Women readers have asked author Wm Seven to shed light on the subject of when he believes the Goddess concept first began. His response was to provide evidence of a tradition going back approximately 40,000 years when our “modern human” ancestors were physically and intellectually indistinguishable from us - 21st Century human beings. He stated that scientists now realize our early ancestors were just as cunning and resourceful as humans are today and thrived in what is known as an Advanced Paleolithic Culture ( paleo -‘ancient,’ lithic -‘stone’ age ). Everything they were, we are today. We are their direct descendants. He further stated that according to Philip E. L. Smith, Professor of Anthropology, University of Montreal….

“...these new humans proceeded to make a quantum leap greater than anything seen before in a comparable length of time. In esthetics, in communication and symbols, in technology and adaptive efficiency, and perhaps in newer forms of social organization and more complex ways of viewing their fellows, these first modern men went on to effect a transformation worldwide in its impact. Without their accomplishments the world and we - would be very different today.”

Like many archaeoastronomers, Mr. Seven believes that even though our ancient ancestors invented many of the tools necessary for their survival, there were tools they did not have to create. They merely had to use their imagination to discover and utilize them. These “discovered” tools would transform the world of our Ice Age ancestors as fundamentally as any they themselves invented. These tools of enlightenment came from continual celestial observations of the recurring patterns of constellations, planets, lunar phases, and solar cycles. As the skies repeated its yearly cycle, century after century, millennia after millennia, our ancestors noticed that these continual transitions in the sky coincided with the terrestrial seasons. Between the naked eye observations and the ability to reason as sensibly as we do today, early humans had all the tools necessary for the first Ice Age astronomers to blossom. Soon our early forebears would make an understandable and tangible connection between the heavens above and humanity below when our female ancestors realized that the waxing and waning of the moon resembled their own menstrual cycles. Though they did not fully understand the true workings of the heavens, the information they gathered and kept track of was perfect for their immediate survival needs. Soon, the Ice Age “wise ones” were beginning to understand that all of the powerful forces were not just in the heavens, they were firmly established in the constancy of nature itself. Most likely, these self-appointed holders of the sacred knowledge would eventually evolve into the holy men and women of the tribe.

As you can see, our Paleolithic ancestors were far from being the ignorant animals that Victorian scholars would have had us believe more than a hundred years ago. It was previously hypothesized that the dominant male would do the all of the hunting while the subservient female waited in a cave and was merely a docile breeder of offspring. This unfortunate modern misconception was the result of Victorian scientists projecting their own male dominated society upon early theories. Today, scientists believe that the female, by netting and spearing small game, gathering fruit, berries, roots, and mushrooms was just as contributory in hunting and gathering of food sources as men; and the male was not some grunting savage beast, but was a protective and loving mate, much the way most humans are today. Almost certainly, early humans combined the gathering of herbs for healing with the utilization of mind-altering fungi to commune with heaven. More importantly, it is now believed that women, concerned with fertility as a matter of survival, would gather once a month around secluded bonfires, create bulbous female figurines that were full like the moon and discussed ways of staying fertile. They also discussed the movements of the heavens and, with their sacred knowledge in hand, became one of the most valuable assets of the tribe. Over the next 40,000 years, women created social and ritual traditions that coincided with lunar cycles and created tangible evidence in the form of goddess artifacts we find today.

Venus of Willendorf, Museum of Natural History, Vienna, 30,000BC:

The Venus of Willendorf was found by the researcher Szombathy on the 7th of August, 1908. It is made out of limestone and still has some signs of red pigmentation; it fits in the palm of a hand. It is one of the most obese representations of the Paleolithic statuary. She represents the Earth and its fertility and continuation of life, the Mother Goddess, the universal female principle even if it is in its most primitive conception. Women were recognized as the life-givers and sustainers. They were revered as priestesses. Upper Paleolithic female figures, such as this one are found from the Pyrenees Mountains to Siberia, indicating that East and West were once united in honoring the Goddess. The vast majority (over 90%) of human images from 30,000 to 5,000 B.C. are female.

This figure is 17 inches tall and was found in the entrance to a cave that was both a dwelling place and a ceremonial

Venus of Lespugue - L'Home Museum, Paris, 25,000BC:

The Venus of Lespugue was found in 1922 by Saint Perrier in the cave of Les Rideaux. The sculpture is made out of mammoth ivory and measures 5.75” high. The breasts are deteriorated but they have been restored in this reproduction so that we can appreciate the original look of the statue. She represents the Mother Goddess, the universal female principle. Women were recognized as the life-givers and sustainers and they were revered as priestesses.

The Venus of Willendorf was found by the researcher Szombathy on the 7th of August, 1908. It is made out of limestone and still has some signs of red pigmentation; it fits in the palm of a hand. It is one of the most obese representations of the Paleolithic statuary. She represents the Earth and its fertility and continuation of life, the Mother Goddess, the universal female principle even if it is in its most primitive conception.

Women were recognized as the life-givers and sustainers and they were revered as priestesses.

Venus of Laussel - Dordogne, France, 22,000BC:

This figure is 17 inches tall and was found in the entrance to a cave that was both a dwelling place and a ceremonial site. She was painted red, the color of life, blood, and rebirth. Paleolithic sculptors chiseled her out of limestone with tools of flint, and gave her to hold in her right had a bison’s horn, crescent-shaped like the moon, which is notched with thirteen marks representing the thirteen days of the waxing moon and the thirteen months of the lunar year. With her left hand she points to her swelling womb. Her head is tilted towards the crescent moon, drawing a curve of relationship from her fingers on the womb up through the incline of her head to the crescent horn in her hand, so creating a connection between the waxing phase of the moon and the fecundity of the human womb.

Nile River Goddess - Brooklyn Museum or Art, New York, 4,000BC:

The image of the bird Goddess appeared in Egypt in early pre-dynastic times (4000B.C.) as funerary figures with strongly beaked faces and wing like arms and hands. These painted terracotta figures, less than a foot high and much alike, were found in graves in Mohamerian, near Edfu. They serve as a superb blend of bird, woman, and deity. Their greatly enlarged posteriors are a representation of the cosmic or primal egg. In Egyptian myth, the generation of the primal egg takes place in what is know as the time of non-being where the sublime goose appears among the imperishable stars. While the world is still flooded by silence, the voice of the great cackler breaks the stillness, and she lays the egg containing the germ of life. From her egg bursts forth a bird of celestial light. The cosmic matter from which the universe is formed comes from the primal egg.

Ishtar - Louvre Museum, Paris, 2,000BC:

So common in the Mesopotamian area were the clay figurines of Ishtar/Inanna/Ashtart in her characteristic breast-offering pose, which this has come to be known among archaeologists as “The Ishtar Pose”. She was addressed as “Mother of the Fruitful Breast”, Queen of Heaven, Light of the World, Creator of People, Mother of Deities, River of Life, Etc. The breast-offering pose suggested her function as the Goddess of all nourishment and fertility. Ishtar, also know as Inanna in Sumeria is, above all, a lunar Goddess who gives life as the waxing moon and then withdraws it as the waning moon. The light and dark dimensions to her power, her dying and resurrected son-lover Tammaz, who annually descends to the underworld and rises again from it all suggests a lunar mythology which revolves around the connection made between the light and dark lunar phases and rhythmic alteration of the Earth’s fertility.