In thinking about our bodies, our selves, or the past of our species, it is difficult to disentangle our engrained cultural perspectives and values from what we are trying of observe and understand. Our own upbringing supplies the meanings we unconsciously impose on the "facts." In the past century and a half, Western culture has been in the throes of a re-evaluation of gender roles and their meaning. 150 years ago, males were highly privileged and occupied dominant positions in society; since then, in parts of Western culture, at least, something more akin to equality of the sexes has emerged. In this recent painting of a Neanderthal social group, the artist has shown a mature female, her child hanging on her hip, taking the lead in distributing the meat of an ibex to the group. As women become more recognized as leaders and significant contributors in the present, it becomes easier to imagine them playing such roles in the past. 

What was the past really like? It can be highly misleading to project the views and issues of our own times onto the past. We have to construct our views of the past, carefully and scrupulously, from the evidence that survives.