Author does address this, btw. I still think it’s a bad argument. I just couldn’t fathom that they would say this and not further clarify.
they make claims and assumptions to address it, they dont really cite anything. Shit like this “The inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports.” is a hypothesis, but it is not being stated as one, it’s being stated as fact. It’s a testable hypothesis, they could have controlled for the variable of pace setting runners that they bring up by only looking at statistics of running events that do not have this variable.
And like, the whole premise could be true, that women were also hunters, modern runners with modern sports medicine arent ideal evidence, that kind of endurance might not have been needed for their hunting, women are still humans and humans have the greatest running stamina of any animal. But besides capability, ancient humans also could have had roles determined by sex, it’s at least prevalent in other apes like gorillas. Either way is possible without more solid evidence and it’s pretty crazy to say one way or another is scientifically true.
I actually dont think testing this hypothesis is as easy as you think. You can’t just control for social biases when analyzing marathon data because these social biases are longitudinal. At a young age, women quickly learn from modern society that they are physically inferior to men. Because of this, the best bet for testing this hypothesis is to look at ancient societies, because these societies are largely independent from our modern society.
I mean, it’s also unlikely to be true. The difference between male and female bodies is the equivalent of years of high end steroid use.
If you wouldn’t let a man who had taken steroids for a decade and still takes them compete with other men, then you already acknowledge the biological advantage men have over women at physical sports.
They point to women’s impressive performance in extreme distance events, like 100+ mile ultra marathons.
But that runs head long into the question of “How far do you have to actually chase an animal for it to collapse from exhaustion?” I’m having a hard time finding hard numbers but I don’t think gazelle have the endurance to run 10+ miles before collapsing. So women may be biologically equipped for ultra-long distances, but I don’t see how this correlates to endurance hunting as that advantage doesn’t play out hunting game.
That’s not to say the basis for the theory on male hunters/female gatherers is not without flaw, but the arguments being made against it don’t seem to really be citing evidence that backs up women being significant, let alone dominant, in that role either.
