Hunting women and gathering men

The struggle for some sort of comfortable social equation has long been existent between men and women. A man and a woman could belong to the same race, culture, social group and maybe even family yet there seems such strong differences between us. The way we think, feel express and most importantly I think how we treat each other.   While googling for women in archaeology I came across these two pics

What is interesting is that both the woman archaeologist( yes the woman on the right is supposed to be an archaeologist!) and the prehistoric woman are both dressed similarly!!! Is it irony, co incidence or male perception?? or just my probably biased view point?? Could be all of the above but none the less the male perception of women in any given society has always coloured a societies perception of  women!! So if some part of  a society sees women as scantily clothed objects of their  sexual fantasy then the depiction of both a prehistoric woman and a modern day archaeologist would be much the same I suppose. Though realistically speaking I do not think either looked/look remotely like the above pictures.

 Which brings me to the much spoken about "man the hunter and woman the gatherer" debate : D I am proud to be a women and I believe that separate ladies queues are not any reflection on emancipation of women, but I am no feminist....How much ever men may spread the rumor that they were (and are!?) the ones who were  doing the hunting and therefore of greater importance to the survival of that society, gathering was no easy task I'm sure :D. Though view points differ drastically with respect to the two theories, "male-centered scenario did not go unchallenged. Ignoring females or relegating them to a definitely inferior role in human behavioral evolution drew sharp criticism from several quarters." (http://dml.cmnh.org/1995Aug/msg00025.html)

 Which is definitely a good think, considering some of the previously thought scenarios seem ridiculous (eg. So, while the males were out hunting, developing all their skills, learning to cooperate, inventing language, inventing art, creating tools and weapons, the poor dependent females were sitting back at the home base having one child after another and waiting for the males to bring home the bacon. While this reconstruction is certainly ingenious, it gives one the decided impression that only half the species--the male half--did any evolving. In addition to containing a number of logical gaps, the argument becomes somewhat doubtful in the light of modern knowledge of genetics and primate behavior ) 

 If you are wondering what these two theories are all about, here is a short summary. "The "man the hunter" model stresses that primitive males hunted for meat and provided food and protection for their mates and children who stayed at the home base. The competing hypothesis suggests that major food of early human beings consisted of plants, obtained by women with the use of tools and shared with their offspring. The contrast focuses on how female behavior is conceptualized: as mobile and active or as sedentary and passive. Responses to both theories, however, depend on which anthropological evidence is used, how it is interpreted, what animal models are used, and which behaviors form the starting point. "What Happened to Woman the Gatherer?,Zihlman, Adrienne L.  Sadly I could only find an abstract of this article, it sounds very interesting and I would have loved to have been able to read the rest. 

 And then I came across an excavation where remains of warrior women were found, “women known to ancient Greek authors as Amazons were long thought to be creatures of myth. Now 50 ancient burial mounds near the town of Pokrovka, Russia, near the Kazakhstan border, have yielded skeletons of women buried with weapons, suggesting the Greek tales may have had some basis in fact. Nomads known as the Sauromatians buried their dead here beginning ca. 600 B.C.; according to Herodotus the Sauromatians were descendants of the Amazons and the Scythians, who lived north of the Sea of Azov.” Warrior Women of Eurasia Volume 50 Number 1, January/February 1997, by Jeannine Davis-Kimball

 

 Bronze arrowheads (1), iron sword (2), fossilized Gryphaea shells (3), and unworked stone in shape ofGryphaea shell (4) were found in a young female warrior's burial. (Jeannine Davis-Kimball)http://www.archaeology.org/9701/abstracts/thumbnails/sarmatians

 How cool is that!!!? I would  rather believe is the existence of Amazon women than the disregard with which prehistoric women are  sometimes depicted!! Any kind of generalization however always seems to be a mistake and I think it’s the same in this case. Just as there are men who may not fit the general concept of a “prehistoric man” (prehistoric man in this case with all their baggage of apeishness ;)), I am sure there are women in every culture, period, generation, century (you get the drift) who were and still are making hand axes and hunting. This is in no way a reflection on the superiority of hunting, in fact how can hunting be considered any sign of greatness!!?? It is a means to an end..survival!! And each person man or woman I am sure has his or her own method of surviving whether is is hunting or gathering….

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v44/barddiva/Paleo/comic1.gif

21G conversations: Bhautikavada

A couple of weeks back while on a bus (I feel like a whole book can be written on conversations overheard in buses, especially 21G :D), guess I let the cat out of the bag but anyway yes it all starts with me over hearing a conversation between a man and a woman. I could not figure out if they were a father and his daughter, brother and sister, husband and wife.....The man would point out expensive looking shops through the window of the bus, as we went through Kotturpuram he said oh look at that shop it sells imported stuff, and past the bridge at the signal he  looked at a shop reading out its name said oh they sell designer leather bags, and look..blah blah. He also said you know there is this company in Singapore all I want is (now I could not figure out if he was talking about himself or his son...) to(/for him to) get into this university in the US and get that job in Singapore and I(/he) will be made for life. The semantics of who he was talking about and which university did not really bother me...but it made me think “god how materialistic he sounds...”

It makes me wonder, were we always like this, or is it westernization that has made us so materialistic. I always thought of us (Indians) as people who were philosophical and never cared all that much about materialistic things like money, property... What happened to all that philosophy we were bequeathed from Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, Mahavira and so many many others. I always figured to want more and materialistic things at that was frowned upon.. Yet these days and for some time now, we care so much about a house here/a flat there/a car/a job in the US or a degree from Australia...the list in endless...we just want and want. But are we not victims of circumstances....people need money to survive and it’s a dog eat dog world is it not??? Fortunately I came across an interesting article about materialism (this article I will get back to in a bit) which spoke a lot about Bhutavada, and so I looked up on what it meant, apparently it is a theory of elements and it states that

"According to the theory of elements, whatever is amenable to sense is alone real.  Whatever is not verifiable to sense-experience is not real.  In this sense, the other world, heaven and hell, the soul and god are unreal.  Pratyaksa is the only pramana.  The function utility is the only criterion or activity of reality.  It is in this sense materialistic and pragmatic in its approach.  The Darwinian theory of evolution is an expression of this Bhautikavada.  It advocates the possibility of the development of the mind through the evolution from matter.  In this sense, consciousness is a form of matter and evolute of matter." A source book in Jaina philosophy,Devendra Muni Shastri.

So I guess what I figured out is  that for all our philosophical outlook of life we have always been quite pragmatic...So I want to know (not a question for you, am merely asking myself but any answer is welcome: D) what is the difference between the materialism of then and now, is there any?

Now I return to the article on materialism (N. Vanamamalai,Materialist Thought in Early Tamil Literature, Social Scientist, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Nov., 1973)) in which she quotes Thiruvalluvar as having spoken of three ideals for the human condition: ethical life, acquisition of wealth and a happy love life. Is ethical life still an ideal? Sometimes it seems like acquisition of wealth and ethical life are at logger heads with each other. You cannot have the cake and eat too, if you want one let go of the other...that’s how it seems these days. I do not say it is impossible to remain ethical and still make money,am  just saying it is probably harder than it should/could be in an idealistic world J

Vanamamalai also asks two interesting questions "What prompted the life-affirming materialistic outlook reflected in the Puram anthology(part of the sangam literature )? Why did the later literature incline towards a religious outlook of denying the reality of life on earth and upholding the ideal of a better life in another world, or, in other words, a state of absolute renunciation of desires and passions?”

She then goes on to answer these question by saying that this is probably because the period in which the literature originated was when a huge shift in economy, culture and social structure took place in Tamil society. Class society and non class tribal’s society where coming face to face with each other...and the materialist world outlook, which had its origin in the collective labor of pre-class society, persisted even after the partial destruction of its basis and the emergence of a different basis.

Yes I am as confused and confusing as this article...but my point is that anything that can be divided into black and white is probably unreal. Life is so much more complex, society is so much more complex...it is not just about westernization is it? its about a change, in how we see ourselves, a change of our ideals (there is much talk of ideals in sangam literature...) and like during the period of the sangam literature in Tamilnadu (the dates by the way are being debated upon but what is generally accepted is roughly from 300 BC to 300 AD) big changes are happening in our society now... J Maybe, like before, the materialistic thought process will run its full course, and as in the later historical period we may get to a point where society becomes more philosophical.....oh and by the way I don’t think that the salary they give me at work is at all enough…and that picture of the green man looking insanely happy is how I looked when I got my salary a few days back J