Abro

  1. Introduction: a story everyone learned Let’s reread the story we have been told for decades. On a cold plain, a group of men with spears closes in on a mammoth. Back at camp, women crouch by the fire with infants, sorting roots and berries. This scene encodes a theory, not just an image. It claims that men and women in early human groups did different work, that the division was ancient and universal, and that it shaped the bodies and minds we have today. Each of those claims can be tested. So, let’s test them. We ask three questions. Where did the idea of “man the hunter, woman the gatherer” come from? Did every foraging society actually divide work this way? And what do ethnography, archaeology and human biology now tell us? Box 1 · Who are hunter-gatherers? Hunter-gatherers, or foragers , are people who get most of their food from wild plants and animals rather than from crops or livestock (Kelly, 2013). Homo sapiens has existed for roughly...