An era of matriarchy?

[The Grand Nudger]

They can be patriarchal and still be advanced of course. But if they were VERY advanced to the point of understanding and questioning their own social structure, then I suppose they would abandon unjustified social suppresion and become more open. This is what advanced and knwoledgable individuals tend to do. Einstein, Sagan etc. were against social discrimination. If you have a whole society of Einsteins they would probably be egalitarian - this is what I was trying to say. And we cannot exclude such civilizations in the past as it is very easy to wipe out entire cultures with only little trace or none at all. Ancient people do not have to be retarded just because they are ancient. Check out Hypatia or the Anitkythera mechanism - this is when we stop thinking about ancients as retards just running around half naked and eating grapes.

Hehehe, don't get me started on ancient machines...lol, It will get very boring very quickly. I didn't realize that anyone was proposing that they were retards, but they may have been (and seem to have been) patriarchal folks running around half naked eating grapes. What might have been and what we have evidence for are entirely divergent things, and in this particular case it seems to be an issue of "what one might like to have been". As per your comment earlier about what artifacts can tell us about people from the past. The very notion of an era of matriarchy is an artifact that could give insight to future scientists about us. We wanted to find it, we thought that it would be there. As it turns out we didn't find it, but future anthropologists will know that we wanted to (and one can infer quite a bit from that alone).

They only came to be such way since Europe at the time was infested with extreme Xtianity which destroyed true science as well as many other things rendering the Europeans incapable of anything meaningful and drowning in superstition and paranoia.

Oh, I don't know, I think that they may have had some hand in advancing those areas of understanding they advanced. That Europe was in a relatively sad state comparatively (and in some areas) is without question, nevertheless, their civilization provides an example of a society which, while patriarchal, was advanced. VERY advanced, in fact, to use the emphasis you decided to use. I think what you may be doing here is using our society, and including our current notions of gender equality as the standard for "advanced". If you set the metrics for "advanced" to be gender equality then you rule out such societies as advanced by default without actually explaining why this should be a metric for "advanced" to begin with. What you really mean here is "different" or "divergent". Maybe they -did- question their own social structure and for whatever reason they did not find it lacking (in the way that we might today). We'd have to turn the dial a little closer to our own time to get solid examples of this but supposing that we did, we do see societies questioning their social structure...and deciding that it was "best" (especially relative to their enemies) with some measure of reliability. Another interesting example (that might tickle you pink, considering) is that the cautionary tale of Atlantis is such that the reasons for it "sinking in a single day" was a decline of virtue followed by an attempt to invade the lands of the ancestors of the narrator and listeners. Of course one is left to assume that the virtue of which the narrator speaks is their own. And so it was that the gods decided to punish Atlantis.

I simply think that a society would benefit if it could use the full potential of all its members.

So do I, but is there something here which implies to you that such was the case at some foggy point in prehistory?

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Also, before I forget. Something in your response really caught my eye (and my ire). We can't exclude such civilizations? Let me be very clear...you need to include them, you need to place them into history, this "era of matriarchy" business needs to be ruled in, we don't have to rule it out. To start down this road or hang our laurels on it is to invite only tears - ask our resident apologists.