In general, the physical and intellectual differences between man and
woman were vastly less in primitive days than in our society. Among all
the peoples, living in the state of savagery or barbarism, the
differences in the weight and size of the brain are slighter than among
the peoples in civilization. Likewise, in strength of body and agility,
the women among these peoples are but little behind the men. This is
attested not only by the testimony of the ancient writers on the peoples
who clung to the mother-right. Further testimony is furnished by the
armies of women among the Ashantees and of the King of Dahomey in West
Africa, who distinguished themselves by special bravery and ferocity.
Likewise does the opinion of Tacitus on the women of the old Germans,
and Caesar's accounts of the women of the Iberians and Scots confirm the
fact. Columbus had to sustain a fight before Santa Cruz with an Indian
skiff in which the women fought as bravely as the men; and we find this
theory further confirmed in the passages from Havelock Ellis's work,
"Man and Woman," which Dr. Hope B. Adams-Walther deals upon in Nos. 39
and 40 of the "Neue Zeit." He says:
"About the Andombis of the Congo, Johnson relates that the women work
hard as carriers and in other occupations. All the same, they lead a
perfectly happy life. They are often stronger and more handsomely built
than the men; not a few of them have positively magnificent figures.
Parke styles the Manynema of the same neighborhood 'fine animals,' and
he finds the women very stately. They carry burdens as heavy as the men
and with equal ease. A North American Indian chief said to Hearne:
'Women are created for labor; a woman can carry or drag as much as two
men.' Schellong, who published a painstaking study on the Papuans of New
Guinea in the Ethnologic Journal, issued in 1891, is of the opinion that
the women are more strongly built than the men. In the interior of
Australia, women are sometimes beaten by men out of jealousy; but it
happens not infrequently that it is the man, who, on such occasions,
receives the stronger dose. In Cuba the women fought shoulder to
shoulder with the men. Among some tribes in India, as well as the
Pueblos of North and the Patagonians of South America, the women are as
tall as the men. Even among the Arabians and Druses the difference in
size is slight; and yet nearer home, among the Russians, the sexes are
more alike than is the case among the western Europeans. Accordingly, in
all parts of the earth there are instances of equal or approximately
equal physical development."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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