An extremely old stone figurine was recently found at Tan Tan, Morocco in strata dated to 300,000 to 500,000 BP. It provides an analog to the much-disputed Berekhit Ram figurine from Golan Heights, of about the same age. Both objects bear marks enhancing the stone's resemblance to a woman.

 

  

New finds in archaeology 2007
(as well as older but little-known ones)

Flints chipped in the shape of female forms, in the late stone age. These shapes are seen in small sculptures and plaques as well as incisions in cave walls at Peche Merle and other Magdelinian sites. Numerous examples can be seen here, along with other rarely seen archaic female images

 These highly abstracted female figures have been found at Lalinde, France; Gönnersdorf, Germany; Wilczyce, Poland; and many other sites in north central and western Europe. They are collectively known as the Lalinde-Gonnersdorf type.

A figure in the round of the same type. From Courbet in the Tarn region of France.

 

 

The sensational find of a large stone relief from Tamtoc, Mexico, in the Huastec cultural zone. It shows three women, one with upraised arms and the other two headless. (Chinnamasta in reverse? just kidding.) Early reports saying that the find dates from the Olmec era are being disputed.

 

  

Another large stone relief of a divinity was found near the Templo Mayor in Mexico. She has been identified as the Aztec Earth deity Tlaltehcihuatl / Tlaltehcuhtli.

At right is a detail
from the oldest Maya mural ever found, at
San Bartolo, Guatemala. Nearly 2000 years old, it depicts the birth of the cosmos, with a divinized king at the center of a scene of trees, birds, and volutes of life force.

Ancient vulva petroglyphs
at Soogok-ri-Andong, Korea

See more

And dolmens --Korea has a third of all the megaliths in the world

  

A recently discovered mural, over 4000 years old, from a temple in Lambayeque, Peru. It shows a deer in a net.

  

 

This is the first color photo I've seen of the Lachish Ewer. A menorah stands between two antelopes (a position where a goddess is often shown) Directly above, an inscription dedicates an offering poured out to Elat ("Goddess"). Canaanite, circa 1300.

 

Huastec statue, medieval Mexico. One of many powerful stone women from coastal Veracruz.

  

Juana Azurduy

I came across some paintings of Juana Azurduy, the heroine of the Bolivian independence movement, of whom Mercedes Sosa sings:

Juana Azurduy, flor del alto Peru, no hay otro capitan mas valiente que tu… Tierra en armas
que se hace mujer, amazona de la libertad! El español no pasará que mujeres tendrá que pelear.

“There’s no other captain as brave as you… Earth takes up arms and becomes a woman, an amazon of freedom! The Spanish won’t pass through, for it's women they will have to fight.”

Juana Azurduy, heroine of the Bolivian independence revolution.

 

Han Gaku, a famous woman warrior from Niigata, Japan, circa 1200. She fought the Kamakura shogunate and was nearly executed for it.

  

 

Kimpa Vita

was the prophetic leader of an African cultural revival movement. In 1706, Portuguese Capuchin monks had her burned at the stake as a heretic, but the Antoniados movement she founded spread in the African diaspora, to Brazil, Colomiba, and other countries.

She is also known as Dona Beatriz de Congo.

 

  
See Rebel Shamans

Pot with symbols. Dimini culture,
Greece, circa 4000 BCE.

  

New additions: amazing Gandharan goddesses from the Swat Valley (ancient Odiyana, famous for its dakinis) and some rock-cut reliefs of the Iranian goddess Anahita. Antique pictures of Befana and Perchta and various European witch goddesses. Old drawings of a babaylan from the Philippines doing a curing ceremony and of a machitun in Chile some 150 years ago. Eighteenth century paintings of Abenaki and other Native people in Eastern Canada. Icons of the apocryphal saint Paraskeva, sometimes known as Saint Friday, through whom pagan rites were smuggled into the Orthodox Church. She absorbed veneration of a goddess (some scholars say it was Mokosh) of spinning and weaving (Paraskeva L'nianitsa, the "flaxen") and of the Earth (Paraskeva Gryaznyaya, the "dirty").

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