What if Women Were the True Architects of Human Evolution?

It’s time to talk about the missing chapters of our origins

Prehistoric hand paintings at Cueva de Las Manos in Santa Cruz, Argentina, ca. 13,000–9,000 years ago. It’s estimated that three-quarters of ancient cave art was done by women. Image licensed via Shutterstock.

Life on Earth first emerged in the oceans around 3.5–4 billion years ago. Anatomically modern humans have existed for only about 300,000 years — a mere blink in evolutionary time.

The story of how we got here and when we truly became human is certainly one of the most fascinating and debated chapters in our history. But, unfortunately, it also frequently overlooks something — or rather, someone — quite fundamental: women.

For decades, paleoanthropologists and other scientists have credited males, and males alone, with the major evolutionary changes of the past few million years, ever since our ancestors diverged from apes. From the stories of Man the Hunter and Man the Toolmaker to Man the Thinker and Man the Warrior, we were told that men drove human evolution forward, while women simply sat back, ate berries, and admired them in awe. All the work of creating, sustaining and caring for life is rarely, if ever, even considered in these grand theories of humankind.

This isn’t just an odd oversight considering that without reproductive labour, none of us would be here — literally — but also because among mammals, it’s typically females who first respond to environmental…