Study Finds Neolithic Women had Stronger Arms Than Today's Rowers

A new research from the University of Cambridge indicates that prehistoric women had stronger arms than even elite female rowers do today.

According to the researcher Dr Alison Macintosh, prehistoric women had such strong bones because they used to grind grain. Other occupations such as pottery making, planting and harvesting crops and tending livestock also contributed to their strength. These women also started working at a young age, found the research. Although they were seated, they used their arms repeatedly many hours a day. The research looked at ancient bones of women living in central Europe between the early neolithic and late iron age, which was from around 5,300 BC to AD 100.

Bone strength declines over time:

The strength of the women’s arm bones dropped over time, because more technology which eased manual work came about. Medieval women’s arm bones were as strong as the average women today.

“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.” 

Even male leg bones declined in strength over time.

Early men who were farmers had the same strength as professional runners today. “Then this really progressive decline though time in bone strength, down to what you see in living sedentary undergraduate students at Cambridge.”

Women have been doing rigorous work over thousands of years:

• The study also says that comparing women’s and men’s bones is not a good way to understand how much work women did compared to men because men’s bones respond differently to physical activity.
  
  

  The findings are significant because they throw light on how women have been doing rigorous labour over thousands of years and that’s really been underestimated, says Macintosh.

• The study also says that comparing women’s and men’s bones is not a good way to understand how much work women did compared to men because men’s bones respond differently to physical activity.
• “It suggests that women were doing a huge range of things,” Macintosh says. Some might have had very strong leg bones because they walked a lot, tending to grazing cows and fetching water over long distances, while other women might have been more sedentary, grinding grain all day to make flour.
• “This kind of work just highlights the role of women in the development of life as we know now,” Macintosh says. “We all pretty much live in agricultural societies now. And these couldn’t have developed without all of this manual labor done by women over thousands of years.

So for all those who say that historically women did not work, let’s hope that this research proves them wrong!

Also Read: Yugal Joshi Goes Back In Time For Tales Of Women Warriors