"It seems to me that you take a preconceived stance that balance has never existed in a highly evolved civilization unless proven otherwise."

You have missed something I said elsewhere. I believe there was a balance until Neolithic times when the farming culture took over. Hunting doesn't require strength, but stealth and cunning. Farming introduced a lot of heavy labour and probably became the man's work quite quickly. Please nobody take offence at that last statement :-)

The women with snakes are very well represented in Romanesque architecture too as the 'Femmes-Aux-Serpents', often the naked or topless woman is having her breasts bitten by snakes. This may well originate from the figure you mention, but there are things to consider. The biting of the breasts can be seen in two ways. One, a suckling way and two, as a punishment for sins of the flesh. In the church bourne scenario the latter is far more likely, especially when taken in a 12th century religious, anti-female ridden, context. Another thing to bear in mind with these is that the people of the 12th century had no knowledge whatsoever of the figures of the goddess with serpents and there does not seem to be any reference to her in early literature, so it is likely that memory of her was well and truly gone by the time these carvings were made.

The little Crete figurines paved the way for, and became the prototype for, the very ficticious all encompassing Mother Goddess that everyone seems to want to believe once existed. Many gods world wide have similar traits bestowed upon them in many different cultures, this is only natural, because we all basically want the same things at the same stage of development. Our gods refelct the times in which we live (or these days, in some cases, the times in which we wished we lived).

So, there was undoubtedly and undeniably a great deal of mother-type goddesses around over time, but all I am saying is that they weren't one global entity, but many similar, more localised ones that had similar characteristics, that existed at different times in different places for the reasons stated above.