Our pre-hominin primate ancestors were broadly herbivorous, relying on either foliage or fruits and nuts and the shift in dietary breadth during the Paleolithic is often considered a critical point in hominin evolution.
That's straight out of wikipedia.
We still have the teeth of omnivores. Not carnivores. Early humans are a lot more than the meat from large game. The bulk of their food came from other sources.
Tubers, nuts, flowers, certain leaves, grasses and grains, fruits, fish, small animals, birds, eggs, insects, grubs, etc. All of those things would have been gathered and processed by women.
Women provided the bulk of what became meals.
There is also evidence that some women also hunted large game. What kept women from hunting was small children. You can't exactly follow game for miles and miles with a small child back at the cave. But childless women or young, unmated women absolutely hunted.
This doesn't diminish the contributions of men with hunting activities. The benefits extend beyond food (furs, marrow, and sinew for example).
This narrative that cave women would have starved to death without the manliness of men to go out and bring them food is not a good look for men. It's stupid on the face of it and I can't believe so many of you grasp at this so readily.
Women have not changed so much between then and now that they would have sat in a cave too afraid to go outside, waiting on big strong men to come back and feed them, to go outside and look for eggs, put in a fishing basket, collected some fruit and nuts, or picked up a turtle to feed her kids.
Number 1, they don't shut up till they get fed and all that racker attracts predators.
Number 2, hunting Woodley mammoth and rhinos with spears is dangerous. Things go wrong. Things happen. Once a hunting group has left for a hunt there's no guarantee they're coming back. Life goes on. You don't wait to see if they come back to make care of yourself and your children. It's just not a good long term survival strategy.
Evolution works both ways.
