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"It turned out that the Yangshao Culture, as it was now known, included settled communities extending along most of the length of the Yellow River and its tributaries 6,000 to 7,000 years ago. According to inferences made from settlement and burial practices, women played the dominant role in these communities. They were matriarchal. It wasn't until the Yangshao Culture was replaced by the Lungshan Culture 2,000 years later that men began playing the dominant role in society. What changed things was war. As long as the focus of life was on reproducing and finding enough food to eat, women were more important than men. As soon as enough children survived long enough to become adults and there was a surplus of food, men started going to war, not because they had to, but because they could. Testosterone. Men have been controlling societies around the world ever since."

p. 120 The Yellow River Odyssey by Bill Porter. 
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