Early
humans lived in ecogynocentric cultures and worshiped Earth Goddesses
(Excerpt
from Cyborgs
Versus the Earth Goddess: Men's Domestication of Women and Animals
and Female Resistance
(2017) by Moses Seenarine)
(Female
Hand print, Chauvet cave, France c. 32,000 BP)
The
Earth and her organisms are wholesome, active entities. Each unique
creature has individual and collective interests and relationships.
However, acting like aliens, modern men or Cyborgs have reduced and
eliminated the subjectivity of Earthlings to establish themselves as
the only 'real' subjects in both theory and practice.
The
status of being a subject is central to having rights and safeguards
under a patriarchal society. Framing unique, individual beings as
similar objects is a key strategy of patriarchal reduction and
oppression. This article sketches female subjectivity during
prehistory and their extraordinary decline in status when men gained
control over human organization. It starts with a brief look at how
female-centered societies were associated with Goddess ideologies.
After this, the decline of the Greek Goddess, Metis, is explained.
And the article concludes with an examination of the great fall in
female status in the post-Stone Age.
(Woman/Goddess
of Willendorf, Germany c. 28,000 BP)
♀
Roles
& the Goddess
Female-centered
primate cultures existed for millions of years, and females held a
high status within the earliest human groups, around two million BP.
Also, from the dawn of the species over 200,000 years ago, females
have been active participants in shaping culture, behavior, and human
destiny.
The
notion of a Goddess was central to Stone Age oral traditions,
imagery, gynecology, and female-centered thinking. Gynocentric
practices revolved around reverence for various Goddesses, and
evolved along with our human-like ancestors.
The
Goddess perspective was maintained during humans' continuous
migration out of Africa to populate the Earth, so it was a Global
one. Gynecological sanctions were part of Goddess narratives, and
adhering to these environmental laws ensured long periods of
sustainability for our species.
Stone
Age humans viewed the Earth as a providential Goddess and a fertile
Mother, and females' prominent positions were connected to the
bountiful Deity. Under the Goddess worldview, nature and animals were
perceived as female – sacred, mighty, and nurturing. Men were
active participants in female-led communities, with valuable roles
and strong ties to their maternal clans.
As
fully realized subjects, females led child-centered groups under the
protection of various Earth Goddesses. Then, as now, egg-producing
humans were creative, intelligent, reasonable, courageous, and
powerful. They were likewise generous, compassionate, moral, socially
responsible, and hard-working.
Stone
Age females lived in matrilocal kin groups based on maternal
residence and group motherhood. Clans were also matrilineal, with
inheritance based on maternal lineage.
The Goddess-centered economy was proportionate and equal, with
gift-giving playing a primal role in fostering cooperation and
solidarity between female communities.
The
tightly-knit, female-centered social organization kept the power of
human male animals in balance during the Stone Age. Lack of art and
other physical evidence imply there was an absence of conflict, and
the numerous successful migrations across the globe suggest vast
periods of human cooperation.
In
many parts of the World, Goddess worship and females held dominant
roles, but over the past centuries, grave robbers pillaged a lot of
this evidence. The burial of a 4,500 years old Siberian noblewoman
from the ancient Okunev Culture that was found undisturbed provides a
glimpse of the history that was wiped out.
The
early Bronze Age grave include an incense burner decorated with solar
symbols - three sun-shaped facial images which match ancient rock art
in Siberia. There were also two jars, cases with bone needles inside,
a bronze knife, 1,500 beads that once adorned the woman's costume,
and 100 pendants made from animal teeth.
In
the Americas, female authority persisted into the last millennia. For
example, the priestesses of Moche were renowned for their monumental
architecture and rich visual culture. Regarded as the first
state-level civilization in the Americas, the Moche inhabited the
north coast of Peru from 2,000 to 1,200 BP.
The Moche flourished before the Incas, but at the same time, the
Mayas thrived in Mexico and Central America. The Moche developed the
inland desert with a complicated system of irrigation used for
agriculture. They built adobe pyramids, and, like other gynocentric
cultures, used an Earth Goddess to unify their society.
The
Moche had no written language but left thousands of ceramic vessels
with intricate drawings portraying their daily lives and beliefs
about the human and supernatural worlds. Moche artists crafted
ceramic and metal objects of striking realism and visual
sophistication depicting the Goddess and female life cycles.
The
eight royal tombs of Moche priestess discovered contained extensive
artifacts, and the complexity of the burial reveal the power and
influence the women wielded in life. Archaeologists know the eight
women were priestesses because of their resemblance to figures
depicted in rituals scenes found in Moche art.
The
women were priestesses, but they could have likewise been rulers. The
political and religious realms were blended in ancient cultures, and
rulers were often the priests. For instance, the Señora de Cao, who
reined around 1,700 BP, is considered the first female sovereign of
pre-Hispanic Peru.
(A
winged goddess depicted under Zeus' throne, possibly Metis c. 2,550
BP)
Remembering
Metis
In
Greek, Metis means 'wisdom,' 'skill,' or craft.' In pre-patriarchal
Greek religions, Metis was of the older Titan generation and an
Oceanid. Metis was born of Oceanus and his sister Tethys. She is of
an earlier age than Zeus, the chief male god, and his siblings. This
era was the age of the Goddess when male deities were rare or
insignificant.
Metis
was the Titan Goddess of good advice, planning, and cunning. She
was the mother of wisdom and sound thought. After the decline of
gynocentrism, Metis was reduced to a counsel and spouse of Zeus, and
besides, his cousin.
A
prophecy revealed that she was destined to bear a son greater than
his father. Zeus became jealous and tricked Metis into turning
herself into a fly. Then, he promptly swallowed her. Trapped, Metis
spent the rest of her life giving Zeus advice from inside him.
Inside
Zeus' belly, Metis conceived a daughter. In time, she began making a
helmet and robe for her fetus, and her hammering caused Zeus great
pain. Eventually, her daughter, Athena, re-birthed from the god's
head fully grown and armed with a war-cry.
In
later Greek mythology, after the solidification of patriarchal
versions of earlier religions, poets described Athena as a
"motherless goddess" and did not mention Metis. Other
versions of Athena noted that Zeus, her father, later attempted to
rape her. Athena killed him without hesitation and took his name and
skin. In many different versions of the story, Athena never has a
birth mother. Plato identified Athena with Neith, a much more ancient
Triple Goddess from Libya.
Zeus swallowed Metis and made her a part of himself. But that was not
enough. By having Athena born only from Zeus, the narrative gave
males authority and power over something that had previously only
been a female realm, the cycles of reproduction. Moreover, this
framing of male-birthing removed all female association with wisdom.
In
remembering Metis, this study is reclaiming female prehistory and
wisdom as female-centered. It is asserting that gynocentric cultures
existed among early humans and lasted throughout the Stone Age.
Honoring Metis reminds us that ancient gynecological principles were
sustainable and a return to these practices can slow down planetary
heating and help to restore harmony on Earth.
(Woman/Goddess
of Çatalhöyük c. 8,000 BP)
The
Great Fall of ♀
Stone
Age gynecological worldviews that honored females and nature through
various Earth Goddesses survived well into the so-called 'agrarian'
era. But by the Bronze Age, even though some Goddesses remained, sex
roles and status were totally reversed. Maleness became prized, at
the detriment of other subjects, and females, nature, and the Goddess
were collectively debased to mere objects for male use.
Men's
opportunity arose with females' continuous innovations in cultivating
plants during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age (12,200 to 4,500 BP).
Sperm-producing humans embraced, learned, then took over female
cultivation technologies, but this was not the end. The stupendous
decline in female status and culture, and the attendant rise of
patriarchy, are related to animal enslavement that occurred later.
By
9,500 to 9,000 BP, agricultural economies that relied on a mix of
domesticated crops and farmed animals were fully crystallized in the
Middle East. Soon after, many aspects of daily life in the Fertile
Crescent were diffused into the Mediterranean and elsewhere.
The agrarian transfer package included subsistence agriculture,
animal husbandry, social networks, and cyborg belief systems.
By
8,000 BP, male-dominated farming economies led to the rise to
powerful cyborg city-states in Eurasia. The sovereignty of female
clans honoring Earth Goddesses was comprehensively diminished, and
egg-producing humans were prevented from amply expressing themselves
in increasingly male-dominated societies. Formerly honored girls were
disempowered and objectified into tools by the falsely entitled
cyborg herders.
The
Bronze-Age started around 5,000 BP, and durable weapons increased
male violence across the Globe as embattled men competed to rule over
each other. Across Europe, patriarchal ideology continued to replace
matrilineal and matrifocal systems, which severely affected females'
personal, social, and economic status.
The
pistillate
calamity intensified around 1,500 BP when Christians and Muslims
began to replace the thousands of female-honoring Goddess cultures in
Africa and Eurasia with a single patriarchal god. In a short time
span, in cultures across the world, once sovereign beings were
objectified into reproductive objects and restricted to the domestic
sphere.
In
Gyn/Ecology,
Mary Daly notes, "this attraction/need of males for female
energy, seen for what it is, is necrophilia - not in the sense of
love for actual corpses, but of love for those victimized into a
state of living death." The domestication of 'ladies' is ongoing
and so too is its resistance. Sarah Ditum argues that women cannot
remain neutral on the feminist issue because the battlefield is our
bodies: “There’s no way to avoid picking a side when you yourself
are the disputed territory.”
While
there has been some progress toward sexual equality in modern times,
gains have also been eroded and "the much needed positive
developments are not happening fast enough.” This conclusion was
made at the 2017 UN Commission on the Status of Women, by Phumzile
Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of UN Women, the United Nations
agency charged with promoting women's rights.
In
addition to receiving one-third less wages than a man, over half of
all women workers around the world, and up to 90 percent in some
countries, are informally employed. The informal economy consists of
low-cost, female farm workers, street food vendors, care workers, and
so on. These girls and women work without legal or social protection,
and in India alone, this sector accounts for 190 million women. "They
are the under-the-radar and under-valued cogs in the bigger wheels of
the formal economy," Mlambo-Ngcuka said.
The
UNW director note that changing discriminatory laws in over 150
countries "could affect more than three billion women and girls
in the world." And empowering females politicallly can lead to
many positive changes, including economic one. For instance Phumzile
Mlambo-Ngcuka suggested that "advancing women's equality in
total could bring a potential boost of 28 trillion U.S. dollars to
global annual GDP by 2025."
Women
and children represent seventy-five percent of humans. It makes sense
that society should be organized around the interests of this
majority, rather than a hopelessly insecure minority that is clearly
unfit to rule. Returning the Goddess and women to their rightful
place in prehistory and the present is not only good for females, but
for males, and the entire Earth. Women and men ignore this imperative
at our own peril.
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