^^^
Saffire
I tracked down 'socities were females ruled' from the clues in your post and narrowed it down to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk>>>>>Çatalhöyük had no apparent social classes, as no houses with distinctive features (belonging to royalty or religious hierarchy, for example) have been found so far. The most recent investigations also reveal little social distinction based on gender, with men and women receiving equivalent nutrition and seeming to have equal social status, as typically found in Paleolithic cultures<<<<
>>>>In an article in the Turkish Daily News, Hodder is reported as denying that Çatalhöyük was a matriarchal society and quoted as saying "When we look at what they eat and drink and at their social statues, we see that men and women had the same social status. There was a balance of power. Another example is the skulls found. If one's social status was of high importance in Çatalhöyük, the body and head were separated after death. The number of female and male skulls found during the excavations is almost equal."[19]
In a report in September 2009 on the discovery of around 2000 figurines Hodder is quoted as saying:
“Çatalhöyük was excavated in the 1960s in a methodical way, but not using the full range of natural science techniques that are available to us today. Sir James Mellaart who excavated the site in the 1960s came up with all sorts of ideas about the way the site was organised and how it was lived in and so on,” he said. “We’ve now started working there since the mid 1990s and come up with very different ideas about the site. One of the most obvious examples of that is that Çatalhöyük is perhaps best known for the idea of the mother goddess. But our work more recently has tended to show that in fact there is very little evidence of a mother goddess and very little evidence of some sort of female-based matriarchy. That’s just one of the many myths that the modern scientific work is undermining.”[20]
Professor Lynn Meskell explained that while the original excavations had found only 200 figures, the new excavations had uncovered 2000 figurines of which most were animals, with less than 5% of the figurines women.[20]
Estonian folklorist Uku Masing has suggested as early as in 1976, that Çatalhöyük was probably a hunting and gathering religion and the Mother Goddess figurine didn't represent female deity. He implied that perhaps a longer period of time was needed in order to develop symbols for agricultural rites<<<<
In hunter-gatherer socities - women bought in more calories via picking berries/fruits etc than men did by hunting animals - sometimes men would come back empty-handed.
Imagine if the earth vanquished today - and thousands of years later was unearthed, they too would find numerous pictures of females comapred to men - wouldn't mean that females ruled the earth.
Personally speaking, I dont think evolution points to equality of the sexes but the sexes are
complimentary to each other. Kinda romantic, to think that there would be someone on earth who has the exact complimentary DNA to oneself.
I think if socieites were ruled by women, nothing would get done - (city civilisations would never have been built/new lands discovered etc) look at bonobo society, who are our equal cousins along with chimpanzees, bonobo's are matriarchal, all they seem to do is to have sex.
Partriarchal society - which I suppose came to the fore when humans started agriculture - and society had goods to leave to the next generation - which made it paramount that a father knew for sure that the offspring with any union (with female) were his - (this was made difficult because of hidden ovulation and the female tendency to fancy different types of men depending on where she was in her monthly cycle).
Men and women are different- differences in the brain point this out. Note I am not saying one is better, just that they are complimentary.
I would like to see the evidence of women being 'the natural superiors of the human race'.
And finally for now - men suffer in a partriarchal society too, and it is unfair to blame all men - that is collective guilt, no?
Topic: Honour killings?