Why women did not earn livelihood like men in old times?This is true for almost all old cultures.

Of course, Walter.

However.. the cultures that developed in Europe had close contact with each other. They shared religion. They shared ideas about family, and work, and money, and property. The main tenets of what we now call "Western Culture" mostly stem from Europe (and later the European colonists in other parts of the world).

Europeans also developed guns, and had cattle that gave them immunity to certain important diseases. When Europeans met other cultures in Africa, and America, and Australia and to some extent in Asia, we overran the other cultures and replaced the cultural practices that offended us with our own (this process still continuing).

Western culture is now dominant in most of the World (and certainly influential anywhere). Given our history of violent colonialism... it is hard for me to accept that our culture is dominant because we are morally superior. In yet in almost every case where our culture conflicts with the values of an indigenous culture... our values win and are considered to be the ones that are morally correct.

There is a danger for Westerners to believe that our cultural values are dominant because they are closer to some absolute moral truth. I don't accept the view that modern Western values represent a progression toward a better society. I see them more as a drunkards walk... we accept our values because they are ours.

Since we colonized much of the world, and still have the military might, that gives us the ability (if not the right) to decide on a set of values for the rest of the world.

I don't understand the logic behind using "calories" as a measure of value. The ability to provide calories certainly isn't used to define value in our present culture (and I don't believe it ever has).

Women have had an obvious value to any community since before civilization, no society could ever survive without the ability to bear young. This has nothing to do with their ability to gather resources... but I can't think of a cultural tradition that doesn't include the idea that women need to be cared for and protected.

At least the last ("property") can be disputed: the Saxon tribes had a different system of owning property - that's why the Franks didn't change it (you still can see that when you compare the law codes of the Germanic peoples, and even the later editions [13th century] of e.g. the "Saxon Mirror" and the "Swabian Mirror" mirror different earlier tribal customs.)
They all used the Roman money, but ideas about families were different, too (e.g., the Saxon tribes were each a kind of extended family). The languages were different as well (my family name is Old Saxon, wasn't changed to Frankish - something the Franks didn't force in Saxon territory, too.)

There are some important differences between "integration" and "assimilation" ... and not every time "our values win ".

One of the significant distinctions was the idea of property. The Romans had imposed primogeniture, but it did not necessarily "take" everywhere. Many Germanic tribes held that all estates are partible (it was more complicated with the Kelts). Thus, Charlemagne left his estates and "empire" to Louis of Aquitaine, his only surviving son, but Louis divided his estates and "empire" among his sons--just as Pepin had done, so that Charlemagne only assembled his "empire" as his brothers died. The Roman church had successfully imposed primogeniture on the Saxons in England, but the Brythonic and Goidelic Kelts continued to designate their heirs, and men often left their estates to a sister's son or sons, knowing that those boys at least shared their blood. As only a woman could truly know the father of a child, and sometimes didn't know, that was to them a sensible system. The Insular church was indifferent to the issue, and the custom persisted well into Norman times.

It is absurd to see history as an unchanging monolith, with custom and culture identical everywhere and at all times.

First before the advent of agriculture women were the gatherers who actually provided the tribe with 80% of the food stock. The meat was a rare feast as often hunters would come home empty-handed.

Second, women bare the burden of being pregnant most of the time and with it the burden of guarenteing the safety and survival of the young, crucial for tribe survival.

As soon as mass contraception came up in the XX century things started to change.

Even at a certain time you can see the differences - just look at the Germanic tribes and the Celts, living only short distances apart.

I am highly skeptical that this statistic has any basis in reality, but even if it means anything... what's the point? This is a 21st century narrative. If you asked Hunter gatherers why women were in important I doubt they would talk about calories.

I suspect it is a uniquely Western obsession to need to prove how important women are.

Honestly I don't give a **** about what you think about my data. So have it as you want.
...by the way I am not obsessed with women's importance I am obsessed with getting the facts. I could be talking about oranges being orange.
Not all of us round the world spend their days n nights politicizing every topic on the spot light.

It's more the result of history research: there are and have been varying approaches and methods of the discovery of our past with all its different aspects and remains.

I don't believe that this "historical research" is gives any objective truth about the development in culture.

This is a narrative that 21st century people want to tell about themselves, rather than an unbiased understanding of other cultures. Other cultures didn't worry about calories, nor did they ask questions about whether their practices were "egalitarian". This shows a Western Cultural frame and this form of historical finding is culturally biased.

Assigning cultural value to women by the number of calories they produce... try to think of this objectively. It doesn't make sense. If you want to understand other cultures, you have to ask the questions by their set of values, rather than trying to stuff their cultural practices into modern Western values.

The question is whether you believe Western Culture is the dominant culture throughout much of the world because it it is the most morally advanced culture... or by accident of what Jared Diamond calls "guns, germs and steel".

If another culture was doing this history research, it likely would come up with very different historical narrative.

I don't think that you have any experiences in historical research. And you don't seem to know how such is done.
It would be just a (one) point if someone is "trying to stuff their cultural practices into modern Western values", namely to compare such with today's attitudes. A lot (sic!) more is actually by historians to get a full picture - and what you call "Western culture" has nothing to do with it all.

If you are claiming a great knowledge of historical research, please share it (I do the same when people have discussions on science). Rather than being insulting you could offer information or expertise.

1) How is the word "egalitarian" useful in any context outside of a Western cultural context? How would you measure this in a culturally neutral way?

2) Why is the number of calories produced by women important to anyone outside, except for trying to "prove" the narrative that women were important parts of indigenous society (especially considering that it seems that indigenous societies, including earlier Western societies already celebrated women as important)?

You are right that outside of general education (I did take history and anthropology courses in college) and lots of reading, I don't have any specific expertise in this. But I am willing to learn if you have something to say.

The facts, as I see them (you are free to correct my facts if I have something wrong).

- Most cultures seem to celebrate the role of women. This is seen in the Bible, Western art and literature through the ages, and my understanding of indigenous cultures. The classical deities of invention and of art were female. Women have often been seen as craftspeople and cooks.

- Most indigenous cultures separate the roles of women and men. This is not the same as saying that women are less valuable to men. This is saying that the cultural roles are different.

- The western critique that men usually have the political and economic power seems to be factually correct (and can be measured objectively). This has nothing to do with the number of calories provided. My work is apparently valued by society (since I get paid pretty well). Yet, I produce zero calories for anyone, all the calories I use are purchased from other people.

- As everyone here has said, the idea of "earning a livelihood" is culturally specific. We have jobs in modern Western Cultures that earn paper money. Cultures where men hunt and women gather are not analogous with an modern economy with paying jobs.

Sorry that you insulted you.
I don't think that I have a great knowledge of historical research, it wasjust enough for a German and an English university degree.
But I really don't have the time to summarise what I've learnt during these periods - I'm sure, some websites might be a better help.

Historical narratives can change, as new information becomes available, or old information is either corroborated or demonstrated to be invalid. Cultural differences, however, cannot invalidate an historical narrative. It was that clown Napoleon who said that history is written by the victors, and that history is a set of lies agreed upon. He provides, himself, the evidence that this is not true, as does simple logic. If there were no source of an historical narrative other than that of the victors, we would have no point of comparison to know that. Napoleon was in the habit of releasing bulletins about his victories--and "lies like a bulletin" became a common expression in French--he was not fooling anyone. At Brienne, where he studied before being admitted to l'école militaire in Paris, his best two subjects were math and history. Before his death, he insisted (impotently) that the King of Rome (his son by Marie Louise, the Duchess of Parma, daughter of Frances II, the last Holy Roman Emperor) study history. He was not even fooling himself.

The fact is that historical narrative and synthesis are only as good as the quality of the research carried on by those who write them, and as with all disciplines, you can only fool others for a short time, until your errors or omissions (through ignorance or of a deliberate nature) are exposed. A good example of this is the "Lost Cause" myth of the American South. Immediately after the American civil war, no narrative of a "glorious but doomed defense" was possible because there were simply too many veterans around to give the lie to such a narrative. When Lee died in 1870, Jubal Early, who had despised Lee while in his army, and was cordially despised in return, began to make his living in the 19th century rubber chicken circuit by telling southerners the lies they most wanted to hear. The publication of the The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies between 1880 and 1901, in 70 volumes, by the United States government gave the lie to a lot of the claptrap that Early and others were touting, but southerners weren't listening. In the Jim Crow era, statues went up to military disasters like Lee, Beuregard, Hood and others--not simply as monuments to the Big Lie, but as outward, visible signs to the black man of who was in charge.

The narratives of Douglas Southall Freeman in R. E. Lee and Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command in the 1930s and -40s were very popular, and it appeared that the South, having lost the military war, had won the propaganda war. But a comparison, for example, of the narrative by Freeman and Chancellorsville, by Theodore Ayrault Dodge (a veteran of that battle and the great American military historian of the late 19th century) would convince the casual reader that they were talking about two different battles. Slowly, the historical narrative has been clawed back from the bullsh*t merchants, even though until quite recently, even Northerners believed a lot of that "Lost Cause" crapola. The struggle for a reliable historical narrative, and the synthesis of so many sources will likely go on for centuries--after all, it has only been a little more than 150 years since that war ended, and I recall in my own lifetime the hysteria and the shameless commercial exploitation of the centenary.

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Sound archaeological research has shown the heavy reliance on forage foods of early modern humans. Foraging (also known as gathering) was crucially important to survival. At an archaeological site in Israel, where homo sapiens and homo neanderthalenis lived side by side for centuries, the middens of the early modern humans show the abundant use of forage foods, as well as fish and shellfish from the nearby sea. Their Neanderthal neighbors' middens show that they relied much more heavily on hunting, and seem not have used fish and shell fish at all. We are still around--the Neanderthals are not.

There are still hunter-gatherer societies in existence, although they are disappearing and their cultures have been distorted by contact with modern societies. Many valuable studies have been made of them, however, and in many cases in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before their cultures were warped by contact with industrial society. It has been well established that the foraging of women and children is crucial to the success of those societies. Max's obsessive hatred and fear of women must be taken into consideration when he begins his rants here, just as the careful historian consults the likely prejudices of their historical sources. You don't look for a fair assessment of someone's political acumen, after all, by consulting the memoirs of those who opposed them. Don't look for Max to even understand these issues, once anyone says the word "woman."

I think Setanta's hatred and bigotry toward indigenous cultures is really showing in what he writes. (Of course, I am only writing this to respond to Setanta's childish personal attack with one of my own).

What is really happening here is that Setanta has an ideological narrative... and he feels an obsessive need to shut down any discussion that questions it. He doesn't really provide facts, his goal is to shut down discussion, rather than engage it or even allow it.

It's intellectual bullying for the sake of a partisan narrative.

Setanta is a poster child for the point I am making in this thread. He has a view of History that has been careful crafted to support a modern ideological viewpoint. This make it difficult to discuss differing viewpoints or to get an understanding of different cultures (a set of skills that I think would be useful to him in this diwcussion).

The funny thing is that Setanta and I agree. I don't dispute the role of women in providing for "calories" through foraging in indigenous tribes. Quite the opposite, I am making the argument that we should view these things, as much as possible, separate from our own cultural biases. I have yet to see any reason that these societies doubted the value of women in providing resources to the society as a whole.

Women were also viewed this way in Western cultures from Ancient Greece to Colonial America. This is not in dispute.

Setanta has also already violently agreed with me that the term "earn livelihood" is not useful in many cultural contexts.

There is a modern ideological narrative here. I am saying there shouldn't be. And that is the reason for Setanta's little tantrum.

"Western cultures" is the biggest modern ideological term in this context in my opinion.

Your central point really is meaningful.There is also a theory called 'Postmodernism' in social sciences which says that every piece of writing inevitably has bias present.That bias can be less or more but still no writing can be completely objective.There is influence of the writer's personal beliefs or inclinations,biases,nature,society etc.So,there is need of studying things again,questioning them, analyzing and deconstructing them.Yes,one cannot look at everything through the lens of ones own beliefs,one should try to be as much objective as possible.Objective approach can lead to best form of knowledge and extend the frontiers of it.

Indeed, postmodernists doubt that an accurate telling of the past is possible.

Historical research, however, tries to understand the past.

Pure objectivity is but an ideal, which we can (and should) try to approach, but which we will never reach. This is the case in any domain of enquiry. More so in domains that are deeply important to us, such as politics or history, than in domains which we care less about, such as astronomy. But still, we are subjective by nature, if not by definition.