Women in the Paleolithic Period

Periodization 1 and its many events fits into 5 different groups Social, Political, Interactive, Cultural, economical, or SPICE. The first category, Social can be further divided into gender roles and relationships, family structure, and class structures. Gender roles during the Paleolithic era honored women. Venus statues were all the rage, and in cave paintings, you can see the females painted larger that the males. However, once you get to the Neolithic era and the agriculture revolution, women faded to the background, doing menial jobs and having kids. That also affected the family structure. The class structure, which was non existent during the the Paleolithic era, popped up in most societies individual. For example, in Egypt, a class system was set up which had the pharaoh on top, can be compared to the Indians caste system with the Brahmins as the top there.

This article from “The Real Truth about the Female” by Barbara Ehrenreich targets many beliefs that women were underestimated. The main theory suggested in this document is that, women had to follow the traditional duties. Early theories are being questioned as a result to women proving many things over the years that were often overlooked. Ehrenreich states in his article, “it does strongly suggest that in the Stone Age family, Dad-the-hunter was not the only provider.” There is a great amount of evidence that suggest the theory that women worked as hard as men. Adrienne Zihlman and Nancy Tanner stated “among surviving “hunting” peoples, most of the community’s calories—up to 70%—come from plant food patiently gathered by women.” This fact

The Paleolithic Period is the earliest time period man has been alive, and the longest of the Stone Age's. It dates from 2,000,000 B.C to 10,000 BC The people of the Paleolithic Period lived simple lives, which consisted primarily of survival. Man's life was simply to hunt, eat, and survive, while the woman's job was to gather and watch over the children.

In the Paleolithic era, social hierarchy was determined by multiple factors such as position in the family, gender, age, and favorable personality traits. Titles were given to establish positions within each band. Titles could include, mother, father, husband, wife, brother, sister, child, etc. The higher the position in the band came power over others. (John P. McKay, Understanding World Societies, Pg14). The division of labor was determined by a person’s sex and age. With biological factors, it was inevitable that there would be a division of labor for men and women. Women biologically are able to breast feed their young, which takes several years. At this time period formula was not invented yet, so breast milk was the only source of nutrition for infants. Women would breast feed and the men would most likely care for the infants. In a sense the women and men split the work to care for their young. Since the Paleolithic people had to rely on moving from place to place to gather their food, women also worked outdoors. The women gathered plants and animal products, meanwhile the men hunted. (McKay, Pg.13) Age was also a key factor in the division of labor in their society. Being elderly or a child would result in different task that would generally be easier because of the lack of strength. Unlike the Paleolithic era, in the Neolithic era Social hierarchies mainly came about as a result of plow agricultural society in both gender relations and division of labor.

Sexual Division of Labor: Societies that relied primarily on hunting large animals, such as deer and buffalo, assigned that task to men, allotting food preparation and clothing production to women. Before such nomadic bands acquired horses from the

Since working on the land wasn’t the most guaranteed way to make money families quickly uprooted and left with what they could to the surrounding areas of textile mills and other forms of factories. After some time with the general consensus being that working in the factories was a stable way to make money more and more people moved out to these areas causing the population to grow higher and higher by the minute, giving birth to what we now know as cities. Not only did America progressing heart those located in rural areas here, but on a global

Since they set up their homes in a set place, they developed a trading system.  The development of cities was caused by agriculture because we no longer needed to be nomads. Creating cities showed signs of a revolution because it changed how we lived since we were no longer nomads, it changed how we worked because of trade , and it changed how we thought because we thought we no longer needed to be

Urbanization quickly spread and advanced in the 1800’s. This was due to industrialization. If a factory was built in a town, that town’s population would grow exponentially.

The economic, social, and religious roles of women changed between the Paleolithic and Neolithic time periods. During the Paleolithic Age, women and men had equal position in society. They both helped in the raising of children and the act of obtaining food for their families. The role of women would soon change for the worse in the Neolithic time period. They were left with little social, economic, and religious status, and the large burden of raising children almost singlehandedly.

There are many reasons why there was a rise in the cities in the ancient world. One of the reasons there was a rise in the cities was because of security. In document 2, page 33, it states "City life offered considerably more permanence and security than village life." Cities had more security because not only were they bigger than villages, but city life was more civilized. In the quote that document

Women's lives, roles, and statuses changed over various early world history eras and culture areas in many ways. Ancient Persia, Paleolithic, Athens, Mesopotamian and Roman eras were all different in very unique ways. The Paleolithic era treated women fairly and were treated equally. During the Neolithic era women were not treated fairly. She was the daughter of her father or the wife of her husband. Women rarely acted as individuals outside the context of their families. Those who did so were usually royalty or the wives of men who had power and status.” (oi.uchicago.edu, 2010) Athenian women were not treated fairly

Since the food was plentiful, the population expanded. Soon, advanced cities developed for large area trade. As social standing

Throughout history, the evolution of communities and societies has been influenced by the local and global economy. Large cities emerged from vibrant business activity and flow of products and services. For the most part

The Urban Revolution, written by V. Gordon Childe, is an intricate article that attempts to figure out when, where, and why the phenomenon of cities began. The article also gives a slight description of what a creates a city, mostly from a historical setting. “Throughout the Pleistocene period, all known human societies were savage in the foregoing sense, and a few savage tribes have survived out of the way parts to the present day.”(Childe 1950). Before the development of cities, the domination of farm lands existed. The largest villages in prehistoric Europe, comprised of about “...52 small one-roomed dwellings, but 16 to 30 houses was a more normal figure.” (Childe 1950). Something I find interesting in the article is that due to the small demographic, everyone in the prehistoric cities or villages had to contribute to the hunting. This was because the social surplus was not big enough to feed idle mouths. Childe went on to say that a city has a hierarchy. He stated that a city makes investments in the sciences and written system. One thing that stood out to me is when

Throughout the ancient world women possessed few rights and privileges. A woman’s freedom varied depending on where she was born, in this case Athens and Sparta. But it can be said that most women were second-class citizens during this time period. Most women had limited social roles, little education, and no involvement in politics. Power and freedom was something that only existed in a man’s world, while women were expected to be submissive, docile, bear children, and take care of the household. Surviving records from ancient Greece show that women’s roles did not differ much from city-state to city-state but there were exceptions that include noble women and most notably, Spartan women. Some civilizations treated women with respect