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simple, made of sun-dried brick and wood brought from some distant forest.
    People gave Noah and Paul odd looks, but didn’t comment on them; Paul could sense fear in the air, and noticed that one of the guards got up and ran off into the city. The man glanced at them with a furtive look; Paul felt a dread, as if the fear in the city were contagious, and knew the man had run off to do or say something that would not be in the best interests of Paul and Noah. Perhaps there was money to be made by telling about the strange visitors. Perhaps he was intending to circle around and rob or assault them.
    Paul tried to put the man—the spy, he’d decided—out of his mind as they walked down a dusty street towards the fortress in the city-center. He smelled moisture, saw trees rising above the fortress, and the closer they got to the city-center the thicker the vegetation became.
    People moved in and through the city with a sense of purpose, some with long hair, dressed in beautiful robes and striding with an air of dignity, most with short-cropped hair, dressed in rags and pulling carts or carrying loads on their heads, shoulders, or backs. It reminded Paul that the Romans and many slaveholding people before them had marked their slaves by cutting their hair. Ragged children ran and played in the dirt, under the watchful eye of adults, or carried loads of sticks or baskets of what looked to Paul like barley. Paul noticed that he’d seen only men; there were no women out in public.
    They passed an empty house, and Noah turned and stepped into it through an open door. Paul followed him, happy for the shade. They walked through a large room, down a short hallway, and into a smaller back room with an open window on one side. On the other outer adobe wall was a small recessed area about two feet square and six inches deep. It was positioned just slightly lower than the window and had the effect of being the center of attention of the room; as you walked in you were facing it directly. In the cutout of the wall sat a five-inch-tall figurine made of a red-brown pottery, a woman with a rounded belly, thick thighs, and large breasts that reached down nearly to her legs.
    â€œThe house goddess,” Noah said. “Before the Kurgans arrived, these people worshipped female deities intheir homes, their fields, their temples, and the forests. They understood that women bring forth life but men cannot; they believed that the greatest gods must be women, because the gods bring forth the crops, rain, and everything else in the world. The Kurgans, however, were a people who had learned to survive by conquering and killing and assimilating themselves among other peoples, so they worship life-taking instead of life-giving gods. Warrior gods. Male gods. And when those male gods gave them victory over every peaceful goddess-worshipping people they confronted, they knew their male gods were the greatest and most powerful. So now most of the people they’ve had contact with have male gods, or at least male gods have become the highest gods. Still, today many of the peasants of Nippur, Babylon, and most of the world worship female goddesses, although the practice will be eliminated within the next four hundred years.”
    Paul looked at the strangely formed figure and said, “But it’s just a statue.”
    â€œNo, she is a goddess,” Noah said, “at least to the people who lived in this house, and to about half of the other residents of this town.”
    â€œA female god?”
    â€œYes. They talk to her, they bring her offerings, they pray to her for good crops, success in childbirth, and good health. But they know they cannot pray to her forsuccess in war, because women are life-bringers and not life-takers. They don’t realize it now, but as their population grows and they resort to war to get more wood, land, and food, they will turn to the male war-gods who will usurp the female