By Joyce White

Guest Columnist

After this obscenely expensive and way too long campaign season, I want to be reminded that at least once in human history, a peaceful, egalitarian, Nature-oriented culture existed. We know about it only through archaeological evidence because it began around 9,000 years ago when there were no written records.

So, I went back to Riane Eisler’s book, The Chalice and the Blade, 1987, in which she shows us a culture that existed for a few thousand years in which the inhabitants enjoyed peace, prosperity, cooperation and equality between men and women. The author terms that a partnership model of society represented by the chalice while its opposite — the one we have always lived — is represented by the blade.

It has always seemed to me that there must be a way to live without violence and war, but until I read that book, I had not known that such a culture actually had existed. That possibility was not even mentioned in any high school or college class I participated in, the assumption being, I suppose, that since greed, violence and war has been all we’ve known in the written history of Western civilization, so that must be the way things have always been and always will be.

Eisler explains that it was not until after World War II that some of the most important evidence was unearthed indicating that a different model of civilization honoring the earth and a mother goddess extended over a few thousand years. It led into the long period in our cultural evolution “where our forebears settled down into the first agrarian communities of the Neolithic.”

“Our knowledge,” Eisler continues, “was immeasurably advanced by the exciting discovery and excavation of two new Neolithic sites: The towns of Catal Huyuk and Hacilar” in what is now Turkey. Of particular interest, according to James Mellaart who directed the excavation for the British Institute of Archaeology, was that the knowledge uncovered at these two sites indicated a stability and continuity of growth over thousands of years for a progressively more advanced goddess worshiping culture.”

The Neolithic agrarian economy, she says, was the basis of the development of civilization leading, over the course of thousands of years, into our own time. “And almost universally, those places where the first great breakthroughs in material and social technology were made had one thing in common: the worship of the Goddess.”

New excavations, Eisler explains, are increasingly conducted not by the lone scholar or explorer of early days but by a team of zoologists, botanists, climatologists, anthropologists and paleontologists as well as archaeologists. This interdisciplinary approach characterizes the more recent digs (This book was written, remember, in 1987 from information gleaned before that) such as Mellaart’s and yields a much more accurate understanding of our prehistory. 

As a result, we now know that agriculture — the domestication of wild plants as well as animals — dates back much earlier than previously believed. In fact, she says the first sign of what archaeologists call the agricultural revolution began to appear as far back as 9000 to 8000 B.C.E., more than ten thousand years ago!

By around 6000 B.C.E., not only was the agricultural revolution an established fact, but agricultural societies began expanding in all directions, including to southern Europe. One of the most remarkable and thought-provoking features of old European society revealed by the archaeological spade, Eisler says, is its essentially peaceful character. These locations had been chosen for their beautiful settings, good water and soil and availability of animal pasture. These settlement areas are remarkable for their excellent views of the environment but not for defensive value. “The characteristic absence of heavy fortifications and of thrusting weapons speaks for the peaceful character of most of these art-loving peoples,” Eisler notes. The excavations showed no sign of warfare for over 1,500 years.

Scientific excavations have revealed a lot about pre-history, especially the Neolithic, when our ancestors first settled in communities sustained by farming and the breeding of stock. They examined excavated buildings and their contents, all the objects of daily life including art and they also examine burial sites in an effort to learn about their attitudes toward life and death.

Eisler has extrapolated from these excavations to form her conclusions that these were people who lived by the power of the chalice, i.e. the power to nurture and cooperate, to grow crops and make art, to honor the goddess of the earth, to live in harmony. The power of the blade, on the other hand, features a dominating power, the use of weapons and frequent conflict. Though cultures are never totally one or the other, the predominance of one or the other mode results in very different ways of life.

The author wants to dispel the prevalent idea that a culture which rejects the patriarchal model must then be matriarchal, that if men aren’t dominant, then women must be in that position of exercising power over others. The term matriarchy doesn’t accurately describe these groups who lived peaceably for thousands of years. Rather, there was basically equality and cooperation between the sexes and Eisler coined the term partnership model to differentiate it from the dominator model with which we are familiar.

The partnership model spread to Crete around 6000 B.C.E. and was the last and most technologically advanced society in which male dominance was not the norm. The shift was gradual as invasions began with small bands of marauding herders from Europe. The invasions grew into outright warfare, gradually replacing the partnership model with the dominator model with which we have lived ever since — except for some small indigenous cultures. (*note: Riane Eisler is still working toward a more equal, just and Earth-honoring world at 87 and can be reached at the Center for Partnership Studies at eisler@riane-eisler.ccsend.comor center@partnershipway.org)

Joyce White is a resident of Stoneham. “Since this is my last contribution to Earth Notes, I want to say good-bye and to wish everyone well.” The News thanks Joyce for her well-written columns over the past several years, as well as Sally Chappell who introduced the BN to the idea of including the environmental column to the newspaper’s Opinion Pages back in 2005. Sally is stepping aside as scheduler and coordinator of Earth Notes, handing the duties over to EN writer Bob Plaisted. Thanks Sally for your contributions and your caring attitude! — WER