Like the Celtic/Norwegian Runes, centuries later, Gimbutas writes that repetition of the signs seems significant. “The most frequent combinations are of one or two lines with a V,X or + and M … this suggests the meaning of such inscriptions would be related to the meaning of the repeated symbol.”18
On figurines and pottery, the combinations appear inside double lines or on either side of a divider, but on spindle whorls they encircle the opening, and on bread miniatures, they cover the entire loaf. Groups of signs communicate statements, perhaps not as we understand them today, but statements understood by those for whom they were inscribed.
Because changes in customs in ancient times did not occur with the rapidity to which we are accustomed, it is interesting to note that similar objects were votive offerings to the Goddess in Minoan Crete, early Greek, Etruscan, Venetic, and Roman times. For instance, inscribed spindle whorls (for weaving) were part of the Greek Goddess Athena’s gifts. So it is possible that this ancient tradition of inscribing sacred ex voto offerings had its origin five thousand years before Athena of Greece or Artemis of Ephesus.
Abstract signs, neither pictographs nor hieroglyphs of V,X,Y have been found in the Upper Paleolithic engraved on stone, bone, and antler. They continue through the centuries and into the Neolithic. In both Old Europe and Anatolia (Turkey) they “consistently reoccur on ceramics in various arrangements; duplicated, triplicated, multiplied, inverted, opposed, associated with meanders (wavelike water signs) and parallel lines.”19
Seals for Multiple Uses
Hand held seals with signs from the 7000 to 6000 BCE were used to stamp ceramic objects and perishable objects also. “Signs X, V, chevrons, zigzag, M, N, whirls, crosses, filled crosses, concentric circles and squares, triangles with a dot, parallel lines, double and triple lines, tri-lines joined by a horizontal bar, brushes, quadruple lines abound.”20 Also found are signs of meanders, wavy lines equaling water or life force, snake coils for regeneration, nets and checkerboards, and snakeskin checkerboards, which are dotted bands with interconnected lozenges.21
Around 5000 BCE cylindrical seals, which are continuous round seals with a hole in the middle, came into being. They have repetitive signs such as spirals, meanders, triangular dots, X’s, and S/V signs alternating between parallel lines. What function these cylindrical seals performed is unclear. However, because they had a central hole through the middle, and were intended to be rolled across some objects, perhaps they were used as stencils would be today: to create patterns with ink or dye on fabric, walls, walkways, platforms, doorways, standing stones, storehouses, live animals, hides or large tablets of clay; virtually any relatively flat or uniform surfaces could be utilized. They were innovative means of more easily mass producing notice of meanings than could be accomplished with the older hand-held seals, which were much smaller and suited for individual stamping as we would think of use on a document, decree, or in food warehousing and distribution practices, whether on bags of grain or on doorways designating what was inside and who may enter.
The earliest handled seals with more than one sign date from 6000 BCE in Old Europe and Halciar in Anatolia/Turkey. Gimbutas says, “This combination of signs represents the incipient phase of early writings.”22 Because the development of writing has been credited to later, non-Goddess cultures, these findings are vital to reconstruction of Herstory in ancient times. The development of writing has been said to indicate higher civilization, greater sophistication and learning. If it is to be believed, with Gimbutas and others, that Old Europe had begun to evolve the “incipient phase of early writing,” then this accolade should also be accorded the civilizations of the Goddess peoples.
Sacred script from the Neolithic was intended for communication between humans and the Great Goddess. Unlike Sumerian writing, the sacred script of Old Europe was not devised for economic, legal or administrative purposed devoid of sacred meaning.
WHAT WAS EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE NEOLITHIC?
We will never know for certain, but suppositions can be made.
Life was oriented toward the female. It was she who most closely resembled the Great Goddess in her life-giving/birthing aspect and in the female image of breasts (for food), hips (for birthing), vulva (for sexual energy), and the way in which the clay replicas and wall paintings were made. Work was divided between field/livestock and temple/production. Both were sustenance: one literally feeding all the people and the other sacred nurturance that kept the community together.
Personal property acquisition did not exist. Everything was shared by the people, and everyone who was able worked. Women worked at the Temples, baking bread to feed the town or village. They made the pottery, fashioning clay into vessels and figurines for both secular and sacred usage.
Temple Priestesses had nine or more assistants. It is likely, from twin statues found, that two women governed the community – the one who was the sacred priestess was larger, perhaps older, and wore a triangular shaped pendant around her neck. The one who handled secular matters wore a round pendant necklace. The two had a council of women who together decided daily distribution of goods, settled disputes, arranged ceremonies and attended to traders who traveled between far-flung settled areas, often by boat on the rivers near which most towns grew.
Men were involved in animal husbandry, farming, hunting, and performed as sacred musicians. Almost all of their activities were conducted outside the towns, and they were excluded from women’s sacred ceremonies, dances or funerary gatherings.
Men and women may not have lived together as couples in the way we know relationships or families today. As rudimentary evidence of this, women and children were buried underneath house floors in Catal Huyuk (6000 BCE), and men are not found there, leading to the assumption that they were buried elsewhere, closer to where they lived on a regular basis.
The men around the Goddess were Her birth kin brother and Her seasonal consort/lover, which brings us to the very ancient idea of the “Year God.” This is an agricultural construct that no longer has a direct counterpart in modern Western life or belief systems, even though some of our most powerful symbols evolved from these ideas, as we shall discover later. The male “Year God” lay dormant in the season of winter but came back to life in early spring, mating with the Goddess (Her Temple Priestess representative) to beget abundance. Through the summer season he was honored and celebrated, but after the Fall Harvest, the Year God died, to be reborn next year.
In reality, the human representative chosen from among the most beautiful, skillful, virile of the community young males was ceremonially sacrificed, did die; his sacrificial blood was distributed over the fields to ensure crop fertility year after year. This process was so successful that agricultural communities are known to have farmed in the same location for hundreds of years, feeding thousands of people.
It was a great honor to be the consort of the Goddess at the peak of one’s prowess and manhood. It was a year of adulation, privilege, loving kindness, endless sexual energy flowing from the Goddess and Her Council/Attendants. Each “Year God” was assured the perpetuation of his lineage. His seed was given to the Goddess, and She made it live again through the child born from this sacred union. In a very real sense, this made each “Year God” immortal. The custom of the “Year God” continued for thousands of years, traveled to many different cultures from the Neolithic times, all the way into early written records, known also to the classical Greeks, Romans and early Christians. So, it persisted in human consciousness at least 5,000 years.
She is called: Life Giver, Protectress, Mistress of Nature, Queen of Heaven, Mother of All, Goddess of Fertility and Perpetual Life, Enthroned Goddess of nature and human community. She is described as “lawgiver who insured a high standard of moral conduct … condemned: Lying, the breaking of promises, lack of respect for the sacred and for people.”23 It is said that the Goddess cannot be deceived.
The Goddess is always portrayed in the context of a community of women. Sometime
s the two-headed representation of the Goddess suggest a government of a secular and a sacred leadership, but always with the two women joined together within the Goddess and Her women’s council. Many, many centuries later, on another continent, the great Iroquois Nation in Eastern North America governed a tribal confederation with a “council of Beloved Women” who chose the chiefs and then advised them. Who better to know the true character of a man than his mother, sisters, aunts, grandmother?
Legends abound telling of sisterhoods of virgins who exercise power through chanting and dance; about enchantress and Sybil; about small mystical beings living in forests, caves, on mountains who have the power to change present reality; these are the shape shifters. These legends exist in Europe, the Americas, Eurasia and Russia.
What Did Woman Look Like?
The earliest known representation of a human being is that of a woman’s face, carved in mammoth tusk ivory found in 1922 at Brassempony, France, carbondated to 36,000 BCE.24 Called the Brassempony Lady, she had carefully braided hair, and is probably of the Cro-Magnon peoples. Covering her hair is a precisely fashioned net of regularly spaced squares. This is Paleolithic woman from the “Stone Age” who seems rather tranquil and regal, qualities not readily associated with such distant Old European ancestors.
These women invented the art of spinning thread from fibers and from that thread creating fabric from weaving. Eventually they discovered ways to color the cloth from plant dyes which in turn created an array of fanciful dress colors and patterns which would come to its zenith in Minoan culture on the island of Crete. In early human settlements “Relatively few Neolithic figurines wear clothes and those that do are predominantly female.”25
The most important article of wearing apparel was the string skirt, which was made by twisting plant fibers, such as hemp or flax, into long strings, then attached to a string belt with the end of each string knotted at the bottom so that the entire skirt had a pretty, eye-catching swinging motion when the woman walked. These skirts were made “one size fits all” because they wrapped around the woman’s waist and tied at the side. The skirts were knee length, worn without undergarment or top, such as a blouse or chemise. At this time, this was “the common garb for women in central Europe, Egypt and probably Mesopotamia.”26
From thousands of clay figurines fashioned by women, it is surmised that body paint and tattooing practices were common, almost in lieu of clothing. “Clay statues were covered with geometric or swirling designs, some of which appear to be decorations on clothing. But in other cases, these patterns run straight across obvious anatomical details such as the navel or pubic triangle, as though they were right on the person’s skin, body paint or tattooing rather than patterned clothes.”27 This work reconfirms that the use of small, hand-held clay seals with incised geometrical patterns on them were “quite suitable for stamping paint onto textiles, skin or walls – a way of producing multiple copies of the same design quickly and easily.”28
Women’s bodies were portrayed in three different ways. The ritual figurines of religious significance which featured life giving, protection of humans and nature and the transformative nature of the Goddess are created with large round breasts, round buttocks, thighs and bellies. We do not know if this is a “larger-than-life” exaggeration to heighten awareness of the greatness of the deity and Her extraordinary power of life, death and rebirth transformation, or is guided by keen observation of the Queen Bee in the honey hive who is many times larger than the rest of the bees, if the people actually fed the representative of the Great Mother Goddess on earth until she reached enormous proportions, and over generations altered the evolutionary genetics of those women destined to become the Queen Goddesses, as is the queen bee who is born larger from the beginning of her life. In modern times, the Hawaiian people celebrated just such an ancient principle. Their Queens were many times the size and weight of the average islander in the Pacific. This feature holds true throughout the Neolithic in Old Europe, culminating in the gigantic statues of the Great Goddess on the island of Malta, near Sicily in the Mediterranean. These statues have bodies and legs so large it is hard to imagine whether or not such a person could actually walk!
The second way of representing women is the exact opposite: starkly thin, always carved in white bone, or painted white if the carving material is any other color. This is the Goddess Death aspect of the birth-death-regeneration cycle of nature and humans.
The third representation of woman in the Neolithic is one of ecstatic dance in groups performing rituals, celebrating fertility, sexuality, nature and the devotion to the Goddess. These figures are drawn to imply being in motion. They are a sort of shorthand drawing, generally what we would call “stick figures” with triangular skirts and with arms raised emanating from “hourglass” bodies. In some of the drawings there are smaller figures of men. We know that they are men and that it was intended for everyone to know these were men because they are drawn naked with the most easily identifiable male feature: an erect penis.
The entire idea of female ecstasy or of women engaged in ecstatic dance in ritual groups persists well into recorded written times and will be followed throughout this work as a concept quiet central to understanding the spiritually of women from ancient to modern times. The hourglass-bodied female figures with arms raised as they dance for life, continues for thousands of years, as an enduring symbol to remind us of who we are and where we came from.
Lastly, there are numerous Neolithic figures that have the female’s body symbols of vulva and breast but incorporate messages of natural powers beyond simply that of ordinary humans: the far-seeing power of owls to see in the darkness, or the stealth power of the feline (leopards, lions), the metaphor of the fish (smelling like the woman) with the ability to swim in the amniotic fluid of birth and survive in seawater which has almost the same components as blood and tastes similarly. Or, the snake with its transformative powers, able to shed all of its skin and stay alive, able to give its venom for ritual powers to humans, protecting the people from vermin by eating rats, mice and moles to protect the grain supplies upon which the entire community depended.
Hair styles for women, as depicted on figurines and in some drawings, are shown two ways: One is contained through braiding, wrapping around the head, knotting into chignons or “buns” whether on the top of the head or on either side. In dances and during rituals, the hair (if shown in any detail) is loose and fairly long, usually with curls.
Early headdresses, masks, and something resembling crowns are also shown. As the centuries draw closer to written times, many cultures adopt really elaborate headdresses in Babylonia, Egypt and Mesopotamia, and women of high status may have employed hairdressers to care for their natural hair and wigmakers to create the more fanciful elaborations. Head-dresses were created out of the woman’s profusion of hair, encrusted with jewel stones, flowers, all manner of leaves and wreaths of leaves, birds, snakes and mythic griffins. Basically, almost anything one could imagine was used in the enormous and exquisitely complicated headdresses, causing one to wonder what it was like to walk or try sitting down when wearing one of these magnificent creations towering overhead. The Neolithic women of Old Europe, Turkey (Anatolia), the Near East and the islands in the Mediterranean were of medium/light brown complexion with curly dark hair, fairly long faces, large eyes and medium to robust bone structure.
About 4000 BCE when metallurgy was also being created, in both Old Europe and China, new fiber materials were being used to produce clothing for the first time. In Europe it was the first domesticated wool used for weaving. In China it was silk. Both were easier to color with plant-based dyes, and both protected the wearer from the elements better than the previously used plant fibers of flax/linen in Europe or hemp in China.
Men, if they wore anything other than loincloth while they fished, hunted or tended flocks, seemed to prefer an animal skin wrapped around their waist, which eventually became the wrapped tunic covering from waist to knee
s, or a skin covering their shoulders and back, which in time evolved into the cape of woven materials. Very early portraits (which continued in style into written times) of various nature Gods of the animal herds, even the early Greek God Pan, the goat god of the forests who is shown as half-man and half-goat/sheep is shown as a man with naked upper torso and goat or sheep fur-covered lower body which may also have hoofs.
Woven aprons for women became part of the new costume derived partly from the very ancient string skirt and partly from the newer tunic. Shoes of leather were worn in rocky mountain areas, but bare feet or leather sandals were much more common. So aprons, the linen chemise or early tunic blouse and wool capes or cloaks, in addition to long linen tunics which were belted, were the primary clothing for Old Europeans, until the Minoan civilization turned the entire concept of clothing for women into high fashion, perhaps for the first time.
Try to imagine what it requires to make cloth for thousands of individuals, century after century, all done by hand labor. Shearing of the sheep for wool may well have been the work of men, because they tended the flocks. But the women had to clean it, soften and spin it into useable thread, dye it and finally weave it on looms into cloth. Only then could clothing be made out of it. For linen, the flax, nettle, or hemp plants had to be gathered, processed and then spun, woven and made into garments. For the majority of women, for thousands of centuries until the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700’s, this process was a never-ending, all consuming, life-long work, which is why clothing was considered so precious and most people only possessed one set.
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