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The Great Legacy of our Female Ancestors

I feel like if I had known about prehistory when I was 13, I would have had more strength to resist all the forces that were trying to change or steal my identity. I believe this knowledge would have helped me to continue to trust myself, despite all the confusing and often negative and misogynistic messages girls are bombarded with upon reaching adolescence.

Prehistory — the time before recorded history — is much longer than documented history. Most scholars believe that history as we know it began with the written word. Our earliest writing comes from ancient Sumer (modern-day Iraq). It tells a story that dates back to around 1750 BCE (Before the Common Era) about the Goddess Inanna, who was hailed as Queen of Heaven and Earth. Fortunately, we have other ways of learning about prehistory besides the written word. Art, pottery, tools, cave paintings, temples, statues, ritual objects, and graves, for example, all have much to say about life thousands of years ago. These artifacts tell us that their makers were not violent and warlike, but a peaceful people who saw the female as divine — a people whose lives revolved around agriculture, the arts, and spirituality.

You may have heard the phrase,"History is written by the winners". The people who are writing the history textbooks that are most likely to be used in schools are in a powerful position to mold young minds to support and justify their point of view. They have had an agenda, a vested interest in having young people learn and believe their version of how things happened. You will find that many people (women, people of color, gays and lesbians, etc.) have literally been left out of these textbooks, except in the capacity of stereotypical roles that have been defined for them by the dominant culture. For the most part, our patriarchal system shows these marginalized groups no respect. It is important to remember to question, especially if things don't feel right, or it seems like something or someone is missing. Just because something’s written in a book doesn't mean it’s true.

Women have not always been second-class citizens. In fact, recent discoveries by archeologist and anthropologist Marija Gimbutas reveal that women and men once lived in primarily peaceful and egalitarian societies for at least 30,000 years. Many of these civilizations, like in Naila's story, were matrifocal, and in some cases it is possible that lines of descent were traced through the female - producing matriarchal cultures. It is important to mention that matriarchal is not the opposite of patriarchal. While women were highly respected and in positions of power, it was not at the expense of men. There was no domination but rather what appears to have been a relative sharing of power and responsibility. And because their monies and physical energies weren’t spent in preparing for, or going to, war, they were able to spend their time making art, concentrating on spirituality and ritual, and raising children.

Though we can't return to the past, we can certainly learn from it. If people were able to live together peacefully for at least 30,000 years, they must have been doing something right. Also, it is very empowering for girls and women (and men, too) to understand that society hasn’t always been violent and oppressive. The 5,000 years we have lived under a patriarchal system that promotes hatred and bloodshed seems relatively short when compared to our total time on this earth.

A few years ago, I took a trip to Greece with a group of women in search of ancient Goddess sites. The museums we visited were filled with hundreds of statues of Goddesses, queens, priestesses and women in sacred and ritual contexts. We explored caves, hilltop shrines, ancient altars to the Goddesses Artemis, Hera, Athena, and Ilithyia, and visited the site of the Pythia (the ancient oracles, who were priestesses the deities spoke through to provide hidden knowledge and predict the future) at Delphi. What I found there confirmed what I have always known in my body on a cellular level. I am referring to a way of knowing that is often difficult to explain in words because is feels far deeper and much older than language. This sort of intuitive knowing was likely very highly valued in prehistoric cultures.

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