Could it mean that gender was something so obvious and useful as a concept that early people, while trying to figure out the world around them and how it all fi

Could it mean that gender was something so obvious and useful as a concept that early people, while trying to figure out the world around them and how it all fits together, just naturally extended the idea to just about everything? It doesn't really make sense to anthropomorphise things once you're an adult, but I bet everyone can remember trying to figure out the world as a kid and just assuming things are of similar nature as people. I think that even languages which currently don't have gender forms of words, like English, still have the concept psychologically firmly embedded in the culture. The generic "cat" is more female than male. The "tom-cat" is only male. A "rock", I'll bet, is also subconsciously male, and a "river" more female than male. It's all there, even if not explicit in language. OTOH, it's not really universal, different languages assign gender pretty much randomly - but they do assign it. Social determinism and radical neutrality go against the grain of this "making sense of the world" phase of development, and probably don't result in a practical world-view.