The conventional wisdom prehistoric men treated women like cattle took a big hit in a new study that claims sexual equality might have been an evolutionary advantage for early humans.
A study by a research team from the University College London shows ancient hunter-gatherer societies might have turned to egalitarianism, or the belief all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities, to improve their chances for survival.
Egalitarianism might even have been one of the important factors that distinguished human ancestors from primate cousins such as the chimpanzees.
The study claims sexual equality may have proved an evolutionary advantage for early humans since it would have formed wider-ranging social networks. The study suggests equality between the sexes might have been a survival advantage and played a key role in shaping human society and evolution.
The study contends that in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, men and women tend to have equal influence on where their group lives and who they live with. These findings challenge the belief sexual equality is a recent invention.
It leads to the conclusion sexual equality has been the norm for humans for most of their evolutionary history.
"Sexual equality is one of an important suite of changes to social organization, including things like pair-bonding, our big, social brains, and language, that distinguishes humans," said Mark Dyble, an anthropologist who led the study at University College London. "It's an important one that hasn't really been highlighted before."
"There is still this wider perception that hunter-gatherers are more macho or male-dominated. We'd argue it was only with the emergence of agriculture, when people could start to accumulate resources that inequality emerged", he noted
The advent of agriculture seems to have ended this gender equality. Dyble said agriculture meant settling in one place and this change increased the selfish behavior among men.
"Men can start to have several wives and they can have more children than women," he said. "It pays more for men to start accumulating resources and becomes favorable to form alliances with male kin."
The study noted that when only one sex influenced the process of moving to new locations, which is typical in male-dominated pastoral or horticultural societies, tight hubs of related individuals emerged.
"When only men have influence over who they are living with, the core of any community is a dense network of closely related men with the spouses on the periphery," said Dyble. "If men and women decide, you don't get groups of four or five brothers living together."
Sexual equality is one of the important changes that distinguishes humans. It hasn't really been highlighted, said Dyble as quoted by The Guardian.
Sexual equality might have proved an evolutionary advantage for early human societies since it would have fostered wider-ranging social networks and closer cooperation between unrelated individuals.
"It gives you a far more expansive social network with a wider choice of mates, so inbreeding would be less of an issue," said Dyble. "And you come into contact with more people and you can share innovations, which is something that humans do par excellence."