Long described as a helpless creature, crushed under the male yoke, the prehistoric woman was probably not confined to domestic tasks. Who was Lady Sapiens? A recent essay portrays her as powerful, respected, and essential to the survival of the group.
Posted at 3:00 p.m.
Essay, but also documentary and virtual reality experience, Lady Sapiens – Survey of women in prehistoric times uses recent discoveries and ethnography to correct the image that has been constructed of the sapiens woman having lived in the Upper Palaeolithic, that is between 40,000 and 10,000 years before today. Although many unknowns remain, it’s a safe bet that the prehistoric woman was far from the frail character, dressed in a simple animal skin, who is dragged by the hair by a man in The three ages by Buster Keaton (1923).
An invisible woman
“Prehistory appeared as a discipline around 1860 and prehistorians based their model of society and their way of life on those of prehistory. This has caused women to become invisible, ”said Marylène Patou-Mathis, prehistorian and research director at the French CNRS, quoted in the book.
The discovery, as early as 1884, of female statuettes with voluptuous forms (the “Venuses”) also contributed to confining women to a figure of fertility, according to Jennifer Kerner, professor of prehistory at the University of Paris Nanterre and co-author of the book. , with Thomas Cirotteau and Éric Pincas.
“That role, which is perhaps a role that she had, took up all the space and we completely made her invisible from all the other activities without even thinking about the fact that she might have any. ‘others,’ she explains in an interview. Until the 1970s, when researchers opened the debate on the place of these women in daily activities. Since then, technological advances such as microtomography, which makes it possible to establish the sex of a skeleton from the negative imprint left by the cochlea, a small organ of the inner ear, have made it possible to learn more about the occupations of our female ancestors.
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Jennifer Kerner, prehistory teacher and co-author of the essay Lady Sapiens – Survey of women in prehistoric times
An essential provider
Although it cannot be said with certainty that the women of this period took an active part in the hunt, there is no doubt, for Jennifer Kerner, that they were great providers of food, whether by picking or processing grain into flour. “We found, on the Ohalo site [en Israël], a skeleton of a woman who bears traces of wear on the knees and ankles which are characteristic of the back-and-forth activity on a millstone placed on the ground, a millstone which was found on the site. »
Another activity that is certainly known to be practiced by women at this time, she adds, is art. What if the Lascaux fresco had been painted by a woman? We ignore it. “But we can’t say it’s the men either!” “, notes the prehistorian Sophie Archambault de Beaune, in this essay for which she was scientific advisor.
A woman of strong stature
Physically, the prehistoric woman is different from historical reconstructions presented in museums. 10,000 years ago in Western Europe, Europeans had dark skin and blue eyes. Bone analyzes also showed robust upper limbs, suggesting that Lady Sapiens was muscular and athletic.
A woman of power?
We know today that Lady Sapiens was a woman of action. But, can we imagine that she was also a woman of power? The Lady of Cavillon, discovered in the caves of Baousse Rousse in Italy, provides a clue. Died at the age of 37, she was buried with precious objects for the time: a horse bone awl, two fine blades cut in flint and a headdress braided with shells and lined with a hundred canines. of deer. His body was also covered with red ochre. “This burial tells us that this woman was respected enough to have a wonderful burial made for her, notes Jennifer Kerner, but it does not say what her activity was. She could be a shaman, a priest, a chief’s wife or a chief herself. »
Can we therefore conclude that the sexes are equal? “In my opinion, we will never be able to decide this question”, affirms Mme Kerner. ” Can we talk [de la domination masculine] from the Neolithic because we have a lot more skeletons and remains available and there, we see, on the bones, that the women are in poor health, that they have nutritional deficiencies. And men have far fewer health problems. »
Limits and criticisms
Lady Sapiens, released in France last fall, has been the subject of criticism. A group of prehistorians and anthropologists signed a text, published on the website of the Worlddenouncing the partial and sensationalist nature of the approach.
Jennifer Kerner answers that, by its format, the documentary certainly had to evacuate some nuances, but that the book is less peremptory. “Scientific choices were made by Sophie Archambault de Beaune. Obviously, when we make choices in this way, we weave a red thread, we have a discourse. Isn’t there a risk that interpretations will be tainted by the spirit of the times, as happened in the 19and century? It is inevitable, according to her, when one writes a work of popularization.
“There is a review of the book published on the Babelio site which says: “After two centuries of patriarchy, if you have to push the cursor a little bit to make people aware that women were at least a little important all the same, eh well, it is a lesser evil.” I found that clever. »
The documentary Lady Sapiens will be broadcast on March 8 on ICI Explora.
Lady Sapiens – Survey of women in prehistoric times
Thomas Cirotteau, Jennifer Kerner, Eric Pincas
Multimonde Editions
256 pages