Editing Matriarchy (section)

==== Paleolithic and Neolithic Ages ====
[[Friedrich Engels]], in 1884, claimed that, in the earliest stages of human social development, there was group marriage and that therefore paternity was disputable, whereas maternity was not, so that a family could be traced only through the female line. This was a materialist interpretation of Bachofen's ''Mutterrecht''.<ref>{{harvp|Engels|1984}} {{Page needed|date=October 2013}}</ref><ref>Bachofen, Johann Jakob, ''Das Mutterrecht. Eine Untersuchung über die Gynaikokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen Natur. Eine Auswahl herausgegeben von Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs'' (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1975 [1861]).{{Page needed|date=October 2013}}</ref> Engels speculated that the domestication of animals increased material wealth, which was claimed by men.{{Citation needed|date=October 2013}} Engels said that men wanted to control women to use as laborers and to pass on wealth to their children, requiring monogamy;{{Citation needed|date=October 2013}} as patriarchy rose, women's status declined until they became mere objects in the exchange trade between men, causing the global defeat of the female sex<ref>{{harvp|Engels|1984|p=70}}</ref> and the rise of individualism and competition.<ref>{{harvp|Engels|1984|p=204}}</ref> According to Eller, Engels may have been influenced with respect to women's status by [[August Bebel]],<ref>{{harvp|Eller|2011|p=115}}</ref> according to whom matriarchy naturally resulted in [[communism]], while patriarchy was characterized by exploitation.<ref>Bebel, August, ''Die Frau und der Sozialismus. Als Beitrag zur Emanzipation unserer Gesellschaft, bearbeitet und kommentiert von Monika Seifert'' (Stuttgart: Dietz, 1974 (1st published 1879)), p.&nbsp;63.</ref>

Austrian writer [[Bertha Eckstein-Diener|Bertha Diener]] (or Helen Diner), wrote ''Mothers and Amazons'' (1930), the first work to focus on women's cultural history, a classic of feminist matriarchal study.<ref name="Dinner party">[http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/heritage_floor/helen_diner.php ''Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: The Dinner Party: Heritage Floor: Helen Diner'' (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn Museum, last updated March 27, 2007)], as accessed March, 2008, & November 15, 2013.</ref> Her view is that all past human societies were originally matriarchal, while most later shifted to patriarchy and degenerated. The controversy intensified with ''[[The White Goddess]]'' by [[Robert Graves]] (1948) and his later analysis of classical Greek mythology, focusing on the reconstruction of earlier myths that had conjecturally been rewritten after a transition from matriarchal to patriarchal religion in very early historical times.

From the 1950s, Marija Gimbutas developed a theory of an ''[[Old European culture]]'' in Neolithic Europe with matriarchal traits, which had been replaced by the patriarchal system of the [[Proto-Indo-Europeans]] in the [[Bronze Age]]. However, other anthropologists warned that "the goddess worship or matrilocality that evidently existed in many paleolithic societies was not necessarily associated with matriarchy in the sense of women's power over men. Many societies can be found that exhibit those qualities along with female subordination."<ref>{{harvp|Epstein|1991|p=173}}</ref> According to Eller, Gimbutas had a large part in constructing a myth of historical matriarchy by examining [[Eastern Europe]]an cultures that never really resembled the alleged universal matriarchy. She asserts that in "actually documented primitive societies" of recent (historical) times, paternity is never ignored and that the sacred status of goddesses does not automatically increase female social status, and she interprets utopian matriarchy as an invented inversion of [[antifeminism]].{{Citation needed|date=November 2013}}

From the 1970s, ideas of matriarchy were taken up by popular writers of second-wave feminism such as [[Riane Eisler]], [[Elizabeth Gould Davis]], and [[Merlin Stone]], and expanded with the speculations of [[Margaret Murray]] on [[witchcraft]], by the [[Goddess movement]], and in [[feminist Wicca]]. "A Golden Age of matriarchy" was prominently presented by [[Charlene Spretnak]] and "encouraged" by Stone and Eisler,<ref>{{harvp|Epstein|1991|pp=172–173}}</ref> but, at least for the [[Neolithic]] Age, it has been denounced as feminist wishful thinking in works such as ''[[The Inevitability of Patriarchy]]'', ''[[Why Men Rule]]'', ''Goddess Unmasked'',<ref>Davis, Philip G., ''Goddess Unmasked'' (N.Y.: Spence Publishing, 1998 ({{ISBN|0-9653208-9-8}})); [http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-54600098.html Sheaffer, R., ''Skeptical Inquirer'' (1999) (review)].</ref> and ''[[The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory]]''. The idea is not emphasized in [[third-wave feminism]].

J.F. del Giorgio insists on a matrifocal, matrilocal, matrilineal Paleolithic society.<ref>del Giorgio, J.F., ''The Oldest Europeans'' (A.J.Place, 2006 ({{ISBN|978-980-6898-00-4}})).</ref>