“Matriarchal Societies of the Past and the Rise of Patriarchy”

with Heide Goettner-Abendroth

Thursday,  January 11, 2024 at 12 NOON Eastern Time  

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This new book by Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth is about re-writing the history of cultures from a non- patriarchal perspective, bringing the forgotten matriarchal epoch to light again. It is based on her pioneering anthropological research on still extant matriarchal societies worldwide, which provided her with a new definition of “matriarchy” as mother-centered, consensus based, and thus egalitarian societies.

This is her background for re-examining the history of cultures. She criticizes patriarchal prejudices which abound in archaeological interpretations, and their blindness toward the great variety of human social forms. By going deeper into this material and including new archaeological finds, she is able to develop a completely different picture of the earliest cultural epochs, which were decisively formed by the inventions of women, by motherhood and maternal values.

Additionally, she gives a logical and detailed explanation for the rise of patriarchy, which is based on archaeological field work and not on speculation and, therefore, has a high degree of validity. She also shows by the examples of the Eurasian Steppe and Europe as well as Mesopotamia that patriarchal patterns developed in very different ways in different cultural regions, so that patriarchy did not arise once, but manifold in different countries and continents, and at different times. In these cultural regions, the range of the book includes the development from the Palaeolithic via the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. In this vast field, the author creates revolutionary new insights.

Heide Goettner-Abendroth is a mother and a grandmother. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy of science at the University of Munich where she taught for ten years (1973-1983).  She has published on philosophy of science, and extensively on matriarchal society and culture, and through her lifelong research on matriarchal societies has become a founder of Modern Matriarchal Studies. Her first magnum opus: Matriarchal Societies. Studies on Indigenous Cultures across the Globe, defines the topic and provides a world tour of examples of contemporary matriarchal cultures. It has been translated and published in several languages.

With her new book, her second magnum opus: Matriarchal Societies of the Past and the Rise of Patriarchy, she broadens her research, bringing the forgotten matriarchal epoch in early history to light again. She has been visiting professor at the University of Montreal in Canada, and the University of Innsbruck in Austria. She lectured extensively at home and abroad. 

In 1986, she founded the “International ACADEMY HAGIA for Matriarchal Studies and Matriarchal Spirituality” in Germany, and since then has been its director. In 2003, 2005 and 2011 she organized and guided three World Congresses on Matriarchal Studies in Europe and the U.S.A. She has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2005 by a Swiss initiative and in 2007 by a Finnish initiative.

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Save the date for this upcoming ASWM Salon:

Thursday January 25 at 3 PM Eastern Time

“Strength, Creation, Love, and Transformation: Telling the African Goddesses”  with Vanessa Johnson

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event.