At least early humans and/or Neandrathals seemed to have hunted in groups, lived in groups, and advanced in groups. Today isolation of the individual, by mental illness or by choice, is not uncommon. We have options for female participation in work that two or three generations ago were unheard of. It seems to me irrelevant what the ancients did. No female college graduate is kept out of law school or out of a professional job because the interviewer or employer believes feminism was a failed Neandrethal experiment.

Gender inequality exists today and must be corrected by reference to today's realities, not to social dynamics long since past. Academics have the luxury of research on 20,000 year old people, job applicants do not. We need today's data, not the Flintstones'. We have difficult choices today, which did not exist in Paeleolithic times, choices that are not tied to gender- like jobs exported overseas(where Indian women and men for example may do jobs US workers recently did).

The internationalization of the work force and the weakness of unions are of far greater concern to today's real life women than an interesting but irrelevant academic discussion by Boston-area intellectuals.

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The problem with all this speculation is that the bias of the speculators interferes with the search for truth. In any event whatever happened way back then helped create our current circumstances which are becoming grim because there are so many monkey-brained money-stained bullshit-scatterers in our poliltical leadership.

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that because I'm female, I can't read a map, park my truck or play video games. Guess I'll have to stop doing those things. Gee, I wish someone would come up with a comprehensive list of all the things my female brain can't grasp, so I will know what it is I have to stop doing!

One question, if humans are 'hardwired' for male dominance, why do females WANT equality? And how could the human race survived if females were unable to protect themselves and the children from predators while the males were off hunting?

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Hey , maybe el presidento is really female. But don't forget other great men of the past and present such as the scarecrow in the Wiz. , Donny Rumhead as well as almost all the repubs. in Wash. Then there's the great leaders of the amoral majority, Fallwell, Dobson etc.

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The Neanderthal males left the women behind during hunting trips because they kept telling them to stop and ask for directions instead of using the map.

But since paper wasn't invented yet, the map was made of stone and probably weighed in excess of 100lbs, making it impossible to chase prey while carrying the map.

So in conclusion, if Neanderthal males had only stopped and asked for directions like the females told them, they would not be extinct today.

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"Psst! You can find an anti-feminist spin in the cold fossil bones of Neanderthals, so go for it?"

Would anyone in the mainstream media have given any ink at all to a controversy involving a species that vanished eons ago if bashing feminists wasn't involved?"

Psst! As usual, we're scraping the bottom of the barrel for print-worthy, feminist material, but let's put some lipstick on this pig and see if it'll fly anyway.

Would yesterday's tawdry exposé, that I have dubbed "Wellesleyens Gone Wild", been noteworthy in any but the most sensational of ways had it not taken cheap shots at the vile "Johns" who likely coughed up a week's salary to bang some doctoral candidate looking for a shortcut to stardom?

Once again, Alternet refuses to dispense with the "us vs. them" binary gender construct. Many of its articles, properly framed, would go a long way towards engendering a spirit of unity among both sexes, but as it stands, Alternet now seems interested in playing on *sigh* prehistoric antagonisms?!? Tell us you're not intentionally widening the gender divide in order to "spice things up".

Happy Holidays

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I wouldn't blame the researchers for their theories (theories, not conclusions). Their job is to offer up ideas for consideration and criticism, based on the evidence they have collected.

The problem here is with the author of this piece and with the mainstream media, dumbing down and sensationalizing.

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It is understandable, though no less reprehensible how conservative fundamentalists have derived their anti-female beliefs. What is not publicized or discussed as often however is the more insidious 'Fifth Column' of reactionary 'scientists' who do the same in the name of science. This is the dangerous, yet very attractive aspect of scientism - science used as pseudo-science ideology, which appeals to the untutored beliefs of the average person.

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Firstly, it's ridiculous to take one scientific hypothesis and turn it into a storm of "anti-feminist science". The author provides no other examples to support such a trend, yet still suggests the scientists who put forward this hypothesis are deliberately biased.

If anything, the media has had a pro-feminist slant in the science department for a long time. I've read a steady barrage of "women are better at this, women are better at that, men are worse at this" etc. sort of articles for many years now, without reading of any sort of feminist protest against it. I suppose if it works in your favor, it must be true, eh?

Secondly, I think it is clear that division of labor makes us more effective as a society. If there was no division of labor in Neanderthal tribes, it's not surprising that they'd be less apt to survive because each contributing member of the tribe would be contributing less efficiently (out of trying to do everything that's needed to survive). That part of the hypothesis seems sound; what needs to be proven (or disproven) is whether the Neanderthals actually operated that way.

Comparing their situation to ours does not hold water, since nowadays we must all specialize to do a specific part of society's activities. No one living in modern society does everything from the growing of food to the manufacturing of advanced goods themselves. So viewing this Neanderthal hypothesis as being an attack on modern feminism is, frankly, lacking in sense.

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I think the real issue is not which sex is playing which role, but that the roles are balanced. If a female is better at hunting mamoth than a man, then that man should take up cave-keeping.

It was pride that killed the neanderthals.

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Despite the elegance of your protocol and rigorous adherence to proper clinical procedure, we have concluded that patriarchy is a failed experiment. Continuing the experiment poses a statistically significant risk to the test subjects and their habitat. It is time to pull the plug. Good try; better luck next time.

Your Dissertation Committee

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I guess I've been a failure all my life and didn't know it. As an airline transport pilot (now aged out thanks to another kind of -ism) and now an accountant, I guess I've been dragging down both professions and didn't even realize it.

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but most hunter/gatherer societies have women out working at gathering, folks, not sitting in a cave waiting for meat. If you watch any of those wonderfully bigoted NGC programs about hunter/gatherer societies, you will notice despite all the focus on the male hunting prowess and the celebration of meat, most of the food comes from the gathering and scratch agriculture, not from "meat". This is well documented by anthropologists. In fact, the success rate of hunters is so low that if anyone had to depend on them for food, they would starve. One can easily understand why everyone celebrates when a piece of meat is brought home: it is such a rare occurrence as to be worth celebration.

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it were about anthropological research that was positive toward women and derogatory towards men? For example, if the story in the Toronto newspaper was about how language originated with women and that is why us girls are better at all things verbal and communication, would this be on Alternet? Would the author and others on this board defend a boy's right and ability to score high on the verbal section of the SAT?

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This all comes down to a few retarded (socially or otherwise) anthropologists' belief that the female is just an *addendum* to the male, that she is an incomplete, or biologically-deviant, male. There have been primitive cultures that have supported this idea for millenia. Judeo-Christianity is one -- God-guy creates a man "in His own image" and the bewildered man points to his penis and says, "What have you got that'll fit on this?" God-guy rummages around in a drawer and says, "Here, this is all that's left. See if you can make that work."

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Homo Sapiens had better language skills. This allowed us to work in groups of 50 as easily as neanderthals could work in groups of 5. Not to mention we bred like rabbits compared to neanderthals. lol. That is the biggest advantage of being able to communicate with a larger group -- it leads to a much larger selection of mates.

As far as women and men hunting together and stuff like that? gimme a break... Picture a woman with a baby at her breast, and a spear in hand. lol. It didn't happen. Between grooming, sanitation, herb/veggie gathering, and child care, they did not have the time to learn hunting. We survived as a species, precisely because it didn't happen often. If women were forced to hunt, it would be evidence that our species was not resilient enough to survive. Same holds true today. If women are forced to fight in a war, that war is probably going very very badly. There might be a few women who fight, but this is only because the men had no choice -- sometimes your skills demand that you use them. If a woman can kick the tar out of all the men around her, then chances are she'd become a warrior. But the number of women who took that path have always been inconsequential. At least until modern times.

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Our past does not determine our fate--we do. We as a species can choose gender equality, or to cling to outmoded models of social interaction (as though those that 'worked' in the past were our only option).

Even if inequality got us where we are today, it’s pretty clear that sustaining patriarchal modes of existence are not sustainable now.

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Leave it to a woman to find issue and cause turmoil where there is none.
The above author--a journalist no less--decides to pick a fight with PHD's in their respective fields.
Ever since the advent of famed anthropologist Margaret Meade, we have been taught that a separation of work allowed civilization to flourish.
We are told, that women are peculiarly centered around child rearing (could that have anything to do with fact that the have BREASTS??)--but of course that has nothing to do with the facts to this New Age Feminine Einstein. We are told this has no merit (perhaps there was a Stone Age version of Title 9?) Prior to the Feminist Revolution no one questioned this obvious empirical fact. Today, we cannot even espouse theories without the Feminine Left calumniating the authors.
Every primitive culture in the world that we know of has a division of labor based on gender and no primitive societies allow their women to go to war. In war, primitive cultures were taken as slaves, their children brought to the winner's territory and ultimately assimilated into their society. Thus the genetic legacy of the loosers did not
die out entirely.
Men with their greater muscle mass (on average 30 per cent more) are geared towards more physical aspects of survival while women are more adept at home and hearth.
However we need a New Age writer to rewrite the reality of history. So what scholarship does she supply? Nothing...you see she is a woman and it is her perogative to disagree--so there!!! Its not the facts that count, it's how you feel about them that matters.
Why do these femine chipmunks get to spout off this nonsense?

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Steven Mithen is the one who first talked of cognitive advances homo sapiens enjoyed over neandrethal - not Klein.

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how marvelous it is we have so many "scientists" and other sorts who were actually there to see how the Neanderthals did things! I want a ride in that there time machine - kinda curious about Viking women myself. Did they really beat their men with sticks before sex? Inquiring minds want to know...Truth of the matter is, no one knows how pre-historic gender roles were constructed or what really killed these people off. Clearly, the usual BS anti-fem spin is occurring in the media, but what else is new? My suspicion is that all were so concerned about getting the next meal that they really didn't give a hoot about who brought in the next scavaged piece of meat or who gathered the damn blueberries, just so long as some one did. Lives were short, infant mortality very high, so that rather argues against our modern sort of elaborate judeo-christian gender constructs. But then, I don't have that time machine so I can check. Damn!

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(cognitorex blogspot: published CCTimes, Feb 06' )

Regarding the storm over Harvard President Summers' remarks:
In a recent yet unpublished study relating to proclivity and prowess in applied math and physics, researchers simulated being lost while driving. The husband drove and the wife rode. Cortex electrodes revealed that the wife stimulated the intuitive zone while the man's mathematical nodes were active. Post-simulation, the wives claimed that knowing where they were going seemed the paramount issue while the men, on debriefing, said they were calculating how much faster they would have to drive to make up for lost time.
Case closed?
Not entirely. On switching positions at the wheel, men's math activity tended to decline, particularly among those who felt they wouldn't be lost if they were driving. Ninety-two percent of the wives asked for help, although it was outside the test parameters, but 8 percent of the women did have increased mathematical activity. None would disclose what formulas they were devising.
There!

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Ms. Auel's Earth's Children series postulates Neanderthals ("Clan" people) actually disposed genetically to a strict division of labor and male dominance, and modern/Cro-Magnon humans (the "Others") more flexible in both choice of tasks and leadership. I had supposed that her object was to show that sexism is not merely reactionary but actually "cave-mannish" in a figurative sense. Maybe she hit on something more!

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I studied some anthropology for a year in Boston (as a side line to graduate psychology) and researched a paper on a then popular theory (also out of Arizona): that early humans had driven the large animals on the north American continent to extinction. Remember that one? Made it to all the popular magazines. But you know what? After a few evenings in the Peabody library at Harvard I had learned enough to find that the same data was better explained by archeo-botanical evidence on the change in vegetation in line with temperature changes.
Today I'd pay special attention to those studies focussing on mental and communication. As a previous comment said, being smarter and able to share knowledge was likely the decisive factor for survival, especially under changing conditions. Military analysts tend to look at logistics and communication capability first. A tank without fuel or ammo, or no clue where to cross the river is worthless.

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Nowadays, very few people outside of the fundie fringe sincerely believe that there is a God-given mandate for male dominance. "Eve ate the apple" and "St. Paul told women to be silent in church and obey their husbands" doesn't cut much ice with the largely-secular majority.

What has replaced it as a convenient excuse for male dominance is what historian Robert McElvaine calls the "Darwin Made Me Do It" excuse. Most secular people would laugh at the idea that a big, bad-tempered supernatural being in the sky told them that men must dominate. However, pour this old wine into the new bottle of sociobiology and it becomes respectable! Men dominate women because it's in our genes, it's Nature's way! Voila!

Biologist Robert Sussman has done a great job of demolishing such ideas in his book "Man the Hunted." Basically, he posits that the ideas of "Man the Hunter," male dominance, et cetera have their roots guess where - in the Abrahamic religions which still suffuse our culture. After all, modern science originated in monasteries and among clerics. That big, bad-tempered, bearded Sky Guy is alive and well in our psyches even if we're secular.

And, when it comes right down to it, why justify male dominance or anything else with "It's always been this way?" The ancient Greeks had slaves - does that mean we ought to? A common medieval cure was to apply freshly killed pigeons to a patient's feet - does that mean we ought to opt for dead pigeons in lieu of antibiotics when we're feeling under the weather? No, and no.

One thousand years ago, the Scandinavian countries were patriarchal and warlike - Vikings. Now they are peaceful, prosperous, and have the highest quality of life and most gender-egalitarian cultures in the modern world. The Swedes and Norwegians didn't say, "We used to be Vikings, so we have to continue to behave like Vikings." No. They focused on the quality of life for their citizens in the here and now, with excellent results. Maybe we'd do well to take a leaf from the Scandinavian book.

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there were very few people. Mankind lived by hunting and gathering. Women died in childbirth all the time. Babies and children died all the time too. Most adults died young. So it was important to have lots and lots of babies to keep the people going. It was important work.

Nowdays we have too many people. And people live longer. So if we are going to have less babies born.... the women need something to do besides give birth and take care of children all their lives.
(still important work-mind you)

Women have always been just as smart as men...but the women were busy with the babies and children. Now they are taking over work that men consider their work.

This scares and angers the men.
So here comes all the figthting. We need to sit around the tribal campfire and figure this all out.
Come, brothers and sister, let us reason together.

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Would anyone in the mainstream media have given any ink at all to a controversy involving a species that vanished eons ago if bashing feminists wasn't involved?

Hold on, I'll call Bill O'Reilly and ask (if he can tear his hands away from molesting his co-workers that is).

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It is odd that this theory made it into large media outlets. It seems that it was for its inflammatory stance more than anything.

I am a neuroendocrinology researcher, and I'm always fascinated by how pop-science talks about gender differences in brain and cognition. The fact is that there are differences between male and female brains- but this has nothing to do with one gender being "dominant" or better or whatever. I have not read the book "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps" but I thought it was interesting that the author of this article said it "attacks womens' brains" - I wonder what it said men "can't do". I certainly hope that the book explains that there is a spectrum of gender differences in cognition, and it's not black + white.

Women have a thicker corpus collosum than men. This is the fiber track that connects both hemispheres of the brain. Because of this, women tend to be better at multi-tasking, and men tesk to be better at focusing in the face of distractions. It's not that one is "better" but they are different. Just one example.

The hippocampus is an area of the brain involved in spatial memory- there are many steroid receptors, and it is thought that this is why there are gender differences in this arena. Men tend to use cardinal directions when navigating, and women tend to use landmarks- maybe this is where the bombastic "women can't read maps" statement comes from. Obviously, it's not that simple.

Some Gender and Brain Differences

This is an article written for non-scientists, it goes into one study in depth, but keep in mind that there are plenty of tasks that women do "better" - if that word can even be used.

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I'm just wondering about all the fascination with Neanderthals. Can't we just be thankful we evolved past the ape stage and not worry about whether gender had any kind of role? I mean, I believe in evolution, but yuck. Just imagining what they must have looked like gives me the shivers, and not in a good way!

Or do we dwell on these nasty creatures because we are scared of moving towards the future? Let's not fear the modern world, people. And also, those who are frightened of women having basic rights probably should be blasted back to our dark and creepy Neanderthal past.

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i recently read a book that in it's introduction, focuses on how the female brain has evolved from the primitive "gatherer" to "hunter/leader" through career and modern day requirements. anyone who is interested:
"The New Feminie Brain"
by Mona Lisa Schultz, M.D., Ph. D.
she basically explains what the physical differences have been between male and female brains and how they work...and how that has evolved through time. it is a VERY interesting read.

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It's all about conditioning - what we are taught - what is expected out of us. Then, there are successes and failures along the way. We are all capable of doing everything, but I also think individuals steer towards certain talents and abilities. Imagine the guy who just wasn't good at throwing a spear struggling to invent something else or modifying his technique and being beaten for doing it because it wasn't the right way. There is danger is justlfying limiting people to roles because of preconceived notions that certain types "cannot" do certain things.

I am female and not only LOVE video games, but excel in their play. I not only read maps well, I was the 20th person back out of 160 in my leadership class in the US army on our land navigation course where we had to not only read a map, but accurately use a compass, a protractor & actually cross terrain, locate a can containing the next map coordinates, and then go from there (against infantry, rangers, clerks, every job category - and I was an administrative specialist). There were only 11 other women - the ratio of male-to-females in 1988 on the surrounding bases.

Oh, but I also have a high sex drive and that isn't supposed to exist in women, either, is it?

Did we evolve or not from Neanderthals? So, does this matter in relation to now or not? Did those women just sit there or did they have to fend off predators? Did they have to go on mini-hunts to feed their young and themselves? Is that not surviving? Does remaining in the cave imply they were passively sitting there? If you've ever been camping in the wilds, you wouldn't be thinking that.

Did we evolve from the year 1500? Did we evolve from 1950? 1980? There will always be those trying to keep us in the cave with whatever justification they can. Unfortunately there are those among us who are willing to be kept there, waiting, starving, (waiting to be fed emotionally, physically, intellectually), for whatever reason. Maybe they are trying to please someone, their spouse, their mommy or daddy, or their god, or just doing what they think they are supposed to be doing.

I'm just glad I have a choice what tribe I hang out with now, (in fact, I have a passing membership in many mini-tribes) that I have the opportunity to learn to hunt and gather for me and mine and that I am amongst those who will share their bounty when I am unable to get my own. When I have an overabundance, I give to other tribes/individuals who may not have found a tribe yet.

Nobody can define you. Find your own tribe.

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In fact, the whole question of whether homo sapiens is biologically hardwired for male dominance (I think it is) is irrelevant to the decision whether males should dominate females, or vice versa, or neither (my opinion), in the sense that we cannot deduce this decision (or policy proposition) from biological facts, or any other facts for that matter.

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No, I am not talking about the article about Neanderthals. I am talking about this one. I don't mind reading things I disagree with, as long they are well written. Propaganda is a fine art and not everybody can do it right and in a good taste. I hardly ever agree with the things Barbara Ehrenreich writes but I also hardly ever argue with her. Her supporters are usually sloppy in one way or another and are just asking for trouble. Her writings are always in a great style - I just have to respect her professionalism and shut up. Barbara Ehrenreich is an awesome propaganda master. The author of this piece doesn't seem to be.

Would anyone in the mainstream media have given any ink at all to a controversy involving a species that vanished eons ago if bashing feminists wasn't involved?

Would the author of this article bother writing if not for an attempt (failed, IMHO) to tie a scientific paper to the World Penis Conspiracy?

The science in this storyline is itself questionable.

Any science is questionable in a sense that it leads to more questions. That's not what the author of this "critique" meant, is it?

Now comes the real question: how many people in this forum actually read the original paper? No, not the one in "Toronto Star" - the one in "Current Anthropology". I am slowly ploughing through it (a lunch here, a quick coffee break there) and so far I have not seen anything wildly unscientific about it. I'll try to finish it after work and try to dig in more detail.

And the main thing: if there were an article claiming that early humans survived because their females were chained to the crib and were forced to have 30 children each - would you see it as an attempt to attack womens' reproductive freedoms? Today? Would anybody (including the oft-mentioned neocons) see it this way? It would be a bit of a stretch, IMHO.

Give it a rest. Write about real issues (without trying to tie them to some entertaining stories about Neanderthals). Then people are more likely to read your stuff. Please, don't give the art of Propaganda a bad name by such sloppy work.

P.S. Nevertheless - thank you for turining my attention to this paper.

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this is a well-written article, in my opinion. States the problem, offers critiques from other professional anthropologists and alternative hypotheses, all of which are conspicuously absent from the articles.

At times I get frustrated with what I see as an illiteracy of evolution and biology within the ranks of feminists because of the fear that it will lead to the "males are hardwired to dominate females and females are hardwired to be dominated" biological determinism, and thus everything "Must" be socially constructed. This protectionist stance is naive and counterproductive at best. I personally believe feminism would be a much stronger, more grounded and coherent movement if it incorporated some key observations from the biological and evolutionary sciences into its framework.

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Save us time and give the link to the cited source article/paper, please.

Somebody once said that if an anthropology thingy comes from UofA not to trust it.... or maybe that was don' trust their pointy-ball team, or was it their cheerleaders... ah hell, mebbe I should've just asked for directions... oh wait, that's what I did by asking about the link.. shoot my coffee spilled.. I just can't multitask... penis conspiracies, vaginalogues, brains.... I'm so confused.

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While the mainstream reporting on this is follows a predictable spin, it would help to listen to what the authors had to say, and what the report actually says. National Geographic has a nice article that gives a much better treatment.

The gist of it is that division of labor was a huge advantage, and that division of labor happened to fall along gender lines. It should also be noted: "We argue that the typical patterns of labor division emerged relatively recently in human evolutionary history," Kuhn [one of the authors] said. This is in opposition to an apparently more widely held belief that the division could date back two million years. The estimate in the report is 45,000 to 10,000 years.

Also in the Nat. Geo. article:

"The scientists point out in their study that gender roles were not always the same in early-human cultures, and there's nothing that predisposes either sex toward certain kinds of work."

"That women sometimes become successful hunters and men become gatherers means that the universal tendency to divide subsistence labor be [sic] gender is not solely the result of innate physical or psychological differences between the sexes; much of it has to be learned," the authors write.

And concluding the article:

Kuhn says his study expands the conversation beyond climate, stone tools, and animals bones to include social factors to explain the Neandertal demise.

"Anthropologists have known for a long time that the ways different human groups cooperate and manage their labor are as important to their success as the kinds of implements they use," he said.

The findings, he added, should not be taken as a justification for the separation of roles for men and women in contemporary society.

"We shouldn't look to the remote past for clues about how we ought to behave today," Kuhn said.


The report and the authors themselves seem rather reasonable. While the MSM may be following the gender bias angle in the tradition of sloppy science reporting, you don't need to trash the study to support your own confirmation bias.

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OMG I must not be a woman and I thought I was. My six children think I am , but I read maps , play video games and can do math. Worse, so do my daughters and one of my sons can cook. Woe is me , I am headed for extinction, I had better tell my 12 grandchildren.

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Feminists and women generally have obviously caused all the problems of the world throughout HIStory - it's a wonder god bothered to create women in the first place.

Why not just club us all to death and quit your whining?

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Unfortunately, feminists seem to believe that the history of male dominated cultures on Earth is more myth than fact, concocted by a male controlled media network intent on maintaining the status quo.

The establishment of male dominance in human societies, however, evolved as a direct response to the life and death challenges primitive people faced on a daily basis in a battle to survive.

Because of their superior strength, males were recognized as more valuable assets than females when a group's survival depended on their ability to trap and/or kill big game, defend themselves against human and animal predators, or eliminate economic rivals (such as Neanderthals).

Males were also highly prized for their breeding potential in an environment where greater numbers of warrior/hunters and gatherer/nurturers translated into better security and more prosperity. As would be expected, a man's ability to sire many children over the course of a year clearly eclipsed a woman's maximum capability, barring the rare multiple birth, of producing one new tribe member per year.

Gender based reproductive differences also provided men with another motive for the subjugation of women: the accumulation and protection of wealth. For example, a poor man, by impregnating the wife of an unsuspecting rich man, could gain access to a fortune after establishing a relationship with the child he produced with the wealthy man's straying spouse. The rich man's rightful heirs could then conceivably see all, or a significant portion, of their inheritance diverted to an imposter being controlled by an outsider.

Since first becoming aware of how a cheating man could gain an empire, and how an adulturous woman could lose one, men have, over the eons, experimented with various methods of protecting their assets, from the use of violence to deter extramarital affairs, to forcing their mates to wear chastity belts during periods of separation, to the creation of laws that define women as the property of their husbands. And in doing so, they have managed to keep in place a universal double standard regarding male and female adultry that exists to this day.

The human race is a continually evolving, intelligent species, capable of acheiving higher levels of spiritual enlightenment, or total self-destruction. Facing the truth about our often brutal history, and focusing on ways to keep history from repeating itself, is not always easy or pleasant. But it offers the best hope for human beings to keep moving forward.

I pray that we will one day reach a state of awareness that will inspire men and women to replace the need to dominate each other with the willingness to cooperate as partners. For the man and the woman were designed, as were the opposite poles of the same battery, to empower each other because of their differences, not in spite of them.

Paul Howard Nicholas
Author of "Extinguishing the Flames of Hell"

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Unless it is for the amusement of the ruling money'd class...

Let's face it. In cave-man times, life was nasty, brutish, and short. In a desperate struggle to survive, no one was worrying about "roles". Women did not "hang out at the cave" like June Cleaver, but were out trying to find food same as the men, dragging the small children along with them. These people were hunter-gatherers. Some were hunting, some were gathering, and all pretty much suffered thru tough short lives. Give them a break and leave them alone. Be glad you live in nice air-conditioned comfort!

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All:

No, "feminism" didn't kill off any Neandertals(note the spelling here, please, it's the preferred one for this prehistoric group). Because, in the first place, "feminism" wasn't invented yet. Be that as it may, Caryl Rivers is right(though wrong in some details). The way this story has been "played" reeks of an antifeminist backlash. Furthermore, the research itself has been criticized by various people. If you want to find out more about the type of criticism the research has engendered, you might want to look in the John Hawks Anthropology Weblong(you can google for John Hawks to find it). This man is a biological anthropologist who is also a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin. I don't know whether he's a "feminist" or not, but I *do* know he is very good at what he does, and he is one of the few people "out there" who care to give Neandertals their due. Caryl Rivers is also right(and archaeology confirms it, that *both* "modern" humans and Neandertals tended to humt the same kinds of game(mostly members of the deer family and horses), and both groups hunted these creatures in much the same manner and equally competently. The differences between Neandertals and "moderns" appears to be in their relative numbers; Neandertals apparently were a much *smaller* population than the incoming "moderns"(Africa appears to have had a larger and more varied population, prehistorically, than anywhere else). Beinig a small, relatively scattered population probably made Neandertals more vulnerable to sudden climatic shifts or shifts in food supply. Similar "catastrophes" have happened in historic times to certain populations living in harsh, erratic climates not unlike those of the Eurasian Paleolithic. Think of various Inuit populations in "traditional" times. There are, in some places, elderly people in Inuit communities who can remember surviving such disasters. This has nothing to do with "feminism"; it's just a fact of life in such places if you happen to be a member of a small population like this. Which is what Neandertals were. Go ask the *real* scientists. Don't listen to these popularizers of stereotypic trash.
Anne G

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I typed "women are better" and "men are better" into Googles News and classified the results:

woman-positive or man-negative
"Women Are Better in Every Way"
"Women are better at saving money than men"
"Today women are better educated than men"
"Women are better at a range of language skills"
"women are better champions of bread-and-butter issues"
"Women are better at fighting corruption"
"Women are better administrators than the men, and we’re more level-headed and frugal in spending"
"Women are better at protecting their income than men with more than one in three (35 per cent)"
"women are better project managers"
"women are better than men at providing value-system based leadership"
"woman are better at looking in their mirrors" (driving)

man-positive or woman-negative
"'Here in the Arab world, we always say boys are better, men are better,'' Samar al-Araj, the women's national team trainer," (4 times)
"she thinks men are better at: introductions" (2 times)
"in the presence of a stereotype that men are better, women tend to underrate their own performance"
"Men are better at come complex mental visualization and pattern spotting"
"women are better at telling fibs" (3 times)

I think the real bias in the media is obvious. Even in the supposedly male-positive statements, all but one were qualified in the article. Samar al-Araj, for example, is an Arab championing female soccer. All the female positive statements are strong affirmations.

For sake of completeness:

neutral
"Its men are better off when it comes to English" (re: Delhi police)
"Declaring that men are better than women can land you in hot water"
"Feminists, on the other hand Kimmel argues, "believe that men are better than that, that boys can be raised to be competent and compassionate"
"squad that Paul Millar has put together, the east Belfast men are better equipped to make a go"
"In this respect the men are better served than the women, with dances that clearly reflect Gable's debt to Frederick Ashton"
"there is little doubt two men are better than one"
"Purdue, their post men are better than their perimeter players"
"Young men are better, this one better still." (with regard to sex)
"women are better represented in systems that use proportional representation"
"It is not about establishing whether women are better than men as mortgage brokers"
"Today, women are better informed and career-minded" (not being compared to men but themselves)
"Russian women are better looking" (compared to Indian women)
"why men tend to do better with tasks requiring more localised processing, such as mathematics while women are better at integrating"
"A lot of women are better role models than the skinny models of yesteryear."

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The ideals of feminism are like the concept of a world without wars: We may desire it because it's the right thing to do. Whatever horrors were acted out by our hoary ancestors need not be our destiny. This has no correlation with modern reproductive rights and equitable pay scales.

Anyone who has raised a child knows that from our very beginnings boys and girls have differences. So what? What do this have to do with creating a just society?

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Neanderthals never died out, they inbred with homo sapiens sapiens.

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First being then consciousness. First "neanderthals" then feminism (or any other -ism). First means of production, then organization of society. Application of our present to the past is already tickling trouble or just desiring meaningless debate. We produce and we reproduce (hopefully); the rest is up to us.

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I think you are missing the point and being led astray by this red herring argument. It is a species ability to adapt to environmental changes that dictates success or failure of the species, not whether it was an egalitarian or paternalistic society or anything else for that matter. Whether we came from large male hunters and stay at home gatherer mothers is irrelevant in today's society. If that is the way it was, then it was that way because it was efficient and it worked... no other reason than that and certainly no guaranty that this arrangement will always work in all circumstances. If this were not the case then the brawney he-man blacksmith type would still be the essence of success in society instead of the real dominant achiever of the day ... the pastey little computer nerd. So instead of worrying about whether men of size and strength should still dominate women, how about looking around and noticing how few jobs are out there for that skill set these days. Anyone think about that being the reason that women are able to compete successfully in the new workplace based on brains, communication skills and abilities to get along in tight quarters with each other? Some of the neanderthals out there are indeed struggling to maintain dominance, but they do not clearly see the enemy to their previous position. Its not women, its the needs and demands of today's changed world!

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