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fitzroy95 t1_jdt2fr0 wrote

Reply to comment by artaig in Vivek Venkataraman argues that political equality and proto-democracy were the most common form of political organisation in the "state of nature". These ideals preceded modern liberalism & statehood, and are arguably how humans have lived the majority of our evolution. by Ma3Ke4Li3

No, old societies were largely male dominated tribal groups, whether those groups were feudal, religious/theocratic, or any other hierarchical form. That model has been fairly consistent from human as ape down to modern times.

Direct democracies and representative democracies, are largely recent inventions from within a few individual societies over the last 2000 years.

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oasisnotes t1_jdtvqop wrote

> old societies were largely male dominated tribal groups

Lots of anthropological evidence suggests otherwise. For most of human history, societies weren't necessarily patriarchal or matriarchal, but they were matrilineal (i.e. descent was tracked through the female line). This is because in these societies the only parent you could truly know was yours was your mother. Women didn't necessarily 'rule' these societies in a sense that we would understand it, but they did exercise influence over family and tribal life in a way that could, in many cases, cause quotidian existence to revolve more around them. IIRC societies didn't tend to become male dominated until there was an emergence of food surplus and specialized labor.

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applejackhero t1_jdu2lia wrote

I’m actually pretty sure prehistoric tribal groups were /very loosely/ matriarchal. I can dig up some reading if you want, it basically:

  1. women access to/association with reproduction

  2. physiologically, women women are better suited to hunter-gatherer life styles and tended to live longer, and in a hunter-gather society experience is crucial

I say /very loosely/ because our ideas of matriarchy and patriarchy barely apply

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Luklear t1_jduar1w wrote

At least in some Native Americans or First Nations peoples as we call them in Canada, this was not the case.

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