DADvocate

Instapundit posted a single sentence that redirects to John Hawks' post regarding the claim that Neandertal women hunted along side the men.

Unlike modern humans, who had developed a versatile division of labor between men and women, the entire Neanderthal population seems to have been engaged in a single main occupation, the hunting of large game, the scientists, Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner, say in an article posted online yesterday in Current Anthropology.

Hawk disagrees.

Hawk gives a strong argument supporting his position.

I think that the adaptive landscape assumption is the greatest flaw in this hypothesis. Kuhn and Stiner's hypothesis depends on the assumption that sexual division of labor is quite rigid, so that Neandertals did not adopt a modern organizational strategy even though such a strategy was adaptive for modern humans in the same habitat.

I don't need to rehash Hawk's argument here but one thing Hawk never touches upon it a motive for Kuhn and Stiner to create such a claim.

The obvious is "publish or perish." University professors are often under pressure to publish or fail to be granted tenure, or worse, be fired. A radical but somewhat plausible, such as this, increases the chances of being published.

The motive that jumped out at me is feminism. As mentioned in yesterday's post, many assert that the primary differences between men and women are learned behaviors whether it be social roles or throwing a baseball. This despite the evidence of differing roles in every mammalian species on the planet.

But feminists have to play the "fantasy is real" game. As Hawk says, "The "why not" in this case is, obviously, that Neandertal Amazons are a product of fantasy." But feminists want use to believe that women are equal to men in every way except in the ways they are superior. Not only do they want to re-write history, much as Clinton want to re-write it to enhance his legacy, but, now they want to re-write prehistory. Perhaps the ultimate oxymoron.