Invisible Women in Prehistory and Paleoanthropology (and
Invisible Standards in Publishing) For many 20th-century
decades, the Killer Ape and Man the Hunter theories were all the
rage in explaining the trajectory of human prehistory.
Anthropologists and popular science writers -- males, that is --
put forth scenarios about how humans became human because men
grooved on aggression or went off big-game hunting in
cooperative groups, and in the process kick-started serious
intelligence for the whole species. Raymond Dart and Robert
Ardrey are remembered even today for celebrating, in various
ways, the male and the bloodthirsty. The Man the Hunter theory
had staying power, even into the peace-loving, consciousness-
raising 1960s. Women scholars, though, did respond. In the
1970s, anthropologists Adrienne Zihlman and Nancy Tanner rode
the pendulum swing of Woman the Gatherer, Woman the Tool
Inventor, reversing the superiority equation in favor of
females. Supported by data from hunter-gatherer peoples and
other pri