Margaret Ehrenberg Women In Prehistory Summary

In the book “Worlds of History,” Hughes, Ehrenberg, Clay, Paul, and Senecal all write about the roles of women and their impact on society over the ages. In the section titled “Were The First Artists Mostly Women?’ by Virginia Hughes, she writes about the roles of women who lived in hunting and gathering societies. In hunter-gather societies, women provided more food than men because you could obtain more food by gathering than you could by hunting. It is stated that women contributed to the Paleolithic society by providing food and by being the first artists. In the section titled “Women in Prehistory” by Margaret Ehrenberg, she argues that women were the first farmers and that they contributed to society by also developing the innovations of the agriculture revolution. In Ehrenberg’s section, she uses ethnographic …show more content…
There is a connection between the rise of patriarchy in ancient times and the situation today where scholars are having to rediscover the contributions made by women in the past. The connection between the rise of patriarchy and scholars having to rediscover women’s contributions is that as patriarchy began to rise the contributions made by women began to be forgotten or lost. As horticulture based agricultural societies became more plow based the development of patriarchy began to rise because men became in charge of providing food and farming. In the first urban societies, women had no control over any aspect of their life because of men or their families. Consequently, women had no ability or freedom to really contribute to society. Furthermore, women didn’t have any social influence in most urban communities, but not in all of them. The connection can be seen clearly that as patriarchy rises the contributions made by women begin to decrease or just disappear all at