Female Hunters: When Prehistory Challenges the "Man the Hunter" Myth

In 2018, in the high Andean plateau of Peru, an archaeological team was excavating the site of Wilamaya Patjxa (Puno, altitude 3,800 meters). In a 9,000-year-old burialBurialThe intentional deposition of a body, sometimes with offerings; a marker of symbolic behaviour.→, they uncovered human remains accompanied by a complete hunting kit: knapped stone projectile points, scrapers, knives, ochreOchreA red or yellow mineral pigment (iron oxides), used from prehistory for adornment, funerary rites and art.→ pigments for treating hides. Everything belonged to a young woman, approximately 17 to 19 years old. This discovery, published in 2020 in Science Advances, triggered a major re-examination of one of prehistoryPrehistoryThe span of human history before the invention of writing, from the Palaeolithic to the Metal Ages, known mainly through material remains.→'s oldest dogmas: was hunting really a male affair?¹

The Wilamaya Patjxa burial was not an isolated anomaly. The study's authors, led by Randall Haas (University of California, Davis), undertook a meta-analysis of 429 individuals excavated at 107 hunter-gatherer sites from the Paleolithic and early HoloceneHoloceneThe current geological epoch, begun about 11,700 years ago at the end of the last ice age; the setting of all post-glacial history.→ in North and South America. Result: among those whose biological sex could be confirmed and who were associated with large-game hunting equipment, approximately 30 to 50% were biological females.

This result challenges a paradigm structuring prehistory since the 1960s: the "Man the Hunter" model, formalized by anthropologists Sherwood Washburn and Chet Lancaster in 1968. In this model, the sexual division of labor -- men hunt, women gather -- is universal and deeply rooted in human evolution, responsible for the development of language, cooperation, intelligence, and even bipedalismBipedalismA mode of locomotion on two hind limbs, the defining trait of the human lineage, appearing over 7 million years ago. Visible in the anatomy of the pelvis, femur and foramen magnum.→. This model has structured decades of scientific popularization and continues to influence popular culture.²

But critiques of the model already existed. Isotopic analyses of European NeolithicNeolithicThe "New Stone Age": a period marked by farming, herding, settlement and pottery, from around 10,000 BC.→ skeletons had shown women consuming as much animal protein as men -- a possible sign of hunting participation. Studies of contemporary hunter-gatherer groups (Aka of Congo, Agta of the Philippines, Twe of Namibia) had documented female participation in large-game hunting. And analysis of muscles and bone insertion points on prehistoric female skeletons had revealed muscular profiles compatible with projectile throwing.

The Wilamaya Patjxa discovery brings something decisive: not anecdotal female participation in hunting, but a systematic and intentional presence in funerary equipment. The hunting kit deposited in the grave was not an ordinary or symbolic object -- it included projectile points in active use (with wear traces compatible with hunting), scrapers for preparing hides, and ochre colorants used for leather tanning. Everything indicated an active hunter, not an observer.

Biological sex confirmation for the Wilamaya Patjxa individual was obtained via dental enamel protein analysis (amelogenin) -- a more reliable method than pelvic morphology for incomplete or juvenile skeletons. This confirmation was essential: sex determination errors on archaeological skeletons are frequent, especially for young individuals.³

These results invite a fundamental rethinking of the prehistoric "division of labor." It is possible that in early Holocene hunter-gatherer societies, hunting was not coded by gender but by availability, individual physical ability, and personal aptitude. Sexual specialization of hunting may have emerged later, with the development of agricultureAgricultureThe cultivation of plants and production of food by working the soil, which emerged in the Neolithic in the Near East and independently elsewhere; it radically transformed human societies.→ and more rigid social hierarchies -- not as a fact of nature, but a fact of culture.