marija gimbutas: the world of the goddess

Marija Gimbutas: The World f the Goddess (Green Earth Foundation, 1990)

Ca. 00:18-00:23Marija Gimbutas: The World of the Goddess. Part One

(Intro by) Ralph Metzner, Ph.D.Green Earth Foundation

* 00:26-00:30Ashley Montagu called her work a benchmark in the history of civilization.

* 00:31-00:45Joseph Campbell, in his foreword to The language of the Goddess, writes of the evident relevance of her work to the universally recognized need in our time for a general transformation of consciousness.

* 00:46-00:59Numerous writers, scholars and artists have been inspired by her decoding of the symbolic language of the life-affirming, nature-celebrating Earth Goddess religion of the aboriginal Europeans.

* 01:01-01:10The findings that Dr. Gimbutas has unearthed and documented with meticulous scholarship have revolutionary implications for our time.

* 01:10-01.21Her work gives us hope because she shows that we do not have to learn something new, we only need to remember that which we have tragically forgotten.

* 01:22-01:36Her life and career is a fascinating story in itself. Born in Lithuania in 1921, she absorbed in childhood something of the reverence for life and nature of her Baltic ancestral culture.

* 01:37-01:47As Europe descended into the nightmare holocaust of fascism and world war, she fled with her family from bomb raids, invasions and total social collapse.

* 01:48-01:57She struggled with enormous financial hardship to pursue her education and her very independent line of research in Europe and in the United States.

* 01:58-02:09

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Settling down to a professorship at UCLA in 1963, she embarked on her archaeological and prehistorical research, focused on the cultures of the Neolithic ‟Old Europe.”

* 02:10-02:22She has written over three hundred1 articles and more than twenty2 books, including studies of The Balts, The Slavs, Bronze Age Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, and The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe.

* 02:23-02:30Her magnum opus, The Language of the Goddess appeared in 1989.

* 02:33-02:43There is something here of what Carl Jung called synchronicity, an almost uncanny coming together of individual vision and collective destiny.

* 02:44-03:08This year, in which Marija Gimbutas' work has gained such a wide audience in the West, is also the time in which the people of the same area of Eastern Europe that she has written about, and the peoples of her own country of origin, are throwing off the shackles of totalitarian oppression and peacefully moving toward a more egalitarian political structure.

* 03:08-03:16Please listen carefully to the words of this wise woman of the Baltic lands; she has a most important message for our time.

* 03:18-03:29Ladies and Gentlemen, the archaeological record shows that the most ancient religion of humankind was goddess religion.

* 03:31-03:39I'm sorry to tell that we do not find a father image in very early prehistory.

* 03:40-03:58Erich Neumann, an eminent psychologist, has hypothesized that there has to be a pair, Ur father and Ur mother, in the very beginning but we do not find any material to support that hypothesis. * 04:00-04:15And why? I think it's quite natural that the earliest society was a matrilineal, mother's society and not patrilineal.

* 04:16-04:351 Corrected from 200.2 Corrected from 10.

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And for a very long time we do not find evidence for the understanding of the father's role in biological production.

* 04:35-04:37Copulation was not understood.

* 04:38-04:54Even surprisingly in the early historic times, we still find evidence that this was a matrilineal society in Old Europe, especially in the areas which were not Indo-Europeanized.

* 04:55-05:10Even Etruscans in Italy still mentioned that boys are mother's sons. On tombstones we have this evidence.

* 05:11-05:32So here we have matrilineal societies probably during the very long time of the Paleolithic, the Old Stone Age, which continued into the Neolithic, the early agricultural societies.

* 05:33-05:42This continued in some areas in the Bronze Age, especially in the Minoan culture of Crete and other islands.

* 05:44-05:55Now we should ask the question: ‟If there was a goddess religion, how old was it? Do we know the beginnings?”

* 05:57-06:20Yes, I would guess it is not 10,000 years, not 20,000, not 30,000; it's much more! We actually cannot answer today the question “When is the beginning?” Maybe it is one million years, but this we shall leave for the future.

* 06:21-06:44But we can see already today that the Acheulean culture—the Lower Paleolithic culture, which goes down to 500,000 BC and more—has produced many flint figurines, tiny figurines, which are already symbols, triangles and mother images holding babies and also animal figures.

* 06:45-06:53And this is already a hope that we shall be able to decipher these early objects.

(29) 06:54-07:23

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But today we shall focus on the period which is the Neolithic, the early agricultural period, which started in Europe in the 7th millennium BC and continued throughout the 7th, 6th, 5th, even the 4th and 3rd millennia in some areas like Western Europe, where the Neolithic started later than in the southeast.

* 07:25-07:44This period is so rich, full of finds of especially sculptures and tiny figurines between 2 or 3 centimetres and 20 centimetres high.

* 07:45-07:57There certainly were life-size sculptures of animals and even human beings but they rarely survived.

* 07:59-08:03Then in addition, in the Neolithic there is pottery.

* 08:04-08:24The discovery of pottery is very important for the study of symbolism because vases were decorated, incised or painted and these decorations are not just geometric motifs, they are meaningful, they are symbols. They're extended symbols.

* 08:25-08:31In the beginning there was a symbol and then it was extended and the vase was decorated around.

* 08:32-08:40And there are temples, and temple models. There are all sorts of cult objects found in temples.

* 08:40-08:48So all this is our basic material for the interpretation of the early religion.

* 08:52-09:11I would like to say that it's not only the object that is of importance, and we do not just look at the object with the eyes of an art historian.

* 09:12-09:29It is of utmost importance to know how the object was found. Was the sculpture or figurine found in a temple? Was it found in a courtyard? Was it found in a grave? Or in a cave?

* 09:30-09:35All that counts; this cannot be omitted from our study.

* 09:36-09:57

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However, even that would not explain the functions of the Goddess. To a certain degree, yes, but we need something else to add to be sure that our interpretation is right.

* 10:00-10:18We have to see what kind of goddess is portrayed. Is she nude or is she dressed? Is she stiff, or is she with breasts and belly and buttocks?

* 10:19-10:30And there are, of course, a tremendous variety of images. The types are numerous.

* 10:31-10:43There is not just one goddess that we can describe and say she portrays something. No, there are hundreds of images.

* 10:43-10:58But we can classify them according to their postures. Are they sitting on a throne? Are they standing? Are they found in a grave in a very stiff position?

* 11:00-11:21And then, one more thing is decisive for the decipherment of their meanings and functions. These are the incisions or paintings of symbols.

* 11:23-11:26And what are the symbols?

* 11:28-11:46I should classify them into at least three major groups. They are abstract or hieroglyphic, such symbols like a V, an M, X, Y and others.

* 11:48-12:18The second group are representational and they appear on some tombs or ceramic objects as separate symbols, like eyes or breasts or buttocks or vulvas.

* 12:19-12:41And then the last category are animals. The Goddess appeared as a human being and she also appeared as an animal: a bear or deer or pig, or any other animal like a dog or fox or boar.

* 12:45-12:55 And all these categories are intertwined. We cannot have borderlines between them, they're all interrelated.

* 12:56-13:30

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And this is because in ancient times it was a completely different world of ideology, of thinking, when there was a very close tie between human beings and animals and inanimate objects and the Goddess could be a tree, a stone, an animal, and a human being.

* 13:31-13:43So we are dealing with holistic thinking. This was a period when we were not separated from nature.

* 13:45-13:55Now I would like to start with the slides, because then I can show you the categories of symbols, which are many.

* 13:57-14:01We shall begin with the goddess whom I call the Bird Goddess.

* 14:02-14:24This is a sculpture, about maybe 25 centimetres high, and she is a hybrid between a woman and a bird. She's definitely a woman with developed breasts and a very long cylindrical neck.

* 14:26-14:36Her head is particularly interesting here because she has a beak—a protruding nose but no mouth.

* 14:38-14:57She has eyes, she has a headdress, a turban maybe or just her hair, neatly combed. Then on her right arm there are some incisions and they are chevrons, multiple V's.

* 14:58-15:08So here is one of the typical sculptures around 6,000 BC or 5,800 BC from Greece.

* 15:10-15:29I myself discovered a series of such images, and if you are hesitant to admit that this is a Bird Goddess, maybe this would convince you that this is a beaked creature, not a simple woman.

* 15:30-15:45And from the profile she looks like this. She has, like the first one, a nice hairdo and her whole face is protruding. It’s not a natural woman's face.

* 15:46-15:57So I think there is no doubt that many of such sculptures represent Bird Goddesses, and what is of importance, they are found in temples.

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* 15:58-16:12I myself, excavating in Greece, northern Greece and Thessaly, have discovered numbers of Bird Goddesses within the temples.

* 16:13-16:35There were maybe three or four consecutive temples, and it was possible to count how many of them are found within the temple, on the altars or maybe fallen down on the floor next to the altar, and not in the courtyards.

* 16:36-17:00So that was a clue to me that the Bird Goddess, also the Snake Goddess, were temple goddesses and I interpret them as protectresses of the house, because the earliest temples of Europe, as also of Anatolia, were house-like.

* 17:01-17:09Archaeologists to this day discuss and dispute that these are not temples because these are houses.

* 17:10-17:28However, if you travel in the Aegean area and visits the islands today, you will see that the temples, the churches, are just like houses. There are maybe three, four houses and then another house which is a church.

* 17:29-17:42And who takes care of these churches? Women. And this, I think reflects the very old tradition of the Neolithic period. Women were taking care of temples.

* 17:43-17:50And the temples consist of two rooms usually—one room is the actual temple, the smaller room is the workshop.

* 17:51-18:03And in the workshop we also find figurines and vases and other cult objects, which were for the preparation of the worship in the temple.

* 18:04-18:18Now another aspect of the same goddess is from my own discovery in Macedonia. This one is from the end of the 6th millennium, the Vinča culture.

* 18:20-18:40This is a big vase, about one metre high, decorated with chevrons, red chevrons. She has a necklace and she has her special marks on the face across her cheek, and then her beak and eyes.

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* 18:40-18:49Usually if they are vases then the face appears on the neck or sometimes appears on the lid.

* 18:51-19:04So here we see the association of this type with a special symbol, the V or multiple V, which we can call chevron. And it will repeat throughout.

* 19:05-19:14Now also I would like to indicate that there are about one hundred temple models discovered in Europe.

* 19:15-19:26Some of them are quite well preserved, as this one, also from Macedonia, not from my discoveries, but from Yugoslav excavations.

* 19:27-19:38And many of them have “chimneys,” with the face of the goddess. She has a necklace spreading around the roof.

* 19:39-19:55This one has a sort of mouth, but I am suspecting that this was a later addition. All other chimneys—and maybe are about thirty discovered in this site—have no mouth.

* 20:00-20:11This was around the beginning of the 6th millennium, the last one; this is from the early 5th millennium, 1,000 years later, also from Yugoslavia.

* 20:13-20:34That can be described as a more articulate figure sitting on a throne, marked with tri-lines, three lines, as you can see. She has sort of a bolero dress, she has a crown, and three lines across her arms.

* 20:35-20:54And in front, an apron or maybe it was part of skirt marked with chevrons. Then she has a duck's mask.

* 20:55-20:11And here is another mask, definitely a duck's mask. So the waterbird played a very important role in this category of images.

* 21:12-21:24

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And even this mask is marked with V's on the corners of the forehead. The holes mean that the mask was attached to the face.

* 21:25-21:46And some of the masks do have many holes, especially in the crown, which I interpret as holes for decoration, for feathers maybe. So she was quite impressive, I think.

* 21:47-22:04There are masks of life-size. In my excavations in Greece I have discovered removable masks, dating to the 7th millennium BC. So the masks have a long life.

* 22:05-22:23Of course they existed even in the Paleolithic, but here we have a clear proof that in the Neolithic they were used for re-enactment of certain rituals.

* 22:26-22:39The question of the beginning of this kind of symbolism associated with the bird can be answered by some Paleolithic figurines.

* 22:39-23:00What you see here is a Paleolithic figurine probably from the time between 20,000 and 14,000 BC found in the Ukraine, from Mezin.

* 23:01-23:10This is the profile, I would say, of a waterbird.

* 23:12-23:20The upper illustration indicates an expanded extension of the symbols.

* 23:21-23:25On the left side is the front, and this side is the back.

* 23:26-23:30Why am I showing this? For the association of symbols.

* 23:31-23:48We have a supernatural triangle in front, and then on the side and the back there are chevrons, meanders, and on the neck parallel lines and again chevrons.

* 23:49-24:03So this means that at least for 20,000 years the symbolic association was the same as in the Neolithic period.

* 24:05-24:30

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And this confirms the importance of it. I think I am not making a mistake associating this group of symbols and I am calling them aquatic symbolism associated with waterbirds—especially with meanders, spiral lines, wavy lines and so on.

* 24:33-24:52The pubic triangle is marked with a net design, and the net design is associated with uterine moisture. Moisture was mysterious, and water was also sacred.

* 24:55-25:05Meanders appear on hundreds of figurines and they have beaked faces and necklaces. These are all attributes of the same Bird Goddess.

* 25:06-25:12This is a temple model from western Romania dating to the end of the 6th millennium BC.

* 25:13-25:33Then we go later into the 5th millennium. Again we see meanders decorating the skirts of the goddess, and this one again is the Duck Goddess. She also wears a medallion that is typical of this kind of goddess.

* 25:34-25:44I found medallions in earlier figurines of the 7th and 6th millennia BC in my excavations in Greece.

* 25:46-26:02And here is the head of a very nice figurine from the Vinča culture in central Yugoslavia, and her forehead is decorated with meanders and her eyes are very important.

* 26:03-26:14There are three lines, and two lines around. The eyes had the importance of regeneration, of life-giving.

* 26:16-26:33Some of the eyes are exaggerated—supernatural—as this lid from a huge vase indicates. And then on the forehead is a chevron, double triangle. This probably represents an eared owl.

* 26:36-26:49Then this same goddess, whom I call Bird Goddess, can appear as a bird. So she can be a woman, she can be a bird, a bird that wears a human mask, or has a crown.

* 26:50-27:07This is an especially beautiful vase from the Vinča culture dated to around 4,500 BC or earlier, made of very thin clay, decorated with black bands.

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* 27:08-27:15Images like this continue for a long time. They were made even in the Bronze Age in Europe.

* 27:16-27:33This one is from Hungary, dating to around the 16th century BC, so maybe about 4,000 years later. And I would say that they are prototypes of later sirens of Ancient Greece.

* 27:34-27:50Now we can begin the second category, which is very closely associated with the Bird Goddess, and this is the Snake Goddess. She appears as a woman or she appears as a snake.

* 27:51-27:57There are many snakes found, sculptures of snakes and also painted on pottery.

* 27:58-28:18This is a very clear example. She is decorated with snakes, her arms merge with the body, and her legs are not even shown. But her head is a snake head. This is from Anatolia from the 6th millennium BC.

* 28:19-28:28Now another example, from Central Turkey, is from Hacilar, from the first half of the 6 th

millennium BC.

* 28:30-28:48You see the legs are snake coils. The arms are also probably snakes just like arcs, and her head is decorated with an aquatic design.

* 28:49-29:15Other images are simply women, but here are also hybrids. Her legs are snakes, her arms are also almost snakes, her mouth is long, her nose is not much of a woman's nose, and then she wears a crown.

* 29:16-29:33The crown is especially typical of Snake Goddesses. The crown appears in later times, like here in an example from Crete around 2,000 BC.

* 29:35-29:53And in front we see the crown, but in the back are a mass of snakes. This I think is the beginning of what we still have in folklore.

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* 29:54-30:14In folklore the crowned snake is very important to this day, and is the leader of thousands of other snakes. If she appears then expect the other snakes to appear, or if you touch her, the other ones will follow you.

* 30:15-30:29And if you happen to catch the crown in order to be happy, to know everything and understand animal language, that will be dangerous because the other snakes will follow you for a long time.

* 30:30-30:43The most beautiful Snake Goddesses are very well-known from Knossos and Crete, dating from around 1,600 BC.

* 30:45-31:03These are beautiful ladies, but all over their bodies you can see snakes winding up their arms, around the belly and one on the left is holding snakes in her hands.

* 31:04-31:19They have beautiful headdresses, the tiara and the other has even a monkey, I think, sitting on her head. So these can be goddesses, they also can be priestesses worshipping the Goddess.

* 31:21-31:43Now we are entering another group of symbolism: the Goddess as Creatrix, who is creating from her own body. Her body parts are life-giving.

* 31:44-32:00This one is a Paleolithic figurine dating from 23,000 BC found in Lespugue in the southern part of France, near the Pyrenees.

* 32:01-32:39I like it very much. To some people this is a monstrosity; to me it is a harmonious sculpture showing the essence of Paleolithic art.

* 32:30-32:46This is a symbolic art, not the portrayal of a woman, definitely not. Not a single sculpture or figurine portrays a simple woman, no. They are all symbols.

* 32:47-33:02And what we see here are breasts and buttocks, definitely exaggerated. The legs and head and the arms are reduced because they do not play a big symbolic role here.

* 33:03-33:25

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It was important to show the breasts and buttocks which are symbolically interrelated. Both are in pairs, and two has more strength than one.

* 33:27-33:45Symbolically, this impressed our ancestors and was considered important, so there is a repetition of this doubleness throughout time.

* 33:46-34:02Here is another example from Malta in the Mediterranean and this is much later. The other was 23,000, this is 3,000 BC, but again, the buttocks symbolism is of importance.

* 34:03-34:33This is found in a temple of the same shape, with the buttock-shape in the plan of the temple. Here I interpret the importance of such figurines for regeneration. The Maltese temples to me mostly mean regeneration.

* 34:34-34:49Although some temples, as I told you, where Bird Goddesses were found, were not connected with this motif. Their function was protection and life-giving. Here it is regeneration.

* 34:50-35:09In some Upper Paleolithic rock engravings hundreds of buttocks figurines appear. The figures have just buttocks and a cylindrical neck and nothing else—no arms, no legs.

* 35:10-35:26So here again I think, the regeneration motif dominated. And perhaps in the buttocks, there was an egg, the symbol for regeneration.

* 35:28-35:44Some other images maybe will be more clear, like this one from around the first half of the 6th millennium BC, found in the former Yugoslavia near Belgrade.

* 35:45-36:07This is a seated figurine with the weight in the buttocks and nothing else. No arms, the legs are also reduced, facial features don’t exist, but she has hair. Here the buttocks are egg-shaped.

* 36:09-36:25In some figurines like this, the protruding buttocks are hollow, and the space is egg-shaped.

* 36:37-36:47So here we have two possibilities: that this is a regeneration motif or that this is a cosmic

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egg, connected with an existing myth of the beginning of the world.

* 36:48-36:56These myths still continued in the classical period, and up to the modern times.

* 36:59-37:22Most of these buttock figurines are decorated in the Neolithic period with such symbols as spirals or snake coils or four-corner designs—dynamic symbols, which probably enhance life and regeneration.

* 37:24-37:39More of these are found in the Neolithic, especially during the 6 th millennium BC. This one is from Hungary and is clearly a bird.

* 37:41-37:59So here I see that the buttocks figurines are in many cases birds, which carry perhaps a cosmic egg in the buttocks, or just an egg, which is a symbol of regeneration.

* 38:01-38:27If we go to the Bronze Age, the middle of the 2nd millennium, there are vases from the Aegean islands—like Phylakopi3 or Thera4—that show vultures or birds of prey with an egg inside.

* 38:28-38:40The left one has a red egg, and there are many more. Some vases are decorated with beautiful flowers or sprouts, which also mean regeneration.

* 38:41-38:53But it is interesting here to mention that the red egg is associated with the bird of prey, not with the waterbird in this case, and why?

* 38:54-39:16Because we shall see later that the Goddess of Regeneration is the vulture who attacks human beings after death, but she is also concerned with regeneration.

* 39:17-39:41Another example is on a vase from Phaistos, in the southern part of Crete, which is decorated with an egg and spirals. The vase itself is egg-shaped and the upper part is clearly the head of a bird. Within the bird, within the egg, there are spirals.

* 39:42-39:53

3 Milos4 Santorini

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I call such a symbol a column of life: something is beginning or becoming.

* 39:56-40:12Now from the buttocks we move to the pubic triangle or the vulva, and these are the earliest symbols so far known. Vulvas and triangles are very early symbols.

* 40:14-40:32Some art historians decided that men created the symbolism because they were the first to touch vulvas and they had to show it. But I don't think this is the right interpretation because our ancestors were more philosophical.

* 40:37-40:52If you studied all the vulvas in existence in the Paleolithic and later, you will notice that they are always associated with sprouts, with seeds, with branches.

* 40:53-41:02So this is the beginning of life, which is sprouting and growing. It's not pornography.

* 41:04-41:37This figurine is 23 to 21,000 BC from southern France, from Monpazier. Some scholars describe such figurines as ‟monstrosities” because the vulva is supernatural and swollen, the buttocks are also not natural, and the belly is in a full arch.

* 41:39-41:56This is a very tiny figurine and there are many of them like this. So what is it? I think the importance is life-giving; probably birth-giving is emphasized.

* 42:00-42:12The swollen vulva in association with the buttocks on the other side continues for 15 to 20,000 years.

* 42:14-42:32I will show another example, from 3,500 BC from Hungary. Here we see the same thing: a swollen vulva on one side with the buttocks on the other. This is the handle of a vase.

* 42:33-42:58Here is a very good example from Italy. An incised bone plate figurine with the vulva associated with a fir tree. On her breasts is a crescent, a symbol of regeneration.

* 43:00-43:14There are many figurines which I call birth-giving that are associated with the goddess who brings life.

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* 43:15-43:41This is from my own excavations dating to 6,300 BC in Thessaly, northern Greece. She is portrayed in a natural birth-giving posture. The birth-giving posture in prehistory was in a seated position, there are no others.

* 43:43-43:59In the Paleolithic, some of these types are radiocarbon dated to 20,000 or 21,000 BC in France, which also continue into later times.

* 44:00-44:18This is from a temple in Malta originally described as a pathological figurine. I think this is clearly a birth-giving posture with a swollen vulva.

* 44:19-44:32On her back there are nine lines, perhaps associated with nine months of gestation. Her hands are perhaps typical of a birth-giving posture.

* 44:35-44:42From birth-giving we move to protection of new life.

* 44:43-44:59There are many madonnas discovered in the Neolithic period. They are not known from very early times, but they begin around 5,000 and continue for several millennia.

* 45:00-45:11So the madonna, the mother-holding-child, does not begin with Christian Mary, but is much earlier.

* 45:12-45:26However, the difference is that the protection of life belongs more or less to the animal mother. Most of these images have masks, which are either birds or bears.

* 45:28-45:39Perhaps this comes from the observation that the bear mother was a very good mother, and that birds also take care of their young.

* 45:42-45:59This is an example of the bird mother holding a little bird, and both are masked. Then there are images of bear ’nurses’ with masks.

* 46:00-46:23I call them nurses because they are taking care of babies with a pouch on their back probably for carrying babies. I think the mask is of a bear.

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* 46:24-46:50There are other images I am not showing today of real bears holding babies. And this belief in 'mother bear' still continues. In my own country, Lithuania, the expecting mother was called a 'bear'.

* 46:54-47:08When the expecting mother was approaching to the sauna, for instance, the group of women would chant a formula: ’Oh here, the bear is coming’. Also, the newborn baby was laid on a bear fur.

* 43:11-47:35Even in Greece—and this is surprising, because there are no bears anymore in the Mediterranean area—but in the western part of Greece, to the middle of this century, there was a celebration on the 2nd of February of the 'bear mother'.

* 47:38-47:48And it is described, not as Mary, but as the bear mother, although it is a Christian country.

* 47:50-48:04Now let us go again into another class of symbols: fertility and multiplication.

* 48:06-48:23For a long time the so-called Venuses and the Paleolithic madonnas were called ’fertility goddesses’.

* 48:24-48:44Neither the term ’fertility goddess’ nor ’Venus’ is a good term, because this is a misunderstanding. There is only one category of sculptures that can be associated with fertility.

* 48:45-49:08Of course many figurines are associated with fertility, but not all of them. Venus, of course, is a beauty, a wife or a bride, but not birth-giving or life-giving.

* 49:10-49:32Here is one of the very early images from the Paleolithic, again from southern France, from Laussel. This is a pregnant woman holding her hand on the pregnant belly and holding a crescent or a horn in the other hand.

* 49:33-49:42Therefore I would say she is concerned with fertility, with multiplication, with bounty.

* 49:45-50:13And particularly, because we have the continuity of the same image in the Neolithic

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period. Here we have a clearly pregnant woman with a very prominent belly and then under it is the supernatural triangle. She’s from Neolithic Greece, from around 6,000 BC, or somewhat later.

* 50:16-50:52In those days it was probably important to show the image of a pregnant woman because at that time when agriculture was just in the beginning, earth fertility was of enormous concern and the production of such pregnant images enhanced the earth fertility.

* 50:53-51:05But not only earth fertility, fertility of animals, fertility of human beings. As I said, there was no separation between earth, animal or human being.

* 51:09-51:37And I would add that in my own excavations, the pregnant goddesses were found not in temples, but in courtyards next to the bread ovens, for she also can be called the Bread Mother. She's the one who secures the bread.

* 51:39-52:06And such images are not identical everywhere, here is a pregnant figure from eastern Romania, from the Hamangia culture. Of course the style is different but it very probably portrays the same image.

* 52:07-52:30If we go into a later period, around 4,000 BC, here is an example from northeast Romania, the Cucuteni culture, of an open shrine where the goddess is seated.

* 52:31-52:46She is flanked by young figures, probably portraying a ritual, dancers or something like that, and in then front of her there was a hole for libations.

* 52:48-53:02And if we know the traditions of European peasants, there were libations for Mother Earth up to the 19th–20th century.

53:05END OF PART ONE.

Ca. 54:13-54:19Marija Gimbutas:The World of the Goddess. Part Two

* 54:22-54:43Now we have to rush through the other half of our lecture. I am starting with the symbols of death. First of all the vultures, owls, crows, and ravens.

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* 54:44-55:06One of the best examples comes from the temples of Çatal Hüyük from the 7th

millennium BC, painted on the walls of shrines. Here are seven or so vultures attacking headless bodies.

* 55:08-55:19Presumably the heads were removed immediately after death and then the rest of the body was left for excarnation by the birds.

* 55:20-55:45The skulls are found in other shrines, placed under the heads of the bull. We already know that the head of the bull represents the uterus, so this is for regeneration. The skull was the most important part of the body, the seat of the soul, and they always gave attention to it.

* 55:46-56:08Now, other images are owls. For instance, this is a painting in charcoal found near Paris in a hypogeum, which is a subterranean tomb. She has a necklace, she has breasts, these are her attributes, and she’s clearly an owl.

* 56:09-56:20Owl images appear all over Western Europe, and also in the Aegean area, in Central Europe and in Northern Europe.

* 56:21-56:48Here is one example from the famous tomb in Ireland, from Knowth. There is a long corridor going into the middle of the mound and this was found engraved on a stela near the inner chamber. The date is around 3,500 BC.

* 56:49-57:11I would like to compare that with another from Bulgaria. Possibly an owl image, it’s also decorated with a labyrinthine design, which probably are intestines and I think symbolically they are life-giving.

* 57:12-57:22And here are owls as vases, as urns. One is from Troy, the other is from Poliochni on the Greek island of Limnos.

* 57:24-57:38These have wings and are clearly owls, but what is interesting here is that they are not really death symbols, they are associated with vulvas and with umbilical cords, or snakes.

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* 57:39-58:02So there was never in the Neolithic period a death symbol produced without another attribute indicating regeneration. Death alone was not shown. It was always in association with regeneration.

* 58:13-58:22Even if the symbol is bone, a simple bone found in graves, the bone has owl eyes and the eyes are symbols of regeneration. Eyes have moisture and this moisture is regenerating.

* 58:23-58:42Now we move to Sardinia. This is the plan of a rock-cut tomb from the 5th millennium BC. There is a figurine in front of the skeleton, right in front of the chest, next to the vases.

* 58:43-59:07Some of the vases were decorated with regeneration symbols and there was one dish in which shells were found with red ochre. So this is a series of symbols of regeneration and here, in detail, is the figurine found in this grave.

* 59:05-59:33It is a stiff woman of quite another type. I call this series of figurines stiff nudes. They are found in graves and they continue through millennia. This is the 5th millennium and they are not very slim, as they are later on, anyway, they are stiff. * 59:34-59:47And here we switch to the end of the 5th millennium, beginning of the 4th. This is a well-known image of alabaster, also from Sardinia.

* 59:50-59:58It is liked by many authors and we can find it on book covers, and so on, but what does it mean?

* 1:00:00-1:00:14Well, the white colour I mentioned is the colour of death and therefore they were produced of alabaster, of marble, of bone, bone plates and also light coloured stones.

* 1:00:15-1:00:36 Here the stiffness is reaching its culmination. It's a very abstract figurine, the lower part is just a cone, the arms are always this way and then the head is featureless. But sometimes the heads are shown with masks.

* 1:00:37-1:00:52Later figurines like this one, also from Sardinia, has a round head, which is a round mask and again the lower part is suppressed entirely. The hands are the same.

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* 1:00:54-1:01:15The same image continues in the Aegean area, in the Cyclades. These are probably best known in literature and to the art historians. For a long time they were considered to be ideals of beauty and were never interpreted as death symbols.

* 1:01:18-1:01:40In my understanding they represent the Goddess of Death, leading the dead to the underworld. However, they are also concerned with regeneration because in most cases the supernatural triangle appears on these figurines.

* 1:01:42-1:02:00From the Aegean area we switch now the geographical region, and this one is from Bulgaria. I would say that they differ a little bit although they are also stiff and they are also nudes.

* 1:01:01-1:02:24The head here is broad and the mouth is long and there are some dots, maybe the fangs of a poisonous snake. I would connect this series with the poisonous snake, whereas the other series in the Cyclades, in Sardinia, with birds of prey.

* 1:02:25-1:02:43Even life-size masks are found in graves. This is a very interesting discovery from the 1970s in Varna, which is east Bulgaria, right at the Black Sea coast.

* 1:02:44-1:03:01In the cemetery there were found at least three well-preserved life-size masks of clay, decorated with gold. In this cemetery about 3,000 or more pieces of gold were found.

* 1:03:03-1:03:25So here is the same image I have shown you before with a broad face, and a large long mouth. Some dots here like pins under the mouth are perhaps teeth. The round eyes are typical of the snake.

* 1:03:26-1:03:35I would say these are the precursors of the later Gorgon heads and Pandora maybe, in Greek mythology.

* 1:03:38-1:03:54Now the next image in the series of regeneration is the frog. Again, the best representations are found in relief in Çatal Hüyük shrines in Anatolia from the 7 th

millennium BC.

* 1:03:55-1:04:12

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She's portrayed on the wall with upraised hands, upraised legs next to the horns or bull heads and next to life columns painted on walls.

* 1:04:14-1:04:37Sometimes such figures are covered with geometric motifs, which look like honeycomb, but also there are columns of lozenges and a concentric design on her belly, which is a symbol of regeneration.

* 1:04:38-1:05:00Here is from my own excavations from Achilleion in northern Greece, dated 6,300 BC, carved out of black stone. I call this type the Frog Woman. The frog symbol is long-lasting, of course, from folklore.

* 1:05:02-1:05:18And here I would like to show from Lithuania a tombstone from a cemetery I visited myself in this century. It is a frog with a head in the shape of a lily.

* 1:05:19-1:05:32And this little figurine is from Greece from 6,000 BC, also has a head in the shape of a lily.

* 1:05:33-1:05:58So, the frog is associated with flowers, with buds, with sprouts, and originally the frog was probably associated with the fetus and uterus. This image is as old as the Upper Paleolithic some 20,000 to 30,000 years ago.

* 1:05:59-1:06:26The other image, which belongs to the class of regeneration and uterine images, is the hedgehog. The hedgehog was probably associated with an animal uterus, which has warts. So this is one possibility. Maybe I am wrong, but it could be.

* 1:06:28-1:06:40Linguistically it is proved because in German language 'Igel' is 'hedgehog' and 'eagle' is also 'uterus'.

* 1:06:47-0:06:58Here is a lid in the shape of a hedgehog and the face of the Hedgehog Goddess.

* 1:07:00-1:07:27The association between the hedgehog and regeneration is seen in the later cemeteries. For instance, this vase is from Rhodos dated to the 8 th century BC in the shape of a hedgehog, in which a skeleton of an infant was discovered.

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* 1:07:29-1:07:57And even in 20th century cemeteries in Austria or Bavaria the images of hedgehogs or red balls with spikes were laid by women who had uterine problems. They were also brought to churches as votive offerings for the same purpose.

* 1:07:59-1:08:24Now this is a fish sculpture of about 50 cm high found at Lepinski Vir. It is of stone, egg-shaped, painted in red and decorated with a labyrinthine design.

* 1:08:26-1:08:50In this place, which is called Lepinski Vir in northern Yugoslavia, there were found over 50 shrines, triangular in shape, having red floors, and inside each one was an altar and at the end of the altar there was a sculpture.

* 1:08:52-1:09:04Most of these sculptures were either egg-shaped or fish-shaped, or these fish-shaped sculptures have also the features of a woman.

* 1:09:05-1:09:28Next I will show you in detail the decoration of the sculpture, a labyrinthine design which, to me, is a symbol of regeneration. Her mouth is clearly a fish mouth but the eyes and nose can be interpreted as human.

* 1:09:30-1:09-51Another sculpture, which is egg-shaped, has fish attributes, especially the mouth and round protruding eyes. They're all of stone found in the Danube. This site is located right on the bank of the Danube.

* 1:09:53-1:10:37One more of the series is extremely important because here is the combination of fish, woman and vulture. The hands of this fish lady are vulture claws. Here is a combination, typical in Neolithic art, of several classes of woman, animal, and bird in one.

* 1:10:39-1:11:08An example from another part of Europe indicates almost about the same thing. Here her hands are with three fingers. I think these are not human hands but vulture claws. She has a V, and her round eyes may be fish eyes, and the mouth is very peculiar.

* 1:11:09-1:11:25This is a 52 centimetres high stone figure from France dated from the first half of the 5 th

millennium BC. And the egg-shaped fish sculptures from Lepinski Vir date from around 6,000 BC.

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* 1:11:30-1:11:54In addition to all these fetuses and uterine symbols, the other regeneration symbols are triangles or double triangles. They feature in the tomb architecture, especially in Ireland, where we find very good examples.

* 1:11:55-1:12:15Here is a triangular kern, if you can see it, and stones. If this is removed then the tomb is found to be a round chamber with a corridor.

* 1:12:17-1:12:33In architecture I interpret these also as vagina and uterus. Coming back to the womb, tomb and womb are related.

* 1:12:36-1:12:53The Old Europeans didn't build houses for their dead to continue the same life as the Indo-Europeans did who believed that life continues in the same way.

* 1:12:54-1:13:00The Old Europeans didn't. They returned their dead to the womb or to their ancestors.

* 1:13:01-1:13:20The megaliths of Western Europe have collective, communal burials in them and the bones are mixed up. The bodies were excarnated and then at certain times the bones were collected and put in the tomb.

* 1:13:21-1:13:40Individuality didn't matter, whereas in the later patriarchal culture, the hero, the individual, the glory of the person was most important, but not in this earlier period.

* 1:13:42-1:13:51Some of the plans of the graves are definitely anthropomorphic, probably portraying the Goddess herself.

* 1:13:52-1:14:10Now here is the symbol of the double triangle, or hourglass shape. This definitely is the Goddess of Regeneration with vulture claws instead of human hands.

* 1:14:12-1:14:21That is a vase from the Cucuteni culture dated to 4,000 BC. Cucuteni culture is in northeast Romania.

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* 1:14:22-1:14:46And here is an incision on a vase from Hungary from around 5,000 BC. Also if you see, her hands are not human, she's very abstract, an image containing a series of symbols. Her head is just three lines.

* 1:14:48-1:15:17This is the next image where we see the combination of this goddess, of two triangles incised on the head of a bull. This is a bone plate figure, and it’s a beautiful combination of the Goddess of Regeneration and the head of a bull, dated to around 4,000 BC.

* 1:15:18-1:15:46The symbolism will continue in later times, especially in the Minoan culture where we have many bull heads, bulls, and so-called sacred horns. The symbol of sacred horns begins much earlier than in Crete. Actually it begins in Çatal Hüyük in the 7 th millennium or before.

* 1:15:46-1:16:1:16:02And here are some examples from the Çatal Hüyük shrine, where three bull heads are portrayed on one wall of the shrine with a labyrinthine design on top.

* 1:16:04-1:16:20Then below there are hands, and hands probably were symbols of the goddess' hands. Her presence, or her power was there, and the bulls were there for regeneration.

* 1:16:21-1:16:43Then there are vases decorated with bullheads and the design usually is a whirling pattern, snakes, S-shaped spirals turning around. These are enhancing, stimulating life powers.

* 1:16:44-1:17:10The bull head usually appears at the entrance of tombs. Here are examples from Sardinia, where above the entrance there is a bull head in relief. The design on the walls on the inside of this subterranean tomb, is also bull horns.

* 1:17:11-1:17:35Sometimes they appear in two, in three's, many, many, maybe ten of them are found in one tomb. I shall finish now with the Minoan sacred horns, which are celebrative symbols, and are very well known.

* 1:17:36-1:17:53And who is coming up here in the middle between the horns? In literature you can find the description that this is a symbol of a double axe.

* 1:17:55-1:18:14Well, it is not a big mistake, but I could also call this a butterfly. But the axe was also a

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symbol of the Goddess, because the axe was triangular and axes are portrayed throughout as symbols of the Goddess.

* 1:18:15-1:18:35And if you have the image of the Goddess of Regeneration in the shape of an hourglass, and outurn it horizontally, you have a butterfly. She was a butterfly and she was a woman and she was an axe, and also double axe.

* 1:18:36-1:18:52But later on in the 2nd millennium BC, when the Indo-Europeans arrived in Crete, the symbol was probably transformed into just an axe, a double axe.

* 1:18:54-1:19:31There are several images left to indicate what is portrayed on 'sarcophagoi' of Crete from around the 14th–13th centuries BC when the same symbolism continues. This is life-enhancing actually: shells and horns and butterflies, growing from the head of a bull, with flowers.

* 1:19:32-1:19:43So it is quite logical that you portray something on a sarcophagus which enhances life and promotes regeneration.

* 1:19:45-1:20:11Sometimes, this so-called double axe is for sure a butterfly. This is an example from a seal from Zakros, which is eastern Crete, and this is a clear goddess with the wings of a butterfly, an eyed butterfly.

* 1:20:15-1:20:32She is a woman who has a crown, but her legs are not human. Maybe she has bull legs, maybe another animal, but probably bull, or vultures, it’s difficult to decide.

* 1:20:33-1:20:55In my last slides I shall show you that she can be also a bull. The goddess can be a bull. This one has a head, which is a vulture's head, with enormous horns, and there are crescents next to that.

* 1:20:56-1:21:14So here we have a combination of symbols, which we already have seen before: the bull or the bull head is the uterus, the vulture is the symbol of the Goddess of Death and Regeneration.

* 1:21:15-1:21:27Then we have crescents, of course, and horns, which are also symbols of regeneration. Definitely the symbols of regeneration predominate throughout.

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* 1:21:29-1:21:32Now I am willing to answer your questions if you have any.

* 1:21:33-1:21:45Could you say something about what happened to the old goddess culture, what was the takeover by the Indo-Europeans, how did that come about and what were the changes that occurred?

* 1:21:45-1:22:05My hypothesis is that the Old European culture was partially destroyed by the invaders from the East, I call them the Kurgan people, the horse riding warriors.

* 1:22:07-1:22:26They started in the Volga region of South Russia. About the same time when the Old European culture was flourishing, their culture was already food producing, pastoral and agricultural, but at a very different type.

* 1:22:27-1:22:40They were cattle breeders and they had domesticated the horse sometime in the 6 th

millennium BC, maybe even earlier, we don't know.

* 1:22:41-1:23:03But then, in the 5th millennium they were very mobile because of the horse, and they came to the borders of Old Europe, and there they saw this beautiful culture and meadows along the Danube, in east Hungary, in Bulgaria and Macedonia.

* 1:23:04-1:23:21The first incursion of these half-nomadic people entered into Europe at the end of the 5 th

millennium BC. Since then the trouble started. And this I call the First Wave.

* 1:23:22-1:23:35But then, about 600 or 700 years later there was the Second Wave. And then around 3,000 BC or in the early 3rd millennium, the Third Wave began.

* 1:23:36-1:24:01So we have now a transformation of the European culture from the matrilineal or matristic, or matriarchal if you like, to a patriarchal, patrilineal culture. It took a long time and it was a gradual thing. In the beginning it was only East-Central Europe which was transformed.

* 1:24:02-1:24:12

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The western part of Europe and the Mediterranean area was not touched at all until the 3 rd

millennium BC.

* 1:24:13-:1:24:30The western part of Europe was still flourishing, the megaliths were built there, and although there are traces of Indo-Europeans even in Ireland in about the middle of the 4 th

millennium BC, they had not much influence.

* 1:24:31-1:24:50So this is a development of almost 2,000 years and dates from 4,300 BC to 2,800 BC. This is the period of the incursions of the people from the East.

* 1:24:51-1:25:16European culture is like a layer cake, composed of these two very different ideologies, very different religions, very different social structures. And we are the heirs of the two cultures, not one. Every European culture is a hybrid culture.

* 1:24:17-1:25:42And it is to my belief very wrong to think that the European agricultural culture, Old European goddess culture was Indo-European, as proposed by Colin Renfrew, my good colleague, in 1987 in his book Archaeology and Language. This is a misunderstanding.

* 1:25:43-1:26:07The Old European culture cannot be Indo-European because we can reconstruct the early Indo-European culture if we use linguistic evidence and mythology. My book shows that this is a non-Indo-European culture, an earth loving, art loving culture.

* 1:26:08-1:26:18The Indo-European culture is a completely different culture, representing a different ideology in every aspect of culture.

* 1:26:19-1:26:36You've shown us several different goddesses and I'm wondering if you see this as one goddess with a number of different forms or several goddesses who somehow are together, representing natural forces and doing things in consort?

* 1:26:37-1:26:40I see, you have asked a very serious question.

* 1:26:46-1:26:52Well, one thing is clear, there are many goddesses, there are many types of goddesses.

* 1:26:53-1:27:14It's clear, from the very beginning, from at least the Upper Paleolithic when we start to

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have the sculptures and also cave art. Now, is this one goddess with many functions, many postures?

* 1:27:15-1:27:40I would tend to say yes, and therefore I would like to call her the Great Goddess. However, maybe this answer is not for the whole history of humankind, because perhaps some of the images started in a different way.

* 1:27:41-1:28:00I would classify two groups: the Bird and Snake Goddesses could have originated as totemic animals. From the Upper Paleolithic or even earlier they were serving as protectresses of the family and ensuring the life powers.

* 1:28:01-1:28:13And the other class would be this Goddess who creates from herself, and therefore we have so many of her body parts represented.

* 1:28:15-1:28:34So these could be two lines which later merged, because later on we cannot distinguish very clearly between the Bird Goddess, the Snake Goddess and the other goddesses and their functions. They are polyvalent symbols.

* 1:28:35-1:28:50For instance, the snake is the symbol of life, of life power and is the symbol of regeneration and therefore its functions are here and are there, so it is almost impossible to say.

* 1:28:52-1:29:04But I only speak about the possibility of several images developing from one thought, the others from another.

* 1:29:05-1:29:17Could you comment briefly on the ancient religions of other cultures around the world, and in particular I am curious if goddess worship is characteristic of a number of ancient religions?

* 1:29:18-1:29:23Yes certainly, the goddess religion was universal.

* 1:29:24-1:29:55In all parts of the world we find the goddess before the patriarchal stage and there are similarities between them, although I think if we want to decipher the meaning, the functions of the goddess we have to concentrate on one area which is rich in sculptural art or painted pottery and others, like Europe.

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* 1:29:56-1:30:21And then we can be certain that we can understand the symbolism. Although in general, no question! There are similarities between Africa and Europe and the Near East and the Americas. Indian art has very many similarities to European images.

* 1:30:23-1:30:48In China also, before the patriarchal period, there was goddess religion. Southeast Asia is full of images which are almost identical. The pottery is so similar that it can be confused with what we see in Romania or Hungary and in Indonesia.

* 1:30:49-1:31:08Marija, I'm not sure you're aware of it, over the last 20 years or so, the rediscovery of the Goddess has been the catalyst for a vast new religious movement, which is being regarded as the fastest growing religious movement in America today, the religion of the Living Goddess.

* 1:31:09-1:31:16I would wonder if you might have any comments about this new movement, the resurgence of goddess worship and a projection of how you see that for the future?

* 1:31:18-1:31:25Why it was in the past so slow, and why it is so fast now, yes? It's interesting.

* 1:25:26-1:31:41Of course one thing is the feminist movement and women are helping to spread the idea, that is clear. Another is that the material became ripe for interpretation.

* 1:31:43-1:31:56There is so much that I always question. How come that for so long nobody really touched the question of symbolism or types of goddesses.

* 1:31:56-1:32:13There is a lot written before me about Near Eastern goddesses and others but an analysis of types and symbols was not done.

* 1:32:14-1:32:40So why? Well perhaps someone like me, who is interested in interdisciplinary studies had to appear to connect what is known in mythology, in Indo-European studies, in history of religions, in archaeology, in linguistics and pull all the cords together.

* 1:32:42-1:33:00It needs an interdisciplinary view otherwise it is difficult to understand. All of my colleagues are not interested in figurines or sculptures or religion in general. They just

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discard it.

* 1:33:01-1:33:08There is no interest, no interpretation, as though it’s better not do it because you will not be a scientist.

* 1:33:10-1:33:12What impact in the world … how would this effect the world?

* 1:33:13-1:33:18Right now? Well I think we’ve reach the end of the world and we're starting to create another.

* 1:33:21-1:33:54But I expect we shall become a healthier society. We shall worship the earth—well, not in the same way, nothing returns from the past. We cannot repeat the whole thing from the beginning, we can only transform ourselves and use our knowledge about the past and apply it for creating the future. This is my feeling.

* 1:33:55-1:34:08In other talks I've heard you talk about the fact that the old goddess cultures that you've been speaking about did not know warfare, they didn’t have weapons.

* 1:34:09-1:34:25The invention of warfare was really an invention of the patriarchal sky-god cultures that came later. Could you just briefly outline the evidence for that and how you view that story?

* 1:34:26-1:34:52Yes it is true, this culture is a peaceful culture. We have no weapons except for hunting. Arrowheads exist and even one or two daggers have been found but these are not for warfare, whereas in the East, the Kurgan culture produced formidable daggers around 5,000 BC and later.

* 1:34:53-1:35:08And then from the daggers swords developed, and then they had spears and other weapons, whereas in Europe we do not have weapons until the appearance of the warriors.

* 1:35:09-1:35:24Then after that, of course, the culture was transformed and weapons appeared, together with a specific type of metallurgy which appeared in Europe at the end of the 4 th

millennium or the second half of the 4th millennium.

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* 1:35:25-1:35:49The metal was what we can call now bronze, but it was first arsenic and copper, and this was a hard metal. The metal used before by Old Europeans was a soft metal. It was copper and gold, and from that kind of metal you could not produce weapons.

* 1:35:51-1:36:14The most important evidence for a peaceful culture is the location of habitation sites. They chose the best, the most beautiful areas. They didn't even think of enemies. They didn't have to climb up the hills, they didn't have to fortify their settlements with stone walls.

* 1:36:15-1:36:23If they fortified it was just a trench or some palisade against the wild animals maybe, that was all.

* 1:36:23-1:36:36Marija, is there any evidence that you can use to get an idea of what the balance between male and female was in the family and in society in Old Europe?

* 1:36:37-1:36:58Well, we can reconstruct something, of course, not the whole picture, because in archaeological records it's difficult to find such good evidence for that. We can use settlements, we can use cemeteries, we can use frescos and other sources.

* 1:36:59-1:37:21I would say it's important to see what happened in Crete, in Thera in the Bronze Age where we have so many frescos that we can use to reconstruct the society. This is a balanced society with the woman as a priestess on the top and as a queen.

* 1:37:23-1:37:34I think it’s no doubt that the Minoan culture had a queen and her brother maybe was very important for trade and navigation.

* 1:37:35-1:37:55And I would then go back and see from the settlement and cemetery evidence in Europe of the 6th, 5th, 4th and 3rd millennia BC that there was a balanced society where men were important.

* 1:37:56-1:38:20They were overseeing trade and perhaps architecture, building, shipbuilding, navigation, and toolmaking. In their graves always there appear trade objects, whereas in important female graves the cult objects and symbols appear.

* 1:38:21-1:38:42

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Also in many areas of Europe women's graves have been found which were very important in the sense that the whole mound, a long mound was on top of a single woman.

* 1:38:43-1:38:56Such graves appear in Poland, for instance, in the so-called Funnel-neck Beaker culture. In Hungary graves are found where models of temples were found in a woman's grave.

* 1:38:57-1:39:18So there is a lot of evidence, which shows that the woman is connected with the temple, she is important in the religious movement, she is the overseer of the temple and this was actually a theocracy or theacracy, where women were the leaders of religious life.

* 1:39:20-1:39:40But then men also served in rituals, judging from Theran frescos where there are processions of men, or men bringing gifts to the Goddess, carrying fish from their fishing, bringing to the Goddess.

* 1:39:41-1:39:58So in other words I would agree with Riane Eisler's term gylany, composed of gy and an, woman and man, with L in the middle linking the two sexes.

* 1:40:00-1:40:16However, maybe in the very beginning there was not a real balanced society. I think the woman was more important because of the Goddess and because the mother was really very important.

* 1:40:17-1:40:41The father was probably just a consort and the brother of the family took care of the children. He was the important man, and the linguistic evidence shows that. The brother of the mother is always important in the non-Indo-European remnants of the language.

* 1:40:43-1:41:04Well, I think what I have shown to you in my slides and said is part of what is possible to say about the goddess religion of Old Europe, which existed before the Indo-Europeans.

* 1:41:05-1:41:29I identify this term with a non-Indo-European culture, not Indo-Europeans! This was a Goddess Civilization I would dare to say, because it reached a culmination around the 5 th

and 4th millennia BC.

* 1:41:30-1:41:47I don't agree with the definition of 'civilization', that civilization begins with the warriors in Europe, with the production of weapons and building of hill forts.

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* 1:41:48-1:41:58I think this was an ideal culture, a peaceful, stable and long-lasting civilization from which we can learn a lot.

Transript by Andy Ronin & Kinga BeneEdited by Joan MarlerSpecial thanks goes out to Ralph Metzner

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marija gimbutas: the world of the goddess

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