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Literacy and Patriarchy


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No, they still had specialization but power was more equal. Just as: when you introduce the idea of money to trade equality decreases, and when you formalize decision making and rules making into a technology, whoever masters that technology tends to rise in power.

First, you have no basis for your claim that everyone was equal in hunter gather societies. The only evidence available suggests that people were not less equal simply because of their gender. Those societies could still be very unequal due to unequal distribution of the skill sets required to succeed (i.e. the people with good hunting skills would be more wealthy than those with lesser skills).

Second, specialization will always favor those with hard to acquire specializations but societies which rely on specializations are going to be better off than those that expect people to be generalists. Money has no value in itself but society that places value on money allows more people to specialize and there by increases the over all wealth of society. The side effect of using money is someone can gain power by simply acquiring money. That said, someone cannot acquire money unless one has a rare specialization that allows one to collect money in the first place.

The only reason "nerds" have power in today's society is because they have a hard to acquire skill that is valuable to others. It is really no different than the power a good hunter or a fertile woman likely wielded in hunter-gather societies.

Edited by TimG
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You did not answer the question. Did you listen to Dyer's thesis? You will need to understand the context for my question.

Ok, I watched about 10-15 minutes of the Dyer series. It's great, and really interesting but there are more than a few liberties taken. I would say that it's fact-based but not academically rigorous. A pop intellectual show, kind of like The Nature of Things.

Whether it's him, or the writers... there are little phrases and things in there that really grate on me.

Example:

at about 3:40

"Go all the way back to ancient Egypt 5000 years ago. No human being has ever lived in anything bigger than a village and suddenly here we are in the world's first unified state."

Suddenly ? I think we're talking at least 1,000 years here from farming villages to cities of 5 to 10,000 people. It's too breezy.

Nobody seems to have a strong idea as to why the genders were *more* equal in Egypt, but they were not "equal" in Egypt. I'll keep watching. Thanks for posting this.

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It's just too breezy and sometimes really unbelievable:

“The patriarchs had to buy men’s support and what they had to offer was status. Here was a way to reverse the huge loss of status men had suffered back when we all moved into the villages. Any competent tyrant would spot the raw materials for a deal here.

So here’s an offer you can’t refuse: throw your lot in with us, back patriarchy and we’ll make you superior to all women. You’ll have to obey us, but from now you’ll have control over your women and you can be certain that you’re your kids.

Oh, and we’ll change the religion too. From now on God will be male…"

"The new religions... were a sign that people would break with patriarchy if they had a chance"

"Christianity and Islam represent the final triumph of patriarchy."

Wow. He's some kind of feminist conspiracy theorist as far as I can tell... He brings that Egyptian scholar lady along for the ride.

Academic historians that I have read are much more ponderous and cautious. They tend to not moralize as he does constantly, and they don't make these huge leaps in time either. The practices Dwyer describes as strategized social engineering by elites actually evolved over long periods of time, and there's no indication that the people of that time nor their leaders were any more aware of how large societal changes happened than we are today. They were probably less aware, if anything.

It's still interesting subject matter. Now watching part 4.

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I'm guessing that since he is an expert in military strategy, he sees the world as a series of strategic initiatives. He sees the gradual ascent of patriarchy in Egypt as an intentional strategy by pharohs and scribes.

Part 3 0:10

"and in the course of organizing itself to fight them [its enemies] off Egypt became like everywhere else"

Part 3 0:59

"This was when Egypt finally accepted the full patriarchal package."

Then at the end of part 4, the final conclusion and parting wisdom of the series:

"If we can achieve equality between the sexes then the other big problems like war and nationalism and north-south are not insoluble either."

I think it's a testament to your open mindedness that you found like-mindedness among feminist theories.

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Thanks for the link. However, as I previously stated, I am specifically interested in information about ancient peoples that are the precursors to the civilizations that later developed, rather than the unique isolated cultures which remained technologically undeveloped. I do not consider these outliers to be an adequate proxy for useful information about ancient peoples in Europe, Asia, and Africa that later formed the civilizations now described as "patriarchal".

Ok, I picked the Natufian society as one that was a precursor to relatively advanced Sumerian city-states...

https://books.google.ca/books?id=ZMDMnUn00DUC&pg=PT114&lpg=PT114&dq=Natufian+egalitarian&source=bl&ots=_ZxiCGOY0m&sig=byPvYLeMKTtC2t0wS9Qj-ft8FYE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ULTfVKecM8GuyATblYGIDw&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Natufian%20egalitarian&f=false

"settled societies permit individuals to collect extra property or status, both of which barely exist in hunter-gatherer societies and are in any case frowned on by their egalitarian ethos"

Actually, reading that bit on Natufian civilization gave me some better key words to search this.

Eventually, I found the wikipedia entry that explains it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer

"Hunter-gatherers tend to have an egalitarian social ethos, although settled hunter-gatherers (for example, those inhabiting the Northwest Coast of North America) are an exception to this rule. Nearly all African hunter-gatherers are egalitarian, with women roughly as influential and powerful as men.[10]"

So there's no cause and effect, it seems, but some things make sense: the more you have to move around, the less you can carry, the less you have, the less inequality there is and so on. It doesn't really bridge forward to why men owned technologies that gave them power (and why it happened less often in Egypt).

I did read that in Sumeria, the technologies of writing and of organization all happened around cooperative community management of waterways, including making diagrams in clay and so on. Perhaps this work was done by men, so men inherited the fruits of the resulting technology.

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First, you have no basis for your claim that everyone was equal in hunter gather societies.

I shouldn't say that "everyone was equal". These were egalitarian societies, though, for reasons mentioned above.

Second, specialization will always favor those with hard to acquire specializations but societies which rely on specializations are going to be better off than those that expect people to be generalists.

Specialization and generalization are forces that push and pull societies. I don't understand how you can generalize on "societies which rely on specializations". Can you explain ?

Certainly Mesopotamia was an example of that, in relation to what was there before. But in the electronic age, it's said that specialization is on the wane. Also, we have global specialization too.

The only reason "nerds" have power in today's society is because they have a hard to acquire skill that is valuable to others. It is really no different than the power a good hunter or a fertile woman likely wielded in hunter-gather societies.

I did write that about nerds but I'm not really convinced now. I see a lot of people who are simply good at speaking, writing and general skills doing well in the internet economy too.

Let me know your thoughts on these points.

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The practices Dwyer describes as strategized social engineering by elites actually evolved over long periods of time, and there's no indication that the people of that time nor their leaders were any more aware of how large societal changes happened than we are today. They were probably less aware, if anything.

I don't feel that Dyer suggested that was any awareness of the reasons for the institutions that were adopted. He simply presents a thesis that social institutions are products of evolution and the ones that survived did so because they contributed to the survival of the groups that created them.

There is no moral-ism in this thesis. He simply presents the past and suggests reasons why certain social institutions emerged given the technology and environment available to societies in the past. It is a feminist thesis only in the sense that he present a rational argument for why patriarchal institutions do not need to preserved today.

I find his thesis attractive because of the lack of moral-ism or judgement. i.e. societies in the past did things that we find objectionable today because that is what was needed for survival. A similar thesis can be constructed to explain slavery/serfdom.

Edited by TimG
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Specialization and generalization are forces that push and pull societies. I don't understand how you can generalize on "societies which rely on specializations". Can you explain?

We take it as a given that people specialize. i.e. one person will specialize in hunting while another will specialize is making clothing from the hides. This specialization makes the society more productive but comes with a risk because if something happens to the hunter then the society will have a tough time compensating for the loss. Based on what we know primitive societies tended to specialize based on genders. i.e. they may have been egalitarian but this did not mean that men and women did exactly the same jobs in equal numbers (the idiotic obsession of activists today).

I did write that about nerds but I'm not really convinced now. I see a lot of people who are simply good at speaking, writing and general skills doing well in the internet economy too.

The people who build tech business are good with soft skills. If they have a technical background it is important simply because allows them to find the right employees that can make their vision happen. But that vast majority of people classed as "nerds" don't create businesses - but they do find lucrative employment despite a lack of social skills because there is a market for people that understand technology. Edited by TimG
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I don't feel that Dyer suggested that was any awareness of the reasons for the institutions that were adopted. He simply presents a thesis that social institutions are products of evolution and the ones that survived did so because they contributed to the survival of the groups that created them.

Well that's an obvious thesis I think but ok.

There is no moral-ism in this thesis. He simply presents the past and suggests reasons why certain social institutions emerged given the technology and environment available to societies in the past. It is a feminist thesis only in the sense that he present a rational argument for why patriarchal institutions do not need to preserved today.

There's an inherent moralism when describes different societies as being "brutal" or says "people will reject patriarchy if given the chance". He's cheerleading for feminism between the lines. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it colours what is presented as analysis IMO.

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Well that's an obvious thesis I think but ok.

Well, it is the complete opposite of the thesis that this op started with that suggests literacy is responsible for patriarchy.

There's an inherent moralism when describes different societies as being "brutal" or says "people will reject patriarchy if given the chance".

Statements of the obvious. Very few people believe in patriarchy anymore. The debate today is whether we should accept the natural choices that people make or try impose a false equality based on statistical analysis. Edited by TimG
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Well, it is the complete opposite of the thesis that this op started with that suggests literacy is responsible for patriarchy.

"social institutions are products of evolution"

"literacy is responsible for patriarchy"

I don't see those two things as being opposed.

Statements of the obvious. Very few people believe in patriarchy anymore. The debate today is whether we should accept the natural choices that people make or try impose a false equality based on statistical analysis.

"We"... there isn't really a "we" all the time. And even if they ARE statements of obvious things they are expressions of morality. The entire video is about the end of patriarchy ...

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Whatever the reason, these groups did not expect women and men to do the same jobs in the same numbers. Allowing exceptions to normal roles does not change the fact that normal roles exist.

I don't romanticize life before technology. It was difficult, brutal and short. Life is better for the vast majority of people today even with the issues that need resolving.

There was no such thing as "normal roles" in immediate return hunter-gatherer societies. These were small communities that had to be highly adaptive to the availability of food and changes in their environment. Establishing cultural norms did not start coming in until 10,000 years ago.

The problem today is that the long-running argument between Rousseau and Hobbes has been arbitrarily decided on Hobbes's side, even though the weight of evidence is running against the theme of "nasty, brutish and short" lives in prehistory to a glorious future just beyond our time horizon.

The truth is that life did not become nasty, brutish and short until permanent agriculture became the way of life. The loss of prehistoric hunter-gatherer life was likely the distant memory and source of folklore tales that gave us garden of eden type myths in every agricultural society.

And right now, cornucopia is about to come to an end at some point in the near future, when environment, overcrowding, and resource decline all conspire to end economies that have been based on constant and continuous growth. We live on a finite planet with finite resources! It's high time to start recognizing this simple fact.

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And right now, cornucopia is about to come to an end at some point in the near future, when environment, overcrowding, and resource decline all conspire to end economies that have been based on constant and continuous growth. We live on a finite planet with finite resources! It's high time to start recognizing this simple fact.

You're ignoring the coming population decline though...

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The truth is that life did not become nasty, brutish and short until permanent agriculture became the way of life. The loss of prehistoric hunter-gatherer life was likely the distant memory and source of folklore tales that gave us garden of eden type myths in every agricultural society.

Such a claim is not credible. Injuries and disease take their toll on a society with nothing but superstition and herbal remedies. Also the food supply was unreliable at best and periodic famines would kill. The evidence for this truth is simple: populations boomed with agriculture because agriculture provided a more reliable food supply. Edited by TimG
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Ok, I'm starting to suspect that you have more than a casual interest in this topic.

Absolutely! And the subject of the rise of patriarchal societies is just one aspect of the subject of anthropology. Is patriarchy a natural part of basic human nature? Or the result of adaptations to new technologies and new ways of living that allowed the more aggressive males to seize power and control women? I've already stated my case, and I still would only consider the rise of literacy to play a small part in the rise of patriarchies. It was much more crucial that the realization of a theory of paternity began and resulted in the demand for paternity certainty in some early agricultural societies. In advanced matrilocal societies, the men generally remain on the periphery of family life, and do not interfere with how the house is organized or ruled. Brothers and half-brothers of women with children, usually have a greater parental influence on the children than any likely actual father of the child....who more than likely might be living in a different house with a different woman by the time the children are growing into adulthood.

Early anthropologists viewing simple to complex non-patriarchal societies, had difficult times trying to understand how family life was structured to begin with....especially how did the women decide who was/and who was not proper sexual partners for themselves and their daughters...who would remain living with them and eventually inherit the household. In brief, these are not societies that had a modern concept of nuclear family. Their lives were communal, and children were a communal obligation for all...so, who was or who was not the actual father didn't matter to begin with.

Edited by WIP
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You're ignoring the coming population decline though...

Not really! We have exhausted so much of this planet's resources that a plateau in population at 10.5 billion by mid-century is hardly any help! Truth is we would have reached zero population growth a lot sooner if it wasn't for the pernicious triumvirate of the Reagan Administration, JPII and the Vatican, and the Council of Islamic States, who may never have got together on any other issue, but they all agreed that allowing women free access to birth control was bad for them and their pet interests. The UN-sponsored efforts were largely defunded and populations grew much larger than they would have if women were allowed to stop having babies when they wanted to end baby-making.

The big problem today with having over 7 billion people, is that it is already too large of a global population to sustain permanently even if we radically scale back on our environmental impacts.

And what we are doing today is running a global economic regime that is dependent on more growth and inspiring more and more people to join the race to make and accumulate as much stuff as possible! So, it's not just the size of the human population that's a problem, it's also because the carbon footprints keep getting bigger and bigger with no attempts to shrink them down in size.

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Such a claim is not credible. Injuries and disease take their toll on a society with nothing but superstition and herbal remedies. Also the food supply was unreliable at best and periodic famines would kill. The evidence for this truth is simple: populations boomed with agriculture because agriculture provided a more reliable food supply.

I'm out of time again, so I'll just leave the topic with this article I read by Jared Diamond in Discover Magazine 15 years ago:

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

Diamond draws from archaeological evidence that started coming in as far back as the 70's, which ran counter to the expectations that early farmers would live better than hunter-gatherer ancestors. In fact, the exact opposite occurred all around the world. In Europe, peasant farmers during the middle ages were still not living near as well, nor as long as those paleo-ancestors.

Be careful with carelessly tossed around stats like life span and life expectancy. Usually the calculation of life expectancy eliminates the early deaths from childhood diseases, and once hunter-gatherers made it past their first five years, they lived relatively long lives, well into their 50's and 60's.

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Diamond draws from archaeological evidence that started coming in as far back as the 70's, which ran counter to the expectations that early farmers would live better than hunter-gatherer ancestors. In fact, the exact opposite occurred all around the world.

If the thesis had merit then agricultural societies would have never taken over. Evolution is a relentless taskmaster.

That said, I could see a small group of hunters doing well in a pristine wilderness but that would only be sustainable if their population was kept in check (which likely requires a low life expectancy in an age with no birth control). This would mean that we would expect to see some examples of hunter-gather societies doing well (the data points that Diamond references) but that does not mean these examples are representative. Societies did not turn to agriculture for ideology. They did it for survival.

Although I agree that hunter gatherers were likely more egalitarian that does not mean that tasks would not be assigned according to ability and that would mean that the majority of hunters would be men and a majority of the gatherers would be women. I suspect members of such societies would laugh at the notion that every job needs to be done by an equal number of men and women.

Edited by TimG
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Is suspect members of such societies would laugh at the notion that every job needs to be done by an equal number of men and women.

Agreed. I don't think that's what most observers mean when they talk about egalitarian society. Every society has tasks specialized by men or by women, but in some societies women have more rights, more say in government and so on.

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Agreed. I don't think that's what most observers mean when they talk about egalitarian society. Every society has tasks specialized by men or by women, but in some societies women have more rights, more say in government and so on.

I suspect this goes without saying as far as most anthropologists are concerned. I bring it up because many people today measure equality by looking for equal representation in all jobs even though such a requirement makes no sense from a biological/anthropological perspective. Edited by TimG
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In Europe, peasant farmers during the middle ages were still not living near as well, nor as long as those paleo-ancestors.

Be careful with carelessly tossed around stats like life span and life expectancy. Usually the calculation of life expectancy eliminates the early deaths from childhood diseases, and once hunter-gatherers made it past their first five years, they lived relatively long lives, well into their 50's and 60's.

I do love me some Diamond. I am about to start a 3rd book of his.

My question would be why life expectancy decreased, and whether quality of life for those shorter years was better or preferable. I for one would rather wait around waiting for wheat to grow than be chased by 5,000 BC dinosaurs or whatever...

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I do love me some Diamond. I am about to start a 3rd book of his.

My question would be why life expectancy decreased, and whether quality of life for those shorter years was better or preferable. I for one would rather wait around waiting for wheat to grow than be chased by 5,000 BC dinosaurs or whatever...

One of the reasons it decreased was that people were living in closer quarters and in larger groups. Illnesses, diseases, and waste spread more rapidly than they otherwise would in even a semi-nomadic culture. Another is that the food sources were less varied than they were when people were hunting and foraging, which changed the nutritional makeups of their diets. Edited by cybercoma
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If the thesis had merit then agricultural societies would have never taken over. Evolution is a relentless taskmaster.

That said, I could see a small group of hunters doing well in a pristine wilderness but that would only be sustainable if their population was kept in check (which likely requires a low life expectancy in an age with no birth control). This would mean that we would expect to see some examples of hunter-gather societies doing well (the data points that Diamond references) but that does not mean these examples are representative. Societies did not turn to agriculture for ideology. They did it for survival.

As the picture of the distant past comes into better focus, it appears that the transition to agriculture was neither sudden/nor a great leap forward! The first evidence of grain hybridization goes as far back as 18,000 years ago. But these were no sedentary farmers...as that would have been impossible anyway during the pleistocene epoch, with its colder and rapidly shifting weather patterns. Instead, many bands of hunter-gatherers began carrying seeds of favourite foods with them. Most often rye and other grains were a favourite choice. And, just by a long process of saving the seeds from non-shattering grains they found when they returned to check for growth, they unintentionally hybridized grains that could be sown in fields and harvested in the Holocene...when populations grew dense enough in the Levant and Asia Minor to justify fixed agriculture....and more crucially, weather stabilized into usually reliable seasonable norms that varied little from year to year.

Agriculture was not a first choice for any group of people...as we can see with the last groups of hunter-gatherers in the world choosing to remain in the rainforests and the deserts, rather than moving into settled areas to take up farming. Full time farming did not have the same effects everywhere in the world! In many regions, the societies remained matrilocal and much more egalitarian, while our immediate cultural touchstone - Sumeria for obvious reasons, quickly became both patriarchal and hierarchical, with much of the food-growing efforts done by slave labour. That should neither be considered desireable or inevitable!

So, obviously after there were more than a few million people in the world (50 to 100 million upper limit), population densities started getting too large in many areas to live just off hunting and gathering alone. Worth noting that over here in the Americas...pre-Columbus and especially pre-the animal-borne diseases he and other Europeans brought with them, there were many horticultural societies that at times had higher population densities than in Europe during the time of Columbus! Quite astonishing considering that some of the motivating factors for Europeans to move out and try to conquer the world are believed to be declining firewood availability and frequent famines. But, according to the book - 1491...which I haven't read yet, the largest cities in the world at that time were in the Americas, even though meat had to be acquired from hunting and fishing...so, in the Americas, they only did half of the agricultural revolution, but apparently had much better land-use techniques than in Europe.

Although I agree that hunter gatherers were likely more egalitarian that does not mean that tasks would not be assigned according to ability and that would mean that the majority of hunters would be men and a majority of the gatherers would be women. I suspect members of such societies would laugh at the notion that every job needs to be done by an equal number of men and women.

Okay, here's a brief description of the phenomena called Status Leveling:

In cultural anthropology, a leveling mechanism is a practice that acts to ensure social equality, usually by shaming or humbling members of a group that attempt to put themselves above other members.[1]

Refering to the specific example of the !Kung living in the Kalahari desert:

Yes, when a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can’t accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle."

—Tomazo, "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari" [2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveling_mechanism

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One of the reasons it decreased was that people were living in closer quarters and in larger groups. Illnesses, diseases, and waste spread more rapidly than they otherwise would in even a semi-nomadic culture. Another is that the food sources were less varied than they were when people were hunting and foraging, which changed the nutritional makeups of their diets.

All true. Still, would you rather live to 60 running from a pterodactyl or live to 50 sitting on a tree stump and watching chickens fornicate ?

Also - why is nobody challenging my "humans among the dinosaurs" references ?

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