OOH yeah baby!
I belong to a forum about Sumer. Its a great forum and I really like it, but what I didn't like was when post of mine was removed. There was a discussion about equality in ancient times. Everyone has a theory but nothing can really be proved. Some say ancient societies were matriarcal, some say patriarcal. Now like everyone else, I have a theory but I'm not academic (yet) and can't back it up. Its based on a hunch and what just seems logical to me.
I believe that going back to paleolithic times, when there were many strands of humans around and everyone was basically 'cave man' like and nomadic, I don't think sexism came into play at all. I imagine you got the top spot in the tribe based on your prowess as a hunter and supplier to the tribe. Heck, I suppose those who were into checking out plants for medicinal purposes - precursors to medicine people - were probably looked down upon. Spend too much time looking at plants and not enough killing animals for food, type thing.
Anyway, I reckon women could just have easily as men lead the groups. In Neanderthal groups women did hunting right along with the men. One belief as to why they died out is that too many child bearing women were killed while on the hunt. But I digress...
So, when what was important was survival, who got grub didn't matter in the least. It was only after times changed and people started to settle down that differences became an issue. Women discovered aggriculture, growing the first plants. My hunch is that due to environmental changes there was less and less hunting to be done, so slowly the men started to take over the tending of the fields. And it was around this time that women started to be seen as inferior.
We see through history that gods change gender with different cultures. The common belief today is that women started writing in Sumer as a sort of game and it slowly developed into a communication system, no doubt with the expantion of the community. In Sumer the god of writing was a female. Later on, in Babylonia, the god responsible for writing was male. To me, this reflects the change when writing started to be seen as something serious and the men took over.
So, back to my equality issue. How to prove my theory is right? Well (the bit I like), I came across a link to a 2005 copy of Scientific American which was dedicated to ancient mysteries. One of the articles was about the equality of the sexes! It looks at a dig in central Turkey, of a neolithic group roughtly 9,000 years old (5,000 years before Sumer). This corresponds to the time people changed over from being nomadic and started settling down into communities. As they unearthed the place, what they found was there was no clear difference in how men and women appeared to be treated. Food remains showed men and women ate the same. Dead babies were found buried around the hearth suggesting it was women who did cooking, but so were stones that would be made into spears - usually seen as a male occupation. Also, smoke inhilation marks were found equally on the ribs of men and women, suggesting that no-one spend more time indoors than anyone else (the way they lived was conducive to a very smoky house) and when buried there was no apparent system for where or how you would be buried. Over all it appears to suggest that men and women were basically seen as equal - and this was around the time people shifted from being nomadic to settled.
It would appear this vindicates what I was saying. I may not be an academic. I may not have access to all the dusty uni books, but I still have a brain and I can still put 2 and 2 together!
article if you are interested: Mysteries of the Ancient Ones
I believe that going back to paleolithic times, when there were many strands of humans around and everyone was basically 'cave man' like and nomadic, I don't think sexism came into play at all. I imagine you got the top spot in the tribe based on your prowess as a hunter and supplier to the tribe. Heck, I suppose those who were into checking out plants for medicinal purposes - precursors to medicine people - were probably looked down upon. Spend too much time looking at plants and not enough killing animals for food, type thing.
Anyway, I reckon women could just have easily as men lead the groups. In Neanderthal groups women did hunting right along with the men. One belief as to why they died out is that too many child bearing women were killed while on the hunt. But I digress...
So, when what was important was survival, who got grub didn't matter in the least. It was only after times changed and people started to settle down that differences became an issue. Women discovered aggriculture, growing the first plants. My hunch is that due to environmental changes there was less and less hunting to be done, so slowly the men started to take over the tending of the fields. And it was around this time that women started to be seen as inferior.
We see through history that gods change gender with different cultures. The common belief today is that women started writing in Sumer as a sort of game and it slowly developed into a communication system, no doubt with the expantion of the community. In Sumer the god of writing was a female. Later on, in Babylonia, the god responsible for writing was male. To me, this reflects the change when writing started to be seen as something serious and the men took over.
So, back to my equality issue. How to prove my theory is right? Well (the bit I like), I came across a link to a 2005 copy of Scientific American which was dedicated to ancient mysteries. One of the articles was about the equality of the sexes! It looks at a dig in central Turkey, of a neolithic group roughtly 9,000 years old (5,000 years before Sumer). This corresponds to the time people changed over from being nomadic and started settling down into communities. As they unearthed the place, what they found was there was no clear difference in how men and women appeared to be treated. Food remains showed men and women ate the same. Dead babies were found buried around the hearth suggesting it was women who did cooking, but so were stones that would be made into spears - usually seen as a male occupation. Also, smoke inhilation marks were found equally on the ribs of men and women, suggesting that no-one spend more time indoors than anyone else (the way they lived was conducive to a very smoky house) and when buried there was no apparent system for where or how you would be buried. Over all it appears to suggest that men and women were basically seen as equal - and this was around the time people shifted from being nomadic to settled.
It would appear this vindicates what I was saying. I may not be an academic. I may not have access to all the dusty uni books, but I still have a brain and I can still put 2 and 2 together!
article if you are interested: Mysteries of the Ancient Ones