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moss
moss
2897 posts

Re: Neolithic women
Mar 06, 2017, 10:29
carol27 wrote:
Ooh, it had to come didn't it? Reading tjj s ponderings, it set me a thinking. Do you suppose women just breast fed & gathered? Or were they like Lionesses & quite a bit of the animal kingdom where the female of the species sorts it out? Whoever, don't start, I'm largely thinking about lions.I've often noticed that within said animal kingdom that it's the males who are highly decorated & attractive. Even in some human tribes. Is breast, womb, fecundity expressed by the mounds & curves?
In this day of hairless bodies; fat filled lips & plastic filled breasts; near starvation physiques; stretched grotesque faces & designer vaginas; women, we think we're feminist & we get nowhere near.
Whoa, we've travelled so far. I think our Neolithic women would have had it far better sorted out:)


Clever females have just been sidelined in history! Think of the female writers, poets, artists. Boudica is not exactly a favourite of mine, her cruelty in Colchester - tying the roman matrons to stakes, cutting off their breasts and then stuffing them in their mouths, has always made me flinch. Then there was Cartimandu, about the same time, Iron Age ruler of the Brigantes, 'divorced' her husband and married someone else, okay she did betray Caractus. As Tiompan says, it was the soul-destroying christianity that put paid to equality between the sexes.
tiompan
tiompan
5758 posts

Re: Neolithic women
Mar 06, 2017, 13:15
moss wrote:
carol27 wrote:
Ooh, it had to come didn't it? Reading tjj s ponderings, it set me a thinking. Do you suppose women just breast fed & gathered? Or were they like Lionesses & quite a bit of the animal kingdom where the female of the species sorts it out? Whoever, don't start, I'm largely thinking about lions.I've often noticed that within said animal kingdom that it's the males who are highly decorated & attractive. Even in some human tribes. Is breast, womb, fecundity expressed by the mounds & curves?
In this day of hairless bodies; fat filled lips & plastic filled breasts; near starvation physiques; stretched grotesque faces & designer vaginas; women, we think we're feminist & we get nowhere near.
Whoa, we've travelled so far. I think our Neolithic women would have had it far better sorted out:)


Clever females have just been sidelined in history! Think of the female writers, poets, artists. Boudica is not exactly a favourite of mine, her cruelty in Colchester - tying the roman matrons to stakes, cutting off their breasts and then stuffing them in their mouths, has always made me flinch. Then there was Cartimandu, about the same time, Iron Age ruler of the Brigantes, 'divorced' her husband and married someone else, okay she did betray Caractus. As Tiompan says, it was the soul-destroying christianity that put paid to equality between the sexes.


Hi Moss ,
Although not a novel idea I was suggesting much earlier than Christianity / Monotheism , which was only a continuation of the subjugation .
Back to the the introduction of farming i.e. the Neolithic was the point that the changes were introduced , difficult to prove but good arguments in favour of it .
carol27
747 posts

Re: Neolithic women
Mar 06, 2017, 21:51
tiompan wrote:
moss wrote:
carol27 wrote:
Ooh, it had to come didn't it? Reading tjj s ponderings, it set me a thinking. Do you suppose women just breast fed & gathered? Or were they like Lionesses & quite a bit of the animal kingdom where the female of the species sorts it out? Whoever, don't start, I'm largely thinking about lions.I've often noticed that within said animal kingdom that it's the males who are highly decorated & attractive. Even in some human tribes. Is breast, womb, fecundity expressed by the mounds & curves?
In this day of hairless bodies; fat filled lips & plastic filled breasts; near starvation physiques; stretched grotesque faces & designer vaginas; women, we think we're feminist & we get nowhere near.
Whoa, we've travelled so far. I think our Neolithic women would have had it far better sorted out:)


Clever females have just been sidelined in history! Think of the female writers, poets, artists. Boudica is not exactly a favourite of mine, her cruelty in Colchester - tying the roman matrons to stakes, cutting off their breasts and then stuffing them in their mouths, has always made me flinch. Then there was Cartimandu, about the same time, Iron Age ruler of the Brigantes, 'divorced' her husband and married someone else, okay she did betray Caractus. As Tiompan says, it was the soul-destroying christianity that put paid to equality between the sexes.


Hi Moss ,
Although not a novel idea I was suggesting much earlier than Christianity / Monotheism , which was only a continuation of the subjugation .
Back to the the introduction of farming i.e. the Neolithic was the point that the changes were introduced , difficult to prove but good arguments in favour of it .


Yes thankyou everyone, but what I'm wondering about is why, do we think, that subjugation was deemed necessary. Why, do we think that the concept of , virgin, whore, witch as tjj so succinctly put it became a concept, "going forward":) Yes, a nauseating phrase I know:) but, you know modern parlence & all that.
tjj
tjj
3606 posts

Edited Mar 06, 2017, 23:57
Re: Neolithic women
Mar 06, 2017, 23:54
carol27 wrote:

Yes thankyou everyone, but what I'm wondering about is why, do we think, that subjugation was deemed necessary. Why, do we think that the concept of , virgin, whore, witch as tjj so succinctly put it became a concept, "going forward":) Yes, a nauseating phrase I know:) but, you know modern parlence & all that.


I don't think anything became a concept. Perhaps as a species we are tribal, suggestible and basically pack animals. As pack animals we need scapegoats, someone to blame when things go wrong. In by-gone centuries many women were murdered as witches for being outside of the pack (different). Women generally are physically weaker and less powerful than men as when they become mothers all their energy goes into protecting their children. So it was then and probably still is. The 'concept' of Mother seems always to have been held in high esteem e.g. Mother Earth. There seems to be a lot of oral history and folklore to suggest the Christian 'virgin Mary' was superimposed onto older female, mother deities.
tiompan
tiompan
5758 posts

Re: Neolithic women
Mar 07, 2017, 00:15
carol27 wrote:
tiompan wrote:
moss wrote:
carol27 wrote:
Ooh, it had to come didn't it? Reading tjj s ponderings, it set me a thinking. Do you suppose women just breast fed & gathered? Or were they like Lionesses & quite a bit of the animal kingdom where the female of the species sorts it out? Whoever, don't start, I'm largely thinking about lions.I've often noticed that within said animal kingdom that it's the males who are highly decorated & attractive. Even in some human tribes. Is breast, womb, fecundity expressed by the mounds & curves?
In this day of hairless bodies; fat filled lips & plastic filled breasts; near starvation physiques; stretched grotesque faces & designer vaginas; women, we think we're feminist & we get nowhere near.
Whoa, we've travelled so far. I think our Neolithic women would have had it far better sorted out:)


Clever females have just been sidelined in history! Think of the female writers, poets, artists. Boudica is not exactly a favourite of mine, her cruelty in Colchester - tying the roman matrons to stakes, cutting off their breasts and then stuffing them in their mouths, has always made me flinch. Then there was Cartimandu, about the same time, Iron Age ruler of the Brigantes, 'divorced' her husband and married someone else, okay she did betray Caractus. As Tiompan says, it was the soul-destroying christianity that put paid to equality between the sexes.


Hi Moss ,
Although not a novel idea I was suggesting much earlier than Christianity / Monotheism , which was only a continuation of the subjugation .
Back to the the introduction of farming i.e. the Neolithic was the point that the changes were introduced , difficult to prove but good arguments in favour of it .


Yes thankyou everyone, but what I'm wondering about is why, do we think, that subjugation was deemed necessary. Why, do we think that the concept of , virgin, whore, witch as tjj so succinctly put it became a concept, "going forward":) Yes, a nauseating phrase I know:) but, you know modern parlence & all that.


This is a typical approach to the idea that much greater gender inequality began with the onset of farming during the Neolithic .

http://www.econ.ku.dk/mehr/calendar/seminars/30112012/Hansen_et_al___2012__pdf.pdf

There is also a similar argument for general inequality and greater opportunities for a more hierarchical society .

The Beeb VIEW http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-18235130
The paper , it's a bit techy in places but jump to the conclusions .
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/24/9326.full.pdf

It might be argued that it is little different from the usual wishful thinking golden age fantasies associated with any period earlier than today , in this case the Mesolithic , and also suffers from with the extra baggage of noble savage stuff too . But there is some data rather than dreams .
Of course it wouldn't have been a bed of roses for women or any males that might " less advantaged " in Meso but the possibility that farming exacerbated the divisions seems likely .
moss
moss
2897 posts

Re: Neolithic women
Mar 07, 2017, 09:48
tiompan wrote:
carol27 wrote:
[quote="tiompan"][quote="moss"][quote="carol27"]



Yes thankyou everyone, but what I'm wondering about is why, do we think, that subjugation was deemed necessary. Why, do we think that the concept of , virgin, whore, witch as tjj so succinctly put it became a concept, "going forward":) Yes, a nauseating phrase I know:) but, you know modern parlence & all that.


This is a typical approach to the idea that much greater gender inequality began with the onset of farming during the Neolithic .

http://www.econ.ku.dk/mehr/calendar/seminars/30112012/Hansen_et_al___2012__pdf.pdf

There is also a similar argument for general inequality and greater opportunities for a more hierarchical society .

The Beeb VIEW http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-18235130
The paper , it's a bit techy in places but jump to the conclusions .
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/24/9326.full.pdf

It might be argued that it is little different from the usual wishful thinking golden age fantasies associated with any period earlier than today , in this case the Mesolithic , and also suffers from with the extra baggage of noble savage stuff too . But there is some data rather than dreams .
Of course it wouldn't have been a bed of roses for women or any males that might " less advantaged " in Meso but the possibility that farming exacerbated the divisions seems likely .



A long way from lions and bitches !! sorry Carol..

Though we can only surmise how Neolithic women behaved, also Bronze age, as illustrated in the links you gave, there is no evidence about the day to day interaction. Later historical information point to inheritance and marriage law, which must have been working in the Iron Age/Celtic period, when such burials as the Vix female grave was discovered, and of course later in the Saxon period when women were buried with their grave goods. The high-born Anglo-Saxon Street-Loftus female burial shows her with expensive brooches, as do a lot of A/S female burials. Laying down laws had created an equality, which of course was corroded through time, female were not strong physically, this sorted the boys from the girls, as it still does today.

What I cannot prove though is that marriages were not arranged by families, as for instance looks like the case in the Whittle findings when females were found to be from outside the areas. It shows that the male took over the family farm, it does not show subjugation though, the two sexes could have been working side by side.

Women sadly have always born the brunt of childbirth and caring, those traits have tied her to the home for centuries, the time involved and society’s expectations. But one thing does strike me from the past, the Avebury Avenue of both female/male stones, evident elsewhere, at least a common acceptance that both sexes were equal parts of the world, the yin-yang of dark-light, female-male can never be under estimated .
tiompan
tiompan
5758 posts

Re: Neolithic women
Mar 07, 2017, 10:25
Doesn't the Avebury avenue supposed male -female , ying -yang or whatever binary says more about us than the actual setting ?
Particularly seeing as doesn't apply i.e. it is far from consistent , in that the shape of the stones is not limited to diamonds and pillars and what would be described "female " stones are found opposed to other "female " stones etc. And if applied to the stone circle we would get a very unbalanced picture .
Littlestone
Littlestone
5386 posts

Edited Mar 08, 2017, 15:39
Re: Neolithic women
Mar 08, 2017, 15:24
tiompan wrote:
Doesn't the Avebury avenue supposed male -female , ying -yang or whatever binary says more about us than the actual setting ?
Particularly seeing as doesn't apply i.e. it is far from consistent , in that the shape of the stones is not limited to diamonds and pillars and what would be described "female " stones are found opposed to other "female " stones etc. And if applied to the stone circle we would get a very unbalanced picture .


Actually it’s Yin-yang, not ying-yang. ‘Ying’ in Chinese means, among other things, eagle, jade or victorious. The two Chinese characters used to write Yin-yang are ‘Yin’, the ‘shady side’ and ‘Yang’ the ‘bright side’ (of a mountain for example). As such, the concept of Yin-yang may be seen as symbolising the opposites that comprise the whole. The ‘whole’ is the salient bit, not the ’binary’ opposites bit. ‘Binary’ is the ‘in’ word for a lot of things these days but, in the case of Yin-yang, the word ‘dualism’ (in its religious and philosophical sense) is probably a better word to employ.

As for the Avebury Avenue and the Avebury Henge, perhaps there were just not enough diamond- and pillar-shaped stones lying around (and as far as I’m aware none of the stones at Avebury have been dressed to make them look male or female). That would not stop the architects of the Avenue and the Henge from bestowing 'non-pillar' or 'non-diamond' stones with male or female attributes if they so wished. At Avebury they may have done that by decorating the more ‘neutral’ stones in a certain way, or they may have seen gender-related characteristics on the surface of the stone. Some of the stones may even have represented children, and might not have been seen as warranting stones that were perceived as having more clearly defined gender characteristics.
tiompan
tiompan
5758 posts

Re: Neolithic women
Mar 08, 2017, 16:06
Littlestone wrote:
tiompan wrote:
Doesn't the Avebury avenue supposed male -female , ying -yang or whatever binary says more about us than the actual setting ?
Particularly seeing as doesn't apply i.e. it is far from consistent , in that the shape of the stones is not limited to diamonds and pillars and what would be described "female " stones are found opposed to other "female " stones etc. And if applied to the stone circle we would get a very unbalanced picture .


Actually it’s Yin-yang, not ying-yang. ‘Ying’ in Chinese means, among other things, eagle, jade or victorious. The two Chinese characters used to write Yin-yang are ‘Yin’, the ‘shady side’ and ‘Yang’ the ‘bright side’ (of a mountain for example). As such, the concept of Yin-yang may be seen as symbolising the opposites that comprise the whole. The ‘whole’ is the salient bit, not the ’binary’ opposites bit. ‘Binary’ is the ‘in’ word for a lot of things these days but, in the case of Yin-yang, the word ‘dualism’ (in its religious and philosophical sense) is probably a better word to employ.

As for the Avebury Avenue and the Avebury Henge, perhaps there were just not enough diamond- and pillar-shaped stones lying around (and as far as I’m aware none of the stones at Avebury have been dressed to make them look male or female). That would not stop the architects of the Avenue and the Henge from bestowing 'non-pillar' or 'non-diamond' stones with male or female attributes if they so wished. At Avebury they may have done that by decorating the more ‘neutral’ stones in a certain way, or they may have seen gender-related characteristics on the surface of the stone. Some of the stones may even have represented children, and might not have been seen as warranting stones that were perceived as having more clearly defined gender characteristics.


The original Chinese wouldn't have used capital letters . And writing in mid sentence in english wouldn't need one either , you can use them if you wish .
Binary is hardly a “in” word these days , when used in reference to binary oppositions like male and female , it stems from a least Saussure and is central to structuralism .
The post I was responding to mentioned “the yin-yang of dark-light, female-male “ (note the perfectly acceptable lack of capital ) , the ying /yang was never going to get special mention of being a dualism in the context of the reply .
It doesn't matter if there were not enough stones to fit any binary opposition , the problem is that even with the very limited number of pairs in the Avenue they don't fit into any type of binary opposition , male -female or otherwise .
Littlestone
Littlestone
5386 posts

Edited Mar 08, 2017, 18:21
Re: Neolithic women
Mar 08, 2017, 18:19
tiompan wrote:
Littlestone wrote:
tiompan wrote:
Doesn't the Avebury avenue supposed male -female , ying -yang or whatever binary says more about us than the actual setting ?
Particularly seeing as doesn't apply i.e. it is far from consistent , in that the shape of the stones is not limited to diamonds and pillars and what would be described "female " stones are found opposed to other "female " stones etc. And if applied to the stone circle we would get a very unbalanced picture .


Actually it’s Yin-yang, not ying-yang. ‘Ying’ in Chinese means, among other things, eagle, jade or victorious. The two Chinese characters used to write Yin-yang are ‘Yin’, the ‘shady side’ and ‘Yang’ the ‘bright side’ (of a mountain for example). As such, the concept of Yin-yang may be seen as symbolising the opposites that comprise the whole. The ‘whole’ is the salient bit, not the ’binary’ opposites bit. ‘Binary’ is the ‘in’ word for a lot of things these days but, in the case of Yin-yang, the word ‘dualism’ (in its religious and philosophical sense) is probably a better word to employ.

As for the Avebury Avenue and the Avebury Henge, perhaps there were just not enough diamond- and pillar-shaped stones lying around (and as far as I’m aware none of the stones at Avebury have been dressed to make them look male or female). That would not stop the architects of the Avenue and the Henge from bestowing 'non-pillar' or 'non-diamond' stones with male or female attributes if they so wished. At Avebury they may have done that by decorating the more ‘neutral’ stones in a certain way, or they may have seen gender-related characteristics on the surface of the stone. Some of the stones may even have represented children, and might not have been seen as warranting stones that were perceived as having more clearly defined gender characteristics.


The original Chinese wouldn't have used capital letters . And writing in mid sentence in english wouldn't need one either , you can use them if you wish .
Binary is hardly a “in” word these days , when used in reference to binary oppositions like male and female , it stems from a least Saussure and is central to structuralism .
The post I was responding to mentioned “the yin-yang of dark-light, female-male “ (note the perfectly acceptable lack of capital ) , the ying /yang was never going to get special mention of being a dualism in the context of the reply .
It doesn't matter if there were not enough stones to fit any binary opposition , the problem is that even with the very limited number of pairs in the Avenue they don't fit into any type of binary opposition , male -female or otherwise .


You seem to be missing the point, I was referring to your misspelling of the word ‘yin’ as ‘ying’ (the latter with a ‘g’ at the end). The word ‘ying’ has a completely different meaning (indeed meanings) to the word ‘yin’. For example, in both the Chinese and Japanese writing systems the character ‘ying’ is the first of two characters used to write the word ‘Eng-land’ and can be translated as ‘Excellent’ (quite a complimentary attribute). The second character just means ‘Country’. This has nothing to do with capitalization; there is no such thing in those two writing systems (though there are ways of emphasising a word/character when necessary).

By the way, ‘English’ as it appears in the second line of your post, is generally spelt with a capital ‘E’. :-)

I’ll get back to the male/female stones at Avebury later.
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