Thank you so much for your extremely well-thought-out and well-written analysis of this most critical period of our long-covered up history!
I wrote a book about this, Before War, which your friend Gunnar is listening to, and pointed me your way. Firstly, I agree that nothing in life is oversimplistic and black and white, hence I avoid using the words "good" vs "bad" .. but .. if we *were* to for the sake of argument .. isn't it unequivocally true that war, inequality and oppression of women and animals, which as you say result from patriarchy, are "bad"? Really bad, if you're on the receiving end? could we not therefore agree that matrilineal egalitarianism of the Paleolithic and Neolithic were, well, comparatively speaking, "good"?
Second, I notice an accidental deletion at the phrase "one place, matrlineality also" and I would love to know what you were going to say!
I for one am skeptical about the hard evidence for Neolithic king sacrifice, or human sacrifice in general. Is Frazier the root source of this idea? If so it's quite old before rigorous academic evidence. I've never seen archaelogical evidence for it in the Neolithic, first I've seen is in late Minoan times during the cataclysm crisis. It could possibly be a patriarchally-introduced idea that became a part of later matrilineal holdout societies the same way that social inequality did. I've really looked around for this as so many people seem quite confident that human sacrifice was an ancient custom in goddess cultures. Of course we see it in much later Iron Age Celtic societies with a strong connection to ancient animism, and has come down to us in mythology, but we can't project that backwards thousands of years with confidence.
I'd like to clarify the passage about the creation of "trade", given that, in the strict meaning of that word, trade was huge during the Neolithic, at very long distances. The difference that happened during patriarchy, as you point out, was that now it was for personal hoards of important families, rather than for sacred or beautiful items for all.
The other thing I would be so eager to see more evidence for was for male roles during the Neolithic. There is no reason at all to assume a male role in politics. The earliest clues we have, Minoan art, show women in leadership positions, while men are depicted mostly naked and worshipful of the women. Even for construction, there are matrilineal groups in which women exclusively take care of this, though my gut instinct is that this has more often in more cultures been a male role for good reasons. The metallurgy thing though, has been a huge mystery I have spent countless hours pouring over dusty volumes for a clue to. It's clear from the artistic evidence that women were solely associated with weaving, ceramics, and priestessing. But I have never been able to find anything about the origins of metallurgy. It's shrouded in mystery! It's never depicted in art! I'm fascinated if you have seen anything on this and something to link it to men. It would make sense for men to do it, since it was probably toxic to fetuses. It would also make sense for men to be the herders, since larger size and strength helps with larger animals, and since men were associated in ancient art with animals, but I haven't seen any direct evidence for it.
Thank you Elisha for this wonderful comment! Having just one excellent reader makes it all worth it, and thanks for pointing me to your book.
Yes, it's painful and difficult that we have war, inequality and oppression of women and animals, but that's also part of the world we live in. Calling it bad or evil doesn't make it go away, and might even make us less efficient in trying to improve things. Rather than approaching problems from a place of morality, with pre-set idea of what the resolution should be, I prefer to "create the change I want to see", or asking myself "what am I going to do about it?". At any rate, that's the Zen approach.
As it pertains to this historical view, it seems to me that just as the old patriarchal mindset became blind to the value of women out of clinging to it's own goodness, a less nuanced strand of new feminist historical research has at least partially blinded itself by its need to make men "bad" in a kind of inverted patriarchy thinking (the older, less generous definition of "matriarchy") and to assert value to women in all situations as if to compensate for what came after. So both "sides'" cultural agenda blinders might prevent us from seeing even deeper into the actual reality of what was going on, and therefore who we are.
In any tight-knit group of people living together outdoors in the wilderness, as in the Paleolithic, every member of the group has to have almost all the skills needed to survive. So while things became sharply delineated socially in the Neolithic, it seems to me that there would have been a shared and common sense of balance and reciprocity throughout life, coming out of a sense of family and belonging, in a way we perhaps can't quite grasp today.
For more about men's roles I highly recommend David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything. He does a excellent job of showing the diversity of social practices in different cultures. There's a chapter about the Iroquois politician Kandiaronk which is absolutely fascinating, and gives some clues as to how this might have worked. Many parts of the world was densely settled at that time, and as men roam around far away from home they would have come into contact with neighboring groups, and constantly had to negotiate usage rights and so on. The section on the North American religious festival "clown police" is also great.
Metallurgy looks quite clearly to have initially been developed solely for religious art and jewlery, as it took quite a long time for it to become any better than stone for practical applications. We know people have been burning ochre to make it more red for a very long time, so over hundreds of thousands of years of experimentation with fire and different kinds of soil and plant matter, perhaps metallurgy was just one of many findings along the way? I'm also interested to dig more into this. I agree with you that it is all very underexplored, and I think we'll begin to see much more research here in the years to come!
There were some errors in the text which have been corrected, so hopefully it's more legible now. I updated the section about trade to clarify the distinction you make, that I'm really talking about quid pro quo trade as arising in the Bronze Age. I also adjusted the language about sacrifice to the reflect the probably mostly symbolic nature of it. Graeber discusses the actual sacrifice some, as in an example about Shilluk kings in Sudan, and Robert Graves who was well read on druidisism seemed to think that they indeed did sacrifice people, perhaps as seen with the "Lindow Man".
Thank you so much for your comment. In all my years researching this stuff, I've never come across feminist scholars that make men "bad".
Obviously I have read The Dawn of Everything! I cite and quote it liberally in my book as it's yet more evidence for the book's thesis that our civilization is an appropriation by men of a civilization created with women at the center. The examples of human sacrifice are from much later than the Neolithic. The example you give of the Shilluk kings in Sudan are thousands of years later, at the height of the patriarchal Iron Age.
Your writing and research are excellent but to be honest, your stating that men handled politics in the Neolithic, and some of the other bits of speculation that are stated as facts with no evidence, really undermine the credibility as well as the importance of the message. I highly recommend qualifying this statement that it's your own speculation and stating why you believe that men were the leaders and the metalworkers.
Hi, regarding your point about the sacrificial kings you are probably right, like I wrote before, and I have already amended the text to reflect that.
Heide Goettner-Abendroth repeatedly states that in general, while women handled the economic redistribution and held the highest religious positions, politics was handled by men, and that this was a key part of the balance between the genders. I feel
sufficiently convinced by her etnographic and archaeological research into that.
As far as the metallurgy goes, here's a quote from Goettner-Abendroth:
"It is noteworthy that copper, silver and gold were used only for jewelry and ritual and prestige objects, which served as coveted gifts, too. Copper objects could not be used as weapons, not even as tools, because they were softer than stone tools and not superior to them. This means that the new copper processing was only a by-product and did not result in any new economic or social order. Things made of copper were merely a new luxury item, which was passed on through the communication networks. (…) Mining and metallurgy were part of men’s activities, and were also accompanied by religious beliefs. This can be seen in the fact that, even in later times, goddesses up to the Christian Mary were worshiped as patron saints of the mining industry. The reason is that, in early beliefs, it was divine Mother Earth who produced and gave the richness of metals from her womb. Blacksmiths were considered to be magicians, as they were able to transform metals and had secret knowledge to do so."
And from Anthony:
"Pottery kilns led to metallurgy. Copper was extracted from stone by mixing powdered green-blue azurite or malachite minerals (possibly used for pigments) with powdered charcoal and baking the mixture in a bellows-aided kiln, perhaps accidentally at first. At 800°C the copper separated from the powdered ore in tiny shining beads. It could then be tapped out, reheated, forged, welded, annealed, and hammered into a wide variety of tools (hooks, awls, blades) and ornaments (beads, rings, and other pendants). Ornaments of gold (probably mined in Transylvania and coastal Thrace) began to circulate in the same trade networks. The early phase of copper working began before 5000 BCE. Balkan smiths, about 4800–4600 BCE, learned to fashion molds that withstood the heat of molten copper, and began to make cast copper tools and weapons, a complicated process requiring a temperature of 1,083°C to liquefy copper metal. Molten copper must be stirred, skimmed, and poured correctly or it cools into a brittle object full of imperfections. Well made cast copper tools were used and exchanged across southeastern Europe by about 4600–4500 BCE in eastern Hungary with the Tiszapolgar culture; in Serbia with the Vinča D culture; in Bulgaria at Varna and in the Karanovo VI tell settlements; in Romania with the Gumelnitsa culture; and in Moldova and eastern Romania with the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture. Metallurgy was a new and different kind of craft. It was obvious to anyone that pots were made of clay, but even after being told that a shiny copper ring was made from a green-stained rock, it was difficult to see how. The magical aspect of copperworking set metalworkers apart, and the demand for copper objects increased trade. Prospecting, mining, and long-distance trade for ore and finished products introduced a new era in inter-regional politics and interdependence that quickly reached deep into the steppes as far as the Volga."
Thank you. Some good stuff on metallurgy there, thanks for passing that on. I was specfically asking about how we know that men were the ones that did it.
I would be so grateful if you could let me know in which source(s) of Heide Goettner-Abendroth she says that men were in charge of politics in the Neolithic. I have skimmed her work and not seen that. This is a critical point, because I believe the fate of the world depends on gender balance in leadership. I don't see how she, or anyone, could possibly know who was leading in the Neolithic. All we have is the archaeological record, and something like that didn't leave a trace.
But the evidence strongly suggests that the descendants of the Neolithic farmers, the Minoans, had women in leadership, based on the artwork showing women at the head of parades. In their abundant artwork the men are in loincloths shown honoring women. They had only one throne in the throne room -- and after the Mycenaean takeover, it was joined by two, which strongly suggests that a queen was joined by a king. Their descendants, the Libyans, had all queens. Even fully patriarchal societies had women in politics throughout history. If, as the world got more and more patriarchal, there were some women in politics, it seems extremely unlikely that before the IE invasions, it was all men. But again. I can't think of a single way we could come to that conclusion based on the evidence we have.
Thank you so much for your extremely well-thought-out and well-written analysis of this most critical period of our long-covered up history!
I wrote a book about this, Before War, which your friend Gunnar is listening to, and pointed me your way. Firstly, I agree that nothing in life is oversimplistic and black and white, hence I avoid using the words "good" vs "bad" .. but .. if we *were* to for the sake of argument .. isn't it unequivocally true that war, inequality and oppression of women and animals, which as you say result from patriarchy, are "bad"? Really bad, if you're on the receiving end? could we not therefore agree that matrilineal egalitarianism of the Paleolithic and Neolithic were, well, comparatively speaking, "good"?
Second, I notice an accidental deletion at the phrase "one place, matrlineality also" and I would love to know what you were going to say!
I for one am skeptical about the hard evidence for Neolithic king sacrifice, or human sacrifice in general. Is Frazier the root source of this idea? If so it's quite old before rigorous academic evidence. I've never seen archaelogical evidence for it in the Neolithic, first I've seen is in late Minoan times during the cataclysm crisis. It could possibly be a patriarchally-introduced idea that became a part of later matrilineal holdout societies the same way that social inequality did. I've really looked around for this as so many people seem quite confident that human sacrifice was an ancient custom in goddess cultures. Of course we see it in much later Iron Age Celtic societies with a strong connection to ancient animism, and has come down to us in mythology, but we can't project that backwards thousands of years with confidence.
I'd like to clarify the passage about the creation of "trade", given that, in the strict meaning of that word, trade was huge during the Neolithic, at very long distances. The difference that happened during patriarchy, as you point out, was that now it was for personal hoards of important families, rather than for sacred or beautiful items for all.
The other thing I would be so eager to see more evidence for was for male roles during the Neolithic. There is no reason at all to assume a male role in politics. The earliest clues we have, Minoan art, show women in leadership positions, while men are depicted mostly naked and worshipful of the women. Even for construction, there are matrilineal groups in which women exclusively take care of this, though my gut instinct is that this has more often in more cultures been a male role for good reasons. The metallurgy thing though, has been a huge mystery I have spent countless hours pouring over dusty volumes for a clue to. It's clear from the artistic evidence that women were solely associated with weaving, ceramics, and priestessing. But I have never been able to find anything about the origins of metallurgy. It's shrouded in mystery! It's never depicted in art! I'm fascinated if you have seen anything on this and something to link it to men. It would make sense for men to do it, since it was probably toxic to fetuses. It would also make sense for men to be the herders, since larger size and strength helps with larger animals, and since men were associated in ancient art with animals, but I haven't seen any direct evidence for it.
Thanks so much! Subscribed and will read more.
Thank you Elisha for this wonderful comment! Having just one excellent reader makes it all worth it, and thanks for pointing me to your book.
Yes, it's painful and difficult that we have war, inequality and oppression of women and animals, but that's also part of the world we live in. Calling it bad or evil doesn't make it go away, and might even make us less efficient in trying to improve things. Rather than approaching problems from a place of morality, with pre-set idea of what the resolution should be, I prefer to "create the change I want to see", or asking myself "what am I going to do about it?". At any rate, that's the Zen approach.
As it pertains to this historical view, it seems to me that just as the old patriarchal mindset became blind to the value of women out of clinging to it's own goodness, a less nuanced strand of new feminist historical research has at least partially blinded itself by its need to make men "bad" in a kind of inverted patriarchy thinking (the older, less generous definition of "matriarchy") and to assert value to women in all situations as if to compensate for what came after. So both "sides'" cultural agenda blinders might prevent us from seeing even deeper into the actual reality of what was going on, and therefore who we are.
In any tight-knit group of people living together outdoors in the wilderness, as in the Paleolithic, every member of the group has to have almost all the skills needed to survive. So while things became sharply delineated socially in the Neolithic, it seems to me that there would have been a shared and common sense of balance and reciprocity throughout life, coming out of a sense of family and belonging, in a way we perhaps can't quite grasp today.
For more about men's roles I highly recommend David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything. He does a excellent job of showing the diversity of social practices in different cultures. There's a chapter about the Iroquois politician Kandiaronk which is absolutely fascinating, and gives some clues as to how this might have worked. Many parts of the world was densely settled at that time, and as men roam around far away from home they would have come into contact with neighboring groups, and constantly had to negotiate usage rights and so on. The section on the North American religious festival "clown police" is also great.
Metallurgy looks quite clearly to have initially been developed solely for religious art and jewlery, as it took quite a long time for it to become any better than stone for practical applications. We know people have been burning ochre to make it more red for a very long time, so over hundreds of thousands of years of experimentation with fire and different kinds of soil and plant matter, perhaps metallurgy was just one of many findings along the way? I'm also interested to dig more into this. I agree with you that it is all very underexplored, and I think we'll begin to see much more research here in the years to come!
There were some errors in the text which have been corrected, so hopefully it's more legible now. I updated the section about trade to clarify the distinction you make, that I'm really talking about quid pro quo trade as arising in the Bronze Age. I also adjusted the language about sacrifice to the reflect the probably mostly symbolic nature of it. Graeber discusses the actual sacrifice some, as in an example about Shilluk kings in Sudan, and Robert Graves who was well read on druidisism seemed to think that they indeed did sacrifice people, perhaps as seen with the "Lindow Man".
Thank you again for your comment!
Thank you so much for your comment. In all my years researching this stuff, I've never come across feminist scholars that make men "bad".
Obviously I have read The Dawn of Everything! I cite and quote it liberally in my book as it's yet more evidence for the book's thesis that our civilization is an appropriation by men of a civilization created with women at the center. The examples of human sacrifice are from much later than the Neolithic. The example you give of the Shilluk kings in Sudan are thousands of years later, at the height of the patriarchal Iron Age.
Your writing and research are excellent but to be honest, your stating that men handled politics in the Neolithic, and some of the other bits of speculation that are stated as facts with no evidence, really undermine the credibility as well as the importance of the message. I highly recommend qualifying this statement that it's your own speculation and stating why you believe that men were the leaders and the metalworkers.
Hi, regarding your point about the sacrificial kings you are probably right, like I wrote before, and I have already amended the text to reflect that.
Heide Goettner-Abendroth repeatedly states that in general, while women handled the economic redistribution and held the highest religious positions, politics was handled by men, and that this was a key part of the balance between the genders. I feel
sufficiently convinced by her etnographic and archaeological research into that.
As far as the metallurgy goes, here's a quote from Goettner-Abendroth:
"It is noteworthy that copper, silver and gold were used only for jewelry and ritual and prestige objects, which served as coveted gifts, too. Copper objects could not be used as weapons, not even as tools, because they were softer than stone tools and not superior to them. This means that the new copper processing was only a by-product and did not result in any new economic or social order. Things made of copper were merely a new luxury item, which was passed on through the communication networks. (…) Mining and metallurgy were part of men’s activities, and were also accompanied by religious beliefs. This can be seen in the fact that, even in later times, goddesses up to the Christian Mary were worshiped as patron saints of the mining industry. The reason is that, in early beliefs, it was divine Mother Earth who produced and gave the richness of metals from her womb. Blacksmiths were considered to be magicians, as they were able to transform metals and had secret knowledge to do so."
And from Anthony:
"Pottery kilns led to metallurgy. Copper was extracted from stone by mixing powdered green-blue azurite or malachite minerals (possibly used for pigments) with powdered charcoal and baking the mixture in a bellows-aided kiln, perhaps accidentally at first. At 800°C the copper separated from the powdered ore in tiny shining beads. It could then be tapped out, reheated, forged, welded, annealed, and hammered into a wide variety of tools (hooks, awls, blades) and ornaments (beads, rings, and other pendants). Ornaments of gold (probably mined in Transylvania and coastal Thrace) began to circulate in the same trade networks. The early phase of copper working began before 5000 BCE. Balkan smiths, about 4800–4600 BCE, learned to fashion molds that withstood the heat of molten copper, and began to make cast copper tools and weapons, a complicated process requiring a temperature of 1,083°C to liquefy copper metal. Molten copper must be stirred, skimmed, and poured correctly or it cools into a brittle object full of imperfections. Well made cast copper tools were used and exchanged across southeastern Europe by about 4600–4500 BCE in eastern Hungary with the Tiszapolgar culture; in Serbia with the Vinča D culture; in Bulgaria at Varna and in the Karanovo VI tell settlements; in Romania with the Gumelnitsa culture; and in Moldova and eastern Romania with the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture. Metallurgy was a new and different kind of craft. It was obvious to anyone that pots were made of clay, but even after being told that a shiny copper ring was made from a green-stained rock, it was difficult to see how. The magical aspect of copperworking set metalworkers apart, and the demand for copper objects increased trade. Prospecting, mining, and long-distance trade for ore and finished products introduced a new era in inter-regional politics and interdependence that quickly reached deep into the steppes as far as the Volga."
Thank you. Some good stuff on metallurgy there, thanks for passing that on. I was specfically asking about how we know that men were the ones that did it.
I would be so grateful if you could let me know in which source(s) of Heide Goettner-Abendroth she says that men were in charge of politics in the Neolithic. I have skimmed her work and not seen that. This is a critical point, because I believe the fate of the world depends on gender balance in leadership. I don't see how she, or anyone, could possibly know who was leading in the Neolithic. All we have is the archaeological record, and something like that didn't leave a trace.
But the evidence strongly suggests that the descendants of the Neolithic farmers, the Minoans, had women in leadership, based on the artwork showing women at the head of parades. In their abundant artwork the men are in loincloths shown honoring women. They had only one throne in the throne room -- and after the Mycenaean takeover, it was joined by two, which strongly suggests that a queen was joined by a king. Their descendants, the Libyans, had all queens. Even fully patriarchal societies had women in politics throughout history. If, as the world got more and more patriarchal, there were some women in politics, it seems extremely unlikely that before the IE invasions, it was all men. But again. I can't think of a single way we could come to that conclusion based on the evidence we have.