Hey, Derek, about patriarchy:

So, why do we have patriarchy as the main social system in our society? The queanstwer ions hiddesn in the ancient documents of the oldest world civilization, called Ancient Sumer.
During the dawn of the agriculture age, human society was very peaceful, spiritual, and sexually uninhibited. Back then, there was athe cCult of the Mother Goddess, which appreciated women’s abilitiesy to bear future generations. There was no gender discrimination; women had the same privileges as men in both society and commerce.
But everything changed when the first major types of government started to develop in Mesopotamia. During thisat time, ancient Sumerians developed the type of government called “primitive monarchy,” which is described in the Epic of Gilgamesh. –aActions of a kind were very limited by the aristocratic counsel of nobles in a city-state. Gilgamesh was the last of the Sumerian primitive monarchs who was exiled by the nobles of Uruk. After that, social stratification and oppression of the oligarchic rule drove Ancient Sumer to the rise of the so -called “tyrants” in the Greek sense of the term: an illegitimate ruler and great politician who holds constitutional powers. One of them was Urukagina, who usurped power in the city-state called Lagash. He is known as the first reformer in history, and through his reforms he tried to protect oppressed common people.
Urukagina freed inhabitants of Lagash from priestesses’ oppression, bribery, hunger, murders, usury, and theft. But he was not just the first reformer who established laws in the interest of his people. In fact, he was the worst sexist as well, as he was the first one who officially declared patriarchy in the world. Theis phrase on Urukagina’s condes explains how strict and violent his laws were toward women:
 “If a woman speaks out of turn, then her teeth will be smashed by a brick.”
After his reforms, the outlook on women totally changed. More and more Sumerian city-statets started to become patriarchal. Later on, (for example, in the Code of Hammurabi), husbands and fathers owned the sexual reproduction of their wives, and could kill them for adultery, as virginity was not thea condition for marriage. In the Ancient Assyria, things were kind of worse: husband could beat theisr wifves without any punishment, or even kill them…, but only with a cause. Also, according to Ancient Assyrian laws, if a husband commitsted a crime, his wife according to the Ancient Assyrian ulaws cand be punished in his place. Patriarchy became the main social system in Mesopotamia. That made a huge influence on the Ancient Greecek culture, as the first Greek philosophers used to traveled to Mesopotamia and studyied philosophy and sciences. In the Ancient Greeksce, sports, literature, politics, and philosophy were male domains (except in Sparta, where they considered men and women as equal). As we know, Ancient Greece was athe cradle of the Western civilization. And Ancient Greeks are known not only for their magnificent achievements in areas of sciences, philosophy, arts, and government, but also for their very strict patriarchy system, which they adopted from Mesopotamians,. This history has influenced our lives today.