Hands of the ancient women were far worse at the hands of the athletes
Everyone is interested in how people lived thousands of years ago, what have been the culture was maintained life and was there any other physical ability. The last question is answered by a new study that analyzed the bones of the hands of women living 6,000 years in Europe and modern women.
An investigation has been opened to determine how to behave in ancient society, but opened up brand new frontiers of understanding of the place of women in that time. As shown by numerous analyses, in the hands of women of that time were much stronger than the hands of modern athletes rowing due to the constant physical stress. Prior to this, usually equal to the difference between the men and women of the time, or between ancient and modern men, scientists from Cambridge University say that this is why they may have underestimated the stresses women of the time.
“This is the first study that actually compares the prehistoric female bones with the bones of the living women,” says Dr. Alison McIntosh, lead author of the new research: “Interpreting women’s bones in women specific to the context, we can begin to see how intense, variable and time consuming was their workload, hinting at the hidden history of women’s work for thousands of years.”
The Macintosh team used computed tomography to study the leg and arm bones of women who lived about 7,000 years ago, and women who lived from 1500 to 500 years ago. Then the scans were compared with the results of computed tomography of modern women’s rowing team at the University of Cambridge.
The study showed that while the strength of the bones of the feet were comparable to the strength of modern women athletes, and the bones of the hands were stronger at 11-16 per cent, while if we compare the figures with the usual women, that the bones of the hands of the ancient women is stronger at 30 percent. Women who lived about 4000 years ago the arms were a bit weaker, only 9-13% stronger than the hands of women working in professional rowing.
“We can’t say what specifically, but the load caused the load on the bones that we found,” says Mackintosh: “However, one of the main activities in early agriculture was the transformation of grain into flour, and it probably came from women. For millennia, grain was ground manually between two large stones, called saddle. In the few remaining societies that still use saddle, women ground grain to five hours a day. Repetitive actions for hours can be similar to a reciprocating motion of rowing.”
But Mac said, that is hardly women’s work was limited to one task, as the women were still quite a lot of responsibility for the manual planting of crops, tillage, harvest, food, water, women milked cows, processed wool and skins to make clothes.
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