A culture of caring, basis of a fair and ecologically sustainable society

Family groups are an essential component of the cultural element which defines human ecosystems, because they are the economic, social units for transmitting values and knowledge, emotional, educational and health care to their children, and women have been the protagonists in all these aspects for over 10,000 years.

The picture synthesises the role of women as a cohesive group of transmitters of intergenerational values and knowledge. At first sight, the authority and dignity of the matriarch stands out, surrounded by two generations of descendants. Other essential aspects of daily life are also implicit, integrating the three environmental determiners of the human ecosystem: abiotic, biotic cultural.

The abiotic world provides natural resources used in building, like the almost invisible perfectly cut stones of the building which contains the woodpile, typical of muleteer houses, and the jet and metal jewellery of the women. The oak bundles in the woodpile indicate the kind of terrain and part of the biodiversity of the surrounding area. The composition of the photo, with the matriarch in the middle, the boys standing behind and the girls in front, reflects intergenerational gender relationships, provides socioeconomic information from their clothes and the family environment of economic wealth which allows them to hire women and men from farming families to do domestic service and farm labour. Finally, it also reflects cultural aspects linked to the value system and traditions of mourning the loss of relatives. In this case the husband, father and grandfather has died and the adult women wear full mourning, the girls, except the youngest, wear only a black ribbon; only the grandsons display no sign of mourning, not even the black armband which adult men used to wear on their jackets or coats.