Into to the history of matriarchy
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 4:38 pm
Why should we assume that Neolithic Native Europeans are any different from other living tribes that were described by anthropologists? Of course, just as we see lots of variation in primitive tribes in America, Africa, Indonesia, etc, we'd expect some discriminating characteristics. And certainly, just as anthropologists have struggled to understand those they see, so also any of us would struggle to understand ancestors.
But I think we can at least minimize the misunderstanding by abandoning Christian family values. When I consider all the artifacts related to musical instruments, sacred potions, and what Gimbutas calls "Phallic Wands", I conclude my neolithic, and especially chalcolithic ancestors, were into sex, drugs, and rock & roll.
Which presents enormous problems for US academics hoping to attain, or even maintain, tenure. And why should we assume that the researchers who used to be limited behind the Iron curtain were even more biased? Gimbutas had the enormous advantage of being raised in Slavic Europe, spoke the languages, and what's more, actually bothered, like an anthropologist, to go to speak with the rural people about their folkways, which were largely ignored by the Communist authorities. It seems that none of her critics have bothered to do likewise, or even recognize the importance of oral history.
which is admittedly useful to anthropologists in understanding the tribes they have studied. Her academic critics say she made way too much of too little- the artifacts. and completely ignore the integrative process she used in matching the iconography with oral traditions still extant in obscure rural communities. We all know what "Frankly my Dear, I dont giveadamn." meant or what "the Yellow Brick Road" looks like. Thus also, in folk tales all over Europe, there were phrases in the various tales about local heros, places, and events, that keep popping up among widely dispersed and isolated villagers.
The methods of etymology allowed her to trace the roots back to the Chalcolithic era of Slavic Europe. Her reconstruction of the Goddess cosmology was not just based on the artifacts. I have only read her "The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe" and "The Language of the Goddess". I have not read, nor defend what she has said in defending her position. I note that both works are lavish with illustrations and photos of what has been found. I note further, that she does not discuss what was *not* found, but what should have been were her critics correct.
The forward of the latter work was by Joseph Campbell, who likewise has received lots of criticism. But I note none of his critics have nearly the encyclopedic knowledge of the history and evolution of myth, most especially as it is transfered from a hunting to an agrarian culture. He closes his forward with:"The message here is of an actual age of peace and harmony with the creative energies of nature, which for a spell of 4000 prehistoric years, anteceded the 5000 of what James Joyce has termed the "nightmare" (of contending tribal and national interests) from which it is certainly time for this planet to wake. [his parens].
He says this, not because of what was found in Chalcolithic Slavic Europe, but becuase of what was not found, which would certainly be there were his critics correct. And in the 20 odd years since, after the fall of the Iron curtain, when western researchers have had convenient access to virgin tels, nothing has been found to challenge his assertion. There's a *reason* for the Golden Age of Peace. And we see the very same thing at Carcal Peru, the New World's first city, 5000 years ago, which also lacks any defensive works or any signs of warfare.
Sass, in "The Substance of Civilization" notes that the agrarian revolution, such as at Carcal or Anatolia or Slavic Europe, provides *500* times the amount of food for a local population as they could extract from the ecosystem using hunter/gatherer methods. The populations of these early cities exploded such that it would have been suicide for an aggressive hunting tribe (no more than a few hundred) to attack them.
<On another point of feminist revisonism:
I question the assumption that the neolithic "Venus" fertility figures signify that "God was a woman.", or that women were rulers.>
I guess you missed it. I write a lot, not everyone sees everything. But I have a copy of the Maitreyasamiti texts in Tocharian A, which was copied from a much earlier text in the 5th century. It is a conversation between the Living Buddah and the Gautamid *Queen* of Kucha. If there were a king in this era, Buddah would hve been talking to him about the appropriate way for her to perform her duties. And during the discourse, the subject of mysogeny comes up: YQ 1.44 1/1 [verso] line 4 "Having heard that (the Buddah praising women) and having become glad, the women say: Shame on the denouncers, who..." further on referring to them as the "arrogant Sakyas", ie. the warlords which are still running much of Central Asia. Written in a Brahmi Sanskrit font. http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/te ... ic/tht.htm has jpgs to look at.
Then too, you mite consult "The Mother of the Universe" by Lex Hixon, which is a translation of the hymns to Kali by 18th century Bengalese Saint Ramprasad. Ramprasad also writes with a Brahmi Sanskrit font, and makes it perfectly clear that Kali is the divine force. He often uses the mantra "Kaly-me, Kali-ma" to close a stanza. "Kali-ma" in Tocharian means "everywhere". It is perhaps Kharma that this whole idea of the divine as female gets men so upset. Ramprasad suggests we should challenge conventionality. And while he clearly prefers Tantric sexuality, he recognizes that there are many Kharmapaths to the Goddess. As we see in the Tocharian tradition as well. In Tocharian, the word for "Kharmapath" is... "Kharmapath".
I know this is gettin long, but just one more point about women managing assets. The Tocharians inherited from their Amazon ancesstresses herds of livestock. These were handed down matrilineally. The stock was symbolized by small metal discs, like bolt washers, with a hole thru the center so they could be strung on a string to not loose on horseback. Each disc was engraved with the name of the herd or stock, or in time, field, or whatever other asset. Rich women wore these disks, not strung, but as lace, to display them better, as necklaces, belts, or as we still see, bridal headbands in the region. As metal became more common, the discs were used to represent less valuable assets, and eventually, just the value for the base metal itself. The Tocharian name for these disks:"Cash".
And still today, we see belly dancers wearing cash laced together such that they tinkle as hips wriggle. These strings of cash around a woman's waist are known as "Kucha belts". One other point about the Gautama of Kucha, was that all the brothels in the city were hers. The brothels were a civic institution. Just as men were drafted into armies, Kuchan girls were drafted into brothels. Hence we have the phrase, "Koochi coo"... the final "i" being a female suffix.
You can use force to control the behavior of men and build a great empire. But there's another way to control men that the employers of force try to suppress: sex. The Kuchans, and indeed all the matriarchs back to the Neolithic, used sex. Gimbutas never picked up on that. But I looked at the "phallic wands" in her books, and I've seen porn flix, so I know dildos when I see them. So- I can understand why it is that American academics in particular, cant discuss this.
But I think we can at least minimize the misunderstanding by abandoning Christian family values. When I consider all the artifacts related to musical instruments, sacred potions, and what Gimbutas calls "Phallic Wands", I conclude my neolithic, and especially chalcolithic ancestors, were into sex, drugs, and rock & roll.
Which presents enormous problems for US academics hoping to attain, or even maintain, tenure. And why should we assume that the researchers who used to be limited behind the Iron curtain were even more biased? Gimbutas had the enormous advantage of being raised in Slavic Europe, spoke the languages, and what's more, actually bothered, like an anthropologist, to go to speak with the rural people about their folkways, which were largely ignored by the Communist authorities. It seems that none of her critics have bothered to do likewise, or even recognize the importance of oral history.
which is admittedly useful to anthropologists in understanding the tribes they have studied. Her academic critics say she made way too much of too little- the artifacts. and completely ignore the integrative process she used in matching the iconography with oral traditions still extant in obscure rural communities. We all know what "Frankly my Dear, I dont giveadamn." meant or what "the Yellow Brick Road" looks like. Thus also, in folk tales all over Europe, there were phrases in the various tales about local heros, places, and events, that keep popping up among widely dispersed and isolated villagers.
The methods of etymology allowed her to trace the roots back to the Chalcolithic era of Slavic Europe. Her reconstruction of the Goddess cosmology was not just based on the artifacts. I have only read her "The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe" and "The Language of the Goddess". I have not read, nor defend what she has said in defending her position. I note that both works are lavish with illustrations and photos of what has been found. I note further, that she does not discuss what was *not* found, but what should have been were her critics correct.
The forward of the latter work was by Joseph Campbell, who likewise has received lots of criticism. But I note none of his critics have nearly the encyclopedic knowledge of the history and evolution of myth, most especially as it is transfered from a hunting to an agrarian culture. He closes his forward with:"The message here is of an actual age of peace and harmony with the creative energies of nature, which for a spell of 4000 prehistoric years, anteceded the 5000 of what James Joyce has termed the "nightmare" (of contending tribal and national interests) from which it is certainly time for this planet to wake. [his parens].
He says this, not because of what was found in Chalcolithic Slavic Europe, but becuase of what was not found, which would certainly be there were his critics correct. And in the 20 odd years since, after the fall of the Iron curtain, when western researchers have had convenient access to virgin tels, nothing has been found to challenge his assertion. There's a *reason* for the Golden Age of Peace. And we see the very same thing at Carcal Peru, the New World's first city, 5000 years ago, which also lacks any defensive works or any signs of warfare.
Sass, in "The Substance of Civilization" notes that the agrarian revolution, such as at Carcal or Anatolia or Slavic Europe, provides *500* times the amount of food for a local population as they could extract from the ecosystem using hunter/gatherer methods. The populations of these early cities exploded such that it would have been suicide for an aggressive hunting tribe (no more than a few hundred) to attack them.
<On another point of feminist revisonism:
I question the assumption that the neolithic "Venus" fertility figures signify that "God was a woman.", or that women were rulers.>
I guess you missed it. I write a lot, not everyone sees everything. But I have a copy of the Maitreyasamiti texts in Tocharian A, which was copied from a much earlier text in the 5th century. It is a conversation between the Living Buddah and the Gautamid *Queen* of Kucha. If there were a king in this era, Buddah would hve been talking to him about the appropriate way for her to perform her duties. And during the discourse, the subject of mysogeny comes up: YQ 1.44 1/1 [verso] line 4 "Having heard that (the Buddah praising women) and having become glad, the women say: Shame on the denouncers, who..." further on referring to them as the "arrogant Sakyas", ie. the warlords which are still running much of Central Asia. Written in a Brahmi Sanskrit font. http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/te ... ic/tht.htm has jpgs to look at.
Then too, you mite consult "The Mother of the Universe" by Lex Hixon, which is a translation of the hymns to Kali by 18th century Bengalese Saint Ramprasad. Ramprasad also writes with a Brahmi Sanskrit font, and makes it perfectly clear that Kali is the divine force. He often uses the mantra "Kaly-me, Kali-ma" to close a stanza. "Kali-ma" in Tocharian means "everywhere". It is perhaps Kharma that this whole idea of the divine as female gets men so upset. Ramprasad suggests we should challenge conventionality. And while he clearly prefers Tantric sexuality, he recognizes that there are many Kharmapaths to the Goddess. As we see in the Tocharian tradition as well. In Tocharian, the word for "Kharmapath" is... "Kharmapath".
I know this is gettin long, but just one more point about women managing assets. The Tocharians inherited from their Amazon ancesstresses herds of livestock. These were handed down matrilineally. The stock was symbolized by small metal discs, like bolt washers, with a hole thru the center so they could be strung on a string to not loose on horseback. Each disc was engraved with the name of the herd or stock, or in time, field, or whatever other asset. Rich women wore these disks, not strung, but as lace, to display them better, as necklaces, belts, or as we still see, bridal headbands in the region. As metal became more common, the discs were used to represent less valuable assets, and eventually, just the value for the base metal itself. The Tocharian name for these disks:"Cash".
And still today, we see belly dancers wearing cash laced together such that they tinkle as hips wriggle. These strings of cash around a woman's waist are known as "Kucha belts". One other point about the Gautama of Kucha, was that all the brothels in the city were hers. The brothels were a civic institution. Just as men were drafted into armies, Kuchan girls were drafted into brothels. Hence we have the phrase, "Koochi coo"... the final "i" being a female suffix.
You can use force to control the behavior of men and build a great empire. But there's another way to control men that the employers of force try to suppress: sex. The Kuchans, and indeed all the matriarchs back to the Neolithic, used sex. Gimbutas never picked up on that. But I looked at the "phallic wands" in her books, and I've seen porn flix, so I know dildos when I see them. So- I can understand why it is that American academics in particular, cant discuss this.
