Teeth study shows sexual division of labour among Neanderthals

Neanderthals divided some of their tasks according to their sex, says a new study which suggests women in the group may have been responsible for fixing garments while men made stone tools.
The study analysed 99 incisors and canine teeth of 19 individuals from three different sites (El Sidron in Asturias, L'Hortus in France, and Spy in Belgium).
Researchers found that the dental grooves present in the female fossils follow the same pattern, which is different to that found in male individuals.
All Neanderthal individuals, regardless of age, had dental grooves, researchers said.
"This is due to the custom of these societies to use the mouth as a third hand, as in some current populations, for tasks such as preparing the furs or chopping meat, for instance," said Antonio Rosas, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) researcher at the Spanish National Museum of Natural Sciences.

"What we have now discovered is that the grooves detected in the teeth of adult women are longer than those found in adult men. Therefore we assume that the tasks performed were different," Rosas said.

Researchers also analysed tiny spalls of the teeth enamel. Male individuals show a greater number of nicks in the enamel and dentin of the upper parts, while in female individuals these imperfections appear in the lower parts.
It is still unclear which activities corresponded to women and which ones to men.
However, the authors of the study noted that, as in modern hunter-gatherer societies, women may have been responsible for the preparation of furs and the elaboration of garments.

Researchers said that the retouching of the edges of stone tools seems to have been a male task.
"Nevertheless, we believe that the specialisation of labour by sex of the individuals was probably limited to a few tasks, as it is possible that both men and women participated equally in the hunting of big animals," said Almudena Estalrrich, CSIC researcher at the Spanish National Museum of Natural Sciences.
The study is published in the Journal of Human Evolution.