Status
Available
Call number
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Collection
Publication
San Francisco, Calif. : HarperSanFrancisco, c1991.
Description
Presenting a classic illumination of Neolithic goddess-centred culture, this text provides a picture of a complex world, offering evidence of the matriarchal roots of civilization.
User reviews
LibraryThing member keylawk
By developing a more penetrating but just as rigorous methodology, Gimbutas fills in the "story" of the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in European antiquity. She combined excavation archeology with Linguistics and the study of Myth, coining the terms "archeomythology", "Old Europe"
She brings light to the very concept of "civilization". Not only 600+ pictures of the artifacts, not only charts and timelines showing perspective and flows, but scaled drawings of structures and communities clarified by the extensive excavations.
Abundant irrefutable evidence that "civilization" flourished in Old Europe between 6500 and 3500 BC (and in Crete until 1450 BC), and this period was characterized by art, refinement, cleanliness, trade, and No War.
Widespread fighting and fortification building became a way of life from the Bronze Age up until now, but this is "not the case in the Paleolithic and Neolithic". There are NO depictions of arms or torture in the Cave Paintings. Gimbutas shows that the Neolithic period with large towns and peace was not "pre-civilization".
Also, compare the agricultural site at Catal Huyuk, in Anatolia (hog domestication), with hundreds of temples and paintings in all of them and not one scene of warfare or torture [xi].
The book is written as a tool to "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." {In case anyone asks why we study the past. Why we look for our present and future potential.}
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(gynocentric pre-androcratic communities), and "Kurgan".She brings light to the very concept of "civilization". Not only 600+ pictures of the artifacts, not only charts and timelines showing perspective and flows, but scaled drawings of structures and communities clarified by the extensive excavations.
Abundant irrefutable evidence that "civilization" flourished in Old Europe between 6500 and 3500 BC (and in Crete until 1450 BC), and this period was characterized by art, refinement, cleanliness, trade, and No War.
Widespread fighting and fortification building became a way of life from the Bronze Age up until now, but this is "not the case in the Paleolithic and Neolithic". There are NO depictions of arms or torture in the Cave Paintings. Gimbutas shows that the Neolithic period with large towns and peace was not "pre-civilization".
Also, compare the agricultural site at Catal Huyuk, in Anatolia (hog domestication), with hundreds of temples and paintings in all of them and not one scene of warfare or torture [xi].
The book is written as a tool to "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." {In case anyone asks why we study the past. Why we look for our present and future potential.}
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Subjects
Awards
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (Fiction — 1993)
Language
Physical description
xi, 529 p.; 28 cm
ISBN
0062503685 / 9780062503688
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The goddesses and gods of Old Europe, 6500-3500 BC, myths and cult images by Marija Alseikaitė Gimbutas
The language of the goddess : unearthing the hidden symbols of western civilization by Marija Alseikaitė Gimbutas