The French newspaper "Le Monde" dated January 11 2006, published an article on a research made by Jean-Michel Chazine, member of the French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS) about the probable gender of some prehistoric artists.
The research was conducted on negative hands. It is linked to an anatomical difference between the relative finger length between men and women. Statistically, the length of the forefinger is slightly inferior to that of the ring finger in males whilst it is about equal in length in the case of women hands. This sexual dismorphism was first studied by Pr John Manning of Lancashire Central University.
The hypothesis made by Pr Chazine is that prehistorical populations had a similar anatomical characteristic, hence one could deduct with a relativeley good probability that some of the negative hands were women's hands. Interestingly in the sample analysed by Pr Chazines, the male/female proportion in the negative hands is about equal.
The sample was taken from the Gua Masri II cave, located in Borneo. The negative hands were ated about 10K BP.
During a preliminary study made on Cosquer cave negative hands, the proportion of female hands was even higher but this is limited to those hands that had a complete set of fingers as indeed many hands had shortened fingers (the reason for thes shorter fingers is unknown so far).
Yours sincerely.
Paul
Paul,
Thanks for bringing this up. Quite interesting. I juts read the “Le Monde” article (which, by the way, can be found
HERE) and was surprised not to find in it a reference to the research carried out over the last few years by Dale Guthrie (University of Alaska, Fairbanks) on the same topic.
Yours,
Jacques
