Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site sdcrdcf.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!hplabs!sdcrdcf!alan
From: alan@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Alan Algustyniak)
Newsgroups: net.singles,net.women
Subject: Re: Why male dominance?
Message-ID: <2728@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Mar-86 19:52:14 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.2728
Posted: Thu Mar 27 19:52:14 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 29-Mar-86 04:49:11 EST
References: <1270@decwrl.DEC.COM> <1290@homxb.UUCP>
Reply-To: alan@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Alan Algustyniak)
Organization: System Development Corporation R&D, Santa Monica
Lines: 35
Xref: watmath net.singles:11241 net.women:9884

<Well, here i go, walking on eggs again...>

I'm reporting on 2 ideas that i just read about, concerning why, in
prehistoric times, men were the bread-winners and women raised the
children.  I'm sure that the enlightened, open-minded community which
contributes to this newsgroup will treat these ideas on their merits.{

These ideas from 2 anthropologists were recently reported in a magazine
article[1].

1.) Women in early big-game hunting societies did not get the chance
    to hunt because of menstrual dysfunctions...If early woman joined
    the hunts often enough, it would have endangered her reproductive
    potential....There may indeed have been some societies where women
    hunted, and because of it these societies did not survive. "Those
    societies where women did not go out and hunt are the ones that
    reproduced and survived."

    [Women's] role as child bearer and rearer was more important to
    the band than any of her desires to run after mammoths. "Men,"
    Graham says,"are[sic] much more expendable than women." They
    could be killed or maimed on a hunt, and the band would still survive.

2.)  DeRios thinks that the reproductive odors a woman[sic] emits may
     have been what excluded them from hunts. Animals..."would either 
     have fled or attacked" a band that included a woman.

----------

I'm not very interested in the topic personnaly, and have not thought much
about it, so my personal opinion isn't worth the cost of transmission.

	Al Algustyniak

[1] "But, Oog, She Throws Like a Girl", Insight magazine, 10 Feb, 1986.