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posted by martyb on Saturday December 02 2017, @08:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the many-grains-of-truth dept.

A study has compared the bones of Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age women to those of modern female athletes:

Grinding grain for hours a day gave prehistoric women stronger arms than today's elite female rowers, a study suggests. The discovery points to a "hidden history" of gruelling manual labour performed by women over millennia, say University of Cambridge researchers. The physical demands on prehistoric women may have been underestimated in the past, the study shows. In fact, women's work was a crucial driver of early farming economies.

"This is the first study to actually compare prehistoric female bones to those of living women," said lead researcher, Dr Alison Macintosh. "By interpreting women's bones in a female-specific context we can start to see how intensive, variable and laborious their behaviours were, hinting at a hidden history of women's work over thousands of years."

Also at Science Magazine, The Guardian, WUNC, and The Verge.

Prehistoric women's manual labor exceeded that of athletes through the first 5500 years of farming in Central Europe (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aao3893) (DX)

Related: Divergence in Male and Female Manipulative Behaviors with the Intensification of Metallurgy in Central Europe (open, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0112116) (DX)

Lower limb skeletal biomechanics track long-term decline in mobility across ∼6150 years of agriculture in Central Europe (DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2014.09.001) (DX)


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:34AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:34AM (#604528)

    > Today, everyone (well, not in Eritrea...) can count on at least free shelter with breakfast, showers and periodically clothes — those living under the bridge are there on their own substance-influenced wish.

    Maybe where you are. Here in Melbourne, Australia we have what appears to be a growing number of homeless people. Rather than drug-addicts the two most common categories are mentally ill and indigenous, I'd say. Whether some were alcoholics before or after they became homeless I don't know. The one thing I can say for sure is that our system has failed these people.

    Would they have been better off back in the day? Maybe, there was more sense of community when the communities were smaller. Then again, maybe they wouldn't even have lived this long.

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  • (Score: 2) by KiloByte on Sunday December 03 2017, @04:33AM (1 child)

    by KiloByte (375) on Sunday December 03 2017, @04:33AM (#604571)

    Maybe where you are. Here in Melbourne, Australia we have what appears to be a growing number of homeless people. Rather than drug-addicts the two most common categories are mentally ill and indigenous, I'd say. Whether some were alcoholics before or after they became homeless I don't know. The one thing I can say for sure is that our system has failed these people.

    But, do those homeless people die of starvation? Their standard of life might be not what one could wish for, but it's bad only compared to other people in the same country — they still live like kings compared to an average peasant from medieval Europe or even certain places on Earth today.

    --
    Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @05:10AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @05:10AM (#604577)

      But, do those homeless people die of starvation? Their standard of life might be not what one could wish for, but it's bad only compared to other people in the same country — they still live like kings compared to an average peasant from medieval Europe or even certain places on Earth today.

      You say it as if it were a bad thing.