Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Ancient and ArchaeologyΒ  permalink

Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Lordofthebeasts (U7833306) on Sunday, 18th March 2007

  Hi, this is my first posting, and probably quite a controversial one. I have read much of Marija Gimbutas' works and find them fascinating and with more than just a smattering of truth. Does anyone else find her ideas on archaeomythology ring true? If not, what are your objections to her ideas?

  Link to this forum: Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

  Report message1

• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Monday, 19th March 2007

  I did not know her till your quote but I always joked about archaiologists who will try to give a religio-philosophico-anthropo-social perspective even to the most simple of things - perspectives that people who actually had created the items had certainly no clue and down to the basics no interest.
  
  From the very few things I read in the wikipedia it seems we have to deal with yet another supporter of the indo-european theory (the theory "out of siberia") albeit with another twist this distinction between female dominated societies that supposedly existed in pre-indoeuropean Europe, and male dominated ones that supposedly prevailed after the influx of... indoeuropean tribes from Asia into europe...
  
  Personally I cannot find any truth in the indoeuropean myth. First, the indo-european family of languages is just a family of languages and nothing more, that theory on that mysterious tribe that enterred Europe from the steppes has never been proved 100% as there exist absolutely no ancient nation in Europe and no European mythology that makes any link with the steppes. The fact that horses came from the steppes means nothing as the reality of indo-european similarities is that most of similarities concentrate more around agriculture and husbandry and less around horses. The fact that no known indoeuropean language can be attributed to the steppes apart a mysterious tribe of European origins that had moved to the far east where they became bouddhists - that can be treated only as a lonely example... all the rest languages of the steppes are touranic-mongolic and bear no resemblance. A more possible origin of the indoeuropean languages are the line from Persia to Greece via Minor Asia and from Persia to India - here we have to mention the paradox of the Greek language, one that we know well, that is in theory only 55% indoeuropean, thus according to that it must be a mixed one, but in reality it presents a maximum capacity of word-rooting a language can present. If Greek was mixed at such a 50-50% word-rooting should be almost non-existing as it is in English or French for example. For those that still have a go on that theory I can easily go on and develop the timelines to prove that horseriders in the 3rd millenium B.C. or even back in the 4th or 5th could not had caused all these indoeuropean languages that were even by the beginning of the 3rd millenia quite widespread around the world and very differentiated - hence this fantastic supertribe should had done it before 10.000 B.C. - honestly I doubt it was from Siberia or the steppes and I can put my money on the hypothesis that most if not all of the steppes talked touranic even back then. Europe accepted touranic invasions and that is how you had the Finnish and the Baltics (but only the former maintained their touranic languages) and yes there are anthropologic studies that support touranic invasions in neolithic times (but before 6th millenia B.C.) in waves reaching up to France (hence, Attila was not the first who had that idea!) but there is absolutely no evidence that these brought european languages in Europe. Or could you imagine a neolithic tribe of a bunch of horsemen having the capacity of controlling half of Europe? Impossible. Even if true we would have more non-european languages surviving that event into historic times. My guess is the more obvious: that languages moved around with sea commerce (and in north europe river commerce) of agricultural products.
  
  Personally I cannot find any truth in the other perspective of Gimbutas' theories, those of female dominated. Utter nonsense. One has to be a semi-illiterate to make a theory like that. First of all, there is nothing in horses that make societies more manly and there is nothing in farms that make societies more effeminate. I cannot see also how hunting societies were more manly unless we reproduce the myth of man-hunter and woman sitting in the cave waiting the man to come back with the... mammouth. Quite the contrary: horses and hunting must had given more freedom to women from farming. In farming societies, women necessarily took to the jobs of the house and the field while on the other hand men had enough time (considering also their increased numbers due to the increased food stocks albeit of less variety) to gather together under a leader and form armies that attacked neighbours in order to get more fields and increase the power of their societies to the detriment of others.
  
  Female dominated societies existed in equal numbers in Asia (north and south) as in Europe or Africa or America and farming and hunting societies existed everywhere... what happened was simply that farming societies and patriarchical ones (usually the latter came from the former) created a tradition that everywhere won over the hunting and/or female dominated societies traditions. It is not accidental that these two traditions survived only in really isolated places showing us nothing else than the simple thing that the stronger (whatever that is) will prevail over the weaker.
  
  I do not know how on earth could this Gimbutas say that aaaallll of Europe was female dominated and aaalll of Asia the opposite - these are really overgeneralisations. Did she took into account the ancient religions of Goddesses? So what? Ancient Greeks or Celtics had as many Goddesses as Gods and reverred them to the same level but then where they female dominated societies??? Quite the opposite I would say with certainty.
  
  I think Gimbutas said nothing spectacular other than overgeneralisations possibly derived from personal wishes rather than scientific approaches (her work in greek neolithic villages is laughable, really I was wondering who worked there cos even back in Greece I had heard of so much irrelevant things written even in academic books... whatever item she had found must had been of socio-religio-philosophico...even if it could had been just the tool of a lonely wife!!!) and I can really understand her collegues who would often say "oh there she goes again".

  Link to this forum: Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

  Report message2

• Message 3

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by Lordofthebeasts (U7833306) on Tuesday, 20th March 2007

  Well that was quite a diatribe! Rather more of a burning than I had imagined (or perhaps deserved!). It makes me wonder whether you have taken the trouble to read any of her books, or did you just base your answer on what you have read in Wikipedia? In fact her books make very little reference to the masculine/feminine issue or to the Indo-European invasions. The bulk of her work is based on first hand observations rather than what can be gleaned from text books or university lecture notes. She carefully analyses the markings and shapes of various archaeological artefacts and discusses them in their archaeological context. Much of the work discussed, in great detail, is her own work carried out in person. She also considers artefacts and mythology from across the world, and deals with the analysis in a thorough scientific manner. The fact is that, from my own observations on artefacts and archaeological sites in this country, her analyses and descriptions of markings and possible explanations do seem to fit quite nicely. Maybe most traditional archaeologists(and I assume you are one)are too ready to believe the spurious nonsense that is often purpetrated as "fact", and has been churned out by generation after generation of their peers, rather than approach these issues with an open mind and from a multidiscplinary stance. By the great Jehova, it took long enough for archaeologists to adopt any sort of scientific approach to their subject. Now the vast majority use scientific methodology and equipment, but seem to remain blinkered to anything which asks them to step outside the norm of how their peers think!

  Link to this forum: Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

  Report message3

• Message 4

  , in reply to message 3.

  Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Tuesday, 20th March 2007

  Ha ha, Nick isn't a traditional archaeologist, he's got a chip on his shoulder about them as well. Note the criticism of explanations that supposedly rely on the significance of ritual explanation over that of form and function. Still you're quite right that he hasn't read much about her, otherwise he would have spotted that she attempts to link the Vinca scripts with the writing systems of crete much as he has attempted to do on numerous occasions. He even classifies Vinca symbols fund in South east europe as Linear A and subsequently Linear A as B, B as C and the Cypriot Syllabary of the first Millennium BC as D and modern phoenetic alphabets as E in an attempt to suggest that they were all speaking Greek and they respresent a continuous line of continuity. Its not the metaphysics of her alphabet he objects to, rather the idea that greek is not thre basis of European language groups and civilisation. Take out the idea that there was asupposedly a male dominated Indo European wave of invaders c. 2000 BC and he'd no doubt lap up the ideas. I'd also be inclined to say that if he considers the the Jungian assertions about the validitty of myths in the prehistory of Europe as evidence then he has missed the story of Appollo's victory over Python not to mention that of St Patrick's driving all the snakes from Ireland. Still there seems little to suggest that Old Europe was any less prone to inter tribal conflict because of the worship of female deities.
  
  Can't say I neccesarily agree with her assertions on the significance of the placement of certain symbols within specific contexts. For example the triangle rather than the chevron appears to have more connotation with the vulva. I'm not sure but when anybody suggests one should have an open mind about something it is usually so they can pour in a load of fuzzy new age supposition and your exortation to pagan deities doesn't do much to persuade me that you are nay different.

  Link to this forum: Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

  Report message4

• Message 5

  , in reply to message 4.

  Posted by Lordofthebeasts (U7833306) on Wednesday, 21st March 2007

  Thanks for the reply lolbeeble, I was beginning to think that this site was perhaps only for
  those with an interest in reading what was on Wikipedia! Reassuring that you seem to have
  read Gimbutas'books, and may have enough detailed knowledge to provide an educated critique
  (which I,as yet, despite my advanced years, do not possess).
  I was interested to hear what you had to say about the linguistics angle (and amused at the angle on Greek...I had already guessed that bit). I will go away and re-read the relevant passages again.
  Many of the incised marks (on rocks) that I have seen in this country would appear to fall
  quite readily into Gimbutas' categories. Some of the markings that I have observed first
  hand would seem to be a form of writing, which an archaeologist friend refers to as proto-
  Ogham (although from the putative age of these incisions, it must be proto-proto Ogham, or
  even earlier if you get my drift). Certainly, if Gimbutas' hypotheses (and let's face it
  that is what they are and nothing more) are correct then our ancestors must have had a
  serious addiction to sex! Yes, I do see vulvas and fertility symbols in many of the incised
  markings that I am looking at. Worrying and sad at my age, perhaps I should know better (and
  my wife refers to my delvings as "archaeoporn"!).
  The mythological aspects are intriguing, and not something that I am overly familiar with,
  but as I enter the "third age", and have time to scratch around for information, maybe I
  will get to grips with my paucity of knowledge here as well. For example, I find her
  analysis of the origins of the word "nightmare" very interesting.
  As for the open minded approach....I was an academic, and a scientist to boot, with a
  particular interest in palaeoecology....I have always extolled the virtues of open-
  mindedness (with the caveat of a degree of caution, as you expressed); of knowing the
  difference between a theorem and a hypothesis, and using science as merely a means of asking
  questions in a particular way; and of knowing the difference between absolute truth and
  relative truth in relation to what is said to be "known".
  Finally, as for the extolling of a pagan god.....well frankly I was trying not to offend
  anyone reading this site who was of a religion other than ???? In my Christian upbringing I
  remember singing a hymn that had the words "guide me o thou great Jehova"! New Age supposition is not what I'm about.....seeking the truth and continuing my education (even in the "third age") is what I am most interested in, and I look forward to further dialogue with you and anyone else who is prepared to discuss things rationally.

  Link to this forum: Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

  Report message5

• Message 6

  , in reply to message 5.

  Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Thursday, 22nd March 2007

  No, its my bad, I'm getting Jehova and Jupiter mixed up. I dunno, these bearded deities, they all look the same to me. Mind you Jehova, or Yahweh did have a female consort some time back who would act as a go between on behalf of humanity, at least until Moses apparently cut out the middle deity on Mt. Sinai.
  
  As such it may not have been the ancients who were obsessed by sex. Reading some of the literature you get the feeling that you can't find a cleft in a rock formation without someone equating it to womens' nether regions, I think the term top shelf might be appropriate in more ways than one. It appears to say more about the preoccupations, if not the fantasies of moderns rather than the ancients. Mind you many of these sites appear to have been occupied before the Neolithic and as such the whole idea plays into the JJ Bachofen's theories about the atges of human progression. As such the idea of matriarchal society. unhindered by the sexual mores governing relationships between men and women in the modern west put forward in the mid nineteenth century seems to fall between Rousseau's concept of the noble savage and Gaughin's Tahitian idyl.
  
  Likewise the idea of a peace loving, propertyless, egalitarian culture dominated by women who worshipped an all encompassing mother Goddess across the globe appears to be just as much a fantasy. It has gained some popularity in the twentieth century as people have aspired to end warfare after the escalation in worldwide conflicts during that time. I used to have to put up with a bunch of Neo Pagans armed with their copies of Robert Grave's the White Goddess, there were a fair number of moon Gods in the Near East but they don't get much of a look in. Mind you many of them were men and as such it rather skuttles the whole idea of gender specific worship.
  
  Gimbatus' ascribes a universal meaning to particular forms found in many different contexts, thus any female figurine automatically invokes goddess worship irrespective of what other types of figurative representation they are found in association with. She does the same with her assertions about her alphabet and indeed these would have had significance to the communities that produced them. Are Bird Goddesses always to be associated with the V shape as there are only a finite number of symbols that can be produced. A spot of overlap in form does not neccesarily mean that they will have meant the same thing each time they occur. Admittedly Gimbatus has attempted to suggest it not only the shape of these symbols that sugegsts a universal meaning between communities but also where they occur in similar contxts on specific objects.
  
  In so far as the mythology, well I may have been having a bit of a joke bearing in mind that Graves suggested that the Mother Goddess was the patron poetry. This was also an aspect of Appollo whereas Python was supposed to be the offspring af the Mother Goddess Gaia. Just another example of men supposedly repressing the role of women in history if one were to interpret it in such a fashion. The rotting corpse of Python was supposed to be responsible for the smell in the grotto at Delphi, described by Hesiod as the naval of the earth and as such the Pthian Oracles were often delivered in poetic fashion. The pious Plutarch could not work out why the God of poetry seemed to deliver such doggeril however. Just to confuse matters however Hesiod attributed his poetic skills to his muses at Mt. Helicon.

  Link to this forum: Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

  Report message6

• Message 7

  , in reply to message 6.

  Posted by Lordofthebeasts (U7833306) on Saturday, 24th March 2007

  I like your comments about modern versus Neolithic preoccupations, and you may be right! I do sometimes worry when out fieldworking with my archaeologist friend who is really convinced of Gimbutas' veracity.....we don't manage to walk very far because every rock seems to hold some incised fascination for him. He sees nether regions of the most minute scale where I see a fissure in a rock....he may, of course, be right. I once discusssed with him the problems I frequently experienced in getting students to make accurate observations using a microscope.....even the brightest of them took some time before their perception "clicked in" and they were able to see what was staring them in the face.....it may be the same with most folk and these rock markings, and some are more obvious than others.
  I must admit that on my first reading of Gimbutas's works the "peace loving, propertyless, egalitarian culture dominated by women" must have been so subtly presented that it hardly registered. I am still not sure that this was necessarily her only message. Knowing a little about her origins and those of her mother and grandmother, I suspect she knew more about what she was trying to tell us, but felt she couldn't openly say, than she was prepared to let on, if you can read in between my lines. Her background was, shall we say, "interesting".
  I agree with you about the meaning of some of the markings. I am quite sure that your analysis of V shapes etc as not being universal symbols is correct, but there may be some instances amongst the occurences where there is a degree of meaningful symbolism imparted to it and similar markings. However, I am very mindful of my early dabblings in throwing and decorating clay pots as a child....a child too young and naive to know anything about such symbolism; and what symbols did I use (and incidentally my own children repeated a similar exercise when they were young).....lines, Vs, wavey signs! Hmmmm!

  Link to this forum: Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

  Report message7

• Message 8

  , in reply to message 7.

  Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Tuesday, 27th March 2007

  Well I'm sure you were not too young to have specific associations with stylised representations and symbols even if you might not have any knowledge of the birds and bees. Kids seem to be able to recognise and identify numerous trademarks and cartoons as advertisers are all too aware, think of the golden arches. Children are even capable of ascribing meaning to specific representations on theri own creatios so it is noit as if the capacity for symbolic expression is beyond them. However the fact is these are dependent on some form of key allowing for the transmisson of what is actuallly meant. Humans can give specific designs many different interpreations, as with much conceptual art often the artist has to physically explain what it is they are driving at. Deprived of the ability to ask the creators of these artefacts directly and the absence of literary sources through which possible inferences about aspects of their beliefs could be drawn, it makes the idea of being able to say without doubt that a particular symbol has a specific meaning rather difficult.

  Link to this forum: Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

  Report message8

• Message 9

  , in reply to message 8.

  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Tuesday, 27th March 2007

  I may not have read her books, and yes I have a problem with a relatively high number of archaiologists (especially if they come from the ex-eastern block - we have really heard enything from some of them) since their work is 100% arbitrary.
  
  Sorry but I had read years ago certain texts about the neolithic villages in central Greece (Thessalia) and found them really horrible. It seems Gimbutas had placed her foot in there to have so much "symbolism" in it.
  
  Female equality and just societies interrupted by bad european speaking riders coming from outer mongolia my *** ... i better go believe Daineken.
  
  Lolbeeble, I am not archaiologist, far from this field thus I am far less knowledgeable but then unencumbered to be able to look to the heart of the issue:
  
  neolithic societies (nor ancient, nor medieval) in places of relative communication were not much different from our modern ones - know if women can vote and drive a car is because in the old days there was no supermarket nor a washing machine... societies where men spent a lot of time washing and woving along with women gave worse soldiers in combat against trained men who preferred weapon making and fighting... I can guarantee you that by neolithic times there were really few villages sparsely found in Europe (or Asia or elsewhere) where women had a bit more freedom - that Minoans allowed bare breasted women dressed in fantastic fashion circulating around the city and participating in ceremonies need not necessarily mean that there existed equality in the same sense that there did not exist equality in Rome where women could participate in orgies or in Byzantine Empire where they could get state education or become low level priests (something forgotten today, in our era of equality, by orthodox leaders).
  
  What marked people was always their will to assert their power over other people and back then the most major way to do so was by means of armies (in the absence of our modern global economic paradigm where often a financial hit will do the job, and in case of war you can control it with a few buttons (often painted red), thus women can have their go outside the house!).
  
  Now if Gimbutas did not like that fact what can I do? I did not say I like it like this, it is just the way it is - I am not here to protest over modernism or something... just against unproved and largely unreal theories. Somethings have simple explanations other than starting theories about equal societies and statues of godesses that could down to the basics be even of pornographic nature...

  Link to this forum: Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

  Report message9

• Message 10

  , in reply to message 9.

  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Tuesday, 27th March 2007

  oh Lolbeeble, need not repeat that I never stated that Greek is the most ancient language as this is stupid: all languages came from previous ones (developing from one or a combination of more) thus have the same age. Greek is merely the european language with the older written texts (dating previously than the 14th B.C. century). And surprise it does not comply that much with the Indoeuropean myth... does it imply anything more than that? Well no...not that much.
  
  Anyway at the times I am referring I would not talk about Greek (a term of the 8th century B.C. nor about hellenic a term of the same era)... we talk about times previosu to 4th millenia...
  
  Supposedly this language (sorry 50% of it!) came from riders from the north in the 3rd millenia... though did not see any change in culture, nor how riders could be military successfull in such a highly mountainous largely coastal landscape with little area to feed horses, nor how on earth that language presents a high degree of word rooting (incompatible with the 50% indoeuropean origin) nor why down to the basics it shares more words related to farming with neighbouring minor Asian as well as other eueopan languages and not so much with rider stuff. Unless we set aside the stupid rider theory, we will have to imagine a supertribe
  
  Sorry the myths about supertribes are highly anglo-germanic (lately popular in the USA also), we had a go a couple of millenia ago but ended a bit less than a millenia ago so we are fed up with it... I would not have a go on that thus spare me the label of ufologist! Ehehe! Take care mate!

  Link to this forum: Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

  Report message10

• Message 11

  , in reply to message 10.

  Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Friday, 30th March 2007

  Nick, I'd certainly agree that you are unencumbered by modern work on the prehistory of Greece as quite frankly the kind of ideas you suggest are held by modern archaeologists were doing the rounds not long after a chronology was first applied to artefacts from graves around Mycenae. True there was a longstanding belief from the mid nineteenth century that change in social organisation and material culture was brought about by the movement of different peoples and that a primary agent of this change from India to the Atlantic was the spread of the Indo Europeans who set themselves up as local elites wherever they settled. It was felt that their migration could be tracked by the spread of horse and chariots hence why the appearance of such items in graves outside Mycenae dating to the Bronze age was felt to represent their arrival. That they came from the north was supposedly further strengthened by similarities in style of bronze weaponry to those uncovered in the Balkans and beyond not to mention the appearance of Baltic amber in Aegean graves. Gimbatus Kurgan hypothesis took these assumptions and suggested that the development of such prominent displays of individual wealth represented the growth of patriarchy over the more egalitarian matriarchal societies she proposed existed, based as much from her studies of the Aegean. Of course there may well be case for suggesting that the whole matriarchy idea was reliant on the way the status of Helen and Penelope. For that matter the the whole Kurgan hypotosis seems to have influenced the nature of the villain in Highlander.
  
  Although Gimbatus may have been concerned with the the origins of the Indo European Language family she did not suggest that this was connected to a specific ethnic group who carried the Kurgan culture at the point of stabbing sword. Indeed few nowadays would suggest such an explicit link between language, material assemblages and ethnicity as your assertions about your supertribe strawmen imply, be they mythical Indo Europeans or even Dravidian refugees from your Atlantis fantasies. I do not think the fact that grammarians recognised numerous common routes within various Greek dialects has any bearing on whether it should not be includeded in the Indo European language family. Indeed it probably made it easier for later grammarians such as Jones to spot the similarities between the routes of words across so many different languages over such a vast geographical range.
  
  It has been suggested that Indo European languages were not so tied to the spread of horse based pastoralism but more to that of agriculture and Anatolia is a more likely origin for the Indo European language family than central Russia. Certainly Anatolia and the Black sea was home to many Indo European languages in the ancient world from the Hittite and Luwian scripts of the second millennium BC to Lydian and Lycean in the first not to mention the similarities between Indo European Armenian langauages and Greek. With this in mind it is perhaps not surprising that Greek agricultural terms seem related to those found in Asia.

  Link to this forum: Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

  Report message11

• Message 12

  , in reply to message 11.

  Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Monday, 4th June 2007

  She seems to have been a person of her time.
  
  The mythological and dramatic interpretation of ancient archaeology was all the rage from around 1880 right up until about 1970. More recently, a more mundane and down-to-earth (excuse the pun) approach to the interpretation of archaeological finds, has become fashionable. Maybe we have gone too far in the other direction. That said - I do prefer the modern (i.e. post-1970) approach.

  Link to this forum: Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

  Report message12

• Message 13

  , in reply to message 12.

  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Monday, 4th June 2007

  I had not seen that reply from lolbeeble who again expertly bashed me as a Ufologist (referring to my references to Atlantis and to Dravidians)... eheheh ok! But I think I always talked sense, I have never brought into discussion something that was blatantly flawed: e.g. that in the myth of Atlantis it makes a blatant deszcription of the Atlantic ocean is easily seen by any 8-years old child that has once looked at the If that means that an island exists I do not know there is no proof yet. That 9 out of 10 ancient myths talk about "more progressed societies" and battles of gods and giants is not my imagination or something - now if these progressed ones existed and had cars, computers, internet, sold mixers via telemarketing and organised Big Brother-like programmes for widows searching to remarry I really do not know in the absence of more tangible proof.
  
  Sometimes it is better to believe your own eyes than anything else. Hence our friend U2011621 above rightly prefers the more mundane approach of the later years. Unfortunately in many countries (including first of all Greece) that outdated example still remains to some extent - thus you have all these (usually female) archaiologists talking about the "semiological" (is there any such word?) meaning of the most common product you can imagine and why this in that place in the grave and why that on the other... - I do not think that back then there was more semiology than in our times. Sometimes, in the absence of absolute proof explaining the "why" I believe wit is preferrable to think that despite the huge cultural differences, back then people were down to the basics like us, they strived for power and domination via any possible means that is what mainly dictated their lifes. Other things came as secondary. If we see it that way, solutions to questions of "why this way", "why that way" may come easier.

  Link to this forum: Marija Gimbutas...how much truth in her ideas?

  Report message13

Back to top