Prehistoric women were hunters and artists as well as mothers, book reveals

French book and documentary coming to the UK in September seeks to debunk the simplistic division' of gender roles

From academic works giving women a supporting role to hunter-gather men, to Raquel Welch's portrayal of a bikini-clad cavewoman in the 1966 film One Million Years BC, the gender division of the stone age is firmly entrenched in public consciousness.

While men strode out to spear woolly mammoths, women, as mothers or exploited objects of male desire, sheltered in caves from the violent world, according to an understanding said to be increasingly removed from the latest research.