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Prehistoric women had stronger arms than elite female rowing teams do today thanks to the daily grind of farming life, researchers have revealed, shedding light on their role in early communities.
The study of ancient bones suggests that manual agricultural work had a profound effect on the bodies of women living in central Europe between about the early neolithic and late iron age, from about 5,300BC to AD100.
The results, published in the journal Science Advances, reveal that while the arm bones of women from the neolithic to the late iron age showed variations in strength, they were stronger than those of rowers, football players, and non-athletic women for their left arm, and the latter two groups for their right. Indeed, the neolithic women had arm bones about 30% stronger than non-athletic living women.
“We really saw them standing out through that first 5,500 years of farming, just really consistently stronger arm bones than the majority of the living women, including the rowers,” said Macintosh. “Medieval women had much weaker arm bones than those previous prehistoric women; they looked a lot more like modern, recreationally active women.”
While grinding grain using stone tools was likely to be a key factor in boosting women’s bone strength, the researchers add that other strenuous occupations including pottery making, planting and harvesting crops, and tending livestock could also have contributed.
[Ed: Not to mention carrying babies before there were cribs and prams.]
Source: Prehistoric women’s arms ‘stronger than those of today’s elite rowers’ | Archaeology | The Guardian
Life was physically demanding for paleolithic women and men. There was no transport, probably prior to horse domestication, walking everywhere always.
Neanderthal women were probably stronger again. Stockier and even more heavily boned.
Horticulture developed about the end of the last ice age, which was aprox 10 000 years ago. Earliest signs are PNG with 8000 year old drainage systems.
land clearing with stone axes would put any sport based fitnessed into second place.
I am amazed when I think back to these, our ancestors, developing modernity one tiny advance at a time.
For 200 000 years we had lived as hunger gatherers and then in a huge rush we built modernity over only 10 000 years. From nothing. It really is revolutionary.