

Deep-seated attitudes to women have roots in ancient agriculture - antoviaque
http://www.economist.com/node/18986073?

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tokenadult
A claim about "all-powerful mother goddesses" before the end of the fifth
millennium BC is inherently unhistorical. The submitted article notes, "For
each group, the data included a description of its agricultural methods as far
back in time as it was possible to go using historical evidence or, in the
case of groups which did not have a written language, the first time they were
observed by outsiders." That's much nearer in time than the transition to
plowing the article refers to.

There was no writing anywhere during the earliest part of that transition, and
if we saw statues of voluptuous female figures in some places (as we do) from
that far back, it is at least as likely that the statues are porn as that they
are representations of powerful goddesses. Archeology has historically
systematically underestimated, perhaps for delicate readers, the amount of
sheer erotic art that was produced by early human beings. The oldest surviving
human art on at least two continents is crude drawings of vulvae, so the
working hypothesis until additional evidence is found is that ancient human
beings did not have a highly developed religion of "all-powerful mother
goddesses" but rather incoherent local folk religions that didn't exclude
teenage boys (the ancient artists of surviving ancient art were mostly teenage
boys) from producing crudely drawn and crudely sculpted porn.

See The Nature of Paleolithic Art by R. Dale Guthrie (published by the
University of Chicago press)

[http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Paleolithic-Art-Dale-
Guthrie/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Paleolithic-Art-Dale-
Guthrie/dp/0226311260)

for much more about the evidence, as analyzed by an author who is a specialist
in Pleistocene megafauna (including Homo sapiens) and himself a fine visual
artist.

AFTER EDIT: It boggles my mind that I can link to a source in my comment and
still have "readers" here ask what my source is for a factual statement in
this comment. The source I linked is the source. (The book I link to is by a
research scholar, and itself cites dozens of thorough sources about all
aspects of human prehistory.) The book I link to is a lot better than any
Wikipedia article. (I am a Wikipedian, painfully aware of how many good
sources are missed when amateurs edit articles on Wikipedia.)

~~~
jgj
> it is at least as likely that the statues are porn as that they are
> representations of powerful goddesses

I'm not so sure there is or needs to be a distinction between the two. Penis
goes in, life comes out. You can't explain that. Well, paleolithic man
couldn't. But they could draw/sculpt it and revere it for both its pleasure-
and life-giving properties.

~~~
mmatants
Reverence is the debatable aspect here. Statue of a goddess implies respect,
pornography implies objectification and a very different power relationship.
So if we draw conclusions about the role of women in that society,
interpreting statues as porn versus pedestals makes a difference.

~~~
jgj
> pornography implies objectification

That's a very modern application of those words. The very act of creating a
statue is (true) objectification, whether it was carried out due to respect or
solely to titillate. I'm not convinced that both cannot be true of the same
statue.

And the modern concept of pornography means very little when framed in a pre-
Judeo-Christian world. I doubt any of our loin-clothed ancestors shared the
shame-based perspective 21st century humans have on the human body. No doubt
some statues/drawings of vulvae were made because vulvae were fun things to
interact with, and some were made because they were meant to be revered; I'd
argue that it's possible for some percentage of those works of art to be
motivated by both respect and eroticism, and further that the two motivations
need not be considered so inherently at odds.

~~~
Zimahl
I agree.

Making a statue in ancient times wasn't cheap or easy. Cheap in the aspect of
always living on the edge of life, where a bad season could decimate a living
group, and having time to do so. Easy in that tools weren't readily available
to get it done quickly. I don't think anyone was just swinging in a hammock on
a lazy Sunday - there were no lazy Sundays.

From that you can most likely assume that statues had purpose and
significance. They weren't just put up for _titillation_ which is really all
modern porn is today.

~~~
wisty
Hunter gatherers may have worked far fewer hours than agrarian societies,
especially if they had just had a decent haul.

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zeteo
>The plough was heavier [...] it gave men an advantage over women. [...] Women
descended from plough-users are less likely to work outside the home, to be
elected to parliament or to run businesses

And this is why North European countries, which used the heaviest plows [1],
are the most backward in their treatment of women. Oh wait...

In any case, as anyone who has had a serious conversation with a farmer can
attest, the bulk of the work in agriculture is by far in harvesting and not in
plowing. Pretty much all traditional societies "allow" women to do that.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carruca>

~~~
stygianguest
Also interesting is their assertion that society first changes very quickly
after the introduction of the plow, but then has very long lasting effects.
Why did the first change quickly but the second have long lasting effects?

~~~
hackinthebochs
I don't understand your critique. Can you explain it more?

~~~
stygianguest
First they find support for the hypothesis that the place of women in society
can change very quickly because their function in society changes.

Then they find support for the opposing hypothesis that such changes in
society have long lasting effects, i.e., that the position of women in society
does not change quickly.

Finally they place both opposing hypotheses in a single narrative.

To me, this is a major inconsistency, perhaps only due to the journalist
rather than the scientists. Both hypotheses should be discarded since neither
fits all the observations.

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yk
In _Guns, Germs and Steel_ Jarred Diamond mentions that there were less than
ten places were farming was invented, and that cultures descended from these
centers usually retained their selection of crops. So with the link between
the plow and some specific crops, it seems that the sample size could
potentially be as low as less than ten ( instead of 1200 language groups).

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scarmig
People seem to be a bit overly upset by the mention of the mother goddess,
which I agree is certainly an outmoded hypothesis. But that's a throwaway line
in the article, which fundamentally is about how different technology can
create different social norms and institutions. It's like half the comments on
the article bitching about a capitalization error.

If the authors of the original article dotted all their is and crossed their
ts, that's really something extraordinary: peoples whose ancestors were plough
users show a strong correlation with regressive views on gender. That's
remarkable.

That original paper can be found here:

On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough
[http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/qje.q...](http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/19/qje.qjt005.abstract)

Note also that the strong correlation here lends itself to a variety of causal
claims. Maybe ploughs led to higher population densities and strong states,
which enforce gender roles. Maybe it's the strength based argument offered by
the Economist. Maybe they became manufacturable only once society had
developed strong states, which would make the correlation purely a one of
shared cause.

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Spooky23
I think the explanation here is much simpler that it needs to be.

Pre-agriculture, everyone's job #1 was getting food on the table. Post-
agriculture, you had a surplus of food, so people began to specialize.
Economic and market forces started to become more sophisticated, as people
were secure enough that daily survival wasn't an issue.

So economically speaking, before the advent of modern farm machinery, what did
a farmer need to prosper? Answer: Labor.

Where did this labor come from? Answer: Children.

Farm families are historically speaking very large. Much larger than what a
hunter/gatherer could possible support.

A woman might have 12-15 children, and since you have a food supply, many of
them will survive to adulthood. So if you have 15 term pregnancies, starting
at age 15, you're talking about being almost continuously pregnant until age
30.

In primitive surroundings, pregnancy is deadly. Today, the lifetime risk of
maternal death in sub-Saharan Africa is 1/16. (vs. 1/2800 in the developed
world).

~~~
mseebach
It's definitely a case of specialisation, but your explanation doesn't address
the correlation between the ancient methods of agriculture and current day
labour force participation that the study does:

 _But in countries like Rwanda, Botswana, Madagascar or Kenya, whose people
are predominantly descended from hoe-users, women are far more likely to be in
the labour force than those in historically plough-using places like India,
Syria or Egypt._

------
bitwize
Plows were usually drawn by animals, not people. If this hypothesis holds,
horses and oxen should have even higher status than men.

This is all an exercise in intellectual wankery that reminds me of the bit in
_Cryptonomicon_ where Randy's girlfriend publishes a paper correlating Unix
beards with female oppression.

Oh, and by the way, 'twas Margaret Mead -- a woman and hardly an apologist for
the patriarchy -- who put the lie to the myth that preagricultural human
society was matriarchal. There have been matrilineal societies, but in these
the property tended to pass from father to daughter's husband rather than
father to son.

~~~
s_baby
You must not remember the story of the golden calf. There are plenty examples
of worshiping domesticated animals.

~~~
bitwize
No, I've heard of it; in fact after typing that I thought "does that explain
sacred cows in India?"

But worshiping domesticated animals isn't as universal or persistent as
patriarchy supposedly is.

~~~
s_baby
It's persistent in pre-traditional societies.

The orthodoxy is pre-traditional societies were about equal in likelyhood
between matriarchy, patriarchy, and both. If you're looking at dominant
deities for this definition.

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jostmey
The author fails to present any serious evidence for their claim. I suspect
that sexism began long before the invention of farming.

~~~
bradddd
It's a slippery slope, but I don't think they're directly claiming the cause
of sexism. Instead, the point they're claiming is: "Women descended from
plough-users are less likely to work outside the home, to be elected to
parliament or to run businesses than their counterparts in countries at
similar levels of development who happen to be descended from hoe-users."

So the bulk of the argument stems from some initial qualitative assessment of
the region's agricultural state (i.e. hoe or plow) and then comparing it to
present day stats for the metrics he outlines.

Your suspicions are probably right, but I don't think the author would even
disagree necessarily. I think this is just an interesting look into one of the
factors that may have been responsible.

~~~
jostmey
If anything the invention of farming may have lead to less violence and
greater equality. This was a period of time when humanity transitioned from
the Hunter to the Farmer.

Farming promoted development. It did not hold it back.

~~~
dspeyer
Isn't it pretty well established that farming led to an increase in violence?

Thinking in terms of "development" is generally a bad approach. History
doesn't have levels. Using generic terms like that implicitly assumes all
sorts of correlations that don't actually exist.

~~~
scott_s
_Isn't it pretty well established that farming led to an increase in
violence?_

Not that I'm aware of. My understanding is that agricultural societies were
_less_ violent. As I understand it, when humans are in hunter-gathering
societies, we are more territorial and less accepting of those outside of our
tribe. (On the order of 50 people.) I'd like to know if that understanding is
wrong.

What I _do_ know is that we have gotten much less violent over time. The 20th
century, even with all of its wars, was still much less violent than all
previous centuries.

~~~
comrade_ogilvy
I would suggest there are two related factors here.

Before significant agriculture some amount of warfare was simply a part of
life as usual. This scenario suggests martial competence is fairly ubiquitous,
and thus dominating enemies without paying a high cost in blood is difficult
(e.g. you might need great political skills to stitch together a powerful
local coalition).

However once significant cities were established, being skilled at warfare was
potentially very _lucrative_. This means a soldier specialist may be a very
rewarding career.

Is it really the plough itself, or that the larger cities the plough helped
create were a big incentive for professional soldiers to become the ruling
class?

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codex
The beauty of evolution is that it not only produces a wide variety of human
offspring (via sexual reproduction and sexual selection) but also a _homo_
_sapien_ family unit in which each individual (male + female(s), usually) has
different strengths.

This surplus of skills has allowed humans to survive under a wide variety of
circumstances and environments. Evolution does not guarantee long term
survival of the fittest--it guarantees long term survival of the most
adaptable.

In some environments, the female may be more critical to the success of the
family (or extended clan, or tribe, or what have you). In others, it's the
man. Sometimes it's equal. But just because a particular skill set isn't the
most valuable at any point in time doesn't mean that the individuals with
those skills should be second class citizens. Eventually, years or decades or
millennia from now, or thousands of miles away, their time will come again.

------
redwood
It's worth noting that at the same time, with the rise of agriculture came the
rise of _property_ and with it --- the rise of ownership of not just the here
and now, but also the future... who will own the land in the _future_?

The focus on thr future ownership gave rise to the focus in single
inheritance: a son. And tbe importance of knowing whose son was your's. To
ensure lineage men suppressed women as an extension if their property.

Now both theories are complimentary because the reason sons (not daughters)
became the targtarget for inheritance probably boiled down to these same
issues of strength.

The key change thwt occured is we became more monogomous and suppressive of
women even though it was not a _natural_ way to be, to preserve property after
death.

Source: "Sex at Dawn", an interesting read on post-religiously framed
anthropology

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benmmurphy
history is perfect for data mining. just search for interesting correlations
and then publish when you've found one. it's not like anybody can run a fresh
experiment to see if it is spurious or not.

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Jun8
"Their primary source of information was a detailed ethnographic description
of over 1,200 language groups across the world."

This method could be extremely error-prone, due to borrowings, etc. between
languages, e.g. see some of the criticisms against gluttochronology
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottochronology#Discussion>) which uses
similar techniques to determine relation between languages.

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yarrel
Idiocy of opinion piece journalists correlates inversely with penis size.

~~~
epochwolf
So.. Opinion pieces by women are all completely flawless?

~~~
redrocket
They're completely irrelevant.

