Here, for the first time, threads of truth explaining the mysterious disappearance of ancient cultures-in which women and the environment were at the center-have been woven together to illustrate this loss which has dramatically influenced 3,500 years of western history. The ancient world had not only treated women with respect but had been more resistant to war, more attentive to earth's cycles, more ecstatic. Then suddenly the whole culture vanished. The loss was ushered in by volcanoes and poets, gods of death and caricatures of maddening women, Scylla, Charybdis, Medea, and Calypso-all of