San Antonio College Library

Hayden offers a comprehensive & archaeological perspective on prehistoric religion. He considers why religion first developed, the dichotomy between traditional religions & scripture based faiths, & concludes with an overview of contemporary industrial society from a cultural-ecological perspective.

This book is a controversial exploration of the origin of religion in the neurology of the human brain. The author first describes how science developed within the cocoon of religion and then shows how the natural functioning of the human brain creates experiences that can lead to belief in a supernatural realm, beings, and interventions. Once people have these experiences, they formulate beliefs about them, and thus creeds are born. Forty thousand...

"Uropean civilization between 6500 and 3500 BC - long before Greek or Judaeo-Christian civilizations flourished - was not a provincial reflection of neighboring Near Eastern cultures but a distinct culture with its own unique identity. The mythical imagery of this matrilinear era tells us much about early humanity's concepts of the cosmos, of human relations with nature, of the complementary roles of male and female. Through study of sculpture, vases,...

"The Living Goddesses crowns a lifetime of innovative, influential work by one of the twentieth century's most remarkable scholars. Marija Gimbutas wrote and taught with rare clarity her original - and originally shocking - interpretation of prehistoric European civilization. Gimbutas flew in the face of contemporary archaeology when she reconstructed through her tireless research in the field and in local texts and mythologies goddess-centered cultures...

Easter Island--known to its inhabitants as Rapa Nui--is unimaginably remote, a mysterious volcanic island battered by the Pacific Ocean. Yet somehow this isolated speck produced one of the world's most fascinating and least understood prehistoric cultures. Its awe-inspiring giant stone statues, set in a bare landscape of rolling hills, abandoned quarries and huge craters, have become icons of the ancient world. Who were the people who produced these...