The basic assumption with which we must begin any theorizing about the past is that men and women built civilization jointly. Starting as we do from the end result and reasoning back, we thus ask a different question than that of a single-cause ‘origin.’ We ask: how did men and women in their society-building and in the construction of what we call Western civilization arrive at the present state? Once we abandon the concept of women as historical victims, acted upon by violent men, inexplicable ‘forces,’ and societal institutions, we must explain the central puzzle–woman’s participation in the construction of the system which subordinates her. I suggest abandoning the search for an empowering past–the search for matriarchy–is the first step in the right direction. The creation of compensatory myths of the distant past of women will not emancipate women in the present and the future. The patriarchal mode of thought is so built into our mental processes that we cannot exclude it unless we first make ourselves consciously aware of it, which always means a special effort. Thus, in thinking about the prehistoric past of women, we are so much locked into the explanatory androcentric system that the only alternate model that readily comes to mind is that of reversal. If not patriarchy, then there must have been matriarchy. Undoubtedly there were many different modes in which men and women organized society and allocated power and resources. None of the archaeological evidence we have is conclusive and sufficient to allow us to construct a scientifically sound model of that important period of the transition from Neolithic hunting/gathering to sedentary agricultural societies. The way of the anthropologists, who offer us examples of contemporary hunting/gathering societies and draw from them inferences about societies in the fifth millennium B.C., is no less speculative than is that of the philosopher and the specialist in religious studies who reason from literature and myths. The point is that most of the speculative models have been androcentric and have assumed the naturalness of patriarchy, and the few feminist models have been ahistorical and therefore, to my mind, unsatisfactory.