The Golden Age

Chapter Five

"Ancient myths and beliefs describe the female as the stronger sex, one endowed with magical powers" - Marija Gimbutas

In Greek Legend there is a story of an ancient Golden Age where people lived in peace and prosperity. To quote: 

"The first age was an age of innocence and happiness.  Truth and right prevailed, though not enforced by law, nor was there any magistrate to threaten or punish. The forest had not yet been robbed of its trees to furnish timbers for vessels, nor had men built fortifications around their towns. There were no such thing as swords, spears, or helmets.  The earth brought forth all things necessary for man, without his labour in ploughing or sowing. Perpetual spring reigned, flower sprang up without seed, the rivers flowed with milk and wine, and yellow honey distilled from the oaks."

After that came the Silver age, where everything wasn't so good, then the Brazen age where things got worse and finally the Iron age, which is really our present age of warfare and violence.  The whole concept of this myth is that everything has become slowly worse and worse for human kind since the Golden Age.

Yet the myth of the Golden age doesn't only come from Ancient Greece. Probably the most ancient religion that survives today is Taoism in China. Again this religion talks about a Golden age in the past. As explained repetitively in the Tao-Te-Ching written by Lao Tzu .

The concept of the Golden Age is also in the story of the Garden of Eden which again seems to have been a paradise. This came to an end when Eve listened to what a serpent told her and eats the forbidden fruit. The serpent would be a phallic symbol so it means she listened to a con-man who probably deceived her. So because she ate the forbidden fruit Adam and Eve were banished into the waste land and Adam had to work "by the sweat of his brow".

The story of the Garden of Eden comes from a Golden age story from ancient Mesopotamia but the original story and its meaning has been lost. There is a similar story from the Ancient Greeks where Pandora opens a jar or box she was forbidden to open and out come all the evils of our world. This again brings the end to an age of paradise.

Also in the few Aztec and Maya writing that have survived again there is a myth of a very ancient Golden Age ruled by a compassionate Mother Goddess. This is in contrast to the later age of warfare and human sacrifice. In fact most ancient cultures of the world have some myth of a golden age of the ancient past.

Up until recently modern academics have rejected these legends as pure myth. Not only do they sound too good to be true. Recorded history seemed to show a different story. Ancient history showed that the further you go back in history the more brutal and violent men behaved. After all we do not have human sacrifice anymore.

Though it has to be admitted we still have genocide and wars as we have seen with the Nazi and Po-Pot regimes. Yet it has been assumed by archaeologists that people in pre-historic times were even more brutal than people in historic times. But recent archaeology discoveries have challenged this assumption.

In the 1960s an archaeologists called James Mellaart lead a team to excavate a site in Anatolia in Turkey. This site turned out to be the oldest city ever discovered. Called Catal Huyuk it goes back over 9,000 years. What was discovered goes against all assumptions archaeologist have about people living in Neolithic times.

They couldn't find any fortifications to defend the city or any weapons of war. Neither could they find signs of violence committed on people buried in graves. It was also a city full of feminine imagery to the degree that Mellaart was force to say that the people worshipped the Ancient Great Mother.

So unsettling was these discoveries that the site was closed down for thirty years and the academic world ignored the implications of this find. But there was one archaeologist who was brave enough to challenge the accepted wisdom of the academic world.

The late Mariji Gimbutas went digging in other Neolithic sites and found similar findings. She also highlighted the Neolithic findings that Soviet scientists had made in Transylvania. As well as Goddess civilizations found in Crete and Malta. All these excavations showed peaceful societies that worshipped the Great Mother. Gimbutas became a very controversial figure and her books and work was rejected by the academic world. But other archaeologist also found similar finds.

The Indus Valley civilization in Pakistan was again an Ancient society that archaeologists could find no signs violence or weapons of war.  Even more recently in Caral in Peru the oldest city ever discovered in South America, going back to 5,000 years, the same thing was discovered.  Given the violent history of later South American civilizations with mass human sacrifice archaeologists expected to find the same thing.  But no matter how hard they looked they couldn’t find any evidence of human sacrifice, warfare or any other indication of violence.  And they had to conclude that this civilization existed in peace for thousands of years.

More recently scientists have discovered the Yamnaya people whom they claimed, were “the most murderous people of all time” as they embarked on a violent conquest of Europe 5,000 years ago. It seems it was these people brought a violent end to the peaceful Neolithic age in Europe.

So would this be the fate of any future matriarchal society or religion? It might thrive for awhile but eventually be violently destroyed by a patriarchal people. That could be true but it doesn’t have to be like this.

The whole patriarchal age is a warning from history. If all the knowledge about the patriarchal age is preserved then it is a clear warning of what can happen if men are allowed to rule the world.

The end of the last matriarchal age happened when women became complacent and allowed themselves to be tricked by ambitious men. But if the history of the last five thousand years is preserved, then women will be less likely to be so complacent in the future.