Well, it looks like science is going to have to revise another theory of the role of EVE in prehistory, because those remarkable paleolithic cave paintings were most likely made by EVE artists.
That’s the startling outcome of a new analysis of the handprints in several famous cave paintings by Dean Snow, Pennsylvania State University, as reported by Virginia Hughes, National Geographic. (1) Snow’s careful analysis of hand stencils found in eight cave sites in France and Spain show that three-quarters of the handprints were made by EVE, not men, but he wasn’t really surprised by this finding.
As with so many “man the hunter” interpretations of archaeological remains, these amazing works of art were automatically assumed to have been made by men because they showcase game animals. However, Snow explained, “there has been a male bias in the literature for a long time. In most hunter-gatherer societies, it’s men that do the killing. But it’s often the women who haul the meat back to camp, and women are as concerned with the productivity of the hunt as men are.” A second theory that had credited the paintings to shamans rather than hunters still includes EVE as the artists, because what could be one of the oldest burials of a religious shaman yet discovered is the 12,000-year-old grave of a high ranking female in Israel.
I'm not saying that EVE did everything in prehistoric society. I'm just saying that EVE did a great deal more than they've been given credit for (yet) by the male dominated sciences. Good to know that both male and female scientists are openly challenging these outdated theories to give us a truer sense of our cultural history.
(1) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131008-women-handprints-oldest-neolithic-cave-art/
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