Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe,
Speaker 1: quick question here, who is your favorite goddess? Oh? Man, Well,
Speaker 1: it depends on if you ask me while I've just
Speaker 1: been listening to some some Stevie Nicks jams. If I'm
Speaker 1: going to go into the Fleetwood Mac kind of Rhiannon territory. Uh.
Speaker 1: But if not, I think I'm going to stick with
Speaker 1: something that. Actually I wonder if there's a linguistic relationship
Speaker 1: between Rhiannon and the one I'm about to talk about,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of a cognate the Sumerian goddess in Anna.
Speaker 1: You're familiar with in Anna, but she's the one who
Speaker 1: rings like a bell through the night. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's also Rhiannon. But in Nana does sort of take
Speaker 1: to the sky like a bird in flight, and I
Speaker 1: don't maybe sometimes she promises you haven't. She is definitely
Speaker 1: the darkness and she rules her life like a fine skylark.
Speaker 1: But let's not get sidetracked. In Nana has hymns of
Speaker 1: her own that we can sing and I think we
Speaker 1: actually should read some in a second here. So in
Speaker 1: Nana is a Sumerian goddess. She is also known as
Speaker 1: the Acadian Ishtar. I think that they're This is believed
Speaker 1: to be the same goddess, essentially across a different stream
Speaker 1: of tradition, and the deep history of the Mesopotamian goddess
Speaker 1: has lots of different things associated with it. So in
Speaker 1: some sense, Nana is the goddess of the storehouse, meaning
Speaker 1: that she rules over the stores of things like dates
Speaker 1: and meat and grain. But she's also a goddess of
Speaker 1: fertility and sex and war and slaughter. So she's got
Speaker 1: all of this interesting stuff gathered up under her feathers.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I said feathers. I don't think
Speaker 1: she's a bird under her dark wings. That's a different
Speaker 1: that's a different song. But it's interesting because all the
Speaker 1: things that she is encompassing here. Um, this, this is
Speaker 1: the domains that we would cover in a vast pantheon
Speaker 1: of gods and goddess is from other traditions, all wrapped
Speaker 1: up into one. Yeah, And to give a sense of
Speaker 1: the power of Ananna, I if Robert, if you will comply,
Speaker 1: I think we should have a reading of some excellent
Speaker 1: ancient texts. Let's do it trivia question. In fact, I
Speaker 1: didn't know this until this episode. Who do who do
Speaker 1: you think is the earliest named author in all of
Speaker 1: world literature? M hmmm, well it certainly it would probably
Speaker 1: tie to this time period, but I had no idea
Speaker 1: who the individual would be. Well, very often we find
Speaker 1: ancient texts and carvings things, you know, marks made in
Speaker 1: clay and cune of form and stuff. We don't know
Speaker 1: who the author is. It doesn't say like you know,
Speaker 1: Jeff wrote this clay tablet inscription. But a strong contender
Speaker 1: for the title of the earliest named author in all
Speaker 1: of world literature is in Headuwana, a twenty third century
Speaker 1: b c. E. Mesopotamian high priestess and poet twenty third
Speaker 1: century b c. Forty three hundred years ago. This priestess
Speaker 1: and poet she was the daughter of the Akkadian king
Speaker 1: Sargon the Great, and she's named as the author of
Speaker 1: a collection of hymns and poems, many of which are
Speaker 1: devoted to the praise of the Sumerian goddess in Hannah.
Speaker 1: And I think we should read some selections from Inhduanas
Speaker 1: him the Exultation of Anna. And this is from a
Speaker 1: translation that I found on the electronic text Corpus of
Speaker 1: Sumerian Literature based out of the University of Oxford. Now
Speaker 1: the poem is way too long to read in its entirety,
Speaker 1: but I put together some abridged selections. So here we go.
Speaker 1: On the Exultation of Anna, Lady of all the divine powers,
Speaker 1: resplendent light, righteous woman, clothed in radiance, beloved of On
Speaker 1: and Rak, Mistress of Heaven, with the great pectoral jewels.
Speaker 1: She loves the good head dress, befitting the office of
Speaker 1: ain priestess. Like a dragon, you have deposited venom on
Speaker 1: the foreign lands, Lady who rides upon a beast whose
Speaker 1: words are spoken at the holy command of On the
Speaker 1: great rights are yours? Who can fathom them? Destroyer of
Speaker 1: the foreign lands, you confer strength on the storm, beloved
Speaker 1: of Inlil. You have made awesome terror way upon the land.
Speaker 1: Because of you, the threshold of tears is opened, and
Speaker 1: people walk along the path of the House of Great
Speaker 1: Lamentations in the van of battle. All is struck down
Speaker 1: before you. With your strength, My lady, teeth can crush flint.
Speaker 1: You charge forward like a charging storm, My lady, the
Speaker 1: great an Una gods fly from you to the ruined
Speaker 1: mounds like scudding bats. They dare not stand before your
Speaker 1: terrible gaze. They dare not confront your terrible countenance. Who
Speaker 1: can cool your raging heart? Your malevolent anger is too
Speaker 1: great to cool, Lady Supreme over the foreign lands, who
Speaker 1: can take anything from your province. Blood is poured into
Speaker 1: their rivers because of you, and their people must drink it.
Speaker 1: And then there's a section that's talking about if a
Speaker 1: city has not acknowledged itself to be hers, if the
Speaker 1: city doesn't say I belong to an Anna. Quote, it's
Speaker 1: a woman no longer speaks affectionately with her husband at
Speaker 1: dead of night. She no longer takes counsel with him,
Speaker 1: and she no longer reveals to him the pure thoughts
Speaker 1: of her heart. I in head to Anna, will recite
Speaker 1: a prayer to you. To you Holy in Anna, I
Speaker 1: shall give free vent to my tears like sweet beer.
Speaker 1: Be it known that you are lofty as the heavens.
Speaker 1: Be it known that you were broad as the earth.
Speaker 1: Be it known that you destroy the rebel lands. Be
Speaker 1: it known that you roar at the foreign lands. Be
Speaker 1: it known that you crush heads. Be it known that
Speaker 1: you devour corpses like a dog. Be it known that
Speaker 1: your gaze is terrible. Be it known that you lift
Speaker 1: your terrible gaze. Be it known that you have flashing eyes.
Speaker 1: Be it known that you are unshakable and unyielding. Be
Speaker 1: it known that you always stand triumphant. The light was
Speaker 1: sweet for her, Delight extended over her. She was full
Speaker 1: of fairest beauty, like the light of the rising moon.
Speaker 1: She exuded delight. Robert, how would you even begin to
Speaker 1: characterize this awesome mixture of brutal, merciless conquest and all
Speaker 1: these statements about radiants and beauty. Oh, I mean, well,
Speaker 1: but she's not to be trifled with, and she's really
Speaker 1: on on on par with the sun in terms of
Speaker 1: just beautiful, radiant. But but but also with all this
Speaker 1: destructive potential. I think it's fun. It talks about delight.
Speaker 1: This is a poem with delight in it. And also
Speaker 1: they will make you drink the blood. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that The best I can think is the sun. It
Speaker 1: is delightful to stand in the sun, but you will
Speaker 1: and can be burned by the sun as well. I
Speaker 1: mean it is, there's just a primal and vital energy
Speaker 1: to her. Now. She in many ways I think here
Speaker 1: is described as having the qualities of a storm god
Speaker 1: like Baal or mar Duke or Yahwe or Zeus or
Speaker 1: thor you know, these these storm war gods where the
Speaker 1: sky weather deity tends to be so ceated with conquest
Speaker 1: and power and killing um. But she's also embodied, as
Speaker 1: you know, resplendence and delight, and she has all these
Speaker 1: other qualities we see in in other stories about her.
Speaker 1: That she's associated with stores of grain that are necessary
Speaker 1: for survival, that she's associated with sex and fertility and happiness.
Speaker 1: And so how does it end up that you've got
Speaker 1: this one deity who's got all these different qualities gathered
Speaker 1: underneath her. Yeah, and then what is taken away from
Speaker 1: her over the centuries to follow. That's a good question,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. In thinking about my own favorite goddess,
Speaker 1: my mind instantly turned to Fetis because I've been interested
Speaker 1: in mythic sea creatures of late, and we've talked about
Speaker 1: the Iliad quite a bit of late. So I I
Speaker 1: thought to Thetis, who through really throughout the history of
Speaker 1: written language. She's most well known as the mother of Achilles, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the the nearly invincible warrior of the Iliad.
Speaker 1: And she's commonly described as an immortal near it. And
Speaker 1: she begot Achilles through her union with the mortal Pelias,
Speaker 1: king of the Mermaidans. And to protect her mortal son,
Speaker 1: she dipped him by the heel and the river sticks.
Speaker 1: And she also commissioned Hephaestus to forge his armor and arms.
Speaker 1: And she petitions Zeus himself on her son's behalf. Now,
Speaker 1: Thetis never strikes me as as someone you want to
Speaker 1: cross or mess with, especially as as far as the
Speaker 1: welfare of her son is concerned. She commands a fair
Speaker 1: amount of power and influence in the Greek pantheon. And
Speaker 1: and she herself as the daughter of the sea god Nereus,
Speaker 1: and her brother in law is Poseidon. And yet there
Speaker 1: is something reduced about her. Uh. This this this being
Speaker 1: that is that that was worshiped as a goddess. Uh
Speaker 1: seems to be somewhat diminished in the Iliad and in
Speaker 1: other works. It's like she's been reduced to a supporting
Speaker 1: role when she once was the star. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: I I researched this a little bit and I can't
Speaker 1: ram it ran across a pay per titled The Wrath
Speaker 1: of Fetus by Laura M. Slatkin from Columbia University and
Speaker 1: was published in the journal Transactions of the American Philological Association.
Speaker 1: And she points out that in the Iliad, she's quote
Speaker 1: a subsidiary deity who is characterized by helplessness and by
Speaker 1: impotent grief, and yet she persuades Zeus to set in
Speaker 1: motion the in the events of the Iliad, and in
Speaker 1: Mighty Achilles invokes her name above all others. He asks
Speaker 1: her to pretention Zeus and remind the king of the
Speaker 1: gods that she is the one who saved Zeus when
Speaker 1: all the other Olympians wanted to bind him, and to
Speaker 1: be bound, Slatkin points out, is the doom of a god.
Speaker 1: And Thetis does nothing short of saving the cosmos and
Speaker 1: maintaining cosmic equilibrium by preventing Zeus from going down like
Speaker 1: Zeus's own father Cronus. So that's kind of funny to
Speaker 1: suggest that you would be saving the cosmos by saving Zeus,
Speaker 1: because like, of what good is Zeus? Zeus is just trash? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it but he's the trash we know, right, You
Speaker 1: can imagine a situation was like, oh man, these gods,
Speaker 1: gods are crazy, but at least we kind of have
Speaker 1: worked out, you know, what their their mad passions are.
Speaker 1: We don't need another revolution so that the other Olympians
Speaker 1: will rule the roost. I mean, Zeus mostly just does
Speaker 1: bad stuff. Yeah, but it's true, it's true. Well, there's something.
Speaker 1: It's like it's almost like we make excuses for him
Speaker 1: as this like bad tempered, criminal, violent male deity, or
Speaker 1: we're just like, oh, boys will be boys. What a rascal?
Speaker 1: Are we still talking about mythology or not talking about
Speaker 1: current events? No? No, no, I mean I think that well,
Speaker 1: I think there's something to be said about that, and
Speaker 1: that will tie into today's episode. So fetis were also
Speaker 1: told in the writings of the Greek poet pindar Uh
Speaker 1: was destined to birth of son more mighty than his father,
Speaker 1: and that's why her her original suitors Zeus and Beside,
Speaker 1: both abandoned her love and forced her against her will
Speaker 1: to marry Immortal instead. Uh So, think of that. There's
Speaker 1: tremendous power in thetis, like she was faded to birth
Speaker 1: this this child greater than its father. So if she
Speaker 1: had born the son of Zeus or Poseidon, that would
Speaker 1: have been a rival to the King of the gods. Right,
Speaker 1: but the King of the gods. If the King of
Speaker 1: the gods has a son who's too powerful, he asked
Speaker 1: to fear, he will be dethroned. Right, So maker Mary immortal,
Speaker 1: so at least her mighty son will be mighty, and
Speaker 1: more or less the mortal realm, and certainly at Kells
Speaker 1: is mortal. That's kind of the that's the whole theme,
Speaker 1: and this immortal mother and the son that is doomed
Speaker 1: to die, and sola Can points out that this was
Speaker 1: an established trope because Thetis has a lot in common
Speaker 1: with Eos, the god, the goddess of the dawn, and
Speaker 1: the mother of Memnon, who we've discussed on the show before,
Speaker 1: and the Colossi of Memnon episode. Yeah, the established role
Speaker 1: of an immortal mother looking after her mortal son who
Speaker 1: is doomed to die, and the Iliagist sticks to Fetus
Speaker 1: in this one role, but still invoking the established mythological
Speaker 1: role of the old Indo European don goddess. Interesting. So
Speaker 1: Thetis was certainly worshiped as a sea goddess in her time.
Speaker 1: But this goes beyond the mere limiting of a mighty
Speaker 1: deity to a supporting role in the iliot Uh. Slatkin
Speaker 1: points out that the Laconian traditions identified her as a
Speaker 1: primordial creatrix, so she she is quote not simply a
Speaker 1: cosmic force, but the cosmic force. She not only has
Speaker 1: power in the sea, but is the generative principle of
Speaker 1: the universe. Well, that seems to go along with the
Speaker 1: nature of the sea and creation myths, right, Like when
Speaker 1: you have the sea, you've got the waters. First, there
Speaker 1: is like the darkness and the waters, and then you've
Speaker 1: got creation coming out of that. The water is almost
Speaker 1: kind of symbolize a primordial chaos from which some kind
Speaker 1: of order can be wrought. And you see that in
Speaker 1: other creation myths too, like in the Tiamat creation myth
Speaker 1: where mar Duke slays Tamat, the sea monster, you know,
Speaker 1: the who re presents the water being yeah, and then
Speaker 1: uses her body to make the world. So we've already
Speaker 1: established this this trend where we see a a often
Speaker 1: a primordial like all powerful cosmic goddess who is then
Speaker 1: reduced over time made a minor role in a story
Speaker 1: of warring men or a or a minor deity that
Speaker 1: is that is overpowered by masculine deities. What what happened
Speaker 1: and what potentially is still happening in our culture? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And on one hand, that kind of male dominant, misogynist
Speaker 1: rewriting of cultural ideas and mythology and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: it seems so common that you might not even stop
Speaker 1: to ask why things are that way, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it just seems like, well, that's always what happens in culture.
Speaker 1: You know, men think they're better than women, and they
Speaker 1: want to rewrite all of the cultural stories and everything
Speaker 1: to downplay women's roles and make themselves feel more important.
Speaker 1: And and some people just say, well that, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: just how it is. But why wouldn't that be an
Speaker 1: interesting thing to have an explanation for why that is
Speaker 1: such a trend. And that's what we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about in today's episode. We're gonna talk about one hypothesis,
Speaker 1: one fascinating hypothesis for why this has come to pass.
Speaker 1: And this was presented in the book The Alphabet Versus
Speaker 1: the Goddess The Conflict between Word and Image by American
Speaker 1: surgeon author and inventor Leonard Schlaine, who lived n seven
Speaker 1: through two thousand and nine. Yeah, so, in the late
Speaker 1: nineties when this book was written, Schlaine was the chief
Speaker 1: of laparoscopic surgery at California Medical Center in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and apparently he worked at least to some degree in
Speaker 1: performing surgeries on the arteries supplying blood to the hemispheres
Speaker 1: of the brain. And just a fun bit of trivia
Speaker 1: that really has nothing to do with our episode today,
Speaker 1: but his daughter Kimberly is married to the actor Albert Brooks,
Speaker 1: and his daughter Tiffany as a noted filmmaker and founded
Speaker 1: the Webby Awards. Stuff About Your Mind incidentally, is a
Speaker 1: Webby Award winning podcast. I don't see that as a
Speaker 1: conflict of interest, but I just thought I pointed out
Speaker 1: but wait a minute, Albert Brooks, Hanks Scorpio, Yeah, Hank
Speaker 1: Scorpio himself is connected to this episode. Now, before we
Speaker 1: lay out sh Lane's central claim and discuss some of
Speaker 1: his arguments, I definitely want to say that this is
Speaker 1: an idea we're discussing because it's interesting and because it
Speaker 1: raises questions worth investigating, and not because we're endorsing it
Speaker 1: as correct. I'd say this is going to be more
Speaker 1: in in bicameral mind kind of territory, where this is
Speaker 1: a book that brings up a lot of interesting questions,
Speaker 1: takes us to a lot of interesting places, but ultimately
Speaker 1: we're not going to be saying we think that this
Speaker 1: guy has the right idea. And in many cases I
Speaker 1: think that I'll go ahead and say that I'm not
Speaker 1: convinced by his core thesis, and I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of criticisms about his approach to argumentation. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I think a lot of peripheral arguments and
Speaker 1: observations that come up in this book merrit individual analysis, right.
Speaker 1: And then he's using he to build this hypothesis. He's
Speaker 1: using uh, he's using science, and he's using history. He's
Speaker 1: using a number of just fascinating cultural examples. So he
Speaker 1: is uh. Even if we ultimately are not won over
Speaker 1: by the hypothesis, uh, he supports it with so much
Speaker 1: fascinating information, and it really does force you to at
Speaker 1: least re examine some of these things that we've taken
Speaker 1: for for granted, like just the absence of or that,
Speaker 1: for the most part, the absence of goddesses from our
Speaker 1: our our major world religions. Okay, so let's start with
Speaker 1: Schlane's central claim and then back up and and run
Speaker 1: through his argument. What do we have a quote here
Speaker 1: that will help us get to the heart of Schlane's
Speaker 1: claim from the beginning? We do. We have at least
Speaker 1: a couple of quotes here, and and certainly he was
Speaker 1: he was a great writer, so his words capture at best,
Speaker 1: he writes quote, there exists ample evidence that any society
Speaker 1: acquiring the written word experiences explosive changes. For the most part,
Speaker 1: these changes can be characterized as progress. But one pernicious
Speaker 1: of fact of literacy has gone largely unnoticed. Writing subliminally
Speaker 1: fosters a patriarchal outlook. Writing of any kind, but especially
Speaker 1: it's alphabetic form, diminishes feminine values and within them women's
Speaker 1: power in the culture. WHOA. Now, that is a far
Speaker 1: reaching and radical hypothesis and something that, if it were true,
Speaker 1: would have profound implications for the whole world. Indeed, and
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of the heart of his hypothesis here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So whenever you've got these big kind of hypotheses like this, uh,
Speaker 1: radical claims about something very fundamental about like say, the
Speaker 1: role of gender egalitarianism or the lack thereof in the world,
Speaker 1: and explaining it through something as widespread as the idea
Speaker 1: of literacy. You definitely it makes your ears prick up right,
Speaker 1: you know, you want to know what this was about.
Speaker 1: I've got another quote that expresses part of the core
Speaker 1: of his idea. It's quote, literacy has promoted the subjugation
Speaker 1: of women by men throughout all but the very recent
Speaker 1: history of the West. Misogyny and patriarchy rise and fall
Speaker 1: with the fortunes of the alphabetic written word. Another nice
Speaker 1: summary from from later in the book is quote the alphabet,
Speaker 1: through its emphasis on linearity and sequence, caused the left
Speaker 1: side of the brain of those who learned it to hypertrophy,
Speaker 1: resulting in a marked cerebral dominance of one lobe over
Speaker 1: the other. Metaphorically, the mind listed to one side as
Speaker 1: one carrying an unevenly distributed load. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: like a major, lasting influence on the way the human
Speaker 1: brain works. Yeah. Now, Schlan talks. He tells a story
Speaker 1: in his book, and he talks about how he first
Speaker 1: began to form this thesis when he was touring Greece
Speaker 1: with this great antiquities guide who kept going to sit
Speaker 1: after sight and explaining, okay, what was once here was
Speaker 1: a shrine to a goddess, female goddess, but then later
Speaker 1: it was rededicated to a male god. It's kind of
Speaker 1: an odd pattern to just see happening over and over
Speaker 1: in one place after another. If the if the tendency
Speaker 1: is generally toward male dominance in the culture and patriarchy
Speaker 1: and misogyny, why did you have all these female goddesses
Speaker 1: to begin with, and why did the changeover in power
Speaker 1: to male dominated pantheon's occur? And so Schlan started to
Speaker 1: wonder what what would cause all that? Yeah, because basically
Speaker 1: we do have a wealth of goddesses in the polytheistic tradition,
Speaker 1: but we see most of them fall out of favor
Speaker 1: over time. They're either reduced to minor deities or demi gods,
Speaker 1: or or certainly they are just the the feminine at best. Really,
Speaker 1: they're the feminine aspect of the same god that also
Speaker 1: has a masculine aspect as well, while the male gods
Speaker 1: continue to climb up the hierarchy. Because really, outside of
Speaker 1: Hindu Shaktism, which focuses on the feminine aspects of the
Speaker 1: gods and the cosmos. Can you think of any widespread
Speaker 1: goddess movements outside of WICCA and the neo pagan goddess
Speaker 1: movement that is also rather modern. Well, the key is widespread.
Speaker 1: If you go into beliefs held by smaller numbers of people,
Speaker 1: I think you'll get into all kinds of things with
Speaker 1: with female deities and and even uh, you know, matriarchal
Speaker 1: kinds of pantheons. But the big religions of the world,
Speaker 1: you know, you've really just got a few that are
Speaker 1: representing the vast majority of humankind, right, and those tend
Speaker 1: to be the big monotheisms. And then you've also got
Speaker 1: Hinduism and Buddhism, right. So as a sort of an
Speaker 1: inform formal survey of sorts, I reached out to the
Speaker 1: folks and the discussion module which is which is the
Speaker 1: official stuff to Blow your Mind Facebook group, which you
Speaker 1: should all join if you want to engage in meaningful
Speaker 1: conversation with other listeners and and also your hosts here.
Speaker 1: But I said, hey, what are what are some goddesses
Speaker 1: or divine females that are displayed in your homes? Uh?
Speaker 1: And I and I also open this up to sort
Speaker 1: of hyper real religious examples as well, which will say so,
Speaker 1: just a quick list of some of the uh goddesses
Speaker 1: that were mentioned. I this wonder Woman, the Virgin Mary
Speaker 1: Desire of the Endless, which is a character from the
Speaker 1: Sandman comic book. Um, somebody mentioned sort of an abstract
Speaker 1: feminist goddess tattoo, uh Freya, Princess Leiah Calisi from Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones, um Mucha's Claire de Lune painting. And also
Speaker 1: Marlene Dietrich who was an actor, right, yeah, uh Tara.
Speaker 1: In fact, here is a quote from listeners sorry, who says,
Speaker 1: I have several white Taras in my house. She's a
Speaker 1: Tibetan Buddhist deity thought to help curb ego driven thoughts
Speaker 1: and action. So I thought this was interesting beginning. I
Speaker 1: had to ask because I was looking around my own
Speaker 1: living room and I realized, well, we have several depictions
Speaker 1: of various gods, but they are all masculine. Why do
Speaker 1: I not have any images of a goddess in here
Speaker 1: as well? I'm gonna have to fix that. Yeah, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with your living room? Man? I know I've got
Speaker 1: I've got I've got to balance it. And that brings
Speaker 1: us back to uh to Schlane's are here, how did
Speaker 1: this unbalancing occur? Yes, And another side of the theory,
Speaker 1: of course, would be how come we see goddesses diminished
Speaker 1: throughout the world for the last few thousand years? But
Speaker 1: now you've got all kinds of people who say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got wonder woman, she's a goddess. Where did that
Speaker 1: come from? She Len has an answer for that too, Again,
Speaker 1: not necessarily something we're going to agree with him on,
Speaker 1: but it's an interesting thing to consider. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take a quick break and
Speaker 1: we come back. We will jump into she Lene's hypothesis.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. All right, we're back. Now we're
Speaker 1: about to get into Leonard Slaine's hypothesis about what happened
Speaker 1: with the decline of female lead pantheons of goddess based
Speaker 1: religions and lead to male dominated religious ideas and cultures
Speaker 1: in history. And so he's got a framework that he
Speaker 1: uses throughout the book to sort of describe these associated
Speaker 1: ideas of types of thinking, sort of perceptual modes, hemispheres
Speaker 1: of the brain, and a gender identity that are all
Speaker 1: sort of grouped together into these hemispheres, and I think
Speaker 1: this grouping could be kind of problematic. We'll talk about it.
Speaker 1: But what is his basic basic division of the two
Speaker 1: perceptual modes. All right, so you have the feminine outlook,
Speaker 1: which is holistic, simultaneous, synthetic, and uh and it involves
Speaker 1: concrete worldviews. So this is sort of the perceptual mode
Speaker 1: that sees sees things by gestalt, sees everything at once,
Speaker 1: that goes by intuition, that works uh more with concrete
Speaker 1: images and objects very much bound in image. And then
Speaker 1: you have the masculine outlook, which is linear, sequential, reductionist,
Speaker 1: and abstract in its worldview. Okay, so this is more
Speaker 1: based on non visual information and uh, sequential analysis of things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the feminine is, hey, give me a picture, and then
Speaker 1: the masculine outlook is I'd rather have those thousand words. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of people you're listening to this
Speaker 1: and saying, like, I'm not loving the like gender associations
Speaker 1: there with the different types of points of view, And
Speaker 1: I think that's a fair point to make. Slain himself
Speaker 1: is aware of the fact that these generalizations could be problematic,
Speaker 1: and he writes, quote every individual is generously endowed with
Speaker 1: all the features of both, right. Yeah. He frequently brings
Speaker 1: up the Yen yang Uh symbol from Taoism as as
Speaker 1: the idea of balance between the two. Yeah. So Slain
Speaker 1: is obviously aware of the fact that these perceptual modes
Speaker 1: do not always correspond to the literal divisions of biological
Speaker 1: sex or of gender identity. But nevertheless he uses these
Speaker 1: concepts by by these terms male and female to describe them,
Speaker 1: and I think sometimes throughout the book this leads to
Speaker 1: trouble because it continually suggests a blurring of the distinction
Speaker 1: between for example, the quote male perceptual mode, which female
Speaker 1: primates are perfectly capable of using and even favoring and
Speaker 1: confusing that perceptual mode with literal males of the species.
Speaker 1: So this, I think, this book is, for one thing,
Speaker 1: going to be vulnerable to a lot of criticisms of
Speaker 1: over generalization with all kinds of things, actually, but gender
Speaker 1: is going to be one of them. Yes, So let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the the key sources that
Speaker 1: ground his idea. Because he didn't you know, he's very
Speaker 1: upfront about this. He didn't just dream all of this up.
Speaker 1: He was basing Uh, he's basing it on the foundation
Speaker 1: established by other thinkers. Okay, so he points to a
Speaker 1: few of these. First of all, there's Robert Logan's the
Speaker 1: Alphabet Effect, from which states that quote, a medium of
Speaker 1: communication is not merely a passive conduit for the transmission
Speaker 1: of information, but rather an active force in creating new
Speaker 1: social patterns and new perceptual realities. There's an intrinsic impact
Speaker 1: to the use of an alphabet, and the literate worldview
Speaker 1: is different from one where information comes exclusively via oral communication. Okay,
Speaker 1: this sounds very parallel to another author that he quotes frequently,
Speaker 1: which is Marshall McLuhan. Uh. The the idea that the
Speaker 1: medium is the message, right in some way, that the
Speaker 1: medium through which information is conveyed actually does change the
Speaker 1: way your brain works. Yeah, I mean I instantly think
Speaker 1: of the you know, the classic bit of writing advice,
Speaker 1: or I guess just storytelling advice in general, show don't
Speaker 1: tell you know it is that is in effect image
Speaker 1: versus word. But in any case, when you're doing that
Speaker 1: as a writer, you're using words. True. Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: does get get a little complicated. He also points to
Speaker 1: the work of anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss, who touches on
Speaker 1: the downside of the power of literacy that it brought
Speaker 1: with it hierarchical societies and slavery. So while one might
Speaker 1: think to the current state of Western women and credit
Speaker 1: their rising status to higher levels of education, Schlane argues
Speaker 1: based on this that that men and women lived in
Speaker 1: greater balance in nonliterate agricultural societies, and that we see
Speaker 1: some examples of this in preliterately at grarians cultures, um
Speaker 1: you know, from from relatively recent times. Okay, So his
Speaker 1: proposition here is that we might actually be very surprised
Speaker 1: at how much gender egalitarianism we would find if we
Speaker 1: went back in history at times before the written word. Right.
Speaker 1: He says that quote images are primarily mental reproductions of
Speaker 1: the central world of vision. So he points out that
Speaker 1: the brain uses the human brain uses wholeness, uh, simultaneity
Speaker 1: and synthesis to observe the world and to gain meaning
Speaker 1: from alphabetic writing, the brain is forced to depend on
Speaker 1: sequence analysis and abstraction. In other words, the way that
Speaker 1: you take in uh, you know, an open field is
Speaker 1: different from the way you read a paragraph about what
Speaker 1: that open field looks like. And so he's saying that
Speaker 1: this ultimately shapes the mind of men and women in
Speaker 1: a way that leads to more patriarchy and culture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he says, it affects the inner, outer, and supernatural realms
Speaker 1: of the mind. And uh, yeah, he points back to
Speaker 1: a time when the goddess, in all her forms, was
Speaker 1: the principal deity. And there's that. There's this wonderful quote
Speaker 1: that I keep coming back to. Uh. From the book,
Speaker 1: he says, from the outer rim of history. We begin
Speaker 1: to learn her name Insumer. She was in Nanna in Egypt.
Speaker 1: She was Isis in Canaan. Her name was Ashera in Syria.
Speaker 1: She was known as as Tarta in Greece Demeter, and
Speaker 1: in Cyprus Aphrodite. Whatever her supplicants called her, they all
Speaker 1: recognized her as the creatrix of life, nurturer of young,
Speaker 1: protector of children, and the source of milk, herds, vegetables,
Speaker 1: and grain. Since she presided over the great mystery of birth,
Speaker 1: people of this period presumed she must also hold sway
Speaker 1: over that great bedevil er of human thought, death. I
Speaker 1: brought you into this world, I can take you out.
Speaker 1: It makes sense, right, Yeah, And again this this this
Speaker 1: gets back to our just our ideas of these primordial
Speaker 1: feminine deities. Meanwhile, uh, these his deities, he says, they
Speaker 1: tended to have male consorts who, in these concerts might
Speaker 1: be gods of the hunt, you know, representing the the
Speaker 1: the the hunter gatherer balance of life. But he was
Speaker 1: generally a temporary lover to be cast aside, or if
Speaker 1: not that, a son, So she was not. It wasn't
Speaker 1: even like a king and queen scenario. So when does
Speaker 1: Slane propose that this transition from the female empowering female
Speaker 1: deity lead religions transitioned into the more patriarchal, male dominated religions. Well,
Speaker 1: he points out that around fIF BC you had hundreds
Speaker 1: of goddess based religions enveloping the Mediterranean basin. But by
Speaker 1: the fifth century CE you these have been almost completely eradicated,
Speaker 1: and by that time women were prohibited from he says,
Speaker 1: conducting a single major Western sacrament. So something is occurring
Speaker 1: during this time that that that depletes the power of
Speaker 1: the goddess and allows the masculine gods and ultimately the
Speaker 1: the male abstrac abstraction of the one God in Abrahamic
Speaker 1: tradition to rise so obviously it's not going to be
Speaker 1: so easy to prove that the cause of this change
Speaker 1: was the alphabet literacy. So how's he going to go
Speaker 1: about it? Well, he argues that this is ultimately left
Speaker 1: to quote the court of what archaeologists call competitive plausibility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is something that the historical sciences often have
Speaker 1: to resort to. Write. You're a historian, you're an archaeologist.
Speaker 1: You can't run the experiment of replaying history to figure
Speaker 1: out what happened. So you have to sort of construct
Speaker 1: a model and see what model best fits the existing evidence,
Speaker 1: and then even more important than that, what accommodates new
Speaker 1: evidence that gets discovered. Yeah. So, first of all, in
Speaker 1: the book, Schlane spends a lot of time assembling an
Speaker 1: overview of human evolution with a focus on gender relations.
Speaker 1: So he takes us from the scent dependent ground to
Speaker 1: the vision dependent life in the trees. He takes us
Speaker 1: from packs of male chimps feasting on their kills and
Speaker 1: sharing with only females and heat, to the emergence of
Speaker 1: estrus free humans who are thus unshackled from the alpha
Speaker 1: male structure. Uh human physiology, he points out, increasingly ends
Speaker 1: up demanding fragile young and a birthing process that that
Speaker 1: incapacitates the female. Prolonged childhood ends up meaning that the
Speaker 1: females can't participate in the hunt as much and often
Speaker 1: have to stay closer to home, and they need support
Speaker 1: from the males and from each other. And then on
Speaker 1: top of that, the infant's brain is incomplete. Uh, and
Speaker 1: language comes in to fill the gaps, and it also
Speaker 1: enables learning lessons to take place outside of genetic change.
Speaker 1: Now that's an interesting idea that the fact that humans
Speaker 1: are born with maybe fewer instincts about how to behave
Speaker 1: properly and and fill their role within the human society
Speaker 1: than other social animals come born with. And there's but
Speaker 1: that humans have this this card they can play, which
Speaker 1: is the language card. You can transmit a lot of
Speaker 1: information from one generation to the next through speech. Quote,
Speaker 1: using speech, one number of a clan learning a lesson
Speaker 1: that would enhance survival could pass it on to the
Speaker 1: others within hours instead of eons. And he said, this
Speaker 1: this is another bit that I just absolutely love. He says,
Speaker 1: the new corporate brain called culture hovered like a friendly
Speaker 1: poltergeist over each tribe of hunter gatherers. Isn't it funny
Speaker 1: that culture can be like a person. It's almost like
Speaker 1: a person who's not there. It's the invisible queen of
Speaker 1: your society, right, That culture is a thing that has preferences.
Speaker 1: It's a thing that tells you what to do and
Speaker 1: how to act. It's a thing that tells you what's
Speaker 1: beautiful and what's not, what's tasty and what's not. It's
Speaker 1: almost sort of like you have this invisible parent who's
Speaker 1: a corporeal parent is assembled from the parts of many
Speaker 1: other parents that came in generations before. Yeah, and it's uh.
Speaker 1: He points out that all this probably begins as gesture
Speaker 1: based communication, uh, you know, as well as um the
Speaker 1: visual features of the faith, various expressions. But then these
Speaker 1: we end up incorporating vocal communication to free up those
Speaker 1: hands and the eyes because if you're only speaking in
Speaker 1: sign language, you can't it diminishes your ability to work
Speaker 1: a tool. At the same time, you have to look
Speaker 1: at the other person. But if you as you can
Speaker 1: communicate in the dark, Yeah, it also gives you the
Speaker 1: chance the ability to do it in the dark. So
Speaker 1: uh language, vocal language begins to take over. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's not only the relay of information here, but complex
Speaker 1: discussion and strategy. All of that becomes possible as well,
Speaker 1: and so you end up having the situation where the
Speaker 1: hunter gatherer divide grows for these early humans, and there
Speaker 1: are ramifications on the way that males and females both
Speaker 1: experience the world, he argues. He says that you know,
Speaker 1: hunting demands cold bloodedness, tinged with cruelty, but if you're
Speaker 1: a nurture that requires an emotional generosity combined with warmth, uh,
Speaker 1: we see this emergence of of different roles, which leads
Speaker 1: males and females to respond differently emotionally to the same stimuli,
Speaker 1: different worldviews, different ways of surviving, essentially redesigning the human
Speaker 1: nervous system in the process. So he's saying that even
Speaker 1: though men and women are born with these kind of
Speaker 1: very potent brains that could do whatever they want, the
Speaker 1: roles that they tend to assume within the group force
Speaker 1: them to favor one kind of emotional state versus the other.
Speaker 1: You can have the state that's usually assumed by the males,
Speaker 1: which is this cold, cruel hunter state of mind, or
Speaker 1: you can have this state that's more often assumed by
Speaker 1: the females, which is the intuitive, emotional, nurturing and educating
Speaker 1: side right. And of course, all this takes place within
Speaker 1: a bilobed brain, something that all vertebrates, beginning with fish,
Speaker 1: actually possess. The human brain lobes look symmetrical, but they're
Speaker 1: functionally different, what we call hemispheric lateralization, and other vertebrates
Speaker 1: have this as well, but it's most striking in humans.
Speaker 1: And then you have in between all of this, you
Speaker 1: have the neuronal fibers that are called the corpus colossum,
Speaker 1: the connect and integrate the two lobes. Each controls the
Speaker 1: movement of the opposite side. They work in close congress
Speaker 1: with each other. And we've discussed a lot of this
Speaker 1: on the show before. With all things brain region related,
Speaker 1: we've learned a lot about function through dysfunctions, specifically injury
Speaker 1: and disease affecting specific regions of the brain, and in
Speaker 1: recent decades we've learned even more through magnetic stimulation. But
Speaker 1: essentially it comes down to this divide right brain, you
Speaker 1: have nonverbal emotional states, dream, spirituality, music, balance, altered states
Speaker 1: of consciousness, metaphor and holistic views and just a quick
Speaker 1: reminder that Julian Jaynes and his bi cameral mind hypothesis, Uh,
Speaker 1: this is the source of the voices. And then with
Speaker 1: the left brain, we have doing, we have action, we
Speaker 1: have language, and we have the the complex meshing of
Speaker 1: competing emotions. And he describes metaphor as quote the right
Speaker 1: brains unique contribution to the left brains language capability. Now,
Speaker 1: if we're to recall some of the interesting thoughts of
Speaker 1: Julian James, James had this whole idea that our very
Speaker 1: consciousness itself is built on the possibility of metaphor. I
Speaker 1: don't know if he's correct about that, but it's certainly
Speaker 1: true that metaphor undergird's our entire structure of language. There
Speaker 1: are very few ways of talking that do not involve metaphors.
Speaker 1: In fact, most of our abstract words are actually based
Speaker 1: off of metaphors for concrete tasks. Yeah, Slaine. He argues
Speaker 1: that metaphors essentially bring plasticity to language, and they translate
Speaker 1: emotion into language, birthing poetry, mythology, and more. And then
Speaker 1: he to get back to the gender divide here. He
Speaker 1: says that in in females and again I want to
Speaker 1: remind everybody that this is a um this is a
Speaker 1: book from the nineties, so just bear than in mind
Speaker 1: of on the science here. But but he argued that
Speaker 1: that in females we see ten to thirty three pc
Speaker 1: more neuronal fibers in the forward part of the corpus colossum,
Speaker 1: and that means greater integration, better communication of emotions, increased
Speaker 1: global awareness, field perception, and the understanding of offspring moods.
Speaker 1: And they're also generally more adept at multitasking. That's the
Speaker 1: other part of the argument. Males, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: they become more adapted shutting down their feelings for you know,
Speaker 1: improved hunting ability. So the fact that there's more tissue
Speaker 1: connecting the hemispheres on average and the female brain tends
Speaker 1: to mean that the brain has a more balanced approach,
Speaker 1: whereas the male brain, if it on average has less
Speaker 1: tissue connecting the two hemispheres, it can tend to be
Speaker 1: more uh, an isolated kind of left brain approach to things. Right.
Speaker 1: But then again, the argument here too is also that
Speaker 1: that that male and female brains can ultimately do the
Speaker 1: same things, because he points out that in a hunter
Speaker 1: gatherer society, each hemisphere of the brain is executing tasks
Speaker 1: for which it is best suited. But you still have
Speaker 1: to have versatility in case of injury or death. Right,
Speaker 1: what happens if the hunter is sick? Uh, then maybe
Speaker 1: the the gatherers have to do a little hunting, or
Speaker 1: vice versa. So each sex of the human species has
Speaker 1: to be able to assume the principal labors of the other.
Speaker 1: So he's not saying that only men can be hunters
Speaker 1: and only women can be nurtures. He's saying the opposite.
Speaker 1: But this cultures are generally arranged so that men do
Speaker 1: the hunting tasks and women do the nurturing tasks. And
Speaker 1: then he talks of a fair bit about eyeballs. All right,
Speaker 1: we will address the eyeball question when we get back.
Speaker 1: Thank Okay, we're back. It's time for eyeballs now. I
Speaker 1: think this is actually one of the most interesting little
Speaker 1: side tangents in the book. Uh. It only takes a
Speaker 1: couple of pages, but he puts forward this interesting idea
Speaker 1: about the differing role of light sensitive cells called rods
Speaker 1: and cones in the retina and how this may have
Speaker 1: actually shaped our cognition. I've never read any thoughts along
Speaker 1: these lines before, but I thought this was one of
Speaker 1: the most interesting actions of the book. So you've got
Speaker 1: these different cells in your retina, you've got rods, you've
Speaker 1: got cones. And rods are extremely light sensitive, Schlin writes, quote,
Speaker 1: like trip wires, they detect the slightest movement in a
Speaker 1: visual field, distributed evenly throughout the periphery of each retina.
Speaker 1: They see in dim light and appreciate the totality of
Speaker 1: the visual field, seeing images as gestalts. So rods are
Speaker 1: for kind of all at once. Perception is how you
Speaker 1: get a general sense of a field of vision. Cones, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: are concentrated densely in the middle of the retina, called
Speaker 1: the macula. And cones have two main functions. One of
Speaker 1: them is that they pick out differences in color, and
Speaker 1: the other is that they intensify clarity in the in
Speaker 1: the middle of the vision, so he writes, quote, concentrating
Speaker 1: on one aspect of reality at a time. Cones view
Speaker 1: the visual field as if through a tunnel. Like rods,
Speaker 1: Cones report to both hemispheres, but the left hemisphere is
Speaker 1: metaphorically best suited to p process their input. So while
Speaker 1: you've got rods that are used for this all at
Speaker 1: once perception of a general field of vision. Cones are
Speaker 1: used for focus analysis and sequential processing. Now, biologically, rods
Speaker 1: are older than cones. All vertebrates have rods. Cones are
Speaker 1: only possessed in abundance by a few animals. Schlan points
Speaker 1: out that cones are mainly present in predatory animals like
Speaker 1: predatory predatory birds and predatory mammals, and especially in the
Speaker 1: in the human primate um because they allow you to
Speaker 1: focus on something and to see where it's going and
Speaker 1: to scrutinize. So the cones isolate elements of the field
Speaker 1: of vision then look at them one at a time,
Speaker 1: and this is better served by the sequential analytic function
Speaker 1: of the left part of the brain. So to quote
Speaker 1: one of Schlene's most interesting smaller hypotheses in the book, quote,
Speaker 1: the focusing ability of the phobious centralis creates the illusion
Speaker 1: of time passing because the image is seen within this
Speaker 1: new auro circle of the eye can only be processed
Speaker 1: one at a time. Because macular vision examined what was
Speaker 1: and then moved on to what is, it forced the
Speaker 1: emerging human brain to consider the possibility of what might
Speaker 1: come next. So Schlan argues that the abundance of cones
Speaker 1: in the human eye, paired with left brain analytical thinking,
Speaker 1: helped give rise to the human sense of time and
Speaker 1: our tendency for mental time travel into the past and future,
Speaker 1: something that other animals only have these sort of rare
Speaker 1: little inklings of though there are some inklings, and we've
Speaker 1: talked about that in the past with birds and other animals. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think that's an interesting thing to consider,
Speaker 1: the fact that we've got these eyes that focus on
Speaker 1: one thing at a time, and how that affects our
Speaker 1: perception of reality. Could that actually generate time as we
Speaker 1: know it? Yeah? Yeah, this is this is definitely an
Speaker 1: interesting portion of the book. He also talks about hands
Speaker 1: a good bit. Yeah. He in that specifically this is
Speaker 1: tying in with the predominance of right handedness in human beings. Uh.
Speaker 1: He points out to the left hand, controlled by the
Speaker 1: right brain, is more protective than the right. This is
Speaker 1: the hand that's going to hold a baby. Meanwhile, what's
Speaker 1: the right hand doing the attacking hand? Right? Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: except in people who are reversed and are of course
Speaker 1: left handed. Um. So, in all of this, males come
Speaker 1: to embodied death. Females come to embody life, but eventually
Speaker 1: men come to identify their own role in reproduction as well.
Speaker 1: And again, the female goddess reigns supreme. Is this master
Speaker 1: of life and death, realizing when there's a dependency between
Speaker 1: the two that I have to kill to eat, I
Speaker 1: have to consume life in order in order to live.
Speaker 1: And h. Layne writes that the goddess reign supreme and
Speaker 1: then the Kurgan culture rides in on its horses and
Speaker 1: represses it, replacing her with their sky god. Uh and UH.
Speaker 1: What he says is interesting about this in this very
Speaker 1: early example is uh, is that in other aces we
Speaker 1: see a more primitive of two colliding cultures absorbing the
Speaker 1: more advanced culture. So you have got these agricultural, more
Speaker 1: technologically advanced societies that are invaded by these horse riding
Speaker 1: Kurgan people's, and you would expect them to adopt the
Speaker 1: more advanced agricultural technology of the societies they invaded, right,
Speaker 1: you know, very much like when the when the Mongols
Speaker 1: invade China and then essentially become Chinese culturally. But that's
Speaker 1: not what we see here. And of course the question
Speaker 1: is why, all right, so Schlaine can't be the first
Speaker 1: person to offer a hypothesis on what caused the demise
Speaker 1: of goddess culture. Uh. And so I know he referenced,
Speaker 1: he references Claude levy Strauss a good bit. Does levy
Speaker 1: Strauss have a have an argument that he counters? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So the the Levee Strauss argument is that the essentially
Speaker 1: bride bartering kicked kicked things off, so men came to
Speaker 1: realize that they had a role in reproduction. And then women,
Speaker 1: of course can procreate earlier than men, so they become
Speaker 1: a commodity, and eventually all femininity is is treated as
Speaker 1: such a commodity. But Chlane opposes as he says that
Speaker 1: it doesn't explain the quote dramatic zigzagging from masculine to
Speaker 1: feminine and then back to masculine principles that occurred before, during,
Speaker 1: and after the first five thousand years of agriculture. And
Speaker 1: then another argument, you have anthropologist Sherry Ortner who credits
Speaker 1: the tendency to align the masculine with culture and the
Speaker 1: feminine with nature. This is definitely a tendency you see
Speaker 1: in in literature all throughout the ancient world. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: what do. What do cultures do? Will they rise up
Speaker 1: in the world by advancing their culture, and in doing
Speaker 1: so they are mastering nature. They are overpowering nature, and
Speaker 1: sometimes the exact language for that is even more severe.
Speaker 1: Butch Lane opposed this and says, well, it doesn't account
Speaker 1: for the female imagery that is predominant throughout these different mythologies. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you have Frederick Engels who are us that the goddess
Speaker 1: perished due to the rise of private property. Of course
Speaker 1: he did, and he argues that this this becomes a
Speaker 1: thing as nomadic hunter gatherers. Uh, you know, give way
Speaker 1: to agriculture so you can own land, and then it
Speaker 1: follows that you can own women. Now, sh Leane opposes this,
Speaker 1: neans is that it doesn't explained the fall of the goddess.
Speaker 1: He points to the work of William Irwin Thompson and
Speaker 1: Jane Jacobs who argue that hunters were so reduced in
Speaker 1: status during the agricultural revolution that they turned to conquest
Speaker 1: and this led to the fall of goddess cultures, which
Speaker 1: I think is an interesting especially an interesting idea, especially
Speaker 1: in light of of so many discussions going on in
Speaker 1: our culture today about what happens when when roles and
Speaker 1: peoples who traditionally felt more empowered, uh feel less empowered.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is that you've got all these
Speaker 1: people with these hunting instincts, especially predominantly men, with hunting
Speaker 1: instincts that are not really very necessary anymore. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: we've got plenty of grain, we don't we don't need
Speaker 1: to hunt, and in fact, there aren't even all that
Speaker 1: many animals around for you to hunt anymore. So what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do. Well, maybe you just turn your
Speaker 1: hunting instinct on people and you say, I'm going to
Speaker 1: become a warrior now instead. Yeah, the rise of the
Speaker 1: warrior class. Now. Meanwhile, feminist historian Gerda Learner she blames
Speaker 1: the form flames all of this on the formation of
Speaker 1: the archaic states. So the idea here is that you had,
Speaker 1: through the necessity of centralized power, you end up resurrecting
Speaker 1: the role of the alpha male. You need some sort
Speaker 1: of decision maker at the heart of it. And Lennon
Speaker 1: Learner also argus argues that slavery ties into all of
Speaker 1: this because slaves would have been of little use during
Speaker 1: in hunter gatherer culture. But when you have agriculture. This
Speaker 1: gives slaves value, and so the former hunters they they
Speaker 1: turn first people into slaves and then women, specifically into
Speaker 1: subservient people. Now, Shelen opposes this. He says that it
Speaker 1: doesn't account for the numerous goddess based societies that thrived
Speaker 1: during this period. And he says, you know why we're there,
Speaker 1: slave owning archaic states built around goddesses then, and so
Speaker 1: Slaine argues that, yes, there's a change going on here,
Speaker 1: but it's a change coming from within and it all
Speaker 1: ties in to the hidden cost of literacy. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I think we should end our first part there, and
Speaker 1: in the next episode, we're gonna look at a little
Speaker 1: bit of the historical evidence that Slane uses to support
Speaker 1: his hypothesis, and we're going to discuss some criticisms of
Speaker 1: the argument, both criticisms of reviewers and some critical thoughts
Speaker 1: of our own. In the meantime, be sure to head
Speaker 1: it over the Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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