Ancient burial hints that prehistoric women may have hunted as much as men: Scientists

Scientists have uneard a 9,000-year-old female hunter burial in Andes Mountains of South America which counters long-held belief that when early human groups sought food, men hunted and women gared.

"An archaeological discovery and analysis of early burial practices overturns long-held 'man--hunter' hyposis," said Randy Haas, lead author of study from University of California (UC), Davis in US.

researchers believe findings, published in journal Science Advances, are particularly timely in light of contemporary conversations surrounding ed labour practices and inequality.

"Labour practices among recent hunter-garer societies are highly ed, which might lead some to believe that sexist inequalities in things like pay or rank are somehow 'natural'," Haas said.

"But it's w clear that sexual division of labour was fundamentally different -- likely more equitable -- in our species' deep hunter-garer past," he added.

In 2018, during archaeological excavations at a high-altitude site called Wilamaya Patjxa in what is w Peru, researchers found an early burial that contained a hunting toolkit with projectile points and animal-processing tools.

y said objects accompanying people in death tended to be those that accompanied m in life.

Based on an analysis of bones and dental proteins, study found that hunter was likely female.

From furr examination of records of ancient burials throughout rth and South America, researchers identified 429 individuals from 107 sites.

Of those, y said 27 individuals were associated with big-game hunting tools of whom 11 were female and 15 were male.

scientists believe this sample is sufficient to "warrant conclusion that female participation in early big-game hunting was likely n-trivial".

y also found that somewhere between 30 to 50 per cent of hunters in se populations were female.

According to researchers, this level of participation stands in stark contrast to recent hunter-garers, and even farming and capitalist societies, where hunting is a decidedly male activity with low levels of female participation, "certainly under 30 per cent." In future studies, scientists hope to understand how consequences of sexual division of labour changed in different times and places among hunter-garer populations of continent.