Feminism killed the Neanderthals
If I ever get to wondering how "book-learning" got such a bad rap, I don't have to look much further than stories like this:
A new explanation for the demise of the Neanderthals, the stockily built human species that occupied Europe until the arrival of modern humans 45,000 years ago, has been proposed by two anthropologists at the University of Arizona.
Unlike modern humans, who had developed a versatile division of labor between men and women, the entire Neanderthal population seems to have been engaged in a single main occupation, the hunting of large game, the scientists, Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner, say in an article posted online yesterday in Current Anthropology.
Because modern humans exploited the environment more efficiently, by having men hunt large game and women gather small game and plant foods, their populations would have outgrown those of the Neanderthals.
. . .
At sites occupied by modern humans from 45,000 to 10,000 years ago, a period known as the Upper Paleolithic, there is good evidence of different occupations, from small animal and bird remains, as well as the bone awls and needles used to make clothes. It seems reasonable to assume that these activities were divided between men and women, as is the case with modern foraging peoples.
But Neanderthal sites include no bone needles, no small animal remains and no grinding stones for preparing plant foods. So what did Neanderthal women do all day?
Their skeletons are so robustly built that it seems improbable that they just sat at home looking after the children, the anthropologists write. More likely, they did the same as the men, with the whole population engaged in bringing down large game.
Somehow I doubt that the Neanderthals would have survived for better than 100,000 years in a harsh environment if they showed such casual disregard for their child-bearing women and young children's safety. I also can't think of a single example in the animal kingdom where that dynamic holds true. Either the Neanderthals were incredibly unique, or these people just aren't thinking things through. The relative primitiveness of Neanderthal weapons should make it not too great a surprise that they never developed delicate sewing instruments, which is about all the evidence that's offered for their theory. The far more likely explanation is that they just weren't as cognitively developed as us modern types and got pushed into extinction.
Now, if you really want to piss today's women off, you could try combining the two theories and say that the reason the Neanderthals died out is because they were too stupid to keep women in their place. At the very least, such an argument should prove that our more primitive ancestors' genes have survived to be passed down to some people.
And by that I mean the lesser cognitive ability, because the proponents of this theory make it clear they believe this whole "division of labour" issue that caused the Neanderthals to die out, was a cultural issue, not genetic.
Dr. Stiner said that in her view there was not time for them to change their culture. “Although there may have been differences in neurological wiring,” she said, “I think another very important key is the legacy of cultural institutions about social roles.” Is there a genetic basis to the division of labor that emerged in the modern human lineage? “It’s equally compelling to argue that most or all of this has a cultural basis,” Dr. Stiner said. “That’s where it’s very difficult for people like us and Richard Klein to resolve the basis of our disagreement.”
Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted for 15,000 years; three times the length of recorded history, which would make their "cultural institutions" quite impressively resistant to change. I think there may be a cultural basis for this theory, but I doubt it has anything to do with the Neanderthals'.
