The Roots of Indo-European Patriarchy:

Indo-European Female Figures and the

Principles of Energy

MIRIAM ROBBINS DEXTER

INTRODUCTION
In this essay, we look at female figures in early historic Indo-European cultures and
make use of recent archaeological and biological evidence to consider anew who the
Proto-Indo-Europeans were—their religion and social structure, the place of women in
their societies, and what element of society may have comprised those who migrated
(or, more likely, expanded)1 out of their original homeland. This evidence includes
new studies in both mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y-chromosome DNA.

NEOLITHIC EUROPEAN SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND RELIGION

During the Neolithic era, from around 6000 BCE to around 4000 BCE, large areas of
Europe were inhabited by peoples who centered their societies around the worship of
female figures. This was the case particularly for Southeastern Europe, an area which
archaeologist Marija Gimbutas called “Old Europe.” These people were sedentary agri-
culturalists who had few weapons, no fortified sites, and very likely were equalitarian
in their social structure. They made sophisticated and beautiful pottery and figurines,
often inscribed with symbols which may have represented a language.
Based on linguistic and archaeological evidence, the migrations of a new group of
people can be tracked as they moved into Europe beginning in the fourth millennium
BCE. These people assimilated with and sometimes attacked the indigenous peoples,
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causing social change and probably the imposition of new religious beliefs, language,
and culture. The prehistoric members of this culture, or closely-linked group of cul-
tures, are called “Proto-Indo-Europeans.” Once they expanded throughout Eurasia and
merged with indigenous groups, they became the “Indo-Europeans.”

PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN AND INDO-EUROPEAN GODDESSES:

THE ROOTS OF PATRIARCHY
Once each year, I teach a course at the University of California, Los Angeles entitled
“The Roots of Patriarchy: Ancient Goddesses and Heroines.” This course is based on
my 1978 doctoral dissertation, “Indo-European Female Figures.” The course has
changed over the years, as I’ve refined my understanding of who the Indo-Europeans
were and how they viewed the ideal feminine. Since Goddesses and heroines represent
the ideal feminine which a culture wishes to promote, these female figures hopefully
give us a clue as to what the people of their cultures thought women should represent.
In the UCLA course, we look at the functions and attributes of early historic ideal-
ized female figures in the Indo-European Greek, Roman, Irish, Welsh, Indic, Iranian,
Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic cultures. We attempt to distinguish between those
Goddesses the Proto-Indo-Europeans carried with them when they left their home-
lands, and the Goddesses worshiped by the indigenous Neolithic cultures before the
advent of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. We also look at Near Eastern text and iconogra-
phy as well as European Neolithic iconography to try to determine the early sources
for these female figures.
According to the research of the French comparative mythologist, Georges
Dumézil, Proto-Indo-Europeans fulfilled three functions in both their social and their
religious structure: those of sovereignty and the priesthood; the military; and the nur-
turing professions (motherhood, the crafts, farming, and similar functions). Although
females as well as males could occupy the priestly role (and this is a more human func-
tion than a divine, since human religious leaders are seen to intermediate with the
divine), Indo-European goddesses and heroines enabled the Indo-European males to
fulfill the functions of sovereignty and the military. The most important function of
an idealized Indo-European female figure seems to be that of nurturing.
With regard to the first function—sovereignty—goddesses and heroines are the
intermediaries through whom sovereignty passes. In other words, if one is to be king,
he must embrace or even marry the purveyor of sovereignty. For example, if a man

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married Greek Helen, Penelope, Jocasta, the Irish Queen Medb, or Germanic
Brynhild, he acquired the kingship along with a wife. Sociologically, this may well
reflect a process whereby incoming Proto-Indo-European males married indigenous
women; and if the woman was daughter of a king, the Proto-Indo-European male
would inherit the kingship with the land passed through the female.2
In the second function, the military, Indo-European female figures give advice and
energy to warrior-heroes. The exceptions to this rule are the Irish female figures who
serve as active warriors and queens (Queen Medb and Irish battlefield Goddesses such
as Badb and the Morrígan.) But Irish culture seems to be anomalous among Indo-
European cultures with regard to the powers and functions of both their divine and
human women. Likewise, in India, the Great Goddess of the Shakti religion, Devi in
her manifestations as Durga and Kali, is a singularly active warrior Goddess.
But most Indo-European “warrior” Goddesses are not active fighters. In the Greco-
Roman pantheon, the warrior Goddess Athena/Minerva is more a general than a rag-
ing fighter; Ares/Mars fills the latter role. Likewise, the Germanic Freyja is the first
Valkyrie, but she is not known as a warrior-Goddess. Later on, the epic heroine and
Valkyrie Brynhild comes closer to filling that role.
Finally, in the third function, nurturing, these goddesses act in the way typical
patriarchal societies expect of women. Even the virgin Goddesses such as the Greco-
Roman Artemis/Diana and Athena/Minerva are invoked as “Mother.”
Thus most of the Goddesses worshiped in the assimilated Indo-European cultures
were those worshiped by the “Old European” peoples who were indigenous to Europe
before the advent of the Indo-Europeans. Therefore, the Germanic Freyja, Greek
Athena, Roman Juno, Baltic Laima, and very likely the Indic Devi were not among
those carried by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. All of the powerful multi-functional Indo-
European Goddesses, then, were assimilations of the Goddesses worshiped by the thea-
centric—goddess-centered—folk who peopled Europe previous to the Proto-Indo-
European invasions.

THE PROTO-INDO-EUROPEANS
The Proto-Indo-Europeans were pastoral, semi-nomadic, and horse-domesticating.3 It
is likely that they were patriarchal, patrilineal,4 and patrilocal.5 They may have had
wheeled vehicles but probably not before the fourth millennium BCE.6 They pro-
duced a variety of weapons,7 and they very likely had a tripartite social structure con-

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sisting of priests/sovereigns, warriors, and nurturers.

Around 4500 BCE, the Indo-Europeans began a series of expansions away from
what many believe was their homeland: the forested and grassy steppes north of the
Black and Caspian Seas.8 Even though we cannot be certain why the Indo-Europeans
left their homeland at this time, we have genetic as well as archaeological and linguis-
tic evidence for this expansion.9
These expansions took place over several millennia. The First Wave may not have
caused great change among the Old European cultures but the Second Wave, begin-
ning approximately 3500 BCE, brought about the end of many “Old European” tradi-
tions in ceramics, architecture, settlement, and ritual in Southeastern Europe.10 In fact,
the Second Wave brought about the disintegration of the “Old European” culture.11 A
Third Wave of expansions took place between 3000–2800 BCE.12
Greece provides a good example of the effect of these different waves of incursions.
Upon entering Crete, in the second half of the second millenium, the Indo-European
Mycenaeans adopted Minoan writing, art, and most likely religion, forming a transi-
tional phase between Old European and Indo-European culture. The somewhat later
Dorians, entering Greece around 1200 BCE, brought with them considerable violence
and an ensuing Dark Age.13 It would seem that later Indo-European incursions were
more militarized, perhaps involving greater numbers of people than earlier ones. In
Central Europe, there is evidence that newcomers held sway for a while, then the older
Goddess-worshiping people regained power only to lose it again when the newcomers
held the power for good.14

PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN GODDESSES
The Proto-Indo-European religion and probably its culture seem to have been male-
centered. Their Goddesses were few in number, and they represented mostly natural
phenomena: the sun maiden (daughter of the sun), the dawn, the Earth, and a river-
Goddess, Danu. Further, in Northern Indo-European cultures such as the Irish, the
Germanic, and the Baltic, the sun deity itself was female, although the names are not
cognate.
The Earth is represented in Phrygian and Thracian Greek as Semele, mother of the
God Dionysos, who was originally a God of vegetation but later became the God of
the grape and wine. In Lithuania, the earth Goddess was Zemyna, a representative of
the fruitfulness of the earth. In Latvia, she was Zemes Mate, “earth mother,” while in

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East Slavic, her name was Mati Syra Zemlya, “mother moist earth.” The Slavic
Goddess was in control of the elements and she could prophecy to mortals.15
The Proto-Indo-European Goddess of a river or watery place was Danu or Donu,
and she is represented in many of the Indo-European cultures. In Greece, she became
the Danaïds and Danaë. In Indic she was Danu, the mother of Vrtra, the arch-with-
holder of the waters; her name also appears in Sanskrit as the Danus, demons and ene-
mies of the deities, while in Iranian her name appears in the Danava-tribe. In Old
Irish she was Danu, the mother of the Túatha Dé Danann, a magical people who were
learned in the healing arts, while in Welsh she was Dôn.16 Many rivers bear her name:
the Danube, the Dniester, the Dnieper, the Donets, and others.
The Dawn-Goddess too exists in many Indo-European cultures. She is Lithuanian
Au_ra (found with various suffixes), Latvian Auseklis, Old Prussian Ausca, Attic Greek
Eos, Roman Aurora, and Sanskrit Ushas.17 An example of this goddess may be found
in Latvian dai_as, or folksongs. In one, excuses are made for the late arrival of the
dawn-Goddess Auseklis:
For three mornings I have not seen
Auseklis rise:
The sun-maiden has locked her up
in an oaken chamber.18
In several Indo-European cultures there are myths of a sun-maiden, daughter of
the sun. In Latvian and Lithuanian she is Saules Meita, “young girl of the Sun;” in
Sanskrit she is S_ry_, literally “female sun”; and in Greek, albeit transformed, she is
Helen, “the Burning One,” wife of Menelaus and lover of Paris of Troy.19 Saules Meita,
in various myths, had two sets of suitors—divine twin “sons of God” and the moon.
This is the total of Proto-Indo-European female figures. None of the more power-
ful female figures in the assimilated Indo-European cultures have cognate names, and
therefore they likely originated with the indigenous peoples of Neolithic Europe and
Southern Asia.
A much more powerful cognate Proto-Indo-European deity represented in most of
the Indo-European cultures was a sky god: Zeus in Greek, Dyaus in Indic, and Dievas
in Lithuanian. The Proto-Indo-European religious pantheon was patriarchal.20

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PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN WOMEN
Even though the function of idealized Indo-European female figures was to give ener-
gy to the males of the culture, there were many human women who participated in
these functional categories in an active manner. Excavations of Sauromation and
Sarmatian female graves, among others, in the Southern Ural steppes—the area which
was most likely prehistorically the Proto-Indo-European homeland—has uncovered
grave goods proving that these women were priestesses and warriors.21 If indeed Indo-
European human women living in the area of the original homeland were active par-
ticipants in the more public sphere of their societies, could this possibly hold a clue to
the structure of the earlier Proto-Indo-European society? In the Indo-European canon,
the Proto-Indo-Europeans were patriarchal, but they may have been less stringently
patriarchal than has been thought since the women in those cultures were not con-
fined to the roles of wife and mother.
WHO LEFT THE HOMELAND?
I heard a lecture at UCLA a few years ago by the Irish Celticist Kim McCone.
McCone discussed young warrior heroes such as the Old Irish Cú Chulainn, “the
hound of Chulainn,” theorizing that such young male heroes (and groups of not so
heroic warriors who lived as outlaws) reflected a social reality in Indo-European cul-
ture: the Männerbund, groups of young men who live at the edges of society and are
connected in legend and myth to wolves, dogs or other animals. Information about
these young male groups is found in ancient Germanic, Gaulish, Celtic, Greek, and
Roman myth and probably society as well.22 If it was these young men who left the
homeland in a series of expansions (rather than migrations, which would have
involved whole families), then perhaps the culture of their homeland was not as patri-
archal as the young men who left it. Perhaps the particular violence and warrior men-
tality which we see in conquering Indo-Europeans was the product of a particular class
and age—of a surfeit of testosterone, as it were. That would explain the possibility of
more actively participating human females among these Kurgan peoples who did not
leave the steppes.
DNA EVIDENCE
If, then, it was mostly young males who expanded out of the Proto-Indo-European
homeland, there might be some evidence determining the origins of assimilated Indo-
European females and males. There is DNA evidence that the assimilated females

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carry mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in an unbroken line from at least the Upper
Palaeolithic era from at least 35,000 BCE or earlier.23 In other words, the female
ancestors of current Europeans were living in those areas to which the Proto-Indo-
Europeans expanded. Although studies of the Y-chromosome DNA are in the early
stages, they seem to show a similar unbroken line. This means that roughly 80% of
European DNA is continuous from the Upper Palaeolithic.
Genetic researchers Brian Sykes and Luca Cavalli-Sforza show that, according to
mtDNA and Y-chromosome studies, an influx of farmers at the beginning of the
Neolithic is responsible for only 20-26% of the DNA in Europe.24 There is evidence
of a catastrophic flooding of the Black Sea in the mid-seventh millennium BCE. This
may have caused the forced migration of farmers out of the entire area around the
Black Sea.25 If that is the case, then the incursions of mid-Neolithic Proto-Indo-
Europeans as well as early Neolithic Near Eastern farmers played a small role in the
European gene pool.
Because of the DNA evidence, one is drawn to the conclusion that few Proto-
Indo-Europeans expanded into Europe. I contend that this small-scale expansion
would have consisted of young warrior-males. Their horses and their weapons would
have given them the power to impose their language and their social structure upon
the Neolithic Europeans.

CONCLUSIONS
The Indo-Europeans were patriarchal—their religion and social structures were male-
centered. But the social roles of Indo-European human females do not seem to have
been as constricted as those of divine females. Thus, the Indo-Europeans who
remained in their homeland may not have been as patriarchal as those who expanded
out of the Steppes. At least some of those who left the homeland were, in my opinion,
the most patriarchal subgroup of the Indo-Europeans—young, rather militant, men.
They would have brought particularly strong patriarchal social standards to their new
homelands, and they would have become elite chieftains in the new cultures: the
assimilated Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Italic, Baltic, Slavic, Indic, Iranian and others.
This, then, is one of the origins of patriarchy as we know it in Europe and parts of
Southern Asia.

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THE RULE OF MARS

Miriam Robbins Dexter holds a B.A. in Classics and a Ph.D. in Indo-

European Studies (comparative linguistics, ancient Indo-European lan-
guages, archaeology, and comparative mythology), both from the University
of California at Los Angeles. Her doctoral dissertation, Indo-European
Female Figures, along with courses she has taught (and is still teaching) at
UCLA, in ancient goddesses and heroines, evolved into her book, Whence
the Goddesses: A Source Book. She is the author of seventeen journal arti-
cles and nine encyclopedia articles on ancient female figures. She co-edited
an anthology of articles in honor of the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas,
Varia on the Indo-European Past: Papers in Memory of Marija
Gimbutas (1997), as well as a monograph of Dr. Gimbutas’s own collected
articles, The Kurgan Culture and the Indo-Europeanization of Europe:
Selected articles from 1952 to 1993 (1997). She has also co-edited sever-
al volumes of the Proceedings of the UCLA Indo-European conference. She
edited and supplemented the book which Professor Gimbutas was writing at
the time of her death, The Living Goddesses (University of California
Press, Winter, 1999. Paperback version 2001). She is also co-editing confer-
ence proceedings for the Institute of Archaeomythology (along with Joan
Marler). For thirteen years, she taught courses in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit
language and literature in the department of Classics at the University of
Southern California. She is presently teaching in the Women’s Studies and
Honors Programs at UCLA.

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Dexter, Miriam Robbins. 1984.Proto-Indo-European sun-maidens and gods of the moon. Mankind
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Gimbutas, Marija. 1977. The first wave of Eurasian steppe pastoralists into Copper Age Europe.
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——— 1980. The Kurgan wave #2 (c. 3400–3200 B.C.) into Europe and the following transformation
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1993. Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man, (Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph
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Noble, Vicki. 2002. Medea of Colchis and the women of the silk road. The Black Sea Flood and its
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Polomé, Edgar C. , Douglas Q. Adams, and J.P. Mallory. 1997. God. Mallory, J.P. and Douglas Q.
Adams, eds. The Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn
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Ryan, William. 2002. Human responses to circum-Mediterranean and Black Sea climates and sea-levels.
The Black Sea Flood and its Aftermath: Papers from the First International Symposium on the
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Ryan, William and Walter Pitman. 1998. Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries about the Event
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ENDNOTES

1. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza 1997, p. 100 stresses the difference between migrations and expansions: “In
migration, in the narrow sense, a group may move from one location to the other, leaving none or very
few individuals in the old location. In expansions, migration is usually the consequence of local satura-
tion or overcrowding, and only a fraction of the population moves elsewhere.” He refers to the expan-
sions of the speakers of Indo-European languages. See also Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza 1997: 97; 98-99;
2000: 161. See also Mallory 1989: 222 ff.
2. Dexter 1990, pp. 146-152.
3. Anthony 1991, pp. 193, 204, 214; Mallory 1989, pp. 127, 183; Mallory 1997.
4. Mallory 1989, pp. 123-124; Dexter 1990a, pp. 34-35.
5. Gimbutas 1997, p. 112.
6. Mallory 1989, pp. 121, 127, 183.
7. “The sacredness of the weapon is well evidenced in all Indo-European religions.” Gimbutas 1997, p.
168. See Biaggi, forthcoming. See also Mallory 1989, p. 122.
8. Gimbutas 1977; 1979; 1980; 1997, pp. 195-300; Mallory 1989, pp. 127, 182-83, 222-265; Cavalli-
Sforza 1997, p. 97-99. Katona (2000) discusses the variable views of János Makkay, as well as his own
views, on Gimbutas’s theory of the Indo-European homeland. See Dexter (1997e, footnote 8) for a dis-
cussion and bibliography of other theories regarding the Indo-European homeland.
9. Cavalli-Sforza 2000, pp. 117-118.
10. Anthony 1991, p. 208.

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11. Gimbutas 1980, pp. 273; 1997, p. 269.

12. Gimbutas 1979, pp. 127-131; 1997, pp. 256-259.
13. Gimbutas 1999, pp. 151-153.
14. Andrew Katona, pers. comm., 10/26/03, citing Nándor Kalicz, Clay Gods: the Neolithic period and
Copper age in Hungary (Budapest, 1970: 44).
15. Dexter 1990a; 1997b.
16. Dexter 1990a, pp. 36-46; 1990b; 1997c.
17. For etymologies of these four female figures, see Robbins (Dexter) 1978, pp. 200-203, 212-215;
1980).
18. Jonval 1929: No. 424 =B34022. All translations in this paper are by the author. For this text and
many others illustrating the Proto-Indo-European goddesses, see Dexter 1996; 1997a; 1997d;1999.
19. Dexter 1984, pp. 137-144.
20. Polomé, Adams, and Mallory 1997, pp. 230-231.
21. Dexter 2002; Forthcoming; Noble, Forthcoming; Davis-Kimball 2002, pp. 28-29, 47, 77. In the
Steppe Bronze Age, ca. 1500–1000, in the Samarkand oases, female grave goods included the bronze
mirrors later found in graves of priestesses among the Scythians and Saka (Masson and Sarianidi 1972,
p. 122).
22. This may be reflected in the “warrior frenzy” of some young Indo-European heroes who have to be
“cooled down,” one way or another, before they can rejoin their societies. See Dexter 1990a, pp. 160-
161 and McCone 1986.
23. Sykes 2001, p. 169. In Sykes (2001, p. 126 he writes, “If the interaction between Neanderthal and
Cro-Magnon resembled more recent historical encounters between new arrivals and the original inhabi-
tants of a territory, then we might expect the matings to be between Cro-Magnon males and
Neanderthal females, rather than the other way around.” That is, it is the males who commonly make
incursions into the areas already inhabited by females with whom they mate. Thus, it is likely that it
was Indo-European males, at least mostly without females, who expanded into Old Europe, mating
with them and giving rise to hybrid children; but those children carried mtDNA from their mothers,
DNA dating back to the Upper Palaeolithic.
24. Sykes 2001, pp. 153-154, 193-194.
25. Ryan and Pitman 1998. I must thank Vicki Noble (pers, comm. January, 2004) for her inspiration
in connecting the migrations of the Near Eastern farmers with this catastrophic flooding of the Black
Sea.

156. . .