What did women do thousands of years ago?

In Africa and other regions of ourthe planet is still inhabited by tribes of hunter-gatherers. The so-called groups of people who get their food exclusively by hunting animals and collecting edible plants. Usually men are engaged in hunting, because they have a stronger body build. And women do easier and safer work, that is, they collect plants. Scientists were convinced that the roles of men and women were distributed in this way even thousands of years ago. However, scientists recently discovered that there were far more women who hunted for a long time than now. Most likely, like the men, they took up arms and went in search of birds or even huge mammoths. This is evidenced by numerous archaeological finds.

Thousands of years ago, not only men, but also women were engaged in hunting.

Ancient hunters

That thousands of years ago women were capable ofto hunt, was told in the scientific journal Science Advances. In 2018, in the Andes mountain range, archaeologists managed to find a burial more than 9,000 years old. A huge number of various weapons of those times were found in the grave. They were all made of stone, but well sharpened so that they could injure animals. The objects found at the burial site are shown in the image below. The numbers from 1 to 7 designate stone points that were tied to spears. The rest of the tools could be used for cutting meat.

Stones found in a found grave

That the weapon belonged to the buriedman, there is no doubt about it. Thousands of years ago, some groups of people believed that after death a person falls into another world. There was a widespread belief that people in the afterlife would use the same things that they used during their lifetime. That is why they put weapons in the graves of people - after all, even in the afterlife, they will clearly need food? Similar beliefs persisted over the next thousand years, and this is evidenced by the sarcophagi of the pharaohs, which are full of riches.

See also: How did the Neanderthals fight?

Women hunters

Since men were usually considered hunters,archaeologists assumed that a male person was also buried in the grave. However, in the course of studying the bones, they suddenly discovered that they had found the skeleton of a woman. Scientists also managed to find out that the buried person's diet included a large amount of meat. Thus, they were lucky enough to find the remains of a woman who, thousands of years ago, hunted wild animals on a par with men. But the question arises - is it possible, after the discovery of one female hunter, that all women hunted before?

Photos from the excavations of the ancient huntress

Indeed, based on one find,you can't speak. Therefore, scientists began to study scientific publications about the discovery of the remains of other people of those times. They had at their disposal information about 107 burials in North and South America. In total, the remains of 429 people were found in these graves. Of these, 27 people were buried along with their weapons, that is, they were hunters. To the surprise of the scientists, 11 of these hunters were female. But this is 41% of all bodies found.

The life of ancient people as seen by the artist

Ultimately, scientists put forward the assumption thatthat thousands of years ago, if not all women, then at least half of them were engaged in hunting. What it was connected with is unknown. Perhaps this was due to the lack of men. It is also possible that this was their deliberate choice and they really did an excellent job of hunting. It is impossible to say for sure yet, but scientists have more interesting topics for study. For example, they want to know if female hunters existed in other parts of our planet, or if they were only in the vicinity of the Andes mountain range. In any case, the image of a man-hunter and a woman-gatherer now seems wrong and it is important for scientists to reconsider their views on the ancient world.

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About what they ate and how they huntedancient people, I wrote in this material. In it, I told what "rooms" their caves were divided into, what weapons they used during the hunt and in what form they used meat. In general, studying the ancient world is an interesting activity and I recommend doing it right now.