Summary written by Tulika Mohan, tulika.mohan@pomona.edu
Archeologist Marija Gimbutas posits the idea of a Western society before patriarchy, a ‘Goddess Culture’ based on excavations of goddess sculptures unearthed in 1973-1974. As the aesthetic nature of these excavations differed from the works of the Bronze Age, she believed that this culture was distinct from the known Indo-European culture and called this subsect of Southeastern European Neolithic culture ‘Old Europe’ (Murdock 11).
Through combining the known mythology and archeological evidence such as female figurines and female-honoring ritual artifacts — Gimbutas found a ratio of 98% female goddess figurines to male gods— she formed the basis of the Goddess Culture. This was not as accepted by archeologists as “they did not accept the notion that a religion could be extrapolated from the artifacts”.
Though unconventional, her methods push for a new space within archeology, and in understanding the male dominated Abrahamic religions. Many Goddess devotees hold a both-and epistemology that accepts (linguistic) contradictions and embraces the paradoxical nature of the Female Divine with her multiplicity of attributes and unitary Oneness.
In religion and myth:
In mythological texts from the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1200 b.c.e.) city-state of Ugarit, Ashera is called “the creatress of the gods”; her consort at Ugarit, the god El, is called “creator.” El is also referred to as father and patriarch at Ugarit, as Asherah, likewise, is called mother.
Ugaritic and other Canaanite materials further associate Asherah with lions (indicating power), serpents (representing immortality or healing), and sacred trees (signifying fertility).
Biblical scholars assume that full-blown, radical, or philosophical monotheism came to Israel fairly late in its history, during the time of the exile in the sixth century b.c.e.
Prior to this, we have abundant evidence that other gods and goddesses were worshipped in Israel in addition to (or sometimes instead of) YHWH.
Gimbutas did not use the term “matriarchy” but rather “matriliniarity” because unlike women in patriarchy, men were not suppressed. Men were very important in society in trade, architecture, shipbuilding and crafts. There was no marriage; the mother had a consort but no husband.
Was it egalitarian? Houses and graves appear to have been all of similar sizes.
Was this civilization peaceful? Weapons recovered but they could be ceremonial.
The Destruction of “Old Europe”:
This culture was slowly destroyed, according to Gimbutas, during a period that stretches from about 4200 B.C. until the end of the third millennium B.C. Elements of the culture survive on in parts of the Mediterranean world, particularly in Minoan Crete. When the Minoan society was destroyed through the Mycenean invasion in about 1450 B.C., Old Europe has in principle completely disappeared.
That great and dramatic changes happened towards the end of the Neolithic period is a fact that Gimbutas was not the only one to establish… But while the general opinion during the last few years has been that these changes happened as a result of inner social, economical and demographic processes, Gimbutas believes that the major reason for the changes was the expansion…of “patriarchal, socially stratified nomad tribes.”
Around 4,000 BCE the “Kurgans,” who Gimbutas describes as a patrilineal, patrilocal, militaristic, and seminomadic group originating in the steppes of Russia, embarked on a series of invasions or migrations across Europe that radically transformed the region’s language and material culture. The “Kurgan” incursions displaced the earlier, indigenous Goddess-focused, egalitarian, earth-centered societies of the Neolithic, but vestiges of this gynocentric culture managed to survive.
References:
1) http://www.jungatlanta.com/articles/spring16-marija-gimbutas.pdf
2) 7000 B.C.-3500 B.C.
4) https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/asherahasherim-bible
5) https://goddessdocumentary.wordpress.com/marija-gimbutas/
6) https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1999/1999.10.05/
From Wikipedia:
Old Europe
Old Europe, or Neolithic Europe, refers to the time between the Mesolithic and Bronze Age periods in Europe, roughly from 7000 BCE (the approximate time of the first farming societies in Greece) to c. 1700 BCE (the beginning of the Bronze Age in Scandinavia). The duration of the Neolithic varies from place to place: in southeast Europe it is approximately 4000 years (i.e., 7000−3000 BCE); in parts of North-West Europe it is just under 3000 years (c. 4500−1700 BCE).
Regardless of specific chronology, many European Neolithic groups share basic characteristics, such as living in small-scale communities, more egalitarian than the city-states and chiefdoms of the Bronze Age, subsisting on domestic plants and animals supplemented with the collection of wild plant foods and hunting, and producing hand-made pottery, without the aid of the potter’s wheel. There are also many differences, with some Neolithic communities in southeastern Europe living in heavily fortified settlements of 3,000–4,000 people (e.g. Sesklo in Greece) whereas Neolithic groups in Britain were small (possibly 50–100 people).[citation needed]
Marija Gimbutas investigated the Neolithic period in order to understand cultural developments in settled village culture in the southern Balkans, which she characterized as peaceful, matristic, and possessing a goddess-centered religion. In contrast, she characterizes the later Indo-European influences as warlike, nomadic, and patrilineal.
Using evidence from pottery and sculpture, and combining the tools of archaeology,comparative mythology, linguistics, and, most controversially, folkloristics, Gimbutas invented a new interdisciplinary field, archaeomythology.
In historical times, some ethnonyms are believed to correspond to Pre-Indo-European peoples, assumed to be the descendants of the earlier Old European cultures: the Pelasgians, Minoans, Leleges, Iberians, Etruscans, Rhaetians, Camunni and Basques.
Two of the three pre-Greek peoples of Sicily, the Sicans and the Elymians, may also have been pre-Indo-European.
How many Pre-Indo-European languages existed is not known. Nor is it known whether the ancient names of peoples descended from the pre-ancient population actually referred to speakers of distinct languages. Gimbutas (1989), observing a unity of symbols marked especially on pots, but also on other objects, concluded that there may have been a single language spoken in Old Europe. She thought that decipherment would have to wait for the discovery of bilingual texts.
The idea of a Pre-Indo-European language in the region precedes Gimbutas. It went by other names, such as “Pelasgian“, “Mediterranean”, or “Aegean”.
Apart from marks on artifacts, the main evidence concerning Pre-Indo-European language is in names: toponyms, ethnonyms, etc., and in roots in other languages believed to be derived from one or more prior languages, possibly unrelated. Reconstruction from the evidence is an accepted, though somewhat speculative, field of study. Suggestions of possible Old European languages include Urbian by Sorin Paliga,[5] and the Vasconic substratum hypothesis of Theo Vennemann (also see Sigmund Feist‘s Germanic substrate hypothesis).
Indo-European origins
See also: Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses
According to Gimbutas’ version of the Kurgan hypothesis, Old Europe was invaded and destroyed by horse-riding pastoral nomads from the Pontic-Caspian steppe (the “Kurgan culture”) who brought with them violence, patriarchy, and Indo-European languages.[6] More recent proponents of the Kurgan hypothesis agree that the cultures of Old Europe spoke pre-Indo-European languages but include a less dramatic transition, with a prolonged migration of Proto-Indo-European speakers after Old Europe’s collapse due to other factors.[7][8]
Colin Renfrew‘s competing Anatolian hypothesis suggests that the Indo-European languages were spread across Europe by the first farmers from Anatolia. In the hypothesis’ original formulation, the languages of Old Europe belonged to the Indo-European family but played no special role in its transmission.[9]
According to Renfrew’s most recent revision of the theory, however, Old Europe was a “secondary urheimat” where the Greek, Armenian, and Balto-Slavic language families diverged around 5000 BCE.[10]
Recent genetic evidence favors Gimbutas’ Kurgan hypothesis over Renfrew’s Anatolian hypothesis.[11][12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Europe_(archaeology)
References:
Gimbutas, Marija (1982). The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: 6500–3500 B.C.: Myths, and Cult Images Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-04655-2
Gimbutas, Marija (1989). The Language of the Goddess. Harper & Row, Publishers. ISBN 0-06-250356-1.
Gimbutas, Marija (1991). The Civilization of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper. ISBN 0-06-250337-5.
