Our Brutal Fathers

How did patriarchy first begin? The answers to that question are many and varied, and most often tries to explain it by one single factor - Agriculture! Private property! Men are stronger!

But - the history of patriarchal development is a lot more complex and interesting than one single answer - and very few people have decoded what the evidence tells us about how patriarchal patterns arose and evolved in ancient Europe and Asia Minor - as deeply as research scholar Heide Goettner-Abendroth.

In past episodes we have covered Heide’s work on modern matriarchies (Ep 16:The Peacebuilders) as well as the history of matriarchal societies in ancient Europe and West Asia (Ep 25: The Mothers of Invention). Well, strap in - because in this third installment we are talking about how those ancient matriarchal cultures came to their dramatic ends. About how the first small cells of patriarchy began and then grew and took hold in different parts of the ancient world, how it spread and destroyed former matriarchal cultures. How matriarchal societies waged resistance and fought against their oppressors to protect their egalitarian way of life, but how in the end those brutal forefathers prevailed and shaped the world we live in today.