The Civilization of the goddess: the world of Old Europe

ENMy purpose in this book is to bring into our awareness essential aspects of European prehistory that have been unknown or simply not treated on a pan-European scale. This material, when acknowledged, may affect our vision of the past as well as our sense of potential for the present and future. We must refocus our collective memory. The necessity for this has never been greater as we discover that the path of “progress" is extinguishing the very conditions for life on earth. This book examines the way of life, religion, and social structure of the peoples who inhabited Europe from the 7th to the 3rd millennia B.C., which I have termed Old Europe, referring to Neolithic Europe before the Indo-Europeans. During this period, our ancestors developed settled agricultural communities, experienced a large growth in population, and developed a rich and sophisticated artistic expression and a complex symbolic system formulated around the worship of the Goddess in her various aspects. Substantial evidence for a rapidly growing Neolithic culture that began in the middle of the 7th millennium B.C. exists in the Aegean area, the Balkans, and in east-central Europe. A second area of focus is the central Mediterranean world. In the western Mediterranean coastal zone, the transition from hunting and food gathering to agriculture took the entire 7th millennium for a full transition. In western Europe, the transition from food gathering to agriculture took place only in the early 5th millennium B.C. The first half of this book is dedicated to the definition, distribution, and chronologies of culture groups throughout the period of c. 6500-3500 B.C. (in western and northern Europe, somewhat beyond 3500 B.C.). Regional groups reveal a surprising variety of styles, inventiveness, and imagination in the arts and architecture. Subsequent chapters discuss reli gion, script, and social structure.The last chapter focuses on the decline of these cultures, the intrusions of alien people with a totally different economic, social, and ideological stmcture that gradually changed the face of the Old European world. These events not only explain the disintegration of the civilization of Old Europe but define the transition to patriarchal and belligerent societies. As interdisciplinary research (archeological data, linguistics, mythology, and early historic data) confirms, this transition coincides with the Indo-Europeanization of Europe [p. vii-viii].