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Most Cave Paintings Were Painted By Women, Says Penn State Researcher
barlevg writes "Analyzing hand-prints found in cave sites, an archaeologist from Penn State University has concluded that roughly 75% of all ancient cave art was painted by women. Previously it was thought that neolithic cave paintings were made mostly by men, perhaps to chronicle their kills. But an analysis of the relative lengths of fingers in hand stencils found on cave walls suggests that it was mostly prehistoric women--not men--who created these works."
In related news, primitive hand stencils in caves are now likely considered as the first crude attempts at nail painting.
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What interested me about his research was the evidence that sexual dimorphism in humans was substantially stronger in the paleolithic than today.
To me that adds credence to the notion that society has removed a lot of the need for distinguishing between genders. Which was neat.
(deserved slap/punch)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The paintings are there to boast about their hunting skills and number of kills. The hand prints and stencils are there to boast about the number of women that the caveman has.
Have they considered the null hypothesis?
Have they thought that perhaps men were simply less narcissistic, and just like on Youtube where women more commonly display their faces in their videos than men, the women stenciled their hands more frequently than the men... You know, because it's the painting not the damn hand that matters -- It's the content not the face presenting it that matters... yet they show their faces, even if it means obscuring a part of the content.
There's something deeply evolutionary to that: Women primarily value social standing of mates. Males primarily value youth and fertility / beauty -- visually identifiable things. As the peacock displays its plumage for the peahen, so to do the female humans instinctively put on displays for their prospective mates, while the guys try to "impress the girls" with what they have, can do, or provide.
"Look at this cave painting I made, I'm a good artist." "Yeah, well look at how sexy my hand is, you like being touched by it."
The study proves nothing, IMO. Look to the neurology we've inherited from our ancestors, there you will find the same ratios you can use to surmise which sex favored/favors certain behaviors now and in the past.
Anthropologists debung male-centric myths, tech site breeds tens of sexist-joke comments.
Stay classy.
Given the time and lifestyle involved in such times, women were not really allowed to do much of anything.
Citation Needed. If you look at neolithic cultures around the world the society you describe was actually rare. Hunter/gathering societies need both parts of that equation; people hunting food and people gathering food. Interestingly, different societies partition the food processing differently. Sometimes the men do the grinding, sometimes it's the women, sometimes the men do all the butchering, sometimes the women do. IIRC, two New Guinea tribes considered each other heretics because in one group only the men cooked the meat, and in the other only the women did.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
"As the article says they tested 32 hand prints, and 24 handprints were female, with the algorithm determining if the handprints belonged to a male or female painter having an accuracy of 60%."
60% accuracy for the modern sample, not the research sample. FTA:
Because there is a lot of overlap between men and women, however, the algorithm wasn't especially precise: It predicted the sex of Snow's modern sample with about 60 percent accuracy. Luckily for Snow, that wasn't a problem for the analysis of the prehistoric handprints. As it turned out—much to his surprise—the hands in the caves were much more sexually dimorphic than modern hands, meaning that there was little overlap in the various hand measurements.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes