(David Burman:)
>
> On the contrary. The evidence strongly suggests that our original
> foreparents were egalitarian in their practices, with agricultural
> surpluses and advanced cultural development, but with no signs of
> fortification that would suggests the need for defence from others. This
> contradicts the commonly held patriarchal assumptions that agricultural
> surplus was the necessary and sufficient condition for domination and war.
> These societies valued the feminine power to create life over the masculine
> power to take it.
>
I wonder on what sort of evidence such assuptions are based.
> There is some evidence that climatic changes in central Asia precipitated a
> gradual change to sky god worshipping, male dominant and dominating modes
> of social organization. These changes are thought to have been associated
> with loss of agricultural productivity which resulted mass migrations and
> ultimate overrunning of the peaceful populations they encountered, while
> taking on a modifyied form of the cultures they conquered. The most recent
> of such invasions, and hence the only one in recorded history, was Mycenian
> invasion of Crete. From this material, it seems that the history of
> conquest and domination that we assume to be human nature, is really an
> historical blip of a mere 5,000 years.
>
>
It makes more sense to me to assume, that women had more power while
gathering was a more guaranteed "income" then the other activities.
In flood plains where agriculture was "easy", it developed, where it
was not, nomad animal-rearing, thus wondering was the norm.
Both activities lead to surplus, private property, which required
heirs, thus women became part of the property ever since.
Conquest and domination was part of human life - as it was part
of animal life. However, I agree, it is not necesserily "human
nature", as human behaviour changes much more rapidly as to be
possible to define it.
Eva
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
