506
The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong
(www.scientificamerican.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
506 points (82.9% liked)
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We have a lot of marathon data. There is a large, consistent difference showing the opposite. This article is horrendously unscientific, so many claims, assumptions, and over summarizing and simplifying
Author does address this, btw. I still think it's a bad argument. I just couldn't fathom that they would say this and not further clarify.
they make claims and assumptions to address it, they dont really cite anything. Shit like this "The inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports." is a hypothesis, but it is not being stated as one, it's being stated as fact. It's a testable hypothesis, they could have controlled for the variable of pace setting runners that they bring up by only looking at statistics of running events that do not have this variable.
And like, the whole premise could be true, that women were also hunters, modern runners with modern sports medicine arent ideal evidence, that kind of endurance might not have been needed for their hunting, women are still humans and humans have the greatest running stamina of any animal. But besides capability, ancient humans also could have had roles determined by sex, it's at least prevalent in other apes like gorillas. Either way is possible without more solid evidence and it's pretty crazy to say one way or another is scientifically true.
I actually dont think testing this hypothesis is as easy as you think. You can't just control for social biases when analyzing marathon data because these social biases are longitudinal. At a young age, women quickly learn from modern society that they are physically inferior to men. Because of this, the best bet for testing this hypothesis is to look at ancient societies, because these societies are largely independent from our modern society.
I mean, it's also unlikely to be true. The difference between male and female bodies is the equivalent of years of high end steroid use.
If you wouldn't let a man who had taken steroids for a decade and still takes them compete with other men, then you already acknowledge the biological advantage men have over women at physical sports.
I mean we also see a lot of what I would define as "outlier behavior" from men more generally. We see crazier olympic world records being set and broken, we see higher rates of suicide and violent crime, that sort of shit, which I'm personally kind of interested in figuring out the reason for. If you took some theoretical "average" man and some theoretical "average" woman I think they'd probably be a lot closer in terms of strength and stamina and shit than comparing athletes of different sexes to one another, I think the gap would be smaller.
They would not. Testosterone is a hell of a drug.
The difference between the average man and the average woman is the same as the difference between a man who's been taking steroids since he was 12, and an average man.
Estrogen is also a hell of a drug... It's actully a point in the article that people give testosterone too much credit and estrogen not enough credit when it comes to how they affect the physique.
Your argument being founded on the effects of testosterone is not a good one...
It's nothing compared to testosterone.
For example I am an average height and weight guy. I had never gone to a gym in my life, but at 25 decided to start powerlifting with some friends for fun. Within 3 months I was already lifting nearly as much as the world record lifts by women in my weight class.
I started going to my university powerlifting competitions, having lifted for less than a year, and was definitely lifting poorly compared to the other men, but I out-lifted every woman there most of whom had been training for years.
I don't think you understand the average difference in strength between men and women, it's rather large.
I don't think I'm arguing against your evidence. It's your idea that this difference in men and women's strength is simply explained by a difference in testosterone. This claim does not nullify the questions posed in the article.
Both biology and the environment play roles in defining people's personality and physique. Higher testosterone is only a piece of biology's role, but it's only loosely related to environment's role. It's not an unreasonable hypothesis to claim society's artificial rules placed on women might have had an effect on women's physique through things like sexual selection. This is why scientists still explore these things.
Testosterone is a hell of a lot of the explanation though. When people inject more testosterone they get a hell of a boost to muscle development and strength.
Although past sexual selection may have led to women being smaller and having less testosterone and ability to develop muscle mass, it does not change that women are indeed smaller and have less testosterone and ability to gain muscle mass than men, leading to the average woman being slower and physically weaker than the average man. My replies have been directed at the assertion earlier that men only hold records because of outliers, and the average man and woman are close in strength and speed, but that is just not true.
In that case, there may be a flaw in argument. Your anecdotal story doesn't disprove their point. The moment you started powerlifting training for 3 months, you've already became stronger than the average male. Most men on Earth don't do any sort of strength training, and it's not unreasonable to think that these men are not much stronger than the average woman.
And most women on Earth don't do any strength training, and are much smaller than the average man.
Hell I was way stronger than the vast majority of women I knew well before I started any strength training, my point was a few months of training had me on par with the strongest women in the world in my weight class.
They point to women's impressive performance in extreme distance events, like 100+ mile ultra marathons.
But that runs head long into the question of "How far do you have to actually chase an animal for it to collapse from exhaustion?" I'm having a hard time finding hard numbers but I don't think gazelle have the endurance to run 10+ miles before collapsing. So women may be biologically equipped for ultra-long distances, but I don't see how this correlates to endurance hunting as that advantage doesn't play out hunting game.
That's not to say the basis for the theory on male hunters/female gatherers is not without flaw, but the arguments being made against it don't seem to really be citing evidence that backs up women being significant, let alone dominant, in that role either.
It took me literally less than a minute to google and disprove that claim in this 'article':
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathons_at_the_Olympics#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DIn_2020%2C_both_the_men%27s%2Cby_Tiki_Gelana_in_2012.?wprov=sfla1
This article is not scientific, its simply an opinion piece and should be treated as such. And honestly I don't even think it was a good opinion piece. And why is it hosted on Scientific American?
Because if you say things like this enough, people believe you
Men tend to be taller, so I'd think longer limbs are an advantage. I don't pretend to know anything beyond that.
1.Wikipedia is not a scientific source.
I found this study that seems to support their point.
"Men Are More Likely than Women to Slow in the Marathon"
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263585668_Men_Are_More_Likely_than_Women_to_Slow_in_the_Marathon
I can't read the article so unfortunately don't have the grounds to agree or disagree with you. But I'd be carefull voicing my option like this when your only source is Wikipedia and isn't speaking about the claim you are trying to disprove.
Edit: incase anybody is interested in reading some more real evidence instead of Wikipedia, this study goed deep into mens vs womans endurance and highlights a few problems with research focusing on males as the baseline.
Sex Differences in VO2max and the Impact on Endurance-Exercise Performance
Lmao, that wikipedia article has better listed sources than this so called 'scientific article' which, incidentally, has none...
What're you talking about? The study linked has 43 references and has been cited 140 times. It even has their method and approach pretty clearly stated right at the start of the paper where they outline where they gathered their data from. Did you click the wrong link or something?
It doesn't even have a list of sources that I can find. Where did you find it in the linked article ?!
So this is the link in question:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263585668_Men_Are_More_Likely_than_Women_to_Slow_in_the_Marathon
And you don't see a research paper with citations?
Here's a screenshot of the end of the paper that displays the links to the citations and references:
Here's the full abstract as well just for further clarification:
Wtf are you stupid, this isn't the linked article in this thread? Did you just link some random study?
This is the article from the above comment you replied to. Like literally a few comments up from here.
https://lemmy.world/comment/5428995
Yeah and I'm talking about the article in this post, you know from the comment thread were are in... 🙄
That's very unclear from your reply above. Do you always act so condescending when people seek clarification? Because even this short conversation with you has been challenging. Perhaps try to be a little less of an asshole. It would be easier to clear simple communication issues especially when you use pronouns and the antecedent isn't really clear.
Yes, especially when people start lecturing me that I'm wrong when they haven't even made an effort to understand the issue at hand. All just to prove that I'm so wrong and they're so right.
Happens more often than you think and I really don't like it.
Right so change it. People are going to meet hostility with hostility. If you approach every conversation from an advsarial position you'll get a lot of "I'm right and you're wrong" and "lecturing" from the other side. If you had simply clarified that your vague statement was about the original article, and not the one linked in the comment you replied to, then we could've walked away with a positive interaction...
Right, or just make an effort to read up on the conversation.
More likely to slow from their original pace, but they still finish much faster.
And men have much better ultra-marathon records than women as well.
I think, better phrased, men as marathon and ultramarathon outliers tend to do better than women, but in terms of ultramarathons, I think women tend to do better on average. citation needed obviously but that's going off the top of the dome.
Men are faster than women in a marathon because they can maintain a pace for longer without slowing, that's called endurance.
I can't believe the superior endurance of men can even be up for debate, but clearly no one does enough exercise anymore for the self evident to reveal itself.
Endurance is not speed. If I can go 4 hours at 5 miles per hour before I have to take a break to rest and you can go 2 hours at 10 miles an hour before you have to stop, you'd be much faster than me in a 2 mile race. But that doesn't have anything to do with endurance.
Why are you changing 2 variables. Endurance is your ability to perform at a certain level for a period of time. Kipchoge has more endurance than me because he can maintain my 800m pace for 26 miles. Speed is literally only a consideration for sprinting. As soon as you're performing past that, it's all endurance. And when we look at all tests of endurance; iron man, ultra marathon, military fitness, triathlon, etc etc. Men come out on top.
Who gives a shit if you're still running full speed of your full speed isn't fast enough to keep up on the first place?
In the longest ultramarathon, which is 3,100 miles, men have beaten women by days every single year: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Transcendence_3100_Mile_Race
TLDR Male 40 day 9 hours, Female 45 days 12 hours. *Nearly 123 km per day.
they're the ones that specified marathons!