[spectre] Subject: Old Europe

[imkunst1 at rz.hu-berlin.de]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
    From: KriegPeter at aol.com
    Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 15:24:10 EST
    Subject: Old Europe
    To: ...
    Status:
    Dear friends,
    ever since Secretary Rumsfeld called the anti-war coalition a 
    manifestation of "Old Europe" have I been trying to find out what 
    this term actually stands for. Now I found the explanation - in a 
    book by the late archeologist Manija Gimbutas, Professor of European 
    Archeology at UCLA and curator of Old World Archeology at the UCLA 
    Museum of Cultural History:
    
    "The term Old Europe is applied to a pre-Indo-European culture of 
    Europe, a culture matricfocal and probably matrilinear, agricultural 
    and sedentary, egalitarian and peaceful. It contrasted sharply with 
    the ensuing proto-Indo-European culture which was patriarchal, 
    stratified, pastoral, mobile, and war-oriented, superimposed on all 
    Europe, except the southern and western fringes, in the course of 
    three waves of infiltration from the Russian steppe, between 4500 and 
    2500 BC."
    
    Mirija Gimbutas, The Goddesses And Gods Of Old Europe, University of 
    California Press, 1974 (quoted from the new preface to the 1982 
    edition)
    There exist good arguments to assume that much of the historic 
    development of democracy until the present time is owed to the 
    survival of Old European cultural values...

    Peter Krieg