Forests hold the climate together. They are also at extreme risk due to global warming, drought, and other ecological stresses created by industrial civilization. New research shows that forests may be “hanging by a thread.” This excerpt from a recent peer-reviewed article in Science magazine details some of the threats to forests. Despite the academic language, it paints a frightening picture of the near future.
Trees are the living foundations on which most terrestrial biodiversity is built. Central to the success of trees are their woody bodies, which connect their elevated photosynthetic canopies with the essential belowground activities of water and nutrient acquisition. The slow construction of these carbon-dense, woody skeletons leads to a slow generation time, leaving trees and forests highly susceptible to rapid changes in climate.
Other long-lived, sessile organisms such as corals appear to be poorly equipped to survive rapid changes, which raises questions about the vulnerability of contemporary forests to future climate change. The emerging view that, similar to corals, tree species have rather inflexible damage thresholds, particularly in terms of water stress, is especially concerning. This Review examines recent progress in our understanding of how the future looks for forests growing in a hotter and drier atmosphere.
Temperature and Atmospheric CO2
No tree species can survive acute desiccation. Despite this unambiguous constraint, predicting the death of trees during drought is complicated by the process of evolution, whereby the fitness of tree species may benefit equally from traits that either increase growth or enhance drought resilience. Complexity arises because improving either of these two beneficial states often requires the same key traits to move in opposite directions, which leads to important trade-offs in adaptation to water availability. This conflict promotes strategic diversity in different species’ adaptations to water availability, even within ecosystems.
Understanding how the diversity of tree species will be affected by future droughts requires a detailed knowledge of how the functions of different species interact with their environment. Temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration are fundamental elements that affect the water relations of all tree species, and the rapid rise in both of these potent environmental drivers has the potential to markedly change the way trees behave during drought. The future of many forest systems will be dictated by how these atmospheric changes interact with tree function.
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Rising temperature and drought
Ultimately, the impact of elevated CO2 on forest trees is likely to come down to the intensity of the CO2-associated temperature rise and its effect on trees’ water use. This is because the distributions of tree species, in terms of water availability, broadly reflect their intrinsic tolerance of water stress. In other words, species from rainforests to arid woodlands face similar exposure to stress or damage during periods of drought.
Hence, any increase in the rate of soil drying caused by elevated temperatures is likely to lead to increasing damage to standing forests during drought. Improved tree WUE could ameliorate the temperature effect, but this argument remains highly debatable because most reports of improvements in tree WUE with rising atmospheric CO2 refer to intrinsic WUE, a value that converts to real plant water use only with a knowledge of leaf temperature and atmospheric humidity.
Thus, rising atmospheric temperature and the associated increase in evaporative demand is likely to reverse the improvements in tree WUE that are proposed to result from higher CO2. Recent evidence suggests that this is the case, with observations of reduced global tree growth and vegetation health associated with enhanced evaporative gradients and warming temperatures.
Predicting Tree Mortality
Tree mortality is most commonly observed when drought and high temperature are combined, likely owing to the compounding effects of the increased evaporative gradient and the increased porosity of leaves at high temperature. The inevitable rise in the intensity and/or frequency of such events as global temperatures climb has already been associated with an increase in tree mortality globally , especially in larger trees which raises a grave concern about the capacity of existing forests to persist into the future. Establishing the magnitude of this threat is an important challenge that requires a fundamental understanding of how water deficit leads to tree mortality.
Much research has focused on the possible mechanisms behind tree death during drought. Possible mechanisms primarily include vascular damage, carbon starvation, and enhanced herbivory . These studies reveal the complex nature of tree death, where the moment of death is difficult to pinpoint or even define. Although it remains difficult to connect cause and effect at the point where drought injury becomes lethal, strong and consistent correlational data from trees suffering mortality or growth inhibition across the globe point unequivocally to the plant water transport system as a fundamental axis dictating the long-term survival of trees .
Forests on a Thread
The massive woody structure of trees provides mechanical support for their photosynthetic crowns; however, the matrix of microscopic threads of water that is housed within the porous woody cells of the xylem is even more fundamental to tree survival. These liquid threads provide a highly efficient mechanism to transport large quantities of water over long distances under tension, from the roots to the leaves. Relying on this passive pathway to replace the water transpired by leaves has the major drawback that the internal water column in trees becomes increasingly unstable during times of water stress, as the tension required to draw water from the soil increases.
The water transport system in plants lies at center of interactions between rainfall, soil water, carbon uptake, and canopy dehydration, which makes xylem hydraulics an obvious focus for understanding and predicting the thresholds between tree death or survival during exposure to drought and heat stress. Xylem vulnerability to cavitation varies markedly among species, not only indicating sensitivity to water deficit but also enabling the quantification of functional impairment if trees are not immediately killed by drought.
The characteristics of tree species that are classically associated with adaptation to water availability—such as rooting depth, water storage, stomatal behavior, root and canopy area, and leaf phenology—can be predictably integrated to determine how plant water content will respond to environmental conditions. The combination of environmental conditions with biological attributes results in a highly tractable framework for understanding the dynamics of mortality or survival during slow dehydration.
Modeling forest mortality in the future
Modeling provides the most credible view of how forests may cope with different intensities of future global warming, with most models suggesting large-scale mortality, range contraction, and productivity loss through this century under the current warming trajectories. Greater precision as to the nature and pace of forest change is urgently needed, requiring dedicated work on key knowledge gaps that limit model precision accuracy. These gaps are apparent in even the basic physiological processes of trees, such as stomatal behavior, tree water acquisition, and interactions between water and carbon stores in trees.
Critical components such as the dynamic connection between trees and the soil are highly simplified inmodels owing to a lack of knowledge about water transfer and storage in the roots under conditions of water stress. The triggering of mortality is also highly oversimplified because the negative feedbacks likely to operate during acute tree stress are difficult to capture in a model. Avoiding this complexity, a commonly used proxy for lethal water stress is the point of 50% xylem cavitation in stems.
Although this threshold is not strictly correct (because trees can survive with a 50% impairment of water transport capacity), it does provide a readily measurable indication of rapid vascular decline incipient to complete failure of the vascular connection between roots and leaves. More-precise understanding of the post-drought transition to recovery or tree death is needed to accurately represent the legacy effects of drought in large-scale models.
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Additional Disturbances
Predicting or modeling the impacts of drought on forest communities is also complicated by interactions between changes in climate and interactions with other disturbance agents, such as fire, insects and pathogens, or logging . The catastrophic wildfires that have affected Australia in 2019 and 2020, after years of extreme drought, is just one such example of drought-fire interactions. Such interactions are also affecting forests in North America, Amazonia , and elsewhere .
Increases in vapor-pressure deficit and temperature during drought dry out fuel, thereby increasing fire activity and the area that is burned. Drought-fire interactions may also cause tipping points and shifts among vegetation types in areas such as the southwestern Amazon. There, tree mortality is elevated during intense fires experienced in drought years , resulting in altered microclimatic conditions and grass invasion into the understories, which further increases flammability and fire risk.
The Ohio River is the most polluted river in the United States. In this series of essays entitled ‘The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk travels the length of the river and tells her story. Read the first, second, third, fourth and fifth part of Will’s journey.
The Kinzua Dam forms the Allegheny Reservoir, a few miles east of Warren, PA. Two days before the Fourth of July, I studied the dam and reservoir from a parking lot built on the southern edge of the dam. I was angry. Below me, motorboats and jet skis ripped across the water. Classic rock and pop country playlists clashed as parties raged on pontoon boats. Behind me, motorcycles carrying humans on holiday rides tore down the highway. The noise foreshadowed the fireworks that would soon light up the nation. Hearing the exploding fuel in combustion engines racing around me, and imagining the fireworks’ gunpowder that would soon be exploding across the sky, I wondered why my fellow Americans blow so much shit up when they celebrate.
The star-spangled banner flying over a Seneca Nation flag on a pole above me caused me to consider whether Americans actually believe fireworks put on a better show than the setting sun or whether fireworks are so beloved because they remind Americans of “the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air” and their favorite pastime, colonial warfare.
The anger grew as I studied the 1900 feet of concrete, steel, gravel, and dirt that stretches between two hills and stands 179 feet tall to trap the Ohio River.
I scanned the Allegheny Reservoir until it disappeared behind more hills. I knew, from previous research, that the Allegheny Reservoir sprawled northwards into southern New York for 27 miles and reached depths of 120 feet. I knew, too, that Seneca land had been destroyed when the reservoir was formed. Meanwhile, the sounds of Styx – that river in Hell and an accursedly annoying rock band – playing “Come Sail Away” competed with Shania Twain’s “That Don’t Impress Me Much.” Singalongs and drunken laughter, amplified by the water, drifted up to me. Shania’s mood matched mine best. I asked the Ohio River how anyone could party in the midst of such destruction.
Eventually the boats turned a corner formed by the hills and vanished. The wind blew across the Allegheny Reservoir leaving a delicate wake. The reflection of the hills in the water danced and waved. The water enchanted me. I tried to picture what was under the water. And, that’s when the Ohio River’s answer came to me.
People can party in the midst of this destruction, they can drive their jet skis over indigenous burial grounds, they can dance on pontoon boats floating over stolen land because so much truth, today, is submerged. Truth is submerged by history. Truth is submerged by ideology and cultural conditioning. Truth is submerged by popular ignorance of the processes destroying the planet. Truth is literally submerged like Seneca land under the Allegheny Reservoir.
The history of the Kinzua Dam and Allegheny Reservoir submerges many truths.
These truths include theft of Native land, the forcible removal of Native people, and another treaty to add to the long list of broken promises the federal government has made to Native Americans. In 1936, the infamous St. Patrick’s Day Flood washed over the Ohio River Basin. Floods like the St. Patrick’s Day Flood had, for years, directly threatened Pittsburgh, one of America’s most important industrial cities at the time. Instead of considering whether it was prudent to allow massive human populations to congregate in areas prone to powerful floods, Congress responded with the Flood Control Acts of 1936 and 1938 and authorized the Kinzua Dam.
The completion of the Kinzua Dam in 1965 and the formation of the Allegheny Reservoir drowned 10,000 acres of the Seneca Nation’s most fertile lands. That 10,000 acres represented one third of the territory promised to the Seneca under the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua signed by George Washington himself. The formation of the dam also required the removal of around 600 Senecas from their ancestral homelands.
Living Senecas were removed. And, so were some of the Seneca dead. In 1964, in an act of utter disrespect, the United States Army Corps of Engineers attempted to dig up the remains of one of the most famous Seneca war chiefs, Cornplanter, as well as the remains of more than 300 of his kin and descendants. If that wasn’t bad enough, apparently the Corps of Engineers did such a questionable job, that many Seneca wonder whether Cornplanter was ever truly moved and whether his resting place has been drowned by reservoir.
Truths are also submerged in plain sight by an ignorance of the industrial processes necessary to construct the Kinzua Dam.
Concrete is a good example. Despite being surrounded by concrete, I had never asked where concrete comes from. It turns out that concrete is one of the most destructive materials on earth. Using a study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a Guardian article I found estimated that concrete now outweighs the combined carbon mass of every tree, bush, and shrub on the planet. In simpler terms, there may be more concrete on Earth than plants.
According to London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs, the production of cement – a key ingredient in concrete – is responsible for 8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. And, perhaps most pertinent to the Ohio River, concrete sucks up almost a 10th of the world’s industrial water use. But, how is concrete made? It starts with ripping limestone, clay, sand, and other aggregates from the earth. Wild beings live in communities where this limestone, clay, and sand is ripped from the earth. So, this extraction destroys these beings’ homes. Extracting and transporting these materials requires industrial energy and produces dust pollution as well as greenhouse gas emissions.
Industrial energy production involves ripping fossil fuels from the earth, produces toxic waste, and also destroys habitat.
The limestone, clay, sand, and other aggregates must be crushed and mixed with water to a certain proportion. This crushing and mixing process also requires industrial energy, produces emissions, and consumes water. The mixture is then heated to around 2700 degrees Fahrenheit to decompose the limestone and produce what is called “clinker.” This heating process again requires industrial energy, produces emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, emissions from the burning of the aggregates, and hazardous waste. After the clinker is created, it is quickly cooled and ground up. The rapid cooling process requires industrial energy and the grinding process produces dust pollution.
The ground clinker is now dry cement which is bagged, shipped, and distributed to work sites. Bagging produces waste and involves paper production which requires deforestation. Shipping and distribution require energy for transportation which again produces emissions. Finally, the dry cement is mixed with potable water and another type of extracted aggregate including quarried stone, fly ash, slag, and sometimes recycled concrete. In other words, when I looked at the Kinzua Dam’s concrete, I was looking at a destructive process involving thousands of people engaged in dozens of ecocidal activities that produced all kinds of pollutants and consumed water, the most precious necessity of life.
After I learned how concrete was made, when I looked at the Kinzua Dam, I couldn’t help but see the gaping wounds quarries cut into the land, the lungs microscopically shredded by tiny rock fragments in dust pollution, and the water stolen from creeks, streams, and rivers only to be trapped for centuries in blocks of concrete.
Uncovering these submerged truths made me angrier.
I fantasized about sinking pontoon boats, pouring sugar in jet ski gas tanks, and slashing motorcycle tires. I fantasized about the ghost of Cornplanter drilling holes in the Kinzua Dam. I fantasized about the Ohio River gathering her power to overwhelm and destroy the dam.
While I pictured the Ohio River bursting through the Kinzua Dam, I noticed a sound my ears had not picked up before. So far, I had only viewed the dam from the east side, the side trapping the river. This new sound beckoned me to view the dam from the west. As I moved westward, I heard a growing roar. Then, on the dam’s west side, I saw the Ohio River gushing out of two floodgates. The sound was roughly similar to the sound a waterfall makes. But, it was not the same.
Rivers choose to leap from waterfalls. They shout with joy as they jump from cliffs and over stones. They thunder while proudly showing off the full power of their flow. At the Kinzua Dam, the Ohio River was not free to choose. She was forcibly squeezed through pipes called penstocks to turn hydroelectric generating turbines. Then, she was shoved from a ledge to slam into a concrete drainage control bed.
As I listened, I knew the Ohio River was screaming with anger. The hills rang with her rage. In this rage, I heard her explain how I could put the anger I was feeling to good use. She told me to dive into the depths and give voice to submerged truths.
In medicine, shock refers to an extremely serious condition of inadequate blood perfusion. Shock is most often caused by heart problems, severe infections, allergic reaction, massive blood loss, overdose, or spinal cord injury.
Of the 1.2 million people who show up to U.S. emergency rooms with signs and symptoms of shock each year, between 20% and 50% of them die.
Shock can be understood to progress through two broad phases: compensatory (phase 1) and de-compensatory (phase 2). In compensatory shock, the body can “compensate” for the emergency by adjusting blood pressure, diverting resources from the extremities, and using other internal mechanisms.
Victims in compensatory shock may seem, at first glance, to be doing relatively well. They may be lucid and able to talk clearly. But medical professionals know that this is an illusion. Without treatment, they are likely to worsen quickly. Careful assessment of vital signs and mechanism of injury/history of present illness (MOI/HPI) will show that this person is in an extremely perilous situation.
If left untreated or if their injury is series, they will soon enter the second phase of shock: de-compensatory. In this stage, the body can no longer compensate for the underlying issue. As blood and oxygen circulation collapses, cellular metabolism begins to fail. Our bodies begin to die, cell by cell. Vital organs fail one after another. The damage becomes irreversible. Death is nearly certain.
Planetary Ecology and Shock
Like our own lives, life on this planet depends on a precarious balance: the stability of climate, oceanic pH, nitrogen cycles, soil erosion and formation, and populations of beings at the basis of the tropic cascade such as bacteria, plankton and other photosynthesizers, and insects provides the foundation on which the entire biosphere rests.
These major life-support systems of the biosphere function similarly to human organs, each fulfilling a different need for life to continue as we know it. Due to the predations of industrial civilization, these “planetary organs” are in a dire state.
Soil erosion due to agriculture and overgrazing has decimated carbon storage across large portions of the earth’s surface and released this to the atmosphere. The cryosphere (the portion of our planet’s water frozen in ice) is rapidly melting. Thawing permafrost in the far north is releasing methane emissions to the atmosphere. The assaults go on and on.
When a human being goes into shock, the body compensates by shunting blood from the extremities towards the more vital internal organs. The same process is playing out across this planet. Like a human being, the natural world attempts to maintain its own stability. As carbon pollution chokes the atmosphere, for example, plants increase their growth rate, which should capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it in soils and trees trunks, maintaining homeostasis. This is the delicate balance of geological and biological feedbacks that has made Earth an Eden for millions of species over millions of years.
That balance has been shattered by the explosion in agriculture, logging, and fossil fuel burning. Plants can no longer compensate, and “global greening” has been overwhelmed. Instead, we are entering a period of “global browning” as vast areas of vegetation begin to die from sustained drought and climatic changes.
The ecology of this planet is entering a state of de-compensatory shock.
Abundant Cheap Energy Allows Us To Ignore Reality
People living in wealthy nations are largely insulated from ecological collapse because of the availability of cheap energy.
They can ignore the collapse of fish populations since corporations send vast trawlers to remote oceans to vacuum up the last remaining reserves of wild fish. They can ignore the collapse of forests because energy-intensive industrial logging brings wood products from Oregon and Alaska and Indonesia to the world market. They can ignore water shortages because vast amounts of energy are used to pump entire rivers dry to feed growing cities.
Our ability to lie to ourselves, and to each other, is one of our society’s defining features. The urge to deny that anything is wrong is overwhelming. The scale of the immanent catastrophe, which has truly already arrived, is unthinkable. As with a patient in compensatory shock, so with the planet. Ignorance is bliss.
This won’t last. Ignorance is no protection against a burning planet, only against psychological wounds, and only in the short term. We are children of this living world. Our lungs are the oysters of this atmosphere, filtering out pollutants and capturing them inside our delicate tissues. We are permeable creatures, absorbing each chemical toxin industry produces. Like mites living on the surface of our skin, when the supraorganism begins to die, those who are dependent upon it are not long for this world.
What will a person do when they are confronted with the imminent death of themselves, of a loved one, of their civilization, of their biosphere? Deny that it is happening? Reject the science and the evidence of their own eyes? Lash out angrily against those who speak the truth? Try to bargain with reality? Retreat into depression?
These responses are all familiar to both the E.R. doctor and the Earth defender, and increasingly describe global politics. Denial and anger are the defining characteristics of the rising authoritarian tide. Modi, Putin, Trump, Erdoğan, and Bolsonaro are the figureheads of this death cult; there are hundreds of millions behind them.
Bargaining is the primary strategy of the liberals. As the biosphere bleeds from a million clearcuts and chokes on a toxic mixture of industrial chemicals and greenhouse gases, they promote so-called “solutions” that are no different from the status quo. Their fantasies of green energy, sustainable capitalism, and electric vehicles allow them to justify a lie that will kill the world: that they can have “normality”—modern, high-energy way of life—and a living planet at the same time.
Their plans are not even the equivalent of bandaging a bleeding planet. They are harmful in their own right—the equivalent of stabbing the victim elsewhere and claiming that since the wounds aren’t quite as deep, they are actually helping. This is the good-cop, bad-cop routine of modern politics.
That most people are simply depressed and apathetic, then, is no surprise. The normal functioning of industrial civilization is rapidly murdering life on this planet and destroying the capacity to support future life, and in the process immiserating billions of human beings. Anyone who is carefully watching the vital signs of this planet knows that the prognosis is not good.
Righteous anger is fitting response to this situation, but denial has no place now. Bargaining is worse than useless. And depression is understandable, but when paired with inaction it is not excusable. Only by accepting the reality of the situation can we begin to discuss meaningful action.
The reality is that the life support systems of our home, Earth, are failing. Without intervention, the organs of this planet will falter and die. Industrial civilization has shown itself to be incompatible with life. So the path forward is clear. Like open veins, the world’s pipelines must be closed off. The mining industry, opening great sores on the Earth’s surface, must be stopped and the land allowed to scab over. The abrasion that is industrial agriculture must be halted, and the soil bandaged with ecology’s first responders—those plants derisively called “weeds”—and eventually, replaced with forests and grasslands once again. The cancerous factories and toxic industry belching and circulating poisons around the planet must yield to the scalpel. The destruction must be halted, and the land must be allowed to heal.
And humans must find a way to live within the ecological limits of this planet, rather than constantly finding new ways to transgress them. If all you have ever known is how to live in a culture that is destroying the planet, this will take humility, and sacrifice, and a willingness to learn.
The process of ecological collapse has been accelerating for many years. It will not be reversed easily. Many wonders of the natural world are already gone—the billions of passenger pigeons, and the teeming flocks of Great auks. But there are many who remain: blue whales, redwood forests, loggerhead turtles, coral reefs.
Our task as a generation is to manage the coming collapse by accelerating the dismantling and destruction of the systems that must end (capitalism, industrial civilization, the fossil fuel and mining economy, industrial agriculture, etc.). At the same time, we most slow, halt, and reversing the collapse of forests, grasslands, soils, the carbon cycle, and the rest of the living world. And in the midst of all this, we must do our best to build human communities based in sustainability and human rights. Any of these elements in isolation leads to a bleak future. Only in combination do they represent some hope.
When we accept what is happening, the path forward becomes clear. Now we must gather our will and our community and get to work.
Max Wilbert is a third-generation dissident who came of age in post-WTO Seattle. He has been part of grassroots political work for nearly 20 years. His second book, Bright Green Lies, will be released in early 2021.
In this episode of Resistance RadioDerrick Jensen interviews Michelle Connolly, who is an activist living in Prince George, BC, the traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh Nation. She has spent much of her life exploring and experiencing natural forests, and has an educational background in forest ecology, although she is not a researcher and does not do science for a living. Michelle is part of Conservation North.
Conservation North is a 100% volunteer-run community group based in Prince George, British Columbia (BC), traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh. We support and advocate for the protection of wild plants, animals and their habitats in northern BC.
Their mission is to advocate for the maintenance and protection of critical natural habitats capable of, and necessary for, maintaining long term regional biological diversity. To recognize and promote the fundamental importance of natural landscapes as living sources of adaptation to climatic and other environmental change.
Their goals include full legal protection for all remaining endangered old growth forest in the Inland and Boreal Rainforests, particularly the productive, accessible forests that are currently being targeted by industrial logging.
Resistance Radio covers ecology and feminist themes. Episodes can be found on YouTube or browse all of the interviews in our Resistance Radio archive.
See below for more videos of logging in the region:
Chris Straquez describes plans for a 1500 km railway project in southern Mexico, the potential for environmental destruction, and how developers justify their genocide against indigenous people.
The Mayan Train Project: Destruction of Indigenous Land
The history of modern train industry started with the appearance of first steam engines, which enabled humanity to transport goods and people in a faster, reliable and cheaper way into a new age in the life of industrial revolution, human expansion and global economy. This, in turn, caused a great expansion of railways, machine improvements and enabling goods and people to be transported safer and faster. Today diesel engines, electrical trains and maglev high-speed bullet train network the entire earth. All these trains were developed from the steam engine.
Trains allowed us to save time covering long distances with huge cargoes which of course meant huge profits for businesses. People had faster means to get to and come from work. Business profited and personal vacation trips increased considerably. The creation of the regional time zones was due to the necessity to plan for the arrival and departure of trains from station to station. For the first time, geographical zones were divided up and assigned times so the ‘powerful’ railroad companies could organize travel schedules, forever changing the dynamic of time.
An entire nation connected by railroads, the traditional conception of space and time annihilated. Pathways altered to accommodate for terrain, locomotives pathways through the terrain. Tunnels made through mountains and bridges allowed for crossing valleys and rivers. A straight line from point A to point B. This, of course, meant many natural environments had to be gutted for the whole infrastructure of trains and railroads to become a reality.
Is there something Mayan about this train?
The Mayan Train is the signature project for the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s current President. This project will use the right of way of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Railway all along Palenque to Valladolid. Valladolid current rights of way from different infrastructures such as roads, highways, and drivelines, among others; will be used in order to reduce the environmental impact caused by the project, and reduce the costs of new rights of way. The project includes nearly 1,460 km of railways in the Yucatan peninsula that will connect 5 estates: Tabasco, Campeche, Chiapas, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo.
During the Daily Presidential Morning Conference, it was communicated that an investigation carried out by The National Fund for Tourism Development (FONATUR in Spanish) found that rights of way of many estates were not ‘recorded’. That a register did not exist, and many claims have been lost by the federal government from people who had never been paid for the rights of way in their lands which amounts approximately $750 million dollars in total. The Mayan Train project, in case you are wondering, will cost around 6 to 8 billion dollars, and is expected to bring more than three million visitors a year to the region; to archaeological sites and the area’s vast biodiversity such as Calakmul and Sian Ka’an.
The principal tourist territories are Cancún, Tulum, Palenque, Chichén Itzá and Calakmul biosphere, which is considered as the main location for the railroad routes, since it harbors 1,729,738 acres of a high biodiversity, considering 1,569 plant, 107 mammal, 398 bird, 84 reptile, 19 amphibian and 48 freshwater fish species.
Experts have warned of environmental risks, including the survival of certain species, disturbances within underground water networks, such as the Sac Actún underwater cave system and the Dos Ojos system in Tulum, Quintana Roo. The aquifers provide nourishment to trees and wildlife as it is one of the biggest fresh water storage areas on the planet. The erosion and fissuring of landings above those aquifers would allow an unbalance on the vital source for the jungle and represent an issue for local communities.
One of the world greatest biospheres in danger.
The Mayan Train’s route covers 15 federal protected areas, 20 state protected areas, rich geological regions and hydrological resources. There is a huge risk of extinction of flora and fauna. In 2018, the National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation conducted a nationwide census, finding that population was around 4,000 across five regions in Mexico, mostly distributed around Yucatán’s peninsula, which is also one of the railway’s main routes. This will make protecting of this species even more difficult for environmental organizations.
The Mayan Train will interfere the Calakmul Biosphere, which is considered the largest forest reserve, containing 6500 well-preserved archeological structures. It is the third most important ecological area and is sparsely inhabited. Once penetrated by the train, the inevitable consequence will be development at the expense of nature.
One of the most crucial areas that would be made vulnerable by the Mayan train routes is Laguna Bacalar in Quintana Roo, already water-polluted by the proliferation of hotels and private houses on its surroundings, an increase in tourism would turn it into a cesspool.
Moreover, the megaproject will bring about the fragmentation and destruction of one of the world’s last pristine rainforests. The railway will cut through the heart of the Mayan jungle, and since the natural wealth will be endangered, the megadiverse ecosystem would be damaged, and refuge for roughly 10 percent of the world’s known species may disappear.
Yet another threat to indigenous ways of life.
The Indigenous Regional Council (a settlement of 82 indigenous communities) across the Mexican Mayan train course estates would be crucially affected. The disruption to the Calakmuk Biosphere Reserve would decrease their economic development, forest resource tracking, as well as their main cultural heritage. I understand that environmentalists and local societies are against the construction of the railway, since ecosystem issues would be highly damaging for the territory.
Indigenous groups, and their conservationist and academic allies, call the train “an act of war” and López Obrador’s bid to ingratiate himself to Indigenous communities “a mockery.” They warn that the train will not only devastate southern Mexico’s ecosystems but also trigger unsustainable development and further marginalize the communities living there. These critics—the most prominent of which are the Zapatistas, who led an armed insurrection against the federal government in 1994—say the project will repeat the mistakes of development in Cancún and Tulum and bring cartel violence, corruption, and mass development (read destruction) to the Mayan forest. The Zapatistas have said they will defend the land with their lives.
These groups also said the Mayan Train poses a risk to the cultural identity of the indigenous people who live in the communities through which the tracks will run. Indigenous culture, namely that of the Mayan people who live in the region, could be marketed as a commodity, they argued. They also renewed their criticism of the Mayan Train consultation process in 2019, which was described by critics as a sham and an empty gesture. A vote on the project found 92% in support but the United Nations said that the entire consultation process failed to meet all international human rights standards.
In their new broadside, the groups charged that the government had made a ‘unilateral’ decision about ‘the future of the communities and indigenous peoples’ through which the train will run under the pretext that they will be ‘the main beneficiaries.’ However, the “main role” of the local indigenous population will be to provide “cheap labor” for the railroad’s construction, they charged, warning that the project will perpetuate the “systematic discrimination” against indigenous people that the Mexican state has promoted for years. The thousands of jobs that will supposedly be created will most probably be precarious, poorly paid, temporary jobs without social security guarantees.
It’s not about the lives or the poor and the oppressed, but a business opportunity.
President López Obrador has said that construction of the Mayan Train will help the economy recover from the coronavirus-induced crisis, asserting that it will create 80,000 jobs this year and 150,000 in 2021. He pledged that the project will be finished in 28 months, or by October 2022, stressing that no excuses will be accepted for delays. The project will be carried out in 7 sections, each one in charge of the following companies:
1ST SECTION: Mota-Engil México, a Portuguese conglomerate that received several profitable contracts in the former Mexican administration, and China Communications Construction Company LTD that has international claims of fraud and blackmailing, most notoriously in the Philippines.
2nd SECTION: CICSA S.A. de C.V. and FCC Construcción S.A. both owned by Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helú. CICSA was one of the key players in the construction of the now failed Mexico City-Texcoco Airport (NAICM) and FCC was involved in the Odebrecht scandal.
3rd SECTION: Construcciones Urales (Grupo Azvi) and Gami Ingeniería e Instalaciones. Gami was also involved in NAICM.
4th SECTION: Ingenieros Civiles Asociados, better known as ICA. Involved in NAICM, too, and it has oil, gas and infrastructure in Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche and Quintana Roo.
5th SECTION: Pending, BlackRock Incorporated would be the company that would keep this section of construction that runs from Cancun to Tulum. The area with the most significant economic relevance of the entire project since it launched an Unsolicited Proposal (PNS) two years ago to FONATUR. It is expected to be the winner of the contract that would be announced on August 23.
Rogelio Jiménez Pons, director of FONATUR, who is managing the project, said that the Maya Train will help to lift more than one million people out of poverty. In reality, this mega project represents a new paradigm of economic disintegration, regional (under)development and social (in)equity.
Relationship with animals, places and plants.
We name living beings. We name things that are not alive. To draw the line between what is ‘living’ and what is ‘non-living’ can vary from micro to macro, from ideology to religion, from land to empire, but to me a living being is one whom I can establish communication. I have named not only my cats or dogs but I have given a name to each car I had, and also guitars and machines… I can only talk from my own experience, but I can’t remember the last time I had a pep-talk with my mobile screen or an argument with my car. Whereas I have communicated with animals and sometimes plants. Something or someone I can kill or exploit can’t have a name. I would get too sentimental if I actually had to do that. Naming something gives it some importance; how many of us haven’t named an animal friend or given nicknames to people, plants and places around us?
Naming something undoubtedly establishes not only a reference point but a connection. A connection to the land and its inhabitants boosted by entering into a relationship with these individuals, because that is what they are: individuals. If you spend enough time around them, you will notice that we have so much in common and they can communicate in such interesting ways… if we would only listen. Establish communication with them? That is pure non-sense! These are THINGS, objects, resources. They are not alive. I can’t use and abuse them if I perceive them as a living entity, can I? If I name living entities would I be able to carry out a project, say, a trans-isthmic train through important Mayan archeological sites and natural reserves? It would traverse (read violate) the Yucatan Peninsula, home of human communities such as the Mayan Yucatecas, Choles, Tzetzales, Mixques; land of the green iguana, tapir, mockingbird, swamp crocodile, many different species of bats, felines, primates, insects and even the soil. All these living beings are seldom mentioned in the Mexican media. We only know that “the train will be good for the people of Mexico.” In a country that contains one of the richest arrays of biodiversity, cultures and peoples, I always wonder who exactly these people of Mexico the government talks about are.
Issues with the Environment Impact Manifestation.
One of the biggest arguments against the Mayan train is that a proper environmental impact study was not carried out to assess potential damage by this mega project. After over a year of allegations, the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) released a document, an Environment Impact Manifestation (MIA in Spanish) which explains the Mayan Train project and the long awaited environmental impact study. It includes a section called Social Analysis of the Indigenous Peoples in which the concept of ethnocide is explained. What raised the brow of people who have already checked the document is a concept called “ethno-development.”
Rodolfo Stavenhagen, German-Mexican sociologist and anthropologist who specialized in the study of human rights and the political relations between indigenous peoples and states, was a huge critic of the Western concept of “development”. In his book, The Ethnic Question: Conflicts, Development, and Human Rights he portrays how this “Western development” has terrible effects on indigenous peoples. He mentions that development try to promote the idea that the communities will benefit from the capital investments, technological innovations and modernization. The reality is something quite different; these developments have negative and noxious effects on the masses, especially indigenous communities. Such injuries have not been correctly documented or understood, but everyone can think in terms of economic, social and environmental damages instead of benefits.
Stavenhagen defines ethnocide as “the process in which a culturally distinct people, usually named ‘ethnic group’, loses identity due to policies designed to undermine their territory and their base-line resources; language usage and both political and social institutions; customs, art, religious practices and cultural values. When a government applies these policies then it becomes a culprit of ethnocide which can be either economic or cultural. Economic ethnocide when it is made under the guise of development and cultural when it pretends to eradicate ethnical minorities in order to give way to a Nation-State.”
Ethnocide and Ethno-development.
Once the MIA defines what ethnocide means, it states: “Ethnocide can have a positive turn: ‘ethno-development’, which can be possible if indigenous peoples affected by the development are involved in the development process and benefit administration, in this case we can understand it as a participative process for the indigenous communities to become involved not only as established in the OIT 169 Convention, but from the proper plan-ification and appropriation of the development project for their communities in which the benefits are observable.” Ethno-development is defined as the social capability of indigenous communities to build their own future, using teachings characteristic of their own historical experiences, real and potential resources of their culture, in accordance to a project that is adaptable to their own values and future aspirations.
The overall objective of the MIA, is to be a component that fosters ethno-development of the indigenous peoples that are encountered inside the Regional Environment System (SAR). Indigenous communities are being involved with a consultation process, pretending that the project respects and guarantees their rights and seeks to adapt their values and future aspirations to reach sustainable community development.
Sara López, member of the Regional and Popular Indigenous Council of Xpujil (CRIPX), one of the main organizations against the Mayan Train project, said that the mega projects will strip people away from their territory, their life, and under the excuse of development they [governments and corporations] want to eradicate the indigenous peoples. “It is not a mega project for the peoples. For us, the poor, there is no project, we resist and live from what we work and harvest, [the project] is not for us. There are 85 companies that have invested in this project: [the benefits] are for the national and international companies.”
The Power of Association and Relationships.
To be clear: most people don’t give a fuck about animals, rivers, trees, anything non-human for that matter. Even when it comes to our own species, some humans are considered more important than others. Caring about both humans and non-humans requires for us to enter into a relationship with them. Yet, in this throw-away society, it seems that the only long-standing relationship we have is over overconsumption. We name and establish a relationship with cities, tablets, video game consoles, all kinds of machines, however, they cannot really enter into a relationship with us; we use them and dispose of them; another copy, another unit, another gizmo that will become obsolete in a couple of months or weeks.
Our lack of empathy resides in the quality of our relationships. Let’s reconnect with the living and stop transforming the living into dead consumables. Have you looked at your animal companion or a wild one directly into their eyes? Have you noticed all the facial expressions? The sounds they can make? The movements they perform? Everything is so full of expression. Have you contemplated flowers, leaves, trees? How they sway with the wind, how they stretch themselves to the sun? How they sulk when they are hungry or thirsty? Have you just stared at land, sea, mountains? The astounding quantity of voices, and eyes, and hearts pulsating in a symphony so full of movement, sound, color that makes you feel alive? If you can feel the life within yourself, you can feel the life around you.
It is there for us to see… if we would only observe, we would notice it is there and that inexorably changes who you are and how you relate to the environment.
This article was originally a talk given in 2004 in North Carolina by historian Gerda Lerner, who was 84 years old at the time. Gerda describes the creation (social construction) of patriarchy based on hierarchy and enslavement. She describes how this system is antiquated and dangerous to men and women.
I’m doing something very difficult today and that is I’m going to talk about 2,500 years of history in 50 minutes. So, you will have to accept on faith that the facts I’m citing are amply proven by examples, but I can’t give you the examples. They are in the book, but I think in the discussion next week we will have a chance to go into more concrete examples. And what I was, what I’m trying to tell you also, is that studying the ancient near East, which is the area around in which all the trouble is going on now – the current day Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia between the Euphrates and the Tigris – which is where Western civilization started – it’s very interesting for a historian because the sources are very much more plentiful than our sources are for say 13th century Europe. And the reason is that the people there wrote on clay tablets and clay tablets don’t destruct as paper does – and as papyrus does – so we have tens of thousands of pieces of evidence for everything that I’m going to say.
It’s a very rich area for research. I was interested in this book in finding out whether there is a history of patriarchy possible. Whether it’s possible to do a history. Is it a historic construct? And the reason, of course, is that in everything we are taught, we are taught by traditional history that women are in some way essentially different from men and are designed to perform different functions. And when we question that, we are always told, “Well, it’s always been like that.” And depending on the religious affiliation – it’s either God given or Nature given.
I wanted to see whether that can be challenged with historical evidence. And so, I’m starting with the first division within human society which occurred as soon as human beings lived in groups and that is, of course, the division between men and women. The obvious differences between men and women are there; they are recognized by human beings and they were always incorporated in a sexual division of labor. Okay? Now, I just want to anticipate my final finding. Namely, what I’m trying to prove to you is that patriarchy is a historical system. It was created by human beings. It has a historical beginning. And it has an end. That may be news to you. *laughter from audience.*
Established over a period of nearly 2,500 years, and I roughly date that period from 3,100 before the common era to 600 BCE. Now 600 BCE is the period in which all the major monotheistic religions are already written down and established, in which Greek philosophy is developed, Greek science is developed, and that’s the period when, in other words, patriarchy is firmly established. Now, the sexual division of labor already occurred in the Neolithic tribal villages that arose in that area. And, we have some evidence on the lifespan of the people at that time. And it was a very, very short lifespan. For males it was 35 years, and for females 30 years. That’s rounded up a little bit.
Now if you remember that in 30 years, the age at which girls reached puberty was later than it is now. It always has been getting earlier since historic time. So even if we dated it to 14, a woman had 16 years in which she could bear children, alright? Infant mortality rates were about 80% at the time, so 20% of the children would survive from the first year of life, which meant that a woman had to have pregnancies practically every year or every year and a half in order to have two or three children survive into adulthood. Okay?
And, of course, what it means in practical terms, if those groups in which the social arrangements did not work for the survival of children, those are the groups that disappeared. Right? So the sexual division of labor made it absolutely essential for groups to develop a system by which women could raise children. And now generally when we are told about the subordination of women, and we are told why it happens, we are told that it has to do with the fact that women “bear” children. I find that this is not – that “child bearing” – is NOT the issue. The main issue is child “nurture.”
Human children need many years of care before they can survive – and in more primitive conditions, more years of care.
And so, the long nursing and the effective mothering are the key issues in the survival of tribes. And as a result, the essential division of labor that we find in most of the early societies is that women who are…women take care of the hunting and gathering around the area, which, in fact, supplies as much as 70 or 80% of the nutrition of the group, and men take care of the hunting and then later on that turns into warfare – defending against other tribes.
This – both of these functions – when needed for group survival – and the sexual division of labor were an effective means of assuring group survival under very harsh conditions and IT DID NOT CONNOTE INEQUALITY. And we know that from many evidences of graves of early settlements where male and female graves are of the same type, and so forth. The next thing that happens is that little groups of tribes in settlements begin to encroach upon each other and they need to find a way in which they can stop from constantly having warfare.
What develops is the exchange of women.
Women are exchanged for two reasons: to foster inter-tribal relations and also later on to assure tribes that they have an efficient supply of women who can raise children. Now this exchange of women takes place in all known societies and it is very often marked by a shift from what we call matriliny to patriliny. Now matriliny is the way in which society is organized so that you reckoned the descent through the mother, and the couple lives in the location of the mother’s home. Very often the husband of the daughters will come occasionally as a visitor and not even live there. Matriliny was very, very widespread in all early settlements and then in the period I’m describing, we see a shift to patriliny – which is also patrilocality. The descent begins to be reckoned through the father. The bride, or the wife, leaves the home of her parents and goes to the location of the father.
Now, one example of the early arrangement we find in the Bible in the story of Jacob who goes to Laban’s house to live there for seven years to get his daughters. So that’s still matrilocality. And then he takes his wife and children, at the time that patrilocality is established, and he takes them to the house of his father. So there is a perfect example of proof of a shift. What is very interesting is as we study the evidence that while this process takes place everywhere, it never is reversed. We have no record of patriliny changing to matriliny. Okay? So you can say that this is sort of a historic development.
You might ask, why were women exchanged and not men?
Or why were not children exchanged? If you wanted to secure the friendship of another tribe and you gave your children – this was done for example in the middle ages among ruling families, they often exchanged the children of the rulers to secure a peace. Well the reason for that is essentially that (this is an assumption, an hypothesis) one could not be sure by exchanging men, that they would stay and that they would be peaceful. And they didn’t know how to control the men, but if you had women, you knew that by exchanging, that the moment they were pregnant and had children they stayed with their children. And so the ability of women, the biological ability, and the hardwired ability of women to nurture children made them predisposed to being cast in this role. So in that sense there is some biological basis. But that does NOT mean that that role had to be cast as an inferior role. And that’s just my point.
At a certain point, this becomes changed to an inferior role. Other explanations that have been given for the rise of patriarchy are that it had to do with the fact that men invented animal husbandry – out of the hunting role. They learned how to domesticate animals, and because they learned how to domesticate animals, the theory goes, man, the hunter, acquired some wealth in animals and then started controlling the world. This is ahistorical because animal husbandry was invented in the region we’re talking about about 8000 BC. And we have evidence, hard evidence through diggings, of relatively egalitarian societies in the region that practiced animal husbandry 2000-4000 years later. So, this could not be the reason. This is not what happened.
So, but it did happen that men learned to domesticate animals and that the sexual division of labor became reinforced by that, very strongly.
Now, at the time of about the period that I’m starting to talk about, 3000 BCE, there were city states being formed in this region, in Ur, in Lagash, in Kish, in Sumer, and we have very good records from those. And what we find when these city states are formed is that they already have developed a more elaborate division of labor. Namely, there are people who specialize in military functions, there are people who specialize in the arts and crafts, and there are people who specialize in taking care of the community and hunting and gathering.
What we find developing in these early settlements is a new role for women of the elite. And, I’m talking here about the wives of rulers. In these city states, you have the temple which is the big center for activity, and the reason for that is that in that region, you need to have large-scale watering systems in order to do agriculture. And these watering systems require a supply of labor and they are managed by the temple – by the temples. And so there’s a temple elite, and gradually you see some individuals that begin to function as rulers.
These rulers are – most of them are -usurpers.
That is their claim to fame – is that they won in some warfare against the neighboring tribe and that the king gave them land and so now they are the men of the king and to show their legitimacy, they usually claim that they are also related to the Goddess. I’ll talk about that later. But, one of the troubles that they have is that they are constantly engaged in warfare. And when they are away being usurpers, they could be easily replaced, you know. And so they’re very insecure, so they set up their wives as deputies. And that’s the role of the wife as deputy, or called the stand-in wife.
And I just want to point out to you, without being able to give you all the examples that I could easily give you, that that role is with us to this day. Alright? It’s the role of the woman of the elite, like you had in say the Gandhi family in India – if they are running out of boys, the women take over. Okay? These women have tremendous power. They conducted warfare. They collected taxes. They bought and sold slaves. They had tremendous power, but they also were very vulnerable because, at that same time, we already have documents from that time from the city of Ur and from others, that the men had already begun to keep harems.
To kings it was a sign of status and legitimacy that the bigger your harem, the more powerful you were. And these women could be replaced at any time by a second wife or a concubine if they no longer sexually pleased their husbands. And there are many cases where we have letters where these women are set aside – these powerful women.
So what you have here is a prototype of a patriarchal role for elite women.
They give up their sexual freedom, but in exchange they get a lot of power – but only so long as they sexually serve and reproductively serve their husband. If they don’t have boys, for example, if they don’t give birth to sons, they can be set aside. Out. Out of nowhere. And they can be, there are cases where they are imprisoned, they are set aside. Okay? So this is with us to this day. This elite wife role.
Now, we come to the big change in the Bronze Age. And it is, of course, again, there are many, many things that change, and I have to simplify it very greatly and I’m sorry for that. But the main outstanding thing about the Bronze Age is that due to the fact that you now have bronze tools and weapons, warfare intensifies and becomes much more effective. And more and more people are killed in warfare, on the one hand. On the other hand, you now have bronze tools for tilling the soil and plowing, agriculture comes in. And it is much more efficient – and all of a sudden there is enough food supply so that these small communities can feed other people that they bring in – which before was impossible.
Because of that, and because there’s now a constant need for labor, they develop a system of acquiring that labor.
And the labor that they acquire are slaves. And, but before that, I just need to say that this whole agricultural revolution brings with it a much greater specialization of the economy. It brings with it the development of kingships, so that instead of small city states and tiny tribes, you get sizable kingdoms now, right? And it brings a rivalry between the temple bureaucratic elite, which controls the irrigation system, and the kings. Okay? And that has a great impact also on what develops.
So, for example, at that time there’s one of the rulers, Sargon of Akkad, and he rules over Sumer, Assyria, Elam, and the Euphrates Valley. This is in the middle of the second millennium. And I’m mentioning him because he had a daughter named Enkheduanna, who’s the first known woman poet in the history of the world. She was a great poet, and her work is available to this day. And he set her up as the High Priestess, that was another stand in role for women. If you made her High Priestess, then she could penetrate power in the temple elite. And so the women of the elite were used as pawns.
Of course, the males too. Males didn’t have free choice either.
Now, in this same period, warriors were rewarded with, in other words, successful warriors of the usurper king, in order to consolidate his power, he gave them conquered land and he gave them conquered women. Before that time, whenever there was warfare, and we have very accurate descriptions, they described how they piled up the corpses and they killed everybody. Piles and piles of corpses: men, women, and children were killed.
But after the agricultural revolution, we come to the development of, what I call, the invention of slavery. Alright? This is VERY crucial. And the point here is that because men had already learned that if you exchange women and you either rape them, or you marry them and they have children, they will stay in the family of the conqueror. Because they had learned that, they could transfer that to the conquered enemy. And what is very interesting is that in every society in the world that developed slavery, THE FIRST ENSLAVED PEOPLE WERE WOMEN AND CHILDREN. And what’s really interesting about this, when I first started researching this – I found it almost impossible to believe – I looked at dozens and dozens of sources on the origin of slavery, and they all had that sentence in it. And nobody, NOBODY asked WHY or WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS! THAT’S ALL I DID. I asked WHY? And WHAT’S THE MEANING OF IT? OKAY?
So we have the record that for several hundred years in this area, while they enslaved women and children, they did not enslave the conquered men.
They either killed them, or they mutilated them. They cut their Achilles tendons, they blinded them, they mocked them and branded them. They didn’t know what to do with them, because if a man had been fighting you with a bronze cudgel, right? And you conquered him, and now you brought him home, and you put a tool in his hand that was a stick with a bronze hoe on it and said, “Now work for me for free,” he might very well at night use it for a weapon. And they didn’t know what to do then.
So you had to invent a way in which you could make people enslaved. This was NOT a natural thing, okay? And men learned that you could do that by making the slave a MARKED human being that was denigrated so that he was not considered, he or she was not considered, quite human. You turn him into an “Other.” And this was done by a variety of ways. Very often the people conquered actually looked different, very different race – so racism starts. You know, racism is one of the very bases on which slavery is built.
But even if it was a next door neighbor that looked just exactly like your own tribe – they started cutting their hair differently, or they marked their ears, or they cut off their noses. They did very brutal things. The point was to mark them – as “different”. And then, to construct an idea that because they are different that they are inferior. And they’re not quite human. And once you have done that, then you can – then they found that you could use “difference” and turn it into “dominance”. And,
THAT IS THE KEY MORAL PRINCIPLE OF PATRIARCHY.
AND I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE KEY TO PATRIARCHY COMBINES ALL THE DISCRIMINATIONS IN ONE: You’re different if you’re female, you’re different if you are from a different race, you’re different if you are from a different ethnicity, you’re different, later, if you’re a different religion, and, finally, YOU ARE DIFFERENT IF WE SAY SO.
You know, we create. Welfare mothers? All of a sudden, they are different? They’re not our neighbors? They’re not exactly like us, only they are poor? No, you see. THIS is the essence of the moral principle on which patriarchy is built. And so, the intertwining of the forms of discrimination that are involved in slavery and sexism are so connected from the beginning that you cannot separate them out, and the mistake we have been making in the past 40 years is that everybody’s fighting their own little thing. You cannot abolish this that way. From the beginning it’s been interlocked, alright? And I think that’s the importance of this research.
What this also means, is that once slavery is invented, class is formed in a new way.
I call it in a phrase, class is formed “genderic-ly”. Namely, class is never the same for men and women. The enslaved people, the enslaved men and women and children are used as the exploited labor. That’s – they share that. But for women, slavery from the beginning means sexual services and reproductive services to the conquered males. And it does not mean that for males. For some periods, there are examples where males are used that way – in the Roman Empire and so forth. But those are the exceptions. And that’s the second principle. For woman subordination and oppression always involves the control of their sexual and reproductive functions by males or male dominated institutions. And this has not changed in 3,000 years. Okay?
Now, that means also that class – if class is defined as the access to resources, or the access of what the Marxists used to call “the means of production” – but I prefer “resources”, as there are all kinds of resources, then males have direct access to resources. Males of the dominant group have direct access to resources. But women have access to resources only THROUGH the men on whom they depend which is either the men in their family of origin or the men they marry. And this is a very, very BIG difference. So class is NOT the same for men and women and slavery is NOT the same for men and women. Now from here I’m going to a – I feel like I’m on a racetrack – from here I’m going to go to a period at the end of the second millennium and mostly the first millennium BCE when you already have kingships and states and the archaic states are formed.
At that time you have the big major law codes that are available and almost everything I’m saying here is based on the study of the four major law codes.
Mainly the code of Hammurabi, which is put down about 752 BCE, the Hittite and Assyrian law which was created and written down between the 15th and 11th century (you remember that it goes backwards before) and the Hebrew, and I’m mostly basing this on Genesis, which was completely written down in the 7th century BCE. So I’m going to give a quick overview, of how now, after we have – after human beings invented a way to turn difference into dominance and to organize the societies accordingly, that didn’t mean yet that they could get away with a lot of excess or with a lot of rights. That took a long time to develop. It was not a sudden overthrow. It was something that developed over a thousand years in this case.
So, first of all, in the law codes, what we see is before the laws are passed, kinship was the way in which the law took its order. In other words, if there was a crime committed, the head of the kin group – or the males in the kin group would take care of settling it. Usually with some kind of bloodbath, you know – an eye for an eye, or something like that. Gradually, that shifts.
The laws are written, and the laws are written so that the king suddenly starts intervening.
So for example, adultery. Adultery is a crime that only women can commit in these societies. There is no adultery for males, they can sleep around as much as they want. Women’s adultery is usually punishable by death. A very brutal death. But we see the difference between, at first, used to be the males in the family would kill their sister, daughter, whoever, to avenge a breach of law that shamed the family. But now in these law codes, it’s put down exactly what is to happen, and they have to go to the court, and the court puts in the punishment. So the state takes over the enforcement of the patriarchal arrangements of marriage.
Now these marriage arrangements vary by class. They are always considered “contracts” between two male heads of families. Nobody has any choice in marriage. Okay? And their – for the upper class group, the father of the bride receives a bride prize from the father of the groom. And that bride prize is, becomes the property of the husband and he has all the rights over it. And, however, he has a big constraint. He cannot sell it or use it for himself because he is obliged to keep that bride prize in case of his death. That is the support for his widow, alright? So the bride prize is a way in which the families assured a common interest for both husband and wife in the marriage, a financial interest, and they give some sort of protection to the widow. But what happens when the widow dies? That money, she can’t dispose of it. It goes to her sons.
So what we see here is the first development of something we are seeing all through historical time, and that is property passes from man to man, but it passes THROUGH women.
That’s the second principle of the patriarchy. So if you want to know what woman’s status actually is, there’s no use just looking at what some woman do – you have to look at the property relations. And you have to look at widowed women. That’s a very crucial way of finding out the actual status of women in a society.
Now the middle class of the ancient near Eastern societies, they don’t have that much property, and they don’t have that much property usually to be able to pay a bride prize for their sons, so what they do is they try and get a marriage for the daughter and the bride prize for their daughter is used to pay for the marriage of the son. So again, the property goes through women, but it’s used for the males in the family.
The lower class, the totally lower class, impoverished people, have, if they need to bury… First of all, they have one loophole that exists in patriarchy, is that if they have a very beautiful daughter, they can perhaps marry her to someone in the upper class. It’s possible for women to change their class status by marriage, but generally, the arrangements are all such that the property of the group, the class as a whole, stays in the class. They encourage people to marry within their class. But the very poor then, what they can do is to sell a daughter into prostitution or slavery and use the money to buy a bride for the son. Or, to go get out of debt, as the debt-slavery develops as an institution. There are many laws about it. If a man is in debt, he can take his wife and children and make them debt-slaves, and with money he can get from them, he can pay his debt.
So property in women and children is legalized as part of the legal institution of the patriarchal state.
Of course you can understand, when you, by the way, any time you open the newspapers and you read about some women in Afghan societies whose fathers are killing them, or whose brothers are killing them because they’ve been raped or disgraced – I mean, that’s the old system still working fine. It’s incredibly…it has an incredible longevity. The virginity of brides and the chastity of wives become a commodity for the family. And that’s how patriarchy starts. Okay? Rape is considered a crime by the rapist against the father of the raped woman or against the husband. And very often the punishment is that the raped woman gets married – has to get married – to the rapist.
So women have an – you can easily confuse that and think that it means women have become enslaved – they have NOT become enslaved. These very same middle and upper class women that I have described to you, in all these law codes, we have a picture of a society in which women are very active commercially. They have many occupations. They have a much higher economic status than 18th century American women, for example. They can buy and sell slaves. They can oppress other people. They can manage businesses – and they do. But yet, everything depends upon their marital and sexual arrangement.
Essentially, to establish patriarchy as a functioning system, men have to guarantee, and the state guarantees, that the sexuality and reproductive power of women is controlled by men and male dominated institutions.
Of course, we could spend a long time, and maybe next week we will, discussing how that still today plays out. And that of course informs feminist attitudes about such questions as abortion and rape. Because what’s involved is a very ancient and very, very important principle that’s the mainstay of this oppressive system. Now, to zoom right through. *laughter* Zooming right along, even in this whole period when all these institutions developed, women still have power. And one of the big powers that women still have in the ancient near Eastern societies is that they served the gods. They serve as priestesses, they serve in the temple, they rule over temples, and in a certain important way – you know, in ethical culture we understand religion as a human construct, and the human construct in religion has always been based on who creates life, who controls death, and who brings sin into the world.
And in the period that I’m talking about, all these societies have a pantheon of gods and goddesses who act very much like human beings, who have all the failings of human beings. In one of the oldest epics, the epic of Gilgamesh, it opens up with the gods bringing Gilgamesh who’s half god and half human to trial because he goes around raping women and it’s creating a disturbance. So you see what I mean. The gods and goddesses have human qualities and they’re equally obnoxious to each other. They conduct warfare, they conduct intrique. So if a person had something wrong with them, and they wanted help, they were as likely to go the the temple of the goddess where the priestess was in charge as to a temple of a god. This all changes. And it changes in the latter part of the first millennium, but it changes in different places at different times depending on the condition. It always changes in one direction only.
The gods and goddesses are replaced by a powerful male god.
It is the storm god, the god of the wind. It’s very interesting. That’s the most powerful god. And all of a sudden, or gradually, the goddess is dethroned and all of a sudden becomes his consort or his wife. That, of course, is the preliminary to, finally, to the development of monotheism, right? And as this development takes place, more and more, you find the creation stories changing so that it is no longer the mother goddess that creates life, and I didn’t have a chance to talk about the mother goddess cult in the Neolithic that’s pervasive. And, those mother goddesses were always also in charge of death.
So the mother goddess, who was in charge of life and death, is now the wife of the storm god. And all of a sudden you learn that it’s the storm god that gives life. And the next thing that you will be told in the Hebrew Bible is that it is God who creates life. God opens the womb of Sarah. God decides who is fertile and not. It’s no longer the Goddess, alright? So the dethroning of the Goddess takes place everywhere, and if you look at it historically, as I did, it takes place when a particular state becomes IMPERIALIST. It’s very interesting. It doesn’t take place in any other time. When the state begins to make claims that it has the right to conquer its neighbors and to rule – as one ruler said, “I rule the four corners of the Earth. God has given me this right.” There we are.
To conclude this sad story.
*laughter from audience* By the time that monotheism develops, by the time you have empires in this region, you have powerful military states that control the lives of their citizens, you see the development of science, Greek science, Greek philosophy, and women by that time have been fairly well removed from contact with the Divine. That also is a process that takes many hundreds of years, but it takes place always in the same directions. So the founders of Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle, are very explicit about their view of women: Women are crippled human beings. They are incomplete. They are not quite human. And therefore, you can compare them to slaves. And the comparison is made.
So what we are seeing is, that – now if we talk about two kinds of things that give power – one is the region of actual power – which is militarism and the distribution of land. That’s one source of power for human beings. But there’s another source of power. And that’s the symbol system. What you put into people’s heads. How you explain the world and the relationship to the universe and the meaning of life. Okay? So by the time that men, and IT WAS MEN IN THIS CASE, create the first meaningful symbol system of Western civilization, the subordination of women has been accomplished “in fact” – every place they live. And so it isn’t questioned. It isn’t an issue. They discuss slavery.
They discuss whether it’s right to enslave people, but they do NOT discuss whether women are EQUAL human beings. That comes later.
And so because of that antiquity, by that time then, when the very values of Western civilization are created, the men who create this mental construct, assume the subordination of women as either “Natural” or “God given”. They assume as a verity that God does not speak to women. And that a “male” god creates life and that “sin” was brought into the world by women. Well, by the time you have that mental construct firmly established and men and women believe in it and teach it to their children, nobody can question patriarchy.
And we now add, which I don’t have time to do unfortunately for you, 2000 further years of systematically depriving women of education. Okay? Systematically and in EVERY place in the world. Okay? And then you ask, why aren’t women better off? Why didn’t they start for their struggle for rights sooner? So, in conclusion, patriarchy was established by men and women, I believe. And when it was first established, it served a purpose. I call it the patriarchal bargain that women made. And the bargain was: I give up my sexual freedom. I give up the idea of any, you know, and my reproductive freedom, and in exchange one man or the state will protect me and my children from warfare and will allocate resources to me.
Okay? That’s the bargain. So it was once a good bargain, IN THE NEOLITHIC. *laughter from the audience* We’re no longer living the Neolithic. And what we have is an idea system that’s based on a perfectly wonderful arrangement FOR THE NEOLITHIC. And which is TOTALLY dysfunctional now, OKAY?
WOMEN AND CHILDREN PERISH IN MODERN WARFARE IN EXCESSIVE PREDOMINANCE OVER MALES, OKAY? SO – PROTECTION IS OUT THE WINDOW. We can argue to what extent men provide resources for women. THAT’S ARGUABLE.
My point is that to further existence of patriarchy as it is based on hierarchy, militarism, enslavement, and the constant pitting against each other of one group for the benefit of another, ENDANGERS NOT ONLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN, BUT THE WORLD. IT’S DYSFUNCTIONAL. IT’S OUTDATED. IT CAN BE ABOLISHED.”
Dr. Gerda Lerner (April 30, 1920 – January 2, 2013) was an Austrian-born American historian and woman’s history author. In addition to her numerous scholarly publications, she wrote poetry, fiction, theater pieces, screenplays, and an autobiography. She served as president of the Organization of American Historians from 1980 to 1981. In 1980, she was appointed Robinson Edwards Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she taught until retiring in 1991.
Lerner was one of the founders of the academic field of women’s history. In 1963, while still an undergraduate at the New School for Social Research, she taught “Great Women in American History”, which is considered to be the first regular college course on women’s history offered anywhere.
She taught at Long Island University from 1965 to 1967. She played a key role in the development of women’s history curricula and was involved in the development of degree programs in women’s history at Sarah Lawrence College (where she taught from 1968 to 1979 and established the nation’s first master’s degree program in women’s history) and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she launched the first Ph.D. program in women’s history. She also worked at Duke University and Columbia University, where she was a co-founder of the Seminar on Women.
