Ancient woman may have been powerful leader, 4k-year-old treasure suggests | Hacker News Reader

Ancient woman may have been powerful leader, 4k-year-old treasure suggests

nationalgeographic.com

>She says it supports her 2020 study that determined many Argaric women were involved in the production of linen and wool textiles —a valuable sector of the economy, along with metallurgy. So it follows that women could have been rulers: “Women in El Argar were an active part of its economy… a ruler is only another example of the significance of women in this society,” she says.

I think this is pushing the evidence too far. Women have always been a very valuable part of the economy, especially in the pre-industrialization. If we look at modern substistence cultures, if you look at who tends the gardens and raises the livestock, most of the "GDP" is probably produced by women. However, unfortunately, many times economic contribution does not translate into political power.

In addition, there have many times been exceptions carved out for the daughters of powerful men, even in societies that are otherwise male dominated. A good western example is Queen Elizabeth. She was a very powerful and well-respected monarch, but the big thing that made her acceptable was that she was the daughter of Henry VIII. A good eastern example is Razia Sultana of Delhia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razia_Sultana) who IIRC was the first if not the only female sultan (she actually went by the title "sultan" not "sultana") the daughter of Iltutmish.

A more recent example is Indira Ghandi. Indira of the 1960's and 70's was pretty backwards in terms of equal rights for women. Yet, Indira Ghandi became Prime Minister of India (the only female Indian Prime Minister to date). A lot of that was due to the fact that she was the only child of Nehru the first Prime Minister of India who was in office for nearly two decades until his death.

So, seeing evidence of a very high status woman, even a great ruler, does not mean that women in general were considered equals or given their rightful place and respect in society.

I’m curious where the idea that women weren’t integral parts of the economies of antiquity comes from.

Just a few examples from the Bible which I assume would shape modern perspectives:

Lydia, unmarried merchant of purple cloth and independently wealthy[1]. First convert of Europe.

And the “wife of noble character” from Proberbs 31[2]:

> She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard. She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks. She sees that her trading is profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night.

1. https://www.gotquestions.org/Lydia-in-the-Bible.html

2. http://web.mit.edu/jywang/www/cef/Bible/NIV/NIV_Bible/PROV+3...

I'll be more blunt: that paragraph you quoted is completely non-sensical. To quote again (emphasis mine):

I mean, in most societies those who have been the core of their economies have been peasants, so should it follow that peasants were also the rulers? Heck, just look at all the designations in the US recently of "essential workers" (e.g. grocery store workers, delivery drivers, health care workers, etc.) who are often at the lower end of economic power.

No way saying that women couldn't have been rulers, but being "involved in valuable sectors of the economy" sure as heck isn't evidence to support that.

Social science is lost. Expect most of these "studies" in the future. "Pythagoras was actually a woman", "How Greek philosophy was actually Ethiopian philosophy repackaged", "Revisiting the Einstein situation.New findings point to Milena's original contributions"

It may or may not be of interest that the orientation of the headpiece is reversed in the announcement of the fund from 2014.

https://www.uab.cat/web/news-detail/bronze-age-palace-and-gr...

This NatGeo link says:

> But the woman in the same grave was buried a short time later with particular splendor, including bracelets, earlobe plugs, rings, spirals of silver wire, and the silver diadem, which still adorned her skull when the grave was unearthed. It matches six other diadems found on wealthy women in Argaric graves; all have a distinctive disc-shaped projection usually worn downwards to cover the brow and nose.

It sounds like the woman was buried with the lobe of the crown pointed down over the nose, or at least other similar crowns were found that way.

That was a fascinating read, thanks.

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Imagine how the people back then were thinking of how future peoples would view them. Now we are those people.

Unless things go horribly South, and they probably will, future people will have billions of hours of reference material by which to better understand us.

It will probably take only a few Youtube and Twitter replies before they nope out of wanting to understand us.

Amazing achievement at that age.

Not really. The longer you stay in power, the more people are used to it. ;D

Please don't. I realize you meant it in good fun, but this sort of thing is kudzu* and there's a power law in how worse it gets as the thread proceeds.

Threads are particularly sensitive to initial conditions, so it's especially important not to do this when there aren't any comments yet.

(Submitted title was "4,000 year old woman may have been powerful European leader, treasure suggests". Perhaps the submitter rewrote it to fit HN's 80 char limit, or perhaps NatGeo rewrote their own headline once they realized all the lame jokes it was generating.)

* though I do need to find a different metaphor- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23668829

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