A woman’s place? Out hunting with spears

WASHINGTON: A new study says a woman’s place might never have been at home.

Scientists have discovered the 9000-year-old remains of a young woman in the Peruvian Andes alongside a wellstocked hunting kit for big game.

Based on a further analysis of 27 individuals at burial sites with similar tools, a team led by Randall Haas at the University of California concluded that between 30 to 50 per cent of hunters in the Americas during this period may have been women.

The paper, published in the journal Science Advances, contradicts the notion that in hunter-gatherer societies, the hunters were mainly men and the gatherers women.

“For at least some portion of prehistory, that assumption is inaccurate,” Dr Haas said.

He said the results “highlight the disparities in labour practice today, in terms of things like gender pay gaps, titles and rank”.

“The results underscore there may be nothing ‘natural’ about those disparities.”

The skeletal remains of six people including two hunters were discovered in 2018 by Dr Haas and members of the local Mulla Fasiri community at Wilamaya Patjxa, an important archaeological site in highland Peru.

According to the paper, the 17-year-old huntress, dubbed “WMP6” by the scientists, would have used a weapon called an “atlatl” — a spearthrowing lever that allowed our ancient ancestors to throw spears much further.

Her main prey at the time would have been species like the vicuna, a wild ancestor of the alpaca, and Andean deer.