Ancient Mystery: Teenage Hunter’s Unexpected Role in Big Game Pursuits 9,000 Years Ago Revealed
The girl, whose remains date back 9,000 years, was estimated to have been 17 to 19 years old at the time of her death based on her bones and tooth enamel, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances. The girl’s burial was particularly interesting to researchers due to the items that were found buried alongside the body.
There were several stone projectile points, likely parts used with an atlatl or spear-thrower tool, big rocks for breaking bones and scraping hides, and small rocks with sharp edges for butchering meat.
“All these things together told us that this was a hunting toolkit,” said Randall Haas, an archaeologist at the University of California. “This was really surprising to us…given our understanding of the world, which was that in hunter-gatherer societies males hunt and females gather or process subsistence resources.”
Randall Haas/University of CaliforniaThe teenage girl was buried with what archaeologists believe was a hunting tool kit.
The team also found the remains of several large mammals at the site like taruca or Andean deer, and vicuña, animals related to alpacas.
The discovery counters the long-held belief among archaeologists that hunter-gatherer societies divided tasks based on the traditional sex-based limitations familiar in modern society; big game hunting was the responsibility of male family members while the women looked after the children.
This gender-based division of labor has been found in many contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, and it’s especially rare for women to take on the task of hunting big game. But the ancient cultures of the Americas that existed thousands of years ago may have had a more liberal way of doing things.
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