sooo much silliness out of these old white men.
even w/o hunting, there wd, of course, b women who defended their tribe from animals and other humans. and of course they wd take down something tasty that wandered by.
the boy’s hunting parties werent the only lethal weapons. how cd they b?

could find to survive, and the female population had uses every bit as useful as female bears and wolves..

The society that had the smarts to invent the atlatl certainly had the smarts to figure out how, and who, to use it.

The atlatl is a very impressive tool.

Very simple and very impressive. Even kids can throw balls a mile with it, so probably women could too.

Using an atlatl to throw a spear with accuracy is not easy without practice & skill. We were able to launch the spear, but hitting the target was difficult. We only managed to hit the ground near the target.

I am quite sure Native American women hunters were much more skilled than me!

My impression of the atlatl technology is that it’s seemingly so simple, yet it’s so elegant and powerful.

Throwing them. I tried to do both but did not have time to finish. All became surprising accurate with these and it is amazing how far they can go. They also use larger “dart heads” and hit with more force than arrows. Arrows go further.

She could not always rely on a male to do those jobs.

In the second book of the collection, The Valley of Horses, published in 1982, one character invents the "spear-thrower" which basically extends the reach of any human's throwing arm. The implement in the story was based on both archeological finds and extant technology known to contemporary hunter/gatherer societies.

Auel also explored the idea of Neanderthal/Homo Sapiens hybrids, an idea that was not widely accepted in scholarly or scientific circles at the time. With the improvement in genetic sciences, that idea is being proved correct over and over again as Neanderthal genes are showing up in modern populations.*

With apologies to Dr. Eren, I feel like I spent my entire time as an anthropology student in the nineties deconstructing the obvious prejudices and blatant slants of early anthropologists--who were generally White, cis, male** and wealthy enough to devote their lives to an emerging discipline. Yeah, those guys were often full of it. But I really wish that my courses had allowed me the opportunity to learn more about--you know--anthropology. As a relatively liberal-thinking person, I already had a fairly firm grasp on what was wrong with my own culture. I chose anthropology as my major because I wanted to learn about other cultures.




* There was also a lot of sex in those books. They were sort of like pre-historical romance novels with parkas instead of corsets. . . and there was some science as well as conjecture.

** There was, of course, Margaret Mead, and during my student days, there were newly published works by a young, male anthropologist whose entire academic career was based on deconstructing Margaret Mead.

While a dart propelled by an atlatl might have been effective, it was more likely a child's hunting kit. Women would have used more efficient methods like nets and snares to trap protein for dinner.

There is indirect evidence for twined fabric (which requies no loom) and nets going back 40,000+ years through impressions on clay and carved figurines.

Here is an example, almost laughably large. Twined fabric can be quite fine, although not as fine as later woven fabric: