The suggestion that settlements and cities were a function of women’s desire to have better, safer and more comfortable places to raise children, is contrary to many assessments, which see these developments as masculine. The argument is that as men accumulated wealth, they decided to build settlements and cities to protect it.
There are a couple of problems with this. In the hunter-gatherer cultures we know of, wealth is a largely unknown concept. That was why the early colonists used valueless trinkets to seduce the peoples they encountered and would eventually enslave. Those people liked shiny pieces of coloured glass because they were pretty; they had no idea of relative material value. A gold doubloon or a worthless bauble, all were the same. The idea of personal property is similarly strange to them, so how could wealth possibly be amassed; and if it can’t be, because you don’t know what it is, then why would anyone need to protect it?
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