A new study from University College London argues that gender equality may have been the norm in the earliest days of human society.
"There is still this wider perception that hunter-gatherers are more macho or male-dominated," says Mark Dyble, the anthropologist who led the study. "We'd argue it was only with the emergence of agriculture, when people could start to accumulate resources, that inequality emerged."
Scientists tracked genealogical data from contemporary hunter-gatherer societies in the Congo and the Philippines and then created a computer model to extrapolate back to the early days of humanity. They published their findings in the journal Science and The Guardian has a nice summary:
Dyble says the latest findings suggest that equality between the sexes may have been a survival advantage and played an important role in shaping human society and evolution. "Sexual equality is one of a important suite of changes to social organisation, including things like pair-bonding, our big, social brains, and language, that distinguishes humans," he said. "It's an important one that hasn't really been highlighted before."
The authors argue that sexual equality may have proved an evolutionary advantage for early human societies, as it would have fostered wider-ranging social networks and closer cooperation between unrelated individuals. "It gives you a far more expansive social network with a wider choice of mates, so inbreeding would be less of an issue," said Dyble. "And you come into contact with more people and you can share innovations, which is something that humans do par excellence."
Read more over at The Guardian.
