The Nonsense of Patriarchy
Indeed, one of the reasons humanity survived was not his great brain. Of course we kind of like to think early humans were not as smart as we today, bit it took as great an intelligence to look around his world and devise folk-mythologies on their existence without any instrumentation to understand it with and come up with any ideas about that existence as it does to develop our modern ideologies of genetics, the universe, and quantum particularizations. The funny thing is that they were not as wrong as we think they were.
Take genetics. They understood that the development of human knowledge was extremely important to survival and they figured out that one of the keys to doing so was to diversify their genetics as much as possible. It is almost one hundred percent certain that early communities were of matriarchal-kin alliances. One of the most important steps in continually supplying new genetic variations into the gene pool, even though they might not have called it a gene pool, but they nevertheless understood that their communities needed a constant influx of differing male mates.
And from this came the universal prohibition on any male from within the matriarchal family to mate within that family. There is a great deal of evidence that that was true, and also a great deal of evidence that if such a crime was perpetrated their was only one punishment—death. The deviance of incesticide was seen to be so vile that that any other type of punishment, such as exile, could not be enough.
We tend to think, almost certainly illogical, that before the neolithic age humans were so spread out they hardly ever encountered other human groups. But if they only mated with other matriarchies, as the genetic record illustrates, they could not have been so isolated. Plus, before the neolithic they was a lot more moving back and forth over landscapes that also made this possible. What today we call migration. One of the advantages humans had in surviving was a great adaptability to differing environments. But migrations were long distance commutes , and even before neolithic times they would remain in certain vicinities for sustained periods.
To make these communities, the kin group and their neighbors, were in competition with other teams. It was not a competition to defeat the other team but a competition for each matriarchal kin alliance to insure they all survived. If one hunt was more successful, they did something amazing, they invited the less successful communities into their midst to share. So while competition existed, it was not competition to defeat but competition that drove each to succeed in the victory of assuring the other succeeded.
Okay enough of my nostalgia about early humanity. Let’s advance to the next stage. It begins in the steppes, the grasslands from central eastern europe to siberian pacific coast, down into northern China and the upper regions of the Indus Valleys. Great cities began to rise. Gobekli Tepe, Çatalhöyük, in what is now the Ukraine there were several large settlements, and in the lower Indus valleys, as the paleolithic was becoming neolithic. These cities predated “civilization”, but seem to still be living under their same evolutionary codes.
And some startling new evidence from Gobekli Tepe, that although these people came to Gobekli Tepe and farmed together, they separated and remained what we call hunter-gatherers. I wonder if we might find similarities with some of the other great cities. And just as aside, on intelligence, how advanced were they to make their way back to cities without GPS, nor even maps. That’s a little bit more intelligent than those today who have to turn on their GPS to get across Washoe county.
But during this time we (our ancestors) had a central code, leaders were followed because of displayed wisdom and the success they brought to the communities in their gifts of wisdom and technology that they gave to their communities. The other was that, as we have observed, in all species that undergo menopause and are thus semi-eusocial, the woman is responsible for mate selection to bring new traits, new ideas, new strengths (not necessarily physical strengths only) into the community. No one would have wanted to give birth to Samson. Or Solomon. Or any king.
But these communities were all on the edges of the steppes. The steppes themselves were a great mixing ground. People that had settled elsewhere moved into them, animals, at least horses, were domesticated, and then they attached carts for the horses to drag their stuff, and then invented wheels for the carts, and today’s technology have not yet advanced beyond that wheel have we? We even need the wheel to take off and land our airplanes.
And at first communities moved from Europe, from Africa, the what is now the mideast to the steppes, and then from the steppes to the southeast and into into Indonesia and from Siberian steppes into the Americas, Taiwan, and the first ventures into the Japanese archipelago , and finally to the south pacific islands. But many from the steppes people moved back to the areas like Ukraine, Turkey, into the eastern valleys, and then some ventured back to the southeastern coast of Africa, and forced some of those to migrate into the southern Indian islands and the Malay peninsula and eventually, once more to Indonesia, the peninsula, and the south pacific islands.
And some of these displaced people moved back into the steppes. But remember the female was still the matriarch of the kin group, and the younger women still selected their mates and what we have found with genetic studies, that while nearly every women mated, only one of five males mated. And what we also know is at least by around 5000 BCE there were large groups of men living in groups not connected to to any matriarchal kin group. And what we know as ‘history” begins, patriarchal kingdoms begin to flourish.
Well you can explain this phenomenon however you like, what occurs to me is that these bands of men began to move into settled areas and “take” (euphemistic for rape?) the women. But to maintain their hold on the women, they needed to take control of the resources, and therefore the people whose own resources became owned.
As these patriarchies arose and they took over the resources, the people contracted to themselves into various levels of servitude, and no longer in control of their own resources, slavery arose.
From my perspective what is demonstrated is by placing Patriarchs over the communities they were able to stupify by turning the folk-mythologies, that were attempts to comprehend the environment, into religions that’s sole purpose was to legitimize the rape of the resources, necessary to support the rape of the women and created an incestuous and deformed leadership whose only role was to kill the father, rape the mother or sister, and destroy the very resources by trying to concentrate them under their own control.
Okay now I want to fast forward. The settlement of America by the English & Dutch was not exactly different than that of the Spanish, Portuguese or French because the home countries (companies) certainly wished doing too badly until the English took their territory from them. But both sent not their steppe invading colonies of men, but entire families. Well these first settlers wanted more settlers, but not settlers who would necessarily compete with them, but settlers who could “work” for them. Oh yes, I know, there were the new farmers who were the advance guard in clearing more land and to be the first line of defense against encroachments on native lands, and the British didn’t really want to send their own troops to fight the natives.
Not until they carried their war against France into America did they really send a lot of British troops. After securing more lands for the American settlers they wanted to be paid back for the expense that now enabled the American wealthy to become competitive with their own wealthy.
The Americans claimed that was unfair taxation. The British thought they had provided a service that expanded the territory Americans could control.
But to step back just a bit, thousands of people were contracted to go to America…remember a contract is an agreement to indenture oneself by those who have no resources to not be indentured. And the first black slaves imported into North America, were more or less placed on the same contractual basis, because unlike the absentee and conquistadorial owners these were families. Some fulfilled their contracts and got their freedom and a little land of their own. Those lands was too uncomfortably hostile for most of the delicate Europeans. Even at the time of the founding of the US constitution, Georgia and South Carolina were amongst the least populous because, frankly white folks just didn’t want to live there unless they could own a hell of a lot there.
But this type of slavery of other humans only became possible because of the patriarchal displacement of the matriarchal-kin family.
And my perspective is that from that comes nearly all of our modern issues of conflict.