I found it super interesting to read that during the Paleolithic era, there was very little class inequality. It makes sense that with small groups, people would more or less have to be proficient in all jobs and thus contribute the same things to the group as everyone else. I was surprised to read that there was however, no gender inequality. I had always assumed that a tendency towards patriarchy was sort of ingrained in our species. I figured men trying to control women would have arisen as soon as groups of humans began sticking together. This makes it seem kind of strange how it came about as civilizations began to grow. I get the military and 'heavy lifting' arguments for women being excluded from certain occupations and what not, but everything else? Why restrict women from so much? Not being able to own property or hold positions of authority seems insane and I can't think of any rationalization except that men in general liked being in a private power club. Why didn't women ever revolt? If they all stopped cooking and tending the house, what could the men do?
Another thing I thought was interesting was the fact that there were several human species living together for some time. Why did they all die out but us? They had obviously survived for a very long time independently from homo sapiens. Besides chimpanzees, we are also almost identically related to the bonobo, which is similar to a chimp. The chimpanzee is more violent in general and the bonobo is more peaceful in that many social conflicts are solved by sex. I bring this up as a shower thought, but here we have two very similar monkey species and they both survived just fine despite being so similar. Comparing them to us, wouldn't one of them have died out or something? I think homo sapiens are inherently xenophobic and with our increased brain sizes, that leads to some horrific behaviors. Basically, I surmise that homo sapiens probably wiped out these other species of humans rather than them simply dying off because its preprogrammed in us to not like what is different. Given our natural ability to wipe out other species, i think its more than reasonable to say this is possible.
I thought also how curious it is that inequality didn't really exist in early human existence. Even though the tasks of men and women were different, each task was considered just as important as the other. Once the Agriculture Era came to be, then everything seemed to change. As this time period evolved, positions of power were formed and then patriarchy became the supreme way of the land. It seems that the more "educated" we become, the more destructive as well.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote a very informative post. Thank you.