Saturday 30 April 2022 The Guardian •News^3
Daniel Boff eyF
rom academic s giving
women a supporting
role to male hunter -
gatherers , to Ra quel
Welch’s portrayal of a
bikini-clad cavewoman
in the 1966 fi lm One Million Years
B C , the gender division of the stone
age is fi rmly entrenched in public
consciousness.
However, the view of men
striding out to spear woolly
mammoths while women shelter in
caves is increasingly distant from
the latest research fi ndings.
The historians and fi lm-makers
behind Lady Sapiens : Breaking
Stereotypes About Prehistoric
Women – a French book and
documentary to be published in the
UK in September – are now seeking
to debunk the simplistic division
of roles. Instead they highlight
advances in the study of bones,
graves, art and ethnography often
ignored in the public sphere.
“For a long time, prehistory
was written from the male point
of view, and when women werementioned, they were portrayed
as helpless, frightened creatures,
protected by overly powerful male
hunters,” Sophie de Beaune, a
professor of pre history at the Jean-
Moulin-Lyon III University, writes
in the book’s preface.
“Since women have begun to
enter the ranks of prehistorians,
a diff erent picture has graduallyemerged. The reader will perhaps
be astonished to fi nd men’s and
women’s roles were not so clear-
cut, and that it was cooperation
between all members of the group,
regardless of gender or age, which
ensured their survival .”
Today’s cliche s, the book
suggests, were largely formed
by a lack of interest in the role of
women among the 19th-century
pioneers of research. It is the
cultural understandings of that
period , and a welter of art ranging
from Paul Jamin’s 1888 A Rape inthe Stone Age to Don Chaff ey’s One
Million Years B C , that “pushes this
erotici sation to its limit – embodied
by sex symbol Raquel Welch.”
Thomas Cirotteau , one of the
documentary makers behind the
book with Jennifer Kerner and Éric
Pincas , said the purpose was not
to portray the pre historic woman –
black skinned and largely blue eyed- as a “superwoman” but to “widen
the possibilities ”. “She could hunt,
she had a very important economic
role, she could do art, and the link
between men and women could
be very respectful and full of
tenderness,” he said.
Focusing on the Upper
Paleolithic period of 10,
to 40,000 years ago, the book
highlights etchings found on a
stone plaquette in Gönnersdorf ,
Germany, of a woman with a baby
carrier on her back, allowing
her hands to be free for hunting
and foraging.
They note studies of skeletons
that reveal the strength of the
upper arm muscles of the women
and a recent fi nding at Wilamaya
Patjxa , 3,925 metres up in the
Puno district of Peru , where 24
stone artefacts placed in a young
woman’s tomb compris ed a toolkit
of everything needed to hunt and
butcher big game.
Ten sites in the US from the
Late Pleistocene or Early Holocene
( 12,000 to 8,000BC ) yielded
11 burial s where women ha d been
interred alongside weapons,
suggesting that the discovery in
Peru has wider signifi cance.
De Beane notes that the
importance of small-game hunting
has also been underplayed by
researchers, along with fi shing,
activities women were likely to
have been involved in.
Women were not continually
pregnant, the latest understanding
of their diet and lifestyle suggests,
with studies of carbon, strontium
and calcium in bones suggesting
that children remained breastfed
until the age of four, a practice that
reduces fertility.
Vincent Balter, the director
of France’s Centre for National
Research, writes in the book:
“As Paleolithic women were able
to bear children until they were
about 30, if we say breastfeeding
went on for two or three years,
and they gave birth to their fi rst
child at around 14, that gives us
a maximum of fi ve or six births
per woman.”
It is also suggested that women
achieved high status within their
communities. At the site of the
Lady of Cavillon, the remains of a
woman buried wearing a skullcap
of seashells in the Balzi Rossi
Caves complex in Italy is said to
be a valuable clue “that reveals
the respect that the tribe had for
this woman”.
The documentary accompanying
the book in France attracted an
audience of 1.5 million viewers
when it was broadcast on France-
but it was not without controversy.
In an open letter published in
Le Monde last year, nine specialists
in pre history wrote that the works
“systematically eliminate all the
elements that could suggest the
probability (or even, the mere
possibility) of male domination,
either by mentioning them in a
more or less disguised way, or by
resolutely ignoring them”.
Cirotteau said the documentary
and book were not “militant” about
the lives of pre historic women,
in part as so little was certain. He
said: “ Our role is not be emphatic
about the role of men and women,
but just to show the possibilities
in their activities and status in
pre history.”Hunter, gatherer, mother
Bikini-clad stereotypes are
a sexist myth, say scholars
▲ Boys club? Prehistoric hunters
depicted using bows and arrows to
take down a woolly mammoth
ILLUSTRATION: ALAMY▲ The face of prehistoric woman,
according to the book Lady Sapiens‘Prehistoric woman
could hunt. She had
a very important
economic role.
She could do art’Thomas Cirotteau
Documentary maker▼ Raquel Welch with her caveman
co-star, John Richardson, in the
1966 fi lm One Million Years BC
PHOTOGRAPH: SPORTSPHOTO LTD/ALLSTAR