Great Goddess hypothesis

The Great Goddess hypothesis theorizes that, in Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and/or Neolithic Europe and Western Asia and North Africa, a singular, monotheistic female deity was worshipped.

Lenormant and M.J. Menant, who further brought in the idea that the ancient peoples of Anatolia and Mesopotamia had influenced the Greek religion, and that therefore they also had once venerated a great goddess.

Commenting on this idea, the historian Ronald Hutton (1999) remarked that in the eyes of many at the time, it would have been an obvious conclusion that "what was true in a secular sphere should also, logically, have been so in the religious one.

"[3] In 1901, the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans—who in an 1895 work had dismissed the Great Goddess theory[4]—changed his mind and accepted the idea whilst excavating at Knossos on Crete, the site of the Bronze Age Minoan civilisation.

After unearthing a number of female figurines, he came to believe that they all represented a singular goddess, who was the Minoan's chief deity, and that all the male figurines found on the site represented a subordinate male god who was both her son and consort, an idea that he based partially upon the later classical myth of Rhea and Zeus.