Women's knowledge in early civilization
 

Graeber / Wengrow 433: "[W]omen, their work, their concerns and innovations are at the core of [a proposed] more accurate understanding of civilization. [...] [T]racing the place of women in societies without writing often means using clues left, quite lierally, in the fabric of material culture"
 
For instance, "the kind of complex mathematical knowledge displayed in early Mesopotamian cuneiform documents or in the layout of Peru's Chavin temples [likely] represent knowledge accumulated in earlier times through concrete practices such as the solid geometry and applied calculus of weaving or beadwork"
 
"What until now has passed for 'civilization' might in fact be nothing more than a gendered appropriation--by men, etching their claims in stone--of some earlier system of knowledge that had women at its center"

> from David Graeber and David Wengrow's Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021)

> tagged with #math, #women, #geometry, #textiles, #culture, #knowledge

> created May 14, 2026 at 2:37:55 PM


> part of unfinished everything


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