Talk given to the Radical Anthropology Group at Daryll Forde Seminar Room, Anthropology Building, 14 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW on 16 January 2018. In answer to the question Did Matriarchy Ever Exist? Chris Knight, founder of the Radical Anthropology Group, discussed what inhibited twentieth-century anthropology from studying or recognising female agency in cultural-, social-, political- and evolutionary contexts; how a fresh look at the ethnographic record, mythology in particular, along with greater understanding of primatology and egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, helps to explain how female solidarity was at the key to our origins as a species, and, we hope, will be at the heart of our future.
