The patriarchy is a vertically organized hierarchy. What I’m about to propose has no evidence so far. I venture that the matriarchy was a hierarchy, not vertically organized, rather horizontally organized. (Wikipedia reports on “flat organization” as a horizontal organization, the term “flat” has a derogatory tone.) I first read about this theory in Jeffery Wolf Green’s book “Pluto Volume One” Basically it states, I’m paraphrasing:

Under the horizontal hierarchy of the matriarchy all members of that community mainly men and women were in service to the Divine Feminine. Children were raised collectively. There was no traditional family. All resources were held in common and there was no thought given to an “outside aggressor” because other communities were the same. There may have seemed to be no hierarchy, but women were considered the representative of the Divine Feminine. In procreation men were thought to be vessels of the Goddess or the Divine Feminine. Other than this one caveat the matriarchy was egalitarian. Men were conduits or a delivery system that made a child in a woman. It took a long time for men to realize that they were not merely vessels for the Goddess. Upon this realization they rebelled with acting out anger / rage and violence. The Huns swept across Asia and into the Mediterranean destroyed matriarchal communities and thus the patriarchy began. Men reacted to women’s power by taking it away through acts of isolation for protection from other men. Women were owned and prized for producing sons so the heritage of the patriarchy could continue in perpetuity. This line of reasoning follows logically, yet there is no evidence supporting it thus far.

Vertical hierarchies such as the patriarchy are doomed to failure with a top heavy culture of supremely wealthy men possessing all the power. The advent of predatory capitalism belongs to many men’s incisive and reductionistic thinking that has been and continues to be on a suicidal collision course flaming the climate crisis.