Oct 6, 2025 01:40 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025...t-paradise
EXCERPTS: The Marxist idea, actually credited to Marx’s collaborator Friedrich Engels, was that humans were egalitarian until agriculture spread out of the Middle East about 10,000 years ago. [...] An alternative theory, put forward by the Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas in the 1960s, was that woman-centred societies dominated for longer in Europe – until 5,000 years ago – when they were toppled by incoming, patriarchal nomads from the steppe. [...] Although matrilocal and patrilocal societies are equally warlike, says anthropologist Carol Ember of Yale University, internal strife – as opposed to war against an external enemy – prods societies towards patrilocality, because warring clans prefer to keep their sons close... (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: The Marxist idea, actually credited to Marx’s collaborator Friedrich Engels, was that humans were egalitarian until agriculture spread out of the Middle East about 10,000 years ago. [...] An alternative theory, put forward by the Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas in the 1960s, was that woman-centred societies dominated for longer in Europe – until 5,000 years ago – when they were toppled by incoming, patriarchal nomads from the steppe. [...] Although matrilocal and patrilocal societies are equally warlike, says anthropologist Carol Ember of Yale University, internal strife – as opposed to war against an external enemy – prods societies towards patrilocality, because warring clans prefer to keep their sons close... (MORE - details)