Walking in Circles

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TLM

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Nov 16, 2019
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Vantaa, Finland
There are huge assumptions about gender roles in pre-history :)
Hmmm ... might be totally wrong but I think the few present day hunter-gatherers were used as a model there.

Depending on the landscape the womens gathering distance might actually be several klicks or in much less in dense forest but in both cases fairly good navigation ability is advantageous. I would not underestimate the skills required but then again I am not a victorian gentleman explorer. ;)
 
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Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
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McBride, BC
I think of the intense salmon harvesting done every year here in the Pacific Northwest by the resident First Nations people. They are settled. They have their tribal resource territories. There's a defined Heiltsuk fireplace of charcoal, dated to be 14,500yBP. I'll guess they have been at this for a while. Even the great forest garden harvests of potatoes!!! Funny thing = genetically identical to a Peruvian variety.

The gentleman explorers don't and didn't know squat about the division of labor even in such harvests.
 

Ystranc

Nomad
May 24, 2019
477
359
55
Powys, Wales
Re gender assumptions, my other half can get lost in a supermarket but went to London on her own recently and seemed to be able to orientate herself well enough to get around and get home safely even though she avoids the tube..it seems we all have it in us if we keep calm and pay attention to our surroundings.
 

Broch

Life Member
Jan 18, 2009
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Mid Wales
www.mont-hmg.co.uk
It does depend on where you are though. I get completely lost navigating around sub-terrain monster/shooting games because I don't take any notice of the visual clues. I'm fine, and consider myself to be a good navigator, out in the rural and wilderness open, but much less so in built up areas. This missus copes much better in the structured urban environment than I do.
 

TeeDee

Full Member
Nov 6, 2008
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Exeter
Yep, there is no evidence that 'men' were the path finders at all (not sure how you would find that evidence in archaeology to be honest). There are huge assumptions about gender roles in pre-history :)

Fairly huge assumptions about what gender roles are Post history also.
 
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TeeDee

Full Member
Nov 6, 2008
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Exeter
It does depend on where you are though. I get completely lost navigating around sub-terrain monster/shooting games because I don't take any notice of the visual clues. I'm fine, and consider myself to be a good navigator, out in the rural and wilderness open, but much less so in built up areas. This missus copes much better in the structured urban environment than I do.


Different topic and scenario I appreciate but I have no idea how difficult it must be for initial underwater cave system explorers it must be to successfully ' map ' a new system , even with the use of guidance lines the constant changing of light positions and moving shadows along with re-entrant points and changes in levels must make it a mental nightmare.
 

TeeDee

Full Member
Nov 6, 2008
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Interesting new DNA analysis of a recent Neanderthal 'family' find, suggests that 'females' were the travellers and left their communities to build new families :)


Is there anything to say that these females weren't taken from other communities via force ? :- " One explanation for this is a steady influx of females from different Neanderthal communities, Skov says. Modelling from the team suggests that the patterns observed in genetic diversity would occur if more than half of women in small communities were born elsewhere
 

Broch

Life Member
Jan 18, 2009
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I know, we have to read this kind of 'research' maintaining an open mind whilst accepting it as a 'possibility'.

TBH, that's how I treat everything I've not observed with my own eyes :)
 

Erbswurst

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Mar 5, 2018
4,079
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Berlin
When they were guided by women, no wonder that they ended up in Siberia.

:cigar:

Didn't just a few decades ago the women left the own family and entered the families of the men, took even their family names, moved into the house of the husband?
These scientists should dig out the last own ancestors and would find pretty similar sensations.

It's obvious that orientation skills are mainly a question of training. But men are usually better in it than women so far I see. May be inborn, may be education, who knows?

But if you think about how they lived in the good old times it's very likely that men needed to develop better orientation skills than women who surely didn't leave the closer area around the cave. There were always little children to look after and that surely wasn't done by the stronger men.

And if you just think about how much work it is to keep a fire going and cook some food, nowadays with modern axe and motor chaine saw and easily available food, you understand that being housewife was a full time job, even without laundry and ironing handkerchiefs.

Once we realised after a few days that we had landed by canoe in a nature reserve.
I looked around and saw how we had cleaned up the ground. No firewood left in a circle of 50 meters after just 3 days in hot summer weather!

If you live permanently in one and the same cave you have to carry your wood over pretty long distances. If you haven't a Husquarna or Stihl service point next by of course.
 
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nigelp

Native
Jul 4, 2006
1,417
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New Forest
newforestnavigation.co.uk
“It's obvious that orientation skills are mainly a question of training. But men are usually better in it than women so far I see. May be inborn, may be education, who knows?”

Complete nonsense - you must surround yourself with men of a similar viewpoint.
 
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Broch

Life Member
Jan 18, 2009
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Mid Wales
www.mont-hmg.co.uk
It's obvious that orientation skills are mainly a question of training. But men are usually better in it than women so far I see. May be inborn, may be education, who knows?

I suggest you do some broader research rather than just believe Elizabethan tripe - maybe start with 'The Gendered Brain' by Professor Gina Rippon.

There's a huge difference between social practice and capability/ability.
 
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Erbswurst

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Mar 5, 2018
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Berlin
So, it's only education and training and nothing else if we talk about orientation?
 

Kadushu

If Carlsberg made grumpy people...
Jul 29, 2014
868
945
Kent
Back in 2020 I got a piece of steel swarf embedded in my eye, right in front of the pupil. Contrary to what comic books and Marvel movies had led me to believe, I was not imbued with a superhuman ability to see magnetic fields.
 
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