Women power in the Neolithic age
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One would assume that many of the strongest members of our species are elite athletes. And if particularly strong arms are what you're after, collegiate rowers—who routinely exert many times their body weight in power to propel a boat forward as fast as humanly possible—are about as good as it gets. But according to a new study, even elite female rowers have nothing on the arms of prehistoric women.
In a study out this week in the journal Science Advances, researchers at the University of Cambridge compared the bones of women living in Central Europe during the first 5,500 years of farming to those of typical college students, as well as members of the school's women’s crew team. Apparently, prehistoric women would have made pretty decent rowers. They might even have blown other teams out of the water.
Agriculture was just taking hold over hunting and gathering, and women were doing some hefty workouts. They harvested crops and ground up grain, without any fancy machinery. When the researchers compared humeral rigidity, a measure of bone and muscle strength, prehistoric women had upper arms that were stronger than both average college students as well as members of the competitive rowing team. The researchers think the repetitive motion required in grinding grains led them to possess such powerful arms.
This comparison is the first of its kind. In the past, scientists haven’t done a particularly good job of estimating the strength of women who lived centuries before us. In fact, researchers have actually never compared ancient female bone remains to those of women living today until now. Instead, they’ve compared them to those of men from the same time and region.
But that doesn’t accurately estimate a woman’s strength, says study author Alison Macintosh, an archaeologist at Cambridge. Results from such studies likely underestimate the physical demands required of women during that time.
Hope it helps...
In a study out this week in the journal Science Advances, researchers at the University of Cambridge compared the bones of women living in Central Europe during the first 5,500 years of farming to those of typical college students, as well as members of the school's women’s crew team. Apparently, prehistoric women would have made pretty decent rowers. They might even have blown other teams out of the water.
Agriculture was just taking hold over hunting and gathering, and women were doing some hefty workouts. They harvested crops and ground up grain, without any fancy machinery. When the researchers compared humeral rigidity, a measure of bone and muscle strength, prehistoric women had upper arms that were stronger than both average college students as well as members of the competitive rowing team. The researchers think the repetitive motion required in grinding grains led them to possess such powerful arms.
This comparison is the first of its kind. In the past, scientists haven’t done a particularly good job of estimating the strength of women who lived centuries before us. In fact, researchers have actually never compared ancient female bone remains to those of women living today until now. Instead, they’ve compared them to those of men from the same time and region.
But that doesn’t accurately estimate a woman’s strength, says study author Alison Macintosh, an archaeologist at Cambridge. Results from such studies likely underestimate the physical demands required of women during that time.
Hope it helps...
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