The influential idea that in the past men were hunters and women were not isn’t supported by the available evidence
I feel like this is one of those situations where people distort a 45:55 into either a 0:100 or a 50:50.
Ecologically speaking, we’re a lot like megafauna rats: we thrive from adaptability. Throw humans into whatever environment, with access to whatever barely edible junk, and they’ll still survive and reproduce. As such you expect selective pressure against built-in specialisation of the individuals, for two reasons:
- kin selection - if depending on the environment half of your tribe is dead weight, you’re all going to die.
- individual survival - we might be a social species, but we can’t always rely on other people.
However that does not mean that you should expect the exact same proficiency for all individuals on all tasks based on their innate attributes, such as sex. Some might be really good hunters but passable gatherers; some, the opposite. And I believe that this applies in special to the [important!] typical man and the typical woman.
I can’t emphasise “typical” enough. Because even when dealing with individuals of the same sex, you will see some difference in ability towards certain tasks.
Maybe I’m mistaken but… I never heard that was an evolutionary thing? Just what the roles were?
Try watching 90s sitcoms. Gender essentialism was still ok in public discourse so you hear a lot of ‘because men were designed to hunt’ to explain unrelated behaviour.
I think there has always been a vague yet unproven theory about it, that males generally developed to be bigger because they were more commonly in hunting roles. The kind of thing a teacher might say in high school but not really back up with anything. This could only really apply to mammals, though - in other species, eg often with birds, females are bigger. However the reason behind the size difference probably has a lot more involved in it than simply which sex did more hunting.
Such things are roughly considered to be either evolutionary or cultural.
The further back you go in human history, the less influence culture is assumed to have.
Think about it like this:
If you’re going out with weapons to hunt with, are you also going to ignore the berries and herbs and mushrooms you find? If you’re going out with baskets to bring back materials for foraging, are you going to feel stupid for not also bringing along a sling or spear when you see some small game?
Yes, statistically speaking, men have more strength and lung capacity than women. That would generally make men more effective at hunting, but that doesn’t mean that women didn’t hunt at all.
Oh no don’t misunderstand I’m not trying to say that the whole hunter gather roles are correct. Just saying that, till now, I’ve always heard that’s what it was. Roles. Not evolution.
Yeah, and what I’m saying is that in the nomadic hunter-gatherer days, I think it’s unlikely for those roles to have emerged very strongly. We’re talking about pure subsistence, and in that paradigm, you don’t leave resources behind no matter who you are.
It’s not until agriculture comes around that people start putting down permanent roots in one place. Now you don’t have to expend effort on traveling, rebuilding shelter, moving resources. You get the luxury of storing more resources than you can carry. That’s what allows people to start specializing and shifting into specific roles.
I’m gonna turn into some kind of Jordan Peterson guy, just for the duration of this article.
Mounting evidence from exercise science indicates that women are physiologically better suited than men to endurance efforts such as running marathons.
What are you talking about
It assumes that males are physically superior to females and that pregnancy and child-rearing reduce or eliminate a female’s ability to hunt.
I wouldn’t say “superior” like a value judgement that muscle strength is the most important thing in terms of physical ability, but I don’t think that it’s controversial that the average man is physically stronger than the average woman, or that being pregnant interferes with your ability at physical tasks. This article keeps going on about how it’s clear that there’s not any physical difference when it is blatantly clear from sporting events that (in the average, accounting for individual variation) there is.
But Man the Hunter’s contributors often ignored evidence, sometimes in their own data, that countered their suppositions. For example, Hitoshi Watanabe focused on ethnographic data about the Ainu, an Indigenous population in northern Japan and its surrounding areas. Although Watanabe documented Ainu women hunting, often with the aid of dogs, he dismissed this finding in his interpretations and placed the focus squarely on men as the primary meat winners. He was superimposing the idea of male superiority through hunting onto the Ainu and into the past.
This, I can easily believe. Male scientists past and present can be misogynistic and blatantly ignore data that contradicts the way they like to see the world. On the other hand, you literally did the exact same thing with time-to-run-marathons up above. I think balance and reality is the goal, including pointing out sexist errors when they’re there, but not “feminism at all costs.”
Hunting doesn’t always mean wrestling a bear to the ground with your upper body strength; I am sure that women took part in hunting and that this was and is sometime blatantly ignored by (often male) scientists.
Today these biased assumptions persist in both the scientific literature and the public consciousness. Granted, women have recently been shown hunting in movies such as Prey, the most recent installment of the popular Predator franchise, and on cable programs such as Naked and Afraid and Women Who Hunt.
Why is this in your science article
The terms “female” and “male” are often used in relation to biological sex. “Gender” refers to how an individual identifies—woman, man, nonbinary, and so forth. Much of the scientific literature confuses and conflates female/male and woman/man terminology without providing definitions to clarify what it is referring to and why those terms were chosen.
Why is this in your science article
You can talk about the biology and anthropology of XX chromosome people and XY chromosome people without getting into this
research into exercise physiology, paleoanthropology, archaeology and ethnography has historically been conducted by men and focused on males … we still know very little about female athletic performance, training and nutrition, leaving athletic trainers and coaches to mostly treat females as small males.
What the fuck is this I feel like I’m taking crazy pills
Females are more regularly dominating ultraendurance events such as the more than 260-mile Montane Spine foot race through England and Scotland, the 21-mile swim across the English Channel and the 4,300-mile Trans Am cycling race across the U.S.
This was the first part that made me think, oh shit, maybe I am the wrong one, all this stuff has been valid and I’ve just been being Joe Rogan and poo pooing it all. Nope, it’s just more made up stuff. If Hitoshi Watanabe is sexist (which apparently he is), then this is off the fuckin charts.
I don’t get why it’s a bad thing when male scientists bring their biases into their papers to the point of ignoring that data and just inventing their own imagined world to fit how they like to see it (which, it is, of course, a very bad thing), but all of a sudden if a feminist does it, it turns into a good thing.
I wanted to downvote you for saying you were emulating Jordan Peterson, but I don’t think you actually did that. What you’ve said is well reasoned and grounded in facts.
Thank you; I appreciate it. I’m obviously joking about that, sort of; I did feel nervous about it because this is like the second or third feminist-view science article that I’ve replied to with this sort of thing. It made me worried that this is gonna become my shtick and I’ll have to start a Youtube channel which is sponsored by a concealed carry membership organization or some sort of nutritional supplements.
Thank you for engaging with the article in this depth. I might be able to help you clear up some of your concerns and will try to do so best i can.
Mounting evidence from exercise science indicates that women are physiologically better suited than men to endurance efforts such as running marathons.
This has been an ongoing discussion for years now. There have in fact been several scientists who have made the same claim. You are right to be critical here.
This study from 2015, that analysed the performance differences between men and women from 1971 to 2012, in 50 -mile to 3100-mile ultramarathons, comes to the conclusion that men outperform woman, although they point out that one reason for the gender gap might be that less women participate in marathons.
But this preprint (!) from 2023 suggests that, even with equal participation numbers, men still outperform woman.
Either way, it still is an ongoing debate. While the quoted sentence you chose is clearly not backed up by data the authors at least hint towards this by stating that “We still have much to learn about female athletic performance […].”. I still agree: the statement as made is incorrect.
I’d like to point to this article and this study, that seem to point towards men and woman using different pacing strategies in marathons, possible showing how they could have fulfilled different roles during hunting.
The article addresses a relevant point a bit further down: “The inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports. As an example, some endurance-running events allow the use of professional runners called pacesetters to help competitors perform their best. Men are not permitted to act as pacesetters in many women’s events because of the belief that they will make the women “artificially faster,” as though women were not actually doing the running themselves.”
Still, i would say the evidence is at least unclear and does not back up the statement made and therefore rightfully criticised by you.
Also I’d like to point out that all of this might be of no relevance at all to the question, if woman hunted alongside men or not, since the idea that humans outran animals as a hunting techniques (e.g. “persistence hunting”) has been heavily challenged and, to my limited understanding, debunked. But this is not my field, so i am not familiar with a lot of sources on the topic. I am happy to be corrected here.
I wouldn’t say “superior” like a value judgement that muscle strength is the most important thing in terms of physical ability, but I don’t think that it’s controversial that the average man is physically stronger than the average woman, or that being pregnant interferes with your ability at physical tasks. This article keeps going on about how it’s clear that there’s not any physical difference when it is blatantly clear from sporting events that (in the average, accounting for individual variation) there is.
Have a look at the sources they give in the article. This paper seems to be the main source for the article. In regards to your concerns it states that:
“While there are real, uncontroversial mean biological differences between females and males, the differences that give females an advantage are not only regularly ignored but also understudied. Because of this, science poorly understands female athletic capabilities in terms of strength, endurance, and fatigue. Until this uneven understanding is rectified, our reconstructions of past sexual divisions of labour will be biased and limit the likely broad repertoire of activities females participated in during our evolutionary past.”
In regards to your question why movies and gender roles are part of the article, i would like to ask why this seems to be problematic for you? The context for both seem quite clear? “Gender” (not Sex) is, according to Gender-Studies, something “performed”. Movies and how we talk about Gender-roles very much form, how people frame a Gender and assign roles to it. The article is stating (and in my opinion correctly so) that it makes a difference if a society “performers”, or believes in the idea of male only hunters, as this leads to a bias in the scientific literature and field. Why would this not be included in a scientific article? Its based on quite solid science (other than the whole endurance idea they are promoting). Maybe you could elaborate a bit why you find it not relevant?
You can talk about the biology and anthropology of XX chromosome people and XY chromosome people without getting into this
But that’s not the only topic at hand, isn’t it? They clearly state that in scientific literature it is not made clear when they are speaking of biological or social genders. And it makes a difference if you are addressing gender or sex. Further, it is important to differentiate between the concepts of gender and sex, because they want to make clear where they speak about biology and where they speak about the constructed (or “performed”) gender of female.
What the fuck is this I feel like I’m taking crazy pills
Why? What is the crazy part to you? Do you disagree with the statement that science has been extreme male focused? As far as i can tell it indeed has been and still is. What’s crazy in pointing that out? Or do you disagree?
This was the first part that made me think, oh shit, maybe I am the wrong one, all this stuff has been valid and I’ve just been being Joe Rogan and poo pooing it all. Nope, it’s just more made up stuff. If Hitoshi Watanabe is sexist (which apparently he is), then this is off the fuckin charts.
I don’t get why it’s a bad thing when male scientists bring their biases into their papers to the point of ignoring that data and just inventing their own imagined world to fit how they like to see it (which, it is, of course, a very bad thing), but all of a sudden if a feminist does it, it turns into a good thing.
Yes! I absolutely agree. None of their three chosen examples showes any female dominating in any category, neither once or “regularly”. It is bad practice to make such a claim. I wouldn’t label it as sexist. It’s just really bad science. And it invalidates a lot of the very sensible and very much proven point the authors make. And I agree with you: It is not a good thing when anybody does this, regardless of agenda.
I am glad to hear it. Yeah for however it may have sounded, I was making a sincere effort to engage with the topic. Trying to at least.
But this preprint (!) from 2023 suggests that, even with equal participation numbers, men still outperform woman.
Well, slightly. Not by much. I looked over the study and it seems like it would definitely imply that above 50 miles, when you correct for the number of participants, it’s pretty similar. I can buy that. So yeah maybe I was wrong to poo poo the ultramarathon thing (or at least potentially wrong).
While there are real, uncontroversial mean biological differences between females and males, the differences that give females an advantage are not only regularly ignored but also understudied. Because of this, science poorly understands female athletic capabilities in terms of strength, endurance, and fatigue. Until this uneven understanding is rectified, our reconstructions of past sexual divisions of labour will be biased and limit the likely broad repertoire of activities females participated in during our evolutionary past.
All this, I agree with. Actually I would amend “understudied” to “deliberately downplayed.” But yes I think this all is 100% accurate.
In regards to your question why movies and gender roles are part of the article, i would like to ask why this seems to be problematic for you?
Think about if one of those earlier male-sexist studies about man as hunters and women as gatherers, that the article is critiquing, started talking about movies about male-dominated hunting and referencing the portrayals in the movies and how good it is that the movies are getting it right. See how weird that sounds? To me that would sound out of place and irrelevant and sort of indicate an agenda on the part of the writer.
Also, to me you want to get the basic facts of, what is the biology and the anthropological history in a factual sense, and then build on it into this kind of wider critique and cite examples from all different fields and how they tie together. But to me, they haven’t proven the central fundamental points, and so trying to skip past them and start on analysis and implications and contrast with some other related issues from other fields offends me a certain amount, since I disagree with their underlying factual claims.
What the fuck is this I feel like I’m taking crazy pills
Why? What is the crazy part to you? Do you disagree with the statement that science has been extreme male focused? As far as i can tell it indeed has been and still is. What’s crazy in pointing that out? Or do you disagree?
I was talking specifically about the idea that nutrition and athletic training and performance has been unstudied in females. “Science” as a whole, is extremely male focused yes (I talked in some other comment about the really horrifying way this sexism impacts medical studies, where they do do exactly this).
But we have female Olympic athletes, female professional sports players, people who don’t have the luxury of just bobbling along with whatever theory they happen to feel like espousing. If I can be a little blunt, I think sexism in academia has a something of a safe haven to fester just because of the nature of academia, where a lot of times you can say theories and become well respected only because people are convinced by your theory.
The people who make their livelihood at sports can’t just rely on other people agreeing with them though. To me it’s nuts to say that a women’s pro sports team, or the trainer for a female Olympic athlete, just wouldn’t have it occur to them to treat the females on the team, who need to perform physically, any differently or try to figure out accurate nutrition. Like I said, all it would take would be one coach who knew what they were doing and their female athletes would start dominating anything they took part in because their training was better.
Yes! I absolutely agree. None of their three chosen examples showes any female dominating in any category, neither once or “regularly”. It is bad practice to make such a claim. I wouldn’t label it as sexist. It’s just really bad science. And it invalidates a lot of the very sensible and very much proven point the authors make. And I agree with you: It is not a good thing when anybody does this, regardless of agenda.
Yeah. They took a pretty compelling case and a valid insightful point and then ran way too far with it and included a bunch of specific claims that seem to me to be totally nuts. Which is fine if they had backed them up factually and made a solid case, but to me a lot of the time they’re just throwing stuff out there.
Thank you very much for your answer. I’ll try to expand on some point a bit.
Think about if one of those earlier male-sexist studies about man as hunters and women as gatherers, that the article is critiquing, started talking about movies about male-dominated hunting and referencing the portrayals in the movies and how good it is that the movies are getting it right. See how weird that sounds? To me that would sound out of place and irrelevant and sort of indicate an agenda on the part of the writer.
But that’s not the point they are making. The way i understand it the argument is this:
Males dominate society. The ideas about who and what men and woman are, biologically and socially (gender and sex) are dominated by a male perspective. Since the science is also done by males that means there is a significant bias there to frame theories in accordance with gender and sex perceptions that are dominant in society. If we are looking at the present and how these theories are questioned, it is worth noting that the perception in society has, also, started changing. In fact the very fact, that the discourse has opened up enough to allow portraits of female hunters, shows that rethinking the evidence we have in this new framework might make sense (preferable with an open mind tough). Since this is an intersection of the societal issue of how we see gender and archology it makes sense to “zoom out” a bit and see how those perceptions have changed.
Since the studies about man-hunters are not using this sociological angle, sure it would feel out of place if they started talking about movies. But for the angle the article is taking it makes sense, in my opinion.
Also, to me you want to get the basic facts of, what is the biology and the anthropological history in a factual sense, and then build on it into this kind of wider critique and cite examples from all different fields and how they tie together. But to me, they haven’t proven the central fundamental points, and so trying to skip past them and start on analysis and implications and contrast with some other related issues from other fields offends me a certain amount, since I disagree with their underlying factual claims.
This i agree with, that might have been a better approach.
I was talking specifically about the idea that nutrition and athletic training and performance has been unstudied in females. “Science” as a whole, is extremely male focused yes (I talked in some other comment about the really horrifying way this sexism impacts medical studies, where they do do exactly this). But we have female Olympic athletes, female professional sports players, people who don’t have the luxury of just bobbling along with whatever theory they happen to feel like espousing. If I can be a little blunt, I think sexism in academia has a something of a safe haven to fester just because of the nature of academia, where a lot of times you can say theories and become well respected only because people are convinced by your theory. The people who make their livelihood at sports can’t just rely on other people agreeing with them though.
Thanks for clearing this up. I did a tiny bit of a deep dive and it seems, contrary to your believe, that females are indeed not studied very well in regards to many topics that are sport-related (with is relay just a specific field of medicine, btw.). Here are some quotes from studies or articles about the topic:
Overall, female physique athletes are an understudied population, and the need for more robust studies to detect low energy availability and associated health effects is warranted.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31141414/
The problem? Experts say there are huge gaps in the understanding of female physiology within the context of physical activity and sports, and there isn’t enough evidence-based research to provide concrete recommendations.
Female athletes have long been excluded from exercise participation, training and performance research due to the complexities associated with natural hormonal fluctuations. Consequently, the menstrual cycle (MC) and the degree to which it impacts the athlete remains understudied.
https://www.jsams.org/article/S1440-2440(22)00285-7/fulltext
Female athletes are more susceptible to sport-related concussions (SRCs) and experience worse outcomes compared with male athletes. Although numerous studies on SRC have compared the outcomes of concussions in male and female athletes after injury, research pertaining to why female athletes have worse outcomes is limited.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7366411/
Considering the anatomical differences between male and female athletes, the lack of data and – in consequence – specific guidelines, puts women in disadvantage and may lead to suboptimal training, rehab and prehab plans. This is particularly important in the pelvis and hip area, which are very different in men and women.
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/female-athletes-sports-research
To me it’s nuts to say that a women’s pro sports team, or the trainer for a female Olympic athlete, just wouldn’t have it occur to them to treat the females on the team, who need to perform physically, any differently or try to figure out accurate nutrition. Like I said, all it would take would be one coach who knew what they were doing and their female athletes would start dominating anything they took part in because their training was better.
But on what would that coach base their approach? There is no scientific data to use. Thats the point. The only way how to “know what they are doing” is by using the knowledge that has been acquired from male athletes and hope that it translates to females.
Males dominate society. The ideas about who and what men and woman are, biologically and socially (gender and sex) are dominated by a male perspective.
I feel like the second part isn’t true anymore. I actually think in modern academia, the feminist perspective dominates, case in point being this article, where there are some extremely strong claims that are seemingly fine to present, whereas I feel like if it had the mirror-image claims then it’d a huge big deal and a problem.
If we are looking at the present and how these theories are questioned, it is worth noting that the perception in society has, also, started changing. In fact the very fact, that the discourse has opened up enough to allow portraits of female hunters, shows that rethinking the evidence we have in this new framework might make sense (preferable with an open mind tough). Since this is an intersection of the societal issue of how we see gender and archology it makes sense to “zoom out” a bit and see how those perceptions have changed.
Since the studies about man-hunters are not using this sociological angle, sure it would feel out of place if they started talking about movies. But for the angle the article is taking it makes sense, in my opinion.
Ooooh… so, I actually for whatever weird reason was looking at this through the “academic paper” lens, like it was an article that was about a new anthropological paper that these two authors had submitted. It’s not that. It’s just a magazine article. So, I think some of my criticism about stuff that shouldn’t have been included was 100% unfair. I don’t know why I was looking at it that way but talking about movies and pop culture in addition to the evolution and anthropology is 100% fine for just an article. I have no idea why I thought that but I withdraw that complaint.
Thanks for clearing this up. I did a tiny bit of a deep dive and it seems, contrary to your believe, that females are indeed not studied very well in regards to many topics that are sport-related (with is relay just a specific field of medicine, btw.). Here are some quotes from studies or articles about the topic:
But on what would that coach base their approach? There is no scientific data to use. Thats the point. The only way how to “know what they are doing” is by using the knowledge that has been acquired from male athletes and hope that it translates to females.
So two reasons why I * can* agree with you that there’s still a blind spot in academia about female exercise physiology, but it’s not as big a deal to me:
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There’s a whole galaxy of knowledge outside of academia. I do agree with you on a certain only-study-the-males bias in academia even now. I just don’t think that translates to an overall human lack of knowledge about how things work and how to train athletes of any gender, e.g. by the ones who are doing it for a living. In terms of where they get their knowledge, it’s like anything; it’s a mix of academic theory, personal experience, observation of what’s working for other people, folklore, and judgement. And crucially the chance to put your theories to a not-up-for-debate test.
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I don’t feel like it’s necessary to understand gender differences in physiology in a ton of detail in order to draw anthropological conclusions. The example of hunting with dogs in the article is a great one; you don’t need to understand the physiology to understand that example or draw the conclusions that the different authors draw from it. You do need to be able to look unbiased at the evidence in front of you, and I think that’s important for all authors concerned to be able to do. Besides that, athletic physiology in prehistorical societies is dramatically different from either athletes’ or lay people’s physiology in the modern day (I say that based on reading accounts of modern people who lived with prehistorical-culture people and experienced their daily physical life). I’m not sure that learning about the latter prepares you to be real qualified about the former whether you’re doing it gender-unbiased or not. But like I say I’m not convinced it’s necessary.
IDK, I don’t think there’s a huge gulf between our viewpoints. And thank you for the ultramarathon study in particular; it was really interesting.
IDK, I don’t think there’s a huge gulf between our viewpoints. And thank you for the ultramarathon study in particular; it was really interesting.
While we still have somewhat different viewpoints I have to say that I enyoed the exchange. It’s nice to see interact with people that are open to overthinking their position and I have some angles to consider that I have not been are of before. So thank you for that :-)
👍🏻 ❤️
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Why is this in your science article
Maybe they don’t want people using this article to argue sex = gender and they want to clarify this.
I dunno, after the article started talking about TV shows I think they lost the benefit of the doubt.
All your questions are answered within the article. In most cases a few sentences before and/or after your quotes.
Of all the things you mention I agree that the word dominating is not the correct one in this paragraph:
If you follow long-distance races, you might be thinking, wait—males are outperforming females in endurance events! But this is only sometimes the case. Females are more regularly dominating ultraendurance events such as the more than 260-mile Montane Spine foot race through England and Scotland, the 21-mile swim across the English Channel and the 4,300-mile Trans Am cycling race across the U.S. Sometimes female athletes compete in these races while attending to the needs of their children. In 2018 English runner Sophie Power ran the 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc race in the Alps while still breastfeeding her three-month-old at rest stations.
The fact that real world data directly contradicts several arguments raised in this article…is addressed in the article?
Okay, sure…
What questions was I asking, and where are they answered? The things where I said “What is this doing in your science article”?
My chief complaint is that they’re representing it as demonstrated that women are superior to men in endurance events, and citing specific endurance events where the data show the exact opposite. That’s not really a question.
I should have said questions and conserns.
Where was that main concern, about the data showing the exact opposite of the claims they were making, answered in the article?
It is correct that the worlds of science and medicine have not studied female bodies as well as male bodies. It’s not as bad as it used to be but I think it’s often true that things like recommended doses for drugs are based on assuming “a woman is a small man” rather than actual drug trials involving a significant number of women or any other kind of real data.
I agree though, if they are making up data to support their claims they have allowed their ideology to corrupt their integrity. It seems like an editor really should have fact checked this before publishing but maybe that’s not how it works these days.
recommended doses for drugs are based on assuming “a woman is a small man”
That’s especially true for contraception pills.
That is 100% true. Medical science treats the male body as “normal” and does most studies on males, and women as the outlier and if the male-designed treatment doesn’t work the same way on women then it’s the woman’s problem. It’s a real fucked up situation and it’s still going on.
I just don’t think it’s the same for athletics. I’ve done athletics and worked with athletic people of both genders, and it’s absolutely not true that women athletes are just treated as small males. I mean, if that were true and significant, all it would take is one coach who trained women properly and female athletes under their supervision would have a huge advantage over all the other improperly-trained female athletes.
I only read your comment and not the article, but it gives very strong “women are an enigma” energy
Well I sure do know a lot of women who would be up for hunting.
Evolutionary psychology is horsecrap. News flash at 11.
