Marija Gimbutas

Mariza Gimbutas was all the rage at one time among the eager youngsters of the 1960s and 1970s. She was the author of 'Goddesses of Old Europe' (1974) and she claimed that Copper Age people living around the mouth of the Danube (in modern Bulgaria) were organised into matriarchal societies – being peace loving farmers. The nasty patriarchal hordes arrived later, Indo European horsemen from the steppes, wiping out the matriarchal societies and bringing in thousands of years of persecution of women. Naturall, most hippy like articles recited with loving care this message – but was it true. It seems not. Archaeology long ago brought the idea into contention and in this post at www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/varna-bulgaria-gold-graves-social-hierarch… … it is reiterated as we have a nice copper age burial of a chief buried with heaps of gold treasure with a sword made of flint. How you get a piece of flint that long I don't know. In the Chilterns it tends to come in nodules, or in thin narrow beds know as laminate. Presumably a thin bed of flint was required – but the skill required to dig out a piece that long is still remarkable. The grave is dated to around 4500BC.