The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong

I can see merits to this. A pet topic of study of mine is of the Donner Party expedition. A thing scholars of this interesting historical episode have noted is this is a very good example of the human body being stretched to its absolute limit of endurance with a decent sample size exposed to relatively similar conditions. Interestingly, a decent majority of the survivors were young women. It’s been theorized that they were better able to metabolize and make use of their fat stores than the men, due to their lower metabolic rate, and many firsthand accounts demonstrated that they exhausted less quickly.

Sure women survive more extreme conditions better than men. This includes dehydration.

Is this the new standard boilerplate / disclaimer?

> Before getting into the evidence, we need to first talk about sex and gender. “Sex” typically refers to biological sex, which can be defined by myriad characteristics such as chromosomes, hormone levels, gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. The terms “female” and “male” are often used in relation to biological sex. “Gender” refers to how an individual identifies—woman, man, nonbinary, and so forth. Much of the scientific literature confuses and conflates female/male and woman/man terminology without providing definitions to clarify what it is referring to and why those terms were chosen. For the purpose of describing anatomical and physiological evidence, most of the literature uses “female” and “male,” so we use those words here when discussing the results of such studies. For ethnographic and archaeological evidence, we are attempting to reconstruct social roles, for which the terms “woman” and “man” are usually used. Unfortunately, both these word sets assume a binary, which does not exist biologically, psychologically or socially. Sex and gender both exist as a spectrum, but when citing the work of others, it is difficult to add that nuance.

I often wonder about this. Large scale wars I believe only occurred with the development of agrarian based societies. Nomadic societies would usually not risk all in a do or be enslaved war. Nomadic tribes frequently raided each other but could retreat and make do if necessary.

Farms had to be defended. It would take years to restore a destroyed farm and what would you eat if the enemy stole your harvest and all your animals.

My guess is such a winner take all scenario, they were not merciful to the women and children either. They killed those who resisted and enslaved the rest.