The thread of the Goddess – the timeline

I got this wild idea to create a timeline from Neolithic times when there were mostly matriarchal societies, to today, to highlight how things have changed for women since then, as well as how the Goddess of the Old World has morphed, without ever completely disappearing.

I will embroider the two timelines on natural silk, each threat has it’s own color. What’s left in black are my comments or information I decided not to add. I primarily wanted to trace the Old Europe Goddess to present day, so most info is Euro-centered in this perspective. However, from the social and political timeline I included as much as possible, though everything is too much obviously, so things are missing. I also had only one week to construct this timeline.

Pink thread – the metamorphosis of the Neolithic Goddess

Red thread – the fluctuation of women’s rights

The major aspects of the Goddess of the Neolithic […] can all be traced back to the period when the first sculptures of bone, ivory, or stone appeared, around 25,000 B.C. and their symbols—vulvas, triangles, breasts, chevrons, zig-zags, meanders, cupmarks— to an even earlier time.

The Goddess was associated with water in every form, wolves, snakes, goats, frogs, and other animals.

Archeological evidence attests to the civilizations before 3500 BCE of Europe, Anatolia and Minoan Crete to have been matrilineal, nonviolent, non hierarchical and Earth-centered.

Several sources indicate a major change in climate around 3500 BCE which affected sedentary agricultural populations to the point of extinction, leaving space for nomad tribes, who adapted more easily to the new climate,  to take over.

Suffice to say that the Neolithic population across Europe got severely decimated, with many areas becoming completely depopulated.

Meanwhile, in the North Pontic steppe small populations of pastoralists had started to thrive with their mobile economy that was not based on crops, but instead on animal husbandry.

The genetic evidence shows that the North Pontic steppe people, who were patriarchal, assimilated the women from remaining Neolithic populations in the North of Europe, but not the men.

Further proof that previous societies were matriarchal was that when they assimilated one another, there is a mix of DNA both from men and women, whereas a patriarchal society would select only the women from the other societies.

There is no evidence if the assimilation was peaceful or not.

However, since only women were allowed to live, that is a sign of violence towards at least half of the population. Experience with patriarchal men makes it unlikely they were nice to the women. Nonetheless, those women managed to spread both the Neolithic DNA as well as their traditions and culture, even if in an adjusted form. Also, where historians point there were no more people from the Neolithic, it is more likely the new comers killed everyone because the women wouldn’t fold just to survive. Another thing to underline is that some historians state the Neolithic people was 100% replaced by the new tribe in North of Europe, but what they mean is that the male linage of the Neolithic people were erased. They ignore the women spreading the Neolithic DNA which came to be more than 50% of the DNA of the people who “replaced” them. This is just patriarchal bias. We can follow the mitochondrial linage to the oldest known woman if we want to.

The origins of Mokosh as mother earth may date to pre-Indo-European times (Cuceteni or Tripolye culture, 6th–5th millennia BCE) when a near-global woman-centered religion is thought to have been in place.

If anything Mokosh means Mother Fate or Weaver, which is also related to fate. Mother Earth is a modern interpretation. There is no evidence ancient societies associated femininity with earth.

Mokosh, Fate Goddess as appropriation of the Neolithic Goddess in Slavic tribes, is also spelled Mokoš which means Friday

Women hunters are confirmed by the historical and archaeological evidence as reported by Adrienne Mayor: “Girls and boys in nomadic societies were trained alike in the arts of war“, including the steppe people and the Scythia tribes.

Inanna/ Ištar, the most important Sumerian/ Akkadian Goddess, was both the Goddess of fertility and of war

Indo-European people are said to have spread  in Europe and Asia from Mesopotamia and the Sumerian culture in the 3rd millenia BCE.

In early Sumer women played an important public role as priestesses. They could also own property, transact business and had their rights protected by the courts. Sons and daughters inherited property on equal terms. The status of women deteriorated in the centuries after 2300 BC. Their right to dispose of their property was limited, and the female deities also lost their former importance.

Sumerian women had the same rights as men until 2300 BCE when the right to dispose propriety was limited and Goddesses lost their importance.

Bendis, Thracian Goddess of Moon and hunting

The Moon months were still followed and the Moon represented the main guide for agriculture and life.

Thracian were polygamous men, but grave evidence shows that women were also hold in high regard. Women were free to do whatever they wanted until marriage [but it is unclear how they were restricted then other than sexually.]

Homer associates the Amazonian warrior women as being of Thracian descent from the region of Anatolia.[where the Neolithic people are said to have had their arising and where population never dwindled.]

Lycians, as described by Herodotus (which is a bleah source), were a matriarchal society led by women, where men didn’t have rights. I see this interpretation either a misunderstanding cause by fear and narrow mindedness as Herodot probably couldn’t imagine any other system than the one he lived in, which happens to all of us and would be an honest mistake. Or otherwise a knowingly unjust depiction of the society to further strengthen patriarchy.

Freyja, Norse Goddess of love, beauty, war and death

Norse women were under the authority of their fathers or husbands, but seemed free to do as they please if neither was still alive. Working magic was considered womanly in Norse societies. Magic was reportedly considered evil (not sure if this isn’t a more recent projection). Healing was magic back then 😉

In Archaic Greece women had same rights as men and were reportedly not interested in marring if they had their own means of living.

In early Crete, there was the idea of common ancestry and all people being related on the mother line. Though there was marriage and family, there was also the idea that all people were related, so an extended family.

Athena/ Minerva – Greek/ Roman Goddess of wisdom, warfare and crafts. Artemis – Goddess of hunting

Metropolis means “mother city” in Latin, specifically, it refered to the mother city of a colony.

“Mother Earth” is a term coined in Ancient Greece, also known as Gaia, being the first association with soil and reducing the Goddess to the role of mother. This has shifted the association of water and femininity to soil and femininity, though it was previously seen in reverse as per archeological observations.

Socrate named Aspasia of Miletus his teacher, though women philosophers were ignored by historians…

Socrate left nothing written, and I personally would not trust the reproduction of the dialogues Plato published as those are tainted by his biased, misogynistic view.

Women lost their rights in Classical Greek Period, but regained some afterwards depending on the region and status…

…during the Persian Wars, Thargia became governor of Thessaly and reigned for thirty years. -> This site was one with a major population during the Neolithic period which must have been assimilated by the Indo-European people, but which clearly retained strong matriarchal inclinations.

Rome was built on the rape of the Sabine women…

Women were not considered full-fledged citizens of the Roman Empire, but were citizens only in connection to other men.

Roman women were tied with their perceived role in society, meaning the duty of nurturing a family and looking after the home, a consequence of which was an early marriage, sometimes even before puberty to ensure the woman had no sexual history which might embarrass the future husband.

And now we know where child marriage (actually girl marriage as no woman would marry a boy) comes from.

In addition to increasing vulnerability and reducing status, exclusion of women from the decision making process and the control and transfer of land has also led to a decrease in food security and sustainable development.

In ancient Persia, women were highly respected and equal to men.

In the Persian Empire, the aristocratic and royal women very likely used veil in public as a sign of their higher status. But veiling as an institution to subjugate, control and exclude women from public domain originated after the Islamic conquest in 651 CE.

In Ancient Egypt, women could travel, hold a job they liked, marry who they wanted and even divorce, situation which ended with the Arab conquest in the 7th Century.

Women were the first to convert to Christianity, as in the early days it provided protection from infanticide of girls, promoted marriage at a later age and provided them an escape from men’s unwanted lust.

Women particularly adhered to Christianity, to become nuns and escape the roles as mothers and wives.

A number of female saints replaced the former Goddesses and rituals related to agriculture. The Grain Miracle is associate with them, and the story always portraits them as nuns running from men who wanted to rape them…

Pre-Islamic tribes in Arabia reportedly* viewed women as  property, but societies in Zenobia or Sabaean Kingdom had queens.

*I question this as this view portrays the Islamic religion as a savior. It is true that women viewed Christianity as an escape from late Roman Empire tyranny over their lives. But I don’t see evidence with the Arab world. It could just be my ignorance. However, Greeks spoke the same about Neolithic people and the tribes which followed though there is archeological evidence of women still holding important roles in those societies. It feels like just the reinforcement of the patriarchal view with no merit towards the actual structure of those societies.

As scholar Annemarie Schimmel notes, “Compared to the per-Islamic position of women, Islamic legislation meant an enormous progress: the woman has the right, at least according to the letter of the law, to administer the wealth she has brought into the family or has earned by her own work”.

The Prophet Muhammad’s first wife Khadija bint Khuwaylid was a successful businesswomen who supported Muhammad emotionally and also financially.  – I can see why this seems feminist, but it isn’t. One reason I have a thing against feminism is because “women can have it all” discourse isn’t empowering. It’s exploitative. Also, who took care of and raised Fatima and the other children? And who supported Khadija? Please note she was a merchant before Islam and she has reportedly married three time before, so Islam didn’t free women.

Fatima Al-Fihri founded the first University in 859 CE, University of Al-Qarawiyin, though women were first admitted to the institution in the 1940s after the women’s movement pressured the French colonial government at the time.

In the 12th century, the most famous Islamic philosopher and qadi (judge) Ibn Rushd advocated that women were intellectually and physically equal to men.

If you have to advocate something, it means it isn’t commonly agreed upon…

From 11th to 14th century, there was an increase in the cult of Mary Magdalene and Virgin Mary, offering women a means to engage in the spiritual life without being nuns.

Virgin Mary is associated with the Neolithic Grain Goddess through the stories of the flight from Egypt with baby Jesus adhering to the Grain Miracle narrative.

Article 9 of Ferdinand II of Aragon’s Sentencia Arbitral de Guadalupein 1486, in which the king forbids lords from having sex with a new bride of a peasant.

In Renaissance, women were perceived by men to be inferior.

Both Christianity and Islam seemed to be on women’s side, or more likely, on everyone’s side, until men used these religions for oppression and control.

in Catholic countries the worship of the Virgin surpasses that of Jesus

…like in Andalusia, Spain, there is a church dedicated to a Virgin Marry in every town and processions parading her around are held every year after Easter

Women in Renaissance were endeavored with house work, child bearing and caring, elderly care, field work when necessarily or assisting their husband with their wok, but without getting any credit for it.

During the 16th and 17th century, the witch hunts resulted in about 100 000 women killed.

The Goddess survived in folklore tales either as a witch, such as Baba Yaga, or as a saint, such as Saint Friday (later associated with Saint Parascheva), both with magical powers in service of worthy people, while punishing the others…

Most Ottoman women were permitted to participate in the legal system, purchase and sell property, inherit and bequeath wealth, and participate in other financial activities, rights which were unusual in the rest of Europe until the 19th century.

Up until the 16th century women were involved in the public life of some Arab-muslim societies as well as in wars as soldiers.

When Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts held its first exhibition in 1769, four women contributed eight of the 136 pieces on display. By the end of the century, more than two hundred women had exhibited their work on the Academy’s walls.

In 18th Century, women could choose who they married, but couldn’t own land while married and divorce was very expensive with infidelity of the husband not considered a good reason for it.

147 women were killed by someone they know EVERY DAY worldwide in 2025, compared to 140 in 2023.

Ioana Tinculeasa Rudăreasa was a Wallachian Romani woman who fought for the abolition of Slavery in Romania from 1843 to 1856.

In the 19th century, gynecologists created the notion that women’s reproductive organs made them insane. Therefore husbands committed their wives to asylums without any proof needed.

In 1860’s, Elizabeth Packard founded the Anti-Insane Asylum Society, campaigning for divorced women to retain custody of their children and for women to have the right of defense when accused of insanity

1887 – Nelly Bly faked insanity to expose the abuses at Women’s Lunatic Asylum

Sabat M. Islambouli (1867–1941) was one of the first Syrian female physicians, under Ottoman rule.

1894 – Rita de Morais Sarmento is the first woman engineer in Europe

Marie Curie almost didn’t get her first Nobel in 1903 if it wasn’t for the intervention of her husband. She was awarded a second Nobel in 1911 for discovering Radium which she studied to cure cancer, but men used it to build a nuclear bomb…

Women who didn’t get a Nobel due to misogyny include: Cecilia Payne, Chien-Shiung Wu, Vera Rubin, Lise Meitner, Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Esther Lederberg, Rosalind Franklin, Nettie Stevens and others

New Zealand was the first country to give women rights to vote in 1893, though UK only did so in 1928…

Though Maori could vote in New Zealand, they faced impediments of which one was owning land communally, not individually as required. This is yet another proof that indigenous people lived in shared communities with nature, without ownership notions.

Women could vote in Europe  since 1906 in Finland, since 1946 in Italy and Romania and since 1984 in Lichtenstein

In the US, white women can officially vote since 1920, but some states allowed it earlier like  in New Jersey, where women who owned propriety could and did vote between 1776 and 1807. Black women could vote since 1965.

This was due to white feminism, which disregarded queer and minority women’s contribution to the movement and were even openly discriminating against them. This plays into the patriarchal scenario that matriarchy is the same system reversed, which isn’t the case. It also led to women having to “men up” and “do everything because they are independent”, instead of leading to a partnership between men and women and actual equality.

White women within the patriarchal system are world away from the feminine ways of the ancient women and look to emulate men’s behavior looking for the same power they have to control other people’s lives. This mentality also affects discriminated people who achieve power by strengthening the system which oppresses them, driving them further from their indigenous and organic ways of being. Such examples include: Usha Vance, Alice Weidel, Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Maria Machado, Daniella Weiss.

African-American suffragists include: Mary-Ann Shadd Cary, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Mary Church Terrell, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin, Harriet Forten Purvis…

1944 – Gisella Perl, Romanian Jewish gunecologist, deported to Auschwitz, she performed abortions with bare minimum resources to save women from Josef Mengele’s experiments on them..

Women are allowed to vote in Lebanon since 1952, in Iraq since 1980 and in Saudi Arabia since 2015…

In the 1950s Iraq became the first Arab country to have a female minister and to have a law that gave women the ability to ask for divorces.

The 1954 Ley de Vagos y Maleantes in Framco’s Spain saw many lesbians committed, put into psychiatric institutions and given electroshock therapy.

Poland was one of the first countries from the ex-Soviet Bloc to legalize abortion in 1956.

Until the ’60s or ’70s women couldn’t open a bank account without their husband permission in Europe and the US

1966 – 1977 – Indira Gandhi was the first and only female prime-minister of India

Her domestic initiatives did not necessarily reflect favorably on Indian women. Gandhi did not make a special effort to appoint women to cabinet positions. She did not appoint any women to full cabinet rank during her terms in office. Yet despite this, many women saw Gandhi as a symbol for feminism and an image of women’s power.

The term “femicide” was first used by Sofemicideuth African sociologist Diana Russell in the 1970s

Afghan women officially gained equality under the 1964 constitution, which was overturned by the regime change in 1973.

There may be something wrong in associating women’s clothing to their freedom, especially when the clothing is European rather than the traditional indigenous clothing. I remember seeing comments on Nurjahan Boulden‘s posts about her traditional clothing as being imposed by society, though she lives in US, not Tanzania and can wear whatever she wants, proven by all the video she wears “normal clothes”.

Nearly 90% of Afghan women suffer from domestic abuse, according to the United Nations Development Fund for Women.

1975 – all US states allowed women to serve in juries

1977 – Germany allowed women to work without husband approval; 1988 in Switzerland

The Goddess gradually retreated into the depths of forests or onto mountaintops, where she remains to this day in beliefs and fairy stories. Human alienation from the vital roots of earthly life ensued, the results of which are clear in our contemporary society. But the cycles never stop turning, and now we find the Goddess reemerging from the forests and mountains, bringing us hope for the future, returning us to our most ancient human roots.

1985 – Norway became the first country to allow women to serve on its submarines.

1988 – Benazir Bhutto became the first woman prim-minister in Pakistan and of a Muslim country

1990 – Mary Robinson, first president of Ireland

Until 1991 in Brazil, 1939 – 1978 in Spain – men were allowed to kill women for infidelity

1992 – husbands could rape their wives in Switzerland

By 1998, more than 50,000 Irish women had their children taken away from them in Mother-and-Baby-Homes

Thousands of Roma women were forcibly sterilized between 1966 and 2012 by the Czech authorities.

2015 – Norway became the first nation in the world to conscript women for mandatory military service on the same formal conditions as men.

In 2017,  Jacinda Ardern became the youngest female leader of a government as prim-minister of New Zealand. She had seen the country through a terrorist attack and the Covid-19 pandemics, while being pregnant and giving birth. She resigned in 2022 under pressures a fellow man politician wouldn’t feel…

Women weren’t allowed to travel in and outside Saudi Arabia without a man’s permission until 2019 and until 2018 they couldn’t drive a car…

In Romania, the law 178/2018 was passed to criminalized forced sterilization of Roma women.

“The current global labour force participation rate for women is close to 49%. For men, it’s 75%. That’s a difference of 26 percentage points, with some regions facing a gap of more than 50 percentage points.” — International Labour Organization (2020)

The labour income gender ratio has seen a modest increase, with women in general going from earning 47 cents on the dollar in 2004 to 52 cents in 2025, while white women, in particular, reached 87 cents on the dollar in some countries.

As of 27 January 2021, abortion is illegal in Poland unless woman’s life or health is endangered by the continuation of pregnancy or the pregnancy is a result of a criminal act.

On December 20, 2022, universities in Afghanistan were closed to women and girls…

Claudia Sheinbaum, first woman president of Mexico, made several reforms to insure a better life for the citizens, but the country still faces many crisis…

Male birth control pills trials were stopped due to the side effects of the pills on men, though women are forces to suffer those same side effects.

A recent (2025) literature review reported that while maternal mortality decreased by 21% in permissive states post-Dobbs (, it rose 56% overall and 95% among White women in Texas during the first year of its post 6-week ban

In 2019, the last year before the COVID pandemic spike in maternal deaths, Black mothers living in states that went on to ban abortion had been 2.2 times as likely as White mothers to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or shortly after giving birth; by the end of 2023, that disparity had grown to 3.3 times.

In the US, states with restrictive abortion laws saw an increase of up to 56% in maternal deaths, with black women at a 3.3 higher risk of death than white women…

Pelvic practice exams were done on women under anesthesia until 2024 without consent.

2024 – Brazil made femicide a stand alone crime in October, while recording 4 femicides and 9 attempts / day

The last ten years have seen an increased interest in spirituality from all humans, but many women turn to a modern form of witchcraft, fueled by a reconnection with the ancient Goddess and nature.

Namibia has an all women government in 2025, but still faces gender inequality with 1 in 4 women being affected by intimate partner violence.

92% of rape victims and 71% of human trafficking are women and girls

2025 – worldwide, a male partner or family member killed a woman every 10 minutes

Men can have reduced sentence for murder if the woman has “provoked” them, while women get disproportional punishments for defending against an abusive partner

The timeline is by no means complete, but I’ve done my best within my current limitations. Adjustments may be made with new information.