1. What is the major point being made by the author in this article?

2. What are two types of technology the author believes were first developed by females (not by
males) and why?
3. Why are these types of technology not found archaeologically?
4. What is the author's basis for arguing for women as the inventors of technology?
1. Females may have a more prevalent role in history than is commonly believed. The authors
feel it is a misconception that women and children were simply dependents waiting back at the
camp for the great male hunters to return and provide for them.
2. Women were the gatherers of food that comprising the majority of the diet. Organic tool use,
such as sticks for digging and knocking things down and prying into insect nests, rocks to crack
open fruit and nuts, and many different kinds of containers were essential for them to
developmental for hunting (the males' job) were not used by the transitional hominids.
Even though it is not a 'tool' per se, the authors call womens' social and nurturing skills an
essential tool because they are the primary teachers of survival skills to their offspring. It's been
proven that males had little to no interaction with their own young, and therefore if the women
did not invest the time and effort into teaching their offspring survival skills and social
interaction, the species never would have had the chance to evolve in the first place.
3. The tools used would have originally been organic and therefore unnoticed and/ or unable to
be found throughout history. 'Because mothers had more reason to collect and carry food
consistently, they would be most likely to select and modify appropriate objects regularly for
use as digging tools and containers in order to make the job easier and quicker.' The process of
teaching offspring life skills would leave no hard evidence, either.
4. They are looking at the facts already known to us about the early hominids, i.e. the male role
versus the female role. Males have virtually no significant interaction with their young, and they
would go hunt while women gathered. Therefore the women were obviously the ones teaching
and transporting the young. They look at the fact that any long-term sexual bonds or concept of
a family unit did not make sense for the transitional hominids; they were more like 'pack
animals' who lived a communal life. Therefore the belief that a male had dependents to provide
for is not feasible.