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There is no evidence of early Neolithic societies being matriarchal, nor that they were overrun by patriarchal invaders who upset the peaceful, harmonious world only to make it awful by placing male gods (and themselves) in charge of everything. The archaeology does not support this and there are no historical records looking back on this prehistoric period that satisfactorily document anything like this. I deal with this in my recent book, Introduction to Mythology: A Folkloric Perspective, which was written in part in response to questions I have answered here on reddit for the past 13 years. An excerpt: A narrative describing prehistoric events in Eurasia has become something of a modern myth, set in peaceful Neolithic agricultural villages. It is based on the notion that much of the Mediterranean and Middle East enjoyed a shared worldview that embraced an earth mother. This monolithic belief system, as the story maintains, gave women stature rivaling or exceeding that of men. According to this modern narrative, this prehistoric matriarchal paradise thrived for millennia until horrible conquerors arrived, ruining everything. The warriors wielded battleaxes and rode on horseback or in chariots. These were the Indo-Europeans, who imposed their language, their patriarchy, their brutality, and their male-dominated pantheon of gods. As this scenario unfolds, myths from Europe and those from as far away as India reflect a hybridization of male Indo-European violent deities and the fractured, often-suppressed remnants of the mother goddess. This concept became popular, in part thanks to Marilyn Jacobson (1931-2011), an art professor who wrote in the 1970s as Merlin Stone. Her book, When God was a Woman, promoted her idea, which was based on impressions gained from looking at early art. The problems with this portrait of the past are many. Despite some university lecturers employing Jacobsen’s narrative, evidence is lacking to support the existence and subsequent suppression of a single, widespread goddess in Neolithic matriarchal societies. As explained previously, Indo-European language and myth diffused even if people did not migrate, and there is little evidence of a systematic conquering of the places where Indo-European languages found a home. In addition, there is no indication of a single mother goddess dominating the expansive territory where this process unfolded. Nor is there anything to support the notion of women having political or social supremacy in specific cultures. There may have been all-powerful mother goddesses (related or not to one another) in various places, but evidence to support this is inconclusive. When it comes to mother goddesses in the vast, Eurasian region, there is neither a written record nor persuasive linguistic evidence to support this idea. Proponents of the romanticized concept of a dominant mother goddess point to archaeology. There are, indeed, many artistic depictions of females, some robust and others not. Without any documents, we can only speculate about whether they were related and what these images meant. We do not even know if these were indeed to be portraits of women or something supernatural. We simply do not know. That's not to say there there were not goddesses in what were clearly pantheons of people shortly before historical periods: Even though the idea of a single, Neolithic Mother Goddess religion can be overstated, it does seem that a celebration of the world’s fertility may have been at play when it comes to images of corpulent women, the subject of artifacts found over much of Eurasia. These sometimes depict the act of giving birth or of holding an infant. The female entities were often associated with animals but also with the fruits of the harvest. The archaeological evidence is, frankly, impressive, but its significance is easily inflated and projected meaning unjustified by the objects that have been recovered. There are no written records from the period. In addition, because the languages spoken by these Neolithic farmers were for the most part obliterated, it is generally not possible to look at descendant languages to piece together earlier words that might have been tied to any traditions surrounding a presumed earth mother. (1 of 2)