They had such records as were then
kept, all the tools and implements of the time, and a most
fertile land to work in.
There were a handful of the younger matrons who had escaped
slaughter, and a few babies were born after the cataclysm
--but only two boys, and they both died.
For five or ten years they worked together, growing stronger
and wiser and more and more mutually attached, and then the
miracle happened--one of these young women bore a child. Of
course they all thought there must be a man somewhere, but
none was found. Then they decided it must be a direct gift from
the gods, and placed the proud mother in the Temple of Maaia
--their Goddess of Motherhood--under strict watch. And there,
as years passed, this wonder-woman bore child after child, five
of them--all girls.
I did my best, keenly interested as I have always been in
sociology and social psychology, to reconstruct in my mind the
real position of these ancient women. There were some five or six
hundred of them, and they were harem-bred; yet for the few
preceding generations they had been reared in the atmosphere of
such heroic struggle that the stock must have been toughened
somewhat.
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