Paleontologist and science historian , Claudine Cohen is the author of "Women of origins. Images of women in Western prehistory " , Editions Belin- Herscher , 2006. Interview.
How Lucy lived there more than 3 million years ?
- Nobody really knows how Australopithecus lived , whatever their sex! These are very ancient hominids widely bipeds . According to their teeth, they were vegetarians , feeding on seeds , fruits also , perhaps insects or small animals. They probably used projectiles and broke stones to use the sword. Because of its bipedalism , Lucy had certainly lost the signs of oestrus ( ovulation visible ) . So we can assume she had a permanent sexuality, unlike apes who have periods of rut ( olfactory traces , vulva projecting ... ) inducing fights between males for access to females on the day of the ovulation . We now know that the loss of estrus led to a profound transformation of gender relations . Is this a reason to conclude that Lucy lived with the family, there were couples? This is another story ... But if you believe Darwin, it may be that very ancient times, it is the woman who chose partners , and not the reverse !
You write in "Woman of the origins " Lucy perhaps will one day be renamed Lucien . Simple joke?
- It is not improbable. Lucy was put forward as a kind of female icon , at a time when feminists fought to improve the image of women and their struggle ancraient into the Paleolithic . Until then, this was the man who was the glory of the prehistoric research. And now in 1974 , a Franco- American team ( co-led by Donald Johanson and Yves Coppens ) falls on this exceptional skeleton of an ancient hominid, but into small pieces. The evening of his discovery , he was baptized Lucy (mainly in reference to the Beatles song ) .
To a woman's new heroine of prehistory, it was a revolution?
- Yes , and what a stunt ! However, its skeleton scattered in hundreds of bone fragments , was hardly be readable at first glance ! Two criteria are essential to recognize sex. The first is the slenderness . And Lucy , adult skeleton, measuring 105 cm. Is she a woman? We do not have much basis for comparison , and until today, the sexual dimorphism of this species is discussed . The second criterion is the structure of the basin , that of a woman who has given birth shall keep enough to let the head of the child . But in Lucy was a skull less than 500 cm3 ... This criterion is not very relevant. And can be stored doubt on her sex.
When hunting grows, being male or female exchange still gives ?
- Big game hunting ( mammoth , bison ... ) develops later, from the Upper Palaeolithic ( - 35,000 ) . But at the time when men began to eat meat , there are about 1.5 million years , it is not said that hunting has played the key role we give it. This was demonstrated American archaeologist Lewis Binford in the 60s , before feminists seized on the topic . By studying some sites dismembering or very old butcher, he deduced that Homo habilis was a scavenger or ergaster ( he eats dead animals already killed) before being a hunter! This thesis is far from wacky and can bring women back to the front of the stage. Exit the heroic and brave hunter! All individuals in a group , men, women, teens can participate in the butchering and gathering !
The model human hunter would an ideology among others?
- This is a model that was developed in the 50s, after the war , and wanted instead to wring the neck of ideologies , including racist past . Some American anthropologists, as Sherwood Washburn , focused on hunting as a model of human evolution . Hunting responds very well to this: it allows the manufacture of tools , it induces a division of labor between hunters , develops cunning, selflessness, endurance racing , reveals social skills , physical, intellectual . Better still, the man who brings the game can thus grant sexual favors of women remained in the cave. It is a model that works well.
The problem is that one who acts, who becomes intelligent, who goes into the distance ... it is man alone! It was the best part . Women, it is completely dropped, totally passive , with a multitude of brats attached to her breasts . It is not far from the clichés prehistorians 19th century. Moreover, this Manichean vision provoke angry reactions among American feminists who then seek to build a completely inverse model : the hunter is set aside , women dominate the group , raise children , provide for food, s ' interested in plants ... a model deserves another , especially when the evidence is scarce. But the feminists of the 70s was quickly spread to other buildings deemed more "reasonable" .
Cro -Magnon is the archetype of prehistoric man , manly , hunter, artist ... A Myth?
- Cro- Magnon is the Upper Paleolithic man . His skeleton was discovered in 1868 at a time when prehistoric science strays , not without difficulty, the biblical narrative . But it also conveys the prejudices of the bourgeois and patriarchal society of the 19th century. Cro- Manon is the man with a big H , which comes from the East there are some 40,000 years old, but still nomadic settled in some places of inactivity and has a thriving business : painting , sculpture, picking . He lives in a structured society , with rules . It is he who triumphs over Neanderthals . It is the modern man very large, robust. The Cro-Magnon woman , she is totally obscured . But the Cro -Magnon burial served not only the famous " old man ", but also to four other people, including a woman. The man became famous , his companion remained in the shadows. And fantasies are going well ...
Just next to this archetype of virility, sapiens woman she was not a sex object?
- The image of Cro- Magnon dragging his wife by the hair to tumble to the bottom of the cave does not hold water. Those who forged this image in the 19th century may have taken some Australian ethnographic examples eternally rehashed ... They also evoked the practice of exogamy , which is for men to remove a clan to go , sometimes violently , women outside the group . But the men who painted Lascaux and Chauvet caves belonged to structured social groups , with rules , rituals , techniques and refined artistic productions . It is unlikely that they spent their time savagely raped their women ... Prehistoric art in its erotic dimension , with painted or carved into the rock or statuettes opulent forms vulvas probably contributed to these fantasies . Especially in a Victorian society where sex was taboo.
His place was so close to the fire , taking care of children - Nothing is less certain! The cult of fertility misbehaves road in a society of hunter- gatherers . This is what we have seen in the current similar groups having many children is incompatible with the nomadic and it is vital to control as much as possible births . It was only later , with the settlement and agriculture, the need to have many children arises. But suppose the woman remains cloistered in his shelter near the fire . Was passive so far ? Soil habitat was discovered remains small tools stone . Why women are in they would not be served ? Why would they not been able to make (the force is not essential for stone cutting ) ? Nothing prevents either of having an artistic activity. At the moment , a whole controversy develops around any traces of hands - women ! - Near caves .
Division of labor , manufacturing tools , and perhaps even artistic activities ... the Cro-Magnon woman is not that we believe ?
- The prehistoric science has evolved . American feminists , who had seized the prehistory in an ideological goal, put a lot of water in their wine. But denouncing Androcentrism , they paved the way for further research . Today a number of archaeologists seeking to track the woman on archaeological sites. To find the woman , and understand its role, it must first get it!
Interview by Corinne Bouchouchi
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