One of the more exciting reads that I have had in the topic of Prehistory has been the theory of Marija Gimbutas and her book "The Civilization of the Goddess." In this book she attacks the long-held conventional view of Neolithic peoples being driven by patriachical dynasties that worship male god dominated pantheons. She presents, using the various "Venus Figures" found throughout Europe, and the prominence of temples dedicated to female supernatural entities, as the basis for wide-spread culture where women probably dominated the family, religion, and politics of the inhabitants of Europe and the Mediterranean circa the middle to late Paleolithic ages. She also proposes that the societies of this prewritten Age were far more peaceful than their forthcoming replacements and looked at time and change different than the linear fashion that would mark the early Western civilizations. Of course this has caused some vicious counter-attacks by other experts in the field, usually male, as well as individuals outside of the area of study. Pretty spicy stuff for an area that can often be as dry as the dust one has to dig through to get to some of the nuggets that make up the body of the empirical evidence of the science.

 Looking at it from the perspective of an initiate into prehistory and human behavior throughout the ages, I see no problem with Ms. Gimbutas' assertion that the civilizations of the European continent and the areas that were landlocked with it up until very late in those centuries of the Neolithic revolution were matriarchal. From an economic perspective it makes since. The prevalent life style of hunting and collecting that had sustained human families and their clans throughout the severe times of the Ice Ages, probably began to be less effective than the domestication of grains and animals. This was because of the hunters' own success at initiating highly effective methods at keeping more of themselves alive and killing more of their intended prey.  Agriculture was probably initiated for the most part by the females of the band who excelled more often at details of botany and animal husbandry than the males. With great patience and probably a lot of humor, the women of any given tribe would teach promising male prospects the details of the growth industry of farming and herding. Of course the religious aspects of this culture would mirror the societies that participated. The church of the Goddess who provided the key to a whole new world where families were larger and less time was needed in the collection of life essentials and security because of the rapid availability of extra hands would become quite established. Even if the individuals were shorter lived than their warrior-hunter fore-bearers they didn't have to walk as far as they once did.

 As for her claims to the attributes of these cultures, I will not go too greatly into, for reasons of my own personal need to study the subject more and the point of this article. I would like to express that while I can not disprove the peacefulness of the cultures under the Goddess' gaze, I believe there is evidence of exploitation, violence, and strict draconian measures adopted by various groups that worshipped Her. For brevity I will use only one example. Catal Huyuck, situated on the Asian portion of what is now Turkey, was a thriving metropolis of the pre-male dominated cultures looming on the future horizons, circa 4,000 BC. It specialized in obsidian trade from a nearby active volcano, now dormant. While there is amazing evidence of female-dominated aspects to this society there is also a chamber
dedicated to the Vulture GoddessÇ and displaced human skulls. I think that the booming obsidian industry was much like the oil industry of today; whereas it took place in beautiful areas but generally where people only liked to hear about in other's stories. So to supplement this lack of adventurous individuals, convicts and slaves from skirmishes, from within the Old European cultures or without, were brought in. Human sacrifices and capital punishment were used to intimidate these hapless recruits into working harder at the less than desirable work while maintaining a high profit for the managers of the operation. Now this can't be explained away by stating that the aggressive males of the society had to do something with their time, because of the presence of the many temples of the Goddess and her female associates and siblings. As far as I know there isn't one phallic symbol that one would expect in such primal settings found in any of the temples or shrines of the 20 hectares so far uncovered.

 Now were did these cultures go? There seems to be a large group of experts and interested parties that suggest some sort of drastic intervention. Ms. Gimbutas's book describes the invasion of peoples of the Russian steppes called the Kurgan, horse-riding invaders armed with lethal weapons and a willingness to use them. D.E. Derry ,an established Egyptologist, advocated as late as the mid-50's that an outside race other than the prehistoric indigenous peoples of the region established the civilization that used writing and social order to build the enigmas of the pyramids and the Sphinx. Nazi thinkers of the 1930's and the neo-romanticists of the 18th century attributed the spread of the Aryan from the east as to establishment of the Indo-European and the spread of linear development of civilizations. And the fortean school of thought attributes aliens from outer space for coming  in and  elping the primitives overcome their earthly restraints and begin progressing, or at least progressing in their "eyes."

 Carrying on with the fortean line of reasoning, it has been argued that extraterrestials arrived on this planet about 470,000 years ago. According to Shirley Andrews"s book "Atlantis", they helped out the Cro-Magnon species of the Homo sapiens family on the continent of Atlantis, which advanced their minds and technologies very rapidly to achieve a utopia/homeland around 52,000 years ago. It is generally acknowledged that around the rest of the world ordinary, and probably unaided except by severe conditions of the Ice Age, Homo sapiens started to develop by leaps and bounds in their own mental capacity beginning what is commonly referred to the Neolithic Revolution. The indigenous peoples of land locked Africa and Europe and Southwest Asia show many signs of sophisticated cultures based on spirituality and magical study of the world around them. It is important to remember that these individuals were in a world of severe change and adaptation, mentally not so much physically, was their key to survival. The later mentioned peoples would become the basis for the Old European cultures that Gimbutas refers to.

 The timeline from when the cultures of the later Paleolithic peoples and Old European cultures are established and in their heyday is from 14,000 years ago to 5,000 years ago. The rise of "true civilizations" comes just at the last part of the 5,000 years ago. The Atlanteans start to really have trouble with their world around 30,000 years ago. Plato describes the final destruction of Atlantis some 9,000 years before his time in the Greek civilization in his works some 11,000 before our time. The migrations of Atlanteans with their knowledge based on science and technology would have started in earnest around 12,000 years ago. Where would they landed and started to import their way of life? Probably not in the colder climate of the northern continent later to named Europe but on the southern shores of the fairly new body of water known we call the Mediterranean Sea. It is said that Atlantis enjoyed ideal to very moderate weather because of the gulf stream, which kept it warm while Europe froze with the diversion of the stream by the former mentioned landmass. Probably they settled along the then temperate shores of northern Africa and the balmy coasts of the western Arabian Peninsula. Finding the indigenous people they encountered a bit too spiritual and unstructured for their taste they probably stayed in isolated areas only dealing with them in mystical-shrouded occurrences designed to inspire awe and fear of them. They avoided the hearty populations of the Nile basin and the Balkan regions because of being vastly outnumbered and very well established in the Old European ways. They gave rise to the earliest seafaring cultures while slipping in the worship of the Aliens that benefited them so much in the form of strict male gods. They navigated around Africa, into the Persian Gulf, and into India. The steppes before the Caucus Mountains wouldn't have been any great feat for these travelers.

Then, after about 4,000 years of quiet and very controlled contact and assimilation, the societies and cultures of the lost Atlantis begin their push to reestablish the order of the world that the Aliens had given to them. This is probably because of the degeneration of their new colonies into deserts and severe climatic regions. The Indo-Europeans, who still have no found homeland, come from the east and force the existing Old European cultures into subservience or drive them deeper into the European continent, here Gimbutas reasons they found refuge in areas like the eastern shores of the Greek mainland and further into the Danube region. The Sumerians are inspired into working their economic-based token system of accounting into a written language along with a regimen of draconian gods and a system of land ownership that places them constantly at war with outsiders and each other. The pharaohs of Egypt arise with the help of the newly formed priest class with their mystical knowledge of wondrous things and their promises of immortality to them as omnipotent rulers of their land.

Indeed, with the rise of the civilizations that recorded their goings on in a written form, there comes heavily male-orientated pantheons and a drastic increase on the progress of martial technologies. And in the earlier civilizations, the Sumerians, the Egyptians, and those of the Levant or India, various deities are utterly alien in form or reasoning; they're strictly worshipped in fear of punishment. Their Orders assumed official capacity at policing the populace of their regions for no reason except to obey their gods' dictates to ensure prosperity of future days. As if in a millennium reaction to the subservience to a vast powerful oppressor, the cultures accept cruel deities. The Thugees of Kali and Yama in India, the Sons of Gilgamesh and Sorcerer-Priest/Priestess of Ishtar in Mesopotamia, and the followers of Horus in Egypt; carrying on their strict regimens to keep their respective nations pure and chaste.

  These Atlantean-influenced cultures are extremely rigid and inhumane in their perspectives, whereas the more western-based cultures of later years are bit different. The Hittites, who, originating in the highlands of Turkey, were self-confident enough to portray their kings and dynasties as human enough to smile and to be divinely-inspired and not divinely-sired. Of course the Assyrians who came after the Hittites in their fervent worship of Assur, an ambiguous male god, came out of the heartland of upper Mesopotamia and put a stop to such heresy. It isn't until the Minoans and the Myceneans come into full contact with the indigenous peoples of the European lands where the gods assume much more human aspects. Even then it isn't  until the arrival of the Greek city-states into full international power(s) that the pantheons began to look askance at the gods like Baal or Azhiman who demanded the blood of human beings, even of the worshipper's immediate family, to avoid dire consequences.

 In this perspective, it can be argued that perhaps the advent of civilization as we know it was through the intervention of harsh, demanding forces outside of what would be human behavior. And the followers of the sorts of historian-theorists such as Erich Von Daniken and Ms. Andrew would indicate that these societies were given their edge by the forces of the aliens. But to what ends did these godlike, at least to us, xenomorphs alter our history? To delve into these possibilities, I am going to dig into the popular and artistic impressions of our Western civilization and its mass unconsciousness. Feeling that the historical-based argument leads into specific details that provide unsolvable axioms based more in subjective theories, but the intuition that is expressed in the context of culture as the relationship of an individual an his environment to grasp the unknown but present. 

 The aliens are usually depicted as asexual and have even been depicted as aiding Nordic-featured Nazi-idolized Aryan supermen, dwelling in Antarctica along with the elite of the elite of the Nazi-Darwinists of WWII if not before. This could be in their preference to the Cro-Magnons they isolated and breed on  Atlantis. The abductions of recent times have been physically violating to the abducted, as if the researchers were fascinated by the separate physiology of the two sexes of terran life forms. Trying to come to terms with an unknown factor in their own physiology. Figuring out the foundations of the natural and evolutionistic ways of our species. Or perhaps, for unexplainable reasons, that they are actually hostile to the duality and potential of human nature. This could explain the stress and anxiety experienced by even the briefest of encounters with UFO and ET's recorded of recent years. Can this be interpreted in the longer view of history as the aliens manipulating the more destructive forces of human nature?

 In the current fiction of Arthur C. Clarke starting with his novel 2001 and ending with 3001, we have an epic detailing humankind's internal craving to reach out into the vastness of the universe beyond. He starts with the intervention of unseen, unfathomable entities from across the vastness of space touching a band of hominids and forever altering them. At the end of the saga, 3001, we have the protagonists of 2001 rejoining to somehow cut off the ties of the Overmind watching our development from afar, in an effort to save our universe as we know it.

  In the film adaptation of 2001, by the observant to the point of cold minimalism Stanley Kubrik, we see the atmosphere that defines the relationship of our sentient species (in its various forms) and our patrons. It is one of distant detachment by both sides. From the inspiring of the Neanderthal to taking up arms and providing the disputed waterhole for his diminishing band ,to the consumption of Paul by the monolith into the dual-entity that will one day be part of humankind's last chance. When we see the "star child" at the end of the ink spill scenes and surrealistic tapestry of one man's consciousness, we are left with the feeling that the journey has begun. No more answers than that.

 The later adaptation of 2010 ,while much more involving and personable to the average movie-goer (with niftier special effects), we are presented with a moral fable of the evils of war and human competitiveness. It presents the vastness of the near-universe and the great way we as a species have to travel. The distant patron from afar even sets an adversarial-tone. But this is only one chapter in the four book series by the gifted Dr. Clarke. We must wait to see how the popular media pans out the epic.

 Another great story-spinner of  fantastic literature which could be said to present human evolution at metaphoric levels, is Homer. In the Iliad ,and finally the Odyssey, the author recounts a fabled civilization and its struggles against the powerful forces of the gods to its destruction. He then details the epitome of the modern human of his times, in the embodiment of Odysseus.  The clever favorite of the goddess Athena is called away to war upon an established nation of the East with gods who favor it for itself. Though he does not wish this, he stands by his Western king for all his hubris for the sake of his homeland's culture and its future. Upon succeeding where many others of his company have failed, he is cast on a voyage that will take him twenty years to complete for angering Poseidon, a very alien god (and son of the even more alien Kronos). The Greek fleet itself is all but destroyed by the god of the sea.

 Later, in Virgil, we see the Roman civilization claim to be descended from the remnants of Troy, the arch-typical symbol of the earlier Atlantis-influenced history. Romulus and Remus, suckled by a wolf bitch, are given demigod status as the founders of future capital of the known world.  Later, as the Roman nation expands and its rather stoic and pious people gain influence, they must war against the last worshippers of such dark gods as Baal, Carthage of the sea-faring Phoenician nations. It is said that Troy fared the Greek siege so long because of its Phoenician connections. Again we can see the rejection of Atlantis-influenced mysticism by a western culture for more human-based gods, despite an earlier infatuation with otherworldly. In the eyes of a Gimbutas-influenced historian ,the Roman empire could be seen as an attempt to return to the balance of the ways of the Goddess, but hopelessly astray from the teachings from millennia on end of misdirection.

 I do not profess this theory to be unarguable. Because of my own inexperience in both the fields of historical research and paranormal studies, I only am familiar with a superficial level of reading in these areas. Many works of mythology and folklore, as well as our mass media, express  the alien as something that signals the end of the world as we  know it. From Ragnarok to Nostordamus, this is nothing new. Of course one could say that it is the sheer reaction of the fear-based psychology given any individual, but there is a persuasive logic that becomes apparent upon study of these areas. Could it be that our darker soul, as a species, is heightened by the suppression of actual human enlightenment and freewill by outside forces? That instead of prophecy, we are experiencing ingrained racial memory?  It implies that the current counter-culture to the male-dominated religions and the cults of Alien Contact are at odds, though usually lumped together in the common lingo as "new age."
 

- Eli Hatche, "Nazi's and Saucers in Antarctica"
- D.E. DerryÇs studies on Egyptian history.
- Marija Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess.
-James Mellart, "Catal Huyuck Excavations"
- J.D. Evans, "Neolithic Cultures in Malta"
- Erich Von Daniken, Chariots of the Gods
- Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 to 3001 series
- Stanley KubrickÇs film 2001
- The film 2010
- Plato, Timaeus
- Donald and Lenora Johnson, Ancestors
- Shirley Andrews, Atlantis
- The Skeptic's Dictionary, an on-line publication