Zanna Anderson| Science Editor
Anthropology is a field that has been polluted with sexism, racism and ableism since its establishment in the Age of Enlightenment by upper class, European men. Since then, anthropology has expanded to study cultures of all demographics not just as lab rats or specimens but as fellow humans. However, it was not until 2000 that the idea that human genetic mutation was proven not to be “male-driven” but attributed equally to both males and females.
A common example of gender bias in anthropology is the idea that males evolved to be stronger and faster because they were hunters, while females are weaker and slower because they were gatherers and were held back by their child-rearing responsibilities. This theory is called “Man the Hunter” and there is a mountain of evidence that overturns this theory as it was formulated from cherry-picked evidence and misogyny, according to Cara Ocobock and Sarah Lacy in the academic journal, American Anthropologist.
For example, when researching the Ainu indigenous population in Northern Japan, Hitoshi Wantabe rejected the evidence his team documented that Ainu women contributed equally to hunting as their male counterparts. It is evidence tampering like this that pushes the male-hunter/female-gatherer narrative, thus creating the harmful stereotype that the old-world order had men as dominant leaders and women as submissive servants until the feminists invaded and destroyed this natural way of life. Charting all the way back to Neanderthals living before the Upper paleolithic era, males and females showed equal amounts of wear on their skeletons, specifically to the shoulder bones, due to spear hunting.
Thus, we can deduce that female Neanderthals hunted just as much as their male counterparts — hunting even while menstruating, breastfeeding or pregnant. According to documentation of nomadic tribes in the 17th century and modern analysis of the remains of our nomadic ancestors, ancient humans used a method called perseverance hunting to attack their prey. Essentially, humans would wait until the hottest point in the day and then start chasing down their prey at a slow pace. Humans would let the animal run itself out of sight and then continue to follow it until the prey was exhausted before attacking.
Our modern understanding of how nomadic communities hunted, and the performance effects of estrogen also reveals something interesting. According to Cara Obocock and Sarah Lacy from The Scientific American, estrogen lends itself very well to these efforts as this hormone, which is found in its highest potency in females, increases fatty acid oxidation, insulin sensitivity, cellular membrane stability during stress, androgen receptors, growth hormones, muscle recovery, type 1 muscle fibers and intramuscular fat stores. Additionally, it decreases glycogen utilization, spares protein, attenuates heat-protein response and creates more efficient stretch-shorten cycles.