How misogynistic were cavemen?

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I'll post this just in case there are any doubters left.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-spirit

Prehistoric humans were LGBT+ tolerant.

Human equality is human nature. We just need to reclaim our true nature.

Peace out.

I think it would be rare for only two tribes to be in contact with each other.


Then they wouldn't need to risk death or injury while fighting over territory in which to gather food.


Judging how much food you get for a given foraging effort is one of the most basic skills in foraging. At a simple level, that is what drives bacterial chemotaxis. Humans who can't judge that would not live long anyway as hunter gatherers.


Why would it be worth taking that risk when there is "a clear field to gather and hunt their food"?


Data? For how long does cooked meat keep in the heat? Long enough to hoard it? Do today's hunter gatherers hoard food?

Oh dear, a little historical knowledge is very dangerous. Firstly, what on earth do you imagine a caveman to be? Human history was not the Flintstones. Some humans probably did live near caves, but as there isn't much food there, not very many of them.
Secondly, we know very little of the social attitudes of our ancestors, but I suspect that a species that until the invention of farming was mainly concerned with where the next meal was coming from, was not overly into debates about LGBT rights. They WERE concerned with surviving day to day and very little else. I rather doubt they were Liberals, what with the need to try to get to the age of 30. I suspect they weren't political at all.
You have taken the 21st century and tried to impose it on a very distant past, where life was harder than anyone living can imagine.
Some societies seem to have been led by women, some by men. We don't know why. Some Gods were female, some were male and all were fanciful. Again, we don't know why. We have no idea what the attitudes of pre-Farming communities were and no way of knowing. Pre-Farming societies represent almost all of our history as a species, by the way. We do know from fossil and DNA evidence that human life was nasty, brutal and short. One wave of people supplanted another and although there was some interbreeding between different groups of people, supplanted most likely meant enslaved or killed. The idea of groups engaged in an endless struggle for survival believing in equality is so silly as to be laughable. If you weren't part of the tribe, you were an enemy. Sorry to rip up the lovely dream of some sort of egalitarian past, but there's no evidence for it. Nature is red in tooth and claw and humans have always been the same.

For what it's worth, the fact that some prehistoric peoples were LGBT+ tolerant doesn't mean all were. When talking about uncountable cultural groups across the eons it's important to not assume they were all the same in terms of values, beliefs, etc. It's quite likely that some were tolerant in the way you propose, but that others were only tolerant of certain behaviours, or in certain contexts that might be relevant (for example tolerating behaviours in ritual situations that are taboo outside of that situation, or like how many classical societies were tolerant of male homosexuality between unequals but hostile to the notion of it between social equals you can penetrate your slaves and your apprentice, but not your fellow citizens).

As for annihilation of neighbours, as some are talking about, typically when slavery was practiced by hunter-gatherer peoples it involved war captives and served to replace losses. I wouldn't spin this practice as some sort of utopian 'adoption', but I also wouldn't expect slavery to resemble what we understand it to mean in agrarian societies. I wouldn't rule out slaughter either, but that doesn't mean that should be expected.

Women lived short brutal lived, most likely so did smaller weaker men.It came down to who was strongest,men usually are.
http://nwpaleo.org/2017/05/23/jim-chatt ... y-meeting/

Some cultures were able to safely cure or ferment meat, climate permitting, but when this is not possible it is eaten quickly. An exception is found among the Yanomami, who make soup with monkey meat and keep it cooking until gone in a sort of "endless stew". How safe this is though, I really couldn't say.

As an aside though, the Yanomami are not strict hunter gatherers. They do a good bit of farming of yams and other plant foods and can have very impressive plantations. They have to move from place to place because, believe it or not, the Amazon rainforest soil is actually poor in nutrients and reaches exhaustion quickly.

do you think there would be more population in those days in many tribes that would encounter each other in the same area?
that may be true. but we do not know.

remember that i am talking about the distant past. there is no documentation from that time or even art. all we have is a few skeletons which are mainly mineralized.

everything scientist's plot from that time are very intelligent speculations.
like fire pits and ashes of ancient bones.
and brain case size and the development of the sophistication of stone tools and weapons.
we will never find the wood which the stone axe heads were attached to because it has long been erased by time.



but the clear field to gather and hunt would only be the result of the extermination of competitors. that's what i meant.





i think chemotaxis operates in small organisms that move toward smells.
if an ant finds a pot of honey in it's territory, it will lay a scent trail for other ants to follow, and before long, the honey pot is filled with ants.

on a larger scale, humans i think would have migrated toward where greener grass was (they were out of the trees and mobile by then).

they would note that life is more plentiful where the greenery is.
but they could not be sure.
those people are very primitive i would think. no art, no creative imagination (maybe they did have imagination by 100,000 years ago). no evidence of religion. no deliberate burials yet.

they knew they could catch few wild beasts in the area, but after these beast realized they should move on (due to their fear of attack), then the tribe would have to resort to roots and seeds and insects and small reptiles.
i think near the end of their seasonal occupation of the area, they would light fires to burn out all the grass and reveal lots of stuff that can be harvested.
that is what they would not be able to gauge when they got there.

.
the clear field is won by vanquishing the competitors...derrrr



well beef jerky could last a year until they got back i am sure.
especially the bits which did not have their charred exterior removed.

after they leave, the area becomes dry and arid (the reason they left), and is quite a good environment for preservation.
if you remove all water from a food stuff, it becomes "desiccated", and if it is not exposed to humidity or any other re hydrating influence, bacteria can not live in it. so the cuts of meat that were left in the edges of the fire and were not burned to destruction would have dried out completely. they also do not exude a scent due to their desiccation and would not attract wild animals.

who knows? this is kind of an imaginative guess.

but thanks for considering my post.

Doesn't matter. I only need to assume that there are more than two tribes with adjacent territories, and even in the unlikely case that they are strung out like beads on a string (perhaps along the edge of a river), each tribe would have two neighbours, not one. So if population density is high enough for contact, which is what you need, then it is unlikely that any one group would have contact with only one other group.

Unless you assume that humans are species that shares no traits with others, the ecology of other species can give us pretty good guidelines as to what is relevant.


On the one hand, you argue population density was low. On the other hand you keep arguing as if population density were so high that extermination of all other social groups were the only way to survive and worth any cost. Which is it? Or do you just ignore the costs? And with humans being omnivores, how come anything still lives that eats anything that humans eat, when many other species are easier to kill than humans? I have seen cogent arguments for humans being aggressive, but they were based on data and knowledge of ecology. If you have either of these, you have not yet presented them. For one thing, the way you have presented your argument, it would apply to absolutely any species, not even just social species. The most severe competition comes from those who use exactly the same resources as you do, and that is what conspecifics do. Those of the opposite sex can be a reproductive resource, but any conspecific of the same sex should be killed on sight, according to your argument. How common are fights to the death? If they are less common than your argument predicts, what is wrong?


You missed the point. Tracking the rate of food intake per foraging effort is a basic skill that is widespread across animals. It doesn't need creative imagination beyond what you find in a mouse. If you want to claim that humans 100,000 years ago lacked an ability that seems to have been pretty common for a few hundred million years, you need a good argument. What is it?

Stored how, and in what climate, and is your sureness based on more than speculation?

The original question was about misogyny. Your argument is about intergroup conflict. Is there a link to misogyny?

i do not really feel like debating pure speculation. however,

nomadic tribes have no "territories".
they keep moving on.
if they are strung out like beads, then one would follow the first bead and will be followed by the one behind.
this results in diminishing returns.
they would have branched out in their travels.
not followed a trail.


i do not think that is true at all.
humans have no real instincts like animals do and insects and reptiles do.
they have a brain instead.



but you ignore what i said about theft.
it takes much energy to hunt prey over miles until you can get them, and if another tribe sees the felled carcass of a wilderbeast, it is much easier for them to ambush the tribe that caught it and kill them and take the carcass for themselves.
the hunting parties would have probably been 4-6 men, and the ambushing tribe may have sent 20 men to do the job.
scope them out from a distance and just walk steadily after them. when they have felled their quarry, they would then be "armed" with only sharp edged stones like flint on order to cut the carcass into chunks transportable back to their tribe. kind of an easy target.

never trust anyone not in your family would have been a tenet in those times.

this makes little sense.
it seems at first like you are saying that if we raze the earth, no other life would be able to live, but then you muddy that with "when many other species are easier to kill"
i would not have a clue how that fits. anyway what data is available for the periods beyond 100,000 years ago?
i did say that what i was postulating was pure speculation.


who knows how common any form of behaviour was back then?


creative imagination.
ability to think in an abstract way.
ability to know there is a future.
ability to foresee eventualities from their own actions.



i think if any cave was available, it would have been one of their first needs.
only one entrance.
can not be ambushed from behind.
heat from fires heats whole cave.
deterrents to animal predators.
protection from elements.

the discarded bits of charred beef that could be described as jerky, thrown in cave.
no rain to rehydrate it, and therefore it would be inedible by bacteria.
emits no odor to attract scavengers.
it is a possibility. but i must remind you it is pure speculation.






you are the one that perpetuated this conversation. my first post was relevant to the OP, but you dragged it all into debate and we went of the rails.

thanks for a good debate.
but let us return this thread (though dead) to it's natural flow.

I found more relevant information.

As it turns out, women were quite powerful in old Norse society as well.

That's why I think misogyny is the wrong word. You don't need to hate someone to be against their freedom or equality of opportunity.