1. To 15,000 Before Gendered Constructs
Paleoanthropologists can track human evolution and migration in prehistory by using the remains of women. Such findings have provided some of the most important breakthroughs in our understanding of the past. Humans emerged as hunters and gatherers, and a specific gender dynamic evolved as groups learned to survive. However, there is a debate about whether in fact we can “see gender” in the archeological record and whether gender attribution is helpful for understanding gender relations in pre-history.
How to cite this source?
Remedial Herstory Project Editors. "1. T0 15,000 BEFORE GENDERED CONSTRUCTS." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 1, 2025. www.remedialherstory.com.
Humans began to evolve from their immediate ancestors called hominids nearly 1.9 years ago. The humans we are today evolved in stages from our immediate hominid ancestor, homo erectus. People originally assumed evolution was linear, with one species morphing into another, but discoveries by paleoanthropologists over the last century have shed new light on our prehistoric past. Scholars now understand that evolution could occur in spurts of activity that interrupted long periods of little evolutionary change. This phenomenon is known as punctuated equilibrium.
The real breakthrough with evolution came in 1974, with the discovery of Lucy, a Australopithecus, a hominid ancestor, who likely lived around three million years ago in the area of modern Ethiopia.
While other such hominid remains have been found, the Institute of Human Origins notes that Lucy provides a more complete picture because they could prove that her remains belonged to her alone, rather than being the remains of multiple individuals. They write, Although several hundred fragments of hominid bone were found at the Lucy site, there was no duplication of bones. A single duplication of even the most modest of bone fragments would have disproved the single skeleton claim, but no such duplication is seen in Lucy. The bones all come from an individual of a single species, a single size, and a single developmental age. In life, she would have stood about three-and-a-half feet tall, and weighed about 60 to 65 pounds. Thus, the first complete example of a hominid ancestor was female.
Lucy was found in fragments in the mountains of Ethiopia by a team of white, male researchers. Lucy was short in stature, standing only 3.5 feet tall and her arm-to-leg ratio was much more ape-like than human. Her skull was also quite a bit different from ours. With their small cranial capacity, this group of hominids likely could not think and conceptualize the world in the same ways we do. However, the discovery of Lucy helped to challenge accepted theories of evolution. The researchers saw her remains as evidence that the human ancestral tree was less linear than scientists had assumed. The human tree is more like a bush with different branches, some of which existed at the same time. Neanderthals, for example, lived at the same time as other hominid groups and interbred with them. Decades after Lucy’s discovery, more evidence came to light that confirmed this hypothesis. This evidence included the Dikika child, sometimes referred to as “Lucy's baby,” although they probably lived thousands of years apart. These discoveries and the theories that emerged from them illustrate how scientists work with the data they have and how they generate new ideas as new information is discovered.
Paleoanthropologist (n.), a scientist who studies human evolution and prehistory by analyzing fossils and artifacts.
Archaeology (n.), the study of human history and prehistory through the excavation of sites and the analysis of artifacts and other physical remains.
Hominid (n.), a primate of a family that includes humans and their fossil ancestors and also at least some of the great apes.
The Bones of Lucy, Public Domain
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Migration
Human evolution is challenging to reconstruct. We know that humans evolved to have increasingly large brains and a frontal lobe allowing them to understand complex ideas and plan for the future. Humans also began walking upright, which required our ancestors to develop a big toe, more flared hips to support our abdomen and upper bodies, and the S-curve in our spines. These traits presented both advantages and challenges to the evolving human species. For example, women developed wider hips than men to facilitate the birth process.
About 1.8 million years ago humans began to traverse the globe, making their way into Southwest Asia, the Middle East and Europe. 20,000 years ago, an Ice Age pushed most of those people south into warmer regions. It is from those people that we learn about the portrayal of the female figure in various cave paintings and burial sites. In Eastern Europe, as early as 35,000 years ago there is evidence of more permanent settlements, which included numerous female sculptures known as Venus figurines depicting the female body with exaggerated bodily features. What remains a mystery is how these figures were used.
Human migration reached Australia through the networks of islands in Indonesia as early as 60,000 years ago. There, an elaborate rock painting done by Aboriginal Australians showed a god of creation known as ‘Lightning Man’ with his smaller wife etched below him with exaggerated breasts and genitalia.
Humans arrived in the Americas about 15,000 years ago. Scientists believe this occurred in different migrations over land, ice, and sea. These early Americans were known as the Paleoindians, who were followed by another group called the Clovis people, but the Clovis culture abruptly disappeared 11,000 years ago.
The discovery in 2007 of an ancient teenage girl’s remains in an underwater cave in Yucatan, Mexico, illustrates the age of a female presence on this continent. Named by archeologists “Naia,” her remains are estimated to be 12-13,000-years-old. She had a hard life characterized by malnutrition and an early pregnancy.
The final thrust of human migration was into the Pacific Ocean and probably only occurred about 3,500 years ago.
Map of Human Migration, Wikimedia Commons
Culture in Pre-Written History
95 percent of human history occurred before “history” was recorded. These early hunter-gatherer peoples lived mostly in small bands of 25 to 50 people. At some points in the year, when food was plentiful, these bands would gather in even larger groups of hundreds of people. At these major events, marriages were celebrated and crucial information was shared. Otherwise these groups moved frequently to follow food sources, and kept very few possessions. Women also bore fewer children because of the constant movement and limited food supply. They also breastfed their children longer, sometimes up to five years, to help space out births as breastfeeding can sometimes prevent pregnancy.
Across the world, there was tremendous variation in human cultures that developed. There was little hierarchy in hunter-gatherer culture. Men and women were thus a bit freer than their agricultural descendants and had more free time in their day. Men and women honed a variety of skills and worked altruistically for the good of the group, while roles and tasks were often differentiated by gender. But this was by no means a golden age for women.
Food was often scarce. In Africa and Eurasia, women, children, and the elderly provided the majority of the sustenance through gathering. There’s evidence that up to 70% of the diet of these early peoples came from plants, while meat accounted for only 30%. When the meat supply disappeared, the band moved to find new food sources.One interesting finding in a 1999 anthropological study of modern foraging groups is that grandmothers actually helped improve the evolutionary fitness of a tribe by assuming responsibility for feeding weaned babies and allowing the young mother to produce more offspring. They call this the “grandmother hypothesis.”
A Prehistoric Clan, Wikimedia Commons
End of the Ice Age
As the Ice Age came to an end between 16,000 and 10,000 years ago, natural global warming allowed for diverse plants and animals to flourish and provide a richer quality of life for humans. Humans began to settle along river valleys and began a long transition into agriculture. Many have seen this transition as a positive one, but for women, there were some unforeseen consequences.
Geographer and historian Jared Diamond in his once-controversial article, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” argued that the invention of agriculture had a horrible impact on human health and led to class differences and the rise of elites, along with sex discrimination.
Some feminist historians agree with Diamond and claim that in hunter-gatherer societies women held a superior status that they lost when societies settled into agricultural life. The theory rests on our prehistoric ancestors’ understanding of cause and effect. The theory goes that women held spiritual status in society as magical creatures that bring about life, because the theory suggests that our ancestors didn’t understand the role men played in creating life. The creation stories that survive and portray female pagan goddesses in all their sexualized glory may be evidence of this, but this theory is dated and the evidence is not widely accepted.
A Prehistoric Clan, Wikimedia Commons
Conclusion
In the following section we will explore this academic debate to more deeply understand the challenges of prehistory and also to see how the biases of our more egalitarian time can impact our reading of historical events. There is much we have to ask ourselves about the Ice Age. How reliable are oral traditions recorded centuries or millennia after they were first told evidence of prehistoric culture? What can other evidence, such as cave paintings, tell us about early cultural development? How would agriculture impact gender dynamics in the centuries to come?
