The discovery of a 9,000-year-old female skeleton buried with what archaeologists call a “big-game hunting kit” in the Andes highlands of Peru has challenged one of the most widely held tenets about ancient hunter gatherers — that males hunted and females gathered. this young woman was a big game hunter, who participated with her people in the pursuit of the vicuña and deer that made up a significant portion of their diet. Reseachers looked at 429 burials in the Americas from about 14,000 to 8,000 years ago and identified 27 individuals whose sex had been determined who were found with big game hunting implements. Eleven were female and 16 were male. females were about 30 to 50 percent of the big game hunters.
— source nytimes.com | Nov. 4, 2020