Was Patriarchy Necessary To Build Civilization?
It depends on what you think is civilized
Here’s the premise:
Civilization is built when men produce more than they need to satiate their desires; civilization is the surplus value males create for the future, particularly their children.
Men will only produce surplus value if it will increase their returns in the marriage market(h/t:RPR). It is not that marriage itself is of value to men, rather marriage provides a means by which man can ensure paternity of his children. With the paternity of his children assured, man can invest invest in his children. Assured paternity binds father to children.
This binding of father to son and daughter is civilization, it may even be humanity itself.*
Sounds sort of reasonable, right, based on what most people believe about the world and how it functions? But let’s deconstruct this and see if it actually holds up.
Patriarchy as a pervasive social system is only about 6–9 thousand years old. The prevailing hypothesis is that it came about as a result of warlike, Proto-Indo-European Northern tribes overtaking the settlements of “Old Europe.” Prior to that time, most humans lived in peaceful, largely egalitarian communities that were matrilinear (heredity passed through the female line). Both archeology and anthropology indicate that Middle and Upper Paleolithic tribes were overwhelmingly like this, although this same way of life also continued into the Neolithic and early Chalcolithic eras (copper age).
In other words, for most of human history, men were not looked upon as the head of the household, the leader of the tribe, or more important than women. Women were revered as the givers of life, and men did not have primacy or power over them. In fact, in Çatalhöyük, a settlement of about 10,000 from the Neolithic era, where extensive archeological artifacts have been discovered, giving great insight into the way the society functioned, it is clear that the inhabitants were both egalitarian, non-hierarchical, and largely peaceful.
Çatalhöyük has strong evidence of an egalitarian society, 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. Çatalhöyük
The settlement seems to have been very orderly, efficient, and successful. The inhabitants gained skill in agriculture as well as the domestication of animals, and it is the first place in the world where mining and smelting of metal is in evidence. Pottery and the making of obsidian tools seem to have been major industries, although weapons of war and fortifications are notably absent. Çatalhöyük existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5700 BC and flourished around 7000 BC. It was a fully-functioning culture that appears to have done quite well without the coercive and controlling hierarchies of the patriarchy that was to come soon after.
These villages were not heavily fortified, and showed little evidence of hierarchical social stratification. However, they did possess highly developed artistic and spiritual sensibilities, as well as baffling and inexplicably advanced capabilities of megalithic construction. A remarkable example is a series of round megalithic temples built out of stones ~50 tons in weight and ~10 feet high, located 9 miles northeast of Urfa (330 miles east of Catal Hoyuk) at Gobekli Tepe.
While the Kurgan hypothesis has been academically controversial and has come under many challenges by scientists including Colin Renfrew, Grey & Atkinson, Mario Alinei and many others, we believe that it remains the most convincing explanation for the early spread of militarism and hierarchical dominance of society.
OK, so maybe you’re thinking, “Sure, those people had a nice village and lived what seems like a pretty good life, but in order to really create great civilizations, patriarchy was needed.” I suppose it depends somewhat on what you consider a great civilization. Patriarchy brought about not just stratification between men and women, but rather, an entire class system that had not previously existed. Some men gained wealth and power, but nearly always at the expense of others around them.
It is this Nordic invasion (rather than the invention of agriculture) that resulted in mankind becoming chained to a system that could build the Pyramids and many other monuments to central authority, far too numerous to count; but could not free the vast majority from lives of poverty and want.
In 1949 Dr. Margaret Murray traced back the royal lineage of Egypt and demonstrated that “at the level of royalty, the Egyptian culture at most periods was matrilineal.” The practice of brothers marrying sisters may have come about as a way for sons to gain access to the hereditary power.
Most of the great achievements of a patriarchal society took place on the backs of the people who were oppressed by it. This includes the unpaid labor of women, who kept homes and raised children, freeing up the men in their lives to focus on ideas and innovations, as well as the free labor of slaves, in many cases. The great railroads of America weren’t built by the men who financed them. They were built by the coolies who did the backbreaking labor for a meager wage.
The Carnegies and the Vanderbilts of the world may have worked hard and used their ingenuity to form their empires, but they also exploited their workers. Hundred-hour workweeks were common until they were abolished by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, but it took 50 years of agitation to get the Act passed because there was significant resistance to it from the patriarchs of industry. Patriarchal stratification means that some people count more than others and that many times employees are used as if they were just another resource to be maximized. Henry Ford only advocated for the 40-hour workweek because he realized it would help sales.
In a 1926 interview to a magazine, World’s Work, Ford said: “Leisure is an indispensable ingredient in a growing consumer market because working people need to have enough free time to find uses for consumer products, including automobiles.”
“It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either ‘lost time’ or a class privilege,” Ford stated.
So, let’s review: For most of human history, lineage went through the mother and men and women had fairly egalitarian relationships. They lived in relative peace and harmony, both within their communities and with their neighbors. This does not mean that early societies were Utopian, but warfare was not prevalent and the coercive control of women was not a part of the social fabric. In some early societies women were actually the heads of the household, as in ancient Egypt. Herodotus of Greece wrote that in Egypt, “Women go in the marketplace, transact affairs and occupy themselves with business, while the husbands stay home and weave.” This was the case until around the 4th century BC. (1)
Class stratification also did not exist in any significant manner. Cultures kept evolving to have greater technologies, finer art, better tools, and refinements to their social systems. Patriarchy brought domination-based systems and a focus on technologies of war. It may have eventually led to palaces and great edifices as well as greater industry, but are we truly better off?
We live longer and have better medical care than in ancient times, but we also live more isolated lives, devoid of the kind of community and social connection that human beings are designed for. Loneliness in our culture is at an epidemic level that cuts lives short. We have all types of stratification and the discord and violence that arise out of a system of social hierarchy. Dominance based hierarchies produce, but they also largely benefit those at the top of the hierarchy in ways that the rest of the society doesn’t benefit from in the same ways.
There was plenty of “civilization” before patriarchy became a common social system. The belief that patriarchy = civilization is a fantasy perpetuated by men who feel threatened at the thought that it could have ever been otherwise.
(1) When God Was A Woman, Merlin Stone, Page 36