Question on the end of matriarchy.

[Mariam]

I've been doing a little research on the subject, couldn't find anything definite on the end of matriarchy except for the idea that it was because of the urgness of war after hunter-gathere tribes setteled, and men's physical power patriarchy took place normally.

So how did it end was it as easy as this or was their any type of competition between genders for supremecy or any thing like that??

This question is related to another about individual's "innoccent" contribution in the development of the whole race and civilazitions...but thats another story.

Any ideas??

[Tower of Bebel]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 02:13 pm
I've been doing a little research on the subject, couldn't find anything definite on the end of matriarchy except for the idea that it was because of the urgness of war after hunter-gathere tribes setteled, and men's physical power patriarchy took place normally.

So how did it end was it as easy as this or was their any type of competition between genders for supremecy or any thing like that??

This question is related to another about individual's "innoccent" contribution in the development of the whole race and civilazitions...but thats another story.

Any ideas??
IMO: Possession - property

When people learned how to produce food by themselves they were able to save some of their produced goods. Small reserves became property and possession. But there is a problem if you want to make your own children to enherite your property: men don't know which kid is theirs, only a woman can be certain. This made men to force women to monogamy. (that's why laws made sure women would be killed if they'd have a relation with another partner, which is not the case for men). Men made slaves of their wife in order to stay in power and make sure only their children will enherite.

[Black Dagger]

I disagree that 'Matriarchy' was a universal social reality such that it could have a definitive 'end'. Ancient human societies had diverse gender relations, they were not universally matriarchal (or vice versa), rather i think it's more accurate to say that there was a strong tendancy towards matriarchy and societies with matriarchal traits or structures before the agricultural revolution.

This passage might help you,


Originally posted by Evelyn Reed 'The Myth of Women’s Inferiority'


Emancipation of the Men

So long as hunting was an indispensable full-time occupation, it relegated men to a backward existence. Hunting trips removed men for extended periods of time from the community centers and from participation in the higher forms of labor.

The discovery of agriculture by the women, and their domestication of cattle and other large animals, brought about the emancipation of the men from their hunting life. Hunting was then reduced to a sport, and men were freed for education and training in the industrial and cultural life of the communities. Through the increase in food supplies, populations grew. Nomadic camp sites were transformed into settled village centers, later evolving into towns and cities.

In the first period of their emancipation, the work of the men, compared with that of the women, was, quite naturally, unskilled labor. They cleared away the brush and prepared the ground for cultivation by the women. They felled trees, and furnished the timber for construction work. Only later did they begin to take over the work of construction—just as they also took over the care and breeding of livestock.

But, unlike the women, the men did not have to start from first beginnings. In a short time, they began not only to learn all the skilled crafts of the women but to make vast improvements in tools, equipment and technology. They initiated a whole series of new inventions and innovations. Agriculture took a great step forward with the invention of the plough and the use of domesticated animals.

For a fragment of time, historically speaking, and flowing out of the emancipation of the men from hunting, the division of labor between the sexes became a reality. Together, men and women furthered the abundance of food and products, and consolidated the first settled villages.

But the Agricultural Revolution, brought about by the women marks the dividing line between the food gathering and food producing epochs. By the same token, it marks the dividing line between Savagery and Civilization. Still further, it marks the emergence of a new social system and a reversal in the economic and social leadership role of the sexes.

The new conditions, which began with food abundance for mounting populations, released a new productive force, and with it, new productive relations. The old division of labor between the sexes was displaced by a new series of social divisions of labor. Agricultural labor became separated from urban industrial labor; skilled labor from unskilled. And women labor was gradually taken over by the men.

With the potter’s wheel, for example, men specialists took over pot-making from the women. As Childe writes:

“Ethnography shows that potters who use the wheel are normally male specialists, no longer women, for whom potting is just a household task like cooking and spinning.” (What Happened in History.)

Men took over the ovens and kilns that had been invented by the women—and developed them into smithies and forges, where they converted the earth’s metals: copper, gold and iron. The Metal Age was the dawn of Man’s Epoch. And the most common name today, “Mr. Smith,” has its origin in that dawn.

The very conditions that brought about the emancipation of the men brought about the overthrow of the matriarchy and the enslavement of the women. As social production came into the hands of the men, women were dispossessed from productive life and driven back to their biological function of maternity. Men took over the reins of society and founded a new social system which served their needs. Upon the ruins of the matriarchy, class society was born.

From this labor record of the women in the earlier social system, it can be seen that both sexes have played their parts in building society and advancing humanity to its present point. But they did not play them simultaneously or uniformly. There has actually been an uneven development of the sexes. This, in turn, is only an expression of the uneven development of society as a whole.

During the first great Epoch of social development, it was the women who pulled humanity forward and out of the animal kingdom. Since the first steps are hardest to take, we can only regard the labor and social contribution of the women as decisive. It was their achievements in the fields of production, cultural and intellectual life which made civilization possible. Although it required hundreds of thousands of years for the women to lay down these social foundations, it is precisely because they laid them down so firmly and so well that it has taken less than 4,000 years to bring civilization to its present estate.

It is therefore unscientific to discuss the superiority of men or women outside the framework of the actual processes of history. In the course of history, a great reversal took place in the social superiority of the sexes. First came the women, biologically endowed by nature. Then came the men, socially endowed by the women. To understand these historical facts is to avoid the pitfalls of arbitrary judgment made through emotion or prejudice. And to understand these facts is to explode the myth that women are naturally inferior to men.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/reed-evely...inferiority.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/reed-evelyn/1954/myth-inferiority.htm)

[Tower of Bebel]

Isn't history wonderful? :)

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13, 2007 03:56 am
Isn't history wonderful? :)
The history of how men came to oppress women? :huh:

[Mariam]

I disagree that 'Matriarchy' was a universal social reality such that it could have a definitive 'end'

Im not trying to say that it was, but it was in a sense a system practiced in some parts of the ancient world.


The very conditions that brought about the emancipation of the men brought about the overthrow of the matriarchy and the enslavement of the women. As social production came into the hands of the men, women were dispossessed from productive life and driven back to their biological function of maternity. Men took over the reins of society and founded a new social system which served their needs. Upon the ruins of the matriarchy, class society was born.

So it can be seen as a natural development of human societies..historically patriarchy was the normal phase after matriarchy, or that matriarchy as a system wouldn't really survive or manage to cope with these social or economic developments??


Isn't history wonderful?

Oh yeah!! ;)

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by Mariam+--> (Mariam)So it can be seen as a natural development of human societies..[/b]

It is a natural development yes, but not the natural development of human societies; i.e. i don't think patriarchy is somehow intrinsic to humans such that it had to happen and would have always happened etc. (i know this is not what you're saying)


Originally posted by Mariam+--> (Mariam)
historically patriarchy was the normal phase after matriarchy [/b]

Well at present patriarchy is very close to a global norm, so yes i think that's true.


[email protected]
or that matriarchy as a system wouldn't really survive or manage to cope with these social or economic developments??

More or less, yes.

But i think maybe it's not so much that the matriarchal system couldnt cope, rather, it was thrown out:


Reed
As social production came into the hands of the men, women were dispossessed from productive life and driven back to their biological function of maternity. Men took over the reins of society and founded a new social system which served their needs.

Which is the difference between something collapsing and something being torn-down.

[Mariam]

But i think maybe it's not so much that the matriarchal system couldnt cope, rather, it was thrown out:

Ya thats what i was thinking off, however this leads to another question about the role that religion played in the raise of patriarchy..

I remember reading something in an arabic feminiest book about the connection between monotheism and patriarchy although there were some evidence on a relation between polythesim and some kind of discrimination against women...

I know im going a bit off topic, but is it as always: religion being abused to serve those who seek power?

[ComradeR]

I know im going a bit off topic, but is it as always: religion being abused to serve those who seek power?

Of course, the (as i like to call them) jerusalem religions went to great lengths to subjugate women and stamp out any free thought, this is especially true of christianity with it's infamous witch burnings and it's violent campaigns to wipe out the old pagan religions which celebrated women.

[Tower of Bebel]

Originally posted by Black Dagger+January 12, 2007 06:11 pm--> (Black Dagger @ January 12, 2007 06:11 pm)
[email protected] 13, 2007 03:56 am
Isn't history wonderful? :)
The history of how men came to oppress women? :huh: [/b]
First: wonderful because of this:


From this labor record of the women in the earlier social system, it can be seen that both sexes have played their parts in building society and advancing humanity to its present point. But they did not play them simultaneously or uniformly. There has actually been an uneven development of the sexes. This, in turn, is only an expression of the uneven development of society as a whole.

During the first great Epoch of social development, it was the women who pulled humanity forward and out of the animal kingdom. Since the first steps are hardest to take, we can only regard the labor and social contribution of the women as decisive. It was their achievements in the fields of production, cultural and intellectual life which made civilization possible. Although it required hundreds of thousands of years for the women to lay down these social foundations, it is precisely because they laid them down so firmly and so well that it has taken less than 4,000 years to bring civilization to its present estate.

It is therefore unscientific to discuss the superiority of men or women outside the framework of the actual processes of history. In the course of history, a great reversal took place in the social superiority of the sexes. First came the women, biologically endowed by nature. Then came the men, socially endowed by the women. To understand these historical facts is to avoid the pitfalls of arbitrary judgment made through emotion or prejudice. And to understand these facts is to explode the myth that women are naturally inferior to men.

Second: I study history at Ghent university.

[Mariam]

this is especially true of christianity with it's infamous witch burnings and it's violent campaigns to wipe out the old pagan religions which celebrated women.

Thats clear enough but i though that even in polytheistic societies as in ancient Greece women were seen as inferior:


Nowhere is this situation more troubling than in Ancient Greece where women were largely regarded as inferior creatures scarcely more intelligent than children.


Athens also drew a sharp distinction between citizen and resident alien, between legitimate born and the illegitimate, and between the woman who was a wife and the one who was not wife


Although she could own her clothing, jewelry, and personal slave and purchase inexpensive items, she was otherwise unable to buy anything, own property or enter into any contract.


Citizenship for a woman entitled her to marry a male citizen and it enabled her to join certain religious cults closed to men and non-citizens, but it offered no political or economic benefits.

and so on in ancient rome and even in the days of Hammurabi..so it wasn't only in the" One God" doctrine! Now how would it be justified..this topic is really getting me all mixed up :wacko:

[ComradeR]

and so on in ancient rome and even in the days of Hammurabi..so it wasn't only in the" One God" doctrine!

Yeah pretty much all your so-called "civilized" religions are that way.


Now how would it be justified

It can't be, there simply is no real justification for it's wrought.


this topic is really getting me all mixed up :wacko:

Sorry for the lack of detailed info, i'm not the best at explaining shit :D

[Severian]

Originally posted by Black [email protected] 12, 2007 12:42 pm
It is a natural development yes, but not the natural development of human societies; i.e. i don't think patriarchy is somehow intrinsic to humans such that it had to happen and would have always happened etc. (i know this is not what you're saying)
I think it's intrinsic to class society, and class society is a phase humans necessarily had to pass through. As soon as the productivity of labor became big enough to produce a surplus (beyond what's necessary for the laborer's survival), you started to see privileged class arise to grab that surplus.