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Thursday 19th November 2020 | PALATINATE
SciTech
New findings suggest women hunted alongside men
Phoebe Abruzzese What seemed like an age old image of men going out to hunt woolly mammoth whilst women stay home, look after kids, and forage mushrooms for a prehistoric, mammoth-based Sunday lunch has been used to explain gender relations in everything from why men have historically been the breadwinners of the family, to why far more teenage boys play Call of Duty than girls. However, recent archaeological digs in Peru have unearthed remains showing that women were perhaps closer to the action than The Flintstones will have you believe.
The interdependence of both men and women is key to a successful hunt
The common hypothesis of ‘man the hunter’ was first popularised within the scientific community at an influential 1966 archaeology/ anthropology symposium, and quickly began to influence pop culture and the general public’s conceptions of stone age gender equality. However, even back in 1990, this simplified outlook was beginning to be disputed. In her incredibly named article, ‘I’m not a great hunter but my wife is’, Barbara Bodenhorn calls for less rigidity in the way we think about hunting, stating that it is a complex set of practical and symbolic behaviours; the interdependence of both men and women is key to
a successful hunt. Evidence of this more nuanced look at the sexual division of labour can be found in the Inupiaq Inuit communities, where the women are responsible for attracting the animals, and men are responsible for their subsequent slaughter. Both genders work together in unison, towards the common goal of putting meat on the stone dinner table. However, recent discoveries in the Andes suggest that women sometimes took a more active and violent role in the hunting. Randy Haas and his team from the University of California unearthed the remains of a teenage girl, estimated to have died 9,000 years ago. Remarkably, she had an extensive tool kit buried next to her, including projectile spear points and sharpened flints. Initially, this discovery led the research team to believe that they had found the cadaver of a well respected, male tribe leader and accomplished hunter, but further analysis proved it was a woman.
Between 30 and 50% of hunters may have been women
The manner of burial is also important – the implements were stacked neatly on the thigh of the body. The suggestion is that this individual was well respected within their hunter-gatherer community specifically for their hunting prowess, meaning it wasn’t seen as abnormal or
‘unladylike’, as was once theorised. Upon reexamination of remains found with big-game hunting tools at multiple sites across North and South America, 11 were discovered to be female and 16 male.
The individual was wellrepected within her huntergatherer community
With this in mind, Haas estimated that between 30 and
50% of hunters may have been women, and stated that we need to re-think our perception of the organisational structure of ancient hunter-gatherer groups. Although in many huntergatherer societies, both historic and contemporary (e.g. the Kalahari persistence hunters), the males hunt and the females gather, the rigidity of this view (likely in conjunction with Western sexism about how labour should be divided between the genders) may have meant that archaeological
Girl power (Amber Conway) finds of females with hunting tools have been scientifically neglected. So the next time a man tells me to go to the cave-kitchen and make him a cave-sandwich I will simply hit him with my leather sack full of spear-tips. GOT AN IDEA FOR AN ARTICLE? WE’D LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU!
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“More than just osmosis”: why I study Biology
Chloe Ellison For me, biology was just another school subject until I studied it at Alevel. It was during these two years that I really started to appreciate the broad spectrum of topics that encompasses the subject; it became more than just osmosis. The sciences as a whole mean creative and imaginative lateral thinking to solve ever-arising problems, and in my opinion, are let down by the formulaic research articles that don’t capture the wonder of discovering something new, nor do these articles engage the general public. I find biology particularly engaging due to the real-life applications that are seen every day and the drama that comes along with it. Cells, plants, and animals are dynamic; they often won’t play by the rules or to your hypothesis and so detective caps are needed to solve the underlying mechanisms that are present. Medical ethics, or the lack
thereof, cause devastating effects and disparities amongst populations, so ethics should always be at the forefront of any study. The appalling treatment of participants in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study during the 20th century and the lack of regulation of drugs such as thalidomide sparked a curiosity in the lack of caring but also the lack of forethought and proper scientific process. Why didn’t the science community intervene? That’s for another day.
Cells, plants, and animals are dynamic and often won’t play by the rules
I first read the book “Friendly Fire” by David Isenberg and John Morrow when I was 16. It details autoimmune diseases and the underlying causes. I discovered this book when chatting to the librarian of my local library who recommended the book; I was glad he did. Autoimmune diseases
interested me because of the drama involved in your own body is attacking its most precious cargo: you. I found type one diabetes (Diabetes mellitus) the most interesting as it is one that is relatively common but is often not taken seriously by the general public. The mass production of insulin using genetic engineering was the first time that this technology was utilised for more than blue-sky thinking. Up until relevantly recently type one diabetics used pig or cow insulin to restore blood glucose levels, but this changed in 1982. It was in this year that the first biosynthetic human insulin was put onto the market. This was where I started becoming really fascinated. Here, the human gene that encodes the insulin protein is inserted into DNA within a bacterium, normally E. coli (Escherichia coli). The bacteria then produce human insulin that can then be collected and used as a medical treatment. This was a much faster process and didn’t
produce the allergic reactions that pig insulin did.
Biology is often life-saving, not just in the medical sector but also in conservation and agriculture
In the last few years, insulin is often in the news when discussing US healthcare systems because pharmaceutical companies have increased the price of insulin, a life-saving drug, by 300% between 2002 and 2013. This intersection of genetics, disease, immunology, and ethics sparked a new interest in 16 year-old me that I now luckily get to experience constantly. I believe biology is important as it’s not just food for thought; it is often life-saving and improves the quality of life. Not just in the medical sectors of biology, but also
in conservation and agriculture. Genetic modification of organisms could be used to increase the yield of corn crop, to increase the nutritional value of rice, or to cure diseases such as cystic fibrosis. The utilisation of these technologies would begin to rectify many of the global inequalities amongst populations which would enrich everyone’s lives, enable growth, and is honestly just quite neat.
(Naotake Murayama via Flickr)
