Eva, how do you justify your opinion about all women everywhere as property with
the fact that in most Native American communities the women owned the property
and could put the husband out of the marriage by simply putting his shoes in the
door? Power was vested in the clans and in the clan mothers who chose and still
choose the members of the council. Only they can depose a leader and in my
nation only the "beloved woman" can declare war. In my two divorces the wife got
all of the property and left me only with what they didn't want. It is not easy
being in a traditional marital arrangement. That is why we so rarely leave
them. You seem a bit Eurocentric here. REH
Durant wrote:
> (David Burman:)
>
> >
> > On the contrary. The evidence strongly suggests that our original
> > foreparents were egalitarian in their practices, with agricultural
> > surpluses and advanced cultural development, but with no signs of
> > fortification that would suggests the need for defence from others. This
> > contradicts the commonly held patriarchal assumptions that agricultural
> > surplus was the necessary and sufficient condition for domination and war.
> > These societies valued the feminine power to create life over the masculine
> > power to take it.
> >
>
> I wonder on what sort of evidence such assuptions are based.
>
> > There is some evidence that climatic changes in central Asia precipitated a
> > gradual change to sky god worshipping, male dominant and dominating modes
> > of social organization. These changes are thought to have been associated
> > with loss of agricultural productivity which resulted mass migrations and
> > ultimate overrunning of the peaceful populations they encountered, while
> > taking on a modifyied form of the cultures they conquered. The most recent
> > of such invasions, and hence the only one in recorded history, was Mycenian
> > invasion of Crete. From this material, it seems that the history of
> > conquest and domination that we assume to be human nature, is really an
> > historical blip of a mere 5,000 years.
> >
> >
>
> It makes more sense to me to assume, that women had more power while
> gathering was a more guaranteed "income" then the other activities.
> In flood plains where agriculture was "easy", it developed, where it
> was not, nomad animal-rearing, thus wondering was the norm.
> Both activities lead to surplus, private property, which required
> heirs, thus women became part of the property ever since.
> Conquest and domination was part of human life - as it was part
> of animal life. However, I agree, it is not necesserily "human
> nature", as human behaviour changes much more rapidly as to be
> possible to define it.
>
> Eva
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
