506
The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong
(www.scientificamerican.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
506 points (82.9% liked)
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Author does address this, btw. I still think it's a bad argument. I just couldn't fathom that they would say this and not further clarify.
they make claims and assumptions to address it, they dont really cite anything. Shit like this "The inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports." is a hypothesis, but it is not being stated as one, it's being stated as fact. It's a testable hypothesis, they could have controlled for the variable of pace setting runners that they bring up by only looking at statistics of running events that do not have this variable.
And like, the whole premise could be true, that women were also hunters, modern runners with modern sports medicine arent ideal evidence, that kind of endurance might not have been needed for their hunting, women are still humans and humans have the greatest running stamina of any animal. But besides capability, ancient humans also could have had roles determined by sex, it's at least prevalent in other apes like gorillas. Either way is possible without more solid evidence and it's pretty crazy to say one way or another is scientifically true.
I actually dont think testing this hypothesis is as easy as you think. You can't just control for social biases when analyzing marathon data because these social biases are longitudinal. At a young age, women quickly learn from modern society that they are physically inferior to men. Because of this, the best bet for testing this hypothesis is to look at ancient societies, because these societies are largely independent from our modern society.
I mean, it's also unlikely to be true. The difference between male and female bodies is the equivalent of years of high end steroid use.
If you wouldn't let a man who had taken steroids for a decade and still takes them compete with other men, then you already acknowledge the biological advantage men have over women at physical sports.
I mean we also see a lot of what I would define as "outlier behavior" from men more generally. We see crazier olympic world records being set and broken, we see higher rates of suicide and violent crime, that sort of shit, which I'm personally kind of interested in figuring out the reason for. If you took some theoretical "average" man and some theoretical "average" woman I think they'd probably be a lot closer in terms of strength and stamina and shit than comparing athletes of different sexes to one another, I think the gap would be smaller.
They would not. Testosterone is a hell of a drug.
The difference between the average man and the average woman is the same as the difference between a man who's been taking steroids since he was 12, and an average man.
Estrogen is also a hell of a drug... It's actully a point in the article that people give testosterone too much credit and estrogen not enough credit when it comes to how they affect the physique.
Your argument being founded on the effects of testosterone is not a good one...
It's nothing compared to testosterone.
For example I am an average height and weight guy. I had never gone to a gym in my life, but at 25 decided to start powerlifting with some friends for fun. Within 3 months I was already lifting nearly as much as the world record lifts by women in my weight class.
I started going to my university powerlifting competitions, having lifted for less than a year, and was definitely lifting poorly compared to the other men, but I out-lifted every woman there most of whom had been training for years.
I don't think you understand the average difference in strength between men and women, it's rather large.
I don't think I'm arguing against your evidence. It's your idea that this difference in men and women's strength is simply explained by a difference in testosterone. This claim does not nullify the questions posed in the article.
Both biology and the environment play roles in defining people's personality and physique. Higher testosterone is only a piece of biology's role, but it's only loosely related to environment's role. It's not an unreasonable hypothesis to claim society's artificial rules placed on women might have had an effect on women's physique through things like sexual selection. This is why scientists still explore these things.
Testosterone is a hell of a lot of the explanation though. When people inject more testosterone they get a hell of a boost to muscle development and strength.
Although past sexual selection may have led to women being smaller and having less testosterone and ability to develop muscle mass, it does not change that women are indeed smaller and have less testosterone and ability to gain muscle mass than men, leading to the average woman being slower and physically weaker than the average man. My replies have been directed at the assertion earlier that men only hold records because of outliers, and the average man and woman are close in strength and speed, but that is just not true.
In that case, there may be a flaw in argument. Your anecdotal story doesn't disprove their point. The moment you started powerlifting training for 3 months, you've already became stronger than the average male. Most men on Earth don't do any sort of strength training, and it's not unreasonable to think that these men are not much stronger than the average woman.
And most women on Earth don't do any strength training, and are much smaller than the average man.
Hell I was way stronger than the vast majority of women I knew well before I started any strength training, my point was a few months of training had me on par with the strongest women in the world in my weight class.
They point to women's impressive performance in extreme distance events, like 100+ mile ultra marathons.
But that runs head long into the question of "How far do you have to actually chase an animal for it to collapse from exhaustion?" I'm having a hard time finding hard numbers but I don't think gazelle have the endurance to run 10+ miles before collapsing. So women may be biologically equipped for ultra-long distances, but I don't see how this correlates to endurance hunting as that advantage doesn't play out hunting game.
That's not to say the basis for the theory on male hunters/female gatherers is not without flaw, but the arguments being made against it don't seem to really be citing evidence that backs up women being significant, let alone dominant, in that role either.