Myth: Females were fought over and treated as prizes – as property - by males.
As far back as written human history goes, women have been subordinate to men. Our ancient religious texts show patriarchy as the default social frame, with detailed examples of explicit subordination of females. Historical records, epic poems, folklore and literature from cultures around the world, from every century, depict men in charge and women in service; and moreover, women are often portrayed as less intelligent, less civil in their behavior, and even “unclean,” by arbitrary religious measures.
Even in our enlightened times, women in the United States only received the right to vote a century ago, and the privilege of owning a credit card independently in the early 1970s. We know, empirically, that the idea that human females are in any way inferior to males, intellectually or emotionally, is nonsense – yet, to a degree, the subjugation of females persists, and the cloud of social disdain toward women still hovers in many regions of the modern world.
The question to be answered is this: has it always been so? Has Homo sapiens, as a species, always experienced this social distinction between males and females?
The assumption of anthropologists and primatologists for more than a century was, yes, Homo sapiens and its hominin predecessors all lived within a social order that placed males above females, as seen in other primates – chimpanzees, most immediately, but also gorillas, gibbons, and others.
But that model has been challenged repeatedly in recent years, as evidence has arrived via anthropology, archaeology, paleontology, and even our decoding of the human genome. Here’s a broad array of that evidence, all in support of the reality that human females were the equals of males in prehistory, not their subordinates.
Chimpanzee culture as a model does not apply to Homo sapiens. In Sex at Dawn, Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá methodically define the biological distinctions between our closest primate cousins, the chimpanzee and the bonobo.
The chimpanzee is violent, aggressive, and patriarchal. He takes females at will, sometimes killing his own kind, including infants. His social organization is somewhat militaristic, centered around an alpha male, to whom the other males are subordinate. Females are, in general, subordinate to males. Females mate only in estrus, and display their fertility through a temporary coloring of the genitals.
The bonobo, though sharing 99.6% of the chimpanzee’s DNA, is very different. She is far more egalitarian (though somewhat hierarchical) in social organization, not particularly aggressive, and highly sexual (even using sex to resolve conflicts). She lives in a society that is as matriarchal as it is patriarchal, and can mate any time she pleases, choosing her partners rather than being chosen.
Ryan and Jethá argue that anthropologists who liken Homo sapiens to the chimpanzee miss the mark; we are far more similar to the bonobo, and thus our early social organization would more reasonably resemble theirs to that of the chimpanzee.
Human females, not males, drove human evolution.2 A number of critical sexual features have made us who we are. We list them incidentally, with little thought of how each affects the other. But when we put them all together, we see that human females were no docile spoils of ape combat or supplicant sexual vessels – they were the driving force of our evolution. Those features included:
The forward vulva. Like the bonobo (and only the bonobo), the human female’s vulva is forward, rather than oriented downward (see above). This led to…
Face-to-face mating. Unlike the chimpanzee, who mates rearward (like horses and dogs), humans mate face-to-face; we are certainly capable of a wide range of mating positions – but face-to-face has unique characteristics that make a difference not only in sex, but in cognition, like…
Eye-gazing while mating. Human beings, like bonobos, look into each other’s eyes. This is a game-changer; it goes to the Theory of Mind, the concept of moving toward greater self-awareness and understanding of others of our kind through the realization that they have inner lives similar to our own. This social cognition feature is present to at least a minimal degree in all primates, but is strongest in humans and bonobos – who also, as a result of face-to-face mating, practice…
Sexual kissing. Anyone who was ever a teenager knows that making out increases the likelihood of mating: the longer we engage in the almost inexplicable act of prolonged oral contact, which has no clear sexual value, the more we want to have sex. The reason is simple – during a “wet kiss,” also called a French kiss, testosterone is transferred from the male to the female – which is absorbed directly into her bloodstream by the membranes of her mouth tissues, then converted into estradiol – which heightens her desire. Put simply, kissing increases the enjoyability, and thus the frequency, of sex – a reproductive advantage for the species. And this female facility for self-directed pleasure led to…
Hidden estrus. Unlike all other primates (except the bonobo), the human female can mate at any time during her reproductive cycle, rather than only during fertility. She presents no outward sign of fertility to males. This increases her autonomy and potential selectivity in mate choice – and stands in opposition to the sexual aggression present among chimpanzee males, who compete violently because their choices of females are far more limited. And this female autonomy and selectivity in sexual choice gave human females an astonishing evolutionary power...
Mate selection by scent. All else being equal, human females choose their partners based on how they smell. They do this instinctively, and they do it universally. Every woman living today has this innate tendency, whether she acts on it or not. And it gives her – and the human race overall – a huge advantage: when a woman chooses a partner based on scent, she is unconsciously choosing a partner based on the difference between her complex of genes that define the immune systems of her offspring, and that of the mate she has chosen – the greater the difference, the stronger the immune systems of the children of the mating. This ability had to evolve, meaning females were the sexual choosers in prehistory. Men, notably, do not have this ability.
The consequences of this chain are monumental.
To begin with, shared gaze deepened human consciousness, causing it to develop in ways it didn’t in the chimpanzee. The chimpanzee does not follow the eye gaze of his peers – he follows their head and shoulder movements.
Humans (and the bonobo, who also shares eye-gaze during mating) follow the eye movements of other humans. Apart from strengthening mutual awareness, this ability enables others: we were able to communicate far more deeply, pre-language, than chimpanzees or other primates (apart from the bonobo). The survival benefit is obvious – deep communication, pre-language, enabled everything from tool-making to hunt-planning; and following eye movements, rather than head movements, helped us through the millennia we were prey to stronger, hungrier creatures: it enhanced the speed with which we could respond to the detection of predators.
The benefits of “sniffing” out a stronger match in mating had obvious benefits: with women unconsciously choosing partners who would yield offspring with stronger immune systems, we set the stage for our great diaspora – out-migration into regions of the world in which we did not evolve, where ecosystems differed – enhancing our diversity through adaptation to other climates and environments in which we might not otherwise have survived.
Finally, hidden estrus enabled gender equality, and made our limited sexual dimorphism practical: male and female could more comfortably work side-by-side when females shared, and were able to indulge by their own will, sexual desire and choice: rather than being objects of combat by needy males, they located sexual tension where it belonged – in the thrill of conjugation, rather than in disparity in supply and demand. Human males are, generally, calmer and more cooperative because human females are, ultimately, in charge of mating – whether that fact is acknowledged or not.
Division of labor only recently became gender-based. Adding to the mythology of the supremacy of human males in prehistory is the idea that gender-based division of labor has always been with us – that the men went out and hunted and the women stayed home and cooked, as has been the case for the past few thousand years.
“The rich archaeological record of the Middle Paleolithic3 cultures in Eurasia suggests that earlier hominins pursued more narrowly focused economies, with women’s activities more closely aligned with those of men with respect to schedule and ranging patterns than in recent forager systems,” concluded Steven Kuhn, professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona4. Not until the Upper Paleolithic – less than 50,000 years ago – did broader economies emerge, with proliferation of roles and gender selection of labor, per Kuhn.
While Kuhn and his colleagues make the point that gender-based division of labor may have given Homo sapiens a strategic advantage over the Neandertals in Europe in the Upper Paleolithic, the fact is that the idea that human females have naturally done “women’s work” isn’t supported by the evidence. Women have worked alongside men, no matter the task at hand, for hundreds of thousands of years.
“There is still this wider perception that hunter-gatherers are more macho or male-dominated,” said anthropologist Mark Dyble of University College London.5 “We’d argue that it was only with the emergence of agriculture, when people could start to accumulate resources, that inequality emerged.”
“Sexual equality is one of an important suite of changes to social organization, including things like pair bonding, our big social brains, and language, that distinguishes humans,” he said. “It’s an important one that hasn’t really been highlighted before.”
What’s our conclusion from all of this? Women can do any job men can do, and can often do it better. And that’s not a case of “progress” – it’s been true from the beginning, and remained true all along.
Reality: Females worked alongside males as equals, and their unique abilities and contributions were the drivers of human evolution…
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