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+--- Thread: Article Was prehistory a feminist paradise? (/thread-18922.html)
Was prehistory a feminist paradise? - C C - Oct 6, 2025
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/oct/05/was-prehistory-a-feminist-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)