Busting the Myth of 'Men Hunt, Women Gather'

We used to believe that our ancestors had clear roles: Men hunt, women gather. But new evidence suggests that some of the earliest big game hunters were women.

Thumbnail image credit: MATT VERDOLIVO, © 2020 THE REGENTS OF UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS

Hosted by: Hank Green

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Thanks to Dr. Haas et al. and David Strait / Washington University in St. Louis

[blueclownman]

It's almost like life was very very difficult, and men and women worked together for thousands of years because if not everyone would die....strange...

[driverjayne]

At first i was like "why's hank wearing a hoodie over a hoodie?" But them i remembered I'm currently stuck sitting at a truck stop waiting for the mountain pass into Montana to stop being an icy snow covered death trap and i was like "oh right. Montana."

[Josh-ify]

Hank, is that sweater as nice as it looks? It looks like it's like wearing a hug

[stax]

One would assume when talking about a society mostly focused on survival and their surroundings that it would be less "Men this, Women that.", and more "If you're able bodied you do some work."
That's just my guess based on my understanding of individuals.

[sethmassacre]

Early humans thoughts on gender and gender roles, "gee whiz I sure hope I don't die today"

[randomsandra]

Please let there be a term for the “projecting modern understanding of gender roles onto the past”...because I still love the term “ethnocentrism” (projecting your own culture standards onto other peoples’ and their culture)

[ulysses]

A person's material condition really does shape their perception of gender roles and society. In a hunter-gatherer society, it's all hands on deck get the resources you can get regardless of who you were.

[doogandoggin]

Hey if my girl can take out a bear or elk...I'm sticking with her. I can pick berries.

[theanimerican]

Always figured that the more we found out about our ancestors, the more we find out how utilitarian a lot of their lives were.

[OrbitalCookie]

So, 16 of them were male and 11 female. In my mind I never thought "Men Hunt, Women Gather" makes sense: I always thought it meant "Men are more likely to hunt, Women are more likely to gather". If there are berries to collect and no food left, of course everyone would collect the berries. If there is a big animal around and everyone is starving, of course everyone would hunt it. Then, as we saw in later societies, when the food situation gets better, this role gap widens between the genders.
All the above without getting into the physical differences. The genes ended up this way, because it helped the species to survive better.

[DisHappah]

I guess you've never watched the show Naked and afraid. lol!

[julius]

Busting the myth of "Station wagons never went off road, only off road vehicles did"

[kinomora-gaming]

With a thumbnail like that, the video rating is exactly what I expected.

[TK]

I have heard this before, the theory stated that girls after reaching a certain age would go on hunts with their brothers, fathers, cousins, ect. Under the idea that girls would want to go exploring/hunting as much as boys did. Also there were necessary skills both boys and girls needed to learn on the hunt for their own survival and for the survival of the tribe. Though as females got older and mated, once they had children it became impractical to hunt with the men. Though again, if the female was pretty good or great help on the hunts, then other females would take care of her children when she was on the hunt. It also stated that some males had to stay with the tribe at all times, incase of accidents, animals, or other human attacks. Though it could also be as simple as men wanting to stay near the children when they are small or some males just didn't have the knack for the hunt.

[kinomora-gaming]

I just want to let you guys know that having the Thumbnail border be red on the bottom is going to make a lot of people think they've already watched the video, since fully watching a video adds a red bar along the bottom of the video thumbnail in the web browser

[creativebeetle]

This is interesting and suggests that the male/female division of labour cannot be assumed to be consistent between early cultures and that women may have been more active in hunting in some cultures
Not sure how I feel about the current video title of "Busting the Myth of "Men Hunt, Women Gather" " as the new research suggests some variance in the hunting and gathering gender roles across cultures but also doesn't overturn other existing research regarding the prevalence of male hunting.
At the very least, it does broaden the ways that we should consider past cultures by showing that variances like this exist.

[The_Viscount]

It was my understanding that part of the consideration was that men were more expendable and thus put in more dangerous professions. If a population loses most of their men, the population can still recover easily. The same is not true for a population losing most of the women simply because there's a limit to how many children each woman can bare in a generation.

[citizensteele]

"we can't project modern understandings of gender roles into the past, but we're really trying!"

[sbvrs]

This doesn't surprise me. I assume hunting was, at that time, would've been a common skill for survival.

[theLivind]

I seem to remember a viking era burial from Sweden containing a female skeleton with a sort of strategic planning tool, armour, horses, a sword and other stuff related to military commanders. Viking women also supposedly held the keys to the house, though this was possibly because men tended to go out on the sea for fishing or trading.