encounter and subjugation, of peoples who had mother-based reli-
gions, by invaders who had warrior gods and father-based theolo-
gies.
Marija Gimbutas, a professor of European archaeology at the
University of California at Los Angeles, describes “Old Europe,”
Europe’s first civilization.^4 Dating back at least 5000 years (perhaps
even 25,000 years) before the rise of male religions, Old Europe was
a matrifocal, sedentary, peaceful, art-loving, earth- and sea-bound
culture that worshipped the Great Goddess. Evidence gleaned from
burial sites show that Old Europe was an unstratified, egalitarian
society that was destroyed by an infiltration of seminomadic, horse-
riding, Indo-European peoples from the distant north and east. These
invaders were patrifocal, mobile, warlike, ideologically sky-oriented,
and indifferent to art.
The invaders viewed themselves as a superior people because of
their ability to conquer the more culturally developed earlier settlers,
who worshipped the Great Goddess. Known by many names—As-
tarte, Ishtar, Inanna, Nut, Isis, Ashtoreth, Au Set, Hathor, Nina,
Nammu, and Ningal, among others—the Great Goddess was wor-
shipped as the feminine life force deeply connected to nature and
fertility, responsible both for creating life and for destroying life.
The snake, the dove, the tree, and the moon were her sacred symbols.
According to historian-mythologist Robert Graves, before the coming
of patriarchal religions the Great Goddess was regarded as immortal,
changeless, and omnipotent. She took lovers not to provide her
children with a father, but for pleasure. Fatherhood had not yet been
introduced into religious thought, and there were no (male) gods.^5
Successive waves of invasions by the Indo-Europeans began the
dethronement of the Great Goddess. The dates when these waves
began are given by various authorities as between 4500 B.C. and 2400
B.C. The goddesses were not completely suppressed, but were incor-
porated into the religion of the invaders.
The invaders imposed their patriarchal culture and their warrior
religion on the conquered people. The Great Goddess became the
subservient consort of the invaders’ gods, and attributes or power
that originally belonged to a female divinity
Goddesses in Everywoman