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Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture

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See also: Menstruation and culture

Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture is a book by the evolutionary anthropologist Chris Knight. It was published by Yale University Press in 1991.

The book outlines a new theory of human origins, focusing particularly on the emergence of symbolic ritual, kinship, religion and mythic belief. Previously, the main theory in currency was that of Claude Lévi-Strauss, who claimed that culture's rule over nature was established by men when they invented the incest taboo. In this origins model, men renounce all sexual claims to their own sisters and daughters, instead forging matrimonial alliances by exchanging their female relatives between themselves as wives.[1] Alongside the incest taboo, according to Lévi-Strauss, the dominant sex invented a further series of critically important rules concerning such things as cooking, romantic attachment, the timing of menstruation and the wearing of personal ornaments.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). Unfortunately for Knight, Marshack's interpretations were then being dismissed by critics as 'wishful thinking'.[2] Since then, a range of studies of paleolithic rock art and cave art have helped to confirm Marshack's interpretations. Today, there is widespread agreement that early hunter-gatherers perceived significant correspondences between menstrual and lunar periodicities, scheduling their ceremonies and hunting patterns to achieve a ritual ideal of synchrony with the moon.[3].

Another of Knight's 1991 predictions concerned structures of family, residence and kinship. In 1991, the provisional consensus was that early human hunters must have lived in patrilocal bands. Knight's model seemed difficult to accept because it presupposed strong female kin-based coalitions, early hunter-gatherer women choosing to live with and share childcare with their mothers and other female relatives. In the years since Knight's book was written, a number of developments -- including Kristen Hawks' 'grandmother hypothesis', Sarah Hrdy's 'alloparenting' model and Camilla Power's 'Female Cosmetic Coalitions' hypothesis -- have indicated that early human postmarital residence patterns are unlikely to have been patrilocal. Paleogenetic studies over recent decades have confirmed that among African hunter-gatherers, matrilocal residence was traditionally the norm.[4]

Reception

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Knight's book was favourably reviewed in The Times Higher Educational Supplement, The Times Literary Supplement and The London Review of Books; it also received publicity through an interview on the BBC World Service Science Now program, a debate with Dr. Henrietta Moore on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, a front-page news report in The Independent on Sunday and Daily Telegraph and coverage in many other periodicals.[5] The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute described Blood Relations as ‘a very readable, witty, lively treasure-trove of anthropological wisdom and insight.’[6] In April 1998, the Independent on Sunday featured a two-page article on Knight's work by science correspondent Marek Kohn, who described Knight's approach to the origins of language as ‘drawing together some of the most dynamic lines of argument in current British evolutionary thought’.[7]

“This book may be the most important ever written on the evolution of human social organization. It brings together observation and theory from social anthropology, primatology, and paleoanthropology in a manner never before equalled. The author, Chris Knight, is up to date on all these fields and has achieved an extraordinary synthesis. His critiques of Claude Lévi-Strauss on totemism and myth are a sheer tour de force.”

— Alex Walter, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University

In 1997, the feminist journalist and historian Barbara Ehrenreich did much to explain and utilize Knight's ideas in her book, Blood Rites: The origins and history of the passions of war.[8] Among major poets, Ted Hughes[9] and Peter Redgrove[10] favourably cite Knight's insights concerning menstrual synchrony and its place in world mythology and folklore.

The sculptor Anish Kapoor draws inspiration from Knight's work, describing how his appreciation of the colour red – in, for example, Kapoor's celebrated sculpture Blood Relations – owes much to Knight's 'wonderful theory' that the world's first art was produced when women began decorating themselves with red ochre cosmetics.[11][12]

Another prominent figure inspired by Knight's book is the Chilean revolutionary activist and artist Cecilia Vicuña. Having studied Knight's work over many years, she associates the blood-red woolen quipus or 'Red Threads' central to much of her recent work with the string figures and images of menstruating goddesses in Aboriginal Australian rock-art as described and interpreted by Knight in his book.[13]

Although Knight's theory of human cultural and symbolic origins remains controversial, in the years since Blood Relations was published it has become central to an increasing body of archaeological research and debate on how symbolic culture first emerged during the evolution of our species.[14][15][16][17][18]

  1. ^ Lévi Strauss, C. 1969. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode.
  2. ^ D’Errico, F. 1989. ‘On Wishful Thinking and Lunar ‘Calendars’’. Current Anthropology, Vol. 30 (1), pp. 117-118.
  3. ^ Bennet Bacon et al., 2022. 'An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological Calendar.' Cambridge Archaeological Journal, October 2022, pp. 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774322000415
  4. ^ Verdu, P. et al., (2013) Sociocultural behavior, sex-biased admixture and effective population sizes in Central African Pygmies and non-Pygmies. Molecular Biology and Evolution, first published online January 7, 2013 doi:10.1093/molbev/mss328. Schlebusch, C.M. (2010) Genetic variation in Khoisan-speaking populations from southern Africa. Dissertation, University of Witwatersrand. See pages following p.68, Fig 3.18 and p.180-81, fig 4.23 and p.243, p.287. Destro-Bisol G, et al., (2004). Variation of female and male lineages in sub-saharan populations: the importance of sociocultural factors. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 21: 1673-82. Hammer MF et al., (2001). Hierarchical patterns of global human Y-chromosome diversity. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 18: 1189-203. Wood ET, Stover DA, Ehret C, Destro-Bisol G, Spedini G, McLeod H, Louie L, et al., (2005). Contrasting patterns of Y chromosome and mtDNA variation in Africa: evidence for sex-biased demographic processes. European Journal of Human Genetics, 13: 867-76.
  5. ^ Reviews of Chris Knight, 1991. Blood Relations: Menstruation and the origins of culture.
  6. ^ R. E. Davis-Floyd, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
  7. ^ Marek Kohn, 'Survival of the Chattiest.' Independent on Sunday, 4 April 1998.
  8. ^ Barbara Ehrenreich, 1997. Blood Rites: The origins and history of the passions of war. London: Granta, pp. 104-110.
  9. ^ Ted Hughes, 1992. Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. London: Faber and Faber.
  10. ^ Shuttle, P. and P.]] Redgrove, 1978. The Wise Wound. Menstruation and Everywoman. London: Gollancz.
  11. ^ Anish Kapoor, Surge. 2019. Listado de Obras en Exhibitión, p. 82
  12. ^ Interview. Anish Kapoor on vaginas, recovering from breakdown and his violent new work: ‘Freud would have a field day’. Jonathan Jones, The Guardian, September 31, 2021.
  13. ^ Cecilia Vicuna, 2017, Read Thread. The Story of the Red Thread. Sternberg Press.
  14. ^ Knight, C.; Power, C.; Watts, I. (April 1995). "The Human Symbolic Revolution: A Darwinian Account" (PDF). Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 5 (1): 75–114. doi:10.1017/S0959774300001190. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 August 2020. Retrieved 8 May 2009.
  15. ^ Watts, I. 2009. Red ochre, body painting, and language: interpreting the Blombos ochre. In R. Botha and C. Knight (eds), The Cradle of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 62-92.
  16. ^ Power, C. 2010. Cosmetics, identity and consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 17, No. 7-8, pp. 73-94.
  17. ^ Watts, I. M. Chazan and J. Wilkins, 2016. Early Evidence for Brilliant Ritualized Display: Specularite Use in the Northern Cape (South Africa) between ~500 and ~300 Ka. Current Anthropology Volume 57, Number 3, pp. 287-310.
  18. ^ Dapschauskas, R., Göden, M. B, Sommer, C. and Kandel, A. W., 2022. The Emergence of Habitual Ochre Use in Africa and its Significance for the Development of Ritual Behavior During the Middle Stone Age. Journal of World Prehistory https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-022-09170-2
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