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>When people keep close track of each other's ancestry, that's female empowerment? The idea was that offspring of different females were spatially segregated i
by yholio 5y ago
>When people keep close track of each other's ancestry, that's female empowerment?
The idea was that offspring of different females were spatially segregated in the tomb. If the females were powerless members of the patriarch's harem, the social status of their offspring would depend only on their relation with the common father or some other brotherly ranking. The different family trees that emerge suggest that these matriarchs had at least some power in the later development of the community.
- toyg 5y agoOr simply that the community "classified" children by their mothers, which is the obvious approach: as the Romans later stated, pater semper incertus est, "the father is always in doubt". That doesn't involve any power attribution.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> If the females were powerless members of the patriarch's harem, the social status of their offspring would depend only on their relation with the common father or some other brotherly ranking. If this isn't true for some well-documented societies like Imperial China or the Ottoman Turks, why would we believe it's true of people in prehistoric Britain?
- yholio 5y agoBecause it's not true for women neither in imperial China nor the Ottoman empire, history shows women wielded significant political power in those societies, up to and including influencing imperial succession to favor their offspring.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> history shows women wielded significant political power in those societies, up to and including influencing imperial succession to favor their offspring. Yes, of course, that's true of all past, present, and future societies. And for that reason, it isn't what people are talking about when they ask what the status of women was in society. What do you think the blurb in the article is trying to say?