Women -- England -- History; Women -- Great Britain -- History
While the men gave themselves wholly to hunting, the women went about
their domestic pursuits. To them was assigned the making of such
scanty clothing as was imperatively required in the cold season; for
though the crude carvings of the time invariably represent the hunters
as naked, it cannot be concluded from such evidence that clothing was
not worn at all. The extremely serviceable reindeer sinews served the
women for thread, and a thin reindeer prong, pierced through at the
thick end, made a satisfactory needle. The skins were simply sewed
together at the edges, without shaping, but with apertures through
which to pass the head and arms. The women devised many ornaments;
these consisted of amulets and necklaces made of bone, ivory, and
shells, which, shaped and polished, they painstakingly punctured and
fastened together in long strings for the decoration of their necks
and arms. Apparently, it was not customary to wear foot covering of
any kind, as the feet of such skeletons of this period as have been
found are so symmetrical as to preclude the probability of constraint
during growth. The men may have worn some form of foot covering
when engaged in such exposed work as spearing the seal in the winter
season; but the women, who remained in shelter during the severities
of the winter, did not avail themselves of any such protection. The
fact that gloves were worn by men seems to be established by some of
the rude etchings of the period, for in them such articles appear to
be discernible.
The sanitary condition of the homes of these hunting tribes was of the
worst description; the offal and refuse were thrown at the very doors
of the cave, there to decay and poison the air. The caves themselves
were smoke-begrimed and foul, for house cleaning had not yet entered
into the economy of woman. While, by reason of their simple, open-air
life, they were a vigorous race, the ills to which the cave-dwellers
fell a prey, the injuries they suffered in warfare or from the attacks
of wild beasts, or the diseases contracted through unsanitary living,
must have been sources of great dread to them, as they were without
any medical knowledge of which we have trace. When the women,
particularly, became too sick to perform their allotted tasks, they
were carried out to die or to become the victims of savage beasts; but
this was only one of the inevitable phases of an existence that was
replete with tragedies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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