Ruminations on Patriarchy

I have often wished I knew the particulars of how so many of us humans became so enthralled to the Patriarchy.

There is a great deal of evidence that this was not the state of early humanity. Europeans (prior to conquest, enslavement and forced conversions by the Latins) were less patriarchal. There were warrior queens and Female heads of organized religion.

Early American history reports the same thing. Prior to the Europeans carrying the infections inflicted on them at the hands of the Latins to the "America's" there was ample evidence that they did not live in exclusive patriarch communities. And yet, patriarchy is not just an "infection" brought to us all by the Latins. It has arisen in Asia, Africa, South America.

Somehow I've always felt if I came to understand the mechanisms that resulted in the imbalance and reduction in status that results in embracing patriarchal notions, I would understand better how to oppose it's modern incarnations. If only I could find how and why we went from Humanity to Mankind. At which point in prehistory did this happen and why?

Well, I'm reading a book given to me by a friend, the book is Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. I found this gem in there, and for some reasons it resonates on this question in my mind.

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From there, after six days and seven nights, you arrive at Zobeide, the white city, well exposed to the moon, with streets wound about themselves as in a skein. They tell this tale of its foundation: men of various nations had an identical dream. They saw a woman running at night through an unknown city; she was seen from behind, with long hair, and she was naked. They dreamed of pursuing her. As they twisted and turned, each of them lost her. After the dream they set out in search of that city; they decided to build a city like the one in the dream. In laying out the streets, each followed the course of his pursuit; at the spot where they had lost the fugitive's trail, they arranged spaces and walls differently from the dream, so she would be unable to escape again.

This was the city of Zobeide, where they settled, waiting for that scene to be repeated one night. None of them, asleep or awake, ever saw the woman again. The city's were streets were streets where they went to work every day, with no link any more to the dreamed chase. Which, for that matter, had long been forgotten.

New men arrived from other lands, having had a dream like theirs, and in the city of Zobeide, they recognized something of the streets of the dream, and they changed the positions of arcades and stairways to resemble more closely the path of the pursued woman and so, at the spot where she had vanished, there would remain no avenue of escape.

The first to arrive could not understand what drew these people to Zobeide, this ugly city, this trap.