This outstanding collection of 32 essays from renowned scholars,artists and activists is a fresh approach to a topic with ancient roots. Patriarchy is not the inevitable outcome of civilization, these authors contend, but rather a deliberately chosen social structure with a beginning, a middle, and, hopefully, an end.
This diverse collection of provocative authors each takes her or his own approach to the material at hand. Together they examine the possible origins of patriarchy such as the collapse of the fertility of the once fertile crescent to the loss of land in the great Black Sea flood. They examine the evidence of ancient cultures based on equality and a reverence for both genders, contrasting that with the contemporary patriarchy that brings so much strife to our world. And they bring hope with thoughtful suggestions for real change so that humankind can once again live in equality.
This outstanding collection, brought together by Cristina Biaggi, includes essays by an outstanding field of writers from several disciplines such as Riane Eisler (author of The Chalice and the Blade), anthropologists Peggy Reeves Sanday and James DeMeo, biologist Mary Clark, historian Mark Kann of Stanford University, linguist Harald Haarman, writer Donna Henes, artist Suzanne Bellamy, psychiatrist Glenda Cloughley, and several others.
