this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 157 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (8 children)

As an indigenous Canadian I can confirm this.

Both of my parents were born and raised in the wilderness. I don't mean that they were born in a modern hospital and later raised in the bush. They were born in the 40s in a teepee with the help of traditional midwives.

Dad was a great hunter and trapper and did all the things you could imagine a hunter and gatherer could do.

Mom did the same as well, not as much or as well as dad but good enough to survive on her own or with children. She hunted birds, fished and could bring down gut clean prepare butcher moose, caribou, bear, wolf, lynx and any other large animal if she had to .... when she was a young woman that is. She could also travel, walk, snowshoe, use dog team, paddle a canoe, portage, sail, and survive alone in the bush for weeks or months on her own. In her prime, she was a far better hunter and gatherer than most men I know now including myself.

It only makes sense .... prehistoric hunters and gatherers didn't sit around and relegate women to only do certain things. Everyone no matter what gender had to be capable of doing everything in order to ensure and secure the survival of everyone.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Early enough in human history we weren't even relying on weapons to hunt as much as the fact that despite not having as high of a top speed as our prey, we could literally chase them until they died of exhaustion, that doesn't seem like gender would make too much of a difference in it. We all get out ran by prey in the short term, and we all have the stamina and speed to catch up.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Stamina and precision are universal human traits, yep. Nobody can toss a rock and then run a marathon like an angry hairless ape

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Whether that hairless ape was a man or woman also didn't matter.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago

Aerodynamics change very little, yep

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Literally just walk down animals and eat them, like a paleolithic terminator. We could carry water and possibly some jerry/nuts, so could literally go for days without stopping.

Horses can gallop for like a mile or two and maybe go for like 20 without stopping.

And we have tracking abilities. There was some meme about that paleolithic terminator thing. Like an animal would see these weird naked apes in the distance and that's it, they're done. Doesn't matter if they run or not, death is coming.

And we definitely still have that ability, physically.

Check this out.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete)

Albert Ernest Clifford Young OAM (8 February 1922[1] – 2 November 2003[2]) was an Australian[2] athlete from Beech Forest, Victoria. A farmer, he became notable for his unexpected win of the inaugural Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon in 1983 at 61 years of age.[3][4]

In 1983, now aged 61 years old, Young won the inaugural Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, a distance of 875 kilometres (544 mi). The race was run between what were then Australia's two largest Westfield shopping centres: Westfield Parramatta in Sydney and Westfield Doncaster in Melbourne.[8] Young arrived to compete in overalls and work boots, without his dentures (later saying that they rattled when he ran).[9] He ran at a slow and loping pace and trailed the pack by a large margin at the end of the first day. While the other competitors stopped to sleep for six hours, Young kept running. He ran continuously for five days, taking the lead during the first night and eventually winning by 10 hours. Before running the race, he had told the press that he had previously run for two to three days straight rounding up sheep in gumboots.[10] He said afterwards that during the race he imagined he was running after sheep trying to outrun a storm. The Westfield run took him five days, fifteen hours and four minutes,[1] almost two days faster than the previous record for any run between Sydney and Melbourne, at an average speed of 6.5 kilometres per hour (4.0 mph).

And what a sportsman:

All six competitors who finished the race broke the old record. Upon being awarded the prize of A$10,000 (equivalent to $36,011 in 2022), Young said that he did not know there was a prize and that he felt bad accepting it, as each of the other five runners who finished had worked as hard as he did—so he split the money equally between them, keeping none.[11] Despite attempting the event again in later years, Young was unable to repeat this performance or claim victory again.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

All thanks to the wonderful muscles of the human ass. I can't help but laugh sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

All at the cost of having to wipe those cheeks

[–] Cracks_InTheWalls 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Huh. Can't help but wonder if this is connected to why a significant amount of people find asses sexually attractive across gender lines - something about signs of a good persistance hunter (likely quite overstated by base monkey brain), and therefore ability to provide for spawn.

Probably not, but makes ya think. I also accept that I'm thinking about it from a heteronormative, sex as biological imperative for spreading genes POV - so limited and overall probably wrong.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 weeks ago

Ayo fellow Canadians here though not indigenous. Thanks for sharing your story!

It makes me sad how overlooked the stories and lessons of the indigenous people are in Canada and the discrimination still present to this day.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

This study this meme is based on is completely incorrect and should be retracted. Here's a lay summary of its issues:

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/03/04/new-paper-debunks-the-prevalence-of-women-hunting-in-early-societies/

And the published article detailing the problems with that study's issues:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513824000497

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I remember reading this simply terrible article in Scientific American; the entire article was based on this research paper referred to the meme above.

The paper was a complete fraud, and people just guzzled the cool-aid. He'll they still do, looking at this thread.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

To say it's "completely incorrect" is an exaggeration at best. The paper you cited is far more nuanced than that.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 weeks ago

A bit of an exaggeration, sure. But only a bit. The lay summary of the article I referenced states the following:

Venkataraman et al. find that the paper commits every error that it was possible to make in the paper: leaving out important papers, including irrelevant papers, using duplicate papers, mis-coding their societies, getting the wrong values for “big” versus “small” game, and many others.

"commits every error that it was possible to make in the paper," and, "completely incorrect," aren't very different.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

So you're saying women are capable of taking out the garbage and recycling?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I should tell my girlfriend this news!

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I hate to break it to you, but She-Ra is less about hunter gatherers and more about interstellar empires with magitech

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

I'm gonna use that saying, lol

[–] BigDanishGuy 32 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I urge everyone to look up the book Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez. The cultural patriarchy is crazy.

Nobody questions how archeology is influenced by contemporary culture. When archeologists find a grave and goes "the body is buried with weapons and a shield, therefore it must be a warrior and thus a man. And they still fucking note how it's weird that this definitely-a-man is smaller than other men from this culture, and his hips are wide, almost like a woman... But he's a dude, he's got weapons after all!" smh

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago

I got the audiobook and I couldn’t finish it. I just couldn’t. I felt so much anger.

But what I managed to get through was fantastic. The part about public transport during winter was so eye opening.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

anyone who tries to claim there was any absolute standard of behavior for pre-industrial tribes like that is just doing fantasy worldbuilding

Every social organization you can think of was probably the way of life for someone out there, from patriarchy to matriarchy, communal to hierarchical

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

I wonder whether there was an infantarchal society where they took direction from toddlers. I suppose they wouldn't have lasted very long if they did exist...

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Do you have a link to that evidence? I remember reading a while back about a find in South America that had female hunters but would be interested in reading more evidence about it being widespread.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)

I thought everyone knew this. Tasks based on sex were not so prevalent until high cultures formed and people started settling down instead of being nomadic.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago

Not just nomadic. Many sedentary societies lack strong gender divisions in labor as well.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 weeks ago

Its almost as if people need to be flexible to stay alive

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

No, you don't understand, this is all communist propaganda! /j

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago

Yes, octomom has a baby.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

My mom would puke at these, even I feel some nausea. It just was such a horrible time to be alive. I wouldn’t wish these times on my worst enemy

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago

Oh yeah? Then why am I always angry at everyone all the time?!

Boom. Scienced!

\s

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

Would be a nice plot twist, but do you habe any sources for your claim? If this is real I would like to know more

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10306201/

This paper has a lot of back and forth. Another commenter posted a rebuttal.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago

THIS IS A GROUP EFFORT, PEOPLE!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago

The only thing that might predispose women is when they get pregnant. Most forms of hunting don't require excessive strength. This is not speculation, prehistoric people do not give a shit about your value system or how it imposes itself on science. Animals in animal world be animals.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

I grew up in Da Yoop. In my high school, our head cheer leader was an expert bow hunter. This "discovery" is not in any way a surprise to me.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That's why when you see documentaries about tribes that had little to no contact to the outside world, women are often hunting and do the heavy lifting and men are at home raising kids and taking care of the village while the women are out there. I mean i haven't seen it, but according to this one weird paper they must exist.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

they're being sarcastic, since they find it preposterous that women are people

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I used to believe in Social Darwinism, I got better info and no longer believe that crap.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

What about Darwin Socialism?

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