1 |
Previous | 1 of 6 | Next |
|
This page
All
Subset
|
T he Accounting Historians Notebook, October 2003 23
A radical school of modem femi-nism
exists which believes in the
existence of a time in prehistory,
before the “male take-over,” when
society was universally matriarchal,
and women enjoyed a more central
role in society than men. The idea
of an ancient matriarchy first
gained ground in the 19th century
amongst evolutionary theorists,
such as Engels. He linked the op-pression
of women to the rise of the
state, which . he said had resulted in
the separation of private and public
domains, the activities of women
being relegated to the private ser-vice
of their husbands (Leacock,
1978, p. 255; Siverblatt, 1991, pp.
141, 144-146). Another theory is
that matriarchal society was swept
aside during the Neolithic by patri-archal,
hierarchical invaders from
northern Europe (Stone, 1976, p.
20; Tringham, 1991, pp. 96-97;
Grindell, 1993, pp. 124-125). Sup-porters
of the matriarchal thesis
maintain that mathematics, count-ing
and calculation were originally
female preserves that were linked to
fertility through the menstrual cycle
and the motions of the moon. They
argue that “math” is derived from
the Sanskrit “matra” or the Greek
“meter,” both of which mean
“mother” and “measurement.”
Therefore, mathematics literally
means “mother wisdom,” and an-cient
peoples regarded it as one of
the particular gifts of the mother-goddess
to her daughters (Walker,
1983, pp. 684-5). The paper seeks
to explore this claim, that in the
beginning counting and calculation
were the preserves of women.
The significance of counting and
calculation runs deep. According to
Walker (1983, p. ix), the most fun-damental
right that was denied to
women by patriarchy was the right
to control their own motherhood.
Before the male “take-over” women
were in control of reproduction, and
tracking the menstrual cycle
through the lunar phases played a
vital part (ibid., pp. 645, 670). Two
explanations have been advanced
why these charts were significant in
an age before the advent of mo-nogamous
marriage when “every
child’s maternity was certain, but
its paternity debatable and irrele-vant”
(Graves, 1958, p. 387). First,
as is still the case in some cultures
today, people in ancient pre-agricultural
societies, unable to ob-serve
the behaviour of domesticated
animals, did not appreciate the link
between sex and reproduction, be-lieving
instead menstruation to be
the one significant factor (Stone,
1976, pp. 11-12; Thompson, 1981,
p. 127; Walker 1983, p. 680).
FEMININE CONTEXT OF
PREHISTORIC NOTATION SYSTEMS
by
David Oldroyd
Newcastle University
