Customer Reviews

The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe

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For all those who are interested in a learned and well documented alternative view on the prehistory of Europe - the best you can do is to read this work! Gimbutas was one of the worlds leading archaeologists and even her opponents had to admit that virtually no one could match her encyclopaedic archaeological knowledge. Then she started to argue that there has been a prehistoric matrifocal culture in Europe where the Goddess were worshipped and suddenly she was quite mariginalized in the academic community. Of cource no on denied her outstanding archaelogical knowledge but she was suddenly not politically correct in this male dominated community. If you read this powerful book you realize why. This book presents the essence of Gimbutas life long research and her final conclusions.

Gimbutas's lifetime of archaeological research comes together in this panoramic view of Old European civilization. And her work helps blow the frontiers of known history back by about 3,000 years, exposing cultures far older than Sumer or ancient Egypt. Her patient calibrations of dentochronology with radio-carbon dating of artifacts shows large villages and towns from the 6,000s BCE forward, dotted across Eastern Europe. And her compilation of cultural clues shows cultures which challenge all previous notions of how civilizations evolved. The basic equality in size of houses and graves, the emphasis on feminine images in art, the lack of defensive walls or caches of weapons, suggest civilizations focused on the arts of nurturing families, plants and animals. Perhaps the survival of the fittest here meant the flourishing of those best able to care for each other. In discoveries and open-minded interpretation of remains, Gimbutas could stand as the greatest archaeologist of the 20th century.

If you read this book , and understand the implications ,of what it means, then all our preconceptions ,of prehistoric people are destroyed . As Piccasso said ,after visiting prehistoric cave paintings ,We have invented nothing . Have a look at the hair styles ,and sensuous clothing on the figurines ,look at the sensuous art work ,see that there are no weapons of war , come away troubled. Rob Whiteside

An eminently readable scholarly discussion of the trails of artifacts left in the wake of Ancient and forgotten civilizations, this book should be required to be at least overviewed by every educated human being.

The scope of this book is vast, and the depth of the research and presentation of facts is so multilayered that there are some hidden gems in the pictures that Dr. Gimbutas could only gloss over. Dr. Gimbutas herself might have been surprised at learning more about these gems. These are trails for future research.

I give this professor an A+ for being the pioneer at the boundary of inquiry about one of the most important FORMATIVE periods in the history of Humankind.

"Civilization of the Goddess" is one of the all-time iconoclastic and CORRECT pieces of scholarly research. And, we all know what happens to the old guard protecting ancient secrets, when the "paradigm" shifts to something that is both correct and iconoclastic....

When I was a brand-new starry-eyed goddess worshipper, I adored every gorgeous drawing, every elegant photograph in this lavish book. The story that these images claim to narrate, that of a peaceful, matriarchal utopia, sensual and celebratory, made my heart sing and gave me hope that we might someday return to the "old ways." Gimbutas reads the sherds and statues and decorated pots as symbols of the goddess. Thus, slashes = rain = water = primordial symbol of the goddess. Triangles = vulvas = primordial symbol of the goddess. And so on.

Unfortunately, Gimbutas is guessing, or, more charitably, seeing meanings she wants badly to believe. She presents no evidence for her interpretations; she simply shows us a picture of a pot and tells us what she has decided it means. If you think the evidence must be SOMEWHERE (that's what I thought), even if in another book, or a series of articles, guess again. Most archaeologists and anthropologists who are familiar with her (including many female scholars) reject her theory. They point to evidence that directly contradicts Gimbutas' vision of a pacific agrarian utopia: These people had weapons, they had armies, they had male gods who were aggressively sexual. Gimbutas simply selectively ignored evidence that didn't fit her thesis. She committed other violations of scholarly integrity too numerous to list here. Type "Gimbutas" into Google and you'll find several web sites belonging to archaeologists and anthropologists who are saddened by the public's rush to embrace her blatantly revisionist view of the neolithic.

Despite this book's scholarly bankruptcy, I have to rate it three stars. It is gorgeous, and there's no reason to discredit the pictures--just the spellbinding and utterly mistaken story Gimbutas claims they tell.