Explaining My thoughts on the Evolution of Religion
Understanding Religion Evolution
A caring firebrand atheist activism outreach event by “axiological atheist” Damien Marie AtHope.
Understanding Religion Evolution: Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, Paganism & Progressed organized religion
The above picture is my art and I am going to explain some of its imagery.
“Religion is an Evolved Product”
The interconnectedness of religious thinking?
So, it all starts in a general way with Animism (theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits), then this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (theoretical belief in mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item), which then enlists a full-time specific person to do this worship and believed interacting Shamanism (theoretical belief in access and influence with spirits through ritual), and then there is the further employment of myths and gods added to all the above giving you Paganism (often a lot more nature-based than most current top world religions, thus hinting to their close link to more ancient religious thinking it stems from). My hypothesis is expressed with an explanation of the building of a theatrical house (modern religions development).
“Religion is an Evolved Product” and Yes, Religion is Like Fear Given Wings…
It seems ancient peoples had to survived amazing threats in a “dangerous universe (by superstition perceived as good and evil),” and human “immorality or imperfection of the soul” which was thought to affect the still living, leading to ancestor worship. This ancestor worship presumably led to the belief in supernatural beings, and then some of these were turned into the belief in gods. This feeble myth called gods were just a human conceived “made from nothing into something over and over, changing, again and again, taking on more as they evolve all the while they are thought to be special,” but it is just supernatural animistic spirit-belief perceived as sacred. So, it all starts in a general way with Animism (theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits), then this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (theoretical belief in mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item), which then enlists a full-time specific person to do this worship and believed interacting Shamanism (theoretical belief in access and influence with spirits through ritual), and then there is the further employment of myths and gods added to all the above giving you Paganism (often a lot more nature-based than most current top world religions, thus hinting to their close link to more ancient religious thinking it stems from). My hypothesis is expressed with an explanation of the building of a theatrical house (modern religions development).
I am a caring firebrand atheist, wishing to be hard on ideas but kind to people.
My life; the good, the bad, and the ugly on the road to the Mental Freedom of Atheism
I Believe Archaeology, not Myths & Why Not, as the Religious Myths Already Violate Reason!
Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
The motivation of “Primal Religion (Pre-Animism/Animism)” is to some part, Anthropomorphism.
Religion Progression to me:
*Pre-Animism (belief in objects containing spiritual energy: magical Anthropomorphism thinking/possibly a form of Ancestor worship/Veneration of the dead) possibly by at least 300,000 years ago “the most primal stage before Animism’s early religion”
Animism (belief in a perceived spirit world) possibly by at least 100,000 years ago “the primal stage of early religion”
Totemism (a belief that these perceived spirits could be managed with created physical expressions) possibly by at least 50,000 years ago “progressed stage of early religion”
Shamanism (a belief that some special person can commune with these perceived spirits on the behalf of others by way rituals) possibly by at least 30,000 years ago
Paganism “Early organized nature-based religion” mainly like an evolved shamanism with gods (possibly by at least 13,000 years ago).
Institutional religion “organized religion” as a social institution with official dogma usually set in a hierarchical/bureaucratic structure that contains strict rules and practices dominating the believer’s life. And to me paganism and Institutional religion categorized into the following stages:
*primal stage of organized religion is 13,000 years ago.
*proto-stage of organized religion is around 10,000 years ago.
*progressed stage of organized religion is around 7,000 years ago.
***Bible Creation Timeline Begins***
(This is the thinking of young earth creationism)
5,774 Years Ago – According to rabbinic tradition and based upon pertinent calculations that rely upon scriptural data as well as the start of the traditional Jewish (or Hebrew) calendar year 5774 A.M. (“A.M.” here is short for Anno Mundi, which is Latin for “in the year of the world”). Finally, the bible allows us to have a “start date” the presumed time of all creation and no time before. Where did a young-earth worldview come from that contradicts the current scientific understanding that the earth is 4.55 billion years old? Simply put, it came from the bible. Of course, the bible does not say explicitly anywhere the earth is 5,774 or even 6,000 years old as it is usually stated in young earth creationism. So what is their argument in Genesis 1 that says the earth was created on the first day of creation? From there, young earth creationists calculate the age of the earth’s creation by calculating bible genealogies from Adam to Abraham in Genesis 5 and 11, then adding in the time from Abraham to our current time. If we add up the dates from Adam to Abraham, we get about 2,000 years, whether christian or secular, most scholars would agree that Abraham claimed to have lived about 4,000 years ago. Therefore, a simple calculation is 2,000 years + 4,000 years = 6,000 years old young earth creationism thinking for the age of the earth.
*developed stage of organized “Institutional” religion is around 5,000 years ago.
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.
Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations, emotions and natural forces like seasons and the weather. Both have ancient roots as storytelling and artistic devices, and most cultures have traditional fables with anthropomorphized animals as characters. People have also routinely attributed human emotions and behavioral traits to wild as well as domestic animals. From the beginnings of human behavioral modernity in the Upper Paleolithic, about 40,000 years ago, examples of zoomorphic (animal-shaped) works of art occur that may represent the earliest evidence we have of anthropomorphism. One of the oldest known is an ivory sculpture, the Löwenmensch figurine, Germany, a human-shaped figurine with the head of a lioness or lion, determined to be about 32,000 years old. It is not possible to say what these prehistoric artworks represent. A more recent example is The Sorcerer, an enigmatic cave painting from the Trois-Frères Cave, Ariège, France: the figure’s significance is unknown, but it is usually interpreted as some kind of great spirit or master of the animals. In either case, there is an element of anthropomorphism. This anthropomorphic art has been linked by archaeologist Steven Mithen with the emergence of more systematic hunting practices in the Upper Palaeolithic (Mithen 1998). He proposes that these are the product of a change in the architecture of the human mind, an increasing fluidity between the natural history and social intelligences, where anthropomorphism allowed hunters to identify empathetically with hunted animals and better predict their movements.
The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic, Late Stone Age) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago (the beginning Holocene), roughly coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity and before the advent of agriculture. Anatomically modern humans (i.e. Homo sapiens) are believed to have emerged around 200,000 years ago, although these lifestyles changed very little from that of archaic humans of the Middle Paleolithic, until about 50,000 years ago, when there was a marked increase in the diversity of artifacts. This period coincides with the expansion of modern humans throughout Eurasia, which contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals. The Upper Paleolithic has the earliest known evidence of organized settlements, in the form of campsites, some with storage pits. Artistic work blossomed, with cave painting, petroglyphs, carvings and engravings on bone or ivory. The first evidence of human fishing is also noted, from artifacts in places such as Blombos cave in South Africa. More complex social groupings emerged, supported by more varied and reliable food sources and specialized tool types. This probably contributed to increasing group identification or ethnicity. By 50,000–40,000 years ago, the first humans set foot in Australia.
By 45,000 years ago, humans lived at 61° north latitude in Europe. By 30,000 years ago, Japan was reached, and by 27,000 years ago humans were present in Siberia above the Arctic Circle. At the end of the Upper Paleolithic, a group of humans crossed the Bering land bridge and quickly expanded throughout North and South America. Both Homo erectus and Neanderthals used the same crude stone tools. Archaeologist Richard G. Klein, who has worked extensively on ancient stone tools, describes the stone tool kit of archaic hominids as impossible to categorize. It was as if the Neanderthals made stone tools, and were not much concerned about their final forms. He argues that almost everywhere, whether Asia, Africa or Europe, before 50,000 years ago all the stone tools are much alike and unsophisticated.
Firstly among the artifacts of Africa, archeologists found they could differentiate and classify those of less than 50,000 years into many different categories, such as projectile points, engraving tools, knife blades, and drilling and piercing tools. These new stone-tool types have been described as being distinctly differentiated from each other; each tool had a specific purpose. The invaders commonly referred to as the Cro-Magnons, left many sophisticated stone tools, carved and engraved pieces on bone, ivory and antler, cave paintings and Venus figurines. The Neanderthals continued to use Mousterian stone tool technology and possibly Chatelperronian technology. These tools disappeared from the archeological record at around the same time the Neanderthals themselves disappeared from the fossil record, about 40,000 years ago. Settlements were often located in narrow valley bottoms, possibly associated with the hunting of passing herds of animals. Some of them may have been occupied year round, though more commonly they appear to have been used seasonally; people moved between the sites to exploit different food sources at different times of the year. Hunting was important, and caribou/wild reindeer “may well be the species of single greatest importance in the entire anthropological literature on hunting.” Technological advances included significant developments in flint tool manufacturing, with industries based on fine blades rather than simpler and shorter flakes. Burins and racloirs were used to work bone, antler, and hides. Advanced darts and harpoons also appear in this period, along with the fish hook, the oil lamp, rope, and the eyed needle. The changes in human behavior have been attributed to the changes in climate during the period, which encompasses a number of global temperature drops.
This meant a worsening of the already bitter climate of the last glacial period (popularly but incorrectly called the last ice age). Such changes may have reduced the supply of usable timber and forced people to look at other materials. In addition, flint becomes brittle at low temperatures and may not have functioned as a tool. Some scholars have argued that the appearance of complex or abstract language made these behavior changes possible. The complexity of the new human capabilities hints that humans were less capable of planning or foresight before 40,000 years, while the emergence of cooperative and coherent communication marked a new era of cultural development. In religion and mythology, anthropomorphism refers to the perception of a divine being or beings in human form or the recognition of human qualities in these beings. Ancient mythologies frequently represented the divine as deities with human forms and qualities. They resemble human beings not only in appearance and personality; they exhibited many human behaviors that were used to explain natural phenomena, creation, and historical events. The deities fell in love, married, had children, fought battles, wielded weapons, and rode horses and chariots. They feasted on special foods and sometimes required sacrifices of food, beverage, and sacred objects to be made by human beings. Some anthropomorphic deities represented specific human concepts, such as love, war, fertility, beauty, or the seasons. Anthropomorphic deities exhibited human qualities such as beauty, wisdom, and power, and sometimes human weaknesses such as greed, hatred, jealousy, and uncontrollable anger.
Greek deities such as Zeus and Apollo often were depicted in human form exhibiting both commendable and despicable human traits. Anthropomorphism in this case is referred to as anthropotheism. From the perspective of adherents to religions in which humans were created in the form of the divine, the phenomenon may be considered theomorphism, or the giving of divine qualities to humans. Anthropomorphism has cropped up as a Christian heresy, particularly prominently with the Audians in third century Syria, but also in fourth-century Egypt and tenth century Italy. This often was based on a literal interpretation of Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them” (bible nonsense). Ref
Let’s make it simple:
Atheism is the reality position.
Theism is the anti-reality position!
I don’t need religion or its fake gods.
Religion’s slave no more?
Religious Belief is Nothing Special
In general, religious belief is a geography issue and not because of any truth in the belief. This is evident in how 73% of the world’s religionists live in countries in which their religious persuasion makes up a majority of the population Pew Research Center studies show. So, stop thinking you were somehow blessed to be born into the one true religion. https://damienmarieathope.com/2018/01/similarities-and-differences-in-animism-and-totemism/
Fire can be said to have a reasonably wide use and possibly being sacralized then, but we do know at some point it was attached to sacredness. At what point in humanoid history did these sacred rituals fully appear? What dreams were dreamed, what stories told around the fire? https://www.livescience.com/19425-earliest-human-fire.html
400,000 – 350,000 Years Ago – Bilzingsleben (Germany), found an elephant bone fragment, with two groups of 7 and 14 cut parallel lines which seem to be abstract art. Homo erectus bones and teeth which are the remains of at least three individuals. Most importantly the skulls show that they have been intentionally smashed after death and may represent some kind of a burial rite. ref
Pre-Animism: Portable Rock Art
Pre-animism: Anthropology; “A stage of religious development supposed to have preceded animism, in which material objects were believed to contain spiritual energy.” ref
“Primal Religion (Pre-Animism/Animism?)” or at least burial and thoughts of an afterlife may have been transferred from Neanderthals to arcane humans when they bread with them. Neanderthals, also interbred with Homo erectus, the “upright walking man,” Homo habilis, the “tool-using man,” and possibly others which means they could have possibly learned some pre-animism ideas from one of them like that expressed in portable anthropomorphic art that could have related to so kind of ancestor veneration as well. ref
The earliest European hominin crania associated with Acheulean handaxes are at the sites of Arago, Atapuerca Sima de los Huesos, and Swanscombe, dating to around 500,000 to 400,000 years ago. The Atapuerca fossils and the Swanscombe cranium belong to the Neandertal clade, whereas the Arago hominins have been attributed to an incipient stage of Neandertal evolution, to Homo heidelbergensis, or to a subspecies of Homo erectus A recently discovered cranium (Aroeira 3) from the Gruta da Aroeira (Almonda karst system, Portugal) dating to 436,000 to 390,000 years ago provides important evidence on the earliest European Acheulean-bearing hominins as well as could show a transfer of ideas. ref
Homo erectus, the “upright walking man,” Lived: Between about 1.89 million and 143,000 years ago, whereas, early African Homo erectus fossils (sometimes called Homo ergaster) are the oldest known early humans to have possessed modern human-like. The earliest evidence of hearths (campfires) occur during the time range of Homo erectus. While we have evidence that hearths were used for cooking (and probably sharing) food, they are likely to have been places for social interaction, and also used for warmth and to keep away large predators, possibly even relating to Primal Religion “Pre-Animism, which may have included Fire Sacralizing and/or Worship. ref
Neanderthals used fire 400,000 years ago and there is evidence of a 300,000-year-old ‘campfire’ from Israel not that surprising after our human ancestors controlled fire from 1.5 million to 300,000 years ago and beyond. The benefits of fire are not only to cook food and fend off predators, but also extended their day and added to the community by how a fire in the middle of the darkness mellows and also flames excite people, possibly inspiring pre-animism’s “animistic superstitionism.” Sun-worshipping baboons rise early to catch the African sunrise and race each other to the top for the best spots. Thus, we may rightly ponder how much did fireside tales aid to the socio-cultural-religious transformations or evolution. In the dark under flickering lights both above and below, was the scene a mix of wonder, fear, and mystery that superstition was expanded and religion further imagined?
It would seem that superstition was expanded and religion further imagined because both heavenly lights and flickering fire have been sacralized. Which does seem to be somewhat supported by a researcher who spent 40 years studying African Bushmen who gathered evidence of the importance of gathering around a nighttime campfire might be a universally applicable time for bonding, social information, many shared emotions, in fireside tales if we can ascertain a correlation that our prehistoric ancestors likely lived in a similar way to how the Bushmen current do. Although, we cannot directly peer into the past, or fully know the past from the indigenous Bushmen, these people do live in a way that our ancient ancestors lived for around 99% of our evolution. Therefore, we can somewhat draw some reasonable parallels such as how daytime conversations focused mainly on social relationships with only a small percentage of stories, whereas the evening conversations around campfires centered on storytelling, especially the adding of stories about the spirit world adding possible credence to the thinking that nighttime and its darkness full of fear and or wonder in the flickering lights of fireside allows for more mystical thinking and the tales such an environment can produce which could have aided in socio-cultural-religious transformations or evolution.
The importance of water and fire can be a set of hidden factors to human evolution and socio-cultural-religious transformations and involved in many religious themes; lingering primitive animism still seen in current religions. Fire as sacred or magic can be seen in consuming fire, volcanos/lightning as gods power/vengeance, holy fire, fire as a means of transformation or magical purification or just a magical being itself as well as used in fire worship/worshiping the sun or punishment (hell: lake of fire which could be seen as mixing fire and water if only symbolically) used in ceremonies like bonfires, eternal flames, or sacred candles/incense/lights/lamps are in one form or another incorporated in many faiths such as judaism, christianity, islam, hinduism, buddhism, sikhism, bahaism, shintoism, taoism, etc. All this worship of fire/sun are hardly special certain primates worship thunderstorms, others fire or sunrises. We have forgotten how nature worship, animistic superstitionism, animistic somethingism, or animistic supernatralism is presented in today’s religion. The mega religions now think they are removed from animistic superstitionism, which they have not. Their rituals, beliefs, and prayers have a connection to animism nature worship but are more hidden or stylized, such as burning candles which is worshipping fire. ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref
There is evidence of an emerging “preference for the aesthetic” among the Homo Erectus of the Lower Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) Lower Paleolithic art, namely the “Venus of Tan-Tan” (before 300 kya) and the “Venus of Berekhat Ram” (250 to ? kya), in particular in the high symmetry exhibited by gathered stones with seeming faces as well as some stone tools, with posable faces, in addition, to the stone tools that often seem manufactured with much higher care than would strictly be needed.
300,000 Years Ago – Atapuerca, Spain, evidence of the intentional storing of bones from at least 32 people in a cave chamber pit (may have the symbolism of a pseudo womb; put back from where they came from). This behavior suggests a belief that dead humans are not the same as other animals. A stone axe made of red quartzite found exposes some kind of ritual offering for a funeral. If it is so, it would be the oldest evidence of known of sacred funerary practices. ref, ref
Yes, you need to know about Animism to understand Religion
* “animist” Believe in spirit-filled life and/or afterlife (you are a hidden animist/Animism : an approximately 100,000-year-old belief system Qafzeh: Oldest Intentional Burial of 15 individuals with red ocher and Border Cave: intentional burial of an infant with red ochre and a shell ornament (possibly extending to or from Did Neanderthals teach us “Primal Religion (Animism?)” 120,000 Years Ago, as they too used red ocher? well it seems to me it may be Neanderthals who may have transmitted a “Primal Religion (Animism?)” or at least burial and thoughts of an afterlife they seem to express what could be perceived as a Primal “type of” Religion, which could have come first is supported in how 250,000 years ago Neanderthals used red ochre and 230,000 years ago shows evidence of Neanderthal burial with grave goods and possibly a belief in the afterlife.
Think the idea that Neanderthals who may have transmitted a “Primal Religion” as crazy then consider this, it appears that Neanderthals built mystery underground circles 175,000 years ago. Evidence suggests that the Neanderthals were the first humans to intentionally bury the dead, doing so in shallow graves along with stone tools and animal bones. Exemplary sites include Shanidar in Iraq, Kebara Cave in Israel and Krapina in Croatia. Or maybe Neanderthals had it transmitted to them Evidence of earliest burial: a 350,000-year-old pink stone axe with 27 Homo heidelbergensis. As well as the fact that the oldest Stone Age Art dates to around 500,000 to 233,000 Years Old and it could be of a female possibly with magical believed qualities or representing something that was believed to) – Reference link
Possible Religion Motivations in the First Cave Art?
The interconnectedness of religious thinking Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, and Paganism and Beyond Sky Burials: Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, and Paganism
Oldest Intentional Burial: At Qafzeh, Israel, the remains of as many as 15 individuals were found in a cave, along with 71 pieces of red ocher and ocher-stained stone tools. The ocher was found near the bones, suggesting it was used in a ritual. ref
The four to the six-month-old infant from Border Cave, found with a perforated Conus shell in a pit excavated in Howiesons Poort (HP) layers dated to 74 ± 4 BP, is considered the oldest instance of modern human burial from Africa, and the earliest example of a deceased human interred with a personal ornament. In this article, we present new data retrieved from unpublished archives on the burial excavation and conduct an in-depth analysis of the Conus found with the infant and a second similar Conus that probably originates from the same layer. Border Cave is located in the Lebombo Mountains on the border between South Africa and Swaziland. It is an extremely rich archeological site with more than a million Stone Age artifacts along with some of the earliest anatomically modernHomo Sapiens remains ever discovered. Scientists have concluded that people have used the cave for shelter for more 200,000 years. Among the most important finds was the body of an infant, dating back as much as possibly, 100,000 years, which had been painted with red ochre and buried together with a shell ornament. This makes it the oldest known deliberate burial in Africa and, if such burial can be taken to mean a concern with the afterlife, it would be the earliest evidence of the emergence of religion as well. ref & ref
What About Neanderthals
75,000 – 70,000 Years Ago – (South Africa), found engraved pieces of sacralized rock art composed of red ochre and decorated with an abstract pattern at Klein Kliphuis, Wonderwerk Cave, Klasies River Cave like those mentioned earlier at Blombos Cave. 70,000 Years Ago – Tsodilo Hills (Southern Africa), found the “first human worship” of a megalithic serpent/ python /snake-shaped rock with ritual carvings on it in python cave or rhino cave. The large python looking stone item monument comes out of a cave and links to the mythology of modern local people like a mecca of sorts calling it mountain of the gods. The worship has a greater confirmation of worship such as offerings such as 100 multicolored spear points some burned or smashed and 22 tips made from red stone, which leads to some kind of proto early religion, animistic mysticism or totemistic supernaturalism.
Hunter-gatherer monuments occur on every inhabited continent, such communities commonly recognize natural features seeing mystical essence, physically altering them to ritual emphasis understood as veneration of natural things or places. African ethnography exposes the distinction through the contrast between ‘places of power’ and ‘shrines of the land’. Monuments of either ‘places of power’ or ‘shrines of the land’ connect not only to the landscapes but may indeed be a fundamental characteristic or tendency to anthropomorphism. I would like to highlight the possible continuing theme of shake sacralization that is seen at the first human worship of a megalithic stone snake located in South Africa; which is similar to the seeming snake reverence at Gobekli Tepe, the first human-made temple located in southeast Turkey, with an extra significance of sacralized snakes, even some seeming to suggest a believed magical connection to women and birth.
This python cave with the megalithic snake-shaped rock in the Tsodilo Hills is a long list thing of worship but the theme is quite alive and well seen in how the area is still venerated as the “Mountains of the Gods” and python is one of the most important animals by the San people (or Bushmen), various indigenous hunter-gatherer people basically from Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and South Africa. What is similarly intriguing is how the San people’s myth of humanities conception involved a python (seeing to show a birth connection theme with snakes) and streams around the hills are sacralized as having been created by the python as it circled the hills endlessly searching for water. DNA tests show that the ancestors of today’s San hunter-gatherers seem to have separated from other human populations in Africa about 200,000 years ago, to then become genetically isolated around 100,000 years ago, when humans were still confined to the African continent. It is speculated the split involved two separate populations where the San hunter-gatherers evolved in isolation until they came started to come back together about 50, 000 to 40,000 years ago, reforming a single pan-African human population. Also of note found artifacts dating to around 44,000 years ago, demonstrating some of the earliest evidence for modern human behaviors, at a time close to the re-emerging of all humans demonstrates ancient hunter-gatherer’s tools of southern Africa are almost identical to ones used by modern San hunter-gatherers. ref
* “totemist” Believe in spirit-filled life and/or afterlife can be attached to or be expressed in things or objects (you are a hidden totemist/Totemism: an approximately 50,000-year-old belief system (though it may be older as there is evidence of what looks like a Stone Snake in South Africa which may be the “first human worship” dating to around 70,000 years ago) (possibly extending to or from Neanderthals Likewise a number of archeologists propose that Middle Paleolithic societies — such as that of the Neanderthals — may also have practiced the earliest form of totemism or animal worship in addition to their (presumably religious) burial of the dead. Emil Bächler in particular suggests (based on archeological evidence from Middle Paleolithic caves) that a widespread Neanderthal bear-cult existed. Animal cults in the following Upper Paleolithic period — such as the bear cult — may have had their origins in these hypothetical Middle Paleolithic animal cults. Animal worship during the Upper Paleolithic intertwined with hunting rites. For instance, archeological evidence from art and bear remains reveals that the bear cult apparently had involved a type of sacrificial bear ceremonialism in which a bear was shot with arrows and then was finished off by a shot in the lungs and ritualistically buried near a clay bear statue covered by a bear fur, with the skull and the body of the bear buried separately. 100,000 to 50,000 years ago – Increased use of red ochre at several Middle Stone Age sites in Africa. Red Ochre is thought to have played an important role in ritual. 42,000 years ago – Ritual burial of a man at Lake Mungo in Australia.
The body is sprinkled with copious amounts of red ochre. 40,000 years ago – Upper Paleolithic begins in Europe. An abundance of fossil evidence includes elaborate burials of the dead, Venus figurines (depiction of female) and cave art also involving red ochre. Aurignacian figurines have been found depicting faunal representations of the time period associated with now-extinct mammals, including mammoths, rhinoceros, and Tarpan, along with anthropomorphized depictions that may be interpreted as some of the earliest evidence of religion. Many 35,000-year-old animal figurines were discovered in the Vogelherd Cave in Germany. One of the horses, amongst six tiny mammoth and horse ivory figures found previously at Vogelherd, was sculpted as skillfully as any piece found throughout the Upper Paleolithic. The production of ivory beads for body ornamentation was also important during the Aurignacian. There is a notable absence of painted caves, however, which begin to appear within the Solutrean. Venus figurines are thought to represent fertility. The cave paintings at Chauvet and Lascaux are believed to represent religious thought. The oldest cave art is found in the Cave of El Castillo in Spain, in early Aurignacian dated at around 40,000 years, the time when it is believed that homo sapiens migrated to Europe from Africa.
The paintings are mainly of deer. The next oldest cave paintings are found in the Chauvet Cave in France, dating to around 37,000 to 33,500 years ago and the second from 31,000 to 28,000 years ago with most of the black drawings dating to the earlier period. Chauvet Cave appears to have been used by humans during two distinct periods: the Aurignacian and the Gravettian. Most of the artwork dates to the earlier, Aurignacian, era (30,000 to 32,000 years ago). The later Gravettian occupation, which occurred 25,000 to 27,000 years agoThe paintings feature a larger variety of wild animals, such as lions, panthers, bears and hyenas. It’s strange to think that these animals were roaming around France at that time. There are no examples of complete human figures in these cave paintings. ref, ref, ref, ref, ref
The Venus of Hohle Fels (also known as the Venus of Schelklingen; in German variously Venus vom Hohlen Fels, vom Hohle Fels; Venus von Schelklingen) is an Upper Paleolithic Venus figurine made of mammoth ivory that was located near Schelklingen, Germany. It is dated to between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago, belonging to the early Aurignacian, at the very beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, which is associated with the earliest presence of Cro-Magnon in Europe. This female figure is the oldest undisputed example of a depiction of a human being yet discovered. In terms of figurative art only the lion-headed, zoomorphic Löwenmensch figurine is older. The figurine was sculpted from a woolly mammoth tusk and it has broken into fragments, of which six have been recovered, with the left arm and shoulder still missing. In place of the head, the figurine has a perforated protrusion, which may have allowed it to be worn as an amulet. The Swabian Alb region of Germany has a number of caves that have yielded many mammoth-ivory artifacts of the Upper Paleolithic period.
Approximately twenty-five items have been discovered to date. These include the Löwenmensch figurine of Hohlenstein-Stadel dated to 40,000 years ago and an ivory flute found at Geißenklösterle, dated to 42,000 years ago. This mountainous region is located in Baden-Württemberg and is bounded by the Danube in the southeast, the upper Neckar in the northwest, and in the southwest, it rises to the higher mountains of the Black Forest. This concentration of evidence of full behavioral modernity, including figurative art and instrumental music among humans in the period of 40 to 30 thousand years ago, is unique worldwide and its discoverer, archaeologist Nicholas Conard, speculates that the bearers of the Aurignacian culture in the Swabian Alb may be credited with the invention, not just of figurative art and music, but possibly, the earliest religious practices as well. Within a distance of 70 cm to the Venus figurine, Conard’s team also found a flute made from a vulture bone. Additional artifacts excavated from the same cave layer included flint-knapping debris, worked bone and carved ivory as well as remains of tarpans, reindeer, cave bears, woolly mammoths, and Alpine Ibexes. ref
Zoomorphic Löwenmensch (Lion-man of the Hohlenstein-Stadel) Figurine
The Löwenmensch figurine or Lion-man of the Hohlenstein-Stadel is a prehistoric ivory sculpture that was discovered in the Hohlenstein-Stadel, a German cave. The German name, Löwenmensch meaning “lion-human”, is used most frequently because it was discovered and is exhibited in Germany. The lion-headed figurine is the oldest-known zoomorphic (animal-shaped) sculpture in the world and the oldest-known uncontested example of figurative art. Assignment of gender became an objective of certain researchers. Initially, the figurine was classified as male by Hahn who suggested a plate on the abdomen could be a flaccid penis. Schmid later classified this feature as a pubic triangle, however, and from an examination of new parts of the sculpture, determined that the figurine was that of a woman with the head of a “Höhlenlöwin” (female European cave lion). Male European cave lions often lacked distinctive manes, so the absence of a mane could not determine categorically that the figurine was that of a lioness. After restoration, it was realized that the triangular platelet in the genital area was processed all around separating it from the figurine. A fracture point suggests that originally it may have been square in shape.
Although an objective determination of the gender of the Löwenmensch figurine is impossible, debate continues, with the most common interpretation of the fragment being a stylized male sex organ. The Löwenmensch figurine lay in a chamber almost 30 metres from the entrance of the Stadel cave and was accompanied by many other remarkable objects. Bone tools and worked antlers were found, along with jewelry consisting of pendants, beads, and perforated animal teeth. The chamber was probably a special place, possibly used as a storehouse or hiding-place, or maybe as an area for cultic rituals. A similar but smaller lion-headed human sculpture was found along with other animal figurines and several flutes in the nearby Vogelherd Cave. This leads to the possibility that the Löwenmensch figurines were important in the mythology of humans of the early Upper Paleolithic. Archaeologist Nicholas Conard has suggested that the second lion-figurine “lends support to the hypothesis that Aurignacian people may have practiced shamanism and that it should be considered strong evidence for fully symbolic communication and cultural modernity”. The figurine shares certain similarities with later French cave paintings, which also show hybrid creatures with human-like lower bodies and animal heads such as the “Sorcerer” from the Trois Frères in the Pyrenees or the “Bison-man” from the Grotte de Gabillou in the Dordogne. ref
36,000 – 32,000 Years Ago – Chauvet Cave (France), venus and The Sorcerer (should be venus and the sorceress instead), cave art drawn in black charcoal. The black pubic triangle of the venus is at eye level and seems to be the heart of the composition. The white vulva slit appears to have been done later with a pointed tool and is clearly indicated by a vertical line incised strongly enough to cut through both the black pigment and the yellow surface film of the rock and there is a bullhead right above it and the bull leg is the venus leg. Perhaps the female representation relates directly to the corridor to the chamber, which opens just behind her. Four other female representations limited to just the pubic triangle are in the cave; they are all in the system including the Galerie des Megaceros and the Salle du Fond, indicating each time the entrance to the adjacent cavities. There are red handprints and red dots made into figures, red paint (ground red ocher) would be blown, probably by mouth, around the stencil of the artist’s hand. ref
* “shamanist” Believe in spirit-filled life and/or afterlife can be attached to or be expressed in things or objects and these objects can be used by special persons or in special rituals can connect to spirit-filled life and/or afterlife (you are a hidden shamanist/Shamanism: an approximately 30,000-year-old belief system) there is what is believed to be a female shaman burial with a matching carved ivory female head belonging to the Pavlovian culture 29,000 to 25,000 a variant of the Gravettian/(Gravettian culture 33,000 to 22,000 years ago), dated to 29,000 to 25,000-years old Dolní Vestonice, Moravia, Czech Republic. A carved ivory figure in the shape of a female head was discovered near the huts. The left side of the figure’s face was distorted image is believed to be a description of elder female’s burial around 40 years old, she was ritualistically placed beneath a pair of mammoth scapulae, one leaning against the other.
Surprisingly, the left side of the skull was disfigured in the same manner as the aforementioned carved ivory figure, indicating that the figure was an intentional depiction of this specific individual. The bones and the earth surrounding the body contained traces of red ocher, a flint spearhead had been placed near the skull, and one hand held the body of a fox. This evidence suggests that this was the burial site of a shaman. This is the oldest site not only of ceramic figurines and artistic portraiture but also of evidence of early female shamans. Women were much more prominent in religion before 5,500. Archaeologists usually describe two regional variants: the western Gravettian, known namely from cave sites in France, Spain and Britain, and the eastern Gravettian in Central Europe and Russia. The eastern Gravettians — they include the Pavlovian culture — were specialized mammoth hunters, whose remains are usually found not in caves but in open air sites. The origins of the Gravettian people are not clear, they seem to appear simultaneously all over Europe. Though they carried distinct genetic signatures, the Gravettians and Aurignacians before them were descended from the same ancient founder population. According to genetic data, 37,000 years ago, all Europeans can be traced back to a single ‘founding population’ that made it through the last ice age. Furthermore, the so-called founding fathers were part of the Aurignacian culture which was displaced by another group of early humans members of the Gravettian culture. Between 37,000 years ago and 14,000 years ago, different groups of Europeans were descended from a single founder population. To a greater extent than their Aurignacian predecessors, they are known for their Venus figurines. ref ref, ref, ref
Early Shamanism around 30,000 years ago: Sungar (Russia) and Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic)
35,000 – 30,000 years, Years Ago – Cavillon cave Liguria, (Italy) found evidence of a ceremonial burial of an adult female wearing a cap of more than 200 shells with a border of deer’s teeth, red ochre around the face and a bone awl at the side. The lady Cavillon was first believed to be a man so was dubbed “The Man of Menton”. Ref Ref Ref
Aurignacian burials (c.37,000-30,000 years ago) belong to the early phase of this period in Europe. Examples have been excavated at:
Sungir’, Russia – the remains of a man buried with 1500 ivory beads, with partial burning to the bones of his feet, suggesting that he was placed on embers.
Cave of Cavillon, Liguria – a burial wearing a cap of netted whelk shells with a border of deer’s teeth, red ochre around the face and a bone awl at the side.
Combe-Capelle, Dordogne – similar rites found at a shelter, where burials were associated with ochre, mollusks, flint tools and possibly food.
Cueva Movin, Spain – two graves with low mounds, one containing the shape of the body, which was decapitated and covered with animal bodies, and buried with a quartzite knife. The sacred character of these mounds survived through later occupations of the cave, as they were not flattened.
Dolni Vestonice, Czechoslovakia – a child burial with a necklace of 27 pierced fox teeth, the skull area covered with red ochre and the whole burial below complete mammoth shoulder blades. ref
Galgenburg Dancing Figure – Bradshaw Foundation
Venus of Galgenberg – Wikipedia
Galgenburg: Dancing Figure, Lower Austria, believed to be connected with the Aurignacian, and was not far from the site of the Venus of Willendorf. This figure is around 32,000 years old, is One of the oldest human sculptures in the world, this figure of a nude woman dancing was found broken into eight pieces near a campfire on an open-air site. Made with great skill and artistry from an attractive pebble of blackish green amphibolite the figure is worked in relief on the front and is flat on the back. The right arm is held above the head and her breast hangs beneath. The left arm curves out from the body, shoulder slightly forward, hand resting on the thigh of the left leg which also curves outwards, knee slightly bent. The head is poised, slightly square and lacking a face. The pose suggests movement in a dance and the figurine is often called ‘Fanny’ after one of Austria’s prima ballerinas. Such movement is exceptional among early human sculptures which more often have an immobile stance. Was she enjoying herself or participating in a ritual celebration? ref & ref
32,050 – 19,000 Years Ago – Sungar (Russia), found posable evidence of shamanistic Gravettian culture burials and that seem to match the latter indigenous American shamanistic burials in Alaska at the Tanana River site with around 11,500 years old duel infant burial very similar shamanistic grave offerings like decorated stone weapons. To further a clear connection is the Bluefish Cave (Yukon Territory Canada) that held bones with cut marks which is possibly as old as 24,000 to 19,650 years ago and the youngest are around 12,000 years old seem to offer strong support for the “Beringian hypothesis” human population dispersed to North and South America. To me is seems Siberian is the general origin of native Americans at least by around 11,000 years ago, by the land bridge “Beringia” from Asia by way of Siberia in Russia over to Alaska in the Americas, which the Paleoindians had crossover on, finally flooded over by rising sea levels and was submerged. Siberia has a large variety in climate, vegetation, and landscape. Siberia’s Prehistory demonstrates several distinct cultures sometimes transferring ideas, other times not, and some split from earlier cultures creating new ones often in illation, mainly starting with hunter-gatherer nomadism.
During glaciation around 115,000 to 15,000 years ago, the Siberia tundra extended south and an ice sheet covered area of Russia around the Ural Mountains that while some of the oldest mountains are more like large hills, and the area to the east of the lower Yenisei River basin, which in the general area of central and southern Siberia. Some of the first nomadic peoples entered Siberia about 50,000 years ago. Ancient nomadic tribes such as the Ket people and the Yugh people a separate but similar group lived along its banks. Shamanism among Kets shares characteristics with those of Turkic and Mongolic peoples thus not at all homogeneous in expression though neither is shamanism in Siberia in general. As for shamanism among Kets had several types of Ket shamans and shared characteristics with those of Turkic and Mongolic peoples.
The Yana River sites, in Siberia, demonstrate that modern human populations had reached Western Beringia by 32,000 years ago then engaging in an early dispersal possibly by 24,000 years ago. At around 45,000 years old human remains (Ust’-Ishim man) found in Western Siberia the beginning fought that went to central Siberia then eastern and then over to the Americas maybe beginning as early as 30,000 years ago, though based on genetic from Haplogroup Q studies sometime around 15,000 years ago. the artefacts found are similar to the Dyuktai culture in Eastern Siberia possibly originating as early as 22,000–20,000 years ago. Moreover, the Ust’-Ishim man, a hunter-gather found at the Irtysh River whose source is in the Mongolian Altai. The Altai Mountains first colonization came from Southwest Asia around 38,000 years ago. Ust’-Ishim man, with DNA seeming to connect to the first wave of humans to migrate out of Africa into Eurasia and now closely related to modern indigenous peoples of the Americas, East Asian, Oceanian, and Eurasia populations, such as the current residents of the Ust’-Ishim area located in southwestern Siberia sharing borders with Kazakhstan to the south.
Modern Tibetans have the most in common with Ust’-Ishim man but Siberian and East Asian populations shared 38% similar ancestry. Ust’-Ishim man has genetic links to the 24,000 years ago 4-year-old Mal’ta boy part of the Mal’ta–Buret’ culture from south-central Siberia west of Lake Baikal, who’s shamanistic burial including a presumed anthropomorphic female figurine as well as connects to 14-38% similar ancestry to Native Americans. One of 29 female figurine “horn/bone cut Mal’ta Venuses” with a gaunt face “possibly sacred” portable art for a nomadic portable people at Mal’ta, near Lake Baikal dated to around 23,000 years ago expressing similarities to both the around 13,500-year-old shamanistic totem the “stone cut Urfa man” with a gaunt-faced man from Southeast Turkey and the around 11,000-year-old shamanistic totem the “woodcut Shigir Idol” with a gaunt-faced man from in Russia and Shaman’s cache schematic figure that is similar to both Urfa man’s face and the Mal’ta Venus’ face as well as tapered end. It is other figurines in carved bone, ivory, and antler most commonly depicting of birds and human females believed to cold significance as a totemistic fertility rite.
Generally, these figurines were tapered at the bottom, and it is believed that this was done so they could have been stuck into the ground or placed upright and could have symbolized totem “spirit dolls”, which seen in ritual use nearly worldwide, including currently in Siberia. The Mal’ta–Buret’ culture from south-central Siberia west of Lake Baikal is closely related to Ochre Grave/Yamna culture peoples the Yamnaya, Siberians, Native Americans, indigenous Mansi Western Siberia, indigenous Nganasans north Siberia descendants of Paleo-Siberian peoples who were culturally assimilated by various Samoyedic peoples, indigenous Yukaghirs one of the oldest peoples in North-Eastern Asia ranging originally from Lake Baikal to the Arctic Ocean and Kets in central and southern Siberia. “Avam people.” The Avam-Nganasans refer to themselves as “friend tribe,” “Avam” signifying the “real people” which is also what they call the neighboring tribe the Madu Enets, whereas the Vadeyev Nganasans to the East prefer to refer to themselves as “brother,” which is also what they call the neighboring tribes the Evenk or Dolgan. The Yukaghir peoples still practice shamanism with ancestral spirits, the spirits of Fire, Sun (highest cult), Hunting, Earth, and Water. Dead spirits go to “Aibidzi” watching and helping whereas when a shaman “Alma” dies they were often treated as a kind of deity spirit thus the very bones of the dead shaman-god parts where then seen as sacred clan totem relics. Also, among Kets differing shamans was different sacral rites, power, and associated animals (deer or bear) and many other Siberian peoples like the Karagas who all seem to have a shared iconography using skeleton symbols. These skeleton symbols, could be a precursor to the later skull cult motivation in the fertile crescent, it may be bones of a helper animal or an ancestor used by a shaman, possibly joining the air and underwater worlds for a kind of shamanic rebirth expressed among some other Siberian cultures.
The term “shamanism” which probably originates from the southwestern dialect derived from the Sym-Evenki peoples, connects to the Evenki word “Saman.” The Evenki language has three large dialect groups: the northern, the southern and the eastern dialects formerly known as Tungus or Solon member of the northern group of Tungusic languages (“Tungusic” referring to the Evenks/Evenki Indigenous peoples of Siberia, Northeast China 56 ethnic groups/ Mongolia 535 ethnic groups referred to as Khamnigan; a Mongolic language spoken east of Lake Baikal in Russia, located in southern Siberia) and especially the Oroqen language. The general area that is believed to be the native land of Evenki people involves a vast regions of Siberia between Lake Baikal and the Amur River. The Ewenki language forms the northern branch of the Manchu-Tungusic language group and is closely related to Even and Negidal in Siberia. Moreover, the term “shamanism” was first applied the ancient religion of the Turks, Mongols, Tungusic, and Samoyedic-speaking peoples but now describe even unrelated magico-religious practices in ethnic religions in Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Americas; which do to the seeming similarity in some themes and practices.
11,000 years old The Shigir Idol (Totem pole) wooden sculpture of what seems to be a man with seven faces, only one is developed along (images of spirits/ancestors) with geometric symbols, wavy lines or zigzag symbolised the watery element, snake, in the peat bog Kirovgrad, Sverdlovsk region, in the Ural Mountains western Siberia. The Shigir peat bog contains 68 sites and this artifact Seems similar to totem pole symbols the animistic peoples of western North America, word totem derives from the Algonquian (most likely Ojibwe) meaning “kinship group” and carvings may symbolize or commemorate cultural beliefs that recount familiar legends, clan lineages, or notable events. symbol to the animistic peoples of western North America. The Okunev culture Southern Siberia left large numbers of ‘masks’ and engravings, on totem pole like rocks several of feet tall and are seen as the Siberian ethnic grouping most closely related to Native Americans. The Okunev culture often used the images of animals in their carvings, such as, one with a shamanistic being depicting a gaunt-faced and shake at either side and rays shooting out the head.
There is a special burial dated to around 4,500 to 3,800 years ago of a shaman or noblewoman’s grave was found in the Khakassia region of Siberia f note was an incense burner in the grave goods that shows drawings of the sun and match rock art found in the region. Her burial contained a child seeming to clutch her left side around the level of her pelvis was with around 100 decorations made from the teeth of different animals, items carved from bone and horn, two jars, cases with bone needles, a bronze knife, and more than 1,500 beads that on a seeming special funeral costume. The woman and child with a stone box grave common to these peoples are thought to have belonged to the Okunev people who DNA and cranial studies have suggested are the long-ago ancestors of hunter-gatherers that traveled from southern Siberia to North America some 12,600 years ago. In southern Turkey Gobekli Tepe totemism somewhat similar massive temple stone totems that involve anthropomorphic/zoomorphic one of which is clearly a “totem-like fertility” and most others are “T-shaped pillars” generally consisting of a circle.
One of importance is at the sites central temple with a dynamiter of over 30 ft that consists of intermittently spaced 13 ft. zoomorphic (animal reliefs) stone pillars totems and two anthropomorphic (human-like reliefs) 18 ft. central pillars in the circle of pillar stones constructed at around 12,000 to 11,000 years ago. Gobekli Tepe totemism similarities match nearby Nevali Cori cult buildings dated to around 10,400 years ago and the Shigir Idol in Russia is seen in a stone head (broken from a larger source) found with a similar strong nose but rather featureless face. In addition, this around 11,000-year-old shamanistic totem the “Big wood-cut Shigir Idol” semis to have a face representation to the 13,500-year-old shamanistic totem the Urfa man/Balikligol statue, is a human-size statue of a gaunt faced man Southeast Turkey around the time and general area as the Gobekli Tepe manmade religious temple complex with the T-shapes seen with similar V-shape neck design as well as the significance of the referencing of embracing the navel and birth to the Urfa man embracing his genitals as all possibly totem iconography seems to be expressing a fertility cult in likely in a shamanistic/animistic religious persuasion.
Around the time of 11,700 to 8400 years ago was a period totemistic ritual and shamanistic cultic objects such as human busts, plaster human skull, Kfar HaHoresh in northern Israel, human mask at Jericho in the West Bank eastcentral Israel, human busts and human figurines grouped at Ain Ghazal in western Jordan all of which have similarities in face symbiology to bot the Urfa man Idol and the Shigir Idol. Moreover, The Urfa man Idol is around the same age as the anthropomorphic (expressionless faced man) to featureless face represented at Nevali Cori that also has a ” human head and bird-like body stone totem pole and also a gaunt faced man similar to the Shigir Idol in a stone statue at Gobekli Tepe with a protruding erection that points to fertility symbolism. Speaking of fertility, a comparison of Ust-Ishim and Kum6 to an Asian Upper Paleolithic individual confirms that Kum6 shows more affinity to early Europeans. Kum6 6,700-years-old individual (at Kumtepe in northwestern Turkey) carries a DNA frequently found in early farmers of Europe and the Near East that falls between modern-day West Asians and Europeans as well as shows the greatest genetic similarity to Sardinians (an island in the Mediterranean located west of Italy), Greeks, and Cypriots (an island in the Mediterranean located south of Turkey) but also a genetic link that is the most common in Europe and the Near East which likely originated in the Near East 25,000–30,000 years ago and is also observe in a more limited amount in the later Yamnaya culture who were part of a wave of nomadic herders that interbred with local farmers beginning around 5,000 years ago involving a large migration in different directions, including Europe, Siberia to Scandinavia to originating peoples who lived in the Minusinsk Basin and the Altai Mountains that originally colonized by Southwest Asia around 38,000 years ago.
Southern Siberia and Mongolia around 5,500 to 4,500 years ago whose burials where in a flexed position covered in ochre and included animal bones under mounds and were among the first people to drive carts with wheels and tame horses also links them to people in central and eastern Europe including the later Yamnaya culture. The Tekkekoy Caves in northcentral Turkey at the Black Sea coast seems to demonstrate that people that lived between 60,000 to 12,000 years ago. Moreover, genetically the Yamnaya of the northern steppe of Russia were indistinguishable from the Yenesey region of southern Siberia. The ancient DNA of two closely related 7,700-year-old women from a mountainous cave in far east Russia Chertovy Vorota Cave, the humans were found with pottery, harpoons, and the remnants of nets and mats woven from twisted blades of wild sedge grass. Interestingly enough, there is evidence of a Paleoindian wrapped in tule matting around 12,000 to 11,000 years ago from Nevada in America where several Native American groups make tules into many waved items. These women from 7,700 years ago most closely relate to the “Ulchi” an indigenous people live in Khabarovsk Krai, the Russian Far East that has genetic similarities to Native American groups. Moreover, the Native American A–D DNA originated in different parts of Siberia, northwestern and northern Siberia to which the indigenous Mansi and the Ket belong thus a confirming commonality in a Siberian ancestor of Paleoindians.
Moreover, the closest genetic relatives to the indigenous peoples of the Americas B2 DNA originated in the indigenous Tubalar the Altai region and the indigenous Tuvan/ Uriankhai in southern Siberia whose religion of Tuvans is a type of Turkic animistic shamanism similar to Tengrism. Tengrism is a Central Asian religion characterized by shamanism, animism, totemism, ancestor worship and polytheism/monotheism as well as was the prevailing religion of the Turks, Mongols, Hungarians, Xiongnu, Huns, and the religion of the five ancient Turkic states: Gokturk Khaganate, Western Turkic Khaganate, Great Bulgaria, Bulgarian Empire and Eastern Tourkia (Khazaria). Tengri is mentioned as god of Turks and in modern Turkey, Tengrism is known as the (“Sky God religion”) which sems to also connect to how Mongolians still pray to Munkh Khukh Tengri (“Eternal Blue Sky”). A movement similar to Tengrism is Burkhanism concentrated in Altay situated at the Altai Mountains. Burkhan means “god/buddha” in Mongolic languages, yet but is not limited to Buddhist is used in shamanistic beliefs like how in Mongolian Shamanism, the most sacred mountain is Burkhan Khaldun “god Mountain” situated in northeastern Mongolia, with mountain worship going back sever thousands of years. In southern Turkey Gobekli Tepe’s totemism/shamanism is somewhat similar to the massive Shigir Idol totem with its massive temple stone totems, that involve anthropomorphic/zoomorphic one of which is clearly a “totem like fertility” and most others are “T-shaped pillars” generally consisting of a circle.
One of importance is at the sites central temple with a dynamiter of over 30 ft that consists of intermittently spaced 13 ft. zoomorphic (animal reliefs) stone pillars totems and two anthropomorphic (human like reliefs) 18 ft. central pillars in the circle of pillar stones constructed at around 12,000 to 11,000 years ago. Gobekli Tepe totemism similarities match nearby Nevali Cori cult buildings dated to around 10,400 years ago and the Shigir Idol in Russia is seen in a stone head (broken from a larger source) found with a similar strong nose but rather featureless face. In addition, this around 11,000-year-old shamanistic totem the “Big wood cut Shigir Idol” semis to have a face representation to the 13,500-year-old shamanistic totem the Urfa man/Balikligol statue, is a human-size statue of a gaunt faced man Southeast Turkey. is around the time and general area as the Gobekli Tepe manmade religious temple complex with the T-shapes seen with similar V-shape neck design as well as the significance of the referencing of embracing the navel and birth to the Urfa man embracing his genitals as all possibly totem iconography seems to be expressing a fertility cult in likely in a shamanistic/animistic religious persuasion. Moreover, The Urfa man Idol is around the same age as the anthropomorphic (expressionless faced man) to featureless face represented at the Two female figurines at Tell Fekheriye dated to around 11,000 to 9,000 years ago with bitumen and stone inlays and at Nevali Cori dated to around 10,400 to 10,100 years ago with also has a human head and bird-like body stone totem pole and also a gaunt faced man similar to the Shigir Idol in a stone statue at Gobekli Tepe with a protruding erection that points to fertility symbolism. Speaking of fertility, a comparison of Ust-Ishim and Kum6 to an Asian Upper Paleolithic individual confirms that Kum6 shows more affinity to early Europeans. Kum6 6,700-years-old individual (at Kumtepe in northwestern Turkey) carries a DNA frequently found in early farmers of Europe and the Near East that falls between modern-day West Asians and Europeans as well as shows the greatest genetic similarity to Sardinians (an island in the Mediterranean located west of Italy), Greeks, and Cypriots (an island in the Mediterranean located south of Turkey) but also a genetic link that is the most common in Europe and the Near East which likely originated in the Near East 25,000–30,000 years ago and is also observe in a more limited amount in the later Yamnaya culture who were part of a wave of nomadic herders that interbred with local farmers beginning around 5,000 years ago involving a large migration in different directions, including Europe, Siberia to Scandinavia to originating peoples who lived in the Minusinsk Basin and the Altai Mountains that originally colonized by Southwest Asia around 38,000 years ago. There seems to be a connection between southern Siberia and Mongolia around 5,500 to 4,500 years ago whose burials where in a flexed position covered in ochre and included animal bones under mounds and were among the first people to drive carts with wheels and tame horses also links them to people in central and eastern Europe including the later Yamnaya culture. Moreover, genetically the Yamnaya of the northern steppe of Russia were indistinguishable from the Yenesey region of southern Siberia. The ancient DNA of two closely related 7,700-year-old women from a mountainous cave in far east Russia Chertovy Vorota Cave, the humans were found with pottery, harpoons, and the remnants of nets and mats woven from twisted blades of wild sedge grass. Interestingly enough, there is evidence of a Paleoindian wrapped in tule matting around 12,000 to 11,000 years ago from Nevada in America where several Native American groups make tules into many waved items. These women from 7,700 years ago most closely relat to the “Ulchi” an indigenous people live in Ulchsky District of Khabarovsk Krai in the Russian Far East who have genetic similarities to several Native American groups. Moreover, the Native American A–D DNA originated in different parts of Siberia, northwestern and northern Siberia to which the indigenous Mansi and the Ket belong thus a confirming commonality in a Siberian ancestor of Paleoindians. Moreover, the closest genetic relatives to the indigenous peoples of the Americas B2 DNA originated in the indigenous Tubalar the Altai region and the indigenous Tuvan/ Uriankhai in southern Siberia whose religion of Tuvans is a type of Turkic animistic shamanism similar to Tengrism. Tengrism is a Central Asian religion characterized by shamanism, animism, totemism, ancestor worship and polytheism/monotheism as well as was the prevailing religion of the Turks, Mongols, Hungarians, Xiongnu, Huns, and the religion of the five ancient Turkic states: Gokturk Khaganate, Western Turkic Khaganate, Great Bulgaria, Bulgarian Empire and Eastern Tourkia (Khazaria). Tengri is mentioned as god of Turks and in modern Turkey, Tengrism is known as the (“Sky God religion”) which seems to also connect to how Mongolians still pray to Munkh Khukh Tengri (“Eternal Blue Sky”). A movement similar to Tengrism is Burkhanism concentrated in Altay situated at the Altai Mountains. Burkhan means “god/buddha” in Mongolic languages, yet but is not limited to Buddhist is used in shamanistic beliefs like how in Mongolian Shamanism, the most sacred mountain is Burkhan Khaldun “god Mountain” situated in northeastern Mongolia, with mountain worship going back sever thousands of years. Another link of importance is a Okunev culture grave of importance on shore of Lake Itkul, Siberia containing a one-year-old infant, which was also dated to around 4,500 years ago with anthropomorphic and zoomorphic engraving. A total of eight 3-inch long carved figurines with the faces of humans, birds, elk and a boar were on the infant’s chest strung in a necklace of figurine pendants similar to shrunken totem poles. This shamanistic/totemistic pendant neckless were intricately carved from antlers some are hollow seeming rattles that may have held some shamanistic charm quality more evident in how the traces of red paint are in the grooves of the carved figurines possibly to protect against evil spirits. The indigenous Koryak wood masks depicting gaunt-faced men for purging kalas (evil spirits) seem to have a similar imagery to the face of the Shigir Idol similar to masks from Barrow, Alaska but Koryak wood masks are only human rather than animal or semi-human form as in Americas. immediately north of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Kamchatka Krai and inhabit the coastlands of the Bering Sea that create human rather than animal or semi-human form as in America. Similarly, Koryak women would use an anthropomorphic fireboard thin male depicting gaunt-faced person similar imagery to the face of the Shigir Idol and was also use to protect against evil spirits like many other charms. The Male face of the Shigir Idol could demonstrate an indigenous symbiology understood as “Man/men, people.” The term Ket means “man” (plural understood as “men, people”) thought to be the only survivors of an ancient nomadic people believed to have originally lived throughout central and southern Siberia descendants of the tribes of fishermen and hunters of the Yenisey taiga, who adopted some of the cultural ways of those original Ket-speaking tribes, who are suggested to be part of the Na-Dene language family represents a distinct migration of people from Asia to the New World. Na-Dene languages seem likely to connect to the Yeniseian languages of central Siberia into a Dene–Yeniseian in which it has been purposed the Na-Dene languages of North America seem to connect to the Yeniseian languages of central Siberia into a Dene–Yeniseian family as a common origin in a language spoken in Beringia, between the two continents. Na-Dene (Proto-Athabascan–Eyak–Tlingit) also his also been purposed to have a connection to Haida, thus seemingly linking several isolated languages between the Asian and North American continent spreading religious thought. The Athabaskan languages, thus could possibly connect with both Northern (mainly northern parts of North America) and Southern (mainly southern parts of North America) Athabaskan of Native languages in the Americas. Northern Athabaskan connected dialects seem to be associated with such indigenous speakers in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, Yukon, Alaska, parts of Oregon, and northern California. and the American Southwest to northern Mexico. And in Southern Athabaskan or Apachean, and includes Apache and Navajo languages. Furthermore, the origin of the Evenks seems to involve a complex mixing of different ancient aboriginal tribes from the north of Siberia with tribes related in language to the Turks and Mongols. The language of these tribes took precedence over the languages of the aboriginal population “Vasilevich” meaning the Tungusic languages aborigianals the Kets in Evenkia and Yukagirs in Yakutia. A chum (similar to a Native American “tipi”) came from Komi word “com” or Udmurt word “cum” which both mean “tent like shelter” is a temporary dwelling used by the nomadic Uralic people of northern Ural (Nenets, Nganasans, Enets, Khanty, Mansi, Komi) reindeer herders of northern/northwestern Siberia of and the Tyvan Todzhans of southern Siberia have a similar chum/tipi structure. The Evenks, Tungusic peoples, tribes, in Russia, the southernmost reindeer herders, of the Todzha region of the Republic of Tyva as well as their over-the-border relatives in northern Mongolia and China all use chums/tipis. Around 115,000 to 15,000 years ago, Siberia was a time if glaciation generally consisting of a cold dry clement with tundra extending far south and some forest formations in the river valleys while an ice sheet covered area of Russia around the Ural Mountains that while some of the oldest mountains are more like large hills, and the area to the east of the lower Yenisei River basin, which in the general area of central and southern Siberia. Some of the first nomadic peoples entered Siberia about 50,000 years ago. The nomadic tribes Ket people Yugh people lived along the Yenisei River. The Yenisei basin originating Mongolia following north through central Siberia rock art images of shamans from the Middle Yenisci River flows north and the Middle lena River which flows northeast just 4 mi west of Lake Baikal that relatively connects to the Altai region, “Altai” means “Gold Mountain” there are images depicted on historical shamanic drums demonstrate a striking similarity with what is shown on the rock engravings. Images were painted on a drum·skin and served as symbols and sources of secret knowledge. Some of the pairings on existing drums are almost exact duplicates of the images on the rocks seemingly demonstrates a possible relationship between the shaman and the decoration of drums in a shamans totem to help take them to other spheres of the universe, as another form of a protective covering that makes the drum noise of war animals and believed as a model of the universe itself embodying the ancestral connection to the owner of the drum and the female or male shaman him or herself drum owner. Some Siberian people perceived a drum as having once been a “female being” later transformed by a new ‘owner’, the shaman, who received the rights to the drum by undergoing a ceremonial marriage with the rocks (shamanistic rock art. These images, perhaps have a relationship between the medicine weal symbol seen in some Native American cultures as a metaphor for a variety of spiritual concepts and was also made into stone monument that illustrates this shaman’s totem. Medicine (“medicine” denotes sacred) weal symbols (similar to a metaphor concept used by multiple Native Americans tribes) sacred hoop of life) where often constructed with stones circle and with internal spokes formed into patterns on the ground on the ground oriented to the four directions. by several different Indigenous peoples in North America, especially those of the Plains nations. Seen as sacred architecture associated with religious ceremonies where the Circle of Life teachings are believed to promote the creation of knowledge through relationship building and take into consideration the four elements of being: physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional traditional drumming circles may also have a Circle of Life/ medicine weal symbiology achieving balance between these four elements. Stone medicine wheels are sited throughout the northern United States and southern Canada, specifically South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta and Saskatchewan. The majority of the approximately 70 documented stone structures still extant are in Alberta, Canada. Ceremonial Drums are painted with Hand drums as Aboriginal women hand-drumming practices has been an integral part of Aboriginal cultures likely far into prehistory where to some the drumbeat represents the kind of heartbeat of Mother Earth and interestingly the North American Aboriginal cultures Ojibwe tradition suggests that, historically, drumming was predominantly the role of men, accept Ojibwe women traditionally used medicine drums, in particular the water drum. Water drums are used all over the world, including American Indian music made of various materials, with a membrane stretched over a pot. Water drumming is actually of African origin simplest form involves striking the surface of water directly with one’s hands. Aboriginal women had a hand drum to sing lullabies to their babies believing it helps the baby connect with its mother’s heart beat again as well as become connected to the spiritual culture. The Painted Drum (a sacred Ojibwe drum) in traditional views surrounding Indigenous birthing and mother-child relationship ceremony. The story of the drum, is a traditional story a little girl brought the two nations together around the traditional drum as the Creator had explained to her, to play the drum together and unite the Mohawks and Ojibwe nation who before where always at war started to play, they played loud, and proud, providing Mother Earth’s heartbeat ending the waring. The drum may be seen in Siberia as one of the essential shamanic aubrites, of crucial assistance in attaining an altered state of conciseness. this ritual confirmed the drum as a living entity. and it was following this act that images were created on it. The painting of the drum-skin with different motifs thus completing the final action in the process of drum creation. The drum and drumstick together there after became personal attributes of the shaman who then was believed to gain the ability to change the essence of things and (0 transform themselves into anything that the shaman might need in the course of his or her activities from things like a spiritual journey or during a struggle with the shaman’s enemies. Many shamanistic figurines seem to have the Shigir Idol face iconography in many places through a vast amount of time, here are a just a few, such as, 9,000 years old stone masks in Israel, possibly a shaman’s cult regalia many of which like dead people others look like mischievous of malevolent but all seem to have a similar shamanistic face representation as the Shigir Idol. Furthermore, a stone sculpture of two women embracing found at Catal Hoyuk in central Anatolia and the faces of dogu figurines one of which hold similarities the Shigir Idol was made around 8,000-year-old. Around 7,000 The “Thinker and his Wife” which are two sitting figures that seem to have faces that are similar to the Shigir Idol attributed to the Karanovo Culture in eastern Bulgarian found in the same grave. Moreover, this face iconography is also seen in other Karanovo culture figurines with faces that is similar to the Shigir Idol such as the “Lady of Pazardzik” figurine of a siting woman dated to around 6,500 years ago. Lastly a Jomon goddess dates to around 5,000 and another from japan dates to around 4,000 years ago statue of a “Masked Goddess.” Speaking of Japan in relation to Siberian and indigenous peoples of the Americans, which is that bout 25,000 years ago it seems genetically that a group of people in Western Europe that started moving east, mixed with some people in central Siberia, and that genetic group of people kept on going east further possibly mixing with some east Asians, possibly northern Japanese and eventually crossed the land bridge to the Americas leaving a genetic lineage in the indigenous peoples of the Americans. Until around 15,000 years ago Japan was connected to several land bridges, one connecting Hokkaido to Sakhalin and the Siberian mainland allowing mixing, another linking the Ryukyu Islands to Taiwan and Kyushu, and yet and another linking Kyushu to the Korean peninsula. Likewise, the Philippines and Indonesia were also connected to the Asian mainland allowing migrations from China and Austronesia towards Japan, about 35,000 years ago. These were the ancestors of the modern Ryukyuans (Okinawans), and the first inhabitants of all Japan. Taiwanese aborigines are the Austronesian peoples, with linguistic and genetic ties to other Austronesian which includes other ethnic groups in the Philippines, Malaysia, China, Japan, Madagascar and Oceania. The Ainu came from Siberia and settled in Hokkaido and Honshu some 15,000 years ago, just before the water levels started rising again. By around 13,700 years ago the sea level was about 245 ft. below present, and by 8700 years ago the sea level was still some 65 ft. below present. In modern times the Ryukuyans, the Ainus and the Japanese are considered three ethnically separate groups. the Austronesian language family is proposed to originate in mainland southern China and the Hemudu or the Liangzhu culture. First the Hemudu culture inhabitants worshiped a sun spirit as well as a fertility spirit. They also enacted shamanistic rituals to the sun and believed in bird totems and an afterlife and ancestor ghosts and this relates to the Shamanistic roots of Chinese culture around 3,700 years ago. Chinese shamanism called Wuism Wu (shaman, sorcer), features connections to the cultures like the Hongshan culture. Relics of Xinglongwa Culture the origin of Hongshan Culture seem to have a similar face to the Shigir Idol and how the Xinglongwa Culture’s masks dated to around 8000 appear similar to the 9,000 years old stone masks in Israel. Chinese shamanic traditions are intrinsic to Chinese folk religion encapsulating all the indigenous religions of China. Also, Taoism has some of its origins from Chinese shamanism such as striving for the status of a xian (“mountain man”, “holy man”). A Wuism “shaman/wizard/spirit medium”, believed to commune with “spirits”, “gods” was first recorded during the Shang dynasty, which was around 3,600-3,046 years ago, a time when a wu could be either sex onwards and shamanistic and/or totemistic worship developed around ancestral worship with the main gods being are virtuous deified. The term “wu” was is considered to possibly to mean “female shaman/shamaness/witch/sorceress, and not until around 2,400 years ago the word “xi” was created to refer to “male shaman/warlock/sorcerer.” Interestingly the Sino-Tibetan root word mjaɣ “magician/sorcerer” seems similar to Chinese wu, Tibetan ‘ba’-po “sorcerer” and ‘ba’-mo “sorcereress/ female shamaness” in Bon a Tibetan religion. There is thinking that the Bon religion like the Oroqen peoples in northeast China possibly connects parallels between the ancient shamanic traditions of Tibet with the Siberian shamanic tradition of Lake Baikal. The Dorset culture a pre-Inuit people are noted on Greenlandand ganedicly have a larger connection with several Siberian populations such as the Naukan, Chukchi, Koryak and Yukaghir over other Native Americans, including Aleuts. Moreover, genetics from an around 40,000-year-old Tianyuan individual from China whoes autosomal DNA very close to Circum-Pacific populations (East Asians, Native Americans and Australasian Aborigines) but after splitting from West Eurasians. But most interesting is that the Tianyuan remains of Northern China show not a tad of greater affinity to East Asians (nor to Native Americans) than to West Eurasians. Also, of note both the indigenous Tujia an Ethnic minority and indigenous Oroqen also a recognized ethnic minority in China are way more ancient a people than most of East Asian peoples to Tianyuan but also to Anzick-1 the Paleo-Indian male infant found in western Montana Tungus shamanism. The Tujia peoples a Tibeto-Burman language mainly worships a white tiger totem and some in western Hunan worship a turtle totem. Oroqen shamans called jardalanin (“second spirit”) who accompanies the rituals and interprets the behavior of the shamanbut jardalanin is not a shaman as well as if the second spirit is female, she must be an experienced adult, just as how no menstruating female can be present during healing rituals. The Oroqen language a Northern Tungusic language, is very similar to the Evenki language to the point that the word similarities mean 70% of the other language can be understood by the other language’s speaker. The Oroqen accounts of a shaman identified Buni as the ritual journey to the lower world, which is a term was similar to the Nanai people of Siberia identifie accounts of shamans for the lower world or land of the dead is identical to similar usage by the Nanai people of Siberia in accounts of shamans identified seemingly linking the two. Moreover, the Chinese term wu has been linguistically linked to not only with Sino-Tibetan languages, as well as with Mongolic, Austronesian, Mon–Khmer, Turkic, and Indo-Iranian language groups. Genomic analysis of cultivated coconut (Cocos nucifera) has shed light on the movements of Austronesian peoples. By examining 10 microsatelite loci, researchers found that there are 2 genetically distinct subpopulations of coconut – one originating in the Indian Ocean, the other in the Pacific Ocean. However, there is evidence of admixture, the transfer of genetic material, between the two populations. Given that coconuts are ideally suited for ocean dispersal, it seems possible that individuals from one population could have floated to the other. However, the locations of the admixture events are limited to Madagascar and coastal east Africa and exclude the Seychelles. This pattern coincides with the known trade routes of Austronesian sailors. Additionally, there is a genetically distinct subpopulation of coconut on the eastern coast of South America which has undergone a genetic bottleneck resulting from a founder effect; however, its ancestral population is the pacific coconut, which suggests that Austronesian peoples may have sailed as far east as the Americas. Let’s back to Sungar Russia and the shamanistic Gravettian culture burials that seem to match the latter indigenous American shamanistic burials in Alaska in addition, the Gravettian people’s origin seems to appear simultaneously all over Europe including Russia. Like their Aurignacian predecessors, they are well-known for their Venus figurines some of which may connect to a fertility rite. And the Gravettian peoples of eastern Europe where quite religiously shamanistic which seems expressive with their Venus figures and unique burials. The Kostenkian, Kostenki-Avdeevo and Kostenki-Streletskaya cultures are the examples of the cultures of the eastern European Gravettian. Not far from Sungir also in Russia, there is another well-known Gravettian site in western Russia at Gagarino seems to further follow this ritualistic/totemism/shamanism of the dual burial’s significance with an interesting dual head to head figurine sculptures found there, which can be interpreted to shows a woman/girl and a man/boy in a way similar to that of Sungir. One of these highly-ritualized graves is of a man buried with ivory beads, with partial burning to the bones of his feet, suggesting that he was placed on embers. In the settlement area, there was three additional burials one of an older man and two adolescent children all where adorned with elaborate grave goods that included ivory-beaded jewelry which included more than 13,000 beads, clothing, and spears, Red ochre covered these four burials along with the examples of elaborate grave goods demonstrate these where early examples of ritual burials and thus constitutes important evidence of the antiquity of human religious practices. In addition, two human skeletons outside the settlement area without grave goods which could also be evidence of classes or different social status. found evidence of modern human ritual graves consisting of an adult male in a single grave and a duel grave with a girl and a boy all buried wearing very heavily beaded clothing and grave goods. The male was around 50-65 years of age covered in red ochre buried in an extended position with his hands folded over his groin. He also had a beaded cap with some fox teeth, along with mammoth ivory bracelets some showing red and black paint and several thousand mammoth ivory beads. Moreover, a female skull had been placed beside a stone slab in an area stained with red ochre, and was found overlying the old man’s burial. The double burial is of a boy, 12-14 years old and a girl, 9-10 years old, buried head to head in a long, narrow grave, covered with red ochre, and ornamented with grave goods. Artifacts with the burials include several thousand mammoth ivory beads, hundreds of perforated arctic fox teeth, ivory pins, disc-shaped pendants, and ivory in geometric and animal carvings. Such as a small horse pendant next to the boy’s shoulder. He also had a beaded cap with some fox teeth and a decorated belt of polar fox teeth and an ivory pin at his throat. On his chest was a carved ivory pendant in the form of an animal. A long spear of straightened mammoth ivory almost 8 feet long on one side as well other smaller ones where placed alongside the double child’s burial. The girl also wore a beaded cap and an ivory pin at her throat, but her burial contains no fox teeth though at her side where two pierced antler batons, one of them decorated with rows of drilled dots. Moreover, a headless skeleton was found immediately on top of the two adolescents. Overall, there is an extraordinary mastering of technology expressed in quite a wide range of techniques cutting, sawing, scraping was used to create collections of bones, antler and ivory artifacts. Furthermore, it seems ivory tools were only used as hunting, art or ornament objects and that such things were also found in the burials may have a symbolic meaning. Lastly, two human skeletons outside the settlement area without cultural remains. ref
31,000 – 27,000 Years Ago – The Venus of Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic), found a ceramic female figurine, together with a few others from nearby locations, symbols of fertility and success, or representations of a female mother goddess. Human burials were found as well two men and one woman. One grave of an adult woman, possibly a shamaness, contained burial goods including several stone tools, five fox incisors, and a mammoth scapula. In addition, a thin layer of red ochre was placed over the bones, indicating a specific burial ritual. A carved ivory figure in the shape of a female head was discovered near the huts. The left side of the figure’s face was distorted. One of the burials, located near the huts, revealed a human female skeleton aged to 40+ years old, ritualistically placed beneath a pair of mammoth scapulae, one leaning against the other. Surprisingly, the left side of the skull was disfigured in the same manner as the aforementioned carved ivory figure, indicating that the figure was an intentional depiction of this specific individual. The bones and the earth surrounding the body contained traces of red ocher, a flint spearhead had been placed near the skull, and one hand holding the body of a fox. This evidence suggests that this was the burial site of a shaman. This is the oldest site not only of ceramic figurines and artistic portraiture but also of evidence of female shamans. The number of mammoth bones found on some Pavlovian sites indicates, that mammoths were not only hunted but also worshiped in a way. The picture represents a free image of a shaman, which is about to communicate with the spiritual world to influence the moves of the herds. Some 28,000 years ago (23,500 RCYBP), a 10-year-old boy began to suffer from an excruciating, even unbearable pain in his hands and legs. He suffered from periostitis, the bone illness. Was buried in a ritualistic sacred way. He possessed a fascinating cap sewn with some 600 shells (of the Dentalium badense), big stone pectorals, a figurine of a man, many discs made of various materials and several animal skulls. When he died, the survivors broke his drumstick, and one of its parts was placed to his grave together with the other things that he was using. It is possible that they placed the other part on the grave together with the drum. Such a custom is still alive in some Arctic communities. Although the artifacts in the burial remind of those of the Pavlovian and the burial itself was considered to be the oldest one of a shaman, the radiocarbon dating shows that it was more recent and belonged to the Kostenki-Willendorf culture. The Kostenki-Willendorf culture Upper Palaeolithic culture of central Europe and the Russian plain dating to around 30,000-20,000 years ago. This culture is based on assemblages containing backed blades, shouldered points, and Venus. The Venus of Kostenky (Kostienki) is among the oldest known examples of prehistoric sculpture in Russia. It is one of a series of European venus figurines that proliferated during the period of Gravettian art (c.27,000-22,000 years ago). In fact, the term “Venus of Kostensky” is a misnomer, since – like the “Venus of Gagarino”, the “Avdeevo Venuses”, the “Mal’ta Venuses” and the “Zaraysk Venuses” – it refers to a group of venues, in this case found at Kostenky, in the Don Region. The most famous Kostenky venus is the ivory carving known as “number 3 from Kostienki 1” (see figure 1), which has been indirectly dated to about 24,000 years ago. It is part of the Paleolithic art collection of the Hermitage Museum, in Saint-Petersburg. Though less famous, a second mammoth ivory figurine from the same site is considered to be more representative of the Kostenky-Avdeevo-Gagarino style. ref
27,000 – 23,000 Years Ago – Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic), found a triple ritual burial that contains two males posed to either side of a female who had a pelvic deformity so could not have had children. The bodies were of three teenagers, one of the males had his hand between the female’s legs, where there is a stone too. Moreover, red ochre was placed between the female’s legs as well as on the heads of all three people. The other male lay on his stomach facing away from female but holding hand with a mask which depicts the woman. Also found was a single burial of women covered in red ochre along with two mammoth bones on top of her and there is a clay carving of her next to her. The woman seems to hold some possible specialness and women of Ice Age Europe were not mere cave wives but shamanistic leaders, clever inventors, and mighty hunters. Furthermore, this site has one of the earliest known potter’s kiln as well as 2300 clay figurines; venus figurines, animals, and some weapons, evidence of trade, and a hollowed bone for flute. Specifically, there is a female figurine called the black Venus of Dolni Vestonice a reddish clay figurine. Goddesses are usually inferred from depictions of females, whether sculpted or painted. However, I don’t believe all female figurines are goddesses I think it more likely they are ancestor totems or some other spirit. Moreover, I don’t believe it is right to brand all female figurines as earth mothers, fertility goddesses, but some may have been earth mothers, fertility goddesses, we just don’t. Although what we do know is while the rituals may differ by gender, or may be separate by gender in many cultures, the ability to reach the spirits is often perceived as essentially female and the female gender may have been attributed to the first supernatural entities. However, there also is also a carved ivory figure of a young man which may represent the first example of portraiture dated to around 29,000 years ago. ref & ref
J DNA and the Spread of Agricultural Religion (paganism)
* “paganist” Believe in spirit-filled life and/or afterlife can be attached to or be expressed in things or objects and these objects can be used by special persons or in special rituals can connect to spirit-filled life and/or afterlife who are guided/supported by a goddess/god or goddesses/gods (you are a hidden paganist/Paganism: an approximately 12,000-year-old belief system) And Gobekli Tepe: “first human made temple” as well as Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city” are both evidence of some kind of early paganism. early paganism is connected to Proto-Indo-European language and religion. Proto-Indo-European religion can be reconstructed with confidence such as the Gods and Goddesses, the myths, the festivals, and the form of rituals with invocations, prayers and songs of praise that make up the spoken element of religion. Much of this activity is connected to the natural and agricultural year, or at least those are the easiest elements to reconstruct because nature doesn’t change and because farmers are the most conservative members of society and are best able to keep the old ways. Goddesses: There are at least 40 deities although the gods may be different than we think of and only evolved later to the ways we know. Such as, how a deity’s gender may not be a fixed characteristic since they are often deified forces of nature which tened to not have genders. Among the Goddesses reconstructed so far are: *Pria, *Pleto, *Devi, *Perkunos, *Aeusos and *Yama. Myths: There are at least 28 myths that can be reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European. Many of these myths have since been confirmed by additional research, including some in areas which were not accessible to the early writers, such as Latvian folk songs and Hittite hieroglyphic tablets. One of the most widely recognized myths of the Indo-Europeans is the myth in which *Yama is killed by his brother *Manu and the world is made from his body. Some of the forms of this myth in various Indo-European languages are given in this article about the Creation Myth of the Indo-Europeans. The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is estimated to have been spoken as a single language from at around 6,500 years ago, the Kurgan hypothesis relating to the construction of kurgans (mound graves). The earliest kurgans date to the 6,000 years ago in the Caucasus and are associated with the Indo-Europeans. Kurgans were built in the Eneolithic, Bronze, Iron, Antiquity and Middle Ages, with ancient traditions still active in Southern Siberia and Central Asia. Kurgan cultures are divided archeologically into different sub-cultures, such as Timber Grave, Pit Grave, Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnish and Kuman–Kipchak. Kurgan barrows were characteristic of Bronze Age peoples, and have been found from the Altay Mountains to the Caucasus, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria. Kurgans were used in the Ukrainian and Russian steppes, their use spreading with migration into eastern, central, and northern Europe in the around 5,000 yea5rs ago. Burial mounds are complex structures with internal chambers. Within the burial chamber at the heart of the kurgan, elite individuals were buried with grave goods and sacrificial offerings, sometimes including horses and chariots. The structures of the earlier Neolithic period from the 4th to the 3rd millenniums BC, and Bronze Age until the 1st millennium BC, display continuity of the archaic forming methods. They were inspired by common ritual-mythological ideas.Whereas, the Anatolian hypothesis suggests that the speakers of Pre-Proto-Indo-European to the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) lived in Anatolia during the Neolithic era, and it associates the distribution of historical Indo-European languages with the expansion during the Neolithic revolution around 9,000 years ago, with a proposed homeland of Proto-Indo-European proper in the Balkans around 7,000 years ago, which he explicitly identified as the “Old European culture“. This hypothesis states that Indo-European languages began to spread peacefully, by demic diffusion, into Europe from Asia Minor or Turkey, the Neolithic advance of farming (wave of advance). Accordingly, most inhabitants of Neolithic Europe would have spoken Indo-European languages, and later migrations would have replaced the Indo-European varieties with other Indo-European varieties. The expansion of agriculture from the Middle East would have diffused three language families: Indo-European toward Europe, Dravidian toward Pakistan and India, and Afro Asiatic toward Arabia and North Africa. Reconstructions of a Bronze Age PIE society, based on vocabulary items like “wheel”, do not necessarily hold for the Anatolian branch, which appears to have separated at an early stage, prior to the invention of wheeled vehicles. The Proto-Indo-European Religion seemingly stretches at least back around 6000 years ago or likely much further back I believe possibly an approximately 12,000-year-old belief system. ref, ref, ref, ref, ref
Urfa Man, known formally as the Balikligol Statue
So, this short post is about the ‘Urfa Man’. Let’s start with an answer to a very common question: no, he is not from Göbekli Tepe. He was found during construction work in the area of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site at Urfa-Yeni Mahalle / Yeni Yol, broken in four nearly equal pieces. The settlement was largely destroyed, it featured a small T-shaped pillar, similar to those from Göbekli Tepe’s Layer II. This speaks for a PPN B date, as does the archaeological material recovered. The ‘Urfa man’ himself gives witness to the ability of early Neolithic people to sculpt the human body naturalistically. It is the oldest known statue of a man, slightly larger than life-size. In contrast to the cubic and faceless T-shaped pillars, the ‘Urfa man’ has a face, eyes originally emphasized by segments of black obsidian sunk into deep holes, and ears; a mouth, however, is not depicted. The statue seems to be naked with the exception of a V-shaped necklace. Legs are not depicted; below the body, there is only a conical plug, which allows the statue to be set into the ground. Both hands seem to grab his penis. As no find context has been recorded for the sculpture, it is hard to evaluate its original function. But there are several fragments, especially heads, of similar sculptures from Göbekli Tepe. At this site, statues like the ‘Urfa Man’ seem to have been part of a complex hierarchical system of imagery directly related to the functions of the circular enclosures. You can find a longer text about this here. The presence of a sculpture like the ‘Urfa Man’ and of T-shaped pillars are strong evidence for the presence of a special building inside the settlement at Urfa-Yeni Yol. It may have been comparable to the PPN B ‘cult buildings’ of Nevalı Çori, but this will remain pure speculation. ref
Gobekli Tepe: “first human made temple”
Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?
13,000/11,600 – 9,370 Years Ago – Gobekli Tepe (Turkey), found the “first human-made temple” at a southeast Turkey a dynamic sight still holding secrets that hopefully will come to light but what is already known is quite telling. Through the radiocarbon is around 12,000 it is thought that the belly hill location may have functioned as some kind of ritual or religious center by around 13,000 years ago. The thoughts of Göbekli Tepe being a meeting place of cultic feasting and drinking holds some water in evidence beer brewing almost 11,000 years ago and the brewing of alcohol is thought to have development around 11,500 years ago and to some may have in some way drove the new cultivation of grains and agriculture at this general time. When though we may see alcohol as mundane today it most likely had a religious significance. This prehistoric religious site, that is so far unearthed involves but a part of what may be found consisting of three circular stone temple structures of ritualistically engraved giant standing stones making a religion complex. Some pillars are around 15 to 20 ft-foot-high and can weigh up to 20 tons, many with totem animals. There are also anthropomorphic human totems where arms and hands depicted as is the pillar is a stylized person. The many tall “T” shaped stones are elaborately carved with boars, felines, bovines, scorpions, vultures, and snakes twisting and crawling on the pillars. There is a set of arms and hands on a few of the pillars perhaps ancestors, one appears to be a woman squaring that could be related to a birth with what may be a child coming out as well as snakes on either side pointing to the child. And of even more interest one stone slab holds a crude carving a naked woman who squatting with her legs spread and gentiles open, possibly also referencing child birth. This is also similar to spread lagged goddess motifs which are a part of the extensive religious art in the 9,500-year-old site of Catal Huyuk the “first religious created city” which also is located in Turkey. Likewise, the other stone art on the T shaped stones may be stylized animal spirits, with the seemingly most symbolically used animal being snakes, which are 28% of the engravings and shows it is more important than other animals. The sacred status of snakes goes back to the oldest place of worship in Africa; it was a natural stone snake rock being worshipped as well as there is a common connection in many mythologies to snakes goddess, part of goddesses, or a familiar for such. That is not to say there are not many snake gods as well. Gobekli Tepe proves proof of complex societies involved in some kind of organized religion before settling into concentrated sedentary communities. Gobekli Tepe hill sanctuary resides is also known as “belly hill” and could have also held a significance long ago, possibly a reference to pregnancy; an interesting thought as a female figure was found connected with felines that may express a connection to one of the later themes associated with an ancestor mother or goddess cult. The throne seated female figure, made probably no later than 10,000 years ago, is carved in containing depictions of felines; this could be a proto-kubaba. Kubaba is a prominent goddess and in Sumerian called Kug-Bau who is the only queen on the Sumerian King list. Also, found a carved stone human head possibly male, seemingly part of a larger stone sculpture. Seemingly of interest is a part of a carved stone sculpture of a large bird holding a human head, this theme seems to also match depicted wall art at Catal Huyuk. This wall art at the first religious city contains murals with large birds and headless human bodies, some with high ramps/ladders/stairways into the air seemingly to add access to birds of death. One of pillars at Göbekli Tepe shows two snakes with a round object between them as well as a bird holding a round object. Around 9,370 years ago the entire religious complex was deliberately buried under around 1,500 feet of fill debris consisting mainly of small limestone fragments, stone vessels, and stone tools as well as bones of both animals and humans. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
12,000 – 10,000 years old Shamanistic Art in a Remote Cave in Egypt
Tell Aswad – a tale of skulls?
Tell Aswad, near Damascus, Syria occupies a dominant position over a fertile plain on the route between the Jordan valley and the Middle Euphrates. This site has produced important evidence on early farming. From the beginning peas, lentils, emmer wheat, and probably barley were all cultivated. The presence of both cereals and pulses showing characteristics of domestication suggests that these early farmers might already have discovered that if these two types of crops are grown in rotation soil fertility. It is noted for two things, bricks and skulls. A large hollow has been ‘dedicated’ for use as a burial place by the deposition of a cluster of human skulls. The facial features are modeled in clay and colored; some have a black line (eye-lashes) across the closed eyelids. The three skulls were found in a pit resting against one another, underneath the remains of an infant, here is an image of three of the skulls in sediment still. Around 9,500 year old plaster covered skulls. The other two skulls, one is from Jericho but shows that this was a common feature of this culture. The inhabitants of Tell Aswad invented the brick on site by modeling earth clods with beds of reeds, which they then formed raw bricks and eventually dried in later stages. Houses were round from beginning to the end of the settlement, elliptical or polygonal and were partly buried or laid. The orientation of the openings is most often to the East. This conforms with sites in the Southern Levant, whereas Northern Euphrates Valley sites generally display rectangular shapes. Tell Aswad has changed the dating system at this site, abolishing the Aswadian period in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period (11,500–10,700 years ago). The latest research has split the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) period into 3; PPNB Ancien from 10,700 to 10,200 years ago and the PPNB Moyen from 10,200 to 9,500 years ago. The first PPNB period involved the construction of massive earth architecture, layering soil with reeds to construct walls. The inhabitants of Tell Aswad invented the brick on site by modeling earth clods with beds of reeds, which they then formed into raw bricks and eventually dried in later stages. Houses were round from beginning to the end of the settlement, elliptical or polygonal and were partly buried or laid. The orientation of the openings is most often to the East. This conforms with sites in the Southern Levant, whereas Northern Euphrates Valley sites generally display rectangular houses. Weapons as well as tools made of flint including Aswadian and Jericho point arrowheads. Other finds included grinding equipment, stone and mud containers, and ornaments made of various materials. Obsidian was imported from Anatolia. Basketry and weaving were commonplace with the imprint of embroidered fabric recorded on a fragment of plaster. Modeling clay and stone figurines of people, animals and geometric shapes such as spheres, cones, discs took place since the beginning of the settlement, these were sometimes mixed with vegetables. The graves of more than one hundred well-preserved individuals were found. In the first half of occupation, these were found in or around the homes, in later stages cemeteries are isolated outside the village. A collection of nine technically and stylistically similar,over-modeled, skulls were retrieved from two areas. Detailed study of the skulls is currently underway to provide insight into the traditions and social ties of the villagers. The residents of Tell Aswad reserved a very sophisticated treatment for the dead: skulls were removed and cleaned, with a face modelled directly onto the bone with lime plaster and then painted. Tell Aswad has been cited as being of importance for the evolution of organized cities due to the appearance of building materials, organized plans, and collective work. Tell Aswad has been suggested to be amongst the ten probable centers for the origin of agriculture. ref & ref
Discoveries like this are not uncommon the Middle East, death masks and decorated skulls are quite common in a lot of cultures. The Egyptians really solidified the ritual of death masks several thousand years after this finding, and the Phoenicians and Persians are known to have decorated their dead similarly. The significance of this finding is that the skulls represent a,
“regularity and the smoothness of their features.. The eyes are shown as closed, underlined by black bitumen. The nose is straight and fine, with a pinched base to portray the nostrils. The mouth is reduced to a slit… only to important individuals, chosen according to social or religious criteria.”
Danielle Stordeur is a CNRS Directeur de Recherche and Director of the El Kowm-Mureybet permanent mission. She heads the CNRS research unit, that assisted in this discovery, and is quoted from an AFP article, “9,500-year-old decorated skulls found in Syria.” ref
9,500 – 7,700 Years Ago – Catal Huyuk (Turkey), is the “first religious created city” settlement where evidence of religious civilization develop likely contains a spiritual center making it a religious temple city. Catal Huyuk, which in Turkish Catal is for “fork,” Huyuk for “mound.” Likely, inhabitants practicing worship in communal shrines, leaving behind numerous clay figurines and impressions of phallic, feminine, and hunting scenes. Catal Huyuk, a town in southcentral Turkey with an estimated population of 5,000 – 10,000 people, is the apparent center of fertility cult and goddess worship. The houses are accessed via their rooftops, were crammed tightly together, and with little evidence of specialization, hierarchy, or elite. A site of this size might be expected to produce evidence of specialization, elite, and large communal areas, rather than the evidence for an even distribution of labor and resource. However, the site does reveal evidence of rich symbolic and artistic actions, including shrine areas, plastered features, bucrania, wall paintings, figurines, and burials, focused on particular houses, and described as ‘history houses’. Along with goddess and bull cults has been a broader perception of a ‘cult of skulls’ or skull cult. The skull cult has its roots in the Levantine PPNB, with plastered skulls recovered from sites including Jericho, ‘Ain Ghazal, Kfar HaHoresh, and Tell Aswad. Recent excavations have extended this phenomenon into Anatolia, with plastered skulls recovered from Catal Huyuk, and one skull of an adult male, buried in the arms of an adult female at Catal Huyuk. Such plastered skulls were originally believed to venerate elder, male ancestors. However, recent analysis has revealed that many plastered skulls were of children and females, which suggest that these were related to ancestors, the ‘ancestor’ category was not one limited to the elder male image. On this same site, one of the oldest known representation of a drum was discovered in a fresco with more than thirty characters, some of which playing percussions, dancing around a huge bull. Two characters hold what looks like musical instruments similar to the malunga or berimbau, a single-string percussion instrument or musical bow, originally from southern parts of Africa. Although the bow is now thought of as a weapon, a 15,000 years old cave painting in France, displays a bow being played as a musical instrument. Also of relevance in Catal Huyuk is a mural where the color of the dancers’ skin seems to say they might belong to different ethnic groups. Some are black, others white, and others half black and white. Blacks are sometimes covered with a leopard skin. Also found at Catal Huyuk are stone and bone figures shaped in the form of feminine and rooms with altars of veneration. In fact, over 25% of the rooms have altars to a seeming feminine deity. Many of them are linked with images of horns, the horns of the bull. It is a curious anomaly. At first sight, the mother goddess is a symbol of fertility. The horns of the bull are identified with male potency. Yet both are linked in an altar, which is seemingly of primary honor to a feminine deity. In Building 42, a woman held the head of a man in a burial. The man’s head had been plastered to create the features of his face and had been painted red; indeed, it had been plastered several times, suggesting that the plastered skull had been retained for some time before burial with the woman. This burial seems to hold special significance as suggested by the fact that this is the only example of a plastered skull found at the site, and indeed there is only one other example from anywhere in Turkey. The burial was in fact a foundation burial: it had not been dug through the floors of the house, but the floors of the house had been built up above the burial. Therefore, this event must have had a social significance, the founding of a new house. The event had both practical and religious significance. The religious significance was heightened by the placing in the grave of another remarkable object, the claw of a leopard. The detailed study of the figurines at Catal Huyuk has shown that removable heads and dowel holes in torsos to contain heads were much more prevalent than had been thought. The paintings too show headless bodies associated with vultures. The art from Gobekli Tepe also shows a headless body with an erect penis associated with birds. Overall, it is possible that myths circulated in which heads were removed and carried upward by birds of prey. This process could be reenacted in the removal and replacement of heads on figurines. It seems possible that the process of removing and circulating human heads created ancestors that could communicate with the world of animal spirits. This is seen in the artistic renderings of humans interacting with oversized animals at Catal Huyuk as well as be communicated with by humans in the caring for and replastering of skulls, and in the reenactment of head removal on figurines. Those studying the figurines have increasingly noted the fascination with body parts, buttocks, breasts, navels and so on. Indeed, the more examples of art found, the more the focus on the human form. It has long been assumed that the primary focus of symbolism at early village sites in the Middle East is a nurturing ‘mother goddess’ who embodies notions of birth and rebirth. However, recent finds at both Gobekli Tepe and Catal Huyuk have suggested a link to death and violence as much as to birth and rebirth. Recent finds at Catal Huyuk include a figurine that looks like a typical ‘mother goddess’ from the front, with full breasts and extended belly, but at the back she is a skeleton, with ribs, vertebrae, scapulae, and pelvic bones clearly shown. In 2004, a grave was found in which a woman held a plastered skull of a man in her arms; she was also found with the only leopard bone ever found onsite, worn as a claw pendant. In fact, there is much imagery and symbolism of death and violence at Catal Huyuk. There are bulls’ heads fixed to walls, and other installations on and in walls, including the tusks of wild boars, vulture skulls, and the teeth of foxes and weasels. The new finds from the earlier sites of Gobekli Tepe and Nevali Cori in southeastern Anatolia indicate that this focus on dangerous, wild animals is a central theme of the development of early villages and settled life. Death acted as a focus of transcendent religious experience during the transitions of the early Holocene in the Middle East and that it was central to the creation of social life in the first large agglomerations of people. This seems to be the role of dead ancestors in the creation of ‘houses’. Certain houses at Catal Huyuk had many more complete skeletons than there were people who could have lived in those houses. For example, Building 1, which was inhabited for only 40 years by a family-sized group, had 62 burials beneath the floors. It was clear that people had been buried into this house from other houses. So while some houses have no burials in them, the average is 5-8, there appear to be a small number of houses that have 30-62 burials and therefore seem to have a special nature and in the upper levels, there are more representations of women in the figurine corpus. Social status early in the site seems to have focused on wild animals, associated feasts and male prowess, whereas in the upper levels the success of the house was represented by the size of the house, by the centrality of the hearth and by representations of women. The teeth of foxes and weasels, the tusks of wild boars, the claws of bears and the beaks of vultures were placed in protrusions on the walls and also found was a leopard claw and the talons of raptors in burials. In addition, there are stamp seals of bears with the same body shape of the mother goddess with legs bent and arms raised which may symbolize an exhibit connection of motherhood, power, and violence. The focus was on parts of animals that are dangerous or piercing and there is little symbolic emphasis on femurs, humeri, molar teeth, and so on. Dangerous or flesh-eating wild animals and birds are also chosen for representation. The economy at Catal Huyuk is based on domestic sheep and goats, but these hardly appear in the symbolism. At Catal Huyuk, many figurines are found without heads, and in one case, there is evidence for the intentional severing of a stone figurine head by cutting, probably using an obsidian blade. Archaeologists have found numerous obsidian tools that show flattened and abraded edges from working stone surfaces. About a dozen clay figurines have dowel holes, suggesting that the process of removing and keeping heads could be played out in miniature. The ability to remove and replace certain heads might allow for multiple identities and potential narrativization, it has been argued that detachable heads at Catal Huyuk ‘were used to portray a range of emotions, attitudes, or states of being’. There are several bodies with dowel holes than heads made for attachment, which could suggest that the head is more determinative and the bodies are deemed more generic, although this may not imply a hierarchy. Among the figurines, almost all of the examples have detachable heads, are large female forms, and depict breasts, and one is androgynous. At lower levels of the site, as already noted, obsidian is present in hoards or caches below the floors. In the upper levels, these hoards cease and obsidian becomes more bound by new specialist technologies. Pottery too becomes more complex and more specialized after Level V. It gradually becomes more decorated and by the time of Catal Huyuk West, 8,000 years ago, it is heavily decorated with complex designs. By this time of the West Mound as well, burial in houses of adults largely ends. It is presumed that burials are offsite and perhaps in cemeteries. Catal Huyuk acts as a bridge between societies in the Fertile Crescent to the east where agriculture and settled life began the earliest, and in societies in western Anatolia, Greece, and southeast Europe where agriculture and settled life did not begin until 9,000 years ago with economies that quickly included domestic cattle. To the east, there is more evidence of collective ritual and there are more claims for social differentiation related to ritual. Scholars agree that the major monuments of this area and period from 12,000 – 9,000 years ago, such as the temples of Gobekli Tepe, the towers of Jericho and of Tell Qaramel, the large circular buildings at Jerf el Ahmar and the Skull Building of Cayonu, indicate collective rituals. There is little clear evidence of concentrations of power that depend on or are related to the control of production of the temples. To the west of Catal Huyuk, there is less evidence for large-scale rituals, temples, or religious monuments. Indeed, early Neolithic sites to the west of Catal Huyuk are more similar to Catal Huyuk in that the symbolism is often house-based and associated with clearly egalitarian villages. These societies had a fully-fledged agriculture in which domestic cattle and sheep played key roles, allowing smaller scale societies to spread over a diversity of environmental zones. It seems that the shifts made at Catal Huyuk around 10,500 years ago contributed to the ability of societies to break out of “history making” toward more flexible and individual house-based production. Ref Ref Ref Ref Ref Ref
Insoll, T. (2012). The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of ritual and religion. Oxford, United Kingdom. Oxford University Press.
Hodder, I. (2013). Religion at Work in a Neolithic Society: Vital Matters. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, United Kingdom. Kindle Edition.
Harris, S. L. (2007). Understanding the bible (7th Ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Sedentism and the Creation of goddesses as well as gods
Need to Mythicized: gods and goddesses
Sun and Moon Goddesses
Progressed Organized Religion
Speech on the Evolution of Religion & Religious Sexism
Connected “dolmen phenomenon” of above-ground stone burial structures?
Sumerian Creator Being was a Female not Male
Did a Volcano Inspire the bible god?
An Old Branch of Religion Still Giving Fruit: Sacred Trees
NEOLITHIC: FIGURINES AND MODELS?
7,500 Years Ago – Turkey, Anatolian Cultural Evolution round this time animal husbandry and herding become more important economic component. In addition, around 7,500 – 6,500 years ago – The Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE) which is more a reconstructed reference grouping concept of similar culture emerged what later would be just Indo-Europeans (IE). The point must be emphasized that PIE is a purely theoretical construct of Comparative Linguistics, and should be treated as such. Though the approach to reconstructing proto-languages was inspired by methods from the pure sciences of the nineteenth century, such as anatomy and biology, the end result cannot be considered in the same scientific light. Pure science involves the independent verification of experiments through a reduplication of their results. The safe estimate for original IE language was spoken around or some time before 7,000 years ago by a people who lived between the Vistula River in Poland and the Caucasus Mountains in the Southwestern USSR (traditional) or in Anatolia in modern day Turkey. Some linguists agreed that they could trace back the origins of this language about 8,000 to even 9,000 years ago. However, researchers at the University of Reading published a report, which finds that Indo-European languages came from a common root, about 15,000 years ago. The origin of this proto-language probably was spoken in and around the area, which is modern-day Turkey, and in to Iraq, which was then known as Mesopotamia. For both the scholar and the amateur, it is always advisable to keep in mind the inherent limitations of PIE studies. Every attempt, then to give absolute dates for ‘PIE’ (or dates for alleged different stages of ‘PIE’) is either based on the speculative identification of an archaeological culture with the speakers of the ‘language of the PIEs’ or on what may be called ‘intelligent guesses’, deliberations of probability and feelings of appropriateness. In other words, the reconstruction of a PIE lexicon and grammar does not necessarily give us the linguistic picture of a group of PIE speakers at one point in time, or even in one location in space. Even an approximate reconstruction of its semantic content may be very difficult. Any given PIE form may have had different meanings at different points in time within the time frame posited for the PIE language. So I am only offer interesting ideas and I am in no way trying to confirm a theoretical construct which would be an over reach but we can utilize to conceive what a seemingly shared set of attributes among peoples entails such as seen in the PIE developed a religion focused on sacrificial ideology, which would influence the religions of the descendent Indo-European cultures throughout Turkey, Europe, and the Indian sub-continent. Proto-Indo-Europeans marked the patriarchalization of agrarian culture. The earliest extant written sources demonstrate that these invading patriarchal peoples accommodated their divinities to those of the indigenous goddess-worshiping cultures, and they did not immediately belittle the importance of the great mother. Instead, the literature from the 5,000 years ago, recorded after the invasions, demonstrates the fusion of the goddess worshiping with the god worshiping culture. Proto-Indo-European religion is the hypothesized religion of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) peoples based on the existence of similarities among the deities, religious practices and mythologies of the Indo-European peoples which we now can hypothesize originates at least to a large extent from Turkey. The Proto-Indo-Europeans were polytheists. They believed in many gods that was referred by one name as well as several different names for a singular god meaning ‘the celestial one, the shining one’. This word is related to another PIE word with the meaning ‘sky, day’ and both of them ultimately stem from a meaning ‘to shine’. There are also other terms for ‘god’ some of the proposed deity names are more readily accepted among scholars than others. The term for “a deity” was deiwos, reflected in Hittite, sius; Latin, deus, Sanskrit deva; Avestan, daeva (later, Persian, divs); Welsh duw; Irish dia, Lithuanian, Dievas; Latvian, Dievs. One common myth, which can be found among almost all Indo-European mythologies, is a battle ending with the slaying of a serpent, or dragon of some sort. Thor vs. Jormungandr, Sigurd vs. Fafnir and Beowulf vs. the dragon in Germanic mythology; Zeus vs. Typhon, Kronos vs. Ophion, Apollo vs. Python, Heracles vs. the Hydra and Ladon, Perseus vs. Ceto, and Bellerophon vs. the Chimera in Greek mythology; Indra vs. Vrtra in the Rigveda; Krishna vs. Kaliya in the Bhagavata Purana; Oraetaona, and later Keresaspa, vs. Azi Dahaka in zoroastrianism and Persian mythology; Perun vs. Veles, Dobrynya Nikitich vs. Zmey in Slavic mythology; Fat-Frumos vs. Zmeu in Folklore of Romania ; Tarhunt vs. Illuyanka of Hittite mythology. Other similar or influenced analogous stories: Anu or Marduk vs. Tiamat in Mesopotamian mythology; Ra vs. Apep in Egyptian mythology; Baal or El vs. Lotan or Yam-Nahar in Levantine mythology; yahweh or Gabriel vs. Leviathan or Rahab or Tannin in jewish mythology; Michael the archangel and jesus vs. satan (in the form of a seven-headed dragon). The idea of the afterworld existed in many Indo-European traditions. Death was conceived as a journey, the expression of ‘going the way of no return’ is found both in Indian epics and in Greek and Latin poetry. Similarly, in a Hittite ritual text it is said of the underworld that ‘what goes in does not come out again’. The later Indian belief in reincarnation or transmigration of souls seems to be in contradiction with the above mentioned expressions. However, the idea of transmigration was known to Greek philosophers, e.g. Pythagoras, and according to Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico it existed also among the druids of Gaul. Therefore, it is difficult to establish if belief in reincarnation was present in Proto-Indo-European religion or not. In several traditions, it was believed that the afterworld was separated from the world of living by water and the soul was transported across the water. In some traditions, the ruler of the afterworld was the ‘twin’ of the cosmogonic myth. As far as the location of the afterworld is concerned, there was such variation that it could be located almost anywhere except east. Other details about the afterworld also varied considerably but it seems that originally there was no concept of punishment for sins or reward for virtue after death among Indo-Europeans. There are at least 40 PIE deities that can be reconstructed both Devi and Deva general words for deities mainly goddess are used in Sanskrit, Avestan and Hindi. Old Avestan (the most ancient scriptures of zoroastrianism) is closely related to Old Persian or Proto-Indo-Iranian religion which is an archaic offshoot of Indo-European religion and also in some extent close in nature to Vedic Sanskrit and Persian ether started the Vedic traditions (hinduism) or highly influenced them. The Indo-European languages are a family of 439 languages and dialects, and 221 belonging to the Indo-Aryan subbranch. Indo-European languages includes most major current and ancient languages of Turkey, languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the Indian Subcontinent. Moreover, the word deva (Sanskrit and Pali) in buddhism is one of many different types of non-human mystic beings who share the characteristics of being more powerful and other words used in buddhist texts to refer to similar supernatural beings are devata “deity” and devaputra (Pali: devaputta) “son of the gods”. In other languages, the derivative word deva “deity” is expressed, such as in Chinese it is tian, in Korean it is cheon, in Japanese it is ten, in Vietnamese it is thien, in Thai it is thevada, in Khmer iti s tep, in Tibetan it is lha, in Mongolian its tenger, and in Myanmar its nat. The concept of devas was adopted in Japan partly because of the similarity to the Shinto’s concept of kami. Nevertheless, when looking into the past one should be careful to not over interpret or engage in Romanticism instead of Rationalism. Unfortunately, there has been relatively cyclical set of thinking changes between rationalism and romanticism in archaeological/culture-historical interpretation, and the corresponding value attached to religion. The fact that the basic motifs in the narrative of the sun journey can be documented independently on metalwork and on rock art, indicates that we are dealing with a shared Bronze Age religion throughout the Nordic realm, albeit with some regional and local variations shared elements, constitute a basic mythological storyline from which local interpretations could be made when it was applied to different media and materials from rock art over metalwork to ship settings and burials. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27
References
Insoll, T. (2012). The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of ritual and religion. Oxford, United Kingdom. Oxford University Press.
Hodder, I. (2011). Religion in the Emergence of Civilization: Çatalhoyuk as a Case Study. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
Hodder, I. (2013). Religion at Work in a Neolithic Society: Vital Matters. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, United Kingdom. Kindle Edition.
Harris, S. L. (2007). Understanding the bible (7th Ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia (Oxford Handbooks) 2011 Sharon R. Steadman (Editor), Gregory McMahon (Editor) Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom
Ancient Egyptian Culture, Mummies, Statues, Burial Practices and Artefacts?
Prehistoric Egypt 40,000 years ago to The First Dynasty 5,150 years ago
7,000 years old Rock Art
Throughout the caves, canyons, and shelters of the Ennedi Plateau, thousands of images – dating from 5000 BC onwards – have been painted and engraved, comprising one of the biggest collections of rock art in the Sahara and characterized by a huge variety of styles and themes. Most of the figures were engraved on big, vertical boulders, in groups, although occasionally they appear isolated. They follow a very regular pattern: most of them are life-sized or even bigger and are represented upright facing right or left, with one arm bent upwards holding a stick resting over the neck or shoulder and the other arm stretched downwards. In some cases, the figures have an unidentified, horizontal object placed at the neck, probably an ornament. Interspersed among the bigger figures, there are smaller versions which are slightly different, some of them with the arms in the same position as the others but without sticks, and some facing forwards with hands on hips. In general, figures seem to be naked, although in some cases the smaller figures are depicted with skirts. The Ennedi Plateau is a mountainous region in the north-eastern corner of Chad, an impressive sandstone massif eroded by wind and temperature changes into series of terraces, gorges, cliffs, and outliers. Although it is part of the Sahara, the climate of the Ennedi Plateau is much more suitable for human habitation than most of the desert, with regular rain during summer, wadis (seasonal rivers) flowing once or twice a year, and a relatively large range of flora and fauna – including some of the few remaining populations of Saharan crocodiles west of the Nile. Another characteristic feature of these images is their abnormally wide buttocks and thighs, which have been interpreted as steatopygia (a genetic condition resulting in an accumulation of fat in and around the buttocks). Although the best-documented examples of steatopygia (both in rock art and contemporary groups) correspond to southern Africa, steatopygic depictions occur elsewhere in North African rock art, with examples in other parts of the Ennedi Plateau, but also in Egypt and Sudan, where they occasionally appear incised in pottery. In addition, almost all the figures are decorated with intricate geometric patterns (straight and wavy lines, squares, meanders and, in one case, schematic birds), which could be interpreted as garments, tattoos, scarifications or body paintings. In some cases, figures appear simply outlined, but these very rare cases were probably left unfinished. The decorative patterns extend to the ears, which are always depicted with geometric designs, and to the head, where these designs could correspond to hairstyles. The decorative richness of the Niola Doa engravings has led to their interpretation as ritual scenes, probably special occasions when body decoration was part of a more complex set of activities with dancing or singing. On some occasions, comparisons have been established between the geometric designs of Niola Doa and different types of body decorations (body painting, scarifications). Scarifications, in particular, have a long tradition within some African cultures and in many cases, parallels have been documented between this kind of body decoration and material culture (i.e. pottery, pipes, wood sculptures or clothes). The relative proximity of groups with well-known traditions of scarifications and body painting has led to comparisons which, although suggested, cannot be wholly proved. Regarding their chronology, as with most rock art depictions the Niola Doa figures are difficult to date, although they undoubtedly belong to the older periods of Chadian rock art. Some parallels have been made with the Round Head-style figures of the Tassili n’Ajjer. However, the Round Head figures of Algeria have a very old chronology (up to 9000 years ago), while the rock art at the Ennedi Plateau is assumed to be much newer, up to the 5th or 4th millennium BC. These engravings could, therefore, correspond to what has been called the Archaic Period in this area, although a Pastoral Period chronology has also been proposed. In several other sites around the Ennedi Plateau, similar images have been painted, although whether these images are contemporary with those of Niola Doa or correspond to a different period is unclear. Regardless of their chronology, what is undeniable is the major impact these depictions had on later generations of people living in the area: even now, the engravings at one of the sites are known as the ‘Dancing Maidens’, while the name of Niola Doa means ‘The place of the girls’ in the local language. ref
Saharan Rock Art
The first human figures in Saharan art were depicted around 9,000 years ago. This marks the beginning of the Round Head period which overlaps with the late Babalus period and the early Pastoral period. Human figures from this period tend to have rounded heads and featureless faces. The figures range in size from a few centimeters to five meters in height. The Roundhead Period people are shown standing among cattle, hunting with bows, and dancing with masks on their heads. There are many images of running archers in which the strings of their bows and the leg muscles are visible. Pieces that seem to represent some kind of shamanistic experience depict round-headed people floating towards a figure that seems to be a shaman. There are also scenes of everyday life such as people washing the hair. Images of boats have been found in the Nile Valley and the Red Sea hills. An 8,000-year-old rock paintings in the Tassil-n-Ajjer depicts dancers and musicians. One of the instruments pictured is still played thousands of miles south in the Kalihari. Seven-thousand-year-old cave painting in the Sahara seems to depict bows being used as a musical instrument. Bushmen today make haunting music with bow instruments that are placed in the mouth. Sound is produced by tapping a sinew string with a reed.
One image from Tassili-n-Ajjer seems to depict help from the spirit world being sought with animal magic. A member of the Fulani tribe that still conduct similar rituals told National Geographic: “The spirit of the earth assumes the shape of the snake goddess, Tyanaba, protector of cattle. Curved lines represent the serpent as she encircles a sacred bull. A man, second from the right joins four women…At the far right, the “mistress of milk” reclines to chant to the earth. She implores that the goddess lifts the bulls’ bewitchment—perhaps an illness—and ensure propagation of the herd. The woman third from the left listens for the earth’s response.” Among the early depictions of war is a battle scene, in a rock painting in Tassili n’Ajjer. dated to between 4,300 and 4,500 years ago, with groups of men firing bows and arrows at each other. In the image, a group on the right stand ready to fire their bows as a group on the left begins an assault. One painting from Tassili-n-Ajjer dubbed the elephant dance depicts a line of figures connected by a rope or cord. The men wear hip-high white leggings, reminiscent of grass costumes worn in West Africa, and appear to be engaged in some ritual or ceremony. Some of the human-like figures from the Roundhead period are quite bizarre. A well-preserved 4½ foot-high, 8,000-year-old engraving of a mythical beast found in Libya features two mythical catlike creatures engaged in a ritual dance or a battle. Figures, dated to be 2,500 years old, found on boulders in the Air mountains of Niger have tulip-shaped heads and hourglass bodies. Nine-foot-high figures found in the Ennedi mountains of Chad had round heads, enormous buttocks and geometric patterns inscribed on every inch of their body. Other Roundhead period images include a 10-foot-high horned “god” with bulging biceps and huge scrotum. Next to him is a supplicating woman. One 7000-year-old work depicts a masked figure with plants sprouting from his arms and thighs. Some regard it as the oldest record of the cult of the mask. The masks itself looks very much like masks widely seen in West Africa today. Around 7,000 years ago domesticated animals began appearing in Saharan rock art. This marked the beginning of the Pastoral Period. The works from this period have a more naturalistic style and depict scenes from everyday life. They are presumed to have been made by herders. The works have more details and appear to express concerns about composition. ref
Progressed organized religion starts, an approximately 5,000-year-old belief system
This was a time of astonishing creativity as city-states and empires emerged in a vast area stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indus Valley. The previous millennium had seen the emergence of advanced, urbanized civilizations, new bronze metallurgy extending the productivity of agricultural work, and highly developed ways of communication in the form of writing. In the 3rd millennium BC, the growth of these riches, both intellectually and physically, became a source of contention on a political stage, and rulers sought the accumulation of more wealth and more power. Along with this came the first appearances of mega architecture, imperialism, organized absolutism and internal revolution. The civilizations of Sumer and Akkad in Mesopotamia became a collection of volatile city-states in which warfare was common. Uninterrupted conflicts drained all available resources, energies and populations. In this millennium, larger empires succeeded the last, and conquerors grew in stature until the great Sargon of Akkad pushed his empire to the whole of Mesopotamia and beyond. It would not be surpassed in size until Assyrian times 1,500 years later. In the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the Egyptian pyramids were constructed and would remain the tallest and largest human constructions for thousands of years. Also in Egypt, pharaohs began to posture themselves as living gods made of an essence different from that of other human beings. Even in Europe, which was still largely neolithic during the same period, the builders of megaliths were constructing giant monuments of their own. In the Near East and the Occident around 5,000 years ago and religion developed and advanced to roughly the ways we are somewhat familiar to a large amount, limits were being pushed by architects and rulers. Towards the close of the millennium, Egypt became the stage of the first popular revolution recorded in history. After lengthy wars, the Sumerians recognized the benefits of unification into a stable form of national government and became a relatively peaceful, well-organized, complex technocratic state called the 3rd dynasty of Ur. This dynasty was later to become involved with a wave of nomadic invaders known as the Amorites, who were to play a major role in the region during the following centuries. In the Near East and the Occident during the around 5,000 years ago and religion developed and advanced to roughly the ways we are somewhat familiar to a large amount, limits were being pushed by architects and rulers. Towards the close of the millennium, Egypt became the stage of the first popular revolution recorded in history. After lengthy wars, the Sumerians recognized the benefits of unification into a stable form of national government and became a relatively peaceful, well-organized, complex technocratic state called the 3rd dynasty of Ur. This dynasty was later to become involved with a wave of nomadic invaders known as the Amorites, who were to play a major role in the region during the following centuries. ref
- 5,750 years ago: The Proto-Semitic people emerged from a generally accepted urheimat in the Levant. The Proto-Semitic people would migrate throughout the Near East into Mesopotamia, Egypt, Ethiopia and the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.
- 5,700 years ago: Lothal: Indus Valley trade-port city in India.
- 5,650 years ago: Minoan culture appeared on Crete.
- 5,500 Years old birth of the State, the rise of Hierarchy, and the fall of Women’s status
- 5,300 years ago: The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilization (3300–1300 BCE; mature period 2600–1900 BCE) in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, noted for its cities built of brick, roadside drainage system and multi-storeyed houses, as well as for creating artifacts which could be linked to pre-vedic religions.
- 5,200 years ago: Helladic culture and Cycladic culture both emerge in Greece.
- 5,102 years ago: This was the beginning of Kaliyuga, a new age among the followers of Indian religions.
- 5,100 years ago: The initial form of Stonehenge was completed. The circular bank and ditch enclosure, about 110 metres (360 ft) across, may have been completed with a timber circle.
- 5,100 years ago: Newgrange, the 250,000 ton (226,796.2 tonne) passage tomb aligned to the winter solstice in Ireland, was built.
- 5,000 years ago: Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt.
- 5,000 years ago: First evidence of gold being used in the Middle East.
- 5,000 years ago: Vessels from Denmark
- 5,000 years ago: Sumerian Cuneiform emerged from the proto-literate Uruk period, allowing the codification of beliefs and creation of detailed historical religious records.
- 5,000 years ago: The second phase of Stonehenge was completed and appeared to function as the first enclosed cremation cemetery in the British Isles.
- 4,900 years ago: Beginning of the Early Dynastic Period I in Sumer.
- 4,900 years ago: Sumerianpictographs evolve into phonograms.
- 4,900 years ago: Mesopotamian wars of the Early Dynastic period.
- 4,900 years ago: Votive statues from the Square Temple of Eshnunna (modern Tell Ashmar, Iraq) were made.
- 4,900 years ago: Syria: Foundation of the city of Mari.
- 4,900 years ago: Semitic tribes occupy Assyria in northern part of the plain of Shinar and Akkad.
- 4,900 years ago: Phoenicians settle on Syrian coast, with centers at Tyre and Sidon.
- 4,900 years ago: Beginning of the period of the Sage Kings in China, also known as the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors.
- 4,900 years ago: Ziggurats (multi-platform temples: 4,900 years old) to Pyramids (multi-platform tombs: 4,700 years old)
- 4,879 years ago: Rise of the Văn Lang Kingdom and the Hồng Bàng Dynasty in northern Viet Nam.
- 4,874 years ago: The 365-day calendar year was installed in ancient Egypt
- 4,852 years ago: The beginning of the period of the Three August Ones and Five Emperors in China.
- 4,832 years ago: Estimated germination of the Methuselah Tree, the oldest known living organism
- 4,807 years ago: Suggested date for an asteroid or comet impact occurring between Africa and Antarctica, around the time of a solar eclipse on May 10, based on an analysis of flood stories. Possibly causing the Burckle crater and Fenambosy Chevron.
- 4,800 years ago: Ur becomes one of the richest cities in Sumer
- 4,800 years ago: Harp Player, from Keros, Cyclades, was made. It is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
- 4,800 years ago: Iran: Creation of the Kingdom of Elam.
- 4,800 years ago: Seated Harp Player, from Keros, Cyclades, is made.
- 4,775 years ago: Second Dynasty wars in Ancient Egypt.
- 4,773 years ago: the 365-day calendar is introduced in Egypt.
- 4,750 years ago: End of the Early Dynastic I Period, and the beginning of the Early Dynastic II Period in Mesopotamia.
- 4,750 years ago: Estimated ending of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture in the region of modern-day Romania, Moldova, and southwestern Ukraine
- 4,700 years ago: Germination of the Bristlecone pine tree “Methuselah“, one of the oldest known trees still living now.
- 4,700 years ago: Merit-Ptah is world’s first female physician mentioned by name.
- 4,700 years ago: Old Kingdom of Egypt begins. 3rd–6th Dynasties.
- 4,700 years ago: Mesoamericans begin to plant and domesticate maize.
- 4,697 years ago: The Yellow Emperor starts to reign in China.
- 4,685 years ago: Bull lyre from the tomb of Queen Puabi, Ur (modern Muqaiyir, Iraq) was made.
- 4,640 years ago: The cultivation and weaving of silk starts to be a closely guarded secret in China.
- 4,630 years ago: Imhotep, Vizier of Egypt, constructs the Pyramid of Djoser The Djoser pyramid is a step pyramid (or proto-pyramid) is considered to be the earliest large-scale cut stone construction and was thought to function in both life and the afterlife, which was sealed with a 3.5 ton block after the burial. The symbolism of the step pyramid form, which did not survive the 3rd Dynasty, is unknown, but it has been suggested that it may be a monumental symbol of the crown, especially the royal mortuary cult, since seven small step pyramids (not tombs) were built in the provinces.
- 4,627 years ago: Construction of the Caral metropolis in Peru
- 4,600 years ago: Mature Harappan phase of the Indus Valley Civilisation begins. The cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro become large metropolises and the civilization expands to over 2,500 cities and settlements across the whole of Pakistan, much of northern India, and parts of Afghanistan and Iran, covering a region of around one million square miles, which was larger than the land area of its contemporaries Egypt and Mesopotamia combined, and also had superior urban planning and sewage systems. The civilization began using the mature Indus script for its writing system.
- 4,600 years ago: End of the Early Dynastic II Period and the beginning of the Early Dynastic IIIa Period in Mesopotamia.
- 4,600 years ago: Founding of the Chalcolithic Iberian civilizations of Los Millares and Zambujal.
- 4,600 years ago: the Indus Valley Civilisation rises to become a powerful civilization.
- 4,600 years ago: Pre-Palace Period, phase I, in Crete
- 4,600 years ago: Wild horses still provide hunting feasts in Denmark. (Clutton-Brock)
- 4,600 years ago: Large water tank, possibly a public or ritual bathing area, Mohenjo-daro, Indus Valley Civilisation, is made.
- 4,600 years ago: Butmir culture existed in Butmir, near Ilidža, Bosnia and Herzegovina, dating from the Neolithic. It is characterized by its unique pottery, and is one of the best researched European cultures from 2600-2400 BC.
- 4,600 years ago: Unified Indus Valley Civilisation.
- 4,550 years ago: Estimated date of completion of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
- 4,550 years ago: Mesannepada is king of Ur (followed by his son, A-annepadda) who founds the First Dynasty of Ur and overthrows the last king of Uruk, as well as Mesilim of Kish.
- 4,550 years ago:: Great Lyre with bull’s head, from the tomb of King Meskalamdug, Ur (modern Muqaiyir, Iraq) is made.
- 4,500 years ago: Excavation and development of the Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni at Paola, Malta, a subterranean temple complex subsequently used as a necropolis.
- 4,500 years ago: The legendary line of Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors of China is founded by the Yellow Emperor.
- 4,500 years ago: the construction of the stone circle at Stonehenge begins and continues for the next five hundred years.
- 4,500 years ago: Rice was first introduced to Malaysia
- 4,500 years ago: Scribal schools flourish throughout Sumer.
- 4,500 years ago: Assyria is established.
- 4,500 years ago: Cylinder seal from Sumer and its impression are made. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
- 4,500 years ago: Excavation and development of the Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni at Paola, Malta, a subterranean temple complex subsequently used as a necropolis.
- 4,500 years ago: Valley Temple of Khafra, Giza, is built.
- 4,500 years ago: Khafra from Giza Valley, Temple of Khafra is made. Fourth Dynasty of Egypt. Discovered by Auguste Mariette. It is now kept in Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
- 4,500 years ago: Mohenjo-daro is about 7 square miles (18 km2) in size and has a population of c. 20,000 to 50,000.
- 4, 500 years ago: Incised panel “Frying pan”, from Syros, Cyclades is made.
- 4,500 years ago: Two figures of women, from the Cyclades, are made.
- 4,494 years ago: End of Fourth Dynasty, start of Fifth Dynasty in Egypt. Construction of the Pyramids begins.
- 4,494 years ago: “Sculptors at work”, relief from Saqqara, Fifth Dynasty. It is now at Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt.
- 4,494 years ago: The Seated Scribe, a sculpture found at Saqqara, Fifth Dynasty of Egypt is made.
- 4,494 years ago: The first of the oldest surviving religious texts, the Pyramid Texts, was composed in Ancient Egypt.
- 4,492 years ago: Traditional date for the legendary foundation of Armenia by Hayk.
- 4,492 years ago: The Armenian patriarch Hayk defeats the Babylonian king Bel (legendary account) and Hayk founds Armenia.
- 4,474 years ago: Golden age of Ur in Mesopotamia.
- 4,450 years ago: End of the Early Dynastic IIIa Period and beginning of the Early Dynastic IIIb Period in Sumer.
- 4,450 years ago: Kish is lost to Hamazi tribesmen of the Kurdistan mountains; Elam under the Awan dynasty occupies parts of Sumer.
- 4,419 years ago: Neferefre is pharaoh
- 4,410 years ago: By this time, kings in Sumer have ceased to be automatically high priests of the city deity. Infiltration and conquest of Mesopotamia by ancient Semitic-speaking peoplesbegins.
- 4,400 years ago: Construction of Stonehenge
- 4,400 years ago: Megalithic culture begins to spread through Europe and the western Mediterranean.
- 4,400 years ago: Earliest signs of Corded Ware culture from the Caucasus.
- 4,400 years ago: Southeastern Spain is settled from the Mediterranean, by people using Prehistoric Egyptian-style pottery.
- 4,400 years ago: Amorites and Canaanites occupy Syria and Lebanon.
- 4,334 years ago: Sargon of Akkad conquers Mesopotamia, establishing the Akkadian Empire.
- 4,334 years ago: City of Lothal founded under the Indus Valley Civilisation.
- 4,333 years ago: According to the Korean creation story, Dangun Wanggeom established the first Korean Empire, Gojoseon
- 4,300 years ago: C-Group pastoralists arrive in Nubia.
- 4,300 years ago: Megalithic, Corded Ware culture and the Beaker flourish in Europe.
- 4,300 years ago: Sumerian poetry, lamenting the death of Tammuz, the shepherd god.
- 4,300 years ago: Sumerian cuneiform writing reduces pictographs still in use to about 550 BC.
- 4,300 years ago: Major religious festival in Sumeria celebrates the victory of god of spring over goddess of chaos.
- 4,300 years ago: Earliest Trojan culture.
- 4,300 years ago: Beginning of the Pengtoushan culture in China.
- 4,300 years ago: Indus Valley Civilization (Harappan) flourishing in modern day eastern Pakistan – western India.
- 4,300 years ago: Metals start to be used in Northern Europe.
- 4,300 years ago: Unetice culture emerges in the modern day Czech Republic.
- 4,300 years ago: Disk of Enheduanna, from Ur, (modern Muqaiyir, Iraq) is made.
- 4,300 years ago: “Head of a man from Nineveh” (modern Kuyunjik, Iraq) is made.
- 4,285 years ago: Enheduanna, high priestess of the moon god Nanna in Ur, was born.
- 4,254 years ago: Stela of Naram-Sin, probably from Sippar, discovered in Susa (modern Shush, Iran), is made.
- 4,250 years ago: Earliest evidence of maize cultivation in Central America.
- 4,240 years ago: Akkad, capital of the Akkadian Empire, becomes the largest city in the world, surpassing Memphis, capital of Egypt.
- 4,220 years ago: Scord of Brouster farmstead established in Shetland, Scotland
- 4.2 kiloyear event – a severe aridification event that probably lasted the entire 22nd century BC and caused the collapse of several Old World civilizations.
- 4,217 years ago: Nomadic invasions of Akkad.
- 4,200 years ago: The Minoan Civilization developed in Crete. Citizens worshipped a variety of goddesses.
- 4,150 years ago: The earliest surviving versions of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh—originally titled He who Saw the Deep (Sha naqba īmuru) or Surpassing All Other Kings (Shūtur eli sharrī)—were written.
- 4,104 years ago: Approximate date of the Biblical flood according to the Hebrew Calendar.
- 4,070 years ago: Xia Dynasty, first Chinese dynasty and government system established.
- 4,000 years ago: Kultepe? An archaeological site with a 4,000 years old women’s rights document.
- 3,700 years ago: The oldest of the Hindu Vedas (scriptures), the Rig Veda was composed.
- 3,600 years ago: The ancient development of Stonehenge came to an end.
- 3,500 years ago: The Vedic Age began in India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation.
- 3,450 years ago: This is the traditionally accepted period in which, according to legend, the Israelite lawgiver Moses gave the Ten Commandments.
- 3,351 years ago: The reign of Akhenaten, sometimes credited with starting the earliest known recorded monotheistic religion, in Ancient Egypt
- 3,300 years ago: The “standard” Akkadian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh was edited by Sin-liqe-unninni.
- 3,250 years ago: The Upanishads (Vedic texts) were composed, containing the earliest emergence of some of the central religious concepts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref
Prehistoric Egypt 40,000 years ago to The First Dynasty 5,150 years ago
Religion Power and the State
The Pharaoh in ancient Egypt was the political and religious leader holding the titles ‘Lord of the Two Lands’ Upper and Lower Egypt and ‘High Priest of Every Temple’. In 5,150 years ago the First Dynasty appeared in Egypt and this reign was thought to be in accordance with the will of the gods, but the office of the king itself was not associated with the divine until later. Around 4,890 years ago during the Second Dynasty, the King was linked with the divine and reign with the will of the gods. Following these rulers of the later dynasties were equated with the gods and with the duties and obligations due to those gods. As supreme ruler of the people, the pharaoh was considered a god on earth, the intermediary between the gods and the people, and when he died, he was thought to become Osiris, the god of the dead. As such, in his role of ‘High Priest of Every Temple’, it was the pharaoh’s duty to build great temples and monuments celebrating his own achievements and paying homage to the gods of the land. Among the earliest civilizations that exhibit the phenomenon of divinized kings are early Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. In 5,150 years ago the First Dynasty appeared in Egypt with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by the king Menes (now believed to be Narmer). Menes/Narmer is depicted on inscriptions wearing the two crowns of Egypt, signifying unification, and his reign was thought to be in accordance with the will of the gods; but the office of the king itself was not associated with the divine until later. During the Second Dynasty of Egypt 4,890-4,670 years ago King Raneb (also known as Nebra) linked his name with the divine and his reign with the will of the gods. Following Raneb, the rulers of the later dynasties were equated with the gods and with the duties and obligations due to those gods. As supreme ruler of the people, the pharaoh was considered a god on earth. The honorific title of `pharaoh’ for a ruler did not appear until the period known as the New Kingdom 3,570-3,069 years ago. Monarchs of the dynasties before the title of `pharaoh’ from the New Kingdom were addressed as `your majesty’ by foreign dignitaries and members of the court and as `brother’ by foreign rulers; both practices would continue after the king of Egypt came to be known as a pharaoh. ref
Jews enslaved in Egypt is Myth…..
Possibly around 5,000 years ago the First Dynasty appeared in Mesopotamia was Dynasty of Kish and Etana a Sumerian king. According to the Sumerian king list, he resigned after the deluge great flood of Gilgamesh. However, the earliest monarch on the Sumerian king list whose historical existence has been attested through archaeological inscription is En-me-barage-si of Kish 4,600 years ago, said to have defeated Elam and built the temple of Enlil in Nippur. The first Mesopotamian ruler who declared himself divine was Naram-Sin of Akkad. Naram-Sin means “Beloved of Sin”; reigned 4,254–4,218 years ago, was a ruler of the Akkadian Empire, the third successor and grandson of King Sargon of Akkad. Under Naram-Sin the empire reached its maximum strength. After Naram-Sin no ruler declared himself divine until about 4,095–4,049, the second king of the Third Dynasty of Ur, took up the custom of self-deification once more. His self-deification may have been viewed in attempts to consolidate the empire he had inherited from his father. The cult of the divine ruler seems to have culminated under Shu-Sin and after Shu-Sin the divinization kings was abandoned once more. Although, some consider the kings Rim-Sin 3,822–3,763 years ago and the famous Hammurabi of Babylon 3,792–3,750 years ago to have been divine. Both kings struggled to expand their area of influence, and therefore their self-deification may have been part of a strategy to consolidate and legitimize their powers. ref
If you are a religious believer, may I remind you that faith in the acquisition of knowledge is not a valid method worth believing in. Because, what proof is “faith”, of anything religion claims by faith, as many people have different faith even in the same religion?
- To Find Truth You Must First Look
- Archaeology Knowledge Challenge?
- The Evolution of Fire Sacralizing and/or Worship 1.5 million to 300,000 years ago and beyond?
- Stone Age Art: 500,000 – 233,000 Years Old
- Around 500,000 – 233,000 years ago, Oldest Anthropomorphic art (Pre-animism) is Related to Female
- 400,000 Years Old Sociocultural Evolution
- Pre-Animism: Portable Rock Art at least 300,000-year-old
- Did Neanderthals teach us “Primal Religion (Pre-Animism/Animism?)” 120,000 Years Ago?
- Animism: an approximately 100,000-year-old belief system?
- Stone Snake of South Africa: “first human worship” 70,000 years ago
- Similarities and differences in Animism and Totemism
- History of Drug Use with Religion or Sacred Rituals possibly 58,000 years ago?
- Totemism: an approximately 50,000-year-old belief system?
- Australia & Aboriginal Religion at least around 50,000 years old
- Modern Humans start around 50,000 years ago Helped by Feminisation
- Out of Africa: “the evolution of religion seems tied to the movement of people”
- Possible Religion Motivations in the First Cave Art at around 43,000 years ago?
- 40,000 years ago “first seeming use of a Totem” ancestor, animal, and possible pre-goddess worship?
- Prehistoric Egypt 40,000 years ago to The First Dynasty 5,150 years ago
- 31,000 – 20,000 years ago Oldest Shaman was Female, Buried with the Oldest Portrait Carving
- Shamanism: an approximately 30,000-year-old belief system
- Early Shamanism around 30,000 to 20,000 years ago: Sungar (Russia) and Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic)
- ‘Sky Burial’ theory and its possible origins at least 12,000 years ago to likely 30,000 years ago or older.
- The Peopling of the Americas Pre-Paleoindians/Paleoamericans around 30,000 to 12,000 years ago
- Similarity in Shamanism?
- Black, White, and Yellow Shamanism?
- Shamanistic rock art from central Aboriginal Siberians and Aboriginal drums in the Americas
- Horned female shamans and Pre-satanism Devil/horned-god Worship?
- Fertile Crescent 12,500 – 9,500 Years Ago: fertility and death cult belief system?
- 12,400 – 11,700 Years Ago – Kortik Tepe (Turkey) Pre/early-Agriculture Cultic Ritualism
- 12,000 – 10,000 years old Shamanistic Art in a Remote Cave in Egypt
- Gobekli Tepe: “first human-made temple” around 12,000 years ago.
- Sedentism and the Creation of goddesses around 12,000 years ago as well as male gods after 7,000 years ago.
- First Patriarchy: Split of Women’s Status around 12,000 years ago & First Hierarchy: fall of Women’s Status around 5,000 years ago.
- Natufians: an Ancient People at the Origins of Agriculture and Sedentary Life
- J DNA and the Spread of Agricultural Religion (paganism)
- Paganism: an approximately 12,000-year-old belief system
- Need to Mythicized: gods and goddesses
- “36cu0190” a Historic and Prehistoric site in Pennsylvania
- 12,000 – 10,000 years old Shamanistic Art in a Remote Cave in Egypt
- 12,000 – 7,000 Years Ago – Paleo-Indian Culture (The Americas)
- 12,000 – 2,000 Years Ago – Indigenous-Scandinavians (Nordic)
- Norse did not wear helmets with horns?
- Pre-Pottery Neolithic Skull Cult around 11,500 to 8,400 Years Ago?
- 9,000-8500 year old Female shaman Bad Dürrenberg Germany
- Kurgan 6,000 years ago/dolmens 7,000 years ago: funeral, ritual, and other?
- Connected “dolmen phenomenon” of above-ground stone burial structures?
- Evolution Of Science at least by 5,500 years ago
- 5,500 Years old birth of the State, the rise of Hierarchy, and the fall of Women’s status
- “Jiroft culture” 5,100 – 4,200 years ago and the History of Iran
- Progressed organized religion starts, an approximately 5,000-year-old belief system
- Origin of Logics is Naturalistic Observation at least by around 5,000 years ago.
- Ziggurats (multi-platform temples: 4,900 years old) to Pyramids (multi-platform tombs: 4,700 years old)
- “Happy Easter” Well Happy Eostre/Ishter
- 4,250 to 3,400 Year old Stonehenge from Russia: Arkaim?
- When was the beginning: TIMELINE OF CURRENT RELIGIONS, which start around 4,000 years ago.
- Kultepe? An archaeological site with a 4,000 years old women’s rights document.
- Single God Religions (Monotheism) = Man-o-theism started around 4,000 years ago?
- Confucianism’s Tiān (Shangdi god 4,000 years old): Supernaturalism, Pantheism or Theism?
- Yes, Your Male God is Ridiculous
- The Weakening of Ancient Trade and the Strengthening of Religions around 3000 years ago?
- Are you aware that there are religions that worship women gods, explain now religion tears women down?
- Animistic, Totemistic, and Paganistic Superstition Origins of bible god and the bible’s Religion.
- Jews, Judaism, and the Origins of Some of its Ideas
- An Old Branch of Religion Still Giving Fruit: Sacred Trees
- Dating the BIBLE: naming names and telling times (written less than 3,000 years ago, provable to 2,200 years ago)
- Did a Volcano Inspire the bible god?
- No “dinosaurs and humans didn’t exist together just because some think they are in the bible itself”
- Everyone Killed in the Bible Flood? “Nephilim” (giants)?
- Hey, Damien dude, I have a question for you regarding “the bible” Exodus.
- Archaeology Disproves the Bible
- Bible Battle, Just More, Bible Babble
- The Jericho Conquest lie?
- Canaanites and Israelites?
- Archaeology Knowledge Challenge?
- Accurate Account on how did Christianity Began?
- Let’s talk about Christianity.
- So the 10 commandments isn’t anything to go by either right?
- Misinformed christian
- Debunking Jesus?
- Paulism vs Jesus
- Ok, you seem confused so let’s talk about Buddhism.
- Unacknowledged Buddhism: Gods, Savior, Demons, Rebirth, Heavens, Hells, and Terrorism
- His Foolishness The Dalai Lama
- Yin and Yang is sexist with an ORIGIN around 2,300 years ago?
- I Believe Archaeology, not Myths & Why Not, as the Religious Myths Already Violate Reason!
- Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
- Aquatic Ape Theory/Hypothesis? As Always, Just Pseudoscience.
- Ancient Aliens Conspiracy Theorists are Pseudohistorians
- The Pseudohistoric and Pseudoscientific claims about “Bakoni Ruins” of South Africa
- Why do people think Religion is much more than supernaturalism and superstitionism?
- Religion is an Evolved Product
- Was the Value of Ancient Women Different?
- 1000 to 1100 CE, human sacrifice Cahokia Mounds a pre-Columbian Native American site
- Feminist atheists as far back as the 1800s?
- Promoting Religion as Real is Mentally Harmful to a Flourishing Humanity
- Screw All Religions and Their Toxic lies, they are all fraud
- Forget Religions’ Unfounded Myths, I Have Substantiated “Archaeology Facts.”
- Religion Dispersal throughout the World
- I Hate Religion Just as I Hate all Pseudoscience
- Exposing Scientology, Eckankar, Wicca and Other Nonsense?
- Main deity or religious belief systems
- Quit Trying to Invent Your God From the Scraps of Science.
- Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
- Empiricism-Denier?
Reasons for or Types of Atheism
Damien’s Kickstarter and Damien’s Patreon
My Blog, My Memes & Short-writing or Quotes
Here is my external pages or content: Facebook Witter Page, My YouTube, My Linkedin, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, Instagram: damienathope, Personal Facebook Page, Secondary Personal Facebook Page, Main Atheist Facebook Page, Secondary Atheist Facebook Page, Facebook Leftist Political Page, Facebook Group: Atheist for Non-monogamy, Facebook Group: (HARP) Humanism, Atheism, Rationalism, & Philosophy and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com
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