Women and History: They Were Humanity’s First Scientists

The book The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow is laden with cheeky and irreverent observations about our human history and our general lack of understanding thereof.  It is an absolute delight to read for those with an interest in the topic.  One of the constant themes that appears throughout the text is that recent human history, distorted by the rise of patriarchy and its religious propagation, basically eliminates contributions of women to our physical and cultural evolution.  The authors were moved to include a section devoted to countering that deletion titled “On Woman, the Scientist.”

Conventional wisdom concerning human evolution suggests there would come a time when people would discover the knack of large-scale agricultural production which would support greater populations, lead to necessarily more complex hierarchical social structures, produce greater disparities in wealth, and introduce the wars, plagues and pestilences that accompany wealth and concentrated populations.  It is common to view this transformation from comfortable hunter-gatherer societies to that produced by this “agricultural revolution” as being the fall from grace represented in Hebrew religious tradition.  What is clear from archeological and anthropological studies is that humans were smart people who learned the techniques of plant and animal management many thousands of years before this supposed agricultural revolution.  They wisely chose to augment their lives only with advances in knowledge that actually improved their well-being.  Why give up healthy and diverse diets for inferior ones based on a few crops?  Why give up a leisurely lifestyle for one that was extremely labor intensive?  Over this long transition period, the ability—the technology— to utilize natural materials from plants and animals would evolve.  If you think of technical developments as the work of scientists, the authors argue that the earliest scientists were society’s women. 

“Rejecting a Garden of Eden type narrative for the origins of farming also means rejecting, or at least questioning, the gendered assumptions lurking behind that narrative.  Apart from being a story about the loss of primordial innocence, the Book of Genesis is also one of history’s most enduring charters for the hatred of women, rivalled only (in the Western tradition) by the prejudices of Greek authors like Hesiod, or for that matter Plato.  It is Eve, after all, who proves too weak to resist the exhortations of the crafty serpent and is first to bite the forbidden fruit, because she is the one who desires knowledge and wisdom.  Her punishment (and that of all women following her) is to bear children in severe pain and live under the rule of her husband, whose ow destiny is to subsist by the sweat of his brow.”

“In this view, we’re not asking questions about who might have actually been doing all the intellectual and practical work of manipulating wild plants: exploring their properties in different soils and water regimes; experimenting with harvesting techniques, accumulating observations about the effects these all have on growth, reproduction and nutrition; debating the social implications.”

Instead, the fever dreams of Patriarchs become stories that became the foundations of patriarchal religions in which women are deemed dangerous and incompetent and must exist only as a subspecies to be manipulated by males.

“Consciously or not, it is the contributions of women that get written out of such accounts.  Harvesting wild plants and turning them into food, medicine and complex structures like baskets or clothing is almost everywhere a female activity and may be gendered female even when practiced by men.” 

“…where evidence exists, it points to strong associations between women and plant-based knowledge as far back as one can trace such things.”

These activities fall into the categories of technology development.

“By plant-based knowledge we don’t just mean new ways of working with wild flora to produce food, spices, medicines, pigments or poisons.  We also mean the development of fibre-based crafts and industries, and the more abstract forms of knowledge these tend to generate about properties of time, space and structure.  Textiles, basketry, network, matting and cordage were most likely always developed in parallel with the cultivation of edible plants, which also implies the development of mathematical and geometric knowledge that is (quite literally) intertwined with the practice of these crafts.  Women’s association with such knowledge extends back to some of the earliest surviving depictions of the human form: the ubiquitous sculpted female figurines of the last Ice Age with their woven headgear, string skirts and belts made of cord.” 

The authors provide us with a summary of how technology developed over those early eras—a process much different than we might expect. 

“Instead of some male genius realizing his solitary vision, innovation in Neolithic societies was based on a collective body of knowledge accumulated over centuries, largely by women, in an endless series of apparently humble but in fact enormously significant discoveries.  Many of those Neolithic discoveries had the cumulative effect of reshaping everyday life every bit as profoundly as the automatic loom or lightbulb.”

“Every time we sit down to breakfast, we are likely to be benefiting from a dozen such prehistoric inventions.  Who was the first person to figure out that you could make bread rise by the addition of those microorganisms we call yeasts?  We can have no idea, but we can be almost certain that she was a woman…”

The reason the authors seem so determined to highlight the role of women in human history—and the same reason we should be interested—is probably a feeling of guilt over what has been stolen from women over the last several millennia.  Gerda Lerner addressed the effect of patriarchy on women in her breakthrough study The Creation of Patriarchy. 

Patriarchy as documented in the Hebrew religious texts, defined women as a subspecies relative to men, one who the Hebrew God had explicitly relegated to a subordinate role.  Women’s access to God would only be through men.  Lerner’s findings were discussed in Women: Patriarchy, Religion, and History.  She would reach these conclusions.

“The decisive change in the relationship of man to God occurs in the story of the covenant, and it is defined in such a way as to marginalize women.”

“We must take note of the fact that Yahweh makes the covenant with Abraham alone, not including [his wife] Sarah, and that in so doing He gives divine sanction to the leadership of the patriarch over his family and tribe…the covenant relationship is only with males—first with Abraham, then explicitly with Abraham and Sarah’s son, Isaac, who is referred to only as Abraham’s son.  Moreover, the community of the covenant is divinely defined as a male community, as can be seen by the selection of the symbol [circumcision] chosen as ‘token of the covenant’.”

“For females, the Book of Genesis represented their definition as creatures essentially different from males; a redefinition of their sexuality as beneficial and redemptive only within the boundaries of patriarchal dominance; and finally the recognition that they were excluded from directly being able to represent the divine principle.  The weight of the Biblical narrative seemed to decree that by the will of God women were included in His covenant only through the mediation of men.” 

The tyranny of the religions men created in order to propagate their dominance held women back for many centuries—and still does in some regions and cultures.

“…All males, whether enslaved or economically or racially oppressed, could still identify with those like them—other males—who represented mastery of the symbol system.  No matter how degraded, each male slave or peasant was like to the master in his relationship to God.  This was not the case for women.  Up to the time of the Protestant Reformation the vast majority of women could not confirm and strengthen their humanity by reference to other females in positions of intellectual authority and religious leadership.”

“Where there is no precedent, one cannot imagine alternatives to existing conditions.  It is this feature of male hegemony which has been the most damaging to women and has ensured their subordinate status for millennia.  The denial to women of their history has reinforced their acceptance of the ideology of patriarchy and has undermined the individual woman’s sense of self-worth.”

We must give thanks to the authors for bringing to current memory the history of eras when men and women were both freed from the burden of patriarchy and the talents of both genders contributed to society and its progressions.