Man the male as "noble hunter" gets a good further kicking

Evolutionary psychology, or its parent/uncle, sociobiology, among its more sexist tropes, latched on to the idea first seriously propounded 60 years or so ago that males evolved to hunt, women to gather (and breed babies, of course).

Well, we know that's not so much the case with Neanderthal women.

And now? The men evolved to hunt, women to gather, sexist Ev Psych theory about Homo sapiens males and females gets further refutation. Early human hunting, we know, relied in large part on humans' ability to outrun other mammals, not on speed, but on endurance running. And, women are better than men at that. And, ancient fossils, as well as modern cultures such as the Ainu of Japan, show women hunting.

The story gets an extra kudo for this:

Before getting into the evidence, we need to first talk about sex and gender. “Sex” typically refers to biological sex, which can be defined by myriad characteristics such as chromosomes, hormone levels, gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. The terms “female” and “male” are often used in relation to biological sex. “Gender” refers to how an individual identifies—woman, man, nonbinary, and so forth. Much of the scientific literature confuses and conflates female/male and woman/man terminology without providing definitions to clarify what it is referring to and why those terms were chosen.

And, I'll break that out into separate blogging.

Per the graphic pictured at left, much of the article addresses the detailed benefits of estrogen for endurance activities in general, including endurance based hunting.

Earlier parts look in more detail at the sexist mindset beyond many claims about man the noble hunter and their times, including ignoring disconfirming studies.

As for today's endurance sport world? "But marathons" is nothing. In ultra-length endurance running, women crush men. Ditto in long-distance swimming.

And, re Neanderthals, per the first link, the evidence shows equality of hunting among them, too. Presumably including cave lions.