Women In Ancient Pre-History

Has the way we have been looking at women in Pre-history been false all along? Contrast to many accounts, the epic hunt conducted by the men of the tribe lasting as long as two weeks at a time only yielded about 20 percent of the tribes overall food intake. Also, women in a place of power and worship created peaceful and prosperous civilizations. Furthermore, ancient females were treasured for their human-giving powers and fertility, making them very important in the growth of the tribe. In ancient pre-history, women were a major factor in the function and structure of society for their fertility, food gathering, and peaceful ideas. Women were the major source of food for the tribe in ancient times because they spent most of their time gathering nuts, berries, roots, and seeds. When they weren’t gathering, they were cooking and caring for the young. Traditionally, we looked at hunting as the significant source of food and the base for all ancient society, but this idea is far from the truth. Hunting takes a lot of time and energy to produce consumable food, mostly in the process of skinning, bleeding, and butchering. “Meat from the hunt came irregularly and infrequently, and only produced 20 percent of the tribes food.”(The Women’s History of the World) Furthermore, wild game …show more content…
With a balanced social order, there was more than just men having a say on society, but both men and women deciding on the future of the tribe. Men and women were seen as equals and it wasn’t until tribes and groups began to battle and fight when women’s equality was tarnished. “The goddess-centered art with its striking absence of images of warfare and male domination reflects a social order in which women as heads of clans played a central part.”(The Language of the Goddess) The idea of a woman is care and tranquility, so a goddess would have been the influence of peace and order, not war and