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(Image source: National Geographic / Dean Snow)
BY LOGAN TITTLE
Turns out, all that crafty cave art thought to be from men commemorating their epic kill
— might be the work of women.
A new study by Dean Snow, an archaeologist from Pennsylvania State University, shows
most of the oldest-known cave art paintings were made by women. (The History Channel)
And it's all because of this.
Hundreds of hand stencils have been found on cave walls across the world next to paintings
of commonly hunted animals. (YouTube / BoilerPlateFilms)
And since men usually were the ones to bring home the bacon, or bison in this case, many
researchers just assumed it was men who drew up their meal plan afterward. (Via Daily Mail)
But after taking a closer look at several caves in France, Snow found one significant
difference between prints.
See, about a decade ago, biologists found men have thea different hand structure than
women. Men's ring fingers tend to be longer than their index fingers, whereas women's
ring and index fingers are roughly the same length.
Snow told National Geographic 32 of the prints he found in the caves were much more pronounced
in their differences than those of today's men and women and he found 75 percent appeared
to be from women.
Snow explained, "[Usually] it's men that do the killing. But it's often the women who
haul the meat back to camp, and women are as concerned with the productivity of the
hunt as the men are. It wasn't just a bunch of guys out there chasing bison around."
But this still doesn't fall short of skepticism.
A writer for the Smithsonian reports another researcher looked at the palm-to-thumb ratio
of hand prints in caves and concluded most of them belonged to teenage boys.
That same researcher also pointed out to National Geographic one thing that was found quite
frequently in caves that women probably wouldn't be painting too often — other naked women.