The recent discovery of a 4,000-year-old bronze axehead in the village of Zengpiyan, in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of south-east China, has highlighted a significant development in the understanding of gender roles in the Bronze Age. The axehead, which dates from around 2,000 BCE, was inscribed with the characters for “man” and “woman,” suggesting that the society of the time had a developed sense of gender representation. This is believed to be the oldest example of gender representation in a material object ever discovered. The discovery provides a fascinating insight into the social dynamics of Bronze Age society and provides a valuable record of an ancient culture that has been lost to time.

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source: Phys.org