An exciting read and refreshing too - here in Sweden among those few academic-feminists who still recognise her name, she is both venerated and shunned at the same time, by the same persons.
They want her ideas to be true, but they cannot discount the flaws in her method (as you rightly point out, freely associating from generic symbols and then drawing conclusions about how a society was organised for thousands of years).
It must be a real problem for present-day archeologists, that 1) they now have to deal with genetics where Y-chromosome haplogroups can be used for tracing and 2) political correctness demanding all finds and conclusions be in line with today's narrative (and of course pro-/retroactively with tomorrow's and yesterday's at the sametime), when material evidence which is what counts the most refuses to comply with said narrative.
The earliest settlements in what is now Sweden date back to around 12 000 BC, give or take a century or so. "Iskantsjägare", meaning "Ice-edge hunters" who made semi-permanent settlements and followed the receding ice. Outside Simrishamn in Scania, the southernmost province, a permanent fishing settlement was uncovered a few years ago, it's founding dating back to around between 9 000 BC - 7 000 BC, with strong indicators that it traded with other permanent settlements inland and along the coast. In Härjedalen (middle Sweden) rock paintings date back to 5 000 BC.
I wonder if Gimbutas took into account, that other - perhaps contradictory - findings would be made after her passing? Science is after all, in any field, never The Truth; it is only ever what we think we know right now. If a decisive find showing that "Out of Africa" is erroneous as it stands right now was to be discovered, then what? The afrementioned genetics (in genetical archeology) must be causing terror among the established academics and their current hegemocial truths.
A final though: it has become increasingly difficult using public sources and search engines to find anything about real archeology and real history, at least in my nation. I cannot help but feel that history is being adapted so as to serve purpose for something still in the future, and while I may not know much history as such, I do know what delegitimising a people's history and historical presence, culture and language is the set-up for.
Ihave to wonder if this is a swedish situation, or EU-wide or even global.
Marija Gimbutas healed me from the feminist mind-virus. ~15 years ago my radfem community - philosophical precursors to today's terfs - discovered her work and much rejoicing was made of it: a brilliant scholar validating the historical feminist utopia we all knew in our bones had existed. (Obvious caveat that none of us knew a thing about linguistics or archaeology or ancient history, but we had intuition, so.)
However, you take this idea to its logical limits and feminism collapses before you like a house of cards. It proves that women do not form a class that transcends race or economic status or motherhood status or whatever else. And if women don't form a class, then there's no shared oppression and there's no solidarity. At best feminism is then merely women teaching each other how to avoid getting raped, and the answer there is 99% "find a good man who will protect you from other men" and 1% "form a women-only community (don't ask who enforces those borders)."
It's all so obvious now that I'm on this side of it.
I've always wondered why archeologists and historians are so against Male and Female deities. I've always wondered why the Abrahamic religions didn't acknowledge that there must be an opposite force to the Masculine god that created the world. The more I read other mythos, the more I realized that Male deities are rarely the creators of things, other than war tools. Female deities have the creative force, which should be evident. Men are suited for building and destroying, planting and reaping, but creating life is something that women do very well.
Nicely done. I have a draft of a piece on Gimbutas in the works, maybe one day I’ll post it, but yours is very well argued. As a lefty myself it was pretty hard to disabuse myself of the notion that much of prehistory was some version of a socialist/feminist utopia, but it’s fair to say theres enough cracks in the armor to shatter it nowadays. Chief among them being the findings of ancient DNA and strontium analysis that make a pretty strong case that at least in Europe the farming societies were at least clearly patrilineal/patrilocal. And obvious examples of endemic warfare that predate the steppe invasion. For all we know, it was the Indo Europeans who were more sexually egalitarian! But that’s just it, we will never know the gender dynamics of those societies for sure. I do find the longhouse cultures of LBK and Cucuteni-Tripoli to be pretty fascinating however. And Gimbutas herself is a fascinating and complex figure who made some great contributions to our understanding of prehistory, regardless of her indulgence in speculations about those dang figurines:)
Many of Gimbutas ideas live on in the bulk of contemporary historians and anthropologists who insist that primitive peoples lived in harmony with nature and each other. For them war, patriarchy and social stratification are the result of agriculture. Of course this is a type of thinking that goes back to Marx, Rousseau and even Lost Paradise or Golden Age myths but she played her part by trying to prove these ideas.
The only positive aspect of her writing was increasing awareness of the Cucuteni-Tripillia culture which was a pretty remarkable culture due to being the first europeans to build large towns with more than 20,000 people and periodically burning them to the ground.
I am amazed at the claim that Gimbutas could speak 7 languages and read 20! I recall that Sir Richard Burton also had similar claims about his linguistic prowess. It is quite inspiring to think thatsuch things are possible with enough study.
Judge them by their actions not their philosophy and mythology, as we all known only the best killers in human history get to write the history books that survive;
...
Big Pharma is owned by the Bankers in 'The City of London' and Basel, Switzerland...THOSE ROBBING ALL BLIND FOR CENTURIES
...
That is a true statement, but like all things you are the blind-man and the elephant, and you are holding the tail, and think you have a snake, and you got shit and piss raining down on you;
Catholic Church gave ashkeNAZI the right of 'usury' in 12AD, and told them to convert to Judaism, because the Vatican said "Only jews can run banks", it didn't last long in Khazaria because the Russians hated the money-lenders so in 13AD all OP was moved to "City of London" a vatican, inside london, just like Basel, just like the Rome Vatican; Note to this day Swiss Mill still protects the vatican; Even the Queen of England, may not enter the "City of London"
In 15AD schism of the Church forced the "City of London" to distance themselves from the Vatican, so they created agents to run the ZOG Nazi banks of "London"; They called them Rothschilds; By 17AD they had taken over the world
In 1800's they funded agent Rockefeller who traded whale-oil in Shanghai china to move into petroleum, in 1840's, by 1910 Rockefeller owned the OIL world, in 1920's Rockefeller begat OIL-Based Medicine ( now called big pharma );
Rockefeller Foundation was setup, which to this day runs the US-GOV, but still an agent of ZOG
In 6AD the ashkeNAZI called themselves "NAZIS", which is why the AZOV today calls themselves Nazis; They had been run out of Khazaria forever by Russian farmers because when the Russians got into debt they would kill the money lenders.
The "CIty of London " offered a safe base for the money lenders. The catholic church in 12AD needed a bank to fund their CRUSADES, e.g. robbing & rapping the muslim world;
...
In 1920's agents ( Bush, Gates,Ford,Hearts,Loeb,Schiff) of Rothschild groomed Hitler, MAO, & Stalin; All the world, and modern GOV on earth is Rothschild bank owned, China, & Russia; To this day the original "Bank of China" still rules, and its 100% Rothschild;
In 1871 London took ownership of WASH-DC because Homo ZOG agent "Lincoln" failed to be war debts for his war of north aggression; London Banks have owned USA since it was a penal colony, later in 1913 the created FED Res bank, they destroyed the world left only the USD standing and then used that bank to pillage the world, and most recently to fund the RESET, using COVID $12T USD as a pretext
An exciting read and refreshing too - here in Sweden among those few academic-feminists who still recognise her name, she is both venerated and shunned at the same time, by the same persons.
They want her ideas to be true, but they cannot discount the flaws in her method (as you rightly point out, freely associating from generic symbols and then drawing conclusions about how a society was organised for thousands of years).
It must be a real problem for present-day archeologists, that 1) they now have to deal with genetics where Y-chromosome haplogroups can be used for tracing and 2) political correctness demanding all finds and conclusions be in line with today's narrative (and of course pro-/retroactively with tomorrow's and yesterday's at the sametime), when material evidence which is what counts the most refuses to comply with said narrative.
The earliest settlements in what is now Sweden date back to around 12 000 BC, give or take a century or so. "Iskantsjägare", meaning "Ice-edge hunters" who made semi-permanent settlements and followed the receding ice. Outside Simrishamn in Scania, the southernmost province, a permanent fishing settlement was uncovered a few years ago, it's founding dating back to around between 9 000 BC - 7 000 BC, with strong indicators that it traded with other permanent settlements inland and along the coast. In Härjedalen (middle Sweden) rock paintings date back to 5 000 BC.
I wonder if Gimbutas took into account, that other - perhaps contradictory - findings would be made after her passing? Science is after all, in any field, never The Truth; it is only ever what we think we know right now. If a decisive find showing that "Out of Africa" is erroneous as it stands right now was to be discovered, then what? The afrementioned genetics (in genetical archeology) must be causing terror among the established academics and their current hegemocial truths.
A final though: it has become increasingly difficult using public sources and search engines to find anything about real archeology and real history, at least in my nation. I cannot help but feel that history is being adapted so as to serve purpose for something still in the future, and while I may not know much history as such, I do know what delegitimising a people's history and historical presence, culture and language is the set-up for.
Ihave to wonder if this is a swedish situation, or EU-wide or even global.
Marija Gimbutas healed me from the feminist mind-virus. ~15 years ago my radfem community - philosophical precursors to today's terfs - discovered her work and much rejoicing was made of it: a brilliant scholar validating the historical feminist utopia we all knew in our bones had existed. (Obvious caveat that none of us knew a thing about linguistics or archaeology or ancient history, but we had intuition, so.)
However, you take this idea to its logical limits and feminism collapses before you like a house of cards. It proves that women do not form a class that transcends race or economic status or motherhood status or whatever else. And if women don't form a class, then there's no shared oppression and there's no solidarity. At best feminism is then merely women teaching each other how to avoid getting raped, and the answer there is 99% "find a good man who will protect you from other men" and 1% "form a women-only community (don't ask who enforces those borders)."
It's all so obvious now that I'm on this side of it.
I've always wondered why archeologists and historians are so against Male and Female deities. I've always wondered why the Abrahamic religions didn't acknowledge that there must be an opposite force to the Masculine god that created the world. The more I read other mythos, the more I realized that Male deities are rarely the creators of things, other than war tools. Female deities have the creative force, which should be evident. Men are suited for building and destroying, planting and reaping, but creating life is something that women do very well.
Oh well. I guess that I'll never know.
Thank you for the restack.
Nicely done. I have a draft of a piece on Gimbutas in the works, maybe one day I’ll post it, but yours is very well argued. As a lefty myself it was pretty hard to disabuse myself of the notion that much of prehistory was some version of a socialist/feminist utopia, but it’s fair to say theres enough cracks in the armor to shatter it nowadays. Chief among them being the findings of ancient DNA and strontium analysis that make a pretty strong case that at least in Europe the farming societies were at least clearly patrilineal/patrilocal. And obvious examples of endemic warfare that predate the steppe invasion. For all we know, it was the Indo Europeans who were more sexually egalitarian! But that’s just it, we will never know the gender dynamics of those societies for sure. I do find the longhouse cultures of LBK and Cucuteni-Tripoli to be pretty fascinating however. And Gimbutas herself is a fascinating and complex figure who made some great contributions to our understanding of prehistory, regardless of her indulgence in speculations about those dang figurines:)
Many of Gimbutas ideas live on in the bulk of contemporary historians and anthropologists who insist that primitive peoples lived in harmony with nature and each other. For them war, patriarchy and social stratification are the result of agriculture. Of course this is a type of thinking that goes back to Marx, Rousseau and even Lost Paradise or Golden Age myths but she played her part by trying to prove these ideas.
The only positive aspect of her writing was increasing awareness of the Cucuteni-Tripillia culture which was a pretty remarkable culture due to being the first europeans to build large towns with more than 20,000 people and periodically burning them to the ground.
Best Kurgan writing since Highlander!
" the people of Old Europe were sexually and politically egalitarian, peaceful,"... What's the Time for the 'Old Europe'?
I am amazed at the claim that Gimbutas could speak 7 languages and read 20! I recall that Sir Richard Burton also had similar claims about his linguistic prowess. It is quite inspiring to think thatsuch things are possible with enough study.
Judge them by their actions not their philosophy and mythology, as we all known only the best killers in human history get to write the history books that survive;
...
Big Pharma is owned by the Bankers in 'The City of London' and Basel, Switzerland...THOSE ROBBING ALL BLIND FOR CENTURIES
...
That is a true statement, but like all things you are the blind-man and the elephant, and you are holding the tail, and think you have a snake, and you got shit and piss raining down on you;
Catholic Church gave ashkeNAZI the right of 'usury' in 12AD, and told them to convert to Judaism, because the Vatican said "Only jews can run banks", it didn't last long in Khazaria because the Russians hated the money-lenders so in 13AD all OP was moved to "City of London" a vatican, inside london, just like Basel, just like the Rome Vatican; Note to this day Swiss Mill still protects the vatican; Even the Queen of England, may not enter the "City of London"
In 15AD schism of the Church forced the "City of London" to distance themselves from the Vatican, so they created agents to run the ZOG Nazi banks of "London"; They called them Rothschilds; By 17AD they had taken over the world
In 1800's they funded agent Rockefeller who traded whale-oil in Shanghai china to move into petroleum, in 1840's, by 1910 Rockefeller owned the OIL world, in 1920's Rockefeller begat OIL-Based Medicine ( now called big pharma );
Rockefeller Foundation was setup, which to this day runs the US-GOV, but still an agent of ZOG
In 6AD the ashkeNAZI called themselves "NAZIS", which is why the AZOV today calls themselves Nazis; They had been run out of Khazaria forever by Russian farmers because when the Russians got into debt they would kill the money lenders.
The "CIty of London " offered a safe base for the money lenders. The catholic church in 12AD needed a bank to fund their CRUSADES, e.g. robbing & rapping the muslim world;
...
In 1920's agents ( Bush, Gates,Ford,Hearts,Loeb,Schiff) of Rothschild groomed Hitler, MAO, & Stalin; All the world, and modern GOV on earth is Rothschild bank owned, China, & Russia; To this day the original "Bank of China" still rules, and its 100% Rothschild;
In 1871 London took ownership of WASH-DC because Homo ZOG agent "Lincoln" failed to be war debts for his war of north aggression; London Banks have owned USA since it was a penal colony, later in 1913 the created FED Res bank, they destroyed the world left only the USD standing and then used that bank to pillage the world, and most recently to fund the RESET, using COVID $12T USD as a pretext
Janet Reno proved how well female deities perform compared to male counter-parts;
Bitches & Bastards are just siamese twins sharing a common asshole
You are an intelligent shit-stirrer.