Majority Of Ancient Cave Wall Handprints Were Made By Women
Majority Of Ancient Cave Wall Handprints Were Made By Women
October 16, 2013
Using a technique that can tell the gender of the person who left handprints on a cave wall based on various hand measurements, a Penn State anthropologist has discovered that the majority of these markings were made by women.
Experts had long believed that these cave handprints, whether they were actually paint-dipped prints or stenciled, were made by men because the majority of other images on the walls typically depicted hunting scenes. Smaller handprints were believed to have been made by teenage or pre-teen boys.
Ten years ago, UK biologist John Manning attempted to use the relationships between a variety of hand measurements to determine a number of different characteristics (including sex) of various individuals. In the new study, emeritus professor of anthropology Dean Snow adapted Manning’s hypotheses to handprints left in cave sites in France and Spain.
“Manning probably went way beyond what the data could infer, but the basic observation that men and women have differing finger ratios was interesting,” the professor explained in a statement. “I thought here was a neat little one off science problem that can be solved by applications of archaeological science.”
More:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112976185/cave-painting-handprints-made-by-women-101613/
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