Early men and women were equal, say scientists - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Satane;47732489]It probably is coded in to us though. Tribes without gender roles probably died out because they weren't as efficient at managing resources. Men - more muscles, simple as that. If you waste the muscles on picking berries you're wasting resources.[/QUOTE] What about the weak men that couldn't hunt or raid, or the women who's strengths would be wasted picking berries and fruits?

[QUOTE=bunguer;47731980]When you barely have food in your table I bet you aren't too concerned with gender roles, equality or most modern issues. You simply do what need to be done, man, woman, child..[/QUOTE] That's one of the reasons why farmers have so many kids. More kids means more farm hands.

[QUOTE=Moustacheman;47732960]What about the weak men that couldn't hunt or raid, or the women who's strengths would be wasted picking berries and fruits?[/QUOTE] There is no such thing as weak men if they train. Exceptions are if they have a disability but as far as I know tribes abandoned such people.

"Enlightened egalitarian principles" is an odd way to describe "Can you throw rock?" "I can throw rock." "Then you throw rock." [QUOTE=Satane;47732489]It probably is coded in to us though. Tribes without gender roles probably died out because they weren't as efficient at managing resources. Men - more muscles, simple as that. If you waste the muscles on picking berries you're wasting resources.[/QUOTE] That explains the gender roles of men naturally liking math and science and machines. wait, no, it doesn't (Not that you necessarily think that.) If it were just about managing resources, then surely it wouldn't matter if it was a strong man or a strong woman doing the hunting. Men have a natural tendency to have faster muscle growth than women, so that affects resources, but that's due to something that has a much greater possibility of causing gender roles on its own. Strength difference can affect it, and resource management is part of it, but they're not the main cause. I'm not doing this for a dissertation or grant or job or anything, this is basically me just gathering my thoughts on the matter. So forgive me if there are errors in this. I would argue gender roles have their original cause in humans being mammals. Since women have to carry the babies to term for 9 months, and rarely have more than one at a time, let alone more than two, they become much less expendable. After mating, a man could die and there would be no problem for the birth, but if the woman died, the mating became worthless. So it became more efficient to keep pregnant women (and those who had recently given birth, to a somewhat lesser extent) out of danger. This naturally leads to them choosing, being advised, or being forced to do something else for that period of time. They would do much less dangerous activities such as gathering food from plants or managing the living area. Additionally, even now it's hard to tell if someone is pregnant in the first month without a device, so back then they would have no idea until the time for the next period came and passed. This [I]may[/I] have caused some to play it safe and say "If you're a woman who's had sex recently, stay away from danger just in case if you're pregnant." This naturally makes it so that there are more women gathering and such than hunting. Sexual selection (i.e. the mate's choice) would likely come into play at this point and cause males to value features associated with hunting less importantly than other features. Hunting without advanced tools like the ones we have today takes some degree of strength, whether you're grappling an animal with your bare hands, stabbing it, throwing a spear, or digging a hole to put wooden spikes in.* Intelligence is important for hunting as well, especially with primitive tools, but intelligence is [I]also[/I] important for things other than hunting, such as telling whether food is safe to eat, how to prepare food to be safe, how best to transport goods, etc. So strength is the most important factor for hunting. Males start to value it less in females, so they care less about it when selecting someone, so it goes from being a positive trait to a neutral one. Thus, there are more females with lower strength mating, but stronger males still mate more often, so strength slowly gets associated with male genes, leading to men being stronger on average than women. (*Strength is even more important for fighting for non-tool-using animals, but less intelligent mammals also have shorter pregnancies, so females have to stay out of danger for less time. Once you get to egg-laying animals, it barely matters. But we're not egg layers. So women are out of the picture for over 9 months.) After this point, gender roles become a sexual selection and sociopolitical issue. First, once men are stronger, it becomes easier for them to vie for power, since advanced technology such as guns haven't been invented yet to even the playing field between people fighting. If someone wants to become leader, there's still at least a partial aspect of strength to it. Being liked and having people on your side is more important, since having more numbers can overwhelm a side with greater strength, but when keeping favorability constant, strength wins out. And if you're a neutral individual seeing one individual getting beaten up by another, you're much less likely to side with the former, even if you like them more. So men slowly gain a higher proportion of power than women. People also like to form group mentalities with those similar to them, so the people in power favor their own group more, and thus give more power to people in their group. So men gain more power than women at an even faster rate. When in power, it becomes tempting to say "our group is just [I]better[/I] than the other group", and the more power you have, the more "justified" you are in saying that. "If they were equal to or better than us, they would be in power!" Blame people confusing is with ought and appealing to tradition. Anyway, part of making your group out to be better than another is to make your group out to be smarter. I mean, you'll make your group out to be better in every way, but intelligence is one of those factors you'll claim your group exceeds in.When in power, it's easiest when people don't try to fight against you. So you like submissive people. There are more men in power and more women outside of power, so men like it more when women just sit back and say "sure, you guys stay in power" rather than try to fight for power for themselves. This easily morphs into favoring a general submissiveness in women. Furthermore, when population grows, it becomes more efficient for leaders to sort people into roles based on averages rather than on individuals. It becomes easy to say "you know what, it's simplest if women just stay gathering the whole time." The human population grows and grows over time, so people get stereotyped into their jobs more and more often. This takes place over a very long time, though. Eventually we get proper agriculture and other methods that make food gathering more efficient. Population grows, and it no longer becomes necessary for every person to be working on getting food. Some people are free to help build better shelter, which promotes more population growth, which promotes more stereotyping. Dedicated guards / militias / armies become available, and they naturally value having the strongest people, PLUS there's an existing "we shouldn't let women get in danger" mentality, so women who become professional fighters are rare. There's also more professions for crafting, some of which require strength. It becomes more efficient to sort the weaker into crafting things that don't require as much strength, and sort the stronger into ones that do require strength. Knitting becomes a female dominated profession. We get more and more advanced technology as time goes on. Some people don't even need to work anymore. In this situation especially, but also in the previous situations, there's a drive to change "better" and "good enough" into "okay" and "not good enough". Blame competition making it so the best people becoming the average in the job, as well as humanity always wanting more and never being satisfied with just what they have. Anyway, since there's spare people and limited jobs, it becomes more efficient to give them to the group "who can actually get things done". Some of these jobs are also for making the advanced technology or researching better technology, which are associated with intelligence. This combines with existing 'propaganda' to further the stereotype of "women just aren't smart". This also leads to the stereotype of "women just don't like technology". okay I'm done explaining because I'm tired of writing this and when I started Satane had written their post "11 minutes ago" and shit I've been writing this for 2 hours time to wrap up AND THAT'S WHY THE REPTILIANS, WHO NEVER HAD SEXISM PROBLEMS IN THE FIRST PLACE, WERE ABLE TO ADVANCE AS A CIVILIZATION AT A FASTER RATE THAN HUMANITY, GAINING BETTER TECHNOLOGY SOONER THAN HUMANS, AND ARE NOW CONTROLLING US FROM THE SHADOWS, REFUSING TO REVEAL THEMSELVES TO LESSER BEINGS SUCH AS OURSELVES

As an Anthropology major this article made me cringe because its so badly done and researched.

Now I ain't no scientician but I think this is a librul conspiracy to undermine family values and good ol' American tradition, I do.

[QUOTE=Moustacheman;47732960]What about the weak men that couldn't hunt or raid, or the women who's strengths would be wasted picking berries and fruits?[/QUOTE] Men that weak would die or forever be in the care of someone else. Women that strong still wouldn't be as strong as the strongest men.

I wrote a paper about this! This isn't a recent revelation. We've had anthro work supporting this thesis since the late 80s.

[QUOTE=itisjuly;47731613]It actually makes sense. When you have little but share it, there's a chance of forming relationships which increases survival. When you have a lot, your chances of survival are already high so there is no point in sharing.[/QUOTE] When you have little to share, you have little to lose. That's why they share. Materialistic relationships cannot aid in survival, when the survival depends on the material given away.

[QUOTE=shozamar;47731873]That's being a bit generous. It's been on and off in intensity but some kind of male dominance has almost always been present. In medieval times you could be the blacksmiths wife but never the blacksmith if you were a woman. Plus there's the whole royal line only going to a women if there's no male heir thing. Roles were defined and often women had some measure of control, but never on the same level as the men. The ancient world was no better for the most part: Ancient Greek women were barely even able to leave the house.[/QUOTE] True they weren't really allowed to be on the same level as men officially, but women could very much own shops, its really murky and sort of case by case but I was trying to say that both men and women provided a share of a households income instead of the age old idea that women ran the house while men ran the shop, that is really too generous because nobody had enough resources or time to afford women to not work. Ancient Athens is often heralded as the model Greek society but again there's plenty of other ancient med societies where women had much more autonomy then Athens, it really was about where you lived I guess

[QUOTE=Sableye;47734065]Ancient Athens is often heralded as the model Greek society but again there's plenty of other ancient med societies where women had much more autonomy then Athens, it really was about where you lived I guess[/QUOTE] Problem with researching those societies is that Athenian culture began to dominate the area, and then Romans came about. Most of the sources come from those cultures that were highly, highly patriarchal in nature and viewed any other as an abomination. We find some such claim and go "wow, those guys let women *do shit*, how enlightened!" while the author intended it as "fuck, look at those filthy barbarians" and then invented some shit on the spot to further their point, and the only way for us to find out the truth is through the analysis of archaeological findings, which is often less than acceptably accurate.

[QUOTE=dilzinyomouth;47732441]Its amusing that you are getting rated dumb by people who clearly didn't read the article or study.[/QUOTE] More fool them than me I suppose.

There is simply no way of being able to know that hunter-gather tribes thousands upon thousands of years ago were 'egalitarian', and even if there were, there is no way you'd be able to say that it would apply to all tribes. This whole article is just a best guess made on some crude "evidence" at best. What a load of shit.

Moral of the story : Read scientific news from peer-reviewed publications and not your average sensationalist paper who's ready to twist any discovery into something the likes of 'Could the LHC create a black hole?' or 'FTL travel discovered'...

[QUOTE=Sableye;47731376]This whole males are breadwinner mentality didn't come about until the industrial revolution when self run shops were destroyed and farms were heavily industrialized and specialized.[/QUOTE] I'd not thought of it before, but it seems with economic progress comes the centralization of social power within the family or group, since fewer people are required to provide for that group. Essentially, the number of breadwinners keep decreasing (within the group) which sustain the group, so those left who aren't breadwinners are left living off of the breadwinners. Wives, children both worked for a time and eventually were freed of that labor over time, but I hadn't considered that it could lead to social inequalities (mostly because children are sort of expected to have a role in our society and nobody seems comfortable with changing that role, which is just sort of information sponge, hadn't considered spouses up to now). Not really trying to make any points here, just sort of interesting. However, I mean, that has much less of an impact today where families can have two workers. Although, people tend not to do that so that their children aren't neglected.

[QUOTE=Moustacheman;47732025]Celtic and German tribes had some measure of equality. Women would often serve as a secondary line of defense, and in some tribes, fought alongside men in the front lines. When an entire tribe is on the move, everyone fights, so either the women fought alongside the men and stood a chance, or the weak Roman bastards slaughtered everyone.[/QUOTE] The main difference is, that germanic and celtic tribal women had no issues with owning property. So you could have incredibly rich female traders for instance. The roman concept on the other hand, put them on the same level as children politically. As a result there was always someone who held power over a woman. (this did actually change with time, particularly due to iurisprudence, who established a fake person to hold this tutelage without actually interfering with the woman at all, but was still part of roman culture.)

[QUOTE=code_gs;47731438]I thought this was already well-known. Until a large scale development of agriculture and the formation of civilization, women were equal and even sometimes considered higher than men. Even after agrarian society was formed, women were still revered through religious forms and idols, just not seen equally in the setting of hard, agricultural labour.[/QUOTE] Pretty much. [editline]16th May 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Moustacheman;47732114]In Sparta, when a young boy entered training, he would be fed very little, often times near starving. If he was caught trying to steal extra grain, he would be punished, not for stealing, but for being a bad thief.[/QUOTE] Also you got married by invasion-raping your wife in her dad's house, and if you got caught the dad had the right to kill you for being a shit suitor. Wonder where the author of this article would put the citation for that.

Sparta sounds kind of dystopian by modern standards.

[QUOTE=Mingebox;47739085]Sparta sounds kind of dystopian by modern standards.[/QUOTE] Sparta was pretty much a horrible shithole to live in. Their society (with its weird customs) managed to outlive the Roman Empire, but it was eventually the slavs and christianity that did them in.

[QUOTE=Deng;47739111]Sparta was pretty much a horrible shithole to live in. Their society (with its weird customs) managed to outlive the Roman Empire, but it was eventually the slavs and christianity that did them in.[/QUOTE] To be fair most of the info we have on them was written by Athenians, their nemesis, so it might have been kind of exaggerated.

[QUOTE=Mingebox;47739085]Sparta sounds kind of dystopian by modern standards.[/QUOTE] Well it was a slave society, what do you expect. Actually pretty much all greek city states where shitholes. We just usually only get shown stuff from the perspective of citizens. Not the large slave population.

[QUOTE=wraithcat;47819949]Well it was a slave society, what do you expect. Actually pretty much all greek city states where shitholes. We just usually only get shown stuff from the perspective of citizens. Not the large slave population.[/QUOTE] Pretty much every ancient civilizations were "slave societies". Also no shit, of course in ancient times the standards of living were lower.

[QUOTE=_Axel;47826243]Pretty much every ancient civilizations were "slave societies". Also no shit, of course in ancient times the standards of living were lower.[/QUOTE] Sure. But generally in terms of most other societies, most people are aware of there being a huge massive divide between the slave and non slave castes. The greek city states often escape similar scrutiny, to the point that many people aren't really aware of the massive slave populations in Athens or Sparta for instance

[QUOTE=wraithcat;47827260]Sure. But generally in terms of most other societies, most people are aware of there being a huge massive divide between the slave and non slave castes. The greek city states often escape similar scrutiny, to the point that many people aren't really aware of the massive slave populations in Athens or Sparta for instance[/QUOTE] I thought most people were aware that ancient Greece was as prone to slavery as anyone else actually. I can see how the whole opposition with "barbarians" could make one think otherwise though.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;47731470]They would have had to have been to deal with the burden of surviving with barely any tools and barely any language. They'd have to all work together regardless of gender to just make ends meet.[/QUOTE] Shame that civilization happened. To create large empires you need men to fight wars and women to make children. [QUOTE=_Axel;47827452]I thought most people were aware that ancient Greece was as prone to slavery as anyone else actually.[/QUOTE] Pretty sure most of the population in the Greek city states were slaves. In BC you can't really have much trade and people that stand around and philosophize all day without slaves to row the boats and do all the agriculture, let alone a professional standing army. Dunno, maybe if you're Persia you can pull it off.

One could argue that to be more successful society had to abolish egalitarian principles in favor of more specialized roles. It was a different time though than nowadays which is why at this point we can (at least in first world countries) afford the egalitarian way.