I was also thinking that inverting the hierarchy, like you said, could maybe have something to do with matriarchical societies. But I don't really know much about matriarchical societies, so I'll have to find more info.
Thing is, there's absolutely zero evidence that matriarchal societies ever existed. Well, there's no conclusive evidence, anyway. Early proponents of the theory, led by Marija Gimbutas, interpreted archaeological evidence in a way that suited a theory they were already trying to prove; but the thing is, that evidence is scant and lacks context, and could mean any number of things. Also, their research focused entirely on Europe, and fails to explain why the rest of the world is patriarchally organized (the theory is that some patriarchal race from the Russian Steppes conquered the matriarchies of Europe, but the theory doesn't say anything about Asia, the Americas, etc.)
Given the patriarchal organization of primate societies, and given that men pretty much run things now, I'd say one needs more than some female-shaped statuettes and a warm fuzzy feeling to assert that things were any different between the emergence of hominids and the beginning of recorded history.
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ninetydegrees
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on 2006-03-08 06:01 pm (UTC)Thing is, there's absolutely zero evidence that matriarchal societies ever existed. Well, there's no conclusive evidence, anyway. Early proponents of the theory, led by Marija Gimbutas, interpreted archaeological evidence in a way that suited a theory they were already trying to prove; but the thing is, that evidence is scant and lacks context, and could mean any number of things. Also, their research focused entirely on Europe, and fails to explain why the rest of the world is patriarchally organized (the theory is that some patriarchal race from the Russian Steppes conquered the matriarchies of Europe, but the theory doesn't say anything about Asia, the Americas, etc.)
Given the patriarchal organization of primate societies, and given that men pretty much run things now, I'd say one needs more than some female-shaped statuettes and a warm fuzzy feeling to assert that things were any different between the emergence of hominids and the beginning of recorded history.