Environmental Ethics and Fertility in Early Cultures and the Industrial Age

Abstract

Archaeological excavations performed in various places around the world have shown that the earliest depictions portraying humans are feminine figures with exaggerated features of their sex. The feminine image has remained dominant in human culture, presenting deep continuities across space and time regarding her role as the mighty Mother of Nature, as the source of life. Striking commonalities recur in the way she was created and worshipped, in her symbols and ritual objects in diverse cultures from Stone and Bronze Ages to even more recent indigenous societies in Africa, parts of Asia, the Americas and Polynesia. Woman's profound experience of herself as a creator of life helped to define the image and the qualities of a Great Mother Goddess or Earth Mother Goddess, across time, as Nature herself, who could protect, nourish, contain and transform life in all its forms. This primordial concept of the Great Mother Goddess was the foundation of later prehistoric and proto-historic cultures in all parts of the world. Her cult was centered on fertility beliefs and rituals, executed on a seasonal basis to reinforce Nature’s potential to increase reproduction of humans, animals and crops. Her identification with Nature led to the deification of natural and cosmic elements worshipped and respected as parts of her. Fertility was regarded as a holistic system in accordance with cosmic and natural elements ruled and controlled by her, strongly connected with environmental observations affecting reproduction’s dynamic. The entire process of reproduction was ritualized, and its symbolism reveals how human consciousness primarily perceived the origins of life; also the manner and reason by which the source of life, when personified, was related either to images declaring environmental associations, or as such, proved to be essential in human wellbeing.