National Geographic broadcasts Sunday, May 22, at 9 p.m., the documentary
Prehistoric Women
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Two years of work were needed to collect and use the evidence.
It was discovered that women hunted and could be important and respected individuals.
An observation far from stereotypical images.
"To speak of prehistoric women is to lift a taboo", launches Sophie Janneau.
It took two years of work for the documentary she produced on the subject to see the light of day.
It will be broadcast Sunday, May 22, from 9 p.m., on National Geographic and will follow Clothilde Chamussy, videographer with a degree in archeology who seeks to “blast the myths about prehistoric women.
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It is thanks to Marie-Antoinette de Lumley that the question of gender has become a concern for many researchers.
At the Musée de l'Homme, she resumed research on the "man from Menton"... who turned out to be a woman.
Current technologies make it possible to learn much more about skeletons, in particular with the study of ancient DNA and that of teeth, true identity cards of an individual.
Many studies are thus reviewed and reworked in relation to the question of sex, as is currently the case for the famous Lucy.
As the documentary shows, prehistoric women also hunted.
They could also have important roles and be respected within groups of individuals.
We can assess this degree of importance in relation to the richness of their burials.
The lady of Vix is a perfect example of a woman with power: it was possible to establish that she belonged to an elite because of the preciousness of the objects found next to her body.
We are a long way, as Marie-Antoinette de Lumley would say, from the stereotypical representations that “prehistoric man pulled his wife by the hair.
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"Competence is not necessarily linked to sex or age"
“Those who studied the material decided that there was a gendered division of labor, but the problem is that it was not really highlighted.
They simply compared the behavior of the hunter-gatherers who remained, that is to say those of Amazonia, underlines the historian Marylène Patou Mathis.
There is always a tendency and ethnologists have had the same to think that it is the same thing everywhere.
Well no, you have to think "other", "different", other systems based on competence.
Competence is not necessarily linked to gender or age.
We must rethink societies differently and rely on evidence.
Sexism would therefore not be the work of prehistoric men but of the researchers of yesteryear.
Clothilde Chamussy ensures that in the field of archeology, things have changed.
"I did not necessarily have this very gendered and traditional education, on the contrary our teachers always offered us different hypotheses", says the one who finished her studies six years ago.
At the time when her older sisters were studying, we did not ask ourselves the question: “In the books we saw men who carved flint and women who swept the cave”, testifies Marylène Patou Mathis.
Many discoveries still await the scientific world, which evolves with society.
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