Karin Bojs: When the patriarchs came to the island of Gotland

In the debate turn many – from Gudrun Schyman to Jordan Peterson – with the concept of ”patriarchy”. It means that the power in the family and society are most in older men.

Researchers in anthropology and archaeology tend to rather talk about that communities can be ”patrifokala”, with a family built around the father, and ”matrifokala”, with a strong focus on modern.

if the ”patrilinjära” communities, where arvslinjer on fädernesidan is central.

Sweden is today one of the world's most gender-equal countries, but our ten most common surnames are still patrilinjära ”son-names” as Andersson, Johansson and Karlsson.

To the early indoeuropéernas communities was patrilinjära there is a lot of evidence for. Not least from the new dna research, which can follow how Y-chromosomes are inherited from father to son.

from the språkforskningen. All the early well-known indo-european cultures, such as the oldest indian culture, the greeks, the romans, the germans, and celts, had to focus on husfadern/patriarch. It is clear from their vocabulary. Jenny Larsson, professor of baltic languages at Stockholm university, gives me some examples:

When the linguistics reconstructs the early indo-european can find many more words for relatives on the male's side, such as ”grandfather”, ”uncle” and ”nephew”.

Shared paternity was clearly an important thing for indoeuropéerna to keep track of. ”The same father” is called in Greek homopatōr, in the icelandic samfeðra and in reconstructed indo-european *somo-pətōr.

is also the English word for the wedding: wedding. It goes back to the indo-european word *wedh -, which means ”to abduct”, ”bring”. The indoeuropeiske the man brought the wife to her *domos, their ”households”. Where he was *demspotis ”the lord of the house”. In sanskrit dampatis. On the Greek despotes – a word which we still use in English when we call a maktfullkomlig male rulers for ”despot”.

some researchers have argued that the strong patrifokala and patrilinjära order arrived to Europe only with indoeuropéerna for about 4500 years ago. The most well-known proponent of this hypothesis was Marija Gimbutas. She was strongly contested, but the new dna research has given her many right when she claimed that indo-european languages arrived here in connection with the extensive migrations from the steppes to the east.

Had Marija Gimbutas was also right in that ”old Europe”, as she called the previous bondesamhällena, was matrilinjärt built with a stronger focus on the role of a mother?

at Least not with the old farmers who built the burial chamber of great stones in Västergötland, sweden, on Gotland, in Ireland and in Scotland.

A research team led by Mattias Jakobsson at Uppsala university, published this week a study in the journal PNAS. The group has analyzed dna and fixed by the carbon-14 method and was able to follow people in stenkammargravarna in up to ten generations.

clearly it was a question of family tombs – many of the gravlagda people were related to each other. Kinship in mödernesidan were, for example, mother and child. But the kinship in fädernesidan dominated. Mattias Jakobssons conclusion is that the individuals in the stenkammargravarna – not least in Ansarve at Tofta on Gotland – came from a conductive layer in a patrilinjärt society.

the dossier is small with 24 individuals sampled. Matrilinjära bondesamhällen may very well have occurred elsewhere, for example in the Balkans. There we'll see as more dna analyses are published.

for thousands Of years, man's lineage dominated our part of the world. This week's study is a first step towards gaining clarity in when it started.

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