How misogynistic were cavemen?

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Most likely the reality of humans is the flexibility of our species.
From what I read about quite a wide range of tribes, old women are often extremely respected and even the chief wouldn't argue with the oldest woman in the village.

But you hit an interesting question: could we put the "=" mark between patriarchy and misogynism?

It's not '=' by definition.

One can still be misogynist even in a theoretically matriarchal society.

That actually makes perfect sense, since women live longer than men.

In primitive tribes, old women are a valuable source of wisdom, since they have seen so much.

You've actually hit upon a good point.

What if women did take over the world? Not all men would like it.

Many men would build huts in the woods in order to get away from the female leaders in the cities.
That's one of the reasons why I'm not even remotely afraid of matriarchy. If it succeeded, men would probably find a way around it.

Good point.

What I find misogynist is locking up women in many cultures, when it is not a survival necessity, artificially limiting their contribution to the society.
In this terms, I find post-WWII USA culture fairly misogynist.
I find a big difference between women busy in their area of the hunter-gatherer culture, as crucial for the tribe survival as the male hunters, and a lady, even surrounded by luxuries, who is expected to do nothing but a very limited pool of activities.

The culture might be misogynistic. Many members of that culture are not.

It’s better to address misogyny in individuals than to emphasize it as a “cultural trait.”

Though it does have to be addressed, either way.

I don’t feel that men who like pretty women are necessarily misogynists.

Are you referring to American culture in this or are you talking about Saudi Arabia?

I was having Victorian England and 18-19th century Europe in mind

You seem to assume that a limited ability to accumulate wealth limits the ability to accumulate power, respect, prestige, etc.

during the paleolithic period, "humans" underwent extreme evolutionary changes in their brain structures.
i am talking in this post about the region of 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
pre agricultural age.

before agriculture, people had to move around (were nomadic) to various fertile areas for their food supplies.

wealth as such was not a concept of posessions, but of family strength.

as various families (tribes) traversed the lands in search of food and shelter, they were no doubt countered by other families in the same areas protecting their sources of food.
i guesss if the food was plentiful enough for both tribes, they may coexist and join forces in tasks like mammoth hunting.

if there was not enough food to provide for everyone, the respective families' men would clash and fight, and the females would watch from a safe distance.
which ever clan won the battle would take the other family's females and they would then multiply with great diversity and become powerful.
all the males would be killed.

skills and training as well as strategy plotting warlords would emerge as the head of each family which could number into the hundreds.

this is an ancient form of wealth by power and conquest.

not by trade or bata which would not come into existence for many more thousands of years.

the larger a tibe became, the more likely other unremarkable tribes would decide they had no chance of beating them so they joined them.
the family grows larger and therefore more powerful.

and time goes by.
never recorded in any documentation would be much interesting stuff to read.

women were crucial to survival and growth of the clan and would not have been held in low respect.

actually i don't know what i am talking about so that's all.

I think you are saying men fought over resources/women, bigger families equated to more power, and women were held in high regard because they were necessary for survival.

I agree with points 1 and 2 but not 3.

In societies where women do the most for the family, they tend to be held in the lowest of regards, and this is why they bear the burden of most of the work.

This is the case in many African cultures. The women literally do everything while the men sit around all day. In some of these cultures, the men tend to cattle, which is viewed as important because the cattle is their wealth, but in many they don't, or that contribution is less than the contributions of the women.

There is a Masaai women's village that was started by a woman who was tired of being beaten by her husband. In one village, all the women grew tired of the men's poor treatment of them and left to the women's village" leaving the childrenbwith the men.

Masaai women do all of the house building, food growing and preparation, clothes making and washing, firewood gathering, water fetching, childcare, and provide all of the medical care so they can build and run a village just fine.

The men do nothing but look after lifestock and offer some extra strength when needed.

Well being the men had none of the skills necessary for being independent, in a matter of weeks they were living under tarps spread over bushes and pleading for the women to come back to them. The women wouldn't even let them enter the women's village to negotiate and they ended up sending the regional chief who was an old man and the only one the women wouldn't bludgeon with sticks or shoot.

They agreed to return to the men on the condition the men would no longer beat them but in my opinion they should have negotiated for the men to do a little more of the domestic work.

For what it's worth you're comparing societies that farm and herd against societies that did not.

At least in the short term, that would mean lots more women, the desired prize in your scenario, but no more fighters. Probably fewer, as some would have been injured or killed.


If they are hunter gatherers, how would such a large group find enough food? The density of food limits group size.


The thing about hunter gatherers is that they need to keep possession down to what they can carry, so they are not tied down to one place. Unless the territory occupied by your big tribe is simply the only territory in which people can live, there is also the option of just walking away. That is one reason why hunter gatherer societies are less hierarchical, because you can always walk away from a tyrant.


The density of food limits group size of hunter gatherers.

I've decided to bump this thread back up with more information.

Remember the Amazons from Greek mythology? There is evidence to suggest that they were based on real barbarian warrior women, such as the Scythians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazons

Thank you. I had been looking for that reference but I could not recall the names of the cultures involved except for the fact of evidence of a Mediterranean culture in central Asia.

very well thought out point, however, i counter with this speculation (it's all speculative you must admit):

the other tribe would have been obliterated so it is no longer a threat.
there would not have been too many people around at the time, so they likely had a clear field to gather and hunt their food.

the point i made which was muddy was "if there was not enough food".
the people would not really have been able to gauge how much food was in the area (unless it was obviously plentiful), so it is natural to kill the competitors even before you know you can coexist.

there is a wilderbeast migration across the serengeti savannas every year.
it may seem obvious for tribes to coexist with such plentiful food.

however theft would be a danger to any catch.
wilderbeasts have a good sense of smell and a high level of vigilance.
therefore it would be a major operation for a tribe to get downwind and ambush the herd.
in the melee, some would stray from the line of panicked egress and others would be slower and weaker.
so if a wilderbeast was caught and slain, the others would bolt off for maybe even 20km before they calmed down.

this would present the other tribe with the hassle of walking 20 km to locate the herd again.

it is far easier to ambush the tribe that caught the wilderbeast and steal it from them.
this must have been a factor in their minds at at the time.

if the predominant tribe had more people in it (over time), then they could possibly split up and catch 2 wilderbeasts.

who knows how brutal these people were. if food was becoming scarce, they may neglect to feed older people who were of no further use, and any weaklings to cull them out of the food requirements.

sometimes there are grass fires on the savannas. this leaves a vast quantity of gatherable foods in their wake.
the women could spend their time hoarding edibles (cooked mammals and insects), while the men hunted bigger prey.

the ability to create fire happened sometime between 600,000 years ago, and 120,000 years ago.

a very wide margin i am sure. but cooking would have been an early use of fire (along with warmth, light, and predator deterrence)

sometimes, the cuts of meat they cooked would be mostly eaten, but some bits would remain in the fire for quite a while.
these bits would dry out and have burned crusts, and people would have discovered that after scraping off the charcoal (maybe at breakfast the next day), the meat was quite salty and dry, and they would have found it quite unsuitable to their preference.
so these cuts were discarded just on the floor of the cave, and the tribe moved on, and the next year when they returned, they found that the cuts of beef (like beef jerky) were still edible.

hmmmm.... maybe food can be stored in some form here for when we get back next time.

that process of curing would have allowed them to preserve excess portions of their catch as stores.
and blah de blahh





yeah i believe i have already addressed these concerns in my first response to this post.