I know I'm probably just going to get shitposted to death...

I know I'm probably just going to get shitposted to death, but how much truth is there in the theory that at least a few prehistorical civilizations were matriarchal until they all got rekt by agressive patriarchal ones?

None. 19th century European anthropologists were just confused by inheritance systems that weren't agnatic primogeniture.

is it
>there were no prehistorical matriarchies ever
or
>matriarchal societies existed, but were not destroyed by patriarchal ones (they fell apart by some other means)

Some civilizations were neither matriarchal nor patriarchal, where authority was passed via seniority to women and they had all kinds of activities unrestricted.

There were some purely matriarchal tribes and city states too, but their shortcoming was lack of expansionism.

According to my college anthropology classes (VERY liberal department, so you know they aren’t lying about this) there have been no matriarchal societies. Men always hold the role of chieftain, or make up the governing council in primitive societies, but women, especially the wives and mothers, can have immense power behind the scenes. Kind of similar to Dune, if you’ve ever read that.

Implying that matriarchal civilizations would not be aggressive.
Maybe not full scale war but constant tribal warfare for sure.
Also if you really interested matriarchal would pretty much mean that old women rule and keep the young one in check. There would be also separation(sometimes in duties) but also in living place between males and females.
Some Native North American confederation have dual system where females rules the clan and own and manage property when males lead warriors and stuff.
Also they were plagued by constant vendettas and small scale tribal warfare.

>but how much truth is there in the theory that at least a few prehistorical civilizations were matriarchal
There is no evidence, at all, that there has ever been a single matriarchal society, in the entire history of the world. But in CURRENT YEAR, it is an indisputable fact that everyone was a matriarch before evildumb fucking white males came along.

The first one. Want to claim there has been a matriarchal society? Show some evidence.

>where authority was passed via seniority to women and they had all kinds of activities unrestricted.
Nonsense.

>There were some purely matriarchal tribes and city states too
Name one.

Indo-Europeans are matriarchal and are being destroyed by patriarchal Bantus, Afroasiatics, and Altaics people.

anons are about to say 'there has never been a female queen or ruler in history, all evidence otherwise has been forged by the sjws"

You think a female ruler means a culture is matriarchal, do you?

Not him but Iroquoian peoples had a matriarchal clan system. Also, if I remember right there are several islands in the Southern Pacific with matriarchal societies.

t. half Mohawk

>Not him but Iroquoian peoples had a matriarchal clan system.
No, they didn't. What even makes you think that?
>Also, if I remember right there are several islands in the Southern Pacific with matriarchal societies.
Again, no.

Okay honest question to everybody in the thread, because like usual, it seems that everybody here is talking about something else:

What definition of the word Matriarchy are we using? When we say 'matriarchal society' what are we trying to say?
Is it
>A society where, be default, a woman is worth more than a man, has more rights and is considered a superior citizen
or
>A society where a woman is traditionally considered to be the head of a family, usually a mother or a grandmother, based on age
or
>A society where a woman or a council of exclusively women is traditionally elected or inherits the leadership role of the entire clan/nation

Matriarchy is a social system in which females hold the primary power positions in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property at the specific exclusion of males.

>Most anthropologists hold that there are no known societies that are unambiguously matriarchal.[58][59][60] According to J. M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer, and Jake Page, no true matriarchy is known actually to have existed.[54] Anthropologist Joan Bamberger argued that the historical record contains no primary sources on any society in which women dominated.[61] Anthropologist Donald Brown's list of human cultural universals (viz., features shared by nearly all current human societies) includes men being the "dominant element" in public political affairs,[62] which he asserts is the contemporary opinion of mainstream anthropology.[63]
>There are some disagreements and possible exceptions. A belief that women's rule preceded men's rule was, according to Haviland, "held by many nineteenth-century intellectuals".[4] The hypothesis survived into the 20th century and was notably advanced in the context of feminism and especially second-wave feminism, but the hypothesis is mostly discredited today, most experts saying that it was never true.[63]

When even (((wikipedia))) claims matriarchy is a fiction, that's not a good sign for the people claiming it existed.

Irrelevant, because there is no real evidence either of these three had ever existed in reality.

Not that retarded subhuman but matrilocal societies often have the woman as the head of the household. Of course to claim any of the known matrilocal societies is "matriarchal" would be retarded.

I mean, how would a low tech society even be explicitly matriarchal anyway? Why would men, who are the physically bigger, stronger, and faster of the sexes allow themselves to be subjugated and relegated to second class citizens by their women? It's a silly notion.

>African nations
>The royal lineage of Ethiopia, including for the Kandake, was passed through the woman only.[citation needed]
>Ancient Near East
>The Cambridge Ancient History (1975)[64] stated that "the predominance of a supreme goddess is probably a reflection from the practice of matriarchy which at all times characterized Elamite civilization to a greater or lesser degree".[f]
>Europe
>Tacitus noted in his book Germania that in "the nations of the Sitones a woman is the ruling sex."[65][g]
>Legends of Amazon women originated not from South America, but rather Scythia (present day Russia). Sarmatians (present day Ukraine) are also considered descendants of the Amazonian women tribe.

So we have one comment by a Roman, a myth, a case of matrilinear descent, and the bizarre claim that the existence of goddesses somehow tells us something about how real women were treated (but lets ignore that the chief god is always male, that obviously is irrelevant amirite?)

>Name one.

Germanic kingdom of Sitone, at least according to Tacitus. There were also possibly matriarchical Scythian tribes (source of amazon myth) but this is far less certain.

That's a fair point, but there have been matrilocal and matrilinear societies so its not impossible to imagine a matriarchy. The fact there is NO evidence for one having existed, at all, is more damning than it being implausible.

>Germanic kingdom of Sitone, at least according to Tacitus
Yeah, his one comment totally proves the Sitones were matriarchal. Never mind the archeology that proves the opposite, that one comment by a man who didn't know what he was talking about ti more proof than any number of high-status male graves could ever be.

>There were also possibly matriarchical Scythian tribes
No. There were female Scythian horse archers, which amazed the Greeks, but to suggest this proves they were matriarchal is to claim that modern Kurds are matriarchal.

>but to suggest this proves they were matriarchal is to claim that modern Kurds are matriarchal.
Well, what is Jineology?

A desire for egalitarian sex relations is not a sign of matriarchy. It's also hot air, the Kurds are muslims, they tolerate women fighters but they're not this progressive multikulti feminist utopia dumb western thots make them out to be.

In the realm of 100% fiction, what I'm saying now has no bearing on reality and would belong more on Veeky Forums than Veeky Forums:
Once men are already subjugated, it would be easy to maintain a matriarchy through killing male infants and maintaining superior numbers. A single man can breed with many, many females, so survival-of-the-tribe is not an issue.
As to how the initial subjugation happens - some sort of a conspiracy, most likely. For example, in most cultures men are more prone to drinking alcohol, and females are the ones responsible for doing low-effort gathering work. Dump some poison berries into the wine supply, half of the men are dealt with, overwhelm the rest with numbers, problem solved.

I realize that this is 100% fiction, but killing off most of the people responsible for defending the tribe/city/whatever during war would probably never be attempted by anyone sane

>we wuz qweenz n shiet
even in these "matriarch" societies men still held the most power

So... this society will be fighting its wars with women soldiers, right? I mean they can't give the men weapons, they'd be able to free themselves. Sounds to me like this society is nothing but a big target with "come and kill our handful of weak and ineffective lesbian warriors and then rape and sell us!" written on it.

There have historically been societies so secluded that they didn't need to defend themselves from others on regular basis, and so they let their guard down completely.

>There have historically been societies so secluded that they didn't need to defend themselves from others on regular basis
Name one.

But such a secluded society would also need to be largely agrarian, right? Who in their right mind would wipe out almost half the fucking population when you need literally every able bodied person to bring in the harvest?

No society secluded enough not to have to worry about war could possibly be agricultural, maybe some incredibly remote amazon jungle tribe could be so isolated, although of course irl such tribes engage in near-constant war with other tiny isolated tribes.