Neopagans

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

Of the German goddess, Nerthus, described by Tacitus, Manson Everard of the Time Patrol thinks:

"'A pretty grim sort'...The neopagans of his home milieu did not include her in their fairy tales of a prehistoric matriarchy when everybody was nice." (p. 565)

I currently have regular contact with members of several different neopagan "denominations." Several of them are scholars of their subject. As such, they know and can expound the differences between ancient practices and attempted reconstructions and newly invented traditions and false claims of continuity with earlier traditions.

I think that prehistorical societies would have been not matriarchies, ruled by women, but anarchies, ruled by no one, as yet - maybe prearchies? - although there would have been matrilineal descent both originally before the male role in reproduction came to be recognized and even later before the institution of patriarchal monogamy made it important to identify legitimate male heirs.