In Çatal Huyuk, Turkey, the statuette of a woman seated on a throne and flanked by two panthers, on whose heads she places her hands, suggests both the image of the mother and the lady of nature. Her generous shapes — wide hips and large breasts — reinforce this idea even more. The name of the female figure is Potnia, the goddess of Catal Huyuk, the oldest known city from the Neolithic period, about 10 thousand years ago. From Potnia were born other female deities also worshiped by prehistoric men. His figurine, carved around 6500 BC, was one of many found in Europe and the Middle East, some older, from the Upper Paleolithic (from 50,000 to 10,000 years ago).
These discoveries have led historians and archaeologists to suggest that, long before they worshiped male gods, man's ancestors would have worshiped goddesses, whose reign extended into the Bronze Age, some 5,000 years ago. The exact meaning of those figurines is not known, because little or almost nothing is known about the customs of prehistoric men. But there is no doubt that for a long time the goddesses reigned alone, leaving male powers in the shadows. In her book 'One is the other', the French philosopher and professor Elisabeth Badinter tries to explain female supremacy from what is supposed to have been the relations between men and women in those distant times. 
The idea is that Neolithic man—unlike his Paleolithic predecessors, who were hunters, and their Bronze Age descendants, who were warriors—was dedicated to herding and agriculture. In other words, it was no longer necessary to risk one's life to survive. In these relatively peaceful times, when brute force did not count as much as a prestige factor and social differences between the sexes narrowed, it is quite possible that goddesses—and not gods—had embodied the main virtues of Neolithic culture. 
Among the hundreds of figurines found, some have full breasts and voluminous hips like Potnia in common. Perhaps the most famous is the Venus of Willendorf, found on the banks of the Danube River in Central Europe. In it, the breasts, buttocks and belly form a compact mass, from which the head and legs emerge - in fact, small stumps. Equally revealing is the Venus of Lespugne, discovered in France: although more stylized, it retains the same characteristics as her sister from Willendorf. 
But, of the prehistoric sculptures found until today, rare are those that present such exaggerated female traits — which gives rise to a debate about what the female figure (duly deified) meant in the beginning of human societies. Historians tend to think that the first men to live in organized groups gave more importance to female sexuality than to fertility, although it is not easy to separate one from the other. However. the image to which they ended up being associated was that of motherhood. There are those who do not agree. “Translating the cult of ancestors to goddesses as a simple exaltation of fertility is oversimplifying”, comments historian and anthropologist Norma Telles, from PUC in São Paulo, who has studied mythology practically since she was a child. “In reality, the goddess is not the one who only generates. She is also a warrior, giver of the arts of civilization, creator of the sky, fabric and pottery, among many other things.”
In fact, in many myths, the goddess appears as the one who gives the grain to men, and not just in the literal sense of nutrition. So, for example, Demeter, revered by the Greeks as the goddess of the harvest, helped cultivate the land—plowing, sowing, harvesting, and turning grain into flour and then into bread. Demeter also taught men to harness animals and organize themselves. The Greeks explained the origin of the world with another female myth: that of the goddess Gaia. Giver of wisdom to men, she limited Chaos—infinite space—and created a being like herself: Uranus, the starry sky.
Shortly after, Eros, symbol of universal love, made Gaia and Uranus unite. From this marriage many children were born and thus the Earth was populated. The belief that the Universe was created by a female deity is present almost everywhere.
Isis, the most ancient goddess of Egypt, had given birth to the Sun. In India, Aditi was the mother goddess of all that exists in the sky. In Mesopotamia, Astarte, one of the most worshiped goddesses of the Middle East, was the true sovereign of the world, who eliminated the old and generated the new. This idea appears clearly in effigies dating from 2300 BC, which show Astarte sitting on a corpse. Also for the Chinese it was a goddess—Nu Gua—who created humanity. His cult appeared during the period of the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD). Depicted with the head of a woman and the body of a serpent, the venerable Nu Gua embodied order and tranquillity.
The Chinese say that by digging clay out of the ground, she fashioned a figure which, to her surprise, took on a life and movement of its own. Enthusiastic, the goddess continued to shape figures, but the mortal nature of her creatures forced her to repeat the work endlessly. Therefore, Nu Gua decided that beings should mate in order to perpetuate themselves—hence she was also considered by the ancient Chinese to be the goddess of marriage. On the other side of the world, in pre-Columbian America, the Aztecs had Tlauteutli as their goddess of creation. For them, the Universe was made of their body. The Mayans also had their mother goddess. It was Ix Chel. From his union with the god Itzamná other gods and men were born.
Over time, gods and men began to share space with the goddesses in the Pantheon, the place reserved for the deities. For Elisabeth Badinter, this happens when the notion of the couple takes root in societies. Little by little, from Western Europe to the East, “it is recognized that it takes two to procreate and produce”, she writes. But the cult of the goddess - mother is still not replaced by the god - father. The divine couple is venerated together. The goddesses will only be dethroned with the advent of monotheistic religions, which admit a single male god. With the spread of Christianity, the ancient goddesses are banished from the popular imagination.
In the West, some ended up being associated with the Virgin Mary, mother of the Christian God, others became saints. But others were either excluded from history or accused by priests of demons and prostitutes. The goddesses of Indo-European cultures had in common the power to create, preserve, and destroy—they gave life and took back what fell apart.
This destructive aspect of female deities was most attacked by the enemies of polytheism. The Sumerian Astarte, for example, would not escape the wrath of either the biblical prophets or the early Christians: for both, she was the incarnation of the devil.
In the Babylonian empire, Astarte was venerated under the name of Ishtar, which means star. In Babylonian writings, she is the light of the world, the one who opens the womb, does justice, gives strength and forgives. The Bible, however, would describe her as a finished prostitute. The importance given to the violent, destructive side perhaps explains why the Hindu goddess Kali Ma appears in Steven Spielberg's film, The Temple of Doom, as the incarnation of violence. She is the bloodthirsty figure in whose name adults are killed and tortured and children are enslaved.
However, for the Hindus, more especially for the Tantras — adherents of a derivation of Hinduism —, Kali is the goddess of transformation and in this more philosophical sense is that she is destructive, in the same way that the passage of time destroys. Represented as a black woman with four arms and a snake around her waist, she can also appear with a necklace of skulls in her lap and a head in each hand.
In their temples, scattered throughout India, sacrifices of buffaloes and goats were performed. “For the Orientals, Kali is the disintegration contained in life, a vision that we Westerners do not have”, interprets the anthropologist Norma Telles. If Kali was seen as a bloodthirsty goddess, other deities made up for such violence. Sarasvati, the goddess of rivers, was for the Hindus the inventor of all the arts of civilization, such as the calendar, mathematics, the original alphabet and even the Vedas, the sacred text of Hinduism.
Also in pre-Columbian America, especially among the Aztecs, the worship of goddesses and gods often included human sacrifices. The goddess Tlauteutli is a good example. One day, the gods discovered that she would be barren unless she was fed on human hearts. In fact, the Aztecs had an apocalyptic view of the world: if they didn't feed the goddess, the Earth would end.
But as the cult of the goddess of motherhood, Tonantzin, began to grow, the Aztecs' interest in the gods to whom bloody sacrifices were made diminished. Later, with the arrival of Spanish conquerors, Tonantzin was identified with the Virgin Mary. This would eventually also happen to the goddess Isis. Worshiped in Egypt and in the Greco-Roman world, it represented transforming energy. Married to the god Osiris, killed by his own brother, Isis did not rest until he restored his life. Legend has it that the floods of the Nile were caused by the tears of the goddess who mourned the death of her beloved. Therefore, the parties in his honor always coincided with the flood season. It is evident that, by celebrating it, the Egyptians celebrated the generous fertility of the Nile River. In the early Christian centuries, Isis came to be identified with Mary.
The goddess Brighid, worshiped by the Celts, ancestors of the Irish, was transformed by Christianity into Santa Brigida. The veneration of those people for Brighid was such that she was simply called "the goddess". Owner of words and poetry, she was also the patroness of healing, crafts and knowledge. Festivities in his honor took place on February 1, anticipating the arrival of spring. In Christian history, the saint was born at sunset, neither inside nor outside a house, and was fed by a white cow with red spots. In Irish tradition, the cow was considered supernatural.
Even before the arrival of monotheistic religions, the myths say that the coexistence between gods and goddesses began to become difficult and the equality of divine powers began to be shaken. Thus, for example, Amaterazu, the Japanese sun goddess from whom emperors descended, did not get along very well with the storm god. Legend has it that one day he went to visit the goddess' domain and ended up destroying her rice fields. Furious, Amaterazu decided to take revenge by locking herself in a cave - which left the world in the dark. After a while, as she didn't come out of the cave, a crowd of gods and lesser gods decided to put together a strategy to convince her to change her mind. So they placed a mirror in front of the cave, which reflected the image of the storm god, as if he were hanged from a tree, and they began to dance.
Attracted by the music, the goddess decided to go outside to see what happened. When faced with the image in the mirror, he was happy and returned to the world. With that, everything was normalized and the days continued to succeed the nights. Another example of conflicts between deities is the case of the Greek goddess Demeter and her husband Hades, the god of the underworld. They began to fight over the custody of their daughter Persephone and the issue was only resolved with the mediation of Zeus, the supreme god of Olympus. Solomonically, he ordered the girl to stay with each of them six months out of the year. Of the goddesses venerated in the ancient world, there were not as many or as famous as those of Greco-Roman mythology. Aphrodite (Venus, in Rome) was perhaps the most popular of all, for embodying love and the beautiful forms of nature.
Artemis (Diana) was the solitary hunter, mistress of the woods and animals. His favorite places were always those where man had not yet arrived. Athena (Minerva) protected the city, houses and families. The predominance that female deities exercised over time led some nineteenth-century researchers to assume that in prehistory women held some form of political authority. There are no archaeological records that confirm this — today, experts do not admit that there was any society whose control was with women. But it is also true that in prehistoric times, when the social division of labor was different, women played a preponderant role in the fight for the survival of the group. It is impossible to know exactly when and why it ceased to be so. One thing, however, is not in doubt: it was men who first traced the mythology of the goddesses.
Adam's first wife
According to an ancient legend, Adam's first companion was not Eve, but a goddess called Lilith—“monster of the night” for the ancient Hebrews—who fought with God and was therefore transformed into a demon. In fact, the greatest punishment imposed on her by the priests was to exclude her from the biblical accounts of the creation of the world. Lilith, the Hebrew version of a Babylonian deity, synonymous with the “dark face of the moon”, did not get along with Adam. One day, tired of disagreements, Lilith left her husband and went to the Red Sea, where she started to live among demons, with whom she had several children.
Unsatisfied, Adam went to ask for God's interference. This then determined that Lilith immediately return home. But she refused and was condemned to devour all her children. As if that weren't enough, she came to be considered a demon like other gods in the world of darkness. For all this, in Jewish folklore, every time a child died, it was said that Lilith had taken it. The legend of Lilith lasted among the Jews at least until the seventh century.
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Ótimo post. Já não se pode dizer o mesmo do comentário acima.