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Share Twit Share Email Home Other Sciences Archaeology Home Other Sciences Social Sciences JULY 13, 2023 Editors' notes In ancient California matriarchal society, daughters breastfed longer and women accumulated greater wealth by University of Utah Woman measuring a strand of shell beads in a photo taken in 1918. Credit: JOHN P. HARRINGTON/ public domain In a new study, researchers and members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area are the first to publish evidence of wealth-driven patterns in maternal investment among ancient populations. Ancestors of the Muwekma Ohlone living 2,000 years ago at Kalawwasa Rummeytak in present-day Silicon Valley in California's San Francisco Bay Area, placed high value on women's economic contributions to their communities, according to the study published in The American Journal of Biological Anthropology. Women stayed in the villages in which they were born, and their male partners moved from their birth communities to join their wives' families. Women's intimate knowledge of the local ecology and female ownership of important food resources appears to have incentivized parents to invest more in their female offspring by breastfeeding them longer. It may have also led to female-biased wealth disparities, as older women at the site were buried with much greater wealth than men.
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In Ancient California Matriarchal Society, Daughters Breastfed Longer And Women Accumulated Greater Wealth

· 13 July 2023 · Comments off

Conny Waters – AncientPages.com – In a new study, researchers and members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area are the first to publish evidence of wealth-driven patterns in maternal investment among ancient populations. Woman measuring a strand of shell beads in a pH๏τo taken in 1918. Credit: JOHN P. HARRINGTON/ […]