The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future (review)

There are different versions of the story, but the basic outline is this: In a time before written history, all societies centered around women, who were revered for their life-giving powers and honored as incarnations of the goddess. At some point, a transformation occurred and society was thereafter dominated by men, the "patriarchy" in which we live today. Although the future is uncertain, it will either bring harmony between the sexes, or women will recover their past exalted status. Cynthia Eller (author of Conscientious Objectors and the Second World War and Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America) notes:

As a student of religion, I was fascinated with this theory, with its power to explain history, to set a feminist and ecological ethical agenda, and incredibly, to change lives. Of course I knew theoretically that this is precisely what myths do—and this narrative of matriarchal utopia and patriarchal takeover was surely a myth, at least in the scholarly sense: it was a tale told repeatedly and reverently, explaining things (namely, the origin of sexism) otherwise thought to be painfully inexplicable. But to see a myth developing and gaining ground before my own eyes—and more significantly, in my own peer group—was a revelation to me. Here was a myth that, however recently created, wielded tremendous psychological and spiritual power. [2000:5]

Initially enamored of the narrative, Eller's cursory reading of the available literature exposed serious flaws in its historical claims. Of course, a myth need not be true to affect lives, but this narrative's lack of a historical component rankled the author. During the past fifteen years, the narrative has moved from the feminist spirituality movement into the feminist and cultural mainstream, and one has to ask: Why would a myth that so narrowly defines women in terms of biology gain such wide acceptance?

It is difficult to generalize, but the narrative seems most popular in the United States, among white, middle-class women interested in religion and spirituality. (It is also found in England, Germany, and, to a lesser extent, Italy.) Eller notes that until the late 19th century in Western Europe, the idea of matriarchy existed more as a literary trope than a historical certainty. Then, in 1861, Johann Jakob Bachofen published Das Mutterrecht, postulating an era of matriarchy that ended in classical times. Evolutionary anthropologists championed Bachofen's theory for the next thirty years, at which time the idea was discredited. A new version of the myth gained acceptance in the late 1970s with second-wave feminists, a resurgence based in part upon the work of folklorist and archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. As Eller writes,

it is hard to overestimate the significance of Gimbutas and her work to the contemporary feminist myth of matriarchal prehistory. Gimbutas loaned her impressive archaeological credentials to the myth at a time when other academic archaeologists were steadfastly unwilling to do so. Though there are many intelligent and well-read partisans of the myth, Gimbutas is the only one who is an archaeologist. [2000:39]

The most common explanation for why prehistory was matriarchal is the theory that prehistoric men were not aware of their role in reproduction. This theory dovetails neatly with the notion that in prehistoric times pregnancy was viewed as "mysterious," "magical," and a product of women alone. Correspondingly, adherents to the myth claim that the patriarchal revolution occurred when men discovered their role in reproduction, a knowledge acquired after humans began to domesticate animals.

There is a second theory explaining the demise of the matriarchy: Patriarchal invaders attacked and defeated the harmonious culture, and then introduced their own male-dominant culture. One has to wonder: If all cultures were matriarchal, where did these patriarchal invaders originate? Eller wryly quotes Riane Eisler's frequent insistence that "the patriarchal invaders came from 'the barren fringes of the globe,' a place securely off the map...