With our time machine, we will turn back the clock: 8,000, 10,000, 12,000 years ago. Twelve thousand years ago, humans lived in bands of 20, 30, or 40 people who lived at the ocean edge collecting seaweed and shellfish from the tidelands, the area between high and low tide.
Women were more suited to gathering food in cold water than men. This is because women have a higher temperature gradient from the skin to the body core and can maintain a constant body core temperature in cold conditions. In addition, women have more subcutaneous fat than men; this acts as an insulator and helps them stay warm.
Anyway, the women did the food gathering–being women; they also did the food preparation and childcare. Since these were matriarchal societies, women directed activities and allocated resources.
So what about the men? What did the men do? Not much, but every once in a while, the menfolk would get together and tell the womenfolk, “We are going on a hunt.” The women reply, “Good idea, go on a hunt.”
Three or four days later, the men would return looking forlorn, looking at their feet. The women would say, “Hunt not successful?” The men would nod their heads and agree. Finally, the women would say, “Never mind, food will be ready soon. We can talk about it after eating.”
Now we will use our time machine to take us to our present time. We need to be careful. Eight thousand years ago, men devised weapons and used them to subjugate women. Massacres, witch trials, mutilations, and plenty of other bad things happened. Finally, we get to our present era but overshoot by 10-20 years into our future.
In this near-future era, women are the primary breadwinners because of their superior initiative, organizational ability, and better education. However, besides their workload, women are still expected to do the childcare, the housework, and the cooking.
What about the men? They are largely sitting on the couch playing video games. But once in a while, a man stands up and says to his woman, “I am going on a job hunt.” The woman replies, “Yes, good idea, go on a job hunt.”
Three or four hours later, the man would return looking forlorn, looking at his shoes. Finally, the woman would say, “Job hunt not successful?” The man would nod his head and agree. Then, the woman would say, “Never mind, dinner will be ready soon. We can talk about it after eating.”
And that is the history of human civilization in five minutes.
I was inspired by watching too many Discovery Channel documentaries about the Neolithic time period. I did not like the heavily male-centric stories. I tried to work out a female-centric narrative. I apologize to those who react to my sharply gendered tale. Life along the ocean shore is based on two self-published e-books by William Bond: The Origins of the Mermaid Myth and Mermaids, Witches & Amazon (lulu.com). Various sites of old settlements on the coasts of Africa have piles of discarded shells the size of small hills. Here is a paragraph from The Origins of the Mermaid Myth:
Gathering food in water and wetlands is a very ancient way of life, far older than farming, and goes back millions of years to our earliest ancestors. Unfortunately the picture drawn by scientists about our ancestors is very heavily biased towards men. They talk about hunter/gatherer societies, where men are the hunters and women the gatherers, but as science is dominated by men they are generally only interested in the hunters, and women are hardly mentioned. But field studies on hunter/gatherer societies that survived until the 20th century show us that the vast majority of food was gathered by women. Hunting with spears or a bow and arrow has always been a very unreliable way of obtaining food, because most animals can easily outrun human hunters.
The line about video games was deliberately provocative. But I did have one hospital nurse exclaim "That is my husband!" Of course, the link between hunting 12,000 years ago and contemporary job hunting is my own, and is designed to be humorous.