Joe Rogan interviewed Cassie Coppersmith on JRE #2528. In the snippet at 5:30:
Joe: “And this is all… That’s so interesting that… the people that probably built it first had…”
Cassie: “No interest in war.”
Joe: “No interest in war. Or at least had a very enlightened perspective.”
Cassie: “It does support… the idea of… human consciousness having reached its peak 12,000 years ago and has been slowly devolving ever since. You can see that in the imagery in some of these temples plain as day. So, yeah, there’ s a lot of images of war scenes on… all of the outer layers of Angkor Wat, but in the middle it’s totally different. Same in India.”
The idea that ancient society was “enlightened” in its views toward war and pacifism is based on two phenomena: 1) the lack of artwork depicting mass warfare in places like ancient Indian and Cambodian ruins, neolithic Europe etc., contrasted with the warfare reliefs of Rome, Egypt, Greece, Babylon, etc., and 2) general lack of mass graves. Riane Eisler made this same claim in her Chalice and the Blade (1987), claiming that before the “patriarchy” overran Europe there was a partnership system between men and women. She’s correct in the sense that matrilineal society is only “matriarchal” insofar as women are channels for inheritance and clan organization. She claims that such a “partnership” system was peaceful. On page 28 she writes:
“But the direction of cultural evolution – including whether a social system is warlike or peaceful – depends on whether we have a partnership or a dominator social structure.”
In reality, matrilineal society has two checks against (massive) warfare, which are interrelated. 1) Inter-tribal marriage is the rule, usually with the husband being the one who moves to the wife’s domicile (matrilocality). Among the Trobrianders, the wives moved to the husbands’ domicile (patrilocality) but because kinship passed through the woman, the children grew up as foreigners in the father’s town and, as Malinowski described it, their true kinsmen were off in their mother’s home village. Either way, under matrilineal descent, either the husbands or the children live as aliens in their town. They are required by law to marry outside of their clan, creating a network of clans related by marital bonds. But was ancient, matrilineal society free of warfare? The idea is absurd. The marriage contract itself testifies to this. A father always preferred that his daughter’s husband move into his clan so that, if he becomes abusive with her, they can avenge her. If he’s powerful enough to induce her into his home, he may have to pay a higher brideprice, and the distance must not be so far to prohibit the wife’s brothers from avenging her if she’s abused. The Yanomami reportedly beat their wives brutally. In Chagnon’s book, his hero Kaobawä has to intervene constantly to prevent domestic violence, because such violence brings retribution from the wife’s clan, which can become war.
The other check against massive warfare is 2) limitations on technology. Matrilineal society rarely climbs above the level of the Stone Age, at least regarding weaponry. Leonard Shlain explained this in a kind of backwards way in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, claiming that once “the patriarchy” sinks its teeth in, warfare increases. Nowhere does he bother explaining what produces “the patriarchy,” though. As I detailed in my Kin and Caliber article, matrilineal society maintains a wide network of inter-tribal marriages with an inheritance system requiring goods be transported from men to their sisters’ children in other villages. This stops the creation of large structures like forges and mines. Without these, you have no bronze or iron, and you have no fortresses. Lacking one negates the need for the other. Matrilineal society instead can’t enact mass warfare, nor does it need to. Instead, its violence is always punitive and retributive. Adultery and incest are punished with death, rape and insult are punished with kidnapping of women and children, and theft is punished with raiding. These are perceived as constant a threat as modern nuclear war, though far more common. The Yanomami are paranoid about raiders, and they have reason to be. We are paranoid about the patriarchy going to nuclear war, which never happened after the bombing of Japan.
If ancient society was so peaceful, then nobody would have worried about losing their women in raids, nobody would have worried about their women being abused in their marriages, and nobody would have worried about retributive murder. Yet these things were constants. I’m not sure on what authority Ms. Coppersmith is making her claim, but the historical record simply confirm it.
I talk about this issue and others in my book If These Fists Could Talk: A Stuntman’s Unflinching Take on Violence which you can get on Amazon.
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