Will the Real Human Being

Please Stand Up?

Riane Eisler

What does it mean to be human? Is there really something terribly The Two Chimps
wrong with us? Or is the story about “human nature” we get from our
education—both formal and informal—skewed toward a particular In most nature documentaries, as well as in a huge body of socio-
way of relating? biological literature, we are led to believe that we are prisoners of
our “unfortunate” evolutionary heritage. Just look at other primates,
Our first inventions, we are told, were weapons, and the first human we are told, and you see why men are violent and women are sub-
groups were organized by men to more effectively kill both animals ordinate to them.
and members of other human groups. Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A
Space Odyssey (based on Arthur C. Clark’s book) begins with a But that’s actually not what we see if we look at our species’ two
scene showing a hominid creature suddenly realizing that a large closest primate relatives: the common chimpanzees and the so-
bone can be used as a weapon to kill another member of his species. called pygmy chimpanzees or bonobos. The DNA of bonobos
The “innocent” cartoon (pygmy chimpanzees)
(we think nothing of The invention of tools and common chim-
showing it to children) of does not begin with the discovery panzees (who are actual -
a brutal caveman carry- that we can use ly no larger) is basically
ing a large club in one bones, stones, or sticks the same. Moreover, it is
hand, dragging a woman to kill one another. not very different from
around by her hair with that of our own species.
the other, has this same message. Not only that, in a few “amusing” However, observations of both these species in the wild indicate that
strokes it tells us that sex and male violence have always gone there are marked differences between the behaviors and social
together, that this is just “the way it is.” organizations of bonobos and common chimps.

Although this story of an inevitably flawed humanity is still embed- In many ways, bonobo chimpanzees prefigure much of what we
ded in prevailing religious and scientific narratives about “original find in humans. They have what primatologists call a more gracile
sin” and “selfish genes”—which also present male dominance as (or slender) build, longer legs that stretch while walking, a smaller
justified by either God or evolution—scholars from many disciplines head, smaller ears, a thinner neck, a more open face, and thinner
tell us a different story of our cultural origins. eyebrow ridges than most other apes. Of particular interest is
that—also like humans but unlike most other species—bonobos
In this story, the invention of tools does not begin with the discovery have sex not just for reproduction but purely for pleasure, and even
that we can use bones, stones, or sticks to kill one another. It begins beyond this, pleasure-bonding.
much earlier, with the use of sticks and stones to dig up roots (which
chimpanzees do) and continues with the fashioning of ways to carry In fact, this sharing of pleasure through the sharing of food as well
food other than with bare hands (rudimentary vegetable slings and as through sexual relations is a striking aspect of bonobo social
baskets) and of mortars and other tools to soften foods. organization. Just as striking is that even though theirs is not a vio-
lence-free social organization, their society is held together, far more
In this story, the evolution of hominid, and then human, culture also so than among common chimps, by the exchange of mutual bene-
follows more than one path. We have alternatives. We can organize
relations in ways that reward violence and domination.
But, as some of our earliest art suggests, we can also To maintain social cohesion
recognize our essential interconnection with one anoth- and order, this species,
er and the rest of the living world. so closely related to us,
relies primarily on the sharing of pleasure.

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fits characteristic of partnership relations. To maintain social cohe- Typical are museum dioramas where a male stands tall in the fore-
sion and order, this species, so closely related to us, relies primari- ground while a group of females sits in the background, or where a
ly on the sharing of pleasure—and not on the fear of pain (or vio- male towers over a smaller crouching female, as in the dioramas of
lence) required to maintain rigid rankings of domination. Neanderthals and homo sapiens at the American Museum of
Natural History exhibit. (For a survey of such scenes in books, see
Equally striking is that, even though males are not dominated by Diane Gifford-Gonzales’ “You Can Hide, But You Can’t Run:
females, in bonobo society females—particularly older females— Representations of Women’s Work in Illustrations of Paleolithic
wield a great deal of power. Moreover, it is through the association Life,” where she speaks of one classic pattern for depicting women
of females in groups that bonobo females seem to have avoided sitting on or working with animal skins as the faceless “drudge-on-
the kind of predatory sexual behavior that has been observed the-hide” distortion of women’s roles as passive and peripheral).3
among common chimps, where males have been seen to force
sexual relations on females. By developing more balanced, and accurate, narratives in which
women, and not just men, play a major role in innovating and mak-
In short, the bonobo chimpanzees rely more on bonds based on ing hominid and human evolution happen, women scientists are
pleasure and the sharing of benefits than on rankings based on fear making significant contributions to our understanding of how we
and force. (Agood resource here is the article on the bonobos by the became human. These contributions present a view of our human
primatologist Takayoshi Kano in Nature. The difference between the emergence in which more stereotypically “feminine” human charac-
bonobo chimps and common chimps is also discussed in detail in teristics, such as nurturance and nonviolence, are highlighted—
my books Sacred Pleasure and Tomorrow’s Children.) whether they reside in women or men.

For example, Zihlman goes beyond earlier accounts about what

Were Women There? distinguishes our species: Our upright posture, which freed our
hands for tool use, and on our large brains, which give us our great
Much of what is still written about the story of human evolution follows capacity to learn, making possible our immense behavioral flexibil-
the old view that “man the hunter” was its main protagonist. Indeed, ity. Like other theorists, such as Glynn Isaacs, Nancy Tanner, Ralph
most of the scientists in this field have been men, although there are Holloway, Paul MacLean, and Humberto Maturana, she empha-
some notable exceptions, such as Mary Leakey, who found the first sizes the role of communication and caring in human evolution. The
early human fossil
in East Africa in These contributions present a view of our human emergence
1959, and in which more stereotypically
Adrienne Zihlman, “feminine” human characteristics,
who has proposed such as nurturance and nonviolence, are highlighted
the bonobo chim- —whether they reside in women or men.
panzee as the
most likely prototype for the “missing link” between hominids and ear- theory she developed together with Nancy Tanner also emphasizes
lier primates, and who has also helped to develop a theory about the our enormous human capacity for creativity. Indeed, Tanner and
origins of human tools in which women play an important role.1 Zihlman propose that we have even to some degree been co-cre-
ators of our own biological evolution—and that females played a
Zihlman is among a growing number of scientists—most of them key part in this process.
women in fields ranging from physical anthropology and biology to
cultural anthropology, psychology, and sociology—who have over As Tanner writes in Becoming Human, not only is it more than like-
the last 30 years been developing a more gender-balanced narra- ly that females developed and used some of the earliest tools, such
tive of early human evolution. As Zihlman notes, this has been an as slings and other means of carrying infants, baskets to carry gath-
uphill struggle. No sooner are earlier male-centered accounts of ered plants, and possibly also tools to dig for tubers and roots; these
human evolution contradicted by new evidence, than new theories tools, in turn, also affected our evolution. “Tools for gathering meant
are put forward to again render women invisible, or at best portray mothers could collect more food for offspring who, then, could be
them as “handmaidens to men” and squarely place men—and with
supported longer before becoming independent” 4—a longer period
them an emphasis on aggression and competition—at the center of
of dependency being a salient characteristic of our species. This
our human adventure. 2
also made it possible for children to have a longer period to “learn
social and technological traditions”—another key development in
Not only that, these theories—which invariably portray male-domi-
human evolution, as it lead to the much greater role of culture in
nance as natural—continue to be replicated in the vast majority of
shaping behavior found in our species.5
textbooks, as well as in visual representations of human evolution.

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329
One could even speculate that as we increasingly relied not on teeth, tion of one half of humanity are unfortunately the price we have to
but on the use of tools and cooking methods to soften food, the huge pay for civilization.
molars characteristic of most other primates became less necessary,
leaving more cranial room for larger brains. As many scientists have But what we are today learning about the Neolithic does not sup-
noted, it is our larger relative brain-size of an average of 1,350 cubic port this view. For example, the belief that the Neolithic was a
centimeters—a quantum leap from even our first hominid ancestors, male-dominated period is inconsistent with the myths found in
who had already attained a brain size of 450 cubic centimeters—that many cultures throughout the world. Stories about female deities
characterizes our human emergence.6 One could further speculate with great power and importance, as well as functioning partner-
that this reduction in molar size also left more room for the voice ships between priestesses and priests, are found in many tradi-
boxes required for the complex verbalizations of human language— tions. Female deities are also in many world traditions associated
leading to the much greater capacity for communication and symbol- with important inventions that most texts still credit solely to men.
ization that make possible the complex social, technological, and In Mesopotamia, the Goddess Ninlil was revered for providing her
artistic development that we call human culture. people with an understanding of planting and harvesting methods.
The official scribe of the Sumerian heaven was a woman, and the
Indeed, as Paul MacLean also argues, it is highly probable that the Sumerian Goddess Nidaba was honored as the one who initially
most unique and important of human tools—our highly complex invented clay tablets and the art of writing—appearing in that posi-
language—originated out of mother-child bonds; in other words, out tion earlier than any of the male deities who later replaced her.
of the bond of caring and love between mother and child. 7 Similarly, in India, the Goddess Sarasvati was honored as the
Moreover, as Humberto Maturana and Gerda Verden-Zöller inventor of the original alphabet.9
emphasize, writing about what Maturana calls the biology of love,
one of the most important developments in our evolution is this That we find basic human inventions—from farming to writing—
human capacity for love.8 credited to female deities suggests that women probably played a
key part in their development. That female deities are attributed
This kind of approach to the study of human evolution makes it so much power, including the power to create the world and
possible for people to refocus from selfishness and violence as the humanity, also suggests a time when women occupied positions of
main themes in our evolution to caring and creativity as equally, leadership in their communities. And that we find these powerful
and in some ways more important, themes. It also makes it possi- female deities in ancient stories of every world region suggests
ble for us to see that these qualities are part of the nature of both that this was once widespread.
women and men. And it makes it possible to see that our primary
and most meaningful identity is as human beings, regardless of We find clues to this earlier period in the traditions of many indige-
gender, race, religion, or nationality. At the same time, this nous North American tribes. As Paula Gunn Allen writes in The
approach also helps us appreciate, and respect, other life forms Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian
and our Mother Earth, thus better equipping us to responsibly deal Traditions, many Indian myths revolve around powerful female fig-
with the environmental challenges we face. ures.10 Serpent Woman is one. Corn Woman is another. Earth
Woman is another. Still another is Grandmother of the Corn. As
Allen writes, “Her variety and multiplicity tes-
It is highly probable that tified to her complexity: she is the true cre-
the most unique and important of human tools atrix for she is thought itself, from which all
—our highly complex language— else is born... She is also the spirit that forms
originated out of mother-child bonds. right balance, right harmony, and these in
turn order all relationships in conformity with
her law.” 11 Similarly, central to Keres Pueblo theology is a Creatrix
Our Neglected Mythic Heritage called She Who Thinks, who is the supreme spirit, both mother
and father to all people and to all creatures. 12
The period after the gathering/hunting so-called Old Stone Age is
known as the Neolithic or New Stone Age. It marks the beginning of From China, too, we have myths about a time when the yin or fem-
what is perhaps the most important human invention: agriculture. inine principle was not yet subservient to the yang or male principle.
This is a time that the Chinese sage Lao Tsu, who dates to about
Here we are taught another interesting story of cultural origins. It is 2,600 years ago, reports was peaceful and just. Likewise, one of the
completely inconsistent with the one about violence and male dom- earliest known European writers, the Greek poet Hesiod, who lived
inance being “human nature,” but it still conveys a similar message. approximately 2,800 years ago, tells us that there was once a “gold-
Now we are told that chronic warfare and male dominance were en race” who lived in peaceful ease before a “lesser race” brought
ushered in by the agricultural age. That is, war and the subordina- with them Ares, the Greek god of war.

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These stories were undoubtably greatly idealized folk memories of shows how, at the same time that the social structure changed to
earlier times. Nonetheless, they tell us that, although most of the a patriarchal one, NuWa lost her power until finally there are
early agricultural era was not a violence-free utopian period, it was myths where she dies.”16
not the bloody time we have been led to believe.
As Junsheng puts it, “due to the elimination and
misinterpretation of information during the sub-
That we find basic human inventions sequent long period of patriarchal society” avail-
—from farming to writing— able data have to be carefully analyzed. 17
credited to female deities, suggests However, as he also notes, a careful analysis of
that women probably played a key part myths provides clues to a massive cultural shift.
in their development.
There are mythical clues to this shift from every
world region. In Africa, the female status in sacred mythology dete-
riorated over time. This seems to follow the pattern found in other
The Metamorphosis of Myth—and Reality world regions, were female mythological figures start out as the
Creatrix, then become a wife or mother of a male god, first in an
Towards the end of the Neolithic period, however, we begin to see equal role and then in a subservient role, are next demoted to non-
evidence of a fundamental social and cultural shift. In the Americas, divine status, and finally are demonized as witches or monsters.
even before the European conquests, there are indications that dur- African goddesses can be found which run the gamut of these
ing a period of great drought there were incursions from warlike roles. The South African Ma is the “Goddess of Creation” and
tribes. For example, such a drought is documented by den- Mebeli (of the Congo) is the “Supreme Being;” Haine is the
drochronology in the western part of the American continent Tanzanian Moon Goddess whose husband is Ishoye (the sun);
between approximately 1275 and 1290. There is also evidence of Dugbo (of Sierra Leone) is an Earth Goddess, responsible for all
raiders who came down from the north and destroyed earlier plants and trees, married to Yataa, the Supreme Being. There are
Mogollan and Anasazi communities—highly developed cultures that also La-hkima Oqla (of Morocco), a female “jenn” who inhabits a
represent a Golden Age of American Prehistory, the Anasazi later river and rules over other evil spirits, Yalode (of Benin) who causes
becoming the Hopi and Zuñi Pueblo Indians.13 foot infections, and Watamaraka (of South Africa), the “Goddess of
Evil” who is said to have given birth to all the demons. 18
In Europe and Asia Minor, this shift occurred much earlier, approxi-
mately 5,500 years ago. At that point there appear, in the words of the Today all these female mythic representations are found side by
British archaeologist James Mellaart, severe signs of stress. There side. But if we do a little detective work, we can trace their origins
are natural disasters and severe climate changes. Here, too, during a and situate them in a sequence from Creatrix to subservience to
period of severe drought we begin to see invasions by nomadic conversion to a male deity or to a demonic witch or monster. For
herders, who bring with them a more warlike social organization.14 example, in the iconography of old Europe, the figure Gimbutas,
called the Snake Goddess, plays a prominent role, probably
In the area the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas calls Old Europe because the snake was viewed as one of the manifestations of the
(the Balkans and Northern Greece) we now, for the first time, find power of regeneration, since snakes shed and renew their skins. But
large stores of weapons. Often these are in a new type of burial: in later Greek mythology, we have the monstrous Medusa, a terrible
“chieftain graves.” Horses, women, and children were often sacri- female with hair of coiled snakes. Significantly, she has been
ficed and placed in these graves to accompany their masters into stripped of the power to give life, but still retains the power to take
the afterworld. life, as she is said to turn men to stone.

In China, scholars at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Similarly, the Hindu Kali is noted for her bloodthirsty cruelty.
Beijing have also traced this shift from more peaceful and egali- Nonetheless there are also remnants in Hindu mythology of the
tarian societies in which women do not appear to have been sub- female power to give life splintered off into a number of deities,
servient to men and female deities seem to have played leading including Parvati. Along a somewhat different trajectory, the early
roles to a later time when Chinese society oriented more to the Greek Mother Goddess Demeter is first turned by Christian remy-
dominator model. 15 For example, in his article “Myth and Reality: thing into Saint Demetra—and finally masculinized as Saint
The Projection of Gender Relations in Prehistoric China,” Demetrius. Following still another trajectory, female deities such
Professor Cai Junsheng writes: “NuWa is the most important as Athena in Greek mythology and Ishtar in Middle Eastern
mythological female figure handed down from the prehistoric age. mythology are now goddesses of war and human sacrifice—
NuWa was long considered by the Chinese as the creator/creatrix reflecting the shift to a more violent, hierarchic, and male-domi-
of the world. However, a careful examination of Chinese myths nated social structure.

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Does this mean that societies ruled by women, matriarchies, are During both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there were
superior to societies ruled by men? Hardly. There is no evidence movements against slavery and against the colonization and
that these earlier societies were ruled by women. exploitation of indigenous peoples. We see the rise of organized
labor and socialism, followed by the toppling of feudal monarchies
But there is evidence that women and qualitities stereotypically and warlords by communist revolutions in Russia, China, and other
associated with women, such as caring and nonviolence, were not countries. In the United States, there is a gradual shift from unregu-
excluded from social governance. In other words, rather than patri- lated robber-baron capitalism to government regulations—for exam-
archies or matriarchies, these societies seem to have oriented more ple, anti-monopoly laws and economic safety nets such as Social
to what I have called a partnership rather than dominator model of Security and unemployment insurance.
organizing relations with other humans and with our Mother Earth.19
There is the nineteenth-century feminist movement demanding
equal education and suffrage for women and the organized move-
A New Look at Modern History ment by blacks for the vote, followed by the twentieth-century civil
rights and women’s liberation and women’s rights movements.
When we look at the last 300 years, taking our hidden cultural her- There is the nineteenth-century pacifist movement followed by the
itage into account, we see that the struggle for our future is not twentieth-century peace movement, expressing the first fully-organ-
between right and left, religious and secular, or even industrial and ized rejection of violence as a means of resolving international con-
pre- or postindustrial. It is rather between the two basic ways of flicts. There is the twentieth-century family planning movement as a
organizing relations that—because there were no names to key to women’s emancipation as well as to the alleviation of pover-
describe the configurations I discovered—I named the partnership
ty and greater opportunities for children.
model and the dominator model.

In basic respects, however, the dominator system remained firmly

Another important aspect of modern history that then becomes visible
entrenched. Colonialism and the killing and exploitation of darker-
is that during the great technological and social disequilibrium of the
skinned peoples continued the tradition of conquest and domina-
industrial revolution and now the postindustrial revolution of electron-
tion on a global scale.
ic, nuclear, and bio-
chemical technolo- For what is still seldom noted There are also periodic

gies, has come the in conventional history texts backlashes; for exam-

opportunity for anoth- and classes is that, as new technologies ple, Jim Crow laws

er major cultural shift: destabilize established institutional forms, passed after the aboli-

this time from domi- there are opportunities to challenge tion of slavery, anti-

nation to partnership. entrenched systems of belief union violence during

For what is still sel- and social structures. the first half of the twen-
tieth century, and con-
dom noted in conven-
tinuing anti-feminist agi-
tional history texts and classes is that, as new technologies destabi-
tation—from resistance to higher education and the vote for women
lize established institutional forms, there are opportunities to chal-
in the nineteenth century to the defeat of the Equal Rights
lenge entrenched systems of belief and social structures.
Amendment and renewed opposition to reproductive rights for
women in the twentieth century.
This leads to a completely different, more interesting, and more
meaningful picture of the last 300 years: one with important practi-
The twentieth century also witnessed massive dominator regres-
cal implications for what we can do today.
sions. In Europe, for example, we see Hitler’s Germany (from the
early 1930s to the mid-1940s) and Stalin’s Soviet Union (the 1920s
Certainly the Enlightenment was a period where we begin to see a
to the 1950s), in which the ideals of a more just society were coopt-
massive questioning of entrenched patterns of domination. The so-
ed into a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” creating still another ver-
called rights of man movement of the late seventeenth and early
sion of a brutal dominator model.
eighteenth centuries eventually led to both the American and
French Revolutions and to a gradual shift from monarchies to
And even after Western colonial regimes are overthrown in Africa
republics. Paralleling the challenge to the supposedly divinely-
and Asia, we see the rise of authoritarian dictatorships by local elites
ordained right of kings to rule was the feminist movement of the
over their own people, resulting in renewed repression and exploita-
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which challenged the suppos-
tion, including the rise of so-called fundamentalist religious regimes
edly divinely-ordained right by men to rule over women and chil-
that once again reinstate the domination of one half of humanity over
dren in the “castles” of their homes, bringing about a gradual shift
the other as a cornerstone of a violent and authoritarian system.
to less autocratic and male-dominated families.

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During this modern industrial age we also see the use of ever more are asserted, violence against them has also increased to literally
advanced technologies to more effectively exploit, dominate, and “beat them back into submission.” In some countries, this violence
kill. Moreover, it is during the industrial age that high technology is perpetrated by government officials; for example, in Afghanistan,
begins to be harnessed to further “man’s conquest of nature”— Algeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Iran the stoning to death of
wreaking ever more environmental damage. women for any act perceived as countering male sexual and per-
sonal control—even a young woman exposing her ankles—is again
being justified on “moral” grounds.21
Humanity at the Crossroads
There is also, under the guise of economic globalization, a recen-
Today the mix of the dominator model and advanced technology tralization of economic power worldwide. Under pressure from
becomes increasingly unsustainable. The blade is the nuclear major economic players, governments are cutting social services
bomb and/or biological warfare and terrorism. Increasingly and shredding economic safety-nets—“economic restructuring”
advanced technologies in the service of a dominator ethos threat- that is particularly hurtful to women and children worldwide. In the
en our natural habitat, as well as that of most species with whom developing world, this restructuring is enriching dominator elites
we share our planet. through a shift from the production of food and goods for local con-
sumption to products for the export trade. At the same time, it is
This postmodern period brings further challenges to traditions of contributing to the impoverishment of Third World people, who no
domination. It brings a strong environmental movement: millions of longer produce what they need and are ever more dependent on
people coming together to challenge “man’s conquest of nature.” It jobs in urban centers.
also brings a strengthening of the family-planning movement as
integral to environmental sustainability; stronger movements against Concurrently, high-paying jobs in postindustrial economies are
the domination and exploitation of indigenous peoples; a growing shrinking, creating increased competition for low-paying jobs (gen-
challenge by peoples in the “developing world” to its domination by erally without benefits) by workers in blue collar, pink collar, and mid-
the “developed world;” and thousands of grassroots organizations dle management displaced by automation or corporate downsizing.
all over the world working toward political democracy, nonviolent Regions ranging from the former Soviet Union to countries in Asia,
ways of living, and economic, racial, and gender equity.20 Africa, and Latin America are being forced into a replay of the rob-
ber-baron days of early capitalism, complete with sweatshops,
Significantly, because these are foundational relations where we forced child labor, rampant political corruption, and organized
first learn and continually practice either domination or partnership, crime.22 In short, there is a widening gap between haves and have-
we now see a much more organized challenge to traditions of dom- nots both within countries and between different world regions.
ination and violence in intimate relations. Child abuse, rape, and
wife-beating are increasingly prosecuted in some world regions. A There is growing scapegoating of women (particularly single moth-
global women’s-rights movement frontally challenges the domina- ers living in poverty) and minorities, once again sometimes in the
tion of half of humanity by the other half, gaining impetus from the name of religious fundamentalism. There is an increase in terrorism,
unprecedented United Nations conferences (1975-1995) that even in once supposedly impregnable nations such as the United
brought women from all world regions together around such pivotal States—some by its own citizens. There are “ethnic cleansings,”
issues as violence against women, equal legal rights and economic such as those in Bosnia and Kosovo, and resurgent genocidal war-
opportunities, and reproductive freedom. fare, such as the carnage of Rwanda. In addition, in the name of
entertainment, the mass media obsessively focus on violence—con-
However, precisely because the movement toward partnership is stantly emphasizing the infliction or suffering of pain that are main-
intensifying and deepening—for the first time focusing on the so- stays of dominator politics and economics.
called private sphere of human relations that are the foundations for
habits and attitudes we carry into all areas of life—the resistence to There is also burgeoning population growth. The world’s population,
change stiffens. There is continued, and in some places increasing, which has doubled in the last 40 years—in only a few decades
violence against women and children. Some of the statistical reaching more than 5 billion people, the vast majority in the poorest
increases are due to the fact that this violence was formerly unre- world regions—is projected to again double by the mid-twenty-first
ported, as it was not prosecuted and was often instead blamed century, exacerbating hunger, violence, and other causes of human
on the victims. But
since violence is what
ultimately maintains Regions ranging from
dominator relations, the former Soviet Union to countries
as women’s and chil- in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are being forced into a
dren’s human rights replay of the robber-baron days of early capitalism.

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333
suffering, straining the world’s natural resources. This unsustainable Endnotes
population growth is in large part also due to dominator systems
1. Zihlman, Adrienne L. (1982). The Human evolution coloring book, with illustrations
dynamics: the continued denial of reproductive freedom to women by Carla Simmons, Wynn Kapit, Fran Milner, and Cyndie Clark-Huegel. New York:
Barnes and Noble Books. 2. Zihlman, Adrienne. (1997). The Paleolithic glass ceiling:
(or the loss of gains already made) and the efforts, often violent, to Women in human evolution. In Hager, Lori D. (Ed.) Women in human evolution. New
deny women access to life options other than procreation. York: Routledge, pp 91-113, p 91. 3. Gifford-Gonzales, Diane. (1993). You can hide,
but you can’t run: Representations of women’s work in illustrations of Paleolithic life.
Visual Anthropology Review 9, pp 23-41. 4. Tanner, Nancy M. (1981). Becoming
In sum, the outcome of the tension between the partnership and human. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, p 274. 5. Ibid., pp 274-275.
See also Zihlman, Adrienne & Nancy Tanner. (1974). Becoming human: Putting women
dominator models as two basic human possibilities is far from set- in evolution. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological
tled. We are now at what scientists call a bifurcation point, where Society, Mexico City. 6. Leakey, pp 44-48. 7. MacLean, Paul. (1995). The triune brain
in evolution: Role in paleocerebral functions. New York: Plenum, p 544; MacLean, Paul.
there are two very different scenarios for our future. (Sept 1996). “Women: A more balanced brain?” Zygon, 31:3, p 434. 8. Maturana,
Humberto R., & Gerda Verden-Zoller. (1998). Origins of humanness in the biology of
love. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 9. Stone, Merlin. (1976). When God was a
One is dominator systems breakdown: the unsustainable future of woman. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p 3. This book is an excellent source of
information about ancient female deities, its only drawback being that it does not make
high technology guided by the dominator model. This is where high
a distinction—which is critical—between the character of the female deities before and
technology in service of the domination of nature despoils and pol- after the shift to a dominator model, when they often became goddesses of war and
sacrifice. For a discussion of this, see The Chalice & the Blade and Sacred Pleasure,
lutes our natural habitat. It is a future where advanced technologies both by Riane Eisler. 10. Allen, Paula Gunn. (1986). The sacred hoop: Recovering the
will be used not to free our human potentials, but to more effective- feminine in American Indian traditions. Boston: Beacon Press. 11. Ibid., p 14. 12.
Ibid., p 15. Herb Martin and Terri Wheeler of California State University at Monterey Bay
ly control and dominate. And ultimately, it is a future of environmen- contributed material on Goddess myths from Native American traditions. 13. Gibson,
tal, nuclear, or biological holocaust. Arrell Morgan. (1980). The American Indian: Prehistory to the present. Lexington,
Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, pp 30-34. 14. Chapter 5 of Riane Eisler,
Sacred pleasure (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996) explores some of the reasons
The other scenario is breakthrough to partnership: the sustainable that the culture of these herding people, who came from arid environments, may have
evolved in a dominator direction. 15. Jiayin, Min. (Ed.). (1995). The chalice and the
future of a world primarily orienting to the partnership model. Here blade in Chinese culture. Beijing: China Social Sciences Publishing House. 16.
advanced technologies are developed and used in ways that pro- Junsheng, Cai. “Myth and reality: The projection of gender relations in prehistoric
China,” in Jiayin (1995), p 44. 17. Ibid, pp 34-35. 18. Herb Martin and Terri Wheeler
mote environmental balance and the realization of our species’great of California State University at Monterey Bay contributed material on Goddess tradi-
tions from Africa. 19. For a detailed description of these societies and the factors
untapped potentials. International regulations ensure corporate behind the shift, see Eisler, Riane (1987, 1988). The chalice and the blade. San
accountability to workers, communities, and our natural habitat. Francisco: Harper & Row; Eisler, Riane. (1995, 1996). Sacred pleasure. San Francisco:
Harper Collins. For a work that incorporates this information into education, see Eisler,
New economic institutions and rules recognize the value of the work Riane. (2000). Tomorrow’s children. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. 20. For
of caring and caregiving, and discourage violence, exploitation, and examples, see chapters 18 and 19 of Sacred Pleasure . 21. Women Living Under
Muslim Laws, an organization of Muslim women with offices in Pakistan and France, is
the despoliation of nature. 23 an excellent source of information here. They can be reached at Women Living Under
Muslim Laws, Boite Postale 23, 34790 Grables (Montpellier) - France. Another excel-
lent source is the quarterly Women’s International Network News, which can be sub-
Although in this world, too, nation-states may continue to break scribed to by writing to Women’s International Network News, 187 Grant Street,
down, instead of leading to genocidal ethnic civil wars, diversity is Lexington, MA02173. 22. Some good readings are Mander, Jerry & Edwin Goldsmith.
(Eds.). (1996). The case against the global economy and for a turn toward the local.
valued and our shared partnership heritage binds cultures together. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books; Henderson, Hazel. (1991). Paradigms in progress:
Although there is still some violence, it is not built into the system as Life beyond economics. Indianapolis: Knowledge Systems, Inc.; Korten, David. (1995).
When corporations rule the world. San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler; Peterson, The. Spike
a means of maintaining rankings of domination. Although there is & Anne Sisson Runyan. (1993). Global gender issues. Boulder: Westview Press; Eisler,
Riane, David Loye, & Kari Norgaard. (1995). Women, men, and the global quality of life.
still conflict, as is inevitable in human relations, young people have Pacific Grove, California: Center for Partnership Studies; Human development report
the tools to resolve it in creative ways. 1995. (1995). Published for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) by
Oxford University Press (New York); The world’s women 1995: Trends and statistics.
(1995). New York: The United Nations. For a short piece that has some good statistics
Women and men are equal partners in both the “private” or fami- and could serve as a handout, see also Korten, David. (June 1997). A market-based
approach to corporate responsibility. Perspectives on Business and Global Change 11:
ly sphere and the outside or “public” sphere. And children are val- 2, pp 45-55. See also the Center for Partnership Studies’ Website <www.partnership-
ued and nurtured not only by their biological parents, but by the way.org> to download “Changing the Rules of the Game: Work, Values, and Our
Future,” by Riane Eisler, 1997. 23. See Riane Eisler, “Changing the Rules of The
entire community—which recognizes that children are our most Game” on the CPS website <www.partnershipway.org>. 24. These two scenarios are
precious resource. outlined in chapters 12 and 13 of The Chalice and the Blade and detailed in the closing
chapters of Sacred Pleasure.

To move toward this world, however, requires fundamental changes,

including changes in our education that make it possible for today’s Adapted from Tomorrow’s Children: A Blueprint for Partnership Education in the 21st
Century by Riane Eisler (Westview Press, 2000).
and tomorrow’s children to see that if we work together we can cre-
ate a more equitable, peaceful, and sustainable future—once we
acquire the knowledge and skills to do so.24

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