Quote:
Didn't you know? It's feminist conventional wisdom. That there is no documentable evidence of this it's because:
1) Scribes and historians and archeologists are primarily male and have a male-dominant agenda to fulfill.
2) Matriarchal societies did not have an alphabet or keep written records. The alphabet killed the Goddess, as every good feminist knows.
|
I don't know about worldwide, but in Western Europe, after the 'fall' of Rome, the pagan cultures were mainly pre-literate, they memorialised their world in sagas and oral traditions. Then the Christianising missionaries introduced the written word (including the development of several alphabets to allow dissemination of holy texts in the vernacular). The problem was not just that the people writing were men......more specifically they were monks and clerics. Unless you stretch way back into the Roman Empire, the only written sources for much of the 'dark ages' and early medieval period in Europe are religious in character, and that religion had what modern tastes would consider to be a strange attitude to women.
Added to that is the fact that such writing recorded only hagiographical, rather than sociological history: the vast majority of men and women were not accounted for by such works. Unless one was a member of the ruling elite, either secular or ecclesiastical, then one was unlikely to ever be mentioned in those texts.
In classical antiquity, writers recorded natural history and observation, military campaigns, plays, comedies, tragedies etc etc. The introduction of the written word with Christianity, was a much more narrow affair. Given that in many areas women were generally, by default, of a lower societal value than men, and that the peasant class (which consitituted the majority of the population) was of a lower social class than the kings/chiefs/lords they lived under, it stands to reason neither would feature heavily in hagiographical texts. (there are of course exceptions)
During the classical period, women were written about as indeed were Goddesses. It wasn't the written word that killed the Goddess....it was the proumulgation of holy texts.
That said, I may well read that book. I am prepared to be proved wrong on this.