News from nationalgeographic.com: Were the First Artists Mostly Women?

by Virginia Hughes

Three-quarters of handprints in ancient cave art were left by women, study finds. This overturns the dogma that the earliest artists were all men.

Archaeologists have found hundreds of hand stencils on cave walls across the world. Many researchers have proposed that they were made by male hunters  because many of these early paintings also showcase game animals—bison, reindeer, horses, woolly mammoths.
Women made most of the oldest-known cave art paintings, suggests a new analysis of ancient handprints.  Archaeologist Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University analyzed hand stencils found in eight cave sites in France and Spain. 

He compared the relative lengths of certain fingers as according to John Manning’s work women tend to have ring and index fingers of about the same length, whereas men's ring fingers tend to be longer than their index fingers. Snow's study determined that three-quarters of the handprints were female.

Experts expressed a wide range of opinions about how to interpret Snow's new data. Some experts are skeptical. Other researchers are more convinced by the new data.

The new work raises many more questions than it answers. Why would women be the primary artists? Were they creating only the handprints, or the rest of the art as well? The question is why these ancient artists left handprints at all.
 

 Difficult words:

ancient ['eɪn(t)ʃ(ə)nt] древний

arch(a)eologist [ˌɑːkɪ'ɔləʤɪst] археолог

cave [keɪv] пещера

convince [kən'vɪn(t)s] убеждать

determine [dɪ'tɜːmɪn]  устанавливать

game animal охотничье животное

interpret [ɪn'tɜːprɪt] объяснять

overturn опровергать 

propose [prə'pəuz]  предполагать

raise a question поднять вопрос

showcase ['ʃəukeɪs] демонстрировать

stencil ['sten(t)s(ə)l] узор 

wide range of opinions широкий диапазон мнений