14 DAY TRIAL // There is a lot of fighting about who should be in charge of which household chores in this day and age. Hundreds of millennia back, however, our ancestors had it all figured out. In a nutshell, the women handled looks while the men took care of weaponry.
Or so say researchers with the Spanish National Research Council in a recent paper in the Journal of Human Evolution. The study, authored by Antonio Rosas and colleagues, argues that this division of labor is the reason the remains of Neanderthal women look different to those of Neanderthal men.
New insights into what our ancestors were up to millennia ago
Writing in the Journal of Human Evolution, researcher Antonio Rosas and his team explain that, as part of their investigation, they studied a total of 99 incisors and canine teeth recovered from as many as 19 male and female Neanderthals.
The scientists detail that the Neanderthal remains that they studied came from different archaeological sites located in Spain, France and Belgium. The reason they analyzed teeth originating from different areas was to make sure that their findings would not be true for just one geographical region.
While closely examining the 99 Neanderthal teeth, specialist Antonio Rosas and his colleagues found that those belonging to Neanderthal women looked different to those of Neanderthal men. Specifically, they displayed longer and more pronounced grooves, together with small cuts on the lower parts.
The researchers theorize that this is because, about 100,000 years ago, Neanderthal women were the ones who prepared furs and made clothes. Since they most likely used their mouths to accomplish these tasks, their teeth eventually developed distinctive wear and tear patterns.
“As in modern hunter-gatherer societies, women may have been responsible for the preparation of furs and the elaboration of garments,” the specialists argue, as cited by Science Daily. Furthermore, “the retouching of the edges of stone tools seems to have been a male task.”
Chores aside, Neanderthal women helped bring home the bacon
What's interesting about this division of labor in ancient times is the fact that, although they were the ones handling household chores, Neanderthal women still had a flourishing career as hunters, just like the men living in those days did.
Thus, researcher Antonio Rosas and his colleagues argue that there is no evidence to suggest that Neanderthal women were left behind when the time came to track down and kill big game. On the contrary, chances are that they too actively took part in hunts.