"Science Shows Prehistoric Gender Equality"

[MMI]

If the latest interpretation of cave paintings is that they are the earliest expressions of feminism, or that they are holy depictions made exclusively by shamans and magicians, the truth is that we will never know what the truth is ... a bit like discussing religion, really.

The modern academic tendency, it seems to me, is to try to overturn standard assumptions - that males led, fed and bred, while females served and suffered - in favour of a more strident feminine role throughout history and a less dominant (interchangeable in this context with "competent") role for men. To go against these new assumptions requires a high standard of proof, and an even greater degree of courage.

Today, misandry is the norm. Clearly, the bad paintings were by man, the better ones by girls, and the best by independent cave-women who banged men on the head with clubs and dragged them by their hair, back to their caves to dominate them!

[Thorne]

If the latest interpretation of cave paintings is that they are the earliest expressions of feminism, or that they are holy depictions made exclusively by shamans and magicians, the truth is that we will never know what the truth is ... a bit like discussing religion, really.

That may be what those reporting these stories are claiming, but it doesn't seem to be what the scientists are actually saying. The consensus seems to be that the standard interpretation of the drawings, being primarily hunting scenes, was that they were made by hunters, which everyone assumed to be men. What the science is saying is that at least some of those paintings were apparently made by women. Not all, not only the good ones, just that some of them were made by women. This seems to imply, and studies of other hunter/gatherer cultures seem to confirm, that women were not strictly gatherers, while men were not strictly hunters. Rather than being a pendulum, swinging back and forth between misogyny and misandry, the science is, as usual, coming closer to what most likely was reality: a more balanced division of labor where everyone did what they were good at.

It's generally a bad idea to get scientific information from story tellers instead of science. The journalists are looking to sell stories, so making mountains out of molehills is their stock in trade. Look at the actual science if you want to know what they are really saying.