Partnership Studies 2: Human Prehistory

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/07/13

Riane Eisler, an Austrian-born American systems scientist, futurist, and human rights advocate, is renowned for her influential work on cultural transformation and gender equity. Best known for “The Chalice and the Blade,” she introduced the partnership versus dominator models of social organization. She received the Humanist Pioneer Award, and in conversation with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Eisler emphasized the urgent need for humanists to focus on values-based systems and the transformative power of caring economics. Drawing on neuroscience and history, she argues that peace begins at home and calls for a shift in worldview to build more equitable, sustainable, and compassionate societies rooted in connection rather than control. The three books of hers of note that could be highlighted are The Chalice and the Blade—now in its 57th U.S. printing with 30 foreign editions, The Real Wealth of Nations, and Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2019). Eisler examines the historical and cultural dynamics of partnership versus domination systems, highlighting how these models influence societies, gender roles, and technological development. Drawing on archaeological evidence, such as Marija Gimbutas’s work and DNA studies, she contrasts egalitarian prehistory with later hierarchical civilizations like ancient Athens. Eisler critiques modern structures that perpetuate violence, inequality, and trauma—often beginning in the home. She emphasizes the importance of whole-system thinking and highlights movements that have challenged domination throughout history. The core message is that peace and human flourishing depend on shifting from a culture of domination to one of partnership, starting with the family and education.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy. It is partnership. This is what we are increasingly learning from the study of prehistoric societies: that we need to connect the dots. We must assemble the larger picture. If a narrative is repeated often enough, it becomes more readily accessible to the mind. However, repetition does not distinguish between truth and falsehood. So, what are the myths we have been told about human prehistory—especially regarding relationships and gender roles? Is there a political utility to these myths? Or are they simply the result of mistaken interpretations? I think those are two essential questions.

Riane Eisler: These interpretations are indeed mistaken, but they serve a function: to sustain what I describe as a domination system. Consider the classic “caveman” cartoon: in one hand, the man holds a club—a weapon—and with the other, he drags a woman by the hair.

What message does this cartoon send—especially when shown to children long before their critical faculties have developed? It normalizes a worldview based on fear and violence (the club) and rigid male dominance enforced through violence, coercion. and cultural indoctrination. This is where the myth-making comes into play. It suggests that domination is natural and inevitable—that it has always been this way and always must be. However, the evidence is showing that this is not true.

For example, consider the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in present-day Turkey, which was inhabited from approximately 7100 BCE to 5700 BCE. Ian Hodder, a prominent Stanford archaeologist who directed excavations there for decades, has emphasized in multiple publications that the community exhibited signs of gender egalitarianism. In particular, grave goods, domestic architecture, and burial treatments do not show significant differentiation between males and females. In his article for Scientific American, Hodder argued that being born male or female in Çatalhöyük did not appear to determine social status.

Despite this, recent books and studies often omit these gender-related findings. Why? Because they lack the appropriate interpretive frame—the contrast between domination systems and partnership systems.

Suppose we fail to include childhood, family, and gender in our reconstructions of prehistory. In that case, we are left with an incomplete—indeed, distorted—picture. One might even call it a neutered prehistory because it leaves out fundamental aspects of human identity and relationships. Ironically, the caveman cartoon portrays these elements—especially gender relations—quite explicitly. However, modern archaeological narratives often avoid them. 

Jacobsen: You are right about that. However, you indeed mentioned gender in the caveman cartoon. And then there are the kinds of biblical mythologies, like Adam and Eve, or popular North American cartoons where Adam has a leaf over his groin and Eve over her breasts. It is very telling. 

Eisler: In my book on education, Tomorrow’s Children, a cartoon illustrates thinking outside the box. More and more people are beginning to do so—but often only in fragments, without applying the broader framework of partnership and domination. 

The cartoon I reference depicts Spanish conquistadors emerging from the water. At the same time, a Native American stands on the shore and says, “What do you mean you found us? We found you coming out of the water.” That cartoon flips the colonial narrative. Indeed, we are beginning to reinterpret that history. Columbus’ actions included the extermination of Indigenous peoples—some of which was deliberate and premeditated. However, part of it also resulted from the spread of contagious diseases to which Native Americans had no immunity.

We are reevaluating the Columbus story, and he is no longer widely regarded as a hero in the same uncritical manner. However, the reinterpretation is happening in bits and pieces, and it has not yet been integrated into a larger framework. That is the key: we need to connect the dots and understand the overarching systems at play.

Jacobsen: Why are the dominant myths about human prehistory such a patchwork rather than being understood systematically—if I hear you correctly?

Eisler: Yes, that is right. We rarely critically examine dioramas in museums, for example. They overwhelmingly depict men—as if women, who give life, did not exist.

Jacobsen: My mother would have something to say about that.

Eisler: What would she say?

Jacobsen: That they are missing the women—and the children.

Eisler: Those gaps are mirrored in our familiar social categories: right and left, religious and secular, Eastern and Western, Northern and Southern, capitalist and socialist. What is missing? Women and children—the majority of humanity. There is something fundamentally wrong with that picture.

Jacobsen: You often reference different spectra—capitalist/communist, secular/religious, and so on. Are there some categories that, for you, do not work well as binary opposites or antipodes?

Eisler: There are binaries in nature… There is hot and cold, light and dark—but it is always a matter of degree. So, even in the binary of domination and partnership, we have to consider it as a spectrum. Societies orient along that continuum to varying degrees. Right now, we are experiencing a regression—a marked shift toward the domination system. We see this clearly in the renewed emphasis on rigid gender roles.

These roles leave no room for anything in between, even though people have always existed outside binary norms. How that variance is treated depends on the cultural context. However, returning to prehistory—I think we have not been asking the right questions. Strangely, I began doing so when I was a child. I remember reading in the Bible that “henceforth, woman shall be subordinate to man,” and I wondered: What was it like before the henceforth?

Jacobsen: That is a powerful question. You were asking it earlier.

Eisler: Yes—and no one wanted to talk about it. I also wondered why a woman would take advice from a snake. We generally do not do that. [Laughing] But it was not until I began my whole-systems research—which includes both history and prehistory—that I came to see that what came before the “henceforth” was a more partnership-oriented model of society. I also learned that the snake was even in historic times still associated with oracular prophecy; think of the Oracle of Delphi: it was a priestess, a “pythoness” working with pythons, with snakes. Or think of the figurines from Crete of women, priestesses in an oracular trance with snakes coiled around their arms. So in searching for wisdom, Eve would turn to a snake! We have to connect the dots! And this requires a whole-systems study of our history, including our prehistory and its partnership rather than domination direction.

However, we are not taught history this way. We are taught history through the lens of conquest—winners and losers, wars and battles. Memorizing the dates of all these conflicts becomes the focus.

Jacobsen: Do you see definite ebbs and flows—regionally or even globally—between the domination model and the partnership model? You mentioned that we are currently in a regression, but there was also a long period of progression toward partnership values. What is your perspective on the longer historical arc of this tension?

Eisler: The real tipping point in this tension did not come until around 3000 BCE, and we know this now from genetic studies. During the Indo-European invasions, a dramatic shift occurred in the DNA record—most notably, a near-total replacement of male DNA in certain regions. This indicates violent conquest.

That is when domination took hold. I have written about this, and my work also incorporates technological change. I have an article forthcoming in a book on achieving peace, edited by my co-author, anthropologist Douglas Fry, of Nurturing Our Humanity. In it, I argue that we must look not only at major technological phases—such as the transition from foraging to farming—but also at overlooked transitions, like the shift from foraging to herding.

This shift is significant because herding cultures developed in increasingly arid regions of the world where climate change has degraded pasturelands. These conditions led to more competitive, often violent, social systems—domination-oriented cultures. Herders, seeking new territory, invaded more settled farming communities. Eventually, some of these herders, such as the Yamnaya, adopted agriculture themselves—but they carried with them the domination model.

Jacobsen: So, climate stress, migration, and technological shifts all helped push societies along the spectrum of domination?

Eisler: We need to see these factors in an integrated way—not just as isolated historical phases, but as interconnected elements that shaped the systems we still live with today. Again, we only know this in bits and pieces. To connect the dots, you need whole-systems analysis.

You can now see the shift very clearly in recent DNA studies. Still, decades ago, archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, an expert in Indo-European studies, had already identified it. She described the transformation quite accurately, at least in what she referred to as the Balkans and “Old Europe,” where a domination  society gradually supplanted a partnership-oriented civilization.

Some argue that force inevitably prevails. Which is actually not true, as we know, nonviolent movements have been very successful, as in India and Gandhi, for example. In any case, the problem with that reasoning is that we now stand at a unique moment in technological development. We have not only communication and transportation technologies that connect us but also technologies of destruction—biological warfare, nuclear weapons—that could annihilate us all in minutes.

So, domination and force are no longer adaptive, if they ever were, considering all the suffering and trauma they cause. Today they are dangerous—existentially so.

Jacobsen: Are there phases in prehistory—not necessarily tied to specific technologies—where we can track dominator and partnership systems in the same way that genetic evidence now allows us to trace population shifts, like with the Yamnaya?

Eisler: Yes. When the Yamnaya migrated into Europe, a dramatic rupture occurred. The destruction of earlier pottery traditions marked the end of older, more partnership-oriented cultures. There was a regression to cruder, less refined technology and social organization. Over time, the invaders absorbed and co-opted more advanced technologies, but now under male-dominated, hierarchical, violent  systems—domination systems.

Now, let me be very clear: This is not about blaming men. There is nothing inherently wrong with men. What is deeply wrong is the domination system, which continues to push us toward an evolutionary dead end.

Men are often the ones forced to give their lives—because someone at the top wants more territory, more power. Look at Putin. However, it is not just a geopolitical issue. Men are also promised a kind of “payoff.” In exchange for loyalty to the domination social and economic hierarchy, they are encouraged to dominate women and children—within what the domination model treats as their “castle,” the militarized metaphor of the home. 

We are seeing that pattern re-emerge in our current regression. There are other inflection points worth noting—points that we often overlook in our current educational and social frameworks. I believe that over the long term, the pen has been far more potent than the sword. Stories shape minds. That brings us right back to the myths.

Take the myths that blame Eve—or Pandora—for all of humanity’s suffering. It is absurd, truly. However, we have inherited these narratives. Myths that justify the domination of women, that treat women as property, as sexual objects, or simply as vessels for reproduction. That is what lies beneath many persistent gender stereotypes: the effort to reduce women to things, to tools.

Of course, women have been deeply traumatized by this. However, so have men. Because under dominator systems, men are taught to suppress much of their humanity. They are socialized into a narrow script, one that rewards dominance, aggression, and emotional repression. This is not a sustainable model for any of us.

I remember being in a park years ago and hearing a child wailing—crying—and then a man’s voice saying, “I am going to beat you until you stop crying. Boys do not cry.” That is the old “masculine” gender stereotype. It illustrates how these roles are enforced, often through violence and emotional repression. However, let us discuss how technology has shaped civilization—how, in some cases, it has fundamentally altered both partnership and domination systems.

Jacobsen: What about the cases where technological advancement caused major civilizational shifts—not just in external structures but also in social relations?

Eisler: Technology itself is values-neutral. What matters is how it is used. Take AI, for example—it all depends on how it is programmed. Yes, we should be concerned about becoming overly dependent on AI. But the real issue is what we are programming it for. If AI is programmed for domination, then yes, we should be highly concerned. However, if it is programmed for partnership—and it can be—it could be transformative. Unfortunately, most mainstream AI draws heavily from social media data, which reflects societies still shaped by systems of domination.

Again, that is not because people are bad. This is not about blame or shame. It is about recognizing that domination systems are trauma factories. They misallocate resources. In domination-based economies, there is often money for weapons and wars—but rarely for children, caregiving, or community well-being.

Like what we are seeing in the United States now—cutting social programs while military budgets continue to grow.  Speaking as a Holocaust survivor, let me be clear: I am not advocating for unilateral disarmament. That would be dangerous in a world where regimes such as those in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Russia, China, and North Korea continue to operate within highly domination-oriented frameworks.

But we must recognize how distorted our priorities have become. These are not the priorities of most people. However, people have been so traumatized, so thoroughly conditioned, that they accept them.

Jacobsen: What are some practices from prehistory that reflect partnership versus domination models?

Eisler: A great example is alloparenting—a practice observed still today among many foraging societies, where caregiving is shared across the group. It means that the entire community—men, women, and older children—participates in raising the young.

The bond with the biological mother remains essential, of course, but the responsibility and the safety net extend beyond her. That kind of distributed caregiving system is a hallmark of partnership societies.

However, the bond—and the sense of security—comes from being surrounded by caring adults and older individuals. We see a shift from that model in societies like ancient Athens, which we have so often idealized. Athens was a very uneasy mix of partnership and domination.In reality, the vast majority of the population in Athens was disenfranchised. Women, and both male and female slaves, were not allowed to vote. Beyond that, the male head of household held the legal right to “expose” any infant he did not want to raise—essentially abandoning the child to die. However, the term was a linguistic softening.

“Good women” were confined to the women’s quarters and deprived of education. Socrates did highlight some of this, but only in fragments. He never  connected these issues to the larger framework of domination that permeated Athenian society.

In my book, Sacred Pleasure, I include a chapter titled “The Reign of the Phallus,” which focuses on ancient Athens. It was not a society where most women had autonomy or education. The exceptions were women viewed as borderline courtesans—such as the hetairai—who had access to learning. In ancient Rome, poets like Ovid celebrated romantic partnerships, reflecting the human yearning for connection. However, that longing persisted despite domination systems, not because of them.

Domination systems systematically suppress empathy. They narrow our evolved capacity for compassion to the in-group only. Those outside the in-group—whether defined by gender, race, class, or tribe—are excluded. Often, the first “out-group” is female humanity.

Jacobsen: We have just about three minutes left. What do you consider the defining distinction between prehistory and recorded history?

Eisler: In essence, prehistory was characterized mainly by partnership-oriented societies. However, as domination systems emerged, we saw both resistance to change and full regressions into rigid domination hierarchies.

Remarkably, it is only in the last 300 years that we see mass movements directly challenging domination systems:

– The so-called “rights of man” contesting the divinely ordained right of kings.

– The abolitionist movement challenged the belief in the superiority of one race over another.

– The feminist movement questioned the supposed divine right of men to rule over women and children in the home.

– And the environmental movement challenges man’s conquest and domination over nature.

As I wrote in The Chalice and the Blade, these are all examples of a resurgence in partnership. However, today, we stand at a crossroads. The real struggle is not between right and left, or secular and religious, or East and West. Those are distractions.

The fundamental battle is between the partnership model and the domination model. We must recognize this, or we will remain caught in a cycle of emergency response—constantly putting out fires caused by domination systems—without ever addressing the deeper structural causes.

That is why our Summit, Peace Begins at Home, emphasizes strategy, not just tactics. Our core principle is that peace starts at home. That is foundational.

However, many prominent figures—even those who speak passionately about war, terrorism, and peace—do not address family violence. That is where the trauma begins.

Jacobsen: Riane, thank you again for your time today. I appreciate it.

Eisler: Yes, we covered much ground today—but that is good.

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