Marija Alseikaite Gimbutas

Marija Birutė Alseikaitė-Gimbutienė (1921–1994) was a Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist renowned for her Kurgan hypothesis, which posits the Pontic Steppe as the Proto-Indo-European homeland, and her theories on the Neolithic "Old Europe" cultures as peaceful, egalitarian societies centered on goddess worship, detailed in her Goddess trilogy including The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974), The Language of the Goddess (1989), and The Civilization of the Goddess (1991). Born in Vilnius, she fled WWII occupations to the US, taught at UCLA, directed key excavations, and pioneered archaeomythology, though her matriarchal views remain controversial [Anisfield-Wolf].