here is one theory related to what you brought up:

"{p. 9} The term Old Europe is applied to a pre-Indo-European culture of Europe, a culture matrifocal and probably matrilinear, agricultural and sedentary, egalitarian and peaceful. It contrasted sharply with the ensuing proto-Indo-European culture which was patriarchal, stratified, pastoral, mobile and war-oriented, superimposed on all Europe, except the southern and western fringes, in the course of three waves of infiltration from the Russian steppe, between 4500 and 2500 B.C. During and after this period the female deities, or more accurately the Goddess Creatrix in her many aspects, were largely replaced by the predominantly male divinities of the Indo-Europeans. What developed after c. 2500 BC was a melange of the two mythic systems, Old European and Indo-European. ...

The persistence of the Goddess worship for more than 20,000 years, from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic and beyond, is shown by the continuity of a variety

{p. 10} of a series of conventionalized images.

{p. 17} Villages depending upon domesticated plants and animals had appeared in southeastern Europe as early as the seventh millennium BC, and the spiritual forces accompanying this change in the economic and social organization are manifested in the emergent artistic tradition of the Neolithic. The development of a food-producing economy and subsequent cultural innovations can no longer be simply explained as an introduction of vaguely designated colonists trom Anatolia or the east Mediterranean. During the seventh, sixth and fifth millennia BC the farmers of southeastern Europe evolved a unique cultural pattern, contemporary with similar developments in Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Syro-Palestine and Egypt. It reached a climax in the fifth millennium BC.

A new designation, Civilization of Old Europe, is introduced here in recognition of the collective identity and achievement of the different cultural groups of Neolithic-Chalcolithic southeastern Europe. The area it occupied extends from the Aegean and Adriatic, including the islands, as far north as Czechoslovakia, southern Poland and the westem Ukraine. Between c. 7000 and c. 3500 BC, the inhabitants of this region developed a much more complex social organization than their western and northern neighbours, forming settlements which often amounted to small townships, inevitably involving craft specialization and the creation of religious and governmental institutions. They independently discovered the possibility of utilizing copper and gold for ornaments and tools, and even appear to have evolved a rudimentary script.

{p. 195} The image of the Great Goddess of Life, Death and Regeneration in anthropomorphic form with the projection of her powers through insects and animals ...

... during the period of early agriculture her image must have been transformed. The domesticated dog, bull and he-goat now became her companions ... the goddess was flanked by male animals noted for their strength. ...

{p. 196} In her chthonic and frightening aspect she must have been a Mother Terrible perhaps yearning for human and animal blood, as indicated by her epiphany in the shape of a ferocious dog.

There was no isolated image of a Mother Terrible; the aspects death and life are inextricably intertwined. She was deployed in graves to stimulate and perpetuate the procreative powers of the deceased. Thc European Great Goddess, like the Sumerian Ninkhursag, gave life to the Dead (another name for Ninkhursag was Nintinugga, 'She who gives life to the Dead'). Her magical hands an music were for the relcase of the life forces. The symbols of 'becoming' - eggs, crescents, horns, and crosses within circles and concentric circles - were engraved or painted over her body or on votivc vases. ...

In her incarnation as a pregnant doe, a chrysalis, caterpillar, butterfly, bee, toad, turtle, or hedgehog, she was a symbol of embryonic life and regeneration. In this fundamental notion lies her association with the moon and the horns. As a bee or a butterfly she emerges from the body or horns of the bull; as a bear she takes care of a young life.

As a supreme Creator who creates from her own substance she is the primary goddess of the Old European pantheon. In this she contrasts with the Indo-European Earth-Mother, who is the impalpable sacred earth-spirit and is not in herself a creative principle; only through the interaction of the male sky-god does she become pregnant."