Female in anthropology
 

Been fishing last weekend and had ample time to muse over various abstract ideas. There is the one that especially hooked me, I keep wondering over it even until now. Tell me, why on earth is it every time we see a picture of the stone age or the human line it is solely and indisputably a male to be portrayed as an example?
Is it because the anthropologists don’t have enough evidence to depict prehistoric females more or less authentically; or because they presume forewomen had quite a masculine frame so there is no necessity to duplicate pictures; or maybe they just succumb under common ‘he’/ ‘man’ form of expression..…?

And in your mind’s eye, what is she, Lady of the Paleo?

Perhaps not all of them...
http://www.rightgrrl.com/steph/cavemen.html
and the existing images include:

Wow. Not exactly a great advertisement for a paleo diet....

some images here
http://www.edwardmitterrand.com/art...o/pages/16.html

:lol: :lol: Guys, you made me laugh!!! Good, I’m alone in the office.

I’d like to stress I didn’t mean works of arts, rather scientific pictures made up by anthropologists or at their request and based upon the collected evidence from their analyses and archaeological findings. Well, something closer to Pauleo’s painting :)

Or to be precise, below is the sample to what I’ve been referring:
So, again, back to the point: why is the human line made for male only?
If you were anthropologist, how would you depict female evolution?

Btw, LondonIan, I also came across the findings that show not all of the palaeolithic women were hiding deep in the cave nursing kids and waiting for fleshy food, some of them were out there stalking and hunting :D . The found artifacts appear to prove this assumption. So I rather agree with Olga Soffer than deride her.

Eos, it's patriarchal bigotry. And a deeply ingrained fear of female sexuality. Afterall, if these examples included women, they might have to display actual breasts (Gasp!). And then they couldn't be used as educational tools for children because Little Jimmy might actually become interested in naturally hairy women or something!

It's the truth! :D

Proteus, I hear for little Jimmy. But what about little Eos who is now deprived of seeing her protomothers and got so despaired in justice and gender equality? :D
After all, just like with male, they could have come up with some disguise and cover these “lust-provoking” breasts under arms e.g.

“Dear Messrs. Anthropologists, medievalisms are long dead and gone. Will you please redress an unjustice and draw up human line for women?” :rolleyes:

LOL! Well, judging from how accurate those "fertility goddesses" look there must have been some really, really obese women in that era. I wonder how they got so fat?

Until very recently it was an unexamined assumption that the (straight, white) male was the essential human and all others were defined by their deviation from that norm. The current "embrace of diversity" in academia is still really only a fashionable tolerance for those deviations from the male norm.

Novels, plays, and films that examine stereotypically male experiences (war, fatherhood, etc.) are still considered to be examining "universal themes," while novels, etc., about the female experience (domestic life, motherhood, etc.) are considered to be "chick lit," "chick flicks," etc.

Personally, I believe the "fear of female sexuality" theory is just a silly dodge. Basically all it does is return the focus back to the experiences and reactions of the male. Even discussions of female sexuality ultimately are discussions of male reactions to it. The female remains the "other" while the male is the subject of essential inquiry. Men have no more "fear" of female sexuality than women have "penis envy." What men really fear is not being the center of everything.

But I'm not bitter. :D

What about the college gender gap favoring women now, and the superior performance of females in schools? Seems that some kind of balance is tipping in western societies at the moment.

Also a lot more is being spent on women's diseases than men. Although women are still getting paid less! :p

I would definitely put war into a genderless area. It affects men and women differently but it affects them both! I've read so many touching things by women about women in war.

There continues to be inequality in all things, and I suspect there always will be.

I absolutely agree that things are changing, but it will take a generation or two to shake out the old thinking. And, I am cynic enough to believe that the "new" thinking will have just as many problems--they'll just be different ones. A society in which the female consciouness is primary and the male is deviant "other" would be no improvement. Just different.

Yes I agree, it will take a while, and is unlikely to be an improvement. Humans are hard-wired to be tribal and it overrides rationality and always will get us into trouble.

I did find a pic to refute the original claim.

Posting that is just a fancy way to commit suicide. In my defense, check the originating site http://suzukibeane.stumbleupon.com/tag/women-s-issues/

BTW, I suspect that the orginal paleo images were thought so desirable because they were so rare in real life. Or because they found chocolate a lot earlier than we thought :)