Review: The Ancient Problem with Men
The prehistoric origins of patriarchy and social oppression
Unique Publications £9.95
This is a wonderfully thought-provoking book with a suitably provocative title. The core premise is that human culture has been developing for tens of thousands of years, and this includes our evolutionary predecessors and even our evolutionary companions such as the Neanderthal. This culture was created by language and the human race has been talking for a long time: singing the landscape, storytelling, and living in close relationship to each other in family groups in a state of harmony and creativity.
Then there came a point, somewhere around 4000 BCE, when men started to band together with weapons and enforce control over others. The written word, normally associated with culture, also began at this time as a record of warfare and accounting. Bruce seeks to discover firstly what our original culture might have been, and secondly why the men then turned their weapons on each other.
Thankfully, this is not an academic book with the staid restrictions on conjecture that academia requires. As a result, the book reads like a songline, calling the landscape of our evolutionary journey. This is a celebration of speculation, gathering the thoughts of diverse authors such as Marija Gimbutas, Richard Leakey, Fiedrich Engels, James DeMeo, and many others.
Bruce explores the concept of matristic cultures, based on partnership between men and women: co-operation rather than competition. The Old Neolithic culture of Europe was one such matristic culture, about which we know the most through the pioneering work of Marija Gimbutas. The book explores different aspects of this proto-farming society, where the male role tended towards hunting and herding and the female towards gathering and horticulture.
The middle chapter of the book is titled ‘Palaeopsychology’, and is based on the work of Harvey jackins, founder of the Re-evaluation Counseling movement. Here it is suggested that the fundamental human condition is one of enthusiasm, flexibility, and creativity, with a natural attraction to other human beings. However, emotional wounding takes place from an early age and builds up armouring that then creates harsh and repressed behavior. This is largely our modern condition, which ahs been built on generation after generation.
The Old Neolithic culture of Europe is contrasted with patristic cultures developing on then steppes of Asia – the hunters who took up herding. These cultures were originally matristic but came under enormous climatic stress as their lands became arid, and the theory of James DeMeo is that these cultures disintegrated and that the traumatised survivors reformed into a patristic model, emotionally armoured by their experiences generation on generation, eventually becoming a culture fully prepared to engage in warfare and genocide. And the rest is history …
This brief review does not really give justice to the magnificent stream of ideas flowing through this book, which are wide-ranging, unrestrained, and happily controversial. Bruce Garrard has been a creative and engaged member of our alternative community in Glastonbury for over 20 years, and ‘The Ancient Problem with Men’ is a welcome addition to the canon of new Avalonian literature.
Mike Jones, The Glastonbury Oracle, February 2012.
The prehistoric origins of patriarchy and social oppression
Unique Publications £9.95
This is a wonderfully thought-provoking book with a suitably provocative title. The core premise is that human culture has been developing for tens of thousands of years, and this includes our evolutionary predecessors and even our evolutionary companions such as the Neanderthal. This culture was created by language and the human race has been talking for a long time: singing the landscape, storytelling, and living in close relationship to each other in family groups in a state of harmony and creativity.
Then there came a point, somewhere around 4000 BCE, when men started to band together with weapons and enforce control over others. The written word, normally associated with culture, also began at this time as a record of warfare and accounting. Bruce seeks to discover firstly what our original culture might have been, and secondly why the men then turned their weapons on each other.
Thankfully, this is not an academic book with the staid restrictions on conjecture that academia requires. As a result, the book reads like a songline, calling the landscape of our evolutionary journey. This is a celebration of speculation, gathering the thoughts of diverse authors such as Marija Gimbutas, Richard Leakey, Fiedrich Engels, James DeMeo, and many others.
Bruce explores the concept of matristic cultures, based on partnership between men and women: co-operation rather than competition. The Old Neolithic culture of Europe was one such matristic culture, about which we know the most through the pioneering work of Marija Gimbutas. The book explores different aspects of this proto-farming society, where the male role tended towards hunting and herding and the female towards gathering and horticulture.
The middle chapter of the book is titled ‘Palaeopsychology’, and is based on the work of Harvey jackins, founder of the Re-evaluation Counseling movement. Here it is suggested that the fundamental human condition is one of enthusiasm, flexibility, and creativity, with a natural attraction to other human beings. However, emotional wounding takes place from an early age and builds up armouring that then creates harsh and repressed behavior. This is largely our modern condition, which ahs been built on generation after generation.
The Old Neolithic culture of Europe is contrasted with patristic cultures developing on then steppes of Asia – the hunters who took up herding. These cultures were originally matristic but came under enormous climatic stress as their lands became arid, and the theory of James DeMeo is that these cultures disintegrated and that the traumatised survivors reformed into a patristic model, emotionally armoured by their experiences generation on generation, eventually becoming a culture fully prepared to engage in warfare and genocide. And the rest is history …
This brief review does not really give justice to the magnificent stream of ideas flowing through this book, which are wide-ranging, unrestrained, and happily controversial. Bruce Garrard has been a creative and engaged member of our alternative community in Glastonbury for over 20 years, and ‘The Ancient Problem with Men’ is a welcome addition to the canon of new Avalonian literature.
Mike Jones, The Glastonbury Oracle, February 2012.
