The Golden Age

In Greek Legend there is a story of an ancient Golden Age where people lived in peace and prosperity. To quote: "The first age was an age of innocence and happiness." The whole concept of this myth is that everything has become slowly worse and worse for human kind since the Golden Age. Up until recently modern academics have rejected these legends as pure "myth".

Yet the myth of the Golden age doesn't only come from Ancient Greece. Probably the most ancient religion that survives today is Taoism in China. Again this religion talks about a Golden age in the past. As explained repetitively in the Tao-Te-Ching written by Lao Tzu. The concept of the Golden Age is also in the story of the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve sinned they were banished into the waste land and Adam had to work "by the sweat of his brow". The story of the Garden of Eden comes from a Golden age story from ancient Mesopotamia.

Also in the few Aztec and Maya writing that have survived again there is a myth of a very ancient Golden Age ruled by a compassionate Mother Goddess. This is shown in contrast to the later age of warfare and human sacrifice. In fact most ancient cultures of the world have some myth of a Golden Age of the ancient past

n the 1960s an archeologists called Mellaart lead a team to excavate a site in Anatolia in Turkey. This site turns out to be the oldest city ever discovered. Called Catal Huyuk it goes back over 9,000 years. What was discovered goes against all assumptions archeologist have about people living in Neolithic times.

They couldn't find any fortifications to defend the city or any weapons of war. Neither could they find signs of violence committed on people buried in graves.

It was also a city full of feminine imagery to the degree that Mellaart was forced to say that the people worshipped the Ancient Great Mother.

So unsettling was these discoveries that the site was closed down for thirty years and the academic world ignored the implications of this find. But there was on archeologist who was brave enough to challenge the accepted wisdom of the academic world.

The late Marija Gimbutas went digging in other Neolithic sites and found similar findings. She also highlights the Neolithic findings that Soviet scientists had made in Transylvania. As well as Goddess civilizations were found in Crete and Malta, all showing peaceful societies that worshipped the Great Mother. Gimbutas became a very controversial figure and her books and work was rejected by the academic world.

Full Article by William Bond