Yet Another Discovery Upends The Myth of Prehistoric Gender Roles

<p>&lsquo;The silent past has been made to speak,&rsquo;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43831770" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">wrote Irish archaeologist</a>&nbsp;Hodder Michael Westropp in 1872, at the height of the Victorian era, enthralled by the developments in a brand new science: archaeology.</p> <p>Yup, our vision of human prehistory &mdash; the time before written records, hence referred to by Westropp as &lsquo;the silent past&rsquo;&mdash; is relatively recent. Only our past wasn&rsquo;t exactly&nbsp;<em>freely</em>&nbsp;allowed to speak back then. Or for another century or so. Instead, it was archaeologists&#39; and historians&rsquo; preconceived ideas about gender that shaped how we interpreted everything from ancient burials and clay sculptures to cave paintings.</p> <p><a href="https://medium.com/the-no%C3%B6sphere/yet-another-discovery-upends-the-myth-of-prehistoric-gender-roles-df1d18972492"><strong>Website</strong></a></p>