Power in Eden: The Emergence of Gender Hierarchies in the Ancient World

by Bruce Lerro

Have gender inequalities always existed? Did inequality occur instantaneously, or gradually over centuries? How responsible were women for their subordination? why was there no women's movement in ancient times? Power in The Emergence of gender Hierarchies in the Ancient World answers these important questions and many others with a reconstruction (based on the best existing evidence and research) of the multidimensional events and processes that led to the emergence of institutionalized male dominance beginning in the late Neolithic age and ending in the axial Iron Age in 500 BCE. I will show across a period from 6000 BCE how socio-ecological transformations across five social formations (hunting-gathering bands, simple and complex horticultural villages, agricultural states and commercial states) were responsible for the dominance of a few men over most women and most other men. My principle claims are that ecological and demographic forces such as repeated population pressure and resource depletion created great social stress which men and women reacted to differently. These forces also catalyzed new social processes in the Bronze Age, including the rise of political centralization, economic stratification, the invention of the plow, and hieroglyphics. The new gender hierarchies were deepened by the emergence of coined money, the alphabet and iron tools which consolidated male dominance. These material forces were sustained and legitimized by the sacred movement from animism to polytheism to monotheism. Lastly these socio-ecological dynamics lead to changes in the psychology of the appearance of the individualist self and new form of reasoning which I call "hyper-abstract" cognition. My work draws primarily on--and synthesizes--the arguments of anthropologists, archaeologists and macro-sociologists, while granting some ground to evolutionary psychologists. While I am sympathetic to the uses of goddess spirituality for women today. I disagree with most everything they say about ancient history. So what's new about this book? What will be added to the discussion of gender hierarchies that hasn't been said before? I have not done original research which bring to light new facts. What I have done is to bring together the existing material of first-rate scholars in many fields and put it together in the following new All materialist* theories, whether intentionally or not, do not have a well developed explanation of how the sacred meaning making systems tend to legitimize gender hierarchies. My chapter on goddess ideology criticizes idealist attempts to explain the technology, economics, politics from sacred beliefs. However my chapters on the movement from earth-spirit magic to sky god religion are designed to fill the gap left by materialist authors. Materialist theories do not have an explanation of how society gets internalized inside people's minds and hearts, that is, into their psychology. Materialist theories tend to see people as victims of circumstances. Without a psychological theory we cannot address the question of how much women colluded with material forces once they were in place. In my three psychological chapters I show how a psychology of subordination is built right out of the demographic, ecological, technological and economic and political structures materialist theories have identified. I apply Vygotsky's socio-historic theory of learning to show how society gets inside of people and how society gets reproduced when people go to work. While some ecological and structural theories argue that the biophysical setting affect gender relations in my chapter on natural disasters in the Bronze Age I argue for radical climatic downturns from the debris of a comet or asteroid caused stress between men and women beyond the normal inability of societies to regulate their ecol

432 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2005

About the author

Bruce Lerro has taught for over 25 years as an adjunct Professor of Psychology at Golden Gate University, Dominican University and Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area.
He has applied a Vygotskian socio-historical perspective to the three books he’s written, found on Amazon. Read more of his articles and get involved at Planning Beyond Capitalism Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. He can be reached at goethe48@pacbell.net