Who invented hieroglyphics? Who did Einstein's mathematics? Who led the defence of Viet Nam in 40 AD? Who invented the first computer? Who built the pyramid at Giza? Who developed the merino sheep? Who was the first writer in the world? Who invented the wheel?



All were women. When the next person asks: Where are all the famous women artists/inventors/architects/writers/scientists? – this book will make it easy to find their names

Hawthorne, Susan

English

ResearchOnline at James Cook University

Hawthorne, Susan. The Spinifex Quiz Book, Spinifex Press, 1993. ProQuest Ebook Central,         http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jcu/detail.action?docID=410456.Created from jcu on 2018-11-20 19:57:42.Copyright © 1993. Spinifex Press. All rights reserved. Hawthorne, Susan. The Spinifex Quiz Book, Spinifex Press, 1993. ProQuest Ebook Central,         http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jcu/detail.action?docID=410456.Created from jcu on 2018-11-20 19:58:54.Copyright © 1993. Spinifex Press. All rights reserved.Susan Hawthorne writes fiction, poetry and non-fiction. A novel, TheFalling Woman was published in 1992, and in 1993 her collection ofpoems, The Language in my Tongue was published in the volume FourNew Poets. Her fiction, poetry and non-fiction have been published inmagazines and anthologies in Australia, New Zealand, Europe andNorth America, and a German translation of The Spinifex Quiz Bookwill be published in 1994. In 1989 she received the Pandora FlorenceJames Award for Outstanding Contribution to Women’s Publishing. Hawthorne, Susan. The Spinifex Quiz Book, Spinifex Press, 1993. ProQuest Ebook Central,         http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jcu/detail.action?docID=410456.Created from jcu on 2018-11-20 19:58:54.Copyright © 1993. Spinifex Press. All rights reserved.Other books by Susan Hawthorne:AnthologiesDifference (1985)Moments of Desire (1989/90) with Jenny PausackerThe Exploding Frangipani (1990) with Cathie DunsfordAngels of Power (1991) with Renate KleinPoetryThe Language in My Tongue/Four New Poets (1993)Spinifex is an Australian nativedesert grass that is droughtresistant and holds the earthtogether. In central Australiaspinifex grass is traditionallyburnt by Aboriginal people as ameans of regenerating the land.Hawthorne, Susan. The Spinifex Quiz Book, Spinifex Press, 1993. ProQuest Ebook Central,         http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jcu/detail.action?docID=410456.Created from jcu on 2018-11-20 19:58:54.Copyright © 1993. Spinifex Press. All rights reserved.The Spinifex Qu i z  BookA Book of Women’sAnswersS U S A N  H AW T H O R N ESPINIFEX??Hawthorne, Susan. The Spinifex Quiz Book, Spinifex Press, 1993. ProQuest Ebook Central,         http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jcu/detail.action?docID=410456.Created from jcu on 2018-11-20 19:58:54.Copyright © 1993. Spinifex Press. All rights reserved.Spinifex Press Pty Ltd,504 Queensberry Street,North Melbourne, Vic. 3051AustraliaFirst published by Spinifex Press, 1991Second edition published 1993Copyright © these questions and the collection Susan Hawthorne,1991, 1993.All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyrightreserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in anyform or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording or otherwise), without prior written permission of both thecopyright owner and the above publisher of the book.Typeset in Garamond Light by Claire Warren, MelbourneMade and Printed in Australia by The Book Printer, VictoriaNational Library of AustraliaCataloguing-in-Publication entry:CIPHawthorne, Susan, 1951–        .The Spinifex quiz book.2nd ed.Bibliography.Includes index.ISBN  1 875559 15 9.1. Women – Miscellanea. I. Hawthorne, Susan, 1951–    . Spinifexbook of women’s answers. II. Title. III. Title: Spinifex book ofwomen’s answers.305.42Hawthorne, Susan. The Spinifex Quiz Book, Spinifex Press, 1993. ProQuest Ebook Central,         http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jcu/detail.action?docID=410456.Created from jcu on 2018-11-20 19:58:54.Copyright © 1993. Spinifex Press. All rights reserved.ContentsAcknowledgements viIntroduction 1Science and SpiritQuestions 5Answers 14HerstoryQuestions 17Answers 27LivesQuestions 30Answers 43Time and PlaceQuestions 46Answers 56IdeologyQuestions 60Answers 73Sport and CultureQuestions 77Answers 89Sources 94Index 97Hawthorne, Susan. The Spinifex Quiz Book, Spinifex Press, 1993. ProQuest Ebook Central,         http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jcu/detail.action?docID=410456.Created from jcu on 2018-11-20 19:58:54.Copyright © 1993. Spinifex Press. All rights reserved.AcknowledgementsThere are many women to thank for both the genesis and the finalshape of this book. The idea for the book came up in a meeting ofthe Australian Feminist Book Fortnight group, because there was agenuinely collective need for such a book. My thanks to the groupfor the idea. Thanks, too, to the individuals in the group who providedthe initial questions: Judith Rodriguez, Sue Martin, Kate Veitch and, inparticular, Jennifer Lang who provided numerous questions and organ-ized them into sections. I would also like to thank Cathie Dunsford,Diana Ellerton, Sandy Jeffs, Renate Klein, Jocelynne Scutt, DaleSpender and Lynne Spender for providing questions in areas I knewlittle about and which helped the overall balance of the book. I wouldlike to acknowledge the writers of the books in the bibliography, as wellas other books not listed, without whose research this book wouldsimply not have been possible. Finally, thanks to the magicalworkings of Claire Warren, typesetter extraordinaire, to ElizabethWood Ellem for her fantastic index, and to Liz Nicholson for herimaginative cover design.Hawthorne, Susan. The Spinifex Quiz Book, Spinifex Press, 1993. ProQuest Ebook Central,         http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jcu/detail.action?docID=410456.Created from jcu on 2018-11-20 19:58:54.Copyright © 1993. Spinifex Press. All rights reserved.IntroductionDid you know that the first known writer in the world was a woman;as was the first novelist? But it is not only in areas such as writingthat women are responsible for cultural advancement. Many culturescredit a female deity with creating the world and with inventing allmanner of things, including the wheel! Many of the world’s oldestartefacts depict women, and Marija Gimbutas, archeologist of OldEurope, claims that there is no evidence of a father figure in theoldest known historical human era, the paleolithic era (Gimbutas,1990: 316).In addition, there is an enormous range of traditional stories fromaround the world that point to a time when women had much moresacred and secular power than now. Much of early human historyis guess work and is limited by the imaginations of people engagedin deciphering it. Three sets of footprints across a volcanic ash plainin Africa may be interpreted as a group of men or a nuclear family,but rarely is it suggested that it may be a group of women. Thereis no reason for that other than our own prejudices. Likewise humanfigurines previously interpreted as male are now being relookedat and reinterpreted. Closer to our own time, many cultures havea range of tales about heroines who performed remarkable featsof physical or intellectual strength. This book, in part, is intendedto bring to the fore some of this knowledge. All the questions arebased on previously published material and shortcomings may bethe result of earlier distortion of texts relating to women.The first thing to say, with regard to the questions asked is, don’tfeel bad if you don’t know the answers. There are many questionsabout history, the arts, science and women’s lives that simply arenot part of the mainstream from which educationalists draw theirfacts. Some of the questions, if you were to look up a male-centred reference book, would either not appear, or have a differentanswer. This discrepancy is due, not to mischievousness on mypart, but rather to the distortion of knowledge about women thatprevails in our culture. A great deal of information about womenhas been lost or destroyed over the generations. The burning ofthe great library in Alexandria in the first century AD was one of1Hawthorne, Susan. The Spinifex Quiz Book, Spinifex Press, 1993. ProQuest Ebook Central,         http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jcu/detail.action?docID=410456.Created from jcu on 2018-11-20 19:57:12.Copyright © 1993. Spinifex Press. All rights reserved.the first great losses. The greater part of Sappho’s poetry was lostwhen the church fathers burnt her work as the works of a heretic.Much more was lost during the years of the witchburnings inEurope. In some instances the losses were not irrevocable. Theworks of women remained on library shelves gathering dust andhave, in recent years, been picked up and read again by feministscholars in countries all around the world. As a result there is agreat deal of re-evaluation of human history from its earliestbeginnings going on. But new knowledge takes time to percolatethrough a culture. In spite of the re-assessment, the cavemanimage still predominates in the popular imagination, as do manyother false images of women.Have you ever been asked, ‘Where are all the great women com-posers / artists / inventors / scientists / explorers / philosophers /doctors / economists?’ The problem with this kind of question isthat if you don’t have a quick answer, then it is assumed that therewere none. There have always been women working at theforefront of just about every human occupation – even those withwhich we might not want to identify – such as military expertise.Indeed, this is one area where many women’s names appear inthe records. Sometimes a man has been credited with, say, awork of art, because the person (probably another man) couldn’tbelieve, or did not wish to believe, that a woman could paint sowell. At other times men were given credit, because they werethe public figures associated with the discovery which they couldnot have achieved without assistance, without mathematical skill,or without the daily support of a woman. The Japanese poet SeiShonagon described the sentiment of many women when shewrote:Very Tiresome Things: When a poem of one’s own, that one hasallowed someone else to use as his, is singled out for praise.Even more tiresome were the times when men stole, outright,women’s work, thereby establishing lucrative reputations for them-selves. Who knows that it was women who invented the basic toolsfor our contemporary computer society?When you are asked such a question it is helpful to know a bookthat contains the answers to these questions. The questions andanswers in The Spinifex Book of Women’s Answers will go some waytowards changing the popular conception of what women have, orhave not, achieved. The book by no means includes every womanof achievement – many volumes would be needed for that. Some2IntroductionHawthorne, Susan. The Spinifex Quiz Book, Spinifex Press, 1993. ProQuest Ebook Central,         http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jcu/detail.action?docID=410456.Created from jcu on 2018-11-20 19:57:12.Copyright © 1993. Spinifex Press. All rights reserved.of the questions are phrased in such a way as to make it possibleto guess at an answer – there being more information in thequestion than in the answer. This had been done to help allay theover-whelming feeling of not knowing the answers. Anyone whocan answer correctly more than ten percent of the questions isdoing well at countering their conditioning and their education.Amongst the traditions dealt with in this book are also new ones:contemporary feminist traditions. Just as women’s work has not beenadequately passed on previously, contemporary feminists areconcerned to ensure their work is recorded and remembered. Books,art works, political stances and famous utterances are included inthis area.This book can be used in many ways. You can sit down andread it straight through (you will find the answers at the end ofeach section). You can use it as the basis for a quiz night – a quiznight all about women, or if it’s a mixed quiz, as a way ofevening up the odds. A question about a famous sportsmanshould be balanced with one about a famous sportswoman, andso on. The book can be used by students and teachers, as the basisfor games or as a source of information about what women haveachieved throughout history and in the modern world. Girls needto know about women who have been mathematicians, poets,mechanics, politicians and many other things besides. We all needto know more about our very long history. How does it change awoman’s view of herself when she hears that female figures createdthe world, or that a woman excelled at the same chosen occupation?Clearly, for an edition published in Australia, questions aboutAustralia and other English-speaking cultures predominate. I have,however, included questions about many other cultures and aboutwomen from countries around the world. This does, of course, makeit even harder – but not for everyone. These questions will be easier,no doubt, for some. What I have discovered in putting this booktogether is that what is obscure for one person is very obvious foranother. Each of us has our own special interests and this appliesto me as the compiler of the questions. I would be interested inhearing from readers who are able to provide questions in areasthat are presently under-represented. It is also important to acknow-ledge and rectify the cultural misrepresentation of European-centredhistory. Many, so-called ‘European’ cultural institutions wereimported from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Likewise, manyoral traditions from around the world record historical events in3IntroductionHawthorne, Susan. The Spinifex Quiz Book, Spinifex Press, 1993. ProQuest Ebook Central,         http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jcu/detail.action?docID=410456.Created from jcu on 2018-11-20 19:57:12.Copyright © 1993. Spinifex Press. All rights reserved.religious ritual or storytelling form. Some of these oral traditionspredate written historical records. Inevitably, however, some areaswill not have been adequately covered.The questions in the book are divided into six categories:Science and Spirit, Herstory, Lives, Time and Place, Ideology,Sport and Culture. The categories provide a focus for questions,but they are not meant to be limiting and you will also findquestions about Sport or Science in categories such as Lives orIdeology. Similarly there are occasions when the answers may beincomplete, where, for instance just a few names are listed andthe list could be extended. This is not always a quiz about right andwrong answers – there are still many areas where our knowledgeis incomplete. Feel free to add your own answers to questionssuch as, Which goddesses are credited with creating the world?There are too many to list, and if I were to attempt it there wouldstill be omissions. And there are cultures where the names ofdeities cannot be pronounced – I hope I have not inadvertentlyoverstepped any boundaries in this regard. There are otherquestions where different traditions provide different answers, andwhere I have discovered this to be the case, as with immunizationand the origin of the Amazons, I have included the variantanswers.The Sources represent those books which were the source of atleast three questions or critical new information. Some providedmany more. In general, they provide further reading or informationon many of the questions. I hope that this book inspires you toread more about the lives and achievements of the women in it.Susan HawthorneAugust 1991.4IntroductionHawthorne, Susan. The Spinifex Quiz Book, Spinifex Press, 1993. ProQuest Ebook Central,         http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jcu/detail.action?docID=410456.Created from jcu on 2018-11-20 19:57:12.Copyright © 1993. Spinifex Press. All rights reserved.

The Spinifex Quiz Book: a book of women's answers

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The Spinifex Quiz Book: a book of women's answers

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