So typical! Men left finding of food to women 19,000 years ago

THESE days there’s supposed to be equality at work, but go back 19,000 years and labour was very clearly divided between men and women.

The evidence comes from fossilised footprints in Tanzania. According to archaeologists the group of more than 400 prints show that women were probably engaged in gathering food – or foraging – while men were largely absent.

Ash from an eruption settled in the footprints at the site, Engare Sero, helping to preserve them.

Kevin Hatala from Chatham University, in Pittsburgh, US, and colleagues made their findings based on analysing the footprint sizes, distances between them and their depths.

The prints belonged to 14 adult women, two adult men and one young male.

The team, writing in the journal Scientific Reports, suggest ‘that the females who made the tracks were foraging together and were visited or accompanied by the males. This behaviour is observed in modern hunter gatherers’.

They add: ‘The findings may indicate a division of labour based on sex in ancient human communities.’