When the average person thinks about the division of labor and overall social structure of primitive hunter gatherer groups, they often think that the men hunted, and women gathered. Is this true? What validity does it hold? What can their division of labor show us about our future? Well, to answer the original two questions, we need to understand why division of labor happened from both a Behaviorist and historical standpoint.
Let’s go back to the beginning, the Paleolithic. With the earliest of Homo, Habilis; Ergaster and Erectus, what little we know is know they would have had more complex social structures compared to Chimpanzees and other apes, our closest living relatives.
Within the Lower Paleolithic, they likely lived in structures similar to troops before adapting systems more in line with Hunter-Gatherer bands. (Christopher Boehm Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior page). What is interesting is the possibility and often argued concept of early Homo monogamy vs polygamy. Sexual dimorphism, the pronounced differences between the sexes outside of genitalia are heavily linked to the social structure and relations between Males and Females. If our ancestors had higher percentage of Sexual dimorphism, they would have higher rates of polygamy-based social structures, likely the males having multiple partners or mates. For the most part, the very lower Paleolithic would have seen a lack of egalitarianism.
Despite this, before the end of the Lower Paleolithic, we begin to see the transformation of society. We moved into hunter gatherer bands, numbering from 20–100 members. (McClellan Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction. and Christopher Boehm Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior). This change brought on other factors such as a rise in egalitarian behavior. This behavior was marked by a lack of division of labor. (women gather, men hunt, etc). Christopher Boehm theorized this structure formed in order to properly distribute resources.
Due to this rise of egalitarian behavior towards the Middle Paleolithic, we can find evidence of women likely holding highly respected roles or positions such as elders or shamans in their communities, based on burials. This would imply women would have had influence in the consensus based decision making, a well known mark of tribal / band societies. The earliest known shaman was also female.(Tedlock, Barbara The Woman in the Shaman’s Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine). However, with time, it becomes apparent Men began to dominate these roles, and women fell subversive. (John Zerzan, Future Primitive Revisited.)
Jack Diamond, professor at UCLA and ranked 9th in top 100 public intellectuals in 2005, believes the adaption of agriculture lessened the female’s power in society, limiting her to a housewife of sorts, caused by higher rate of pregnancies.
However, before adoption of agriculture, mostly within the very late Paleolithic, when the amount of human species declined the final two largest competitors were Neanderthals and us, we varied greatly in terms of division of labor. Neanderthals stuck to their more ‘traditional ways’ of complete egalitarianism, while we adopted the stereotypical division of women gathering and men hunting.
National Geographic’s article Sex-Based Roles Gave Modern Humans an Edge, Study Says explains that the division of labor in our species allowed for us to draw on a larger food source, compared to Neanderthals who fell more into more strict diets. In addition, instead of women staying behind in the hunt, the Neanderthal women joined their male counterparts. This proved dangerous, as women, in the primitive sense, were more valuable to the continuation of a group. Putting women in positions of a hunt placed them in danger, lowering the chances of children to give birth to and raise. A similar article from the New York Times, Neanderthal Women Joined Men in the Huntproposes a similar argument.
However, there is an issue with this. As stated earlier, the main reason we believe egalitarianism became popular was to help distribute resources in a more fair and healthy fashion. If this is the case, the division of labor doesn’t make sense. In both articles, it is noted Neanderthals focused almost entirely on big game hunting, which of course is extremely dangerous due to the hunt and possible lack of this food later on. Perhaps it wasn’t the lack of the division of labor, but a lack of a diversified diet seen in earlier groups of Humans who also shared egalitarian systems. Not only this, but by the Mesolithic (European age following the Upper Paleolithic), Humanity had adopted a more symbolic culture, allowing the concepts of domination of both women and nature to take place. While Neanderthals were likely capable of symbolic thought, their culture was not surrounded by it, as was the case for their Homo Sapien counter parts. We should look into the more intrinsic values such as symbolic culture and overall dietary constraints, not simply the idea of a larger food source, which was achieved by previous groups.
In regards to feminism and the idea of (Marxist or anarcho-) primitivism, it should be understood we seek to abolish domination and alienation of all kinds! While the rise of agriculture and symbolic thought still remains with us, we can actively seek to abolish the effects. The late Lower Paleolithic up to the early Upper Paleolithic makes up a majority of our history, and is understood as a time of leisure, gender equality and a lack of strict hierarchies, not until the time of religion, surplus and agriculture did we fall from such a system.
