By David Futrelle
He said the thing! I always enjoy it when I run across an example of the exact very thing I’m mocking in the title of the blog: some dude claiming that men today deserve a grateful “thank you” from the women of the world because, in the old old old old old days cave men (allegedly) hunted mammoths to feed their lazy cave wives sitting idly at home eating prehistoric bon bons and dreaming of cave Chad.
Never mind that this is, anthropologically speaking, nonsense; in hunter-gatherer societies everyone works and it’s the gathering, not the hunting, that provides most of the calories. And never mind that there’s no clear evidence that men were the only ones who hunted. Or that whoever hunted back then (everybody?) probably mostly hunted much smaller game that was less likely to gore them to death with their mighty tusks.
Anyhoo, today’s Dude Who Said the Thing is ranting YouTube misogynist Warcorpse666 — real name Dave Nordahl — who presumably earned the right to that internet nickname by besting Warcorpses 1 through 665 in hand-to-hand combat. His recent rant on the subject was brought to my attention by the guy who does the Angry White Men blog, which is incidentally very good. Take it away, you big woolly beardo:
I swear I didn’t hire him to say that as some sort of sneaky guerilla marketing scheme for the blog.
Warcorpse666 is not the first person to SAY THE THING. In addition to the anonymous internet rando who provided me with the name for the blog, there have been many others over the years, some of whom I’ve covered here. Enjoy these MAMMOTH CLASSICS featuring ACTUAL MAMMOTHS.
You Nagged Us to Hunt the Mammoth to Feed You: A new variation on an old misogynist tall tale
This one deals with a slightly more novel thesis:
We Extincted the Mammoth to Male-Genocide You
Enjoy! I’m going to go eat some meat that I did not personally hunt.
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Gave me a giggle when it popped up. No idea what he were actually trying to say – I got a bit distracted, as evidenced by my reply on that thread
Warcorpse666 sounds like the name of some black metal fanboy who takes himself way too seriously.
@Shadowplay
Whenever I hear the term nu-male, I can’t help but think about nu-metal. Now I’ve got “Blind” by Korn stuck in my head.
And speaking of ridiculous takes on ancient history, how about Donald Trump as a fascist caveman?
From what I’ve heard, among stone-age tribes which survived until relatively modern times (and in some cases, still exist) the only tribes which men hunted exclusively are the approximately 20% of tribes which relied almost exclusively on big-game spear hunting. In others, men and women often hunted differently, or discouraged women but weren’t willing to waste obvious talent. Among cultures which heavily used horses or dogs for hunting, it wasn’t unheard of for most of the hunting to be done by women. There’s no reason to assume that ancient stone age tribes had less variety of methods than modern ones.
It is not believed that mammoths were hunted with spears, as that would have been suicidally dangerous. One theory is covered pit traps followed by throwing rocks at their heads. Even children can help with that, to some extent. Or maybe they just chased off predators and scavengers, cut off some big chunks quickly and left, like some African tribes still do today. But regardless of how they did it, smart hunting doesn’t always need big muscles.
Actually Women by being selective of their mates made sure the best hunters got the most kids. In every generation there are men who don’t measure up and yes Men who are resentful they don’t measure up this might be the first generation though where a large number of men seemed to have given up, organized and are whining about giving up.
But they don’t seem to be doing anything constructive about it.
Also dear Warcorpse666, not only would this not make male privilege justified, even if it was true, but modern humans, ( aka Homo Sapiens ) never fought mammoths with just sticks and rocks. Our ancestors, male and sometimes female ( yes women could hunt if need be ) fashioned thins like spears out of rocks and wood which they would carve into in a long rod, that they could throw great distances at their prey. You make it sound like our stone age ancestors just picked up sticks and rocks and I don’t know what, poked them mammoth to death with them?
I hear you. To be fair, there are way worse songs to have in your head. Some by the same band even. IMO ‘Blind’ still kicks some ass. A lot of other nu-metal… Not so much.
Anyway, my first thought whenever THE THING!(tm) pops up is still this (provided it is not the film from the 80s):
I had to re-watch that snippet immediately, because I was distracted by the Back to the Future shirt. Surely “Onwards to the Past” would be more fitting?
For the most part, I wish I had a better imagination so that I could come up with a convenient fairy tale about what women did in prehistoric days to justify whatever I think of the present since this is clearly a good and smart thing to do.
@Snowberry
If I remember correctly, I think the Atlatl was also used as a hunting tool at some point of early human history and may been used to hunt bigger and/or faster game, while mitigating the obvious limitations and dangers of just using a spear by hand.
So I suppose outside of traps, the Atlatl would have made hunting big game somewhat safer. Though of course given that fact, and granted this is admittedly conjecture on my part; women of early human times could also use it to hunt bigger game alongside men…. so no matter how Warcorpse666 and his ilk slice it; their line of reasoning and “logic” are untenable on more grounds than they even realize or care to even admit, assuming they bother to do so to begin with.
@Things Come Undone
The manosphere in a nutshell.
Female privilege is earned — but yet to be enjoyed — because women gave birth to (almost) everyone, according to self-styled ambassador.
@Battering Lamb
Well, it is one of the better nu-metal songs. A lot of nu-metal was rather misogynistic (looking at you, Limp Bizkit).
I think it’s traditional at this stage to mention that most anthropologists believe that mammoth hunting wasn’t especially dangerous. As evidenced by the contemporary lack of mammoths.
It has been noted before that in Siberia, hunters appear to have just taken the choice cuts of meat and abandoned the rest. Hardly the behaviour of people who have risked life and limb to eat.
And some new evidence from Mexico where they appear to have been even more picky.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/07/mammoth-trap-mexico-prehistoric-hunting-pits
Boo! Poor animals; environment, health…. etc.
Not surprising.
A 300 lb hog takes two or three people most of a day to completely process. That’s with nice, sharp steel knives.
A mammoth weighed 400 times that, neatly wrapped in skin about an inch thick, all hidden under long, tough hair. No way you’d be able to cut it up completely before it either rotted or froze so solid your stone knives and axes would be shattering.
The dudes totally an idiot.
But YOU, c’mon, don’t you have anything better to do than write online about defending women’s rights??! Most real men are busy at work, going to client meetings, buying houses, doing woodwork projects, learning to ride motorcycles. Doing ACTUAL things.
Stop trying to make a world difference (and not making any) and go out and make a smaller difference to your own life and those you love. Trust me, taking the time to visit your lonely grandma instead of writing this article will make more longterm difference in the world – she’ll remember it forever and these readers will forget what you had a blog in 3 years.
Citation needed.
@Things Come Undone
November 25, 2019 at 12:25 am
I’ve been on the internet a little while now, and I seem to have developed this little tic. Whenever I see a post starting with the word actually I swear my eyes start rotating pre-emptively…
Augh, I think I’ve sprained my goddamn eyeballs.
This is not how human reproduction works. This is not how hunter-gatherer bands work. This isn’t even how women work.
I would imagine herding mammoths off a convenient cliff probably happened. The Blackfoot people who lived in what became Alberta used that tactic against the bison, one such site being memorialised as Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.
@Alan Robertshaw
Roadkill venison is pretty environmentally sound, and is relatively healthy as far as meat goes.
Curiously, it doesn’t seem to be very popular.
I have no idea about the actual gender breakdown of prehistoric labor and of course, neither does anyone else. But it seems to me from the standpoint of man-hours, hunting the mammoth is cake compared to butchering and cooking it.
But whatever Thog the caveman did, this guy has yet to hunt me so much as a frozen pizza. Get your own patriarch provider points and quit bogarting, pal.
Someone needs to post a gif from that guy from the office when he’s going “oh my god, it’s happening!” cause that’s how I feel every time they bring up the mammoth
Also speaking of misogynist rants, I got to tell you guys about my research project for my ancient Greece class. My topic for it right now is what women’s role was in Ancient Greece society. Which is pretty difficult because I only one main sources from woman she was the only who’s writing we have. Everything else about women seems to be from the male gaze. I have to 99% of my sources as a biases source. But there was the one dude, who wrote this long spew of a “poem” if you want to call it that. It reads like a reddit post for one thing. It’s like an ancient mra, mgtow, or incel viel post. He talks about all these different horrible types of women and one bit in the dude is straight up upset that women feel more then one emotion and he called them two face because of this. literally the line is like “one day she’s smiling and the next she could be angry and women are false because of this” and while reading this I feel like I’m commenting on this dude’s dumbassness because I’m like “wow women feel more then one emotion and it can change day by day, it’s almost like she’s a person.
And then there are long bits of rants about fat women and the first read through I was “did I get on reddit form, what am I reading.”
@ Lainy
You can probably get some material in regards to Spartan women. That’s moderately well documented both contemporaneously and in modern texts.
@ pie
Round here it would mainly be people looking at their phones; so probably the same.
@Lainy
Well I guess people with more than one emotion are confusing to mra types, who are angry every day.
@Warcorpse666
I think you forget that the men who hunted mammoths had daughters as well as sons. Why would only male descendants get to claim the mammoth revenues?