy.worldEnglish
        171·
        2 months ago

        A bit of an exaggeration, sure. But only a bit. The lay summary of the article I referenced states the following:

        Venkataraman et al. find that the paper commits every error that it was possible to make in the paper: leaving out important papers, including irrelevant papers, using duplicate papers, mis-coding their societies, getting the wrong values for “big” versus “small” game, and many others.

        “commits every error that it was possible to make in the paper,” and, “completely incorrect,” aren’t very different.

  • Pistcow@lemm.eeEnglish
    491·
    2 months ago

    So you’re saying women are capable of taking out the garbage and recycling?

  • Poogona [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    331·
    2 months ago

    anyone who tries to claim there was any absolute standard of behavior for pre-industrial tribes like that is just doing fantasy worldbuilding

    Every social organization you can think of was probably the way of life for someone out there, from patriarchy to matriarchy, communal to hierarchical

  • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    397·
    2 months ago

    I urge everyone to look up the book Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez. The cultural patriarchy is crazy.

    Nobody questions how archeology is influenced by contemporary culture. When archeologists find a grave and goes “the body is buried with weapons and a shield, therefore it must be a warrior and thus a man. And they still fucking note how it’s weird that this definitely-a-man is smaller than other men from this culture, and his hips are wide, almost like a woman… But he’s a dude, he’s got weapons after all!” smh

    • wildflowertea@slrpnk.netEnglish
      13·
      2 months ago

      I got the audiobook and I couldn’t finish it. I just couldn’t. I felt so much anger.

      But what I managed to get through was fantastic. The part about public transport during winter was so eye opening.

  • Fizz@lemmy.nzEnglish
    21·
    2 months ago

    Do you have a link to that evidence? I remember reading a while back about a find in South America that had female hunters but would be interested in reading more evidence about it being widespread.

    • Cypher@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      One of the original supporting data sources was a myth of the Ainu people containing a woman who hunted.

      If you want biased and unscientific sources keep digging into their claims.

  • Wild Bill@midwest.socialEnglish
    244·
    2 months ago

    I thought everyone knew this. Tasks based on sex were not so prevalent until high cultures formed and people started settling down instead of being nomadic.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      162·
      2 months ago

      Not just nomadic. Many sedentary societies lack strong gender divisions in labor as well.

      • drake@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        32·
        2 months ago

        Anthropology tends to support the fact that women and men pretty much all had equal share of pretty much every task in the palaeolithic and neolithic eras.

        You shouldn’t just reject scientific advances because it goes against what you learned at school. What you learned was wrong. Science adapts based on new evidence. You can too.

    • Steak@lemmy.caEnglish
      69·
      2 months ago

      Men definitely did more hunting then woman in most of human history lmao you are insane

        • Steak@lemmy.caEnglish
          12·
          2 months ago

          Men are faster and stronger. Men don’t spend a good portion of their lives growing children and breastfeeding them. So more free time to hunt. Men’s eyesight is literally better at picking up motion than woman’s and men have better reflex’s and hand eye coordination. Men outperform woman in almost all aspents of what it takes to be a great hunter back in the early human days.

            • Steak@lemmy.caEnglish
              11·
              2 months ago

              You really like that therapy line huh. Look there is a reason we have womans and men’s divisions in sports. Men would destroy the woman at almost all sports. If your fragile femininity cannot handle that, I recommend therapy. This has nothing to do with my masculinity and everything to with science and results. Sorry it doesn’t work out the way you want it to. Again. Therapy.

              Edit: word

              • drake@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
                1·
                2 months ago

                Actually, the history of why women divisions arose in sports is far more nuanced than you seem to believe. The main reasons for doing so were primarily rooted in sexism. Historical records show that women were able to compete with, and win against, men in sporting events during the early middle ages.

                Anyways, I see there’s no reasoning with you, so I hope you have a pleasant evening

                • Steak@lemmy.caEnglish
                  1·
                  2 months ago

                  What are you even looking at records from the middle ages for? Humans haven’t changed that much since then lmao. All we have to do is look at records from today. And guess what? Across the board men perform at a way higher level in almost all sports and physical activities. What makes you think the reason for different divisions was sexism? if the woman could compete with the men society would let them. Especially nowadays, why don’t you see men’s vs woman’s hockey on TV? Because it would be boring, the men would beat the woman everytime it wouldn’t even be fair. This is a really hard pill for you to swallow isn’t it?

                  And looking at you comment history it doesn’t look like you have any personal experience being athletic in the slightest, let alone being near the top in a given sport. You are disabled and can’t stand without sever pain. I have been an athlete my entire life and so have my sisters. Guess what? I can destroy every one of my sisters at every sport and it’s not even close. And they aren’t couch slobs, they play sports at a very high level, they just play against other woman. They know they don’t stand a chance against the men. We’re two very different things when it comes to physical ability.

  • uis@lemm.eeEnglish
    192·
    2 months ago

    No, you don’t understand, this is all communist propaganda! /j

      • Murvel@lemm.eeEnglish
        32·
        2 months ago

        Don’t spread it around. It’s a complete fraud of a paper for all we know. Just the fact that it has convincing rebuttals is enough to make you consider it irrelevant.

        • fossilesqueOPMEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          It’s not a fraud. Science isn’t black and white. Discussing things is a good thing. It’s still peer reviewed and not retracted in a decent journal. Not everyone dismisses it. The authors have responded to some of the criticisms by publishing additional information in the linked “correction” (functions like an attachment added later). Science is a conversation.

          • Murvel@lemm.eeEnglish
            22·
            2 months ago

            No, you’re thinking of philosophy. Philosophy is a discussion. Science is a process. Just the fact that they are being accused of being misleading and outright falsyfyiing evidence is enough to simply ignore their purported results until they can produce a paper that fixes all those problems.

            It’s not a discussion whether we can agree on something. The evidence should do the only talking.

        • fossilesqueOPMEnglish
          5·
          2 months ago

          This author is a crackpot that also went after Chomsky. Chomsky had a hilarious rebuttal from what I remember. He really has a thing for anarchists. I’ll trust these critics more when they do published rebuttals. I’m pretty sure several chapters in this book were published in some journals.

          • ZMoney@lemmy.worldEnglish
            5·
            2 months ago

            Yeah it’s a summary work that draws on decades of research. Both of these authors are extremely well-published in their respective fields. I’m like a third of the way through Dawn of Everything and it’s just as academic as “Debt” was, and neither are mass-market pulp. But work like this always draws hit pieces because it’s a way for critics to get their name out there.

            • fossilesqueOPMEnglish
              4·
              2 months ago

              Yeah, that critic made a career on doing hit pieces. I also find it unconvincing lmao.

        • ZMoney@lemmy.worldEnglish
          31·
          2 months ago

          What I find interesting about this article is that it critiques heavily about the first 200 pages, says almost nothing about the next 600, and then says the conclusion is unsatisfactory because it didn’t quote the book the author wrote in 1991. It’s transparently personal.

          Academics write books. Get over it.

  • Dimi Fisher@lemmy.worldEnglish
    195·
    2 months ago

    In any way all of those are just speculations, it’s very hard to be sure about anything when you go more than 10000 years back in time, all I know is that in school they teach mostly lies

    • keepthepace@slrpnk.netEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      Personally I find it weird that we do generalities about a this population as it is very likely that they had all different cultures on the tribe level.

      • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        You’re right in some regard though I still believe taking note of trends is important, don’t you? If most pre-record civilizations we find have behaved and lived in a certain way it could tell us something notable about our past.

      • Dimi Fisher@lemmy.worldEnglish
        213·
        2 months ago

        First of all it’s not even sure that thousands of years ago there was only primitive tribes around the globe, many finds indicate that on this planet existed civilisations different and more advanced even than are own, check Velikovsky and Graham Hancock he wrote many books about the subject.