Sometimes I'm wondering about humans who lived in the prehistoric era (talking about the hunter-gatherers more specifically). Many questions come to mind. For example - What were they doing all day? The answer you'll get is probably something like this: ''searching for food in the area until it's empty. Then they move on to a new location and do the same thing again. The men are hunting for food, woman are collecting stuff like fruits and taking care of the children''. But who knows that the last part of the answer is the truth? It's prehistory, not written down anywhere. It's something we are expect to happen but we don't know for sure. Perhaps the roles were different? I think it's very interesting to imagine about life in the prehistoric era.

This is a discussion thread about the prehistoric humans. I look forward to what all of you have to say about this topic.

Depends on what you call "prehistoric era", because for me, the 1700s are like prehistorical times

The only reason why I think it really was that way is because in all other posterior eras it was this way, meaning it was the legacy of our ancient times. Just like in times of the Romans, for example, we still used the same weapons (though empowered via the newly discovered materials), so it's only logical to think they inherited the social status of our ancestors.

What I'm not so sure about is if all the human tribes of that era followed this status. We all know the examples of the Amazons, so why not. And of course, I'm sure that not ALL men were hunting nor ALL women were recollecting fruit, because even at that time, some beings were gifted with higher strength, stamina or other qualities, also applied vice-versa with beings not so gifted. Unless they all followed the example of Sparta, getting rid of the "unusable" beings, which would set a parallelism with other animal species.

We will never know for sure, but I support the idea of not all men doing what they were supposed to do and vice-versa. In all known eras, there are documented cases of women taking spots that should belong to men by the era's standards, and if there aren't documented cases of men taking spots that should belong to women is because society wouldn't accept it (or at least is what can we deduce of today's society).

Cave art from prehistoric people is the closest suggestion to what they possibly did. Just from knowing they did cave art lets us know that was possibly one of their recreational activities. Also, prehistoric humans didn't really have individual jobs before the Neolithic Revolution when the specialization of labor really kicked in. Other than that, prehistoric humans would sharpen their weapons as past time.
Humans in prehistoric times represented a bit more of  a struggling to survive than modern day since if the hunters/scavengers/gatherers didn't get a good hunt, they would go hungry for the day and their resources were limited compared to modern day because agriculture didn't develop yet and domestication of various useful animals(such as horses) were still in development. I would also like to point out that scholars also believe that people in prehistoric societies lived in a generally more egalitarian social structure. This part is pretty interesting but I will leave that up to discussion in its role in society and how it changed. 

I don't have much more than anecdotal evidence because I'm not going to go find my resources and quote them.

Look at life in every culture around the world today.  For the most part, and this is across a diverse population of people, from South Americans, to Asians, to Europeans, to Africans, etc, etc, but the for the most part, women are in charge of raising the kids and men do the other 'work.'  Heck, I can't name many species of mammals where the father takes care of the kid and the mother simply runs off to go do other things and ignore babies when they're born.

1.  Women feed the kids.  I imagine prehistoric humans, Homo habilis and Homo Erectus are going to be experienced with breast-feeding their young as a method of nourishment.  Infants eat every 2-4 hours.  As they get a few months older, it stretches out to 4-6 hours but that doesn't provide a lot of time for a mother to go off and hunt, which may take days.

2.  After a year or two, children are often weaned from breastfeeding but they have, usually, a much stronger connection with their mother, who's assuming the duties of raising them and teaching them social norms and expectations within their clan, group, tribe, or whatever you want to call it.   

3.  Studies show babies and small children respond more positively to higher pitch in vocal tones and voices.  So the higher pitch of females is going to give them more comfort, going to catch their attention sooner, and going to make them respond.  Back then, a yelling mother may have saved a five year old from a predator, like a big cat, or an angry hippo instead of saving a kid from running out into the street and getting hit by a car.


I think even though it was a different time and we wouldn't recognize what pre history humans were doing exactly, the gender roles would be similar to what we see today.  Genders, across Life, are job-specific.  Humans are the only ones who've really developed culture so we blur the lines.  If you look at any other animal group, the genders have exact jobs and responsibilities the animals take without knowing what they're doing.  Pre Historic humans didn't have the developed culture we do, so they probably fell into the gender standards known by the rest of the animal kingdom.