-Did a peaceful matriarchy once rule the earth?

[interested34]

Cecil,
In your article Did a peaceful matriarchy once rule the earth? , you excluded native american societies, pre- western contact. Many had matriarchal and matrilineal societies.

[mswas]

Cecil,
In your article Did a peaceful matriarchy once rule the earth? , you excluded native american societies, pre- western contact. Many had matriarchal and matrilineal societies.

But not many of them were peaceful. A lot of the time what happened was that the women ruled the roost at home and managed the day to day logistics while the men focused on being the warriors.

[Der Trihs]

To my knowledge matriarchies have been very rare. And as mswas points out, women having power doesn't make a society peaceful; the idea that women are anti-war is a modern Western conceit. "Come back with your shield or on it", to quote the mothers of Sparta.

[JRDelirious]

Courtesy link. (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2742/earth-mother-has-there-ever-been-a-true-matriarchal-culture) Cecil skips citing some specific examples of instances of matriarchy or matrilineality,but that may just be because their existence itself still proves nothing about the "primeval peaceful matriarchy".

That sort of an idea, after all, sounds like something I'd presume to be a subset of the overarching myth of the Golden Age / Arcadia. For some reason a lot of societies and individuals are heavily invested (in their religion, or in their philosophy of life) in the notion that life on this Earth used to be naturally sweet and harmonious until some meanies came and ruined it, as opposed to life having been tough and rough and conflictive all along.

[Captain Amazing]

For some reason a lot of societies and individuals are heavily invested (in their religion, or in their philosophy of life) in the notion that life on this Earth used to be naturally sweet and harmonious until some meanies came and ruined it, as opposed to life having been tough and rough and conflictive all along.

I think it's because, if that's true, then human beings are naturally good and decent, and it gives people hope that in the future we can create a society that's sweet and harmonious.

[Powers]

I think it's because, if that's true, then human beings are naturally good and decent, and it gives people hope that in the future we can create a society that's sweet and harmonious.

Odd. I have more hope of the latter because it's not been done before. If we were once in that state, then we lost it, and the chances of getting back -- and staying there -- are smaller.


Powers &8^]

[Clothahump]

To my knowledge matriarchies have been very rare. And as mswas points out, women having power doesn't make a society peaceful; the idea that women are anti-war is a modern Western conceit. "Come back with your shield or on it", to quote the mothers of Sparta.

Settlers of the "Wild West" feared being captured, because they would be turned over to the women. And what ensued was not death by snoo-snoo.

[Measure for Measure]

Settlers of the "Wild West" feared being captured, because they would be turned over to the women. I had not heard that. Do you have a cite?

[bibliophage]

I've seen that claim before in a couple of places, with regard to certain tribes. See, for example, Adiar's History of the American Indians (http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofamerica00adairich#page/390/mode/1up), page 390, lines 6-7. Their punishment is always left to the women, and on account of their false standard of education, they are no way backward in their office, but perform it to the
entire satisfaction of the greedy eyes of the spectators.

[Maastricht]

I'm hijacking this thread to remark that many scientists believe that in the very, very early days of judaism, God (Jahweh) was supposed to be married to the Queen of Heaven, Ashera. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_heaven_(Antiquity)) They even shared temples. But there was a power struggle and now all mentionings of her in the Bible are pejoric. Still, even through the pejoric mentionings of "tree godesses" in Deutereronomium, (Ashera was sympbolized by a living tree or, an upright wooden pole) or wrong translations of Ashera as "Baal", an image of a very peaceful religion seeps through.

[John W. Kennedy]

I'm hijacking this thread to remark that many scientists believe that in the very, very early days of judaism, God (Jahweh) was supposed to be married to the Queen of Heaven, Ashera. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_heaven_(Antiquity)) They even shared temples. But there was a power struggle and now all mentionings of her in the Bible are pejoric. Still, even through the pejoric mentionings of "tree godesses" in Deutereronomium, (Ashera was sympbolized by a living tree or, an upright wooden pole) or wrong translations of Ashera as "Baal", an image of a very peaceful religion seeps through.
Precisely what authority has a "scientist" to comment on history?
Is this anything like the "wrong translation" of "Charlotte" as "Edgar"?

[astorian]

Settlers of the "Wild West" feared being captured, because they would be turned over to the women. And what ensued was not death by snoo-snoo.


"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."

-Rudyard Kipling

[Maastricht]

[LIST] Precisely what authority has a "scientist" to comment on history?Um..Historians are scientists, no? Did you even read the wiki link?

[qazwart]

I'm hijacking this thread to remark that many scientists believe that in the very, very early days of judaism, God (Jahweh) was supposed to be married to the Queen of Heaven, Ashera. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_heaven_(Antiquity)) They even shared temples. But there was a power struggle and now all mentionings of her in the Bible are pejoric. Still, even through the pejoric mentionings of "tree godesses" in Deutereronomium, (Ashera was sympbolized by a living tree or, an upright wooden pole) or wrong translations of Ashera as "Baal", an image of a very peaceful religion seeps through.

A lot of that is pure speculation. Ashera worship (which includes Isis) was quite common in the entire area. Various cultures traded worship in many gods as they traded with each other, conquered each other, or simply lived together. Baal simply means "master" in Hebrew and was a common name for many communities for their (usually male) local deity which protected the tribe. It probably doesn't have anything to do with Ashera who was the goddess of heaven.

The thing that bothers me most about these Peaceful Matriarchic Society myths is that they have their roots based in anti-semitism.

The idea goes like this: The world was filled with these peaceful societies headed by a priestess. Then came The Rabbis who destroyed these societies with their oppression of women, and the whole guilt trip they created.

Nazism had some of its roots in this pagan idealism. That strand of anti-semitism (which had an intellectual basis) combined with the less intellectual "Jews control everything" strand into a deadly force. T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound (who both expressed an admiration of early Italian Fascism) also expressed anti-Semitic sentiments based upon similar ideas of the Jews/Early Christianity bringing in guilt.

I remember Utne Reader magazine had an article about this romantic priestess speculation. It turned out the author had also written for various blatantly anti-Semitic journals.

Archaeological evidence suggests that most early societies were pretty violent, and got less violent as time went on. Much of this is probably due to the enlargement of society due to better security (you're not likely to get killed by highway bandits as you travel from city "A" to city "B"), more trade (dead people aren't going to buy your goods), easier communication (you have to be alive to use Twitter although I'm not sure if you need actual brain activity). and the expansion of nationalism (the people over there are no longer enemies, but fellow countrymen. Maybe I won't kill them all and let God sort them out).

If there were matriarchal societies of yore, they probably were just as violent as those other societies. In a certain sense, we now live in the best, most prosperous, and peaceful it has ever been. Which must mean the world use to really suck.

[paperbackwriter]

Um..Historians are scientists, no? Did you even read the wiki link?

Although history usually pitches its tent in the realm of social science, there's a huge and continuing epistemelogical debate as to whether social science should be able to call itself a science. So JWK's comment is perfectly valid from a certain point of view. That all aside, the authorities cited in the linked Wiki article are not historians. The chief commentator cited is 16th-century clergyman Matthew Henry. The others cited are a biblical scholar and an archeologist.

Furthermore, there's nothing in the linked article that substantiates the contentions that Ashera was mistranslated as Baal, that her symbol was a tree, or that her religion was "very peaceful." The article you linked doesn't support your post.

[Der Trihs]

The thing that bothers me most about these Peaceful Matriarchic Society myths is that they have their roots based in anti-semitism.

The idea goes like this: The world was filled with these peaceful societies headed by a priestess. Then came The Rabbis who destroyed these societies with their oppression of women, and the whole guilt trip they created.That's the first time I've heard it put that way. Generally it's "patriarchal sky gods" if a religious angle is being pushed. Or, it's blamed on men in general, or the discovery of animal husbandry ( and therefore knowledge of how babies are made ), or the development of agriculture. Pretty much whatever happens to be the bugaboo of the person in question; most of the ones I've come across have been feminists or Luddites, not anti-Semites. If you are running into people using it to slam Jews, I suspect that they are doing the same thing; using a more peaceful society that never was as an excuse to blame their particular object of hatred for its imaginary destruction.

In a certain sense, we now live in the best, most prosperous, and peaceful it has ever been. Which must mean the world use to really suck.Depressing but true.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Historians are scientists, no.

This observation comes from a historian whose academic training was in the social "sciences."

[Irishman]

Exapno Mapcase said:
Historians are scientists, no.

I can't parse that.

[Derleth]

Historians are scientists, no.Philologists are scientists neither.

(Linguists, OTOH, have at least a modicum of mathematics and the ability to disprove theses by discovering new (aspects of) languages. Unless they're Chomskyists.)

[Jerseyman]

There likely were matriarchies, or at least emphasis placed on the farm and child-rearing, and some similarity lasts into legendary and historical Celtic and Pictish ruling queens. Peaceful - that's a different matter! All the paleological evidence is that the Neolithic had too few people too dispersed for proper warfare but a lot more violence between them hitting each other with sticks and stones that mostly did not do as much deadly damage as bronze (and 'damage' of course includes infection).

So once they settle and start producing metals, their wars are bigger nastier and for those reasons rarer - a sort of deterrent effect. Irish legend is full of warriors knocking the crap out of each other at the behest of some queen or other. After all, it was easy enough for her to start a war because she wasn't going to be out there in it, although Celtic women were sometimes known to fight.

Think of Sparta, where all men do is military and hunting and the women run the farmstead with the native population as generic slaves. I wonder if that was a matrriarchal setup that the later Greeks just chiaged to put political power with the war-band?

[Malacandra]

"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."

-Rudyard Kipling

"When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male."

--same author.

[ivan astikov]

Considering history in the main was written by men, and for most of our recorded existence women have been held back by males, is it hardly surprising that there is no evidence of a successful matriarchal society?

[Derleth]

Considering history in the main was written by men, and for most of our recorded existence women have been held back by males, is it hardly surprising that there is no evidence of a successful matriarchal society?The obvious problem with this theory is that it takes a lack of evidence as evidence. We could use the same kind of argument to support the theory of a prior peaceful civilization of slightly damp sponges.

[ivan astikov]

The obvious problem with this theory is that it takes a lack of evidence as evidence. We could use the same kind of argument to support the theory of a prior peaceful civilization of slightly damp sponges.

Now you are being silly. How do we know whether or not there was whole shelves in the library at Alexander that recorded such instances?

We don't, but there is more chance of it than there is of any involvement with sponges.

[Derleth]

Now you are being silly. How do we know whether or not there was whole shelves in the library at Alexander that recorded such instances?How do you know there were? If I'm being silly, you should have a good deal of evidence to support your position.

[ivan astikov]

How do you know there were? If I'm being silly, you should have a good deal of evidence to support your position.

Not really*. I found this (http://www.geocities.com/jywanza1/Matriarcahldecline.html) though.

Then the northern groups, c. 1900 BC, brought cuneiform to Egypt. The introduction of cuneiform to Egypt at this time, when the patriarchal forces were clashing so severely with the matriarchal, suggests that existing tablets of laws could have been changed to fit the patriarchal beliefs. This would account for the gradual changes in the society of this time.


* I'm not sure how the two are related though?

[ivan astikov]

You're being silly = I've got lots of evidence.

Nope! Still don't see it.

[paperbackwriter]

An uncredited, unreferenced, unsourced article on a geocities page by some guy calling himself "Zen Werewolf" is hardly a cite at all. Is there any scholarly work that references matriarchial societies documented in the Great Library?

[Irishman]

ivan astikov said:
How do we know whether or not there was whole shelves in the library at Alexander that recorded such instances?

Doesn't matter what might have been at Alexandria and destroyed for all time. WE do not have that evidence, so we cannot say that there were peaceful matriarchies ruling the world. As soon as you get some evidence that there were, then it will cease to be silly to argue that they existed.

[ivan astikov]

ivan astikov said:


Doesn't matter what might have been at Alexandria and destroyed for all time. WE do not have that evidence, so we cannot say that there were peaceful matriarchies ruling the world. As soon as you get some evidence that there were, then it will cease to be silly to argue that they existed.

So introducing sponges into the discussion adds, what? Other than coming over like a condescending twat!

[Derleth]

So introducing sponges into the discussion adds, what? Other than coming over like a condescending twat!I use hyperbole as a teaching tool. I can see it does not have the desired effect on you. Do you have any evidence to back up your claims yet?

(BTW, I did not know men could be twats.)

[ivan astikov]

I use hyperbole as a teaching tool. I can see it does not have the desired effect on you. Do you have any evidence to back up your claims yet?

No, I mentioned it to further the topic conversation, not as a prologue to some ultimate source. It's called supposition; sometimes it leads nowhere, other times it unearths gems.

(BTW, I did not know men could be twats.)
You live and you learn.

[ivan astikov]

An uncredited, unreferenced, unsourced article on a geocities page by some guy calling himself "Zen Werewolf" is hardly a cite at all.

I didn't notice the ''Zen Werewolf" bit; I take back everything I've said.

[Malacandra]

I use hyperbole as a teaching tool. I can see it does not have the desired effect on you. Do you have any evidence to back up your claims yet?

(BTW, I did not know men could be twats.)

(As a Brit colloquialism, not only can men be twats or cunts, but it's considered slightly less improper than applying the term to a woman. Like "bugger" being considered a lesser profanity than "fuck", it doesn't have to make sense.)

/aside

[outlierrn]

I think it's because, if that's true, then human beings are naturally good and decent, and it gives people hope that in the future we can create a society that's sweet and harmonious.

It also lets them project any guilt or responsibility for their shortcomings on the Evil Patriachy/Church/Communists/Government/Choose your Evil. 'Hey, I would be sweet and harmonious if only they hadn't fucked things up.

[Jerseyman]

Agreed. I'm reminded of a chapter in Reay Tannahill's 'Sex in History' entitled 'The not so Great Goddess'. We lapse lyrical about the miracle of birth. How do we imagine a girl probably not into her teens thought about it in a primitive society without medical or anaesthetic knowledge? Or a woman expecting her fifteenth child, ten of them dead in infancy? How did the tribe scratching to survive feel? I have my suspicions that all those legendary maidens sacrificed to dragons might have their origin in sending the youngest girl likely to get pregnant (or already so) into the cave selected for winter quarters first to see if anything nasty would reveal itself. She would be the biggest liability and least likely to survive birth. One thing we know about all ancient societies is that they did not carry the weak and disabled. It is hard to blame that on patriarchy since we should expect any boy to be preferred to a girl and that is not true.

The Egyptian link is a cesspool of crap. Egypt has left more than enough about its religion going back to at least 2,500 (none of it, incidentally in cuneiform) and were there anything significantly matriarchal in there it would show up. Contrary to the assumption, it is universally understood that if Egyptians came from anywhere it was from further South and a recent National Geographic focusses on a disputed but growing belief that the whole Pharoahic Thing came along a known trade route to the south-west leading into Chad (at the least) - nobody knows how far it went into 'Darkest Africa' which was probably less forested at the time.

Because men wrote history would be a reason to notice any matriarchy, primordial or still extant, just as they noted the Amazons (though just where is a matter of conjecture). The likelihood is that the original Amazons were simply people whose women fought as well as men. That could well be the Galician Celts (since other Celtic women fought) who must have passed through or round Greece on their way to central Turkey and probably conflicted with the ancestral proto-Greeks en route.

What's more, there's no reason to imagine that the structure of matriarchy would differ at all from patriarchy. What matters to an early relatively peaceful society is Survival, the Home, the Village. A matriarchy would most likely hold those in high esteem as primarily women's activities with men as hunters, protectors and occasional impregnators when the women wanted to become pregnant. Since once man can impregnate a lot of women it is quite likely that only the strongest potential warriors would be allowed to live. Its only difference from patriarchy would be where the power and respect lay.

There is circumstantial evidence that such societies may have existed and with patriarchal conquest continued with much the same structure but political power transferred to the war band in Sparta and Crete. Warning though: there is no real evidence for Sir Arthur Evans's Art Deco bathing-mad Minoans considerable evidence that his 'baths' (made of water-soluble gypsum and without plumbing!) were actually sarcophagi and 'palaces' for the high-ranking mummified dead.

However, Classical Crete did venerate the Great Mother and had a barrack structure and enslaved indigenous population rather less extreme than Sparta's. We know that the legendary Lykourgos legislated Sparta's system but he probably only codified existing custom.

Sparta venerated the Great Mother above all and flogged boys as a trial/sacrifice to her. Some usually died. It was a tourist attraction until banned when Christianity became compulsory about 370CE. Helen of Troy was originally Helen of Sparta. Why would the Mykenaian Greeks mount such an expedition to get her back that it became Scripture to their successors? They were at a 'Viking' level of civilisation, more ready to kill her than to retrieve her. She must have been mightily important, so much so that instead of laughing at Menelaus, they feel obliged to join his expedition. The reality may be something quite different but that is less important than that however garbled, later Greeks had to believe it feasible. (According to Wikipedia, Theseus abducted her as a child because she was of divine birth).

When the heroes return, Klytaimnestra promptly assassinates Agamemnon and continues to rule his kingdom with her lover Aigistheus. Echoes of The King must Die. Penelope, however has remained faithful to Odysseus for some 20 years.

There are strong hints that succession and authority lie with the queen. (These are 'royalty' where it surprises nobody to find King Odysseus ploughing his own fields - 'chieftans' really) No Palace Guard prevent Klytaimnestra from replacing her husband. Penelope's tenacity is exceptional and her son has not taken over. It is easy to imagine that the incoming patriarchal Mykenaians are only just establishing themselves through marriage to the established Queen.

So maybe there were matriarchies, but 'peaceful' or any different in structure from patriarchies, very doubtful.

[John W. Kennedy]

A matrilineal patriarchy is not a matriarchy.