This essay supports a few posts in the Reimagined Mahabharata blog (http://reimaginedmahabharata.blogspot.com/) in which I assert that South Asia had three matriarchal cultures in 4000 BCE that participated in a great revolution around 2000BCE that is the source of the Mahabharata.

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Matriarchy:
The
mother
of
Government
Kamesh R. Aiyer
This essay was written in support of the posts in the “Reimagined Mahabharata” blog,
specifically the fifth one on the three matriarchal cultures of South Asia.
The
Evolutionary
Framework
of
Matriarchy
Anthropologists are often cautious in making absolute statements, but poets are not so
constrained. Robert Graves’ asserted, in The White Goddess, that a matriarch-centered
organizational structure is the “natural” state of human bands. It is tempting to say that
this is obvious – mothers stay home and control the family and the “base camp” while
males go off on long journeys and move from band to band. But this is not a given – for
example, two primate species closest to us, the chimpanzees and the bonobos, appear to
exhibit completely different social organizations. Bonobo bands are female-centric and
run by the female head, chimpanzee bands are male-centric and run by the alpha male.
There are many behavioral differences that go with these different organizations, but one
big difference is the relationship between bands and between individuals within bands.
Similar behavioral differences are displayed by other mammals – elephants for example,
form female-centric and female-run bands. Lions appear to form male-centric but
female-run bands. Canines – wolves, foxes, dogs, etc. – seem to form gender-neutral
bands. There are other behavioral differences between these animals but the form of the
band seems to underlie many differences – the similar band organization between
bonobos and elephants may underlie similarities in band behavior.

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The choice of organization for most animals appears to be genetically specified, but
the demographic and productive nature of the environment drives the selection pressures
that lead to genetically mediated choices. For instance, it appears that the difference
between chimpanzees and bonobos can be traced to a key difference in habitat – the
bonobos have no competition in the niche they occupy north of the Congo river, while
chimpanzees compete directly with gorillas south of the Congo. Inter-species
competition for this niche leads to intra-species competition between chimpanzee bands
for food and security. Battles are frequent between chimpanzee bands, but have never
been observed among bonobos. Chimpanzee males are larger than chimpanzee females –
this makes them better fighters and as a result (possibly) resulted in a social hierarchy in
which males are valued more than females. Evolution has selected for male-centric and
male-run chimpanzee bands. The bonobos, on the other hand, are not subject to such
competition and intra-band competition for resources would be rare (or non-existent, if
our observations are valid). Band members form friendships with members of other
bands and occasionally appear to visit each other.
Population control is achieved in chimpanzees by oestrus (“heat”) – sexual receptivity
of females is limited to certain times during the year, thus limiting fertility – and by
infanticide. When a female chimpanzee is receptive, the male (or males) have an
incentive to prevent other males from accessing the female. At the same time friendships
among males allows the more powerful to share females with the weaker protégé. As a
result, a power hierarchy develops among male chimpanzees that is then used to control
the females. Infanticide happens for many reasons, but one of the most common is when
the alpha male of a troop is overthrown by another unrelated male. Infanticide is both

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direct, with the new male killing unprotected young and indirect by self-induced
abortions by females. Some pregnancies are terminated by the stress of forced
relocations or by the loss of range forced by competition.
Infanticide does not happen because the new alpha male hates the children of the old
male. While the mother is nursing she will not go into oestrus. By killing the nursing
baby the male ensures greater access to sex.1
Thus, sex is subordinated to power (maintaining control over the band) and even
serves a reward/punishment role.
Population control among bonobos is also achieved primarily by oestrus, but with a
wrinkle – a bonobo female in heat can be barely distinguished from one not in heat.
Males, too, are almost the same size as females. As a result power hierarchies do not help
control access to sex. Instead, many social interactions are accompanied by gender-
neutral sexual acts – hugging and pecking as well as mutual rubbing of genitalia. The
matriarch of the band, the alpha female, is welcomed by all other females as a friend, and
conversely, a female not welcome by others will never become a matriarch. Favored
males are welcomed with sex and unfavored males are ignored. Control of the band is a
distinct second to the use of sex to maintaining relationships.
How does this relate to human bands? Humans form bands that have variant
structures, from matriarchal to patriarchal or even gender-neutral, small to large, from
sets of related individuals to apparently randomly formed groups. The plasticity of human
bands allows these bands to adapt to a variety of niches. A band may be matriarchal if
the niche provides a cornucopia of resources and inter-band competition is either non-
1
At the same time, a male will not kill his own children – we do not know why, but pheromonal or hormonal
reactions may be responsible. It seems unlikely that the male chimp knows that the sexual act leads to pregnancy
followed by a baby.

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existent or not possible (if there is only one band, for instance). If, as a result of band
growth and the formation of new bands, resources become tight, inter-band sharing may
be replaced by inter-band conflict, which could lead to the formation of defensive troops
and the value of the man vis-à-vis the woman would increase. Over a small number of
generations (possibly even in one generation) a band might go from being matriarchal to
being patriarchal.
But in the context of a rich environment with no apparent constraints on resources,
men do not have much of a role in the human family. Like bonobos, a man is not so
much larger than females, and cannot force a unified band to allow access if the women
do not want it. For this reason, we think that all three cultures that developed in South
Asia were matriarchal.
The
Role
of
men
in
a
matriarchal
band
In a matriarchal band, the females become pregnant, give birth to children, and jointly
take care of children. It is very obvious that the mother is the creator and sustainer of life
in the band. What makes a man necessary to a band? There are three big reasons:
1. He is a spare hand that is always available
2. His slight advantage in strength makes him useful in inter-band conflicts
3. As the father of some of the children in the band he can help raise them
We will address these in turn. In times of plenty, the male eats more and may or may
not bring in a correspondingly larger quantity of food and other resources. In difficult
times when food is scarce, he needs more and is not likely to be any more productive than
any other female. So the man’s role as provider is questionable.

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The male viewed as a spare hand that is always available compares unfavorably with
adding another female member to the band who is not pregnant and does not carry a
baby. As we said above, the male also eats more, so he creates a burden when a spare
hand is not needed.
The notion that the father of a child should play a role in raising the child is of recent
origin. Before a band can take this into consideration, the notion of fatherhood has to be
developed. That the father is the man who had copulated with the mother a month or two
before her periods stopped and that the stopping of a woman’s period is the harbinger of
her visible pregnancy is a cultural and intellectual discovery of great consequence. It
may seem unlikely to us that humans could ever have been ignorant of the causal
relationship, but there is sufficient anthropological evidence that human bands existed
that had not made the connection between sex and childbirth. That is, the discovery
precedes the moral assertion that the male must help take care of his child. This raises
two questions – how and when did the discovery happen, and, what were the
consequences of the discovery.
Why is fatherhood not immediately obvious? The psychological basis of how
causality is recognized is one reason – psychologists have shown that the separation
between a cause and its effect must be less than 300 milliseconds, otherwise causality is
not automatically recognized by the human brain. A child watches a ball on a screen hit
another ball – if the second ball moves within 300 milliseconds, the child will describe its
motion as caused by being hit by the first ball. If the second ball takes more than 300
milliseconds to move the child will have difficulty drawing the causal connection. And if
the second ball moves many seconds after being hit, the child will absolutely deny a

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causal connection. Conversely, the brain will assume a causal relationship between any
two events that occur within 300 milliseconds of each other.
The point is, it is difficult for us to intuit causality when two simple behaviors follow
each other but not within 300 milliseconds. To recognize a valid causal relation for
other, more complex, events is only possible by deliberate and conscious thought
buttressed with protocols that minimize alternative causes and highlight singular effects
(as the scientific method is intended to do). The birth of a child takes place nine months
after conception (actually the last menstrual period before conception, but this precision
does not matter for this argument) – there is no intuitive procedure by which the
relationship between the cause (copulation) and the effect (conception, suspended
menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth) can be discovered. Given that frequently conception
does NOT happen only makes it harder to relate cause and effect.
If the man’s role as “father” is unknown or unrecognized, the only role for the man is
as a sexual partner, a boy-toy if you will. But this changes when fatherhood is
discovered.
The
Discovery
of
Fatherhood
The key discovery is that the men’s role in fathering children is associated with a
single sexual act and only that one act. As we said before, we are so accustomed to
knowing this that it seems impossible that anybody could have thought differently.
However, anthropologists have discovered that many aboriginal societies do not have our
explanation for fatherhood. The interesting thing is that they recognize “fatherhood” but
without any connection to the sex act.

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In a large fraction of cases, the connection between the father and the child is startling
and obvious – the child looks like the father, has hair and eyes like the father and as he or
she grows up exhibits behaviors unique to the father. Clearly this father had something to
do with creating this child. But what is this something? And how to relate this to the
many cases in which the child does not look like anybody or looks like a grandparent of
either the mother or the father, while the child and the person we think of as the father are
completely un-alike?
Cultures have come up with many explanations. One explanation is that the father
influences the child in the mother’s womb by being present every day (and night). The
relationship is magical in essence and the occasions when it does not happen have a
magical explanation – an enemy witch prevented the influence, or the mother ate
something that neutralized the father’s role, or another male had a more powerful
presence and shielded the mother from the father’s influence. The difficulty of drawing
the connection would have been exacerbated in cultures that had bacchanalia – festivals
during which adults broke customary practices, including sexual exclusivity – often in the
spring around the equinox. Then most of the fertile women became pregnant more or
less at the same time a few months later, and the pregnancy could be explained as a
common effect of spring. And if one woman’s child does not look like her partner, while
another woman’s child does, why, “influence through presence” explains it all.
All the pregnant women participated in the spring bacchanalia -- circumstance could
be interpreted in many ways. Pregnancy occurred through participation because it was a
magical phenomenon or a divine gift. “Go take part in the bacchanalia” would be the
advice to young girls who wanted to be mothers. Since the rest of the world is also

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blooming, pregnancy could also be interpreted as the way spring affects humans. There
is no way for a human band that is not involved in agriculture and does not raise
domesticated animals (all of humanity before 8000 BCE) to make the causal connection
between pregnancy and a role for the father in that pregnancy.
It has been suggested that the discovery of fatherhood comes about by analogizing the
male ejaculate to the female’s menstrual blood. This is a far-fetched suggestion. One
ejaculate looks like another and there is no obvious reason to believe that this has
anything to do with one woman getting pregnant while another does not. Males
masturbate and the ejaculate is treated as an excretion. The possibility that masturbation
is aided by imagining a sexual encounter only enhances the sex act as a thing-in-itself
with no dependence or connection to other human activities. Anthropologist again have
reported on cultures in which the suggestion that ejaculate had anything to do with child-
birth occasioned derisive laughter. Women produce fluid as well, and that, we know is
not responsible for pregnancy – this makes the male ejaculate hypothesis even more
flaky.
It is not as though sex was not important in the ancient world. “Venus” figurines
found in a wide variety of Eurasian pre-Neolithic bands attest to some kind of obsession
with the female figure and female sex organs. The number, variety, and distribution of
these small clay figurines makes it clear that sex was not far from people’s thoughts.
One speculation is that these figurines were given to men as payment for work or as
presents. The men would then use these as tokens that could be exchanged for food or
sex. Sex became a superior form of masturbation, another necessity of male life after
food, while the ejaculation fluid remained an irrelevant detail.

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Another observation could be that male animals fight over control of a band of
females – for example, stags fight over does in the spring and lions drive away most other
male lions from prides. Such behavior even occurs among birds – roosters drive away
other roosters from groups of chickens. But the connection between this and pregnancy is
tenuous – most animals become pregnant in the late spring, while the male’s jealous
behavior lasts throughout the season. Even the observation that among birds the male
can be observed to help feed the stay-at-home mother until the eggs hatch and then help
to feed the fledglings only establishes fatherhood as necessary for protecting the mother
and raising the child, not that the father did anything specific to conceive the child.
The bottom line is that no thought-experiment or testing protocol can decode the
mystery of conception.
So how did humans figure out that a specific sexual act is the cause of conception?
The answer lies in human observation of domesticated animals, when these animals have
been raised for some reason other than their meat. For instance, dogs domesticated for
companionship and security, or cows and goats domesticated for milk production, or
sheep domesticated for wool. A caretaker or owner would note the animal’s distress
when in heat, also note that a cow does not go into heat when producing milk for a calf,
note that a cow-in-heat mounted by a bull becomes pregnant soon thereafter, and note
that the calf has some characteristics of the bull, even if the bull never sets eyes on that
cow again.
Even with the above practical knowledge, entire cultures can draw the wrong
conclusions – witness the story of Jacob and Laban in the Bible, in which Jacob
influences the color of goats and lambs by feeding them in the presence of striped and

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solid wooden rods. And that story was written down at a time when (we think) people
knew better, or should have known better. The hypothesis that sex causes conception is
fundamentally bizarre and unbelievable even when asserted by the wisest people.
An additional philosophical/cultural step is needed – the rejection of human
exceptionalism. Again and again, the wisest humans have made the assumption that we
are different from animals. At the core this is the belief that
Just because an observation is true of an animal, it does not have to be true of
humans. We are different.
That belief is a particularly tough nut to crack. But crack it must in order to draw the
conclusion that sex leads to conception.
Once these steps are taken by the opinion-makers in a culture, the people will accept
the reality of fatherhood. And when that happens, the elements of a rationale for
patriarchy are put into place.
The
rise
of
male
power
If many members of a band are sick and unable to work, a man bonded to a woman
can help with gathering food and other work. This can happen even without a disease –
for instance, if most of the women become pregnant. If work has to be done in the fields,
the men of a band may be slightly more productive than the women as they could work
faster and better. But, as we pointed out earlier, these do not make or break the band.
Meanwhile, men claiming paternity for specific children and not for others, or claiming a
bond with one of the women and not the others, pose a risk to the integrity of the band –
they cannot be trusted to take care of the children who are not their children, or the
women who reject them (or whom they reject).

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But, if a band is in conflict over resources with other bands, any man bonded to a
woman of the band is potentially a fighter for the band. As a culture grows in size, the
possibility of conflict over resources makes it inevitable that the value of fighting men
will increase. This results in the appointment of a tanist, a term used by Robert Graves to
identify the male war-chief of a matriarchal band. The tanist is responsible for putting
together an army that will fight the enemy; the tanist is also responsible for suitably
rewarding these men and disbanding the army when no longer needed. This makes it
necessary that the tanist be personally committed to the success of the matriarch.
Unfortunately, fatherhood is not good enough to bind the tanist to the matriarch. The
male social hierarchy binds the men to each other and to the tanist, but, sex does not bind
in the same way. Matriarchies are nothing if not pragmatic – the matriarch’s lover cannot
be trusted. Traditionally the tanist role goes to the matriarch’s brother or the matriarch’s
son.
As a result, settled matriarchal societies that are in conflict with surrounding
settlements develop a male power hierarchy headed by the brother of the matriarch as
tanist in parallel to the traditional female hierarchy headed by the matriarch. Such a
society needs to show the army, now mostly male and headed by the tanist, that they are
highly valued. During wartime this is easily accomplished with appropriate rewards for
acts of heroism on the battlefield. But even such societies surrounded by hostile
settlements are not constantly in conflict. During the limited periods of peace the band
must show that it continues to value men despite the lack of opportunity for the men to
demonstrate their value.

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One way to improve the valuation of men in peacetime is to transfer some roles or
tasks performed by women to men and/or to devalue some of the roles played solely by
women. The transferred tasks need to be ones perceived as important. Other roles that
could also be played by men but not transferred to them need to be portrayed as of lesser
value. The tasks assigned to men should be ones that can be suspended or abandoned
during wartime – i.e., they are of symbolic importance, while the tasks assigned to
women are ones that cannot be suspended. This transfer and re-valuation of roles is a
slow process that is speeded up as the intensity of warfare increases. During peaceful
times, the presence of an army of males performing symbolically important tasks does
not result in peace – instead the male armies engage in provocative activities that keep
borders tense and make conflicts endemic. This increases the need for a watchful army
capable of suspending traditional assignments.
As the need for an army, for defense or for offense, extends over many years, and
maybe multiple generations, the tanist demands the right to control the assignment of
resources that are critical to a functioning army. This will include power over budgets,
taxes, fees, access to “justice”, and so on, rights that subvert the material power of the
matriarch. Power shifts, from the old power structure under the matriarch to a new one
built around the tanist. If, or when, that happens, the stage is set for a coup in how power
is transferred.
The
coming
of
the
Patriarch
In the initial stages of the takeover, a settled band would be headed by a matriarch
and her brother, a war-leader tanist. The traditional successor to the matriarch is her
daughter – the tanist is her uncle. This is not tenable as he is not as bound to his niece as

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he was to his sister. So, in the early phase, the tanist brother of the dead (or retiring)
matriarch would also retire and be replaced by the brother of the new matriarch, i.e., the
next tanist is the old tanist’s nephew. This is not, generally speaking, a problem – the
matriarch’s death of old age probably indicates that her brother is also old and ready to
retire. Even if the brother is not ready to give up the role, the traditional power of the
matriarch ensures that the tanist will be deposed and replaced by his nephew.
But as matriarchal power weakens, a powerful tanist could retain power after his
sister’s death, possibly by acting as “regent” for his nephew. The situation would be
fragile and susceptible to violent change. One way to maintain stability is to create
practices that retain an organic relationship between the tanist and the new matriarch (his
niece). For instance, succession can center around the death of the tanist and not the
matriarch. Something like this could have happened in ancient Egypt during the third
millennium. The change was dramatic – when the tanist, called the Pharaoh (“The Great
House”) died, his son succeeded him as Pharaoh, and succession was not tied to the death
of the matriarch (the “Great Queen”, i.e. the lady of the Great House). Her daughter still
became the next “Great Queen”.
There is a hitch – the Pharaoh’s son becomes the Pharaoh and the Great Queen’s
daughter becomes the Great Queen. But traditionally, the tanist is the brother of the
matriarch, and that relationship must be conserved. So, the new Pharaoh must be both
husband and brother of the new Great Queen. In order to avoid full incest, the Pharaoh
must be a half-brother of the Great Queen (son of the previous Pharaoh but with a
different mother). Thus, he is both the tanist brother of the Great Queen and her husband,
the Pharaoh.

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The daughter of the Pharaoh born of his half-sister is destined to be the next Great
Queen. His sons, with other women, are candidates to be the next Pharaoh. If the Great
Queen dies early, he can continue as Pharaoh, possibly with a symbolic marriage to his
daughter. If the Pharaoh dies first, the Great Queen abdicates and a new Pharaoh and
Great Queen are crowned. If the Great Queen did not have daughters, the Pharaoh would
nominate one of his other daughters to be the next Great Queen.
A side effect of this succession model was that the other daughters of the Pharaoh
were often not allowed to marry as their husbands might attempt to usurp the throne. To
prevent a coup of this nature, the daughter could not be allowed to marry or have lovers
who might inspire revolution. Egypt is a prime example of how a patriarchal, patrilineal
succession model can be jury-rigged onto a matrilineal, matriarchal system.
The transition from a matriarchy to a patriarchy thus occurs in multiple steps – first,
the matriarch loses power to the tanist; next the tanist does not retire when the matriarch
dies; then the tanist decides that the next tanist should be his own heir rather than the
brother of the new matriarch; and finally, the role of matriarch becomes a symbolic one
performed by the tanist’s own wife.
The
Matriarchal
Mystique
–
a
defensive
reaction
Matriarchies did not go away without a fight. The fight is not conducted through war,
but takes place in a political and social framework. The patriarch’s demand is simple
blackmail – we, the males, are needed for defeating the enemy and saving our tribe,
therefore we should rule. One response to this is to create a “matriarchal mystique”
around the person of the matriarch. Such a rationalization is not needed when the band
was primarily female and males were visitors. But once the men become an integral part

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of the band (a necessity when the band settles down to form a village or town), and claim
privileges, the matriarch’s powers have to be protected. Cultural practices appear that
justify the matriarch’s power – first and foremost are practices that ascribe magical
powers to the matriarch and magical rituals that sustain the tribe. We may think of these
actions as superstitions, but they come into being to defend against patriarchy.
Men do not menstruate and there is no reason to believe that men knew of
menstruation when bands were all (or mostly) female. But with settlement, men become
a permanent fixture in the band and learn about menstruation. Menstruation is bloody
and therefore arouses fear; it stops during pregnancy, a mysterious event associated with
growth and fertility; often, all the women in the band menstruate at the same time, also
mysteriously. Menstruation is magical and is the first mystery protecting the matriarch.
The magic of menstruation expresses itself in the following mysteries:
a) The fertility of the matriarch is seen to determine the success of agriculture. A
settlement culture depends on agriculture. Agriculture is an inherently risky
way of supporting a settled population – droughts are frequent and lead to
famines, and more than one drought is typical in every generation. The analogy
between the land producing food crops and females of all animals producing
children is a compelling one. The connection between menstruation and
fertility extends the analogy. The menstruating woman is analogous to the
fertile land and just as she cannot produce a second child while still producing
or raising one, the land cannot yield a second crop while yielding a current
crop. As the woman ages, she becomes barren and this coincides with
menopause, the end of menstruation and an inability to have children.

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Menopause resembles a drought. These observations lead to a belief in a
magical relationship between the fertility of the land and the fertility of women,
in particular the fertility of the matriarch. The matriarch is the earth-mother,
blood is rain, and children are the food.
b) Rituals associated with the spring festival make fertility possible. The onset of
spring is often the beginning of a planting cycle and coincides with many
animals and birds going into heat and becoming pregnant or laying eggs. In
northern latitudes (though not in South Asia) the spring planting season is the
only planting season. Women do not go into heat, like many animals, so the
spring festival in which all the fertile women take part is a metaphor for
preparing the soil for planting.
Magical thought, i.e, use of metaphor and analogy to observe and explain external
events as mirroring “internal” events, is a common superstition. The above observations,
viewed through magical mirrors, generate the hypothesis that women, in general, and the
matriarch in particular, influence the fertility of the soil. This is not an arena in which
controlled experiments are possible, and the occasional random coincidence of greater
female fertility (more children) and a productive crop supports the magical belief., while
nothing negates it. The matriarch’s power, being magical, is already a mystery – now the
mystery is put to use as a defense against the power demands of a tanist.
A second defense of matriarchy is to co-opt some of the men into a shared power
structure, creating a republic governed by “aristocratic” men and women. It relies on
separating out a power-wielding class from the rest of the men, thus using some men (the
“leaders”) to rule. Only very rarely is the result a democracy. One of the hallmarks of this

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stage is the institutionalization of methods to prevent the accumulation of power in a
single man (and it is usually a man). The pot-latches of the Trobrianders is a typical
example, but so are the distributive feasts described in Hindu myth. The bushmen of the
Kalahari will occasionally gang up on anybody who shows the desire to become powerful
by working harder during good times to save for the future.
Springtime is associated with other magical rituals that show the matriarch’s power
over nature. She is born anew, sometimes in fire (Robert Graves identifies a bon-fire
ritual in Greek mythology that may exemplify this)2
mirroring the fire used to clear forest
for planting. She goes into seclusion when menstruating to mirror the land lying fallow
through the winter. She conducts rituals that structure life in the band during the year.
These rituals begin (and end) in the spring festival – a bacchanalia during which men and
women pair up, for that season or that year, and sometimes for life. The women who
participate ensure the fertility of next year’s crop by displaying their own fertility.
Other rituals throughout the year also act to restrain potential patriarchs. Ritual
battles for the role of consort to the matriarch may keep the aspiring patriarch busy and
exhausted; redistributive feasts that the aspiring patriarch is expected to host that often
impoverish them (and thus limit their power); rewards with fame and honor that isolate
the hero and alienate them from their supporters; etc..
In summary: if there is no competition with other bands, the tanist, or other aspiring
male ruler, will be unable to increase his power. The transition to patriarchy occurs
under the stress of competition leading to a militarized society which abandons
2
The annual bonfire during the spring festival of Holi commemorates the death of the monstrous Holika, the sister
of Emperor Bali, who enters the fire with her nephew Prahlad. She is supposedly immune to fire, but through the
actions of the god Vishnu, she burns while Prahlad lives. This story is a relic of a time when the matriarch magically
survived a bonfire.

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redistributive feasts, honors war heroes with inclusion rather than isolation, and girds for
struggle by building up its food stores.