Ancient burial of a terrible hunter (and his weapon) found in...

Walk quietly in the Lord’s wilderness OtherAncient hunters and gatherers conquer a herd of Vicuania. The hunters easily threw stones, killed some animals, and scattered the rest. The vicuas, the wild ancestors of the alpacas, fell and skilled hunters – both men and women – went to test their victories.

This fictional tale somewhat contradicts the accepted story of such hunters and gatherers: the ancients hunted the big game while their gathered herbs and plants. According to a study published in November, a recent discovery by a 9,000-year-old blood hunter and analysis of other prey carcasses shows that early hunter-gatherer women in the ancient United States hunted as much as men. According to a study published on .4 in the journal The advancement of science.

Randy Haas, Assistant Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, said, “These results reflect the idea that the gender roles we accept – or are accepted by many – in society today may not be as natural as some may be think. “The lead author Randy Haas said. Anthropology at the University of California, Davis.

Connected: In the pictures: An old European hunter-gatherer

In 2013, Haas was working on a separate excavation in the Andes when a local from the southern Peruvian community of Niti, near Mullah Fasiri, reported that hundreds of ancient stone tools were scattered here. Five years later, Haas and his team began digging the site known as Vilamaya Patjaksa, with financial support from the locals.

In 2018, researchers at Vilamya Patjexa found six human bodies (more research was done later in 2019). Two of the six burials also had hunting implements, but one was particularly interesting.

Haas told LiveScience that in the sixth morgue about 9,000 years ago we “began uncovering this really rich artistic gathering,” which contained projectile points and a flake hunting implement. The funeral is believed to belong to a hunter-gatherer who died at the ages of 17 and 19 from a dental development test. As the dig went on, “people started speculating, wow, he must have been a great hunter, a very important person in the community,” said Haas.

The prejudices that color history

James Watson, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona and co-author of the study, was the first to point out that he was not a man. Examining the hunter-gatherers’ bones, Watson said the skeleton could be a woman as they were smaller than the others found in the area. Indeed a detailed analysis of Protein The young hunter’s teeth confirmed that he was a sherat.

But then Haas and his team wondered: is this the only hunter-gatherer, or is it part of the larger Native American behavior? To find out, they added literature for more burial accounts from hunters and gatherers. Pleistozän- (Which ended about 11,700 years ago) and soon Holozän (Which began about 12,000 to 11,500 years ago.)

The team identified 429 skeletons from 107 ancient burial sites in the United States. Of these individuals, 27-11 female rats (including newly discovered rats) and 15 males – were buried with big game hunting tools. Analysis of other data found that between 30% and 50% of these populations were female predators. “What we are seeing is that the dead distances for women and men are just as likely to be related to the big game hunting tools,” Haas said.

Connected: Photos: The human skeleton illuminates the first Americans

“The authors strongly argue that the restless skeleton was likely a big game hunter and that such discoveries are not uncommon among the indigenous population,” said Marin Pilod, associate professor in the university’s anthropology department. That were not part of this study. “If the same craftsmanship was tied to the male skeleton, there would be no question that the man was a hunter.”

“Many cultures do not and do not have a gender binary representation,” Piloud told LiveScience. “When we withdraw from our own gender bias, we can examine statistics in ways that may be culturally more accurate.”

It’s not clear if hunters in other parts of the world regularly hunt, but it’s possible to find such discoveries anywhere, he said. He added that it would be interesting to see how this female rat’s diet compares to other feeds on the website or similar websites to see if she ate the same feed as other men or other women.

“This study will help convince people that women are involved in big game hunting,” said Kathleen Sterling, professor of anthropology at Binghamton University in New York who did not participate in the study. .

Indeed, hunting methods and the size of the social groups at the time meant that we had to accept all of this as most children and adults had to be herded or in nets or “equals”. To steer herd abduction projects in the right direction, “Sterling told LiveScience.

Age was probably more important than gender when it came to who hunted in these societies, but “our gender rules are so strict that not everyone will believe,” she said.

However, when a person is buried with hunting tools, it does not necessarily mean that the person was a hunter, but that their society deemed it appropriate to bury things with them, Sterling said. . However, when the hunting equipment is found in the corpses of humans, it is generally considered prey. “So we have to make the same assumptions about hunting tools buried with women until we have a good reason to say more,” he added.

Originally published on Live Science.