Review of archaeological data shows the erasure of women in prehistory, says researcher

Anyone who was a kid from the 1980s probably remembers the cartoon “The Flintstones”. The story takes place in a prehistoric city (Bedrock), where the family that gives its name to the cartoon lived: Fred Flintstone, the main character, was the “provider”, who worked and obtained game, while his wife, Wilma , took care of the housework and taking care of the children, Bambam and Pedrita.

Animation perpetuated a view highly disseminated in history books of prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies: the man as the hunter and warrior and the woman as caretaker, eventually producing clothing and artifacts from hides and other animal products.

But what if this vision was, in fact, constructed based on a bias of modern conservative societies, with this division of gender roles reflecting the customs and beliefs of the very specialists who study these peoples, without actually having evidence for it?

This is what Marylène Patou-Mathis, a historian and researcher at the CNRS (French science support body), proposes, author of the book “Prehistoric Man is Also a Woman: a History of the Invisibility of Women”.

Based on archaeological data, including artifacts, cave paintings and skeletons of collective mortuaries dating back to more than 25,000 years before Christ, a period that comprises the so-called prehistory (although the author refutes the idea of ​​a common prehistory, but yes the existence of several prehistoric societies with distinct cultures and origins), Patou-Mathis questions the outdated view of some scientists about ancient peoples, themselves influenced by the patriarchal view of Western societies, arguing that there is no evidence to support this division .

“The observation from hunter-gatherer peoples in the early 20th century served as the basis for classifying pre-modern societies as patriarchal. What I am pointing out is that in the more than 40,000 years of evolution of modern man in Europe there is little likely that only this form of organization existed”, explains the author, in an interview with Sheet last month.

One of the most eloquent examples in the book is the very attribution to the female body of being fragile while the male is strong and robust. “My studies of Paleolithic Neanderthals [até 8.000 a.C.] French show that women were as robust as men, so why couldn’t they also hunt and fight?

To this, Patou-Mathis adds evidence from other societies with women playing the role of warriors, such as the Scythians of Siberia and the Viking peoples of Scandinavian countries.

The analysis of several prehistoric bones indicates pathologies associated with repetitive movements, such as throwing a spear, and the use of sharp objects (made from chipped stone) to tear the animals’ hide. In many of the ancient human skeletons, however, it is not possible to distinguish gender – that is until the advent of DNA extraction from bones. It was even thus that it was discovered that a famous buried Viking warrior was, in fact, a woman.

“We only have a way of knowing the gender of skeletons in about 40% of the specimens, so the interpretation of many specialists in the 19th and 20th centuries was based on society itself, comparing the bones with those of men and women of the European bourgeoisie. This idea, from a scientific point of view, it has no value for me, as a scientist I cannot understand this interpretation without proof”, he explains.

Likewise, the production of cave paintings and objects that can be considered cultural —statuettes, busts, artistic representations— has traditionally been attributed to men.

Patou-Mathis also sees this ideological bias as influencing scientific interpretations of cave paintings, without any evidence. “I am not saying that men did not paint the Lascaux drawings, I am simply saying that there is no evidence that it was only men. There is no evidence to support this view other than an ideological bias of the researchers who have described them in the past”, it says.

The “erasure” of women in prehistory turns out to be similar to what happened in other areas of study, such as philosophy, human and earth sciences, and even in artistic and musical production.

“This did not only happen to women, it was also similar to black people. The science and knowledge produced over more than 200 years had the white man’s unique and exclusive vision. That’s why I believe that many works and articles were influenced by the called ‘male gauze’ [expressão usada para o olhar masculino nas obras e produções culturais]”, he states.

Because they are areas largely dominated by men, archeology and anthropology studies, as well as paleontology (the study of fossils), ended up influenced by this male view, according to paleontologist and professor at the Federal University of ABC, Fabiana Rodrigues Costa Nunes.

“In the area of ​​vertebrate paleontology, 6 out of 10 researchers are men. This brings a bias that is reflected in the most diverse areas of knowledge, which end up reproducing this same structure”, she says, based on data gathered by a collective female of women in the area.

“There was also an interesting example in paleontology and in evolutionary biology of difference between the sexes, with females being seen as supporting actors, as proposed in Charles Darwin’s concept of sexual selection. He attributed an almost absolute role to males in the competition between them and choice of females, disregarding any role that could be assigned to them,” he says.

Despite not being new, the idea of ​​including diverse perspectives in the most varied areas of science still has a long way to go. Asked about the reception of her book by her peers, Patou-Mathis says that it has generally been well received, but some historians are resistant to doing away with the idea of ​​a non-patriarchal or matrilineal premodern society. “That, to me, is pure ideology, not science,” she says.