Cara Ocobock and Sarah Lacy: The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong

Cara Ocobock and Sarah Lacy contend that The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong.

Males living in the Upper Paleolithic—the cultural period between roughly 45,000 and 10,000 years ago, when early modern humans entered Europe—do show higher rates of a set of injuries to the right elbow region known as thrower's elbow, which could mean they were more likely than females to throw spears. But it does not mean women were not hunting, because this period is also when people invented the bow and arrow, hunting nets and fishing hooks. These more sophisticated tools enabled humans to catch a wider variety of animals; they were also easier on hunters' bodies. Women may have favored hunting tactics that took advantage of these new technologies.

Emphasis Mine

I am confused here: are women equal to men in hunting because of physiology or technology? The authors do not appear to understand the spectrum of hunting. Hunting is far more than killing animals. There are several strategies for hunting:

• Laying traps (passive or active): anyone, including children, can lay a passive trap in which an animal traps itself. An active trap involves driving animals into a killing zone like over a cliff or to where other hunters are waiting to strike. Both of these can involve both genders. However, an active trap increases the risk of severe injury or death for the hunters and would not be suitable for women with children in tow.
• Tracking and killing herbivorves: these animals graze in packs and will usually run if spooked. I doubt hunting with young children in tow would be wise as a screaming match could erupt at any moment. Some of these animals can defend themselves by charging at predators. Again, hunting these kinds of animals puts children and mothers at risk.
• Tracking and killing carnivorves: these animals tend to solitary or live in small packs. Humans were more prey to these animals before the acquisition of more sophisticated tools. Even with these tools, the risk of serious injury or death remains high.

Overall, hunting involves high risk of serious risk or death in most activities. Even though physiology and technology allows women to hunt, these risks to hunters can reduce the survivability of the group by removing women from reproduction.

What is more, females and males were buried in the same way in the Upper Paleolithic. Their bodies were interred with the same kinds of artifacts, or grave goods, suggesting that the groups they lived in did not have social hierarchies based on sex.

Emphasis Mine

This does not indicate a gender differentiation between hunting and gathering. It just means that genders were seen as equal in status.

Ancient DNA provides additional clues about social structure and potential gender roles in ancestral human communities. Patterns of variation in the Y chromosome, which is paternally inherited, and in mitochondrial DNA, which is maternally inherited, can reveal differences in how males and females dispersed after reaching maturity. Thanks to analyses of DNA extracted from fossils, we now know of three Neandertal groups that engaged in patrilocality—wherein males were more likely to stay in the group they were born into and females moved to other groups—although we do not know how widespread this practice was.

Emphasis Mine

This data is very limited (three (3) groups) and applies to Neanderthals. Whether this can be extended to Homo Sapiens is speculation at this stage. As all research papers conclude, more study is needed. If these results do hold for Homo Sapiens, patrilocality increases the likelihood of a patriarchy. Thus, the idea that hunter gathers were predominately matriarchical would have to die. And then we can no longer blame agriculture for the introduction of patriarchy. Something else must have caused the migration from matriarchy to patriarchy.

Patrilocality is believed to have been an attempt to avoid incest by trading potential mates with other groups. Nevertheless, many Neandertals show both genetic and anatomical evidence of repeated inbreeding in their ancestry. They lived in small, nomadic groups with low population densities and endured frequent local extinctions, which produced much lower levels of genetic diversity than we see in living humans. This is probably why we don't see any evidence in their skeletons of sex-based differences in behavior. For those practicing a foraging subsistence strategy in small family groups, flexibility and adaptability are much more important than rigid roles, gendered or otherwise. Individuals get injured or die, and the availability of animal and plant foods changes with the seasons. All group members need to be able to step into any role depending on the situation, whether that role is hunter or breeding partner.

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A higher population density increases the likelihood of human survivability through increased genetic diversity. This is the reason that the adoption of agriculture was so successful.

Later on, the authors write:

So much about female exercise physiology and the lives of prehistoric women remains to be discovered. But the idea that in the past men were hunters and women were not is absolutely unsupported by the limited evidence we have. Female physiology is optimized for exactly the kinds of endurance activities involved in procuring game animals for food. And ancient women and men appear to have engaged in the same foraging activities rather than upholding a sex-based division of labor. It was the arrival some 10,000 years ago of agriculture, with its intensive investment in land, population growth and resultant clumped resources, that led to rigid gendered roles and economic inequality.

Emphasis Mine

The authors repeat the theory that agriculture gave rise to class society, and, by implication, patriarchy. However, as I wrote above, the existence of patrilocality prior to agriculture may break the causality chain of agriculture to patriarchy.

References

• Ocobock, Cara, and Lacy, Sarah (2023). The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong, Scientific American 329, 4, 22-29 (November 2023) doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1123-22