Upending the Hunter/Gatherer Myth

Humans have, throughout the millennia, attempted to make sense of their world. But, being humans, they invariably ended up screwing things up. Worse, it has allowed later humans to come to conclusions that stemmed from their own base interests or flawed perceptions of the world. The result is that a lot of conclusions haven’t aligned particularly with actual reality. This allows for some modern humans to see spaceships and aliens in ancient cave paintings and in poor, hapless Mary first being called a “virgin” (instead of the literal translation of “young girl”) and then later, being called as a prostitute by a bunch of misogynistic old men who wrote the Bible. Countless generations after have adhered to whatever the Good Book said. Case closed. 

What’s the problem? you ask. Ancient aliens make for good TV, and Mary is long dead and buried. The problem, Life in the Boomer Lane knows, is that, because perception often creates reality, we end up structuring an entire society based on myth and intentional mistruth, and, in the case of the 2016 election, believing that a human who has never done anything for anyone but himself is somehow going to do something for us.

One bedrock belief that has travelled throughout time has been that men were hunters, women were gatherers. That belief has explained why men start wars, channel surf as though the remote were some kind of weapon, and why LBL’s sons always defaulted to wrestling under the dinner table, while her daughter daintily ate her food using the correct utensils.

Then, last month, a discovery was made that rocked the hunter/gatherer belief. The discovery of a 9,000-year-old female skeleton was uncovered, buried with what archaeologists call a “big-game hunting kit” in the Andes highlands of Peru. Clearly, this young woman was a big game hunter. Additional research has shown “something close to equal participation in hunting for both sexes.”

It must be noted that other scientists, specifically males, take exception to the findings. They challenge the burial itself, maintaining that, since everyone knows that women have poorer senses of direction than men, this hapless young woman must have wandered unintentionally into the wrong grave. Another noted that this woman may have been a hostess of an ancient version of QVC and was simply demonstrating the Value of the Day, the “Big Game Hunting Kit.” When asked if these statements were science or opinion, one man said, “It is our opinion that they are science.”

A spokesperson for the Real Truth about Mary Society has seized upon this to energize the base. “The entire story about Mary has been the greatest hoax ever perpetrated against humanity. Near as we can determine, Mary was a brilliant young woman who was definitely not a prostitute. We can’t speak to her virginity because back then, before the advent of social media, people had no way to reveal their sex lives to everyone else. We do know, however that she became the driving force behind Jesus’ ministry and may have also inadvertently been the inspiration for Mona Lisa , the WNBA, and salted caramel ice cream.”