Editing Pseudohistory (section)

==== Matriarchy ====
{{main|Matriarchy}}
The consensus among academics is that no unambiguously and strictly matriarchal society is known to have existed, though many societies are known to have or have had some matriarchal features, in particular [[matrilineality]], [[matrilocality]], and/or [[matrifocality]].<ref>Goldberg, Steven, ''The Inevitability of Patriarchy'' (William Morrow & Co., 1973).</ref><ref>{{harvp|Eller|2000}}</ref> Anthropologist [[Donald Brown (anthropologist)|Donald Brown]]'s list of [[cultural universal|human cultural universals]] (''viz.'', features shared by nearly all current human societies) includes men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs,<ref>Brown, Donald E., ''Human Universals'' (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), p.&nbsp;137.</ref> which is the contemporary opinion of mainstream [[anthropology]].<ref name=":0" />  
Some societies that are matrilineal or matrifocal may in fact have [[patriarchal]] power structures, and thus be misidentified as matriarchal.
The idea that matriarchal societies existed and they preceded patriarchal societies was first raised in the 19th-century among Western academics, but it has since been discredited.<ref name=":0">"The view of matriarchy as constituting a stage of cultural development now is generally discredited. Furthermore, the consensus among modern anthropologists and sociologists is that a strictly matriarchal society never existed." ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (2007), entry ''Matriarchy''.</ref>

Despite this however, some [[second-wave feminist]]s assert that a matriarchy preceded the patriarchy. The [[Goddess Movement]] 
and Riane Eisler's 1987 book ''[[The Chalice and the Blade]]'' cite [[Venus figurines]] as evidence that societies of [[Paleolithic]] and [[Neolithic]] Europe  were matriarchies that worshipped a goddess. This belief is not supported by mainstream academics.<ref name="Nelson">Ruth Whitehouse. "The Mother Goddess Hypothesis and Its Critics," in ''Handbook of Gender in Archaeology'', Sarah Milledge Nelson (ed.), [https://books.google.com/books?id=EtIQUpgo2cEC&q=mother+goddess+hypothesis pp. 756–758]</ref>