Invisible Women of Prehistory Three Million Years of Peace, Six Thousand Years of War

This book is an opening to histories rarely written about. Based on many years of research into ancient history and prehistory, Judy Foster takes on the world. She argues that three million years of peace, a period when women's position in society was much higher than it is now, preceded the last six thousand years of war in which men have come to hold power. Her work is based on close readings of archaeological evidence from around the world, much of it appearing in the last decade or two. She also writes about the academic resistance to these ideas and to the archaeological work of Marija Gimbutas. Beginning with an examination of Old Europe, Judy asks questions about how archaeology is used. She looks at theories of matriarchy and the invention of writing and 'civilisation'. The role of language and the transmission of mythic knowledge are considered alongside visual and symbolic histories. While the northern hemisphere pre-histories are reasonably well-known this is not the case for the hidden pre-histories in Africa, East and South Asia, the Americas. Even less known are the hidden pre-histories of Australia, Oceania and Indonesia. This is ground breaking work. While other books have explored these ideas, rarely are southern hemisphere countries included in the evidence gathering.