Jessica Wynn

So for the Europeans, acknowledging matriarchy would have

complicated the story they were telling about the progress of civilization and who was qualified to govern and the male designated authorities gained real power that the female authorities had previously held and the colonial record showed a patriarchal society because the colonizers had created a more patriarchal society by only recognizing male authority and only communicating with men oh man behind the scenes the women were quietly like no no this is what you should do yeah

Yeah, makes sense that it's just a little bit depressing.

But you see the same pattern with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Iroquois nations in North America.

The European historical records show male chiefs making decisions and signing treaties.

What those records fail to mention is that those male chiefs were selected by senior women, the clan mothers.

and they could be removed by them.

So the women's authority was real and structurally embedded, but it was invisible to European observers who were looking for a chief who looked like a chief.

Yeah.

And if you only document the kind of authority you recognize, like titles and formal leaders, then you miss how power actually functions.

Yeah.

I mean, Eller would probably push back on that and say even accounting for biased records is.

there's still no solid evidence for her prehistoric matriarchy.

And she's probably right about that.

Sorry to disappoint everybody.

But absence of evidence in a biased record isn't proof something didn't exist, and it's not proof it did.

So the honest answer here is we just don't know.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, intellectual honesty sometimes requires sitting with this uncertainty.