MessageToEagle.com – Through the ages, women have suffered greatly because of wars.
To protect themselves and their offspring, our female ancestors may have evolved survival strategies specific to problems posed by warfare, according to Michelle Scalise Sugiyama of the University of Oregon in the US.
Sugiyama analyzed traditional war stories from 45 societies across the world, handed down for generations by word of mouth, including tales from various North American Indian tribes, the Eskimo of the Arctic, Aborigine groups of Australia, the San of Southern Africa and certain South American tribal societies.
However, she focused her study on ancient women’s wartime experiences instead of men. According to researcher, ancestral women developed certain strategies to increase their odds of survival and their ability to manage their reproduction in the face of warfare.
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“These included manipulating male behaviour, determining whether the enemy’s intent was to kill or capture them, and using defensive and evasive tactics to sidestep being murdered or to escape captivity,” said Michelle Scalise Sugiyama from the University of Oregon in the US.
“Consequently to protect themselves and their offspring, our female ancestors may have evolved survival strategies specific to problems posed by warfare,” Sugiyama said.
Sugiyama studied a sample of forager and forager-horticulturalist societies by looking at archaeological and ethnographic research on lethal raiding.
This helped her to compile a list of five ‘fitness costs’ – ways, in which warfare impedes women’s chances of surviving and reproducing.
These occur when a woman is killed, a woman is captured, her offspring is killed, a mate is killed or captured, or an adult male kinsman is killed or captured.
It is called ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ – first named by Nils Bejerot (1921–1988), and refers to a group of psychological symptoms that occur in some persons in a captive or hostage situation.
This motivates acceptance of the situation and reduces attempts to resist the captor — which may ultimately increase a woman’s chances of survival.
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