Judy Foster – The Invisible Women of Prehistory
Three million years of peace, six thousand years of war
Venexia Editrice, Le Civette – I Saggi 2019
di Beppe Pavan
Luciana Percovich and Le Civette di Venexia: how wonderful! Each new volume of the series is a contribution to the search for convincing and encouraging answers to questions such as: why the war? why do states fight each other? Has a society without violence ever existed?
The answer is summed up by Marlene Derlet, who collaborated with Judy Foster on the creation of this editorial project: “Yes, archaeological, anthropological and linguistic evidence shows that before the Indo-European invasion there existed peaceful societies, to whose culture war and victory, with its male heroes, were alien; instead, the feminine was celebrated and women had the same status as men. Their language contained no words to identify destructive weapons; women were not witches, but healers, educators and similar figures, who honored birth, life, death and regeneration".
The project required 12 years of work: research began around the indigenous Australian populations and continued with the study of a "pile of other useful texts”, inspired by the extraordinary and revolutionary work of Marija Gimbutas. Revolutionary because “until not long ago there was a widespread prejudice among scholars and researchers against prehistory and indigenous societies, as well as against any community that was not up to the so-called (Western) civil model” (p 329). Prejudices rooted in what Mary Daly in Quintessence who loves "academia” (the academy of intellectuals who ignore or despise the work of women).
Gimbutas investigated the prehistoric worlds of Ancient Europe and we can read the results of his research in the fundamental text The language of the Goddess. Foster and Derlet extended their research to the "hidden worlds" and the "new worlds", that is, to the rest of the planet, over whose prehistory a sovereign ignorance (academia) continued to dominate.
We thus discover that in the Far East (Thailand, China, Japan, Korea), Indonesia, Oceania, Africa, North, Central and South America, women and men have begun to investigate, research, write... and the final chapter of our book offers us the synthesis of all this work, grouping it into "9 threads" of a feminine fabric of which the warp is represented by the pioneering work of Gimbutas and the weft is made up of research in all areas of the planet. The result I have achieved so far allows the two authors to say that "we have strong reasons to believe that Marija Gimbutas and those who support her are on the right track regarding the reality of the position of women in prehistory” (p. 327).
I briefly present to you these nine threads that led them "on the trail of invisible women in prehistory", trying to "discover their roles and rewrite their history”, reading and interpreting the archaeological documentation and oral tradition relating to that time. The chronological tables reported in the text date the beginning of this story to 7 million years ago, the era to which the "first ape/man found so far” in Ethiopia in 1999. The footnote warns us that “these dates are not fixed, as new discoveries continue to emerge” and, therefore, they are necessary “frequent updates”. The discoveries continue because, obviously, the research continues; and our unconditional gratitude must go - mine for sure - to the women who bring to light their mothers and sisters who have remained invisible, hidden by patriarchal historiography.
The nine threads, therefore… (pp. 318-325).
The first is that of “myth, the immaterial proof". The careful analysis of the symbols and images that decorate ceramics, fabrics, cave walls, etc. – especially when this analysis is conducted by indigenous women, descendants of the matrilineal lineages of those places – demonstrates “how the world is full of incredibly similar myths. (…) And what a wealth of information we lose if we ignore them…! The basic symbols are those: repeated over time and space, they will always have a contemporary meaning”. Let's think about the myths of the first books of the Hebrew Bible...
The second thread is prejudice. I have already said about that towards women. The other "persistent prejudice of contemporary researchers” is the belief that prehistoric people were brutal, violent, and ignorant. “The evidence suggests the opposite: in those societies there was a sense of mutual cooperation and protection of the disabled”; the women knew and cultivated medicinal plants to cure diseases and there are no testimonies of alleged violent activities. On ignorance, then... the engraved, painted and drawn rock art attests "the great skill and talent of those early artists".
Third thread: prehistoric inventions. Many prehistoric technologies were female creations,”designed for practical purposes in everyday life: the use of ropes or threads (for spinning, weaving, weaving fabrics, mats and baskets, fishing nets, etc.); ceramics (for cooking, conservation and transport); forms of accounting and writing (see engraved fired clay tokens); medicine and healing practices; agriculture; and methods for the conservation of natural resources”. And clothing: from sewing animal skins to weaving…
Fourth thread: matrilineage. Almost all the painted "figurines" or figurines in raw clay, ceramic, stone or wood, which emerge from the excavations, are female representations and "they talk about female ancestral deities/spirits/beings from around the world, dating back to prehistoric times”. We are well aware of the formidable work done by Heide Goettner-Abendroth, who documents for us, exactly like this text, that "Matrilineal societies were widespread well before patriarchy emerged and still exist today, despite the pressures of colonization. Prehistoric communities centered on women, who were respected and shared status and responsibilities with men”. Patriarchy=domination; matriarchy=sharing: “In light of this past, humanity can return to living in harmonious societies. As patriarchy began with the advent of history, so it can end with the beginning of a new era".
The fifth thread is agriculture"probably an invention of women, since they were the ones who collected plant resources (…) and had developed methods of conservation and care of cereals, herbs, fruits and other wild plants for edible use (depending on their availability), collecting only what was necessary”. Agriculture first appeared not in Europe, but in Africa, the Near East and Papua New Guinea.
Sixth thread: the house. Different forms of construction were also widespread throughout the world: after the caves, the seasonal huts and the permanent ones on stilts. It was very hard work and several factors had to be taken into account, including “the climatic and social circumstances, the availability of materials, the duration of the occupation, the number of people to be protected".
Seventh thread: the symbolic languages of women. "The secret languages of women were also widespread everywhere. (…) women traditionally communicated through the content and/or configuration of images on pottery, mats, baskets and so on, or through the patterns present on loom-woven fabrics. Both rituals involved the making of objects, and the embedded images conveyed information to other women, knowledge passed down from grandmothers to mothers to daughters.”. Since these tasks were their responsibility, “it is possible that only they understood the meaning of at least some drawings engraved on these objects".
Eighth thread: writing. Most male researchers never talk about it, but there is plenty of evidence of female invention of early forms of writing: clay tokens and seals dating back 10 years in the Middle East, bearing special signs that probably they were used to record the quantity and contents of vases and containers for the storage and preservation of food products; “nü shu”, a secret writing developed by women in an area of China; “the first cuneiform writer was the Sumerian poet Enheduanna, whose hymns and poems were very famous”. (in Inanna. Lady with an Immense Heart, Venexia 2009, the hymns written by Enheduanna).
Ninth thread: the effects of colonization. Here we talk about the Indo-European colonization, which took place “dramatic effects on the peoples of the hidden worlds and the new worlds, especially on women”. Women "they took care of the country”, not only of families and their small clans, but also of the well-being of the forests, the territory, the rivers, the lakes and the coasts… they provided food and medicines, invented tools useful for daily needs… Patriarchal colonization made lose almost all these skills, reducing them topoverty and submission or slavery".
The book ends by giving us a message of trust and hope, as is right and inevitable when talking about women, the strongest and toughest half of humanity: patriarchy has not been able to definitively erase the resistant and colorful fabric that prehistoric women began and that today's feminist women are starting to weave again"so that our prehistoric heritage becomes known to one and all. (…) Women can reveal again a female divinity, the goddess – the feminine principle – and rebuild that peaceful and dynamic existence. Then, when the intricate woven pattern has been fully unfolded, the brilliantly colored images will show a new, harmonious whole, a world of equality and peace".
Beppe Pavan – January 2020
