Wolfman wrote:I'm going to explain why I'm a feminist, and I'm going to do so in evolutionary terms. As far as I'm aware, we do not know about the population of human tribes in the paleolithic times, but we can assume that they would be roughly similar to modern hunter-gatherer societies, such as the Hadza and the Mbuti peoples, both of which live in extended family groups of 20-30 or 15-60 (respectively), with an upper limit broadly being probably around the human Dunbar Number of 150. I've done some looking, but I cannot find any information on age demographics for hunter-gatherer societies, so I'm going to assume the number of non-combatants due to age is roughly 34%, which is roughly what the break down is for modern society. This wont be exactly right, of course. The number of younglies is going to be higher in a hunter-gatherer society, and old would start in the mid to late 30s, but 34% is probably as close of a guess as I can get without conducting a lot of anthropological research I don't care to do. I'm also going to assume that 50% of the band if male, and 50% if female (though I know that this is probably inaccurate). Because I'm lazy, I'm going to work with a band that has those age and sex demographics and a population of 100. So, when we eliminate people do to age, we have 64 people, half of them being men. So, we have 32 people protecting and hunting for another 68 people.
First off, your age ranges for hunter-gatherers are way the hell off. You're giving life expectancies like they were early agriculturalists, not hunter-gatherers. For a population of hunter-gatherers, the children who live to be 15 will mostly live to be ~65 on average. Most of the deaths are in early childhood. Moreover, the notion that men hunt and women don't in hunter-gatherer societies is about as wrong as one can get; both end up gathering, the men
usually end up hunting large game, and the women
usually end up hunting small game. That's the norm for contemporary hunter-gatherer societies that have gotten anthropological studies. And yes, near equal division between men and women.
Let's say that every member of this tribe needs to eat an average 2,000 calories (a rough estimate for adults and children). In the unlikely situation of every male of the tribe being able to hunt at the same time (no one out of commission due to injury or illness) we have 32 people needing to bring in 200,000 calories daily, or an average of one hunter bringing in 6,250 calories, made all the more difficult by the inevitable risk of injury or illness.
Okay, first off, the
large majority of their calories will come from gathering, not hunting. And of the calories that will come from hunting, both men and women would be making roughly equal contributions to that. The risks of injury relating to hunting diminish greatly from proficiency (remember, hunter-gatherers do this shit for a living, and become extremely good at it) and low-risk hunting strategies (like endurance hunting, trapping, etc).
Incidentally, a hunter-gatherer needs to spend ~20 hours a week making ends meet. That particular tidbit has raised an interesting anthropological question--why did anyone decide to pursue agriculture, considering that it was so much more work with so much less reward?
Then add in defending the band from hungry predators. Unlikely, yes, but still possible. Now the guys who just got done chasing dinner over 20 miles in triple digit weather have to fight off a hungry lion.
Note; persistence hunting requires a lot less energy than most other forms of hunting, especially if they combine it with poisons too. It's not like they go on a 20 mile continuous run--they already know where the animals are likely to go, and they don't actually have to catch up, just keep it from getting a good rest.
Or maybe, if they're lucky, they get to fight off the warriors from another band.
It's well established that non-agricultural societies have extremely limited skirmishes of that sort. Not much point in fighting it out and maybe dying when you can just move or share. It only makes sense to fight over territory and property when you've invested several months into your crops and have to get a return or starve over the winter.
So, reasonably, we should expect that males and females to do these things together. Instead of 32 out hunting and fending off predators and enemies, you have 64. You have more people to swap out to deal with injury and illness, and you don't have the same guys doing the hunting day in and day out and deal with the defense of the tribe and so on.
Sure, yeah, hunter-gatherers have a high degree of sexual parity.
So, from our conclusion that males and females would participate similarly in the hunt and in defense we should evolve with similar abilities related to hunting and fighting. Now, reasonably, the women would hunt less then the men, but that has to do with being pregnant and raising small children (breastfeeding, and all), this would explain any minor difference in males and females in relevant abilities, as does the wider set hips of women (which reduces running ability and increases risk of injury but make giving birth easier). So, there's reason to believe similarities between men and women in intelligence. And yes, men and women do have pretty much the same IQ, with Dave admitting that the difference is atmost 3 points. Fun fact: since IQ has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 points, a difference of 3 points is insignificant. There's a formula I could use to prove statistically that the difference is insignificant, but I am lazy as shit. Now, there are some differences in men and women in the mind, and while they alter the way we hunt, they do not hinder us in our hunting.
You seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on the hunting, but hunter-gatherers do a lot more gathering than hunting.
Now, intelligence is important in hunting and fighting for countless reasons. Knowing how to track, which animal to go after, how to hide, how to cover your scent, how to camouflage yourself, where the weak spots on the animal are, when to hit, what to hit with, and so on.
Note; humans are natural endurance hunters. You don't
want to be hidden for endurance hunting. If the animal doesn't know you're there, it won't keep moving and our relative energy advantage (humans are really good at regulating body temperature compared to basically everything else on the planet) wouldn't be helpful. Human intelligence plays a role in hunting because it is useful for devising tools, learning how to use poisons, learning how to predict animal movements over long periods of time, learning how to set traps, etc. You know, actually using intelligence rather than brute force, because you're way more likely to get injured fooling around with a bow and spear than you are with your own two feet and a bit of forethought. Why attack an animal when it can turn around and gore you when you can just be patient and wait until it can't even stand up anymore?
So, as far as I'm concerned gender inequality is not only stupid and counter to the evidence that I just spent an assload of time presenting, but it is counter to our evolution. Thank you, have a nice day.
Definitely.