Parish’s former supervisor, the brilliant Barbara Smuts, incorporated bonobos into a new thesis which proposed how, over the course of human evolution, this unusual degree of gender inequality came about. She pointed the finger at our ancestors’ gradual switch from hunter-gathering to intensive agriculture and animal husbandry. While cooperation on hunts gave men the possibility of controlling food resources, women’s contribution to foraging limited this control. The smaller plots of land associated with the switch to intensive agriculture and animal husbandry, however, limited women’s
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