Girl power in Ancient East Asia: language, archaeology and genes
Many of us have experienced gender-based oppression at least once in our academic careers. This brings us to the question how old and how universal male domination really is. As anthropologists, archaeologists, geneticists and linguists, we are addressing this question from different perspectives in this project, but with a common focus on East Asia.
The archaeological part investigates kinship organization and marriage strategy of Late Neolithic and Metal Age societies in East Asia. The linguistic part of the project compares kinship and gender terminology in the Transeurasian languages with that of other languages and regions in North and East Asia.
Whereas archaeology opens a window into the material life of the past, linguistics also allows for the reconstruction of intangible, immaterial elements of past cultures. Social structures, kinship relation, marital residence and descent patterns, for instance, are among the concepts and ideas of cultural heritage that cannot be excavated from the ground but can be partially reconstructed on the basis of linguistic evidence.
The question how human societies responded to environmental change in different parts of the world has a connection with gender studies in that environmental change may induce changes in subsistence strategies, which in their term can impact descent systems and post-marital residence patterns. As anthropologists point out, “the fish is matrilineal, the cow patrilineal”. Fishing communities tend to involve women more in the economy which translates in a higher frequency of matrilineal inheritance, while cattle farming displays a high male economic involvement and patrilineal patterns of inheritance
The most dangerous part of any form of human oppression, including male domination, is that it can make people believe that there are no alternatives. Our research of girl power in Ancient East Asia shows that there are indeed alternatives. The fact that our collective view on gender has been transformed multiple times in the past seems to suggest that we can hope for a transformation in the future as well.
