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Here are Shaman Headdresses from Siberia, Africa, and Mongolia showing the covering of the eyes and may thus, to me relate to why the Venus of Willendorf has a hat that covers the face, meaning I speculate that this hat, also seen in the possible shaman burials in Italy all are related to shamanism.
“Venus figurines have been unearthed in Europe, Siberia, and much of Eurasia.
Most date from the Gravettian period but start in the Aurignacian era, and lasts to the Magdalenian time.” ref
Venus of Willendorf: Shamanism Headdresses that Cover the Eyes?
“Woman of Caviglione cave/Cavillon cave, Liguria, (Italy) involved 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”. In this cave, the tomb of the Lady of Cavillon, who died aged thirty-seven 24,000 years ago, was discovered. Interestingly, this woman was adorned with a funerary headpiece, which suggests that the people of this time might have believed in life after death.” Ref, Ref, Ref, Ref
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Here are my thoughts/speculations on where I believe is the possible origin of shamanism, which may have begun sometime around 35,000 to 30,000 years ago seen in the emergence of the Gravettian culture, just to outline his thinking, on what thousands of years later led to evolved Asian shamanism, in general, and thus WU shamanism as well. In both Europe-related “shamanism-possible burials” and in Gravettian mitochondrial DNA is a seeming connection to Haplogroup U. And the first believed Shaman proposed burial belonged to Eastern Gravettians/Pavlovian culture at Dolní Věstonice in southern Moravia in the Czech Republic, which is the oldest permanent human settlement that has ever been found. It is at Dolní Věstonice where approximately 27,000-25,000 years ago a seeming female shaman was buried and also there was an ivory totem portrait figure, seemingly of her.
And my thoughts on how cultural/ritual aspects were influenced in the area of Göbekli Tepe. I think it relates to a few different cultures starting in the area before the Neolithic. Two different groups of Siberians first from northwest Siberia with U6 haplogroup 40,000 to 30,000 or so. Then R Haplogroup (mainly haplogroup R1b but also some possible R1a both related to the Ancient North Eurasians). This second group added its “R1b” DNA of around 50% to the two cultures Natufian and Trialetian. To me, it is likely both of these cultures helped create Göbekli Tepe. Then I think the female art or graffiti seen at Göbekli Tepe to me possibly relates to the Epigravettians that made it into Turkey and have similar art in North Italy. I speculate that possibly the Totem pole figurines seen first at Kostenki, next went to Mal’ta in Siberia as seen in their figurines that also seem “Totem-pole-like”, and then with the migrations of R1a it may have inspired the Shigir idol in Russia and the migrations of R1b may have inspired Göbekli Tepe.
Shamanism in Siberia
“A large minority of people in North Asia, particularly in Siberia, follow the religio-cultural practices of shamanism. Some researchers regard Siberia as the heartland of shamanism. The people of Siberia comprise a variety of ethnic groups, many of whom continue to observe shamanistic practices in modern times. Many classical ethnographers recorded the sources of the idea of “shamanism” among Siberian peoples.” ref
Terminology in Siberian languages
- “shaman’: saman (Nedigal, Nanay, Ulcha, Orok), sama (Manchu). The variant /šaman/ (i.e., pronounced “shaman”) is Evenk (whence it was borrowed into Russian).
- ‘shaman’: alman, olman, wolmen (Yukagir)
- ‘shaman’: [qam] (Tatar, Shor, Oyrat), [xam] (Tuva, Tofalar)
- The Buryat word for shaman is бөө (böö) [bøː], from early Mongolian böge. Itself borrowed from Proto-Turkic *bögü (“sage, wizard”)
- ‘shaman’: ńajt (Khanty, Mansi), from Proto-Uralic *nojta (c.f. Sámi noaidi)
- ‘shamaness’: [iduɣan] (Mongol), [udaɣan] (Yakut), udagan (Buryat), udugan (Evenki, Lamut), odogan (Nedigal). Related forms found in various Siberian languages include utagan, ubakan, utygan, utügun, iduan, or duana. All these are related to the Mongolian name of Etügen, the hearth goddess, and Etügen Eke ‘Mother Earth’. Maria Czaplicka points out that Siberian languages use words for male shamans from diverse roots, but the words for female shaman are almost all from the same root. She connects this with the theory that women’s practice of shamanism was established earlier than men’s, that “shamans were originally female.” ref
“Grave VIII also included very fragmentary tibia and fibula, in articulation, and a left humerus, scapula, radius and ulna, representing an articulated arm of an adult. Discriminant analysis of humeral metrics suggests that these elements represent an adult female.” ref
A Unique Human-Fox Burial from a Pre-Natufian Cemetery in the Levant (Jordan)
“Among the skeletal elements preserved, the pelvis from Burial A provides the only reliable sexually dimorphic traits, and is identified as a probable female on the basis of having broad sciatic notches. Discriminant function analysis of osteometric data collected from long-bones, including bone lengths, and diaphyseal and articular dimensions was used to further attempt sex determination (Supporting Information S1). Comparative samples included Levantine Epipalaeolithic skeletons where sex had been determined from pelvic morphology. The discriminant analysis provided ambiguous and male classifications of the two femora of Burial A, while all long bones in Grave I were classified as male. While this is not a conclusive sex determination, given the evidence from the Burial A pelvis, the results suggests that Grave I likely contains interments of one adult female (Burial A) and one adult male (Burial B). None of the individuals show signs of interpersonal violence or obvious pathologies that may indicate cause of death. Although burial pits are not obvious, most of the graves are delimited by body position and the locations of grave goods in contact with the buried individual or large stones around or over the body. Grave goods are present in most of the graves, although the number and type of objects varies. Flint implements, ground stone, red ochre, and partial animal skeletons were found associated with several of the skeletons. Since the burials are dug into pre-existing Epipalaeolithic deposits, the attribution of items as grave goods is conservative—only items in meaningful association or direct contact with the skeletons are included and, therefore, it is possible that we have underestimated the actual number of grave goods in each burial.” ref
“The archaeological record of the Epipalaeolithic period in the southern Levant (ca. 23,000–11,600 years ago) exhibits considerable variability across time and space. A wealth of archaeological investigations suggest dramatic disparities in material culture between earlier and later phases, explained in terms of pre-adaptive thresholds necessary for the development of subsequent Neolithic farming communities. The Late Epipalaeolithic Natufian culture is well-known for its stone architecture, organized site structures, portable art and decoration, and human burials, some of which display grave goods and personal ornaments. Formalized cemeteries, totaling more than 400 interments, appear for the first time. These burials document a wide variety of mortuary practices, with treatments of the dead including stone and organic burial containers and installations, worked stone and bone grave goods and, notably, animal inclusions such as early domesticated dog. Elucidating the social meanings of these variable burial customs is challenging due to the limitations of the material culture record and the limitations of ethnographic comparisons. However, contextual examination of items accompanying human remains permits preliminary interpretations of this mortuary behavior. For example, Grossman et al. interpret an elderly female Natufian burial containing a unique array of grave goods as the first shaman burial.” ref
“Despite early work that seemed to indicate a behavioral break between Early/Middle Epipalaeolithic and later, socially-complex Natufian sites, new excavations suggest an earlier emergence of some of the features characteristic of the Natufian period. Key features used to differentiate Natufian from preceding Epipalaeolithic groups include the appearance of formalized burial grounds and the origin of mortuary traditions that become characteristic of Neolithic symbolic and ideological life. Two key mortuary practices demonstrate ideological continuity between the Natufian and Neolithic, while highlighting a break between the Natufian and earlier EP groups a) the movement or removal of skulls and, b) special human-animal relationships. For example, the burial of an adult female with a juvenile domestic dog is well-known from ‘Ain Mallaha (‘Eynan), while another human-dog burial comes from Hayonim Terrace. Also, a unique burial from the Late Natufian site of Hilazon Tachtit features an elderly female buried with over 50 tortoise carapaces, several articulated raptor wings, the pelvis of a leopard, and the mandible of a wolf. These unmodified animal parts could be viewed as evidence for changing human-animal interactions or domestication yet to come.” ref
“Uyun al-Hammam is a pre-Natufian burial ground, with elaborate human burials that include evidence for unique human-animal relationships, demonstrating that these features are not unique to the Natufian. The remains of at least eleven individuals, interred in eight graves, represent the earliest known cemetery in the southern Levant and more than double the number of human burials for the entire Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic periods. Recent discoveries at ‘Uyun al-Hammam demonstrate a unique collection (in abundance and diversity) of grave goods and varied patterns of interment associated with the human remains. Two adjacent graves contain the articulated remains of several individuals, and include the following elements: 1) the earliest human-fox burial, 2) the movement of human and animal (fox) body parts between graves and, 3) the presence of red ochre, worked bone implements, chipped and ground stone tools, and the remains of deer, gazelle, aurochs and tortoise – grave goods that together became common among later Natufian and Neolithic burials. The ‘Uyun al-Hammam burials thus demonstrate intriguing human-animal relationships earlier than the first domesticated animal in the region. In light of the significance recently given to the Natufian “shaman” of Hilazon Tachtit, our findings provide strong evidence that key aspects of these complex mortuary traditions occurred earlier in the Epipalaeolithic of the Near East than previously thought.” ref
Shamanic Gender Identities
“Shamanic behavior necessitates a broadening of the notion of gender to be more fluid and dynamic, to include not only male and female but also various mediating identities.” ref
“Shamanism, like many other “isms,” is a Western construct, and issues of gender and sexuality play into this construct in various ways. Shamanism has been used since the eighteenth century to describe various people in indigenous (“tribal”) communities who might also be termed “medicine men,” “witch doctors,” “healers,” and “sorcerers”; those people who engage with “spirits” for certain socially sanctioned tasks. Shamans may be identified as such from birth, through an initiatory sickness, or a calling from the spirits; only rarely is the vocation taken up voluntarily. Shamanic practices may include healing the sick, controlling game, altering consciousness, journeying to other worlds, speaking to spirits or becoming possessed by them, even forming marriages and sexual relationships with powerful “spirit-helpers.” While the term derives from the Tungus-speaking Evenk in Siberia, shamanism is often regarded as a global and archaic phenomenon, even the origin of religion. But such a generalizing perspective is misleading. Moreover, an “ism” suggests something coherent and systematic; but in the case of shamanism no such thing exists. Consequently, it is difficult to arrive at a discrete definition; indeed, it would be naïve to attempt a monolithic, all-encompassing definition, or even to arrive at a list of defining characteristics of shamans without sacrificing cultural variety and nuance. A more sensitive approach acknowledges shamanisms’ historicity and foregrounds the diversity of shamans.” ref
“The theorizing of shamanism has marked important intellectual developments. Shamanism has been held to be the “oldest,” most “primitive,” even the “origin” of religion (whatever this may mean), but it is misleading to associate contemporary indigenous practices with a fixed and unchanging past. Prehistoric shamans, however, have been innovatively theorized by archaeologists. Rock art researchers have interpreted various cave paintings and rock engravings as originating in the altered consciousness of shamans. More recently, anthropologists have attended to the nature of shamanism in nuanced fashion, broadening our understanding away from “the shaman” in a society with a “shamanic worldview” to consider the specificity of relationships and wider epistemological concerns. The “old animism,” as presented by Tylor, assumed that indigenous peoples were mistaken in their belief in “spirits” and that “inanimate objects” had “souls.” More recently, scholars theorizing a “new animism” have foregrounded the sophisticated nature of animisms (there is no single “animism” but rather culture-specific animisms).” ref
“For animists, the world is filled with “persons” only some of whom are human. An ongoing system of relationships and regulated behavior steers engagements between human persons and such “other-thanhuman-persons” as tree-people, seal-people, and stone-people. Shamans are often key figures in these relationally-driven ontologies, acting as mediators, working to maintain harmony: for example, if a hunter offends an animal by using inappropriate etiquette, resulting in
the hunter falling ill, a shaman negotiates between the offended “spirit” of the dead animal in order to return the stolen “soul” of the hunter and so restore social harmony between the affected “persons.” Among the Ojibwe and speakers of cognate Algonkian language, a grammatical distinction is made between animate and inanimate genders, not between male and female genders. Persons and personal actions are talked about in a different way from objects and impersonal events. As demonstrated in the work of such scholars as Marjorie Balzer, Marie Czaplicka, and Bernard Saladin D’Anglure, these and other indigenous conceptions of gender, sex, and sexual orientation, tend to disrupt Western binary conventions of “male” and “female,” conflations of sex and gender, and heterosexuality as normative.” ref
“Shamanic behavior necessitates a broadening of the notion of gender to be more fluid and dynamic, to include not only male and female but also various mediating identities. Czaplicka, for example, notes that Siberian shamans are a “third class,” separate from males and females, and Saladin D’Anglure proposes a “ternary” model for Inuit shamans wherein shamans are “in-between” persons (by persuasion or initiation) who embody a “third gender” due to their ability to mediate. The “third gender” status of Inuit shamans is part of wider gender concepts: children are understood to have
decided which gender to be before or at birth, their genitalia adapting to their decision. Other children are given the name of a deceased relative of the opposite gender, performing that gender identity for the time that they hold the name. “Third gender” (shamans in other instances may have a fourth or even multiple gender identity) overlaps in some examples with homosexuality, with the marriage of some shamans to same-sex “spirit” partners involving, in some examples, homosexual marriages in the “ordinary world.” Shamans’ costumes may combine features peculiar to the dress of both men and women. Early explorers assumed biological males dressed in women’s clothing (some of whom were shamans) were transvestites, and the pejorative French term berdache (“male prostitute,” “transvestite”) entered anthropological literature. The more sensitive “two-spirit” was proposed by Native Americans in the 1990s, referring to the individual having two spirits, although “changing ones” more successfully avoids reproducing a Western binary opposition.” ref
“Cross-dressing may indicate shamans’ difference from the rest of the community or show that they have formed an intimate, sexual and/or marital relationship with a nonhuman person of the same gender. Transvestitism may be temporary, a part of specific performances, or permanent as a sign of a distinctive everyday identity. Shamans may undertake marriage to non-human persons of the same gender as themselves and, for example, a female shaman may sometimes be “male” in relation to a spirit wife: a Sora shaman of the Indian subcontinent marries a man, and the “spirit son” of her predecessor, who is her own aunt. The tightly bound relationship between shamans and their other world helpers, especially those with whom they form sexual and/or marital relationships, may mean that secrets are kept, and the revealing of such secrets may lead to the withdrawal of assistance from a nonhuman helper, thus compromising the shaman’s ability to shamanize. Sex has been theorized as key to understanding shamanism by Roberte Hamayon, who attends to shamans, sex, and gender in Siberian shamanism. She argues that shamanic séances among the Evenk and Buryats are “sexual encounters” in themselves. She views the “marriage” between shamans and their non-human helpers
as more significant in understanding what these shamans do than the “ecstasy,” “mastery of spirits,” “altered states” or “journeying” emphasized by other scholars.” ref
“Conclusion: Early work on Siberian shamans by Sergei Shirokogoroff demonstrated that shamans may be either (or both)
“hostages to the spirits” and their sexual and/or marital partners. Shamans might, then, be defined as people who welcome “possession” as an embodiment of (sexual and/or marital) relationship with otherthan-human-persons. As the most effective mediators, then–between genders, between humans and nonhumans, the living and dead, and so on–shamans mediate between all the many constituent elements, beings, and situations of the cosmos. They thereby actively accomplish meanings through the construction of relations between human and other-than-human worlds.” ref
There are other clothing resembling miniskirts that have been identified by archaeologists and historians as far back as 3,390–3,370 years ago. But this is much older. ref
Leopard claw-bone pendant from the Possible Woman Shaman/Priestess burial with the plastered and painted woman’s head in her arms that is several generations removed. She was buried under the floor of the history house (house with multiple burials beyond that of the connected family) with the twin facing leopards at Catal Huyuk. Ref
“From about 7500 B.C.E to 5700 B.C.E., early farmers grew wheat, barley, and peas, and raised sheep, goats, and cattle. At its height, some 10,000 people lived there. Among its more noteworthy features, Çatalhöyük’s inhabitants were obsessed with plaster, lining their walls with it, using it as a canvas for artwork, and even coating the skulls of their dead to recreate the lifelike countenances of their loved ones.” ref
“Bad Dürrenberg is a modest spa town in eastern Germany, perched on a bluff overlooking the Saale River. Among the finds that emerged from the grave that afternoon was a second, tiny skull belonging to an infant of less than a year old, found between the thighs of the adult burial. Other unusual items included the delicate antlers of a roe deer, still attached to part of the skull, that could have been worn as a headdress. Henning also unearthed a polished stone ax similar to a type known from other sites in the area and 31 microliths, small flint blades barely an inch long.” ref
“In the 1950s, researchers reexamined the skeleton and, based on the shape of the pelvis and other bones, suggested that they belonged to a woman. The copious grave goods—in addition to the antler headdress, blades, mussel shells, and boar tusks there were hundreds of other artifacts, including boars’ teeth, turtle shells, and bird bones—clearly marked the burial as special. The flints and other finds were firmly rooted in the world of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who lived between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago. The few Mesolithic graves that had been unearthed in Europe contained a flint blade or two, at most. In comparison, the Bad Dürrenberg grave was uniquely rich for the period.” ref
“It wasn’t until the late 1970s that radiocarbon dating showed that the bones were 9,000 years old, predating farming in central Europe by about 2,000 years and confirming earlier suspicions that the grave dated to the Mesolithic period. Surrounded by tall steel shelves storing artifacts and remains from other graves in the region, they set about excavating the blocks. They worked slowly, sieving the soil from the original dig, and recovered hundreds of additional artifacts. The new finds included dozens more microliths, and additional bird, mammal, and reptile bones. The team also found missing pieces of the woman’s skeleton and more tiny bones belonging to the baby buried with her.” ref
“The shaman lived at a pivotal point in Europe’s past when the climate was changing, pushing people to adapt. People adapted quickly, becoming less mobile and more specialized in response to the changing environment. In the absence of herds of mammoth and reindeer to hunt, such specialization let them wrest more fish and game out of rivers and forests while remaining in a smaller territory. Meller believes that the Bad Dürrenberg burial is proof that human spirituality became more specialized at this time, too, with specific people in the community delegated to interact with the spirit world, often with the help of trances or psychoactive substances. Combined with the earlier analysis of the woman’s grave, the team’s new finds and meticulous look at her bones painted a more complete picture of the shaman. They conjectured that, from an early age, she had been singled out as different from other members of her community.” ref
“Even in death, her unusually rich grave marked her as exceptional. Earlier scholars, including Grünberg, had speculated that she was a shaman who served as an intermediary between her community and the spirit world, and Meller says that the new finds prove it beyond a doubt. In her role as a shaman, the woman would have interceded with supernatural powers on behalf of the sick and injured or to ensure success in the hunt. “You travel in other worlds on behalf of your people with the help of your spirit animal,” says Meller. Just as some people in the Mesolithic specialized in fishing or carving, the Bad Dürrenberg woman specialized in accessing the spirit world. “She must have had talents or skills that were highly esteemed in society,” Jöris says.” ref
“As part of the new archaeological project that started with the reexcavation of the grave in 2019, researchers took yet another look at the woman’s skeleton. A closer examination of her teeth showed that they had been deliberately filed down, exposing the pulp inside. This would have been extremely painful and would have produced a steady flow of blood as the pulp died. The woman would have had to keep the now hollow teeth scrupulously clean to avoid deadly infections. This excruciating procedure, Meller says, might have been a pain ritual to establish her as an interlocutor with the spirit world. Upon close inspection, the woman’s spine revealed a deformity that may have further enhanced her mystical aura.” ref
“According to Orschiedt and Walter Wohlgemuth, head of radiology at Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, the woman had an unusual nub of bone on the inside of her second cervical vertebra that would have compressed a vital artery when she tilted her head back and to the left, cutting off blood flow to her brain. The result was likely an extremely rare condition called nystagmus, a rhythmic twitch of the eyeball that is impossible to deliberately reproduce and would have appeared uncanny to the people in her community. She would have been able to switch it off by angling her head forward to relieve pressure on the artery. “She could deliberately put her head back and induce nystagmus,” Meller says. “It must have added greatly to her credibility as a shaman.” ref
“The woman’s skeleton and the remains of the baby she cradled also contain invisible clues to their identities. Techniques of ancient DNA analysis unavailable just a decade ago have made it possible to answer other questions. Among the finds recovered from the soil by Meller’s team was an inner ear bone belonging to the baby. Not much bigger than a fingernail, this pyramid-shaped bone, which protects fragile parts of the ear, is unusually dense and preserves genetic material particularly well. The shaman’s inner ear bone, too, was preserved along with her skull, which was found during the original excavation. DNA analysis conducted by geneticist Wolfgang Haak of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology confirmed that the shaman was female, as had first been suggested by researchers in the 1950s, and added color to her portrait. Genes for skin pigmentation and hair and eye color showed she was probably dark-skinned, dark-haired, and light-eyed, a far cry from the blond Aryan man imagined by the original excavators. The baby, the researchers found, was a boy.” ref
“DNA extracted from the inner ear bones of the woman and the baby also helped establish their relationship to each other, which was more complex than supposed. They were not, in fact, mother and child, as archaeologists had expected. “It was always assumed the baby was hers,” says Haak. “And it turns out that he’s not.” Instead, the two were distantly related on the mother’s side, second cousins, perhaps, or the woman may have been the baby’s great-great grandmother. Because she was only in her 30s when she died, the latter would mean the baby was placed inside the grave long after her death. “Maybe she took care of the baby in her role as a healer,” Meller says, and was buried with him after they both died at the same time.” ref
“The grave itself, along with the objects deposited inside, provided the final clues to understanding the power of the shaman’s mystical abilities. Researchers believe that the animal remains placed in the burial might have had symbolic meaning. Prey species such as deer and bison or aurochs may have been meant to evoke shamanic rituals intended to provide luck in the hunt. Marsh birds such as cranes, whose bones were also found in the grave, were the ultimate boundary-crossers, capable of flying in the heavens, nesting on the ground, and swimming underwater—a power the shaman might have called upon in her efforts to cross into the spirit world. The birds’ annual migration might also have had mystical significance, as they disappeared in winter and returned each spring. Turtles, whose shells were found by the dozen among the grave offerings, also cross from land to water. “It’s mind-boggling the spectrum of animal remains there are,” Haak says. “It’s a bit of a zoo.” ref
“The team’s analysis of the grave goods further showed that the shaman was connected to a wider community. The flints they found in the block were fashioned from more than 10 different rock sources, some located more than 50 miles away. “What goes in the grave is about how highly regarded she was and how big her community was,” Jöris says. “There were probably people who came from a long distance away for her burial.” During the reexcavation of the shaman’s grave, the team also turned their attention to the area surrounding the burial. As part of preparations for planting trees for the garden show, researchers dug dozens of test holes, but unearthed no other bones or Mesolithic artifacts.” ref
“Barely three feet away from the location of the shaman’s carefully arranged grave, however, they did uncover another small pit containing a pair of red deer antler headdresses. Both headdresses were pointed toward the shaman’s grave, a position scholars believe is unlikely to have been accidental. The fact that an offering had been made to the departed shaman came as no surprise. But radiocarbon dates the team gathered in 2022 indicate that these gifts are around 600 years younger than the woman’s grave, meaning they were placed there more than 20 generations after her death. This antler offering was made around 8,400 years ago and coincided with a dramatic cold spell in prehistoric Europe. Perhaps, Meller says, later shamans called on their distant ancestor for help in troubled times.” ref
“That a preliterate society may have preserved not only the woman’s memory but also recalled the precise location of her grave for so long is a display of sophistication not usually associated with hunter-gatherers. Meller believes that the idea that Mesolithic peoples lacked social complexity does these cultures a great disservice. The impressive level of attention to her grave, in her own time as well as centuries later, speaks to the significance of the shaman herself. “She was so charismatic and powerful,” Meller says, “that people were still talking about this woman six centuries after she died.” With a book on the team’s research published last year and plans for an updated exhibition in the museum in the works, people are talking about her nearly 10,000 years later, too.” ref
Women/Feminine-Natured (Intersex/Genderqueer/Transgender/LGBTQI+ (or non-heteronormative) people)
As the first Shamans at lest 30,000 years ago?
- Around 500,000 – 233,000 years ago, Oldest Anthropomorphic art (Pre-animism) is Related to Female
- Pre-Animism: Portable Rock Art at least 300,000-year-old
- Modern Humans start around 50,000 years ago Helped by Feminisation
- Totemism: an approximately 50,000-year-old belief system?
- Totemism and Shamanism Dispersal Theory Expressed around 50,000 to 30,000 years ago
- 45,000-Year-Old Bone Pinpoints Era of Human-Neanderthal Sex
- 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?
- Religious Art: “Venus” More Than Sex or Motherhood
- Yes, Your Male God is Ridiculous
- Me and My Gender Diversity: Genderqueer, Intersex, and Male.
- Homophobia, Transphobia, and Genderqueerphobia Hurts Us All
- Prehistoric Child Burials Begin Around 34,000 Years Ago
- Early Shamanism around 34,000 to 20,000 years ago: Sungar (Russia) and Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic)
- 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
oldest Saman burrials
31,000 – 20,000 years ago Oldest Shaman was Female, Buried with the Oldest Portrait Carving
Shaman burial in Israel 12,000 years ago and the Shamanism Phenomena
9,000-8,500 year old Female shaman Bad Dürrenberg Germany
Human Religion Stage #3: Shamanism
Shamanism to me, is semi-holistic, between Animism and Totemism. Shamanism is somewhat neofeminine, referring to “new”‘ forms of femininistic style in nature compared to Totemism, tending to go slightly back to a more animalistic sensibility than a totemistic one. Though it has elements if totemism as well where a shaman evokes animal images as spirit guides, omens, and message-bearers including throw bones/runes. Things in nature can be accessed by a shaman who is believed to have sacred access to, and influence in, the world of benevolent and malevolent spirits. Most believe in spirits, existing somewhere on the animism/pantheism spectrum, they actively pursue contact with the “spirit-world” in altered states of consciousness by drumming, dance, or the use of sacred plants some with euphoric or hallucinatory effect. Pantheism is the belief that all reality is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent god. Pantheists do not believe in a personal or anthropomorphic god and hold a broad range of doctrines differing with regards to the forms of and relationships between divinity and reality. Though there are a variety of definitions of pantheism, ranging from a theological and philosophical position concerning God on one side as a religious position in this way, is expressed as a polar opposite of atheism. Whereas on the other hand, some hold that pantheism is a non-religious philosophical position that can be compatible with science. To them, according to the World Pantheist Movement, Scientific pantheism is the only form of spirituality we know of which fully embraces science as part of the human exploration of Earth and Cosmos. And, such pantheism, in general, may hold the view that the Universe (in the sense of the totality of all existence) and God are identical (implying a denial of the personality and transcendence of God). They assert that scientific pantheism respects the rights not just of humans, but of all living beings. It focuses on saving the planet rather than “saving” souls. To them, it encourages you to make the most and best of your one life here. It values reason and the scientific method over adherence to ancient scriptures. Scientific pantheism moves beyond “God” and defines itself by positives. Shamanism may have something like deities, though they tend to be more like pantheism or metaphorical deism/polytheism. Deism is a philosophical position that posits that God (or in some cases, gods) does not interfere directly with the world; conversely it can also be stated as a system of belief which posits God’s existence as the cause of all things, and admits His perfection (and usually the existence of natural law and Providence) but rejects Divine revelation or direct intervention of God in the universe by miracles. It also rejects revelation as a source of religious knowledge and asserts that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of a single creator or absolute principle of the universe. Shamanism may have many supernatural beings both animal and human-like Animism animal deities are common but the more anthropomorphic ones that are human like have a different level of power. Anthropomorphic human-like ones can be both somewhat personal and nonpersonal with a shared metaphorical ancestor grandmother/grandfather or great grandmother/grandfather deism/polytheism, not as much of what we think about like a god today. The wounded healer is an archetype, such as a shamanistic crisis, a rite of passage for shamans-to-be, commonly involving physical illness (pushes them to the brink of death, thought to give them access to the spirit world) and/or psychological crisis but can also involve a disformity or abnormality. My art of the bird could be a chicken, and the shake is viewed as dangerous but also useful, in fact, the usefulness of animals is sacralized, even including animals as a sacrificial use in shamanic rituals for at least around 5,000 years ago, using animals with great respect. ref, ref, ref
“Religion is an Evolved Product”
Neanderthals ‘kept our early ancestors out of Europe’
Two Paleolithic harpoons, at least 60,000 years old, decorated with geometric figures discovered at Veyrier near Geneva. Which is younger than a beautifully-carved 90,000-year-old bone harpoon used to hunt giant catfish in present-day the Democratic Republic of the Congo. ref
Our ancestors had interbred with Neanderthals 55,000 years ago, possibly in the Middle East.
Modern humans and Neanderthals interbred in Europe, an analysis of 40,000-year-old DNA suggests. ref
50,000-year-old Skull May Show Human-Neanderthal Hybrids Originated in Levant, not Europe as Thought
- Research into ancient genomics and archaeology has shed light into the first humans in Europe, who appear in the record approximately 45,000 years ago. Neanderthals disappeared from the region 5,000 years later. The nature of their relationship is being revealed with every new discovery and breakthrough. ref
- Neanderthals and modern humans belong to the same genus (Homo) and inhabited the same geographic areas in Asia for 30,000–50,000 years; genetic evidence indicate while they may have interbred with non-African modern humans, they are separate branches of the human family tree (separate species). ref
- So, around the time we fully interact with Neanderthals in Europe Totemism emerges about 50,000 years ago. And, around the time all interact with Neanderthals is over we see Shamanism emerge about 30,000 years ago, could this just be a coincidence, I don’t really think so.
Upper Paleolithic (totemism in Europe between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago)
“Cultures Aurignacian Associated with Paleo-humans/Paleolithic lifestyle“
Ust’-Ishim man 45,000-year-old remains of a male hunter-gatherer,
(I presume a totemist or connected to the firsts totemic peoples by around 50,000 years ago
then by 30,000 years ago are shamanistic-totemists)
one of the early modern humans to inhabit western Siberia.
Ust’-Ishim man has been classified as belonging to Y-DNA haplogroup K2a*, belonged to mitochondrial DNA haplogroup R*. Before 2016 they had been classified as U*. Both of these haplogroups and descendant subclades are now found among populations throughout Eurasia, Oceania and The Americas. When compared to other ancient remains, Ust’-Ishim man is more closely related, in terms of autosomal DNA to Tianyuan man, found near Beijing and dating from 42,000 to 39,000 years ago; Mal’ta boy (or MA-1), a child who lived 24,000 years ago along the Bolshaya Belaya River near today’s Irkutsk in Siberia, or; La Braña man – a hunter-gatherer who lived in La Braña (modern Spain) about 8,000 years ago. ref
- Grave of the Middle East’s Oldest Witch/Female Shaman
- Asian Shamanism
- Australian Aboriginal Shamanism
- Austronesia, beliefs such as ancestor worship, animism, and shamanism are also practiced. ref
- Shamanism in Europe
- Shamanism Arctic polar region
Totemism and Shamanism Dispersal Theory
To me, totemism seems to have fully developed in Europe (likely western) but could have further developed pre-totemism from Africa, such as seen in the Stone Snake of South Africa: “first human worship” 70,000 years ago. Thus, I am also not sure that the European Totemists could just have been ones that had left Africa or was formed when we interacted with Neandertals in the middle east then splitting from there as early totemists but or the northern peoples caring Desonivin DNA could have come from the north with my proposed Europe Totemism as it seems Totemism hit Indonesia around 30,000 ago or so and possibly then spread to Papua New Guinea and presumably Australia.
I hypothesize that both Totemism and Shamanism Disperse somewhat together as a complementary set of varied beliefs as either one of two main persuasions, totemistic-(female leaning, to me, more geared to “Group-totemism” Acephalous/Gynocentrism–Egalitarian–Equalitarian/Matrilineal–Matriarchy)-shamanism and/or shamanistic-(male leaning, to me, more geared to “Individual-Clan-totemism” Acephalous/Hierarchical–Heterarchy–Homoarchy/Patrilineal–Patriarchy)-Totemism which this must be thought of as only in a general kind of way, rather than only one-type each or that both where varied. I think, likely both held diversity almost from the beginning, so they latter becoming even more diverse through tome also seems logical, which after that became more area stylized or splitting of the two. Such as, a possibility that true totemism as I think fully developed in Europe, not Africa: approximately 50,000-year-old belief system and that Shamanism: an approximately 30,000-year-old belief system by way of Siberia only to later find its way I think through Turkey to the Middle East maybe by around 12,000 years ago, referenced in the shaman burial of that time than out from there to Africa by way of Neolithic farmers from western Eurasia who, about 8,000 years ago, brought agriculture to Europe then began to return to Africa aided by DNA info from a 4,500-year-old hunter-gatherer, known as Mota man, were found in a cave. ref And at least by 3,000 years ago this southern migrations had spread to Africa, as it was by 3,000 years ago Europen DNA took that long to get to southern Africa through “The widespread use of iron weapons which replaced bronze weapons rapidly disseminated throughout the Near East (North Africa, southwest Asia) by around 3,000 years ago.” ref As well as where both Early Shamanism around 30,000 to 20,000 years ago: Sungar (Russia) and Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic) taken along with European totemism by way of Siberia through Austronesians migrations) all the way to Aboriginal Religion.
- Description of Matriarchy – Matriarchy.Info
- Matriarchy in China: mothers, queens, goddesses and shamans
- Medicine in Matriarchal Society
- Matriarchal Studies – Anthropology – Oxford Bibliographies
- Matriarchy | Rain Queens: Female leadership traditions of Africa
- China’s Last but one matriarchy: The Jino of Yunnan
- Matriarchal: Pre-Islam Arab cultures in Arabic Peninsula?
- List of matrilineal or matrilocal societies
- Shamans of the 20th Century
- 6 Modern Societies Where Women Rule
- 5 Latin American Matriarchal Societies You Never Knew About
- Setting the record straight: Matrilineal does not equal matriarchal
- Heterarchy and the Analysis of Complex Societies
- Gynocentrism & Matriarchal Societies
- Matrilineal society
Group totemism was traditionally common among peoples in Africa, India, Oceania (especially in Melanesia), North America, and parts of South America. These peoples include, among others, the Australian Aborigines, the African Pygmies, and various Native American peoples—most notably the Northwest Coast Indians (predominantly fishermen), California Indians, and Northeast Indians. Moreover, group totemism is represented in a distinctive form among the Ugrians and west Siberians (hunters and fishermen who also breed reindeer) as well as among tribes of herdsmen in North and Central Asia. ref
Group/Clan Totemism a clan is a group claiming common descent in the male or female line. They share a common relationship with 1 or more natural phenomena. For the members of this unit, the clan, the totem is a symbol of membership of the unit. It is recognised for the members of this clan and those of other clans. This totem has strong territorial and mythological ties associated with it, and it is believed that it can warn them of approaching danger. Some distinguish between matrilineal social clan totemism and patrilineal clan totemism. Matrilineal clan totemism is widespread throughout eastern Australia – Queensland, New South Wales, western Victoria and eastern South Australia. There is also a small area in the southwest of Western Australia. The genera translation of the word for this totem is ‘flesh’ or ‘meat’ – the person is ‘of one flesh’ with his totem. The totems connected with matrilineal phratries of western Arnhem Land are not the center of cult life, and the members of the phratry don’t have a special attitude towards it. The totems of the matrilineal social clans are the center of cult life. An example among the Dieri is the mardu. It is really an avunculineal (of the mother’s brother’s line) cult totem. Patrilineal clan cult totemism, bindara, is also found in this tribe. Patrilineal clan totemism was present in parts of Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Cape York, coastal areas of New South Wales and Queensland, central Victoria, along the lower Murray and the Coorong district and among the Lake Eyre groups. The best example was among the Jaraldi, Dangani, etc. and northeastern Arnhem Land. In eastern Arnhem Land a combination of aspects, including non-totemic, were associated with the clan. A clan has several totemic cults, and these can be associated with more than one linguistic group. In central Australia totemic combinations were apparent but less strongly so. ref
Individual totemism is widely disseminated. It is found not only among tribes of hunters and harvesters but also among farmers and herdsmen. Individual totemism is especially emphasized among the Australian Aborigines and the American Indians. Studies of shamanism indicate that individual totemism may have predated group totemism, as a group’s protective spirits were sometimes derived from the totems of specific individuals. To some extent, there also exists a tendency to pass on an individual totem as hereditary or to make taboo the entire species of animal to which the individual totem belongs. ref
Shamanism: an approximately 30,000-year-old belief system
37,000 years ago at the site of Kostenki 14 (also known as Markina Gora) in western Russia, genome of a man who was buried there shows, that once modern humans had dispersed out of Africa and into Eurasia, they separated at least sometime before 37,000-years ago into at least three populations, whose descendants would develop the unique features that reflect the core of the diversity of non-African modern humans. Moreover, after then, despite major climatic fluctuations, one of these groups – Palaeolithic Europeans – persisted as a population, ebbing and flowing by moments of contraction and expansion, but persisting intertwined until the arrival of farmers from the Middle East in the last 8,000 years, with whom they mixed extensively. The Kostyonki-Borshchyovo archaeological complex is an extended Upper Paleolithic (Aurignacian to Gravettian) site. The Kostenki burial and other ancient genomes show that for 30,000-years there was a single meta-population in Europe, consisting of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer groups that split up, mixed, dispersed and changed. Only when farmers from the Near East arrived approximately 8,000 years ago, did the structure of the European population change significantly. DNA from a male hunter-gatherer from Kostenki-12 date to around 30,000 years ago and died aged 20–25. His maternal lineage was found to be mtDNA haplogroup U2. He was buried in an oval pit in a crouched position and covered with red ochre. Kostenki 12 was later found to belong to the patrilineal Y-DNA haplogroup C1* (C-F3393). A male from Kostenki-14 (Markina Gora), who lived approximately 35–40,000 BP, was also found to belong to mtDNA haplogroup U2. His Y-DNA haplogroup was C1b* (C-F1370). The Kostenki-14 genome represents early evidence for the separation of Western Eurasian and East Asian lineages. It was found to have a close relationship to both “Mal’ta boy” (24 ka) of central Siberia (Ancient North Eurasian) and to the later Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of Europe and western Siberia, as well as with a basal population ancestral to Early European Farmers, but not to East Asians. ref, ref
34,000-30,000-year-old to remains, carbon analysis dates between 34,050-30,550 and by DNA analysis at 34,000. The mortuary site contains a few extremely elaborate burials one of which involved a juvenile and an adolescent, approximately 10 and 12 years old, buried head to head. The children had the same mtDNA, which may indicate the same maternal lineage. The individuals at Sungir are genetically closest to each other and show closest genetic affinity to the individuals from Kostenki, while showing closer affinity to the individual from Kostenki 12 than to the individual from Kostenki 14. The Sungir individuals descended from a lineage that was related to the individual from Kostenki 14, but were not directly related. The individual from Kostenki 12 was also found to be closer to the Sungir individuals than to the individual from Kostenki 14. The Sungir individuals also show close genetic affinity to various individuals belonging to Vestonice Cluster buried in a Gravettian context, such as those excavated from Dolní Věstonice. And mtDNA analysis shows that the four individuals tested from Sungir belong to mtDNA Haplogroup U. ref
31,000 – 20,000 years ago Oldest Shaman was Female, Buried with the Oldest Portrait Carving
“Gravettian Cultures” (to me, connects to the birth of Shamanism)
Around, Dates: 33,000 to 21,000 BP
The Gravettian was an archaeological industry of the European Upper Paleolithic that succeeded the Aurignacian circa 33,000 years ago. They seem to dissipate or make transfer changes from 22,000 years ago, close to the Last Glacial Maximum, although some elements lasted until around 17,000 years ago. At this point, it was generally replaced abruptly by the Solutrean in France and Spain, and developed into or continued as the Epigravettian in Italy, the Balkans, Ukraine, and Russia. They are known for their Venus figurines, which were typically made as either ivory or limestone carvings. The Gravettian culture was first identified at the site of La Gravette in Southwestern France. The Gravettians were hunter-gatherers who lived in a bitterly cold period of European prehistory, and Gravettian lifestyle was shaped by the climate. Pleniglacial environmental changes forced them to adapt. West and Central Europe were extremely cold during this period. Archaeologists usually describe two regional variants: the western Gravettian, known mainly from cave sites in France, Spain and Britain, and the eastern Gravettian in Central Europe and Russia. The eastern Gravettians, which include the Pavlovian culture, were specialized mammoth hunters, whose remains are usually found not in caves but in open air sites. Gravettian culture thrived on their ability to hunt animals. They utilized a variety of tools and hunting strategies. Compared to theorized hunting techniques of Neanderthals and earlier human groups, Gravettian hunting culture appears much more mobile and complex. They lived in caves or semi-subterranean or rounded dwellings which were typically arranged in small “villages”. Gravettians are thought to have been innovative in the development of tools such as blunted black knives, tanged arrowheads , and boomerangs. Other innovations include the use of woven nets and stone-lamps.[9] Blades and bladelets were used to make decorations and bone tools from animal remains. Sites including CPM II, CPM III, Casal de Felipe, and Fonte Santa (all in Spain) have evidence the use of blade and bladelet technology during the period. The objects were often made of quartz and rock crystals, and varied in terms of platforms, abrasions, endscrapers and burins. They were formed by hammering bones and rocks together until they formed sharp shards, in a process known as lithic reduction. The blades were used to skin animals or sharpen sticks. ref
30,000 Years Ago – (Eurasia), found evidence that the earliest human burial practices varied widely, with some graves are ornate while the vast majority were fairly plain but it seems to be a more common ritual showing the further solidification of ritualizing was blooming. Overall, between 35,000 years ago and 10,000 years ago there is a wide variation in human burial customs. 1
29,000 – 25,000 years ago– (Eurasia), the Pavlovian is an Upper Paleolithic culture, a variant of the Gravettian, that existed in the region of Moravia, northern Austria and southern Poland around 29,000 – 25,000 years BP. The culture used sophisticated stone age technology to survive in the tundra on the fringe of the ice sheets around the Last Glacial Maximum. Its economy was principally based on the hunting of mammoth herds for meat, fat fuel, hides for tents and large bones and tusks for building winter shelters. Its name is derived from the village of Pavlov, in the Pavlov Hills, next to Dolní Věstonice in southern Moravia. The site was excavated in 1952 by the Czechoslovakian archaeologist Bohuslav Klima. Another important Pavlovian site is Předmostí, now part of the town of Přerov. Excavation has yielded flint implements, polished and drilled stone artifacts, bone spearheads, needles, digging tools, flutes, bone ornaments, drilled animal teeth, and seashells. Art or religious finds are bone carvings and figurines of humans and animals made of mammoth tusk, stone, and fired clay. Textile impression made into wet clay give the oldest proof of the existence of weaving by humans. ref
27,000 Years Ago – (Eurasia), Gravettian culture extends across a large geographic region but is relatively homogeneous until about 27,000 years ago. They developed burial rites, which included the inclusion of simple, purpose-built, offerings and or personal ornaments owned by the deceased, placed within the grave or tomb. Surviving Gravettian art includes numerous cave paintings and small, portable Venus figurines made from clay or ivory, as well as jewelry objects. The fertility deities mostly date from the early period, and consist of over 100 known surviving examples. They conform to a very specific physical type of large breasts, broad hips, and prominent posteriors. The statuettes tend to lack facial details, with limbs that are often broken off. During the ppost-glacialperiod, evidence of the culture begins to disappear from northern Europe but was continued in areas around the Mediterranean. ref
27,000 Years Ago – (Austria), Krems-Wachtberg in Lower Austria, Two separate pits, one containing the remains of two infants and the other of a single baby, were discovered at the same Stone Age camp. Infants may have been considered equal members of prehistoric society, according to an analysis of burial pits, as Both graves were decorated with beads and covered in red ochre, a pigment commonly used by prehistoric peoples as a grave offering when they buried adults. ref
12,707–12,556-year-old child remains at a burial site in North America. Anzick-1 is the name given to the remains of Paleo-Indian male infant found in western Montana, remains revealed Siberian ancestry and a close genetic relationship to modern Native Americans, including those of Central and South America. These findings support the hypothesis that modern Native Americans are descended from Asian populations who crossed Beringia between 32,000 and 18,000 years ago. buried under numerous tools: 100 stone tools and 15 remnants of tools made of bone. The site contained hundreds of stone projectile points, blades, and bifaces, as well as the remains of two juveniles. Some of the artifacts were covered in red ocher. The stone points were identified as part of the Clovis Complex because of their distinct shape and size. ref
11,500-year-old child remains of a six-week-old baby girl in a burial pit in central Alaska whos DNA indicated there was just a single wave of migration into the Americas across a land bridge, now submerged, that spanned the Bering Strait and connected Siberia to Alaska during the Ice Age. The girl was found alongside remains of an even-younger female infant, possibly a first cousin, whose genome the researchers could not sequence. Both were covered in red ochre and next to decorated antler rods. ref
“The Rainbow-Serpent (totemistic) Myth of Australia”
9,000 years ago – (Isreal) site discovered in Motza, at the foot of the Jerusalem hills. The site, featuring dozens of stone houses, grander buildings that may have been temples, and skeletal remains. Domestic houses in which the hoi polloi lived didn’t have particularly invested flooring beyond dirt or basic plaster. The public places in prehistoric Motza had better plastering, colored red. one thing they ate that may alude to cultural connections is sheep, which were only dometicated around 10,000 to 11,000 years ago and not exactly next door, but in Anatolia. The floors of the houses were made of tightly-packed plaster which seems to have been kept clean, leaving behind few clues from the inhabitants’ daily lives. But underneath the plaster floors at least 10 people were found buried, lying in fetal positions. A third were men. A third were women. And, a third were children and babies. Which shows, Khalaily explains, that for the first known time in human history, children were considered something other than disposable. “During the transitional time between hunting and gathering to settlement, the attitude towards children, in life and death, changed,” he explains the theory. No earlier burials of children have been found in the ariea. ref
7,000 years ago – (Denmark) site at Vedbaek Denmark, the so-called Vedbæk Finds from the Bøgebakken archaeological site, a Mesolithic cemetery of the Ertebølle culture. An example of the findings of this culture cemetery include the bodies of a young woman with a necklace made of teeth and her newborn baby. The child is cradled in the wing of a swan with a flint knife at its hip. The brief statistical findings of the cemetery are as follows; 22 individual bodies (4 newborns), 17 of the adults buried could be aged – 8 died before reaching the age of 20. There were 9 men, 5 of them over the age of 50, and 8 women: 2 died before the age of 20, 3 living to over 40. Two women died in childbirth (including the young woman mention above) and were buried with their newborns beside them. ref
Grave of Siberian noblewoman with a child up to 4,500 years old
Around 3,950-3,539 years ago, at Sidon, Lebanon. From 19 discrete burial units a total of 31 individuals, included ‘warrior’ burials in constructed graves containing bronze weapons, with high mortality during infancy and early childhood and a peak in adult mortality during early adulthood. There is a conspicuous occurrence of unusual dental traits. Jar burials, all found with remains of sub-adult individuals, represent a burial practice applied to children of a wide age range. Many burials are associated with faunal remains, mostly of sheep or goats, but also of large ungulates. The burial jars found in copper-age Sidon had all contained adults. However, there is burial of a child that had been interred with a necklace around its neck. The fact of the child’s burial, with a funerary vessel and jewelry, could be indicative of status, or of the value attributed to children. ref, ref
3,500-Year-Old Child Burials Unearthed at Ancient Egyptian
Gender Identity
Gender Identity: Unlike biological sex—which is assigned at birth and based on physical characteristics—gender identity refers to a person’s innate, deeply felt sense of being male or female (sometimes even both or neither). While it is most common for a person’s gender identity to align with their biological sex, this is not always the case. A person’s gender identity can be different from their biological sex. Increased societal understanding and scientific research exploring the origins of gender are serving to expand formerly simplistic societal notions of limited gender categorization. Gender identity and other recently defined terms are ones that are more inclusive of these normal variations of gender. Because gender identity is internal and not always visible to others, it is something determined by the individual alone. Gender Variance/Gender Non-Conformity: Gender variance refers to behaviors and interests that fit outside of what we consider ‘normal’ for a child or adult’s assigned biological sex. We think of these people as having interests that are more typical of the “opposite” sex; in children, for example, a girl who insists on having short hair and prefers to play football with the boys, or a boy who wears dresses and wishes to be a princess. These are considered gender-variant or gender non-conforming behaviors and interests. It should be noted that gender nonconformity is a term not typically applied to children who have only a brief, passing curiosity in trying out these behaviors or interests. Gender “Non-Conformity” can be defined most simply as behavior and appearance that conforms to the social expectations for one’s assigned or believed/preserved gender. Gender non-conformity, then, is behaving and appearing in ways that are considered not typical for one’s gender. Gender non-conformity should not be confused sexual orientation. Gender nonconforming people are often assumed to also be lesbian, gay, or bisexual, etc. while gender conforming people are assumed to be heterosexual do to believed heteronormativity which can relate to heterocentricism. heteronormativity/heterocentricism assumes heterosexual unless something, like gender non-conformity, makes one think otherwise. Researchers have noted that there may be real differences in terms of gender between lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, and heterosexual people. In particular, there are higher rates of gender non-conformity in both childhood and adulthood among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and pansexual people than among heterosexual people. Nevertheless, it is important to note that gender non-conformity is not universal among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and pansexual people, nor is it absent among heterosexuals.
Transgender refers to an individual whose gender identity does not match their assigned birth sex. For example, a transgender person may self-identify as a woman but was born biologically male. Being transgender does not imply any specific sexual orientation (attraction to people of a specific gender). Therefore, transgender people may additionally identify as straight, gay, lesbian, or bisexual. In its broadest sense, the term transgender can encompass anyone whose identity or behavior falls outside of stereotypical gender norms. Science has Proved That Being Transgender Is Not a Phase. Our culture is undeniably uneducated about transgender individuals. At worst, this ignorance results in violent hate crimes and murders. In its most benevolent form, transgenderism is viewed as a “phase” or transgender individuals are regarded as “confused.” A new study, however, pushes back on these misconceptions by finding that transgender children identify with their gender identity as consistently as their cisgender peers. The study’s findings support what trans advocates have been saying for years: Being transgender is not a phase or a choice, but a consistent gender identity. The study indicated that transgender children’s responses were indistinguishable from the two groups of cisgender children, suggesting that trans and cisgender children identify with their gender in the same consistent ways.
Gender Fluidity conveys a wider, more flexible range of gender expression, with interests and behaviors that may even change from day to day. Gender fluid people do not feel confined by restrictive boundaries of stereotypical expectations of women and men. For some people, gender fluidity extends beyond behavior and interests, and actually serves to specifically define their gender identity. In other words, a person may feel they are more female on some days and more male on others, or possibly feel that neither term describes them accurately. Their identity is seen as being gender fluid.
Genderqueer is a term that is growing in usage, representing a blurring of the lines surrounding society’s rigid views of both gender identity and sexual orientation. Genderqueer people embrace a fluidity of gender expression that is not limiting. They may not identify as male or female, but as both, neither, or as a blend. Similarly, genderqueer is a more inclusive term with respect to sexual orientation. It does not limit a person to identifying strictly as heterosexual or homosexual. (Note: This term is NOT typically used in connection with gender identity in pre-adolescent children).
Bigender, bi-gender or dual-gender is a gender identity where the person moves between feminine and masculine gender identities and behaviors, possibly depending on context.
Non-Binary gender is an umbrella term covering any gender identity that doesn’t fit within the gender binary. The label may also be used by individuals wishing to identify as falling outside of the gender binary without being any more specific about the nature of their gender.
Gender Identity has broader historical connections such as how early humans became more feminine, which led to the birth of culture. The first is an analysis of fossilized skulls of our ancestors has found that brow ridges became significantly less prominent and male facial shape became more similar to that of females. They referred to this as craniofacial feminization, meaning that as Homo sapiens slimmed down their skulls became flatter and more “feminine” in shape. It is proposed that what happened were lower levels of testosterone, as there is a strong relationship between levels of this hormone and long faces with extended brow ridges, which we may perceive today as very “masculine” features. The other large effect lower levels of testosterone impart is individuals are less likely to be violent and have enhanced social tolerance. This feminization through self-domestication may not only have made humans more peaceful and evenly sized, but may have also produced a more sexually equal society. A recent study showed that in hunter-gatherer groups in the Congo and the Philippines decisions about where to live and with whom were made equally by both genders. Despite living in small communities, this resulted in hunter-gatherers living with a large number of individuals with whom they had no kinship ties. Thus, the argument is that this may have proved an evolutionary advantage for early human societies who became more feminine, as it would have fostered wider-ranging social networks and closer cooperation between unrelated individuals. The frequent movement and interaction between groups also fostered the sharing of innovations, which may have helped the spread of culture.
Gender Expression
Gender Expression: In contrast to gender identity, gender expression is external and is based on individual and societal conceptions and expectations. It encompasses everything that communicates our gender to others: clothing, hairstyles, body language, mannerisms, how we speak, how we play, and our social interactions and roles. Most people have some blend of masculine and feminine qualities that comprise their gender expression, and this expression can also vary depending on the social context i.e.; attire worn at work rather than play, hobbies or interests, etc. Color is a cue that effects how people interact with a child. The response of others to gender-specific colors of attire encourage what is socially designated as gender-appropriate behavior by that child. Stone observed that dressing a newborn in either blue or pink in America begins a series of interactions. Norms governing gender-appropriate attire are powerful. Gender-specific attire enhances the internalization of expectations for gender-specific behavior. Through the subtle and frequently nonverbal interactions with children regarding both their appearance and behavior, parents either encourage or discourage certain behaviors often related to dress that lead to a child’s development of their gender identity. When a boy decides he wants to play dress-up in skirts or makeup or a daughter chooses to play aggressive sports only with the boys, it would not be surprising to find the parents redirecting the child’s behavior into a more socially “acceptable” and gender-specific activity. Even the most liberal and open-minded parents can be threatened by their child not conforming to appropriate gender behaviors. Research has shown that children as young as two years of age classify people into gender categories based on their appearance. A person or behavior that deviates from these scripts of gender can be defined as unnatural or pathological.
A few points about Being Non-Binary can be expressed, such as its okay for Androgynous/Non-Binary people to live as their assigned gender when or as long as it suits them. It’s okay if they realizing that they don’t fit into the gender boxes marked ‘male’ or ‘female’ and do absolutely nothing about it. It is completely, one-hundred-percent acceptable to know you are non-binary and do absolutely nothing about it. You are not obliged to appear androgynous as such you have your whole life to work out your gender identity.
The only clues we have of paleolithic trans individuals would be by considering the societies of aboriginal peoples still living with stone age technologies. The few left remaining on the earth, in the rain forests of South America, or the remaining unspoiled lands of Africa, all have reverential positions for the transsexuals that are born to them. In such societies, trans individuals are considered magical, kin to the gods or spirits, and possessed of shamanic powers. Almost every society in history has had some name, role, or way of relating to non-heteronormativity and/or trans individuals from ancient Mesopotamia, Canaan, and Turkey to India, even to the present day. Some scholars assert that her role in myths as a gender transgressor, as a woman in a man’s lifestyle, she outrageously crossed gender boundaries and was used to support this in others. Inanna’s myths and her professional cult personnel may have offered a safe ideological and social space for those crossing gender and sexuality roles. This would seem evident given the evidence for same-sex behavior, transvestism, same-sex ritual, same-sex prostitution, and varying degrees of non-heterononnativity in the larger Mesopotamian culture. In ancient Rome existed the ‘Gallae’, Phrygian worshipers of the Goddess Cybele. Once decided on their choice of gender and religion, physically male Gallae ran through the streets and threw their own severed genitalia into open doorways, as a ritualistic act. The household receiving these remains considered them a great blessing. In return, the household would nurse the Gallae back to health. The Gallae then ceremoniously received female clothes, and assumed a female identity. Commonly, they would be dressed as brides, or in other splendid clothing. In India, ritual practices for transsexual individuals continue to the present day. Called Hijiras, this sect also worships a Goddess, and undergo a primitive sort of sex reassignment surgery. The Hijiras are treated in a rather hypocritical fashion within Indian society, however, in that they are both despised and revered at the same time. Hijiras often are paid to attend a bless weddings, and to act as spiritual and social advisers, but are also shunned as less than worthy eunuchs. Yet in other circumstances, such as social situations, they are accorded the status of true females. The Dine, or Navajos of the southwest United States, recognize three sexes instead of only two. For the Dine, there are Males, Females, and Nadles, which are considered somewhat both and neither. While those born intersexed or hermaphroditic are automatically considered Nadle, physically ‘normal’ individuals may define as Nadle based on their own self-definition of gender identity. The Nadle once possessed far greater respect before the Navaho were conquered and their culture all but obliterated by the forced assumption of Catholicism. Among the Sioux, the Winkte served much the same function, and individuals could assume the complete role of their preferred gender. Physical females lived as male warriors, and had wives, while physical males lived their lives completely as women. In Sioux society no special magic was associated with this, it was just considered a way of correcting a mistake of nature. Winkte would also perform primitive reassignment operations of a sort, and history records the process used by physical males: riding for days on a special hard saddle to crush the testicles and thus effectively castrate the individual. Native American in general usually have what is called Two Spirits which were male, female, and sometimes intersexed individuals who combined activities of both men and women with traits unique to their status as two spirits. In most tribes, they were considered neither men nor women; they occupied a distinct, alternative gender status. In tribes where male and female two-spirits were referred to with the same term, this status amounted to a third gender. In other cases, female two spirits were referred to with a distinct term and, therefore, constituted a fourth gender. Although there were important variations in two-spirit roles across North America, they share some common traits:
Specialized work roles. Male and female two-spirits were typically described in terms of their preference for and achievements in the work of the “opposite” sex or in activities specific to their role. Two spirits were experts in traditional arts—such as pottery making, basket weaving, and the manufacture and decoration of items made from leather. Among the Navajo, male two-spirits often became weavers, usually women&srquo;s work, as well as healers, which was a male role. By combining these activities, they were often among the wealthier members of the tribe. Female two spirits engaged in activities such as hunting and warfare, and became leaders in war and even chiefs.
Gender variation. A variety of other traits distinguished two spirits from men and women, including temperament, dress, lifestyle, and social roles.
Spiritual sanction. Two-spirit identity was widely believed to be the result of supernatural intervention in the form of visions or dreams and sanctioned by tribal mythology. In many tribes, two-spirit people filled special religious roles as healers, shamans, and ceremonial leaders.
Same-sex relations. Two spirits typically formed sexual and emotional relationships with non-two-spirit members of their own sex. Male and female two-spirits were often sexually active, forming both short- and long-term relationships. Among the Lakota, Mohave, Crow, Cheyenne, and others, two spirits were believed to be lucky in love, and able to bestow this luck on others.
34,000 years old Paleolithic dog or wolf-dog hybrid skulls found in Razboinichya Cave, Siberia
Dogs were domesticated between 9,000 and 34,000 years ago, suggesting the earliest dogs most likely arose when humans were still hunting and gathering – before the advent of agriculture around 10,000 years ago, according to an analysis of individual genomes of modern dogs and gray wolves. An international team of researchers, who published their report in PLoS Genetics Jan. 16, studied genomes of three gray wolves, one each from China, Croatia, and Israel – all areas thought to be possible geographic centers of dog domestication. They also studied dog genomes from an African basenji and an Australian dingo; both breeds come from places with no history of wolves, where recent mixing with wolves could not have occurred. Their findings revealed the three wolves were more closely related to each other than to any of the dogs. Likewise, the two dog genomes and a third boxer genome resembled each other more closely than the wolves. This suggests that modern dogs and gray wolves represent sister branches on an evolutionary tree descending from an older, common ancestor. The results contrast with previous theories that speculated dogs evolved from one of the sampled populations of gray wolves.“The analysis revealed that domestication led to sizable pruning in population of early dogs and wolves.” ref
Dog Domestication and Emerging Sacred Mortuary Rituals around 16,500 to 12,000 years ago
Uyun al-Hammam, A Unique Human-Fox Burial from a Pre-Natufian Cemetery in Jordon Red ochre underlays the bones in a relatively continuous manner around the rib cage but occurred more as infrequent chunks around the other isolated bones. The Earliest Fox-Human Burial, Grave I included an articulated fox skull, lying on its right side, underneath the articulated human ribs of Burial B (link). Although distorted by post-depositional crushing, the skull is remarkably intact (link). The complete right humerus of a fox was found directly below and adhering to the right side of the mandible. Large pieces of red ochre were found adhering to the underside of the human ribs on both left and right sides, while ochre fragments adhered to the nasal bones, mandible and right side of the fox cranium, as well as in the sediment within the skull cavity. The red ochre here is dense and continuous, suggesting that fox skull and human rib cage were placed on top of a layer of red ochre (link) as part of the primary interment episode of Burial B. Isolated chunks of red ochre were also found in Grave VIII near the human remains and between the legs of the fox. Ochre has been documented at several other sites in the Levant in association with or staining art objects, human bones, shell, bone and flint ref
The first burial of red ochre, Use of red ochre by early Neandertals | PNAS
burial practices in jordan from the natufians to the persians
Uyun al-Hammam, Human burials from northern Jordan provide important insights into the appearance of cemeteries and the nature of human-animal relationships within mortuary contexts during the Epipalaeolithic period (c. 23,000–11,600 cal BP) in the Levant, reinforcing a socio-ideological relationship that goes beyond predator-prey. Previous work suggests that archaeological features indicative of social complexity occur suddenly during the latest Epipalaeolithic phase, the Natufian (c. 14,500–11,600 cal BP). These features include sedentism, cemeteries, architecture, food production, including animal domestication, and burials with elaborate mortuary treatments. Our findings from the pre-Natufian (Middle Epipalaeolithic) cemetery of ‘Uyun al-Hammam demonstrate that joint human-animal mortuary practices appear earlier in the Epipalaeolithic. We describe the earliest human-fox burial in the Near East, where the remains of dogs have been found associated with human burials at a number of Natufian sites. This is the first time that a fox has been documented in association with human interments pre-dating the Natufian and with a particular suite of grave goods. Analysis of the human and animal bones and their associated artifacts provides critical data on the nature and timing of these newly-developing relationships between people and animals prior to the appearance of domesticated dogs in the Natufian. Despite early work that seemed to indicate a behavioral break between Early/Middle Epipalaeolithic and later, socially-complex Natufian sites (e.g.,link), new excavations suggest an earlier emergence of some of the features characteristic of the Natufian period. Key features used to differentiate Natufian from preceding Epipalaeolithic groups include the appearance of formalized burial grounds and the origin of mortuary traditions that become characteristic of Neolithic symbolic and ideological life. Two key mortuary practices demonstrate ideological continuity between the Natufian and Neolithic, while highlighting a break between the Natufian and earlier EP groups (e.g., link): a) the movement or removal of skulls and, b) special human-animal relationships. For example, the burial of an adult female with a juvenile domestic dog is well-known from ‘Ain Mallaha (‘Eynan), while another human-dog burial comes from Hayonim Terrace. Also, a unique burial from the Late Natufian site of Hilazon Tachtit features an elderly female buried with over 50 tortoise carapaces, several articulated raptor wings, the pelvis of a leopard, and the mandible of a wolf. These unmodified animal parts could be viewed as evidence for changing human-animal interactions or domestication yet-to-come. ‘Uyun al-Hammam is a pre-Natufian burial ground, with elaborate human burials that include evidence for unique human-animal relationships, demonstrating that these features are not unique to the Natufian. The remains of at least eleven individuals, interred in eight graves, represent the earliest known cemetery in the southern Levant and more than double the number of human burials for the entire Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic periods. Recent discoveries at ‘Uyun al-Hammam demonstrate a unique collection (in abundance and diversity) of grave goods and varied patterns of interment associated with the human remains. Two adjacent graves contain the articulated remains of several individuals, and include the following elements: 1) the earliest human-fox burial, 2) the movement of human and animal (fox) body parts between graves and, 3) the presence of red ochre, worked bone implements, chipped and ground stone tools, and the remains of deer, gazelle, aurochs and tortoise – grave goods that together became common among later Natufian and Neolithic burials. The ‘Uyun al-Hammam burials thus demonstrate intriguing human-animal relationships earlier than the first domesticated animal in the region. In light of the significance recently given to the Natufian “shaman” of Hilazon Tachtit, our findings provide strong evidence that key aspects of these complex mortuary traditions occurred earlier in the Epipalaeolithic of the Near East than previously thought. Graves I to VII were excavated in 2005, and represent the remains of at least nine individuals (link). In 2008, Grave VI was more fully excavated and revealed the remains of two individuals, and another new grave, Grave VIII, was found. These discoveries more than double the number of known human remains from this time period in the Near East. Some of the burials represent primary interments of single adult individuals (Graves III, IV), while others are secondary burials (Graves II and V) or show reuse of an earlier grave (Graves I, VII and VIII). None of the individuals show signs of interpersonal violence or obvious pathologies that may indicate cause of death. Although burial pits are not obvious, most of the graves are delimited by body position and the locations of grave goods in contact with the buried individual or large stones around or over the body. Grave goods are present in most of the graves, although the number and type of objects varies. Flint implements, ground stone, red ochre, and partial animal skeletons were found associated with several of the skeletons. Since the burials are dug into pre-existing Epipalaeolithic deposits, the attribution of items as grave goods is conservative—only items in meaningful association or direct contact with the skeletons are included and, therefore, it is possible that we have underestimated the actual number of grave goods in each burial. ref
Pre-Pottery Neolithic Skull Cult around 11,500 to 8,400 Years Ago?
Possible skull cult evidence pre-Natufian 16,500 BP seen in the Movement of Human and Non-Human Body Parts Uyun al-Hammam, the removal and movement of body parts within and between Graves I and VIII is notable. The missing upper body and skull of Burial A in Grave I is likely the result of erosion. However, the appendicular remains in Burial B were clearly moved post-mortem. The missing skull of Burial B, given the articulated thorax, may have been removed either prior to or during interment of Burial A. The remaining skeletal elements from Burial B are consistent with an adult male individual, as are the cranium and cervical vertebrae from Grave VIII, so it is possible that the skull was removed from Grave I and placed in Grave VIII, or it is simply no longer found in either of these graves. The human remains of Grave VIII appear to belong to at least two different individuals; removed from two or more corpses relatively early in the decomposition process. The placement of the cranium (covered with a large rock) and a separate, articulated arm beside an articulated fox skeleton and other grave goods is suggestive of intentional interment in a grave rather than a coincidence of grave disturbance. The removal of skulls is thought to make its first appearance in the Levantine mortuary record in the Natufian but is documented from many Neolithic graves as a symbolic act. We have one other instance at ‘Uyun al-Hammam of a secondary grave consisting only of a human skull and some mammalian long bones, so skull removal and reburial at ‘Uyun al-Hammam demonstrates that this burial practice originated prior to the Natufian. ref
Natufians: an Ancient People at the Origins of Agriculture
The Natufians practiced decapitation indicating that this society practiced certain rituals but with a meaningful purpose that would have served their new transition to agriculturalists. The Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (MPPNB) revealed new types of burials as the case in Ain Ghazal: sub-floor, courtyard with intact skulls, courtyard decapitated and infant burials. These places were interpreted as a representation of ancestor worship. The Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (LPPNB) had primary and later burials (Mahasneh 2001). Decapitation was very common and reported from many sites in Jordan and Palestine: Basta, Bayda, Jericho, Ain Ghazal, Wadi Shuieb, Abu Ghosh, Baysamun, Nahal Oren and Catal Huyuk. Decapitation was practiced using two methods. The first is the decapitation before decomposition took place; the skull and the mandible are intact as well as a cervical vertebra, all in anatomical position. This method was reported from many LPPNB sites, such as, Jericho and Muraybat in the Euphrates Valley. The second method implies that the skull was removed from the burial after decomposition is completed; the mandible was missing as in Ain Ghazal, Basta, Jericho, Nahal Hemar, Tall Ramad, Cayonu and Hacilar (Bienert 1991, 19). It seems that the average age at death during the LPPNB (the site of As-Sifiya) was below 35 years probably triggered by certain ecological or physiological stresses. The recovered grave goods at the site include bone beads, sea shell beads and pendants, mineral beads and pendants both in male and female burials eliminating the Binford’s dimension of sex. ref
Archaeologists find 14,400-year-old bread in Jordan’s Black Desert: the ancient Shubayqans not only collected oats, barley and wheat. They ground the cereals (giant stone mortars have been found throughout the region, albeit a tad later – dated to about 12,500 to 11,000 years ago), and also sieved it before baking the pita. While the prehistoric Asians apparently had a taste for boiling and stewing in pots as much as 20,000 years ago, the prehistoric Levantines cooked over open fires. ref
12,000 years ago, Stone Age village alongside the Sea of Galilee, during the time they transitioned from a hunter-gatherer way of life to farming. Bodies of five humans. The researchers also found a lot of stone tools, jewelry, and pieces of art that were carved from stone and bone within the ruins. Of the human remains one woman buried on her back and curled into a tight ball, possablly she had her body wrapped up or placed in some kind of bag or sack. There were four additional human remains in a larger burial pit. This included another woman buried in a similar manner to the previously described female. Some of the jewelry was made from beads that came from Cardium shells and there were also two greenstone pendants or buttons. During the excavation, two pieces of bone engraved with the delicate motif of repeating geometric triangular patterns and a piece of limestone that appears to have been carved. ref
12,000-Year-Old Shaman’s Elaborate Funeral Had 6 Stages, A diminutive woman buried in a cave in Israel 12,000 years ago was likely a person of importance and was interred with great ceremony, including a feast of 86 tortoises, archaeological evidence suggests. The cave served as a burial ground for at least 28 people during the latter part of the Natufian period (15,000 – 11,500 B.C.). And one grave stood out, separated from other graves by a stone divider, and with the body and objects around it arranged with particular care and intent. The skeleton of a woman about 4 feet 9 inches (1.5 meters) tall and about 45 years old had been carefully placed in a grave pit layered with sediment, seashells, tortoise shells, chalk and bony horn cores from gazelles. Arranged around and upon her body were bones representing a number of animals: marten skulls, a wild cow tail, a boar’s forearm, a leopard’s pelvis, an eagle’s wing and a human foot. For stage five, attendants filled the grave with garbage from the funeral feast, according to the researchers. And finally, for stage six, a large triangular block of limestone was positioned at the top of the grave. In a statement, Grosman described the occupant of the grave as “probably a shaman,” based on the variety of animal bones surrounding her, because shamans of the time were believed to commune with animal spirits. ref
Star Carr, Around 10,770 Period: Mesolithic to 10,460 years ago with an 11,000-yyear-old Stone Age pendant was discovered in lake edge deposits (now known as palaeo-Lake Flixton) during the archaeological dig at Star Carr. The plectrum-shaped 3mm thick piece of shale which measures 35mm by 31mm, has a perforated hole near one edge, however, it is not known if this was strung or not. The ‘barbed line’ motif which may represent a tree, map or even tally marks is similar to styles found in northern Europe, particularly in Denmark. It may have been worn as sacred jewellery by a Shaman, according to archaeologists. ref
By the Paleolithic era, 200,000 to 40,000 years ago, we were building primitive hearths in the form of a handful of stones in a circle. Ötzi, the 5000-year-old Iceman in the Italian Alps, cautiously carried his fire along with him, in the form of embers wrapped in maple leaves and stored in a birchbark box. As back-up, he was also equipped with a fire-starting kit, consisting of iron pyrites, flint, and tinder fungus. The Neolithic technique seems to have involved grinding the fungus until it was fine and fluffy, then piling it in a mollusk shell, and striking sparks with the flint and pyrite until the tinder ignited. ref
Ötzi the Iceman, Similaun Man, the genetic history of a (Copper Age) European man who lived in the Eastern Alps natural mummy of a man who lived between 3345 BCE and 3300 BCE (aged about 45) Ötztal Alps, near Hauslabjoch on the border between Austria and Italy. Analysis of Ötzi’s intestinal contents showed two meals (the last one consumed about eight hours before his death), one of chamois meat, the other of red deer and herb bread. Both were eaten with grain as well as roots and fruits. The grain from both meals was a highly processed einkorn wheat bran, quite possibly eaten in the form of bread. In the proximity of the body, and thus possibly originating from the Iceman’s provisions, chaff and grains of einkorn and barley, and seeds of flax and poppy were discovered, as well as kernels of sloes (small plumlike fruits of the blackthorn tree) and various seeds of berries growing in the wild. Ötzi had a total of 61 tattoos (or Soot tattoos), consisting of 19 groups of black lines ranging from 1 to 3 mm in thickness and 7 to 40 mm long. These include groups of parallel lines running along the longitudinal axis of his body and to both sides of the lumbar spine, as well as a cruciform mark behind the right knee and on the right ankle, and parallel lines around the left wrist. The greatest concentration of markings is found on his legs, which together exhibit 12 groups of lines. A microscopic examination of samples collected from these tattoos revealed that they were created from pigment manufactured out of fireplace ash or soot. Radiological examination of Ötzi’s bones showed “age-conditioned or strain-induced degeneration” corresponding to many tattooed areas, including osteochondrosis and slight spondylosis in the lumbar spine and wear-and-tear degeneration in the knee and especially in the ankle joints. It has been speculated that these tattoos may have been related to pain relief treatments similar to acupressure or acupuncture. If so, this is at least 2,000 years before their previously known earliest use in China (c. 1000 BCE). Recent research into archaeological evidence for ancient tattooing has confirmed that Ötzi is the oldest tattooed human mummy yet discovered. ref
The genetic history of man who lived in the Eastern Alps over 5,300 years ago whos Y chromosome (transmitted from fathers to their sons) showed paternal genetic line is still present in modern-day populations. In contrast, studies of mitochondrial DNA was K1f comparison showed that neither the Iceman’s lineage nor any other evolutionarily close lineages are present in modern populations: the researchers therefore lean towards the hypothesis that Ötzi’s maternal genetic branch has died out. Moreover, an extraction of twelve samples from the gastrointestinal tract of Ötzi to analyze the origins of the Helicobacter pylori in his gut, a gram-negative, microaerophilic bacterium usually found in the stomach was surprisingly, the hpAsia2 strain, a strain today found primarily in South Asian and Central Asian populations, with extremely rare occurrences in modern European populations. The strain found in Ötzi’s gut is most similar to three modern individuals from Northern India; the strain itself is, of course, older than the modern Northern Indian strain. ref
| Haplogroup K | |
|---|---|
| Possible time of origin | 26,700 ± 4,300 years ago[1] |
| Ancestor | U8b’K |
| Descendants | K1, K2 |
Haplogroup K is believed to have originated in the mid-Upper Paleolithic, between about 30,000 and 22,000 years ago. It is the most common subclade of haplogroup U8b. with an estimated age of c. 12,000 years BP.
- U8a: The Basques have the most ancestral phylogeny in Europe for the mitochondrial haplogroup U8a. This is a rare subgroup of U8, placing the Basque origin of this lineage in the Upper Palaeolithic. The lack of U8a lineages in Africa suggests that their ancestors may have originated from West Asia.
- U8b: This clade has been found in Italy and Jordan.
- Haplogroup K makes up a sizeable fraction of European and West Asian mtDNA lineages. It is now known it is actually a subclade of haplogroup U8b’K, and is believed to have first arisen in northeastern Italy. ref
Haplogroup K has been found in the remains of three individuals from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site of Tell Ramad, Syria, dating from c. 6000 BC. The clade was also discovered in skeletons of early farmers in Central Europe dated to around 5500-5300 BC, at percentages that were nearly double the percentage present in modern Europe. Some techniques of farming, together with associated plant and animal breeds, spread into Europe from the Near East. The evidence from ancient DNA suggests that the Neolithic culture spread by human migration. Analysis of the mtDNA of Ötzi, the frozen mummy from 3300 BC found on the Austrian–Italian border, has shown that Ötzi belongs to the K1 subclade. It cannot be categorized into any of the three modern branches of that subclade (K1a, K1b or K1c). The new subclade has provisionally been named K1ö for Ötzi. Multiplex assay study was able to confirm that the Iceman’s mtDNA belongs to a new European mtDNA clade with a very limited distribution amongst modern data sets. A woman buried some time between 2650 and 2450 BC in a presumed Amorite tomb at Terqa (Tell Ashara), Middle Euphrates Valley, Syria carried Haplogroup K. Approximately 32% of people with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry are in haplogroup K. This high percentage points to a genetic bottleneckoccurring some 100 generations ago. Ashkenazi mtDNA K clusters into three subclades seldom found in non-Jews: K1a1b1a, K1a9, and K2a2a. Thus it is possible to detect three individual female ancestors, who were thought to be from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool, whose descendants lived in Europe. Recent studies suggest these clades originate from Western Europe. ref
Possible Neolithic tattoo marks depicted on a Pre-Cucuteni culture clay figure from Romania, c. 6,900–6,750 years ago. Other tattooed mummies have been recovered from at least 49 archaeological sites, including locations in Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Mongolia, western China, Egypt, Sudan, the Philippines and the Andes. Tattooing for spiritual and decorative purposes in Japan is thought to extend back to at least the Jōmon or Paleolithic period and was widespread during various periods for both the Japanese and the native Ainu an indigenous people of Japan (Hokkaido, and formerly northeastern Honshu) and Russia (Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and formerly the Kamchatka Peninsula). Tattoos include Amunet, Priestess of the Goddess Hathor from ancient Egypt (c. 2134–1991 BC), multiple mummies from Siberia including the Pazyryk culture of Russia and from several cultures throughout Pre-Columbian South America. Cemeteries throughout the Tarim Basin (Xinjiang of western China) including the sites of Qäwrighul, Yanghai, Shengjindian, Zaghunluq, and Qizilchoqa have revealed several tattooed mummies with Western Asian/Indo-European physical traits and cultural materials. These date from between 4,100 and 2,550 years ago. ref, ref
During the era of the Jomon society, shaman-style tribal chiefs were the norm throughout the Eurasian continent. Masks, pottery figurines and ritual artefacts suggest that shaman-type leaders were also common in Jomon society. We can make conjectures about what a Jomon shaman or shamaness’s role was like by looking at modern day Buryat Shamans of Siberia. The Jomon people are determined to be genetically related to the Lake Baikal (Native Mongolic origins have also been proposed 1) is a rift lake in Russia, located in southern Siberia, The Buryat people of Siberia and to have shared the same prehistoric ancestors. [Source: Aileen Kawagoe, Heritage of Japan website, heritageofjapn.wordpress.com
The Jomon world was one where many ceremonies and rituals took place. We can only guess at what ceremonies took place thousands of years ago. Some of them were held by the Jomon people probably to honour their great hunters or to commemorate great catches, such as when dolphin skeletons are discovered at certain sites in special arrangement along with ceremonial items. Other ceremonies may have been held when celestial phenomena took place at strategic locations, e.g. where at mountain sites like Mt. Yatsugatake you could see sunrises or sunsets over the mountain, or mountain sites that offered vantages f0r astronomical sightings. [Source: Aileen Kawagoe, Heritage of Japan website, heritageofjapan.wordpress.com
“Experts have noted that the majority of the figurines represent the female body, particularly a pregnant-looking body. The female figurines of Shakado, as well as those found all over the Jomon world indicate that the Jomon people may have conducted many rites offering prayers for the safe birth of babies, or worship towards some fertility or earth mother goddess. Experts also note that very few completely whole figurines have been found. Most figurines appear to have been made to be easily broken and then the pieces scattered in some kind of ceremonial ritual. Fragments of many figurines were found dispersed over a wide area, in various places and even in neighbouring villages. Because in rural Japan, figurines or straw figures are still used today as substitutes to avoid epidemics and other disasters, some scholars think Jomon figurines may have had the same protective function. Alternatively, they were used in purification rituals. Another theory is that it was a practice that emanated from a popular fertility goddess myth similar to that found in Indonesia, Polynesia, Melanesia and the Americas today.” See Dogu. “The Jomon people also produced stone rods that appeared to represent the male genital part, stamp-shaped stones and stone “swords”. The phallic stones were often found at the entrance to or on some kind of platform likely an altar in the pit houses. They were usually accompanied by one or more figurines. As with the female figurines, many scholars regard the stone rods as symbols of fertility. Others think that the stone rods were used in hunting rituals involving only men. Very large sized stone rods were often used as upright stones in the centre of stone circles or placed in a pit dwelling. In the Final Jomon period, many of the stone rods and swords were broken and often showed burn marks. In addition to these, several other artefacts were also produced and used for ritual purposes: triangular clay and stone tablets, triangular-prism-shaped clay and stone artefacts, ball-shaped artefacts, seiryuto-shaped stone tools, gyobutsu stone bars and dokko-shaped tools.” “Ceramic mushrooms have been excavated from a Jomon archaeological site in Akita prefecture, indicating that the Jomon people as with many cultures elsewhere, probably used “magic mushrooms” (i.e. psychoactive mushrooms) ritually. The mushrooms reproduced in clay were found in a ritual context along with other ritual implements such as ceramic human figurines and as such likely indicate their central function and symbolism attached to shamanic rituals possibly at solstice or other festivals where they may have been distributed to other members of the society. [Source: Aileen Kawagoe, Heritage of Japan website, heritageofjapan.wordpress.com ref
Magic Mushrooms Ritually Used by Jomon People? Yes, Magic mushrooms used ritually during Jomon times Psilocybin mushrooms, more commonly known as “magic mushrooms” in Japan, with the Jomon people as with many cultures elsewhere, the clay “magic mushrooms” probably had a central function and symbolism attached to shamanic rituals at ancient festivals. The use of vegetable hallucinogens by humans for religious purposes is very ancient, probably even older than its use for healing, magic or teaching purposes. The profound alterations in one’s state of consciousness brought about by the use of a hallucinogen have served as a founding axis for religious systems, and in the development of established religions throughout the history of humanity.” — Giorgio Samorini, ethnobotanist and psychedelics researcher, Integration, and the art and skill of using magic mushrooms, along with other herbal resources for healing conferred upon ancient shaman great prestige, see “Shamanism“: “Shamanic knowledge usually enjoys great power and prestige in the community, but it may also be regarded suspiciously or fearfully as potentially harmful to others. By engaging in their work, a shaman is exposed to significant personal risk, from the spirit world, from enemy shamans, or from the means employed to alter the shaman’s state of consciousness. Shamanic plant materials can be toxic or fatal if misused. Failure to return from an out-of-body journey can lead to death. Spells are commonly used to protect against these dangers, and the use of more dangerous plants is often very highly ritualized.” Central Asian shamans served as sacred intermediaries between the human and spirit world. In this role they took on tasks such as healing, divination, appealing to ancestors, manipulating the elements, leading lost souls and officiating public religious rituals. The shamanic séance served as a public display of the shaman’s journey to the spirit world and usually involved intense trances, drumming, dancing, chanting, elaborate costumes, miraculous displays of physical strength, and audience involvement. ref
7,000 – 9,000 years ago “magic mushrooms” shamanism art seen in a group of rock paintings in the Sahara Desert, the works of pre-neolithic Early Gatherers, in which mushrooms effigies are represented repeatedly. The polychromic scenes of harvest, adoration and the offering of mushrooms, and large masked ‘gods’ covered with mushrooms, not to mention other significant details, lead us to suppose we are dealing with an ancient hallucinogenic mushroom cult. What is remarkable about these ethnomycological works, produced 7,000 – 9,000 years ago, is that they could indeed reflect the most ancient human culture as yet documented in which the ritual use of hallucinogenic mushrooms is explicitly represented. We might consider, for example, the works of archeological (or rather ‘archeo-ethno-botanical’) interest in the easternmost areas of Siberia, within the Arctic Circle, on the banks of the Pegtymel River. An extensive petroglyphic area was found there dating back to the local neolithic period. Among these works, we find mushroom gatherers (Dikov, 1971). In some cases we find females wearing long and ornate ‘ear-rings’ and an enormous mushroom on their heads, figures with the stance of people trying to keep their balance. The stocky form and the decoration on the mushroom lead one to suppose these mushrooms are Amanita muscaria (Fly-Agaric), the hallucinogenic mushroom most often associated with shaman practices in Euro-Asia and N. America (Wasson, 1979). Mushroom motifs have also been found in the petroglyphs of the prehistoric settlements of the Kamciatka peninsula on the banks of Lake Ushokovo (Dikov, 1979). The paleolitbic culture of Ushokovo (protoeskimoleuts) belongs to the group of peoples who gave birth to the various paleo-eskimo cultures of N. America (2nd Millenium B.C.). It is to be imagined that these protoeskimoleuts belong to the peoples who contained within their culture, in embryo form, ‘protoshaman’ religious practices.
In California, the rock art of the regions inhabited by the Chumash and Yokut, a polychromic manner of painting – particularly evident during the stylistic phase known as the “Santa Barbara Painted Style” – has been associated with the ‘toloache’ cult centered around ‘Jimsonweed’ (a hallucinogenic plant of the Datura genus) known to have been used by a number of Californian and Mexican Indian tribes (Campbell, 1965:63-64; Wellmann, 1978 and 1981). Apparently, the first examples of Chumash rock art date back to 5,000 years ago (Hyder & Oliver, 1983).
The impressive Pecos River paintings in Texas have also been associated with the ‘mescal’ cult (Sophora secundiflora, hallucinogenic beans of which were used during rites of initiation on the part of the Indian tribes of the region) (Howard, 1 957). Furst (1986) affirms that the mescal cult goes back 10,000 years, which is to say back to the Paleo-Indian Hunters Period at the end of the Pleistocene period. Archeological excavations carried out in the areas where paintings are to be found reveal mescal seeds which go back to 8,000 B. C, when Carbon- 14 dated. Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) has also been found during some of these excavations (Campbell, 1958). The shaman would collect the mushrooms in a bag and deliver them to families, who would then often hang them in socks around the fireplace to dry – the mushrooms would be ready to share their revelatory gifts in the morning of the solstice. Amanita Muscaria grows only beneath a Christmas tree(coniferous/pine tree) in a symbiotic, non-parasitic relationship with the roots of the tree. (6) It used to be thought to be the fruit of the tree. ref
The Buryat people are descended from various Siberian and Mongolic peoples that inhabited the Lake Baikal Region. Religion: Tibetan Buddhism (“Lamaism”), Shamanism. Related ethnic groups: Barga, Mongols, Alaskan Natives, Quileute people, Tuvans, Khakas people, Siberian Yupik people, Altay people, Aleut. When the child is born in the Buryat family’s grand parents conduct a special ritual with a prayer for the future shaman child to inherit the characters of his/her ancestors.“The Jomon people are believed to have had important shaman leaders who had similar roles as the Buryat shamans. In excavated pit houses identified as having belonged to the village shaman, are often found ritual objects such the clay figurine, the phallic stone, a lamp-shaped vessel and often some pottery vessel that likely contained brewed wine or beverage from wild grapes or elderberries. Ritual masks associated with ritual events are also sometimes thought to be part of the shaman’s kit. It is likely that Jomon shamans officiated or presided over ceremonies in the public areas of their villages and sometimes at the stone circle sites.” ref, ref
Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia: tattooed people of the Siberian steppe: Siberian princess reveals her 2,500-year-old tattoos, a large burial chamber in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. (Ancient tattoos: getting under the skin of the Scythians) Inside it, scientists found the remains of a woman and man, along with plenty of priceless ancient treasures, including plenty of cannabis and the world’s oldest carpet and an ornate carriage. The man was a chieftain or king of the Pazyryk civilization that existed in the Altai region about 2,500 years ago, through the end of 600 B.C to the beginning of 200 B.C. The man’s head, except for the back, was shaved. The woman’s head was also shaved, except that on top was a pigtail. Both bodies were mummified, using the same method. The skulls were trepanned and the brain was removed. Through a slice in the abdomen, from the ribs to the groin, the intestines were removed. In addition, through special sections of the chest, back, arms and legs were removed all the muscles of the body, so that remaining was only the skeleton and skin.” On her left forearm is a complicated – and unusual for this culture – scene with two tigers and a snow leopard attacking deer and moose. Some experts believe the images indicate a Chinese influence, suggesting the Pazyryk people enjoyed links with cultures which lived far away from their own. ref
The Ainu have often been considered to descend from the Jomon people, who lived in Japan from the Jōmon period 16,000 to 2,300 years ago). Genetic testing has shown that the Ainu belong mainly to Y-haplogroup D-M55. Y-DNA haplogroup D1b is found throughout the Japanese Archipelago, but with very high frequencies among the Ainu of Hokkaido in the far north, and to a lesser extent among the Rykyuans in the Ryukyu Islands of the far south. The only places outside Japan in which Y-haplogroup D is common are Tibet in China and the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. 12.5%) Ainu men to belong to Haplogroup C-M217, which is the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup among the indigenous populations of Siberia and Mongolia. Four Ainu men and found that one of them belonged to haplogroup C-M217. Some researchers have speculated that this minority of Haplogroup C-M217 carriers among the Ainu may reflect a certain degree of unidirectional genetic influence from the Nivkhs, a traditionally nomadic people of northern Sakhalin and the adjacent mainland, with whom the Ainu have long-standing cultural interactions.cranial traits suggests that the Ainu resemble the Okhotsk more than they do the Jōmon. This agrees with the references to the Ainu as a merger of Okhotsk and Satsumon referenced above. A recent genetic study has revealed that the closest genetic relatives of the Ainu are the Ryukyuan people, the indigenous peoples of the Ryukyu Islands between the islands of Kyushu and Taiwan then followed by the Yamato people and Nivkh. Recent genetic and anthropological studies indicate that the Ryukyuans are significantly related to the Ainu people and share the ancestry with the indigenous prehistoric Jōmon period (pre 10,000–1,000 BCE) people, who arrived from Southeast Asia, and with the Yamato people who are mostly an admixture of the Yayoi period(1,000 BCE–300 CE) migrants from East Asia (specifically China and the Korean peninsula). The Ryukyuans have a specific culture with some matriarchal elements, native religion. According to the recent genetic studies, the Ryukyuan people share more alleles with the Jōmon period (16,000–3,000 years ago) hunter-gatherers and Ainu people than the Yamato Japanese, have smaller genetic contributions from Asian continental populations, which supports the dual-structure model of K. Hanihara (1991), a widely accepted theory which suggests that the Yamato Japanese are more admixed with Asian agricultural continental people (from the Korean Peninsula) than the Ainu and the Ryukyuans, with major admixture occurring in and after the Yayoi period (3,000-1,700 years ago). ref, ref
Ainu religion: One can not understand the Ainu without learning about their spirituality, since it’s central to their lives. Their spiritual practices are rich and complex. They’re different from shinto, the traditional Japanese religion, and they don’t fit the usual definition of animism. The Ainu felt the presence of the spirits of the dead in their day to day lives. They believed that the human lives were protected by the dead spirits who lived in all things that existed in the human world with different gods – solar deity, god who rules the fish, god who rules the deer, god who rules the earth, god of fire, and so on. “Ainu” means “human” as opposed to “kamuy”(gods). The Ainu believed that Gods existed everywhere in the world. This included not only natural phenomenons but also the man made objects, such as the lacquerware boxes which were used for important rituals. The lacqureware boxes were also symbols of power and wealth, since the Ainu gained them through trade with the ethnic Japanese. To acquire one lacqureware box the Ainu had to offer a number of valuable items, such as a hundred of salmons or furs of several bears. So the house with many lacquerware suggested that the man of the house was a good hunter, and that the family didn’t have to struggle with foods. Inaw, prayer sticks made of woods, were also very important spiritual icons. There were many different kinds of inaw. Some were offered as gifts to gods or used to communicate with gods, while others were considered gods themselves. ref
Ryukyuan religion: “Family-centered worship”, with its focus on demonstrating respect of and reverence toward ancestors, is naturally based in the family home. The oldest female relative acts as a primary celebrant, officiating rituals concerning ancestors, household gods and those family members who live both in and outside the home. Daily incense offerings are made and prayer “reports” are delivered aloud, in which each family member is described for the benefit of the incorporeal being addressed. The oldest female relative is also responsible for cleaning and upkeep of the buchidan (ancestors altar), hinukan (hearth god and his home on the hearth), and furugan (bathroom god). The Ultimate Ancestors, those from whom all life springs, are Utin (“Heaven”, the father), Jiichi (“Earth”, the mother), and Ryuuguu (“Sea”, the place from which we were born). They originate and exist, along with kami, or the gods of the world, during the Usachi-yu, the “Ancient Age”. They are held in highest regard as the originators of all things and are worshiped in the community’s utaki (御嶽). Ancestors living in the distant past, but not in the Usachi-yu – that is, ancestors living more than about 25 generations ago but not living with the gods at the beginning of time – are said to be living in Nakaga-yu, the “Middle Age”. These ancestors are worshipped as collective spirits called futuchi (futuki), whose worship is focused usually in Buddhist temples. The Ryukyuan religion, Ryukyu Shinto, Nirai Kanai Shinkou, or Utaki Shinkou is the indigenous belief system of the Ryukyu Islands. While specific legends and traditions may vary slightly from place to place and island to island, the Ryukyuan religion is generally characterized by ancestor worship (more accurately termed “ancestor respect”) and the respecting of relationships between the living, the dead, and the gods and spirits of the natural world. Some of its beliefs, such as those concerning genius loci spirits and many other beings classified between gods and humans, are indicative of its ancient animistic roots, as is its concern with mabui (まぶい), or life essence. Over time, Ryukyuan religious practice has been influenced by Chinese religions (Taoism, Confucianism, and folk beliefs), Buddhism and Japanese Shinto. One of its most ancient features is the belief onarigami (おなり神), the spiritual superiority of women derived from Amamikyu, which allowed for the development of a noro (priestess) system and a significant following for yuta (female mediums or shamans). ref
‘Ain Ghazal a Neolithic archaeological site inhabited during ca. 7250–5000 BC located in metropolitan Amman, Jordan, with the ‘Ain Ghazal Statues, a total of 15 statues and 15 busts were discovered in two underground caches, created about 200 years apart. Dating to between 6500 – 7200 BC, the statues are among the earliest large-scale representations of the human form and are regarded to be one of the most remarkable specimens of prehistoric art from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period. Although it is held that they represented the ancestors of those in the village, its purpose remains uncertain. The figures are of two types, full statues and busts. Some of the busts are two-headed. Great effort was put into modelling the heads, with wide-open eyes and bitumen-outlined irises. The statues represent men, women and children; women are recognizable by features resembling breasts and slightly enlarged bellies, but neither male nor female sexual characteristics are emphasized, and none of the statues have genitals, the only part of the statue fashioned with any amount of detail being the faces.They are comparatively tall, but not human-sized, the tallest statues having a height of close to 1 m. They are disproportionately flat, about 10 cm in thickness. They were nevertheless designed to stand up, probably anchored to the floor in enclosed areas and intended to be seen only from the front. The way the statues were made would not have permitted them to last long. And since they were buried in pristine condition it is possible that they were never on display for any extended period of time, but rather produced for the purpose of intentional burial. The burials in Bab edh-Dhra’ were found in rooms built of mud-bricks (Schaub & Rast 1989) (Fig. 7). The Early Bronze Age IV (2300– 2000 BC) people had continued to carve vertical shaft tombs in marl and chalk layers (two soft and weak layers) besides other types as in Middle Bronze Age I including big jars (Waheeb & Palumbo 1994), such as Umm Zaytuna (Waheeb et al. 1994), Tiwal esh-Sharqi (Helms 1983), Al-Bassah (Waheeb & Palumbo 1994), Pella (Potts et al. 1985; Baker 1998) and Umm ed-Deba (Suleiman 1985) supporting the previous assumption regarding the rock type. The Early Bronze Age IV period is the first period to yield oil lamps from tombs (Waheeb & Palumbo 1993) as well as a variety of grave goods including stone beads, loop handled, amphoriskos, copper rivets, stone pendants, pottery sherds and funnels (Tubb 1985). According to Chesson (2001, 110) the ordering of skulls and long bones at Bab edh-Dhra’ was a structured tradition to assert continuity with past generations. The Early Bronze Age tombs show men and women of various ages, children, and even some infants, gender did not seem to be a selected factor. Studies of Early Bronze Age burial patterns have concluded that tombs and cemeteries were organized by kinship ties (e.g. Bentley 1995; Chesson 1999, 155 ff.; Rast 1999, 171 ff.). The grave goods during the Early Bronze Age were very simple and thus indicated a simple society with minimal if any hierarchies (Fig. 8). ref
A decapitated skeleton from Ain Ghazal in a flexed position.
The settlement at ‘Ain Ghazal (“Spring of the Gazelle”) first appeared in the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (MPPNB ) and is split into two phases. Phase I starts circa 10,300 BP and ends c. 9,950 BP, while phase II ends c. 9,550 BP. The 9th millennium MPPNB period in the Levant represented a major transformation in prehistoric lifeways from small bands of mobile hunter–gatherers to large settled farming and herding villages in the Mediterranean zone, the process having been initiated some 2–3 millennia earlier. Y-DNA haplogroup E1b1b1b2 has been found in 75% of the ‘Ain Ghazal population, along with 60% of PPNB populations (and is present in all three stages of PPNB) and in most Natufians. T1a (T-M70) is found among the later Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (MPPNB) inhabitants from ‘Ain Ghazal, but was not found among the early and middle MPPNB populations. As was previously found in the early Neolithic settlement from Karsdorf (Germany) a subclade of mtDNA R0 was found with Y-DNA T at ‘Ain Ghazal. It is thought, therefore, that the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B population is mostly composed of two different populations: members of early Natufian civilization and a population resulting from immigration from the north, i.e. north-eastern Anatolia. In its prime era circa 7000 BCE, the site extended over 10–15 hectares (25–37 ac) and was inhabited by ca. 3000 people (four to five times the population of contemporary Jericho). After 6500 BC, however, the population dropped sharply to about one-sixth within only a few generations, probably due to environmental degradation, the 8.2 kilo-year event (Köhler-Rollefson 1992). In the earlier levels at ‘Ain Ghazhal there are small ceramic figures that seem to have been used as personal or familial ritual figures. There are figurines of both animals and people. The animal figures are of horned animals and the front part of the animal is the most clearly modeled. They all give the impression of dynamic force. Some of the animal figures have been stabbed in their vital parts these figures have then been buried in the houses. Other figurines were burned and then discarded with the rest of the fire. They built ritual buildings and used large figurines or statues. The actual building of them is also a way for an elite group to demonstrate and reify its authority over those who owe the community or the elite labor as service and to bond laborers together as part of a new community. In addition to the monumental statues small, clay and stone tokens, some with incised with geometric or naturalistic shapes were found at ‘Ain Ghazal. The 195 figurines (40 human and 155 animal) recovered were from MPPNB contexts; 81% of the figurines have been found to belong to the MPPNB while only 19% belonging to the LPPNB and PPNC. The vast majority of figurines are of cattle. A species that makes up only 8% of the overall number of identified specimens (NISP) count. The importance of hunted cattle to the domestic ritual sphere of ‘Ain Ghazal is telling. it was seemingly of importance for individual households to have members who participated both the hunting of cattle – likely a group activity – and the subsequent feasting on the remains. Post-mortem skull removal, commonly restricted to the cranium, but on occasion including the mandible, and apparently following preliminary primary interments of the complete corpse. Such treatment has commonly been interpreted as representing rituals connected with the veneration of the dead or some form of “ancestor worship”. `Ain Ghazal people buried some of their dead beneath the floors of their houses, others outside in the surrounding terrain. Of those buried inside, often the head was later retrieved and the skull buried in a separate shallow pit beneath the house floor. Also, many human remains have been found in what appear to be garbage pits where domestic waste was disposed, indicating that not every deceased was ceremoniously put to rest. Why only a small, selected portion of the inhabitants was properly buried and the majority simply disposed of remains unresolved. Burials seem to have taken place approximately every 15–20 years, indicating a rate of one burial per generation, though gender and age were not constant in this practice. Unlike other Neolithic sites, some people were thrown on trash heaps and their bodies remain intact. Scholars have estimated that a third of adult burials were found in trash pits with their heads intact. They may have seen the newcomers as a lower class. ref
Kurgans 6,000 years ago/dolmens 7,000 years ago: funeral, ritual, and other?
6,000-year-old fortresses found in Jordan show surprisingly advanced
Mysterious 6,000-year-old star mural (Ghassulian Star) from Jordan
Stars: Ancestors, Spirit Animals, and Deities (at least back to around 6,000 years ago)
Two wheel-shaped geoglyphs (possibly like a medicine wheel or shaman drum, or a kind of Henge made from low stacked stones; typically there is little if any evidence of occupation in a henge, as seems aper in wheel-shaped geoglyphs. List of stone circles Outside Europe, examples of stone circles include the 6300~6900 BCE Atlit Yam in Israel and 3000~4000 BCE Gilgal Refaim nearby, and the Bronze Age monuments in Hong Kong. Another prehistoric tradition occurred in southern Scandinavia during the Iron Age, where stone circles were built to be mortuary monuments to the dead. ref) in these although they may contain ritual structures such as stone circles, timber circles, and coves. ) drawn into the Black Desert in Jordan, such ancient circles had different uses, from observatories to burial grounds. Similar wheels have also been found nearby at Azraq Oasis. ref
4,250 to 3,400 Year old Stonehenge from Russia: Arkaim?
Gobekli Tepe: “first human-made temple” around 12,000 years ago.
12,400 – 11,700 Years Ago – Kortik Tepe (Turkey) Pre/early-Agriculture Cultic Ritualism
12,000 years ago. Collective tunnel culture? Evidence of Stone Age tunnels has been found under hundreds of Neolithic settlements all over Europe – the fact that so many have survived after 12,000 years shows the original tunnel network must have been huge. Stone Age man created a massive network of underground tunnels criss-crossing Europe from Scotland to Turkey. ‘Most are not much larger than big wormholes – just 70cm wide – just wide enough for a person to wriggle along but nothing else. There were thousands of them – from the north in Scotland down to the Mediterranean.’In Bavaria in Germany alone we have found 700metres of these underground tunnel networks. In Styria in Austria we have found 350metres, ‘They are interspersed with nooks, at some places it’s larger and there is seating, or storage chambers and rooms. ‘They do not all link up but taken together it is a massive underground network.’ ref
The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe around 35 miles north of Turkey’s border with Syria, T-shaped pillars like the rest, two five-meter stones tower at least a metre above their peers. What makes them remarkable are their carved reliefs of boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions, and their age. Dated at around 9,500BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge. ref
Mystery of Jordan’s Big Circles, ancient stone rings in the desert
Piezoelectric Stones Form Ancient Circular Structures in the Middle East, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia – Scientists at the University of Western Australia have taken almost 45,000 aerial images of mysterious stone circles, or “wheels,” they have found by satellite-mapping technologies in Syria and Saudi Arabia and an aerial photography project in Jordan. The number of stone patterns in only the region of Harrat ash-Shaam of Jordan are 1,000 or more. “wheels” because the patterns are generally circular, often with spokes radiating from a center, Saudi Arabia, 1,240 square kilometers of the desert landscape found 1,977 potential archaeological sites, two of which have been confirmed that two sites which could be as old as 9000 years and certainly at least 2,000-years-old. The circular structure of lines radiating from a central point like spokes go out to “wheel” edges that are so low that none of the patterns can be seen from flat ground – only from the air. ref
At an Israeli site, called Ain Mallaha, also known as Eynan, was a Natufian settlement built and settled circa 10,000–8,000 BCE. The settlement is an example of hunter-gatherer sedentism, a crucial step in the transition from foraging to farming with evidence of dog domestication. It is likely that entire families were buried in the remains of their own houses, the houses being subsequently abandoned. During excavation, Perrot found one dwelling to contain the graves of 11 men, women, and children, many of them wearing elaborate decorations made from dentalium shells. In another dwelling (131), twelve individuals were found, one buried with her hand resting on the body of a small puppy. “The finding of a puppy skeleton in such close association with man is of particular significance as an indication of a close relationship between man and dog,” The Natufians were the first eastern Mediterranean culture to establish permanent villages as opposed to nomads who hunt and forage for food in different areas based on seasonal availability. ref, ref
31,000 – 20,000 years ago Oldest Shaman was Female, Buried with the Oldest Portrait Carving
The Peopling of the Americas Pre-Paleoindians/Paleoamericans around 30,000 to 12,000 years ago
27,000 – 23,000 Years Ago – Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic) an Odd Triple Shamanistic Burial
Saying It With Flowers, 14,000 Years Ago: The prehistoric dual-grave of a man and boy found in an Israeli cave (left) were apparently lined with plants and flowers. Raqefet Cave, one of a number of sites frequented by prehistoric humans on the slopes of Mount. Carmel. Beginning about 13,700 years ago, Raqefet was occupied by the Natufians, who were widespread in the Mediterranean areas of the Near East and may have been the ancestors of the first farmers. The Natufians were the earliest known prehistoric peoples to systematically bury their dead together in cemeteries near the huts they apparently lived in, rather than in isolated and sporadic burial pits; their burials often featured grave goods such as beads, deposits of red ochre, and stone tools. It seems Natufians honored their dead with flowers, too, as Nadel reports online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Of the 29 skeletons excavated so far at Raqefet, four individuals, radiocarbon dated between 13,700 and 11,700 years ago, show what the team says are clear signs of having been buried on a literal bed of flowers. The researchers found that the graves, which include an unusual double burial of an adult male and adolescent boy, had been cut into the limestone bedrock that makes up the floor of the cave, and then lined with a thin layer of mud. Pressed into the mud lining were the impressions of the stems of a number of plant species, some of which the team was able to identify. The plants included Judean sage and members of the mint and figwort family, aromatic plants that blossom into colorful flowers in the spring, and some of which are still found today on the slopes of Mount Carmel. The evidence from the mud impressions was bolstered by the finding of thousands of microscopic plant fossils, called phytoliths, in the four burials as well as in several others. The phytoliths, which can sometimes be identified down to the species level, came from various grasses, shrubs, reeds, and sedges. The team concludes from this evidence, that the graves were lined not only with flowers but other plants that provided lush bedding for the dead. But did flowers have the same symbolic meanings for the Natufians as they do for us? Nadel and his colleagues believe so, citing psychological studies concluding that flowers trigger positive emotional reactions on an unconscious, physiological level that transcends cultural invention. The team also cites evidence from other archaeological sites that some flowering plants were domesticated as early as 5,000 years ago, ostensibly as decoration. The researchers argue that the use of flowers at funerals may have served “as a means of enhancing group identity and solidarity,” similar to the use of other grave goods such as beads to send the dead on their way. Such group solidarity, the team notes, would have been especially important at a time when hunter-gatherers in the Near East were beginning to congregate together in ever more sedentary and cohesive communities as a prelude to their eventual invention of agriculture. The team’s work provides “multidimensional evidence” for the use of aromatic plants and flowers to line graves, and is “the first time such evidence has been presented,” says Leore Grosman, an archaeologist at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem who has excavated at a nearby Natufian site also known for its burials. The findings, she adds, provide “important clues to the views about death and dying in the Natufian culture,” including the possibility that the lush flower burials were designed to make the dead “comfortable” and a sign of “concern about their well-being in the after-life.” ref
12,000 – 10,000 years old Shamanistic Art in a Remote Cave in Egypt
Horned female shamans and Pre-satanism Devil/horned-god Worship? at least 10,000 years ago
Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city”around 10,000 years ago
Historic and proto-historic shamanic rock art
Abstract
This paper deals with historic and proto-historic manifestations of shamanic rock art in Siberia, mainly in the Sayan-Altai
region. This art comes from last few centuries and is characterized by imagery which reveal clear correspondences
to ethnographically documented shamanic material culture. It concerns in particular images of shamans in their ritual attire
and their most important attribute – the drum. Main attention is focused on rock art of the Karakol Valley in Altai, where besides
historic or proto-historic shamanic rock art, also much older art is present. The latter art is dated to second millennium
BC, and is characterized by features which also correspond to Siberian tradition of shamanism. Finally the paper discusses
the social context related to colonization of Siberia which possibly influenced making shamanic images on rocks. 1
Travelling Through the Rock to the Otherworld: The Shamanic ‘Grammar of Mind’ Within the Rock Art of Siberia
Woman As the first Shamans 30,000?
12,000-Year-Old Shaman’s Elaborate Funeral Had 6 Stages
A 12,000-year-old Shaman burial from the southern Levant (Israel
Based the amount of animal bones found in the grave, the team says the woman – who was 45-years-old when she died – was likely a shaman who was once held in high regard during the Natufian period (which spanned from 11,500 and 15,000 years ago), along with 28 other graves, though none of the others were buried like the suspected shaman. – Archaeologists Have Pieced Together an Ancient Shaman’s Burial Ritual
She was not buried with everyday items and tools, as hunters, warriors, or political leaders were. Instead, her grave contained 50 arranged turtle shells and parts of wild pigs, eagles, cows, leopards, martens, and a human foot, among other artifacts.
Hundreds of Natufian graves have been excavated in Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. But only the one uncovered by Grosman contains a woman believed to have been a shaman. The term “shaman” originated in Siberia, but these magic-invoking priest-doctors are common in cultures around the globe. The 1.5-meter-tall (nearly 5-foot-tall), 45-year-old woman was relatively old for her time. After her death, she was placed in a mud-plastered and rock-lined pit in a cave and was buried beneath a large stone slab. (Slab Grave culture ?) The origin of this slab-grave culture is not definitely known. The ornamentation and shape of various bronze objects and especially the technology and stylistic methods used in the making of artistic bronzes found in the slab graves have led scholars to attribute at least some of them to the Karasuk period. At the same time, it appears that the slab-grave culture shares some features with the Karasuk culture of southern Siberia (link: 1). Karasuk culture – Wikipedia, Karasuk culture | archaeology | Britannica.com, The emergence of the Karasuk culture – ResearchGate:
Thus, these results suggest the existence of a Bronze Age ‘Siberian Express’ or a long-distance network of migration and resource transfer that stretched over 2000 km from the Minusinsk Basin of Russia to at least the eastern end of the Gansu Corridor at Mogou 2000 years before the ‘Silk Road’ ( Fig. 6 and S2 (available as Supplementary Data at NSR online)). That these previously established links rapidly strengthen in the Xinjiang region during the middle portion of the second millennium BC is likely linked to technological advances in horse riding, chariots and metalworking, which increased the mobility and migration capabilities of the cultures of the Eurasian Steppe [16,23,113,114]. In China, this period (∼1600 BC) is also highly significant, as it marks the establishment of the Shang Dynasty [115]…. Ryabogina and Ivanov (2011) have summarized much of the multi-proxy evidence. Late 2nd millennium BC pastoralist settlements with walled architecture have been identified in southern Russia; these sites are associated with extensive ceramic assemblages and bones of domesticated animals (Gryaznov, 1969; Legrand, 2006). Similarly, sites further south in the mountains of eastern Kazakhstan, also interpreted as pastoral settlements, have produced high abundance of ceramics and domestic architecture, such as Begash (Frachetti and Mar’yashev, 2007)…. The earliest direct evidence for cereals in the Minusinsk Basin relates to the Early Iron Age Tagar cemeteries of Erbinskaya, Poylovo (barley and millet grains and husks), and Lepeshkina (unidentified grains; Svyatko, 2010; Vadetskaya, 1986 ). Yet both the Karasuk and Tagar economies have been seen as strongly pastoral, indeed more so than their predecessors (van Geel et al., 2004; Legrand, 2006). The reasons for these varying opinions, and the often rather vague impressions they give of the region’s subsistence economy, can be partly traced to different research traditions and theoretical orientations, but arguably more important is the dearth of relevant primary data. …
… Our understanding of the prehistoric economy, both of the Minusinsk Basin and across the Eurasian steppes in general, has been greatly hampered by a lack of systematic sieving and soil flotation, and by the limited availability and analysis of large faunal assemblages. The latter problem applies particularly to the Minusinsk Basin, where excavations have focused almost exclusively on burial sites, and indeed relatively few settlements are known (though see Legrand, 2006), which has also tended to support the idea of nomadic pastoralism…. It is possible to propose, however, that in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC millets came from Northwestern China to Southern Siberia, which became one of the first centres for millet cultivation in Siberia. Generally, during the time of the expansion of the Karasuk and Tagar Cultures, major changes in lifestyle and social structure are believed to have occurred in Southern Siberia, including the use of the horse for both riding and the pulling of spoked-wheel vehicles, which are thought to have led to increased mobility and military activity, an increase in population size (Legrand, 2006), advances in metalworking, and greater social stratification (Bokovenko, 2006; Vadetskaya, 1986 ). The archaeological data suggest stronger connections for the Karasuk and Tagar cultures with China (including trade with Northern China through the Sayan Mountains, similar burial rites, and artistic forms; Devlet, 1965; Di Cosmo, 1994; Vadetskaya, 1986). …
Karasuk culture warrior (2nd half of 2nd millenn. BC)
The Minusinsk Basin is located where China, Mongolia, Siberia and Kazakhstan meet. Enclosed, but broad, and rich in copper and other minerals, the valley offers missing links between the prehistory of China and that of the greater Russian steppes. In the late Bronze Age the material from Minusinsk was important for the origins of bronze metallurgy in China, and in the Iron Age, the area was a focus for the development of that equestrian mobility which was to become the elite way of life for much of the Eurasian steppe for more than a millennium. The emergence of the Scythians: Bronze Age to Iron Age in South Siberia. The emergence of the Karasuk culture Sophie Legrand discusses the people who occupied the Minusinsk Basin in the Bronze Age, and in The emergence of the Tagar culture, Nikolai Bokovenko introduces us to their successors, the horsemen, and barrow-builders of the first millennium BCE. ref
Minusinsk marks the center of the Minusinsk Hollow, one of the most important archaeological areas north of Pazyryk. It is associated with the Afanasevo, Tashtyk, and Tagar cultures—all of them named after settlements in the vicinity of Minusinsk. “About 330-200 B.C. the iron age triumphed at Minusinsk, producing spiked axes, partly bronze and partly iron, and a group of large collective burial places.” Greco-Roman funerary masks, like those found at Pazyryk, make up the “Minusinsk group: at Trifonova, Bateni, Beya, Kali, Znamenka, etc.” “The Indo-European aristocracy with its Sarmatian connections was succeeded at Minusinsk by the Kirghiz after the third century A.D.”Minusinsk – Wikipedia
SREDNY STOG STAGE OF KURGAN CULTURE In Search of the Indo-Europeans Language, Archaeology and Myth
Burial stone slab with paintings discovered in krakaol in burrow no 2. These truly shamanic petroglyphs are often small or even very small in size – some of them measure just a few centimeters. Many such engravings can be found on the rocks of the Altai and Sayan Mountains in southern Siberia (Rozwadowski 2015), though it is not the only region in Siberia with such imagery 1
Ancient women found in Russian cave were close relatives of today’s indigenous population, in all, five human skeletons, harpoons, and nets that are some of the oldest known textiles in Devil’s Gate Cave in far east Russia. This contrasts with many archaeological sites in Russia, Europe, and the Americas where ancient humans are rarely directly related to living people nearby, thanks to wholesale migration and mixing since the invention of agriculture about 12,000 years ago. The ancient women were discovered in Chertovy Vorota Cave, known as Devil’s Gate Cave in English. DNA was extracted from the teeth, inner ear bones, and other skull bones from two of the skeletons from Devil’s Cave, and Hungarian graduate student Veronika Siska was able to sequence enough of the nuclear genome to compare it to hundreds of genomes of modern Europeans and Asians. The team found that the two Devil’s Gate Cave women were most closely related to the Ulchi, indigenous people who today live a few hundred kilometers north of the cave in the Amur Basin where they have long fished, hunted, and grown some of their food. The ancient women also were related to other people who speak the remaining and endangered 75 or so Tungusic languages spoken by dwindling numbers of ethnic people in eastern Siberia and China. They were also related to a lesser extent to modern Koreans and Japanese. 1
Yamna/Afanasevo elite males dominated by R1b-L23, Okunevo brings ancient Siberian/Asian population
Historic and Proto-Historic Shamanic Rock Art in Siberia: A View from the Altai
Ancient DNA provides new insights into the history of south Siberian Kurgan people.
To help unravel some of the early Eurasian steppe migration movements, we determined the Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial haplotypes and haplogroups of 26 ancient human specimens from the Krasnoyarsk area dated from between the middle of the second millennium BC. to the fourth century AD. In order to go further in the search of the geographic origin and physical traits of these south Siberian specimens, we also typed phenotype-informative single nucleotide polymorphisms. Our autosomal, Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA analyses reveal that whereas few specimens seem to be related matrilineally or patrilineally, nearly all subjects belong to haplogroup R1a1-M17 which is thought to mark the eastward migration of the early Indo-Europeans. Our results also confirm that at the Bronze and Iron Ages, south Siberia was a region of overwhelmingly predominant European settlement, suggesting an eastward migration of Kurgan people across the Russo-Kazakh steppe. Finally, our data indicate that at the Bronze and Iron Age timeframe, south Siberians were blue (or green)-eyed, fair-skinned and light-haired people and that they might have played a role in the early development of the Tarim Basin civilization. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19449030
The Republic of Khakassia (Russian:
is located in the southwestern part of Eastern Siberia and borders Krasnoyarsk Krai in the north and east, the Tuva Republic in the southeast and south, the Altai Republic in the south and southwest, and Kemerovo Oblast in the west and northwest. It stretches for 460 kilometers (290 mi) from north to south and for 200 kilometers (120 mi) from east to west. Mountains (eastern slopes of Kuznetsk Alatau and the Abakan Range) cover two-thirds of the republic’s territory and serve as the natural boundaries of the republic. The remaining territory is flat, with the Minusinsk Hollow being the most prominent feature. The Yenisei is the largest river in the republic. Other significant rivers include the Abakan, the Tom, and the Chulym. There are over three hundred lakes in the republic, both salt- and fresh-water. Climate is continental, with the average annual temperature of 0 °C (32 °F). Natural resources are abundant and include iron, gold, silver, coal, oil, and natural gas. Molybdenum deposits are the largest in Russia. Forests cover the south and the west of the republic. The territory of modern Khakassia was the core of the old Yenisei Kirghiz state from the 6th century CE. In the 13th century, following a defeat by the Mongols, the majority of the Kyrgyz people migrated southwest to Central Asia to what now is Kyrgyzstan. Modern Khakas people regard themselves as the descendants of those Kyrgyz who remained in Siberia with Khakas Tengrism and folk religion, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khakassia
Some had thought there was a male shaman in China in Tomb M45 at Puyang, Xishuipo, Henan, which date to between circa 4,500 and
3,000 BC arrangement of Tomb M45 to reflect shamanic practices, no particular evidence supports or even suggests this interpretation. On the other hand, Feng Shi and others have argued that this tomb configuration represents certain asterisms. In fact, it appears that the burial was situated in a way that mirrored certain circumpolar and non-circumpolar asterisms. Four human bodies lie in the tomb that is shaped overall like a turtle plastron, while the center skeleton, that of a young man, represents the “owner” of the tomb. At least one of the other bodies, prior to being interred in the tomb, had been sacrificed or otherwise killed with blade applied to the throat. The owner’s head faces south and his feet north, and at each of his sides lies an animal figure, head positioned toward the north and lying at the feet of the grave owner. The animal figures were constructed from cowrie shells. The figures appear to be guarding the tomb owner. Strikingly, they very obviously take the forms of a dragon and a tiger. It is well known that during and after the Warring States period the dragon and tiger became spirit protectors / mythical creatures of the directions of east and west, respectively. Indeed, by as early as the 5th century BC their respective positions and apparent roles as helper spirits (shen 神) were already established: on a lacquer clothes chest dating to 433 BC, the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng in Hubei province the dragon and tiger appear in precisely the same arrangement surrounding the pole star as they do in M45 at Puyang. The Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng was made around 433 BC, either at the end of the Spring and Autumn period or the start of the Warring States period. The tomb comes from the end of the thousand-year-long period of the burial of large sets of Chinese ritual bronzes in elite tombs and is also unusual in containing large numbers of musical instruments, including the great set of bells for which it is most famous. Along with the Late Shang dynasty tomb of Fu Hao, the tomb represents one of the largest sets of ritual bronze vessels, seeming clear that most pieces would have originally come from large groups deposited in an elite tomb not a spiritual religious shaman. This tomb is important in the history of Ancient Chinese glass, as it contains 173 eye beads that were made in a western Asian style, similar to some found in Gilan, Iran. In Han and later correlative cosmology, and therefore in traditions of internal alchemy, as well, the dragon and tiger, together with the tortoise/snake (north) and Vermilion bird/Phoenix (south), became the Four Spirits (si shen 四神) of the four directions. In fact, yet another of the later Four Spirits seems to lie in tomb M45, in a position directly north of the owner’s feet. This figure, consisting of a head and stem, is constructed of cowrie shells (head) placed in contact with two human femurs (stem) taken from another skeleton interred nearby. Ancient Yangshao culture at Puyang appears to have looked to the night sky to establish a sense of security, and that already in the 5th–4th millennia BC ancient people of China seemingly observed the northern celestial pole and considered it central in their religion. It might be that the stellar configurations in the night sky centering on the stellar pole were thought to provide, likely sympathetically, the dead with protection by or communion with the high stellar powers of the pole. Furthermore, their religious recognition and sympathetic imitation of the pole also would have provided those who remained alive with the assurance that some form of life continued after death, for otherwise the living would not have incurred the enormous expense and taken such remarkable care to bury someone so elaborately to conform to nocturnal stellar patterns, especially considering that they placed the center of the corpse of the deceased precisely where the northern celestial pole would be in relation to the stellar dragon and tiger. Indeed, the presence of the three other skeletons lying in the tomb with the tomb owner, at least one of which was apparently a sacrificial victim, and placed as they were in special niches carved into the walls of the tomb as if in shrines to gods of the north, east, and west, appears to confirm that the grave layout was not merely imitative but also religious in meaning. Thus, in this Neolithic culture of China of the 5th and 4th millennia BC, human death, and therefore most
certainly also life, seemingly were locked intimately into the mysteries of the night sky’s pivot, the northern celestial pole. 1, 2
Prehistoric Beifudi site: Neolithic village in Yi County, Hebei, China. The site, an area of 3 ha on the northern bank of the Yishui River, contains artifacts of a culture contemporaneous with the Cishan and Xinglongwa cultures of about 7000–8000 BP, two known Neolithic cultures east of the Taihang Mountains. The most significant discovery in the first phase of the site’s excavation is a large number of pottery masks in the shape of human and animal faces, the oldest extant carvings to date. A dozen carved clay masks, in cat, monkey, and pig as well as human likenesses, have been unearthed at Beifudi. One mask of a human face has a mouth and nose in carved relief and the eyes are pierced out. The first engraved clay artifacts ever found in ruins of this age, the masks add several millennia to China’s history of carving. These artifacts, along with raised platforms, or altars, may provide information on various early religious practices. The early Chinese almost certainly performed ritual ceremonial sacrifices and burned burials (fanyi) on the raised platforms, as both human and animal burials have been found. The masks are believed to be part of the ritual performances accompanying sacrifices and burials. Excavations in the second phase, dating to 6500–7000 BP include pottery and stone tools, ceramic pots(including the round-bottom fu vessel, the vessel seat, and the bo bowl) and small-mouth-double-handled pots. Artifacts excavated from dwellings include stone blocks, building materials, and broken pottery. Ash pits, and sacrificial sites have been excavated as well as pieces of jade and very well preserved carved ceramic masks. 1
Yangshao culture: along the Yellow River in China. It is dated from around 5000 BC to 3000 BC. It consisted of hundreds of settlements along the Yellow River and Wei River regions, and stretched across the northwestern plains from Shaanxi province in central China to Gansu province in the west. Yangshao village, the source of the Yangshao name, is located near the confluence of the Yellow, Fen and Wei rivers. Around 4000 B.C, about 800 years before civilizations developed in Mesopotamia and Egypt, carefully laid-out villages were founded by hunter-farmers on the Yellow and Wei rivers.“The Yangshao culture is one of the two great Neolithic cultures that proliferated in northern China. Its earliest sites in the Wei River valley date from about 5000 B.C., and the westernmost regions of the Yangshao culture seem to persist until approximately 2000 B.C. In other words, Yangshao culture possessed a history of three thousand years. Yanhshao is a broad term. There are many Yangshao sites. Some scholars also group Neolithic culture sites into two broad cultural complexes: the Yangshao cultures in central and western China, and the Longshan cultures in eastern and southeastern China. The Yangshao culture (5000-3000 B.C.)of the middle Yellow River valley, known for its painted pottery, and the later Longshan culture (2500-2000 B.C.)of the east, distinguished for its black pottery, are te best known of the ancient Chinese Yellow River cultures. Traditionally it was believed that Chinese civilization arose in the Yellow River valley and spread out from this center. Recent archaeological discoveries, however, reveal a far more complex picture of Neolithic China, with a number of distinct and independent cultures in various regions interacting with and influencing each other. Other major Neolithic cultures were the Hongshan culture in northeastern China, the Liangzhu culture in the lower Yangzi River delta, the Shijiahe culture in the middle Yangzi River basin and primitive settlements and burial grounds found at Liuwan in Qinghai Province, Wangyin in Shandong Province, Xinglongwa in Inner Mongolia, and the Yuchisi in Anhui Province, among many others. 1, 2
- Beer Brewed in the Yangshao Area 5000 Years Ago
- Barley: a Surprise Ingredient in China’s 5,000-Year-Old Beer
- Millet First Domesticated in Yangshao Area 10,000 Years Ago
| Major sites | Banpo, Jiangzhai |
|---|---|
| Preceded by | Peiligang culture, Dadiwan culture, Cishan culture |
- The early period (or Banpo phase, c. 5000–4000 BC) is represented by the Banpo, Jiangzhai, Beishouling and Dadiwan sites in the Wei River valley in Shaanxi.[11]
- The middle period (or Miaodigou phase, c. 4000–3500 BC) saw an expansion of the culture in all directions, and the development of hierarchies of settlements in some areas, such as western Henan.[12]
- The late period (c. 3500–3000 BC) saw a greater spread of settlement hierarchies. The first wall of rammed earth in China was built around the settlement of Xishan (25 ha) in central Henan (near modern Zhengzhou).[13]
Early Yangshao sites contain more than one form of burial, generating much debate. One debate concerns the meaning of a few individual graves of young girls at Yuanjunmiao. These graves contain relatively large quantities of stone ornaments and pottery vessels. Rather than symbolizing wealth, such graves may symbolize some aspect of gender instead. Multiple burials of adults are more common at early Yangshao sites. These may have been opened up as needed to bury people from the same kin group. More Burials for individuals are found in later Yangshao sites such as Dahecun in central Henan. A desire to mark individual social position is more clearly evident for the later phases, when greater variation in grave goods, especially ceramics (some painted), is evident. Only a few sites in the central Yellow River valley from the middle and Late Yangshao periods have material evidence for increase in social inequality. In comparison with other areas, differences in the quantity and quality of grave goods among graves are not dramatic. A very unusual Middle Yangshao phase burial was found at the site of Xishuipo in northeastern Henan. Situated around the grave of an adult male were skeletons of three youths (both males and females) that have been interpreted as sacrifices. On either side of the adult were life-sized images made from shells that seem to represent a tiger and a dragon (Figure 5). It has been suggested that the animals represent features of constellations. It is likely that the deceased was a ritual specialist whom the ancient people believed could communicate with the heavens. Furthermore, this ritual specialist was highly regarded and was a kind of village leader. There is little differentiation among Early Dawenkou period (c. 4100-3500 BC) burials in Shandong, as seen from the site of Wangyin. There were both multiple and individual burials at this site. The single graves exhibited minor differences in the nature of grave goods on the basis of age and sex, rather than individual status defined by wealth or power. During the Middle Dawenkou period (c. 3500-3000 BC), more differences in mortuary treatment for individuals emerged. At more than one site, a few graves, for both females and males, contain greater quantities of finely made objects than others. For the Late Dawenkou period (c. 3000-2600 BC), differences among graves are dramatic. The Dawenkou site is the most famous, with a minority of burials containing finely made pottery vessels, symbolic jade tools (no sign of use), ornamental objects of elephant ivory, and pieces of alligator hide that probably were used to fashion drums. The rare materials would have been acquired through exchange networks. Many of these goods probably were made by craft specialists, and some were made just for burial. In addition, some grave pits were more elaborate than others, with special earthen ledges to hold artifacts, and with wooden coffins. A common feature of most cemeteries is a tremendous quantity of pottery as grave offerings. At the Dawenkou site, one grave for an adult female contains 90 vessels, and one grave at Lingyanghe in eastern Shandong contains 160 pots. Different functional types are included, for cooking, storage, serving, and drinking. Drinking cups in rich burials are common. The most elaborate graves discovered in the lower Yangzi River valley, without a doubt, are from the Liangzhu (c. 3300-2200 BC) period Liangzhu culture. Although these graves contain finely made pottery vessels (elegant shapes, some black and polished), it is the jade objects that have received the most attention. There is an amazing variety of finely made jade ornaments, with respect to size, shape, and color. Many have no known function. The intriguing ‘taotie’ (‘animal mask’) design on some jades (Figure 6) also appears on later, historic period bronze vessels in the Yellow River valley to the north. A few rich graves at sites such as Fanshan contain large jades; large size may be another symbol of high social status. Other jade objects include symbolic weapons (no signs of use) that probably once were hafted with wooden handles. These probably served as symbols of power and authority. ref
Liangzhu culture was highly stratified, as jade, silk, ivory, and lacquer artifacts were found exclusively in elite burials, while pottery was more commonly found in the burial plots of poorer individuals. This division of class indicates that the Liangzhu Period was an early state, symbolized by the clear distinction drawn between social classes in funeral structures. A pan-regional urban center had emerged at the Liangzhu city-site and elite groups from this site presided over the local centers. The Liangzhu culture was extremely influential and its sphere of influence reached as far north as Shanxi and as far south as Guangdong. 1
The Majiayao culture (c. 3300–2000 BC) to the west is now considered a separate culture that developed from the middle Yangshao culture through an intermediate Shilingxia phase.
Yaoshan and other elite cemeteries from the Liangzhu period were first constructed as human-made, earthen platforms several meters high over the floodplain. Many Liangzhu site names end in ‘shan’, meaning ‘mountain’ or ‘hill’. This would have provided a dramatic setting for funeral ceremonies. It is likely that ceremonies continued to take place periodically after burial of the deceased. At Yaoshan and the Fuquanshan site closer to Shanghai, archaeologists found altars made of earth and stone. At Fuquanshan, they also found sediments that they believe resulted from sacrificial offerings with fire. At the Mojiaoshan site in Zhejiang, the large platform construction has an area of over 3 ha, with a height of 10 m. In addition, there were remains of smaller rammed, earthen platforms and a large structure. Some of these platforms were constructed partially by fired adobe bricks, indicating even greater labor expenditure. Large structures also could have been Used for public rituals around the graves of individuals who were important ancestors to the whole group. If additional excavation of the site reveals more of these structures, the structures may have been elite residences. 1
Bronze Age burial of ‘shaman’ discovered in Slovakia
Kultepe? An archaeological site with a 4,000 years old women’s rights document.
Bell Beaker material culture has a European distribution that appeared from between 2750 and 2500 BC. The reasons for its spread, either by migration or cultural diffusion, have been much debated over the decades. In the British Isles, the emergence of the Bell Beaker culture, bringing with it new ideas, beliefs, knowledge and values – including the first metalwork of copper and gold – and featuring a wide and expanding network of distant connections, may have appeared ‘modern’ in comparison with the Neolithic world which had perhaps had its day. Much of the evidence derives from the remains of a distinct range of inhumation burials with Wessex, particularly the area of Salisbury Plain centred on Stonehenge, producing a number of important inhumation graves; most famously that of the ‘Amesbury Archer‘, one of the richest Beaker burials ever found. There are, however, many less ostentatious burial remains of this date. The DNA study set out to reveal the origins of these people and their relationship with the earlier Neolithic population. The results of the project revealed a complex picture across Europe in which both migration and cultural diffusion played a part. For the British Isles, however, the genetic evidence demonstrates that a near complete population turnover occurred from the 24th century BC onwards. ref
DNA study reveals scale of Bell Beaker migration into the British Isles, Around 4000 years ago in Britain, Bronze Age shamanism? Dating to between around 2000 BC and 800 BC and is characterized by a new form of burial tradition and the introduction and use of bronze metal. Individuals were now being buried on their own under a single barrow or mound, accompanied with metal objects and prestige items. Previous communal burials like the various chambered tombs of the Neolithic become a thing of the past. The Upton Lovell barrow group, which includes Upton Lovell G2a, dates from the Early Bronze Age, about 1900-1700 BC. The barrow is now badly damaged, but originally the mound covered one of the most unusual burials of the Early Bronze Age. I will turn next to describe some of the objects found in Upton Lovell G2a, as I believe that there are several objects in this collection which suggest that the person buried was an important individual, perhaps a shaman. Among them were four axeheads, including a prestigious battle-axe made of black dolerite. A circular polished, milky colored stone was placed on his chest. At his feet was a collection of stones, which were probably a set of metalworker’s hammers and grinding stones, indicating that he was also a metalworker or even a goldsmith. There whee found bones each had a hole in it, and it seems likely that they were sewn to a cloak (going by their position in the grave). Another group of similar bones was found around his chest and neck – which could have been part of a necklace. Four pierced boar’s tusks found by his knees may have decorated a pouch, and as I mentioned in the Mesolithic shamanism post: bones are added to a shamanic costume, human or animal, as they are connected to the symbolic death and rebirth experience. A costume is a powerful tool in the shamans toolkit; for one, it would provide protection. For some cultures who practise shamanism, shamans have more bones than a normal person, and since more bones meant more power, the shaman would paint or sew extra bones onto his costume in a practical form of wishful thinking. In other cultures, each bone represented a member of the clan, sometimes it was sewn on by each individual member. In this way, the shaman also felt protected by his entire clan. Sometimes the bones only represented the men, the women being symbolised by the “flesh” around the symbolic bones, meaning the part of the costume on which the bones were sewn. Nevertheless, bone symbolism is universally used on ceremonial costumes with many different meanings, making a single interpretation difficult. The different symbols used can be divided into seven groups:
- feathers and wings,
- bones and skeletons,
- antlers and horns,
- human and animal figures,
- bells and other small hangers,
- chains and ropes.
Within the Upton Lovell group of barrows there are others re-occurring objects that certainly point towards a shamanic worldview. One of the burials as defining Wessex culture. ref
The culture is related to the Hilversum culture of the southern Netherlands, Belgium, and northern France, and linked to the northern France armorican tumuli, prototyped with the Middle Rhine group of Beaker culture and commonly subdivided in the consecutive phases Wessex I (4,000 to 3,650 years ago/2000-1650 BC) and Wessex II (1650-1400). ‘Wessex Culture’ as a limited social stratum rather than a distinct cultural grouping, specifically referring to the hundred or so particularly richly furnished graves in and around Wiltshire. The culture group, however, is named as one of the intrusive Beaker groups that appear in Ireland. Wessex I is closely associated with the construction and use of the later phases of Stonehenge. They buried their dead under barrows using inhumation at first but later using cremation and often with rich grave goods. They appear to have had wide-ranging trade links with continental Europe, importing amber from the Baltic, jewelry from modern-day Germany, gold from Brittany as well as daggers and beads from Mycenaean Greece and vice versa. It has been speculated that river transport allowed Wessex to be the main link to the Severn estuary. The wealth from such trade probably permitted the Wessex people to construct the second and third (megalithic) phases of Stonehenge and also indicates a powerful form of social organization. ref
4,000 years ago, one grave of a young mother (Smith named Maud) and a child was discovered. The head of the crouching mother, who was around 20 years old when she died, was pointing north in the shallow and small chalky grave (approximately 1.5m square); Smith speculated that the child might have been buried alive with its mother. Additionally found circling this grave was over 200 fossilised echinoid. Two species were present: the Fairy-Loaf (Ananchytes ovatus) – above left and the Heart-Urchin (Micraster coranguinum) – above right. No other graves in the site had any similar offerings. Fossil urchins have been used as protective amulets (star worship). Sea urchins can be found in all climates, from warm seas to polar oceans. Ain ‘Ghazal (right) – Fossil urchin from Ain ‘Ghazal in Jordan that about 9,000 years ago had a hole drilled through it, implying that the five-pointed star was representative of the human body. And Swanscombe axe (left) – An Early Palaeolithic Acheulian flint hand axe made about 400,000 years ago by Homo heidelbergensis and incorporating the base of a fossil sea urchin, displaying the five-pointed star motif to best effect. The grave 4,000 years ago, contained a small number of goods:
- One broken pot
- Three flint hammer stones
- Two scrapers
- Two crudely chipped handaxes
- A large number of flint flakes
- The broken bones of ox, pig and deer
- A single pebble of white quartz
- The mother ’s skeleton was recovered in 340 pieces. ref, ref
Ethnic History of the Bering Sea, The Ekven Burial Ground 2,000 years ago Ekven Burial 154, of an older woman evidence of female shaman with a wooden mask from an Eskimo Cemetery of the Old Bering Sea Culture. Chukotka in Siberia, within the tomb, lies the skeleton of a woman, lying on a wood floor in a stone-lined grave, surrounded by whalebone and many ivory, wood, shell, stone, and bone tools, with a remarkable wood mask positioned between her knees. Very few graves contain the elaborate grave offerings; sufficiently few for some archaeologists to infer the existence of hierarchical groups, including powerful whaling captains and/or shamans, some of whom were women. This time period was one which saw the convergence of an ethnos, a common Eskimo type of lifeway, which spread throughout the region in both Alaska and Asia. As seen from excavations in this region, a single human burial may contain objects decorated in any of the three styles, suggesting wide travel and communication between the cultures. Shamans were frequently women, who also were known to be very powerful in the spiritual life throughout the northern cultures. 1, 2, 3
Trypillia and Greece Neolithic outliers: the smoking gun of Proto-Anatolian migrations?
(Continued from the post Corded Ware culture origins: The Final Frontier).
Looking at the PCA of Wang et al. (2018), I realized that Sredni Stog / Corded Ware peoples seem to lie somewhere between:
- the eastern steppe (i.e. Khvalynsk-Yamna); and
- Lower Danube and Balkan cultures affected by Anatolian- and steppe-related (i.e. Khvalynsk-Novodanilovka) migrations.
This multiethnic interaction of the western steppe fits therefore the complex archaeological description of events in the North Pontic, Lower Danube, and Dnieper-Dniester regions. Here are some interesting samples related to those long-lasting contacts:
1. I3719 (mtDNA H1, Y-DNA I2a2a) Ukraine Neolithic sample from Dereivka ca. 4949–4799 BC, described in Mathieson et al. (2018) as of “entirely northwestern-Anatolian-Neolithic-related ancestry”.
2. ANI163 from Varna I ca. 4711–4550 BC (mtDNA H7a1), and I2181 from Balkans Chalcolithic (Smyadovo, in Bulgaria) ca. 4500 BC (mtDNA HV15, Y-DNA R) show the first steppe ancestry (read more) in regions known to be affected by the expansion of Suvorovo chiefs.
3. The Yamna Bulgaria outlier (Y-DNA I2a2a1b1b), 3012-2900 calBCE, shows apparently an admixture with cultures of that region (but 1,500 years later).
Greece Neolithic outlier: Proto-Anatolians?
5. Especially interesting is I6423, one of the Greece Neolithic samples referred to inWang et al. (2018), which is obviously an outlier among the three used in the paper. It does not seem to correspond to any of the ancient DNA samples published to date; it is not in Hofmanova et al. (2016), in Lazaridis et al. (2017), or in Mathieson et al. (2018).
Since the Neolithic in Greece could mean any period from ca. 6500 BC to ca. 3200 BC, I guess we are talking here about some migration related to the expansion of Khvalynsk-Novodanilovka chieftains after ca. 4500 BC, because it appears on the PCA precisely on the same spot as Varna and Smyadovo outliers, and its ADMIXTURE shows similar components…
So, this may be the smoking gun of Proto-Anatolian (or maybe early Common Anatolian) expansion with steppe migrants up to the border of Western Anatolia, and we may be able to get rid of those unfounded doubts about Anatolian origins once and for all…
NOTE. Also interesting seems another Greece Neolithic sample, I6420, in ADMIXTURE, although its position in the PCA (near Minoans and Mycenaeans) does not necessarily point to potential steppe influence, but rather to the extra ‘eastern (Caucasus/Iran-related) ancestry’ contribution found in Minoans and in Mycenaeans compared to previous samples of the region.
If it is located near the Western Anatolian coast – especially near Troy – there won’t be much to add about the potential site of entry of Common Anatolian languages into Anatolia… I have read some comments about how ‘impossible’ it was for steppe migrants and their language to ‘invade’ the more advanced cultures of Anatolia from the west, but it seems as ‘impossible’ as it was for Barbarians to invade the Roman Empire and impose their language as elites in certain regions. (And yes, we have at least one important weak political period among Middle Eastern cultures in the early 3rdmillennium BC, similar to the period of the Fall of the Western Roman Empire).
If it is located somewhere more ‘central’ in the Greek Peninsula, then it could also be used to support the Anatolian nature of the controversial Pre-Greek (‘Pelasgian’) substrate. While we know that Greek (at least since Mycenaean) shows a strong Pre-Greek cultural and linguistic heritage (also reflected in its genetic continuity), the nature of that language is usually believed to be non-Indo-European, and Anatolian contacts are rather few and coincident with the Mycenaean period. I don’t think this sample can tell much about the Pre-Greek language, though, because – if it is really Neolithic, and comparing it with later Minoan and Mycenaean samples – it seems a clear outlier.
If it is, however, related to later Yamna migrations after ca. 3000 BC (and, like the ‘Ukraine Eneolithic’ sample that is likely from Catacomb, it is classified as Neolithic just because it cannot be attributed to precise Helladic periods), then we may be in front of the first obvious Yamna migrants in Greece. If that is the case (which I doubt), the sample wouldn’t be so informative for PIE dialectal expansions, because by now it is evident that we will find steppe ancestry and R1b-Z2103 subclades accompanying Yamna migrants in the southern Balkans, and probably well into Mycenaean Greece.
NOTE. Whatever the case, I am sure that for those fond of absurd autochthonous continuity theories, as well as for anti-steppe conspirationists, this sample will be just another good way of arguing for anything, ranging from a rejection of the Middle PIE – Late PIE division, to a support for some mythic ancient autochtonous Proto-Graeco-Anatolian group, or maybe some ancient Graeco–Indo-Slavonic split, or whatever new dialectal stage one can invent to support the own genealogical fantasies…
So, if it actually is a Neolithic sample, let’s hope that it shows a clear R1b-M269 (xL23 or early L23) subclade distinct from those (likely Z2103) expanded later with Late PIE-speaking Yamna (and probably to be found among Mycenaeans), so that there can be no more place for ethnic fantasies. ref
- Kurgan origins and expansion with Khvalynsk-Novodanilovka chieftains
- The renewed ‘Kurgan model’ of Kristian Kristiansen and the Danish school: “The Indo-European Corded Ware Theory”
- The Caucasus a genetic and cultural barrier; Yamna dominated by R1b-M269; Yamna settlers in Hungary cluster with Yamna
- Haplogroup R1b-L51 in Khvalynsk samples from the Samara region dated ca. 4250-4000 BC
The Unique Burial of the Ekaterinovsky Cape Early Eneolithic Cemetery in the Middle Volga Region, by Korolev et al. Stratum Plus (2018) Nº2.
Abstract (official, in English):
This is the first time we published the results of a comprehensive study of burial 45 of the eneolithic cemetery called Ekaterinovsky Cape. The burial contains the skeleton of a young man with traumatic injuries of the skull, leg and hand bones of other individuals, skeleton of a young specimen of a domestic goat (Capra hircus) that was abundantly sprinkled with red ocher. Grave goods include three stone scepters of different types, a large item made of horn in the shape of a bird’s head, a stone adze, knife-like plates of quartzite, beads from the flaps of the shells (Unio), marmot cutters, decoration made from a beaver’s tooth. The uniqueness of the burial is determined by the combination of the composition of the grave goods and traces of ritual practices. To conclude, we suggest the buried man could belong to the elite of the society that left this burial ground.
NOTE. About my terminology, Russian has a lenited pronunciation of E in this case, hence the “Ye-” transliteration of the name of the town (and the site) in Google as Yekaterinovka. The “more etymological” transliteration is with “E”, as they use here, although Russians paradoxically use phonetic transliterations of foreign terms. I prefer the lenited transliteration to distinguish the Russian site from other Ekaterinovkas, though.
Perhaps, we should correlate three very closely related damages [on the skull] with certain rituals, with which scepters could be associated. Each scepter could be a symbolic expression of a part of society, a type of activity, reaching a certain age and social status. This assumption does not seem incredible in combination with other extant, no less impressive, details of the funeral rite. Of great interest is the ornithomorphic rod of the horn. The location of the wand in the head and right half of the breast emphasizes its special significance in ritual practice and in funeral rites. Direct analogies to this product in other burial places of the cemetery are absent, and outside it authors are not known.
On the genetic data
Here is what I could gather about the report I shared of R1b-L51 lineages in Samara:
1) Yes, the comment at MolGen.org contains a more or less accurate summary of the oral communication actually given. And no, no more interesting data – from a genetic point of view – was presented.
2) What A.A. Khokhlov reported was preliminary genetic information from some samples, and an outside lab shared this information with him.
NOTE. It is well-known that David Anthony, also part of the Samara Valley project, provided the Reich Lab with Khvalynsk and Yamna samples from the region, so it would not be a surprise that these had been in fact assessed by the Reich Lab, too. This is my assumption, though, and I may be wrong.
3) What the report conveys is that “all samples investigated” belonged to R1b-P312 and R1b-U106, so I understand there are in principle more than two samples, whatever Google Translate says.
4) As R. Rocca said in Anthrogenica, the reported R1b1a1a2a1a1c2b2b1a2 (U106 subclade) is exactly the same one reported in Narasimhan et al. (2018) for the sample from the Iron Age site Loebanr 1 (Swat proto-historic graves) ca. 950 BC.
NOTE. That would be another hint at the origin of the preliminary data, together with the timing of the report (January), probably coinciding with the final assessment of samples which appeared in Narasimhan et al. (2018). That would explain the similar weird Y-SNP calls from software yHaplo (as reported by Narasimhan in Twitter). This is all again conjecture, though.
R1b-P312 is not reported in Narasimhan et al. (2018) for any sample (that would be “R1b1a1a2a1b”, following the standard used in their tables). Because the V88 sample in Khvalynsk, as well as other previously known V88 samples, are correctly reported as within the V88 branch, we may be talking about anything in the R1b tree from L754 (xV88) on. Most likely at or beyond the subclade of the Zvejnieki sample of hg R1b1a1 (classified as of R1b1a1a2a1), i.e. from P297 on.
NOTE. Since R1b-Z2103 samples are correctly reported, it is unlikely that the reported samples are from this branch, either. ref
Iron Age
Mound 1 at Filippovka 1
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A Sarmatian burial mound (or kurgan) excavated in Russia’s Southern Ural steppes, was carried out by the expedition of the Institute of Archaeology (Russian Academy of Sciences), led by Professor Leonid T. Yablonsky. An early Iron Age burial chamber was discovered measuring approximately 4x5m and 4m deep at the eastern part of Mound 1 at Filippovka 1 kurgan in the Orenburg region. At the bottom of the chamber was found exceptionally rich and varied grave goods accompanying a human (believed male) skeleton. The grave contained:
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Ekven Burial 154
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The Ekven burial (located 30km from the Russian village of Uelen, in the province of Chukotka) provides insights to the Old Bering Sea Eskimo culture from about 2,000 years ago. It was excavated from the permafrost by archaeologists Dorian Andreevich Sergeev and Sergey A. Arutiunov (Sergeev also discovered the major Eskimo cemeteries – Uelen and Chini – on the western side of Bering Strait). Within one grave (numbered #154) excavated in 1967, lay the skeleton of a woman of around 40-50 year old. She was lying on a wood floor in a stone-lined grave, surrounded by whalebone and many ivory, wood, shell, stone, and bone tools. The woman had a wooden mask carefully positioned between her knees. The archaeologists were assisted by three Naukan Eskimos, who saw the mask and cried out “Kamaka!” (“It’s death!” in Chukchi) and refused to continue working. Sergeev touched the mask, saying he would take the spell and work continued until that evening when the eskimos explained the cannibal spirit mythology connected with the mask they call Yughym-Yua(“Master of the Universe”) who is responsible for the lives and deaths of humans; he eats the souls of the deceased, then regurgitates them so they enter the bodies of newborn babies. The wooden Yughym-Yua mask has a likeness to an Eskimo racial type, with high cheek bones and eyeholes blocked by carved bone eyes (a feature of Siberian death masks). It is one of the earliest masks known from Arctic cultures and at one time possibly had feathers, or even hair in the small holes around the edges. It would have been carved to fit over her face between the time of death and when she was buried. Many of the artefacts found in this grave are objects that would have been used during her life, however a number of objects appear to relate to rituals, healing and dance. In addition to the woman’s belongings, the grave included a number of other objects (typically associated with male activities) and included: |
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Princess/ Prince Shaman Ukok of Siberian
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2,400 years ago, wooden coffin of a male (thought to be female; maybe an LGBTQI individual in the Altai Mountains, in a border region close to frontiers of Russia with Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan. Nearby were found the remains of an older warrior and six horses saddled and bridled, that were probably first killed and then buried with him; concluding a member of an elite corps of warriors within the Pazyryk culture. The results of the MRI analysis suggest he died from breast cancer, although he also suffered from an infection of the bone or bone marrow, and had other injuries which may have been caused by falling from a horse. Other grave goods included artifacts made from gold, bronze and felt, a unique mirror of Chinese origin in a wooden frame, a small container of cannabis and a meal of sheep and horse meat. A ‘cosmetics bag’ lay inside his coffin next to his left hip and contained a face brush made from horse hair and a fragment of an ‘eyeliner pencil’ that was made from iron rings, inside which was vivianite (hydrated iron phosphate mineral) to give a deep blue-green color on the skin. 25 years at death, stood around 1.65m tall and with her head was completely shaved, she wore an elaborate human and horse hair wig. She was dressed in a long shirt made from Chinese silk, a long and wide woolen skirt and had long felt sleeve boots. Most strikingly were the highly detailed tattoo’s that adorned her left arm, leading the media to nick-name her ‘Princess Ukok’. The tattoo’s were of a mythological creature – a deer with a griffon’s beak and a Capricorn’s antlers and a spotted panther, along with the head of a deer on her wrist and another small marking on her hand. It is thought that because she often inhaled cannabis (probably to help cope with the pain of cancer), her altered state of mind may have given her a special Shamanistic status in her society. During these trances, he may have been interpreted as speaking to animal spirits and gods and although quite sick, she may have been able to develop her powers of meditation – this could explain the lavish way she was cared for. ref |
ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref
List of Lunar Deities
“In mythology, a lunar deity is a god or goddess of the Moon, sometimes as a personification. These deities can have a variety of functions and traditions depending upon the culture, but they are often related. Some forms of moon worship can be found in most ancient religions. The Moon features prominently in art and literature, often with a purported influence in human affairs. Many cultures are oriented chronologically by the Moon, as opposed to the Sun. The Hindu calendar maintains the integrity of the lunar month and the moon god Chandra has religious significance during many Hindu festivals (e.g. Karwa Chauth, Sankashti Chaturthi, and during eclipses). The ancient Germanic tribes were also known to have a lunar calendar.” ref
“Many cultures have implicitly linked the 29.5-day lunar cycle to women’s menstrual cycles, as evident in the shared linguistic roots of “menstruation” and “moon” words in multiple language families. This identification was not universal, as demonstrated by the fact that not all moon deities are female. Still, many well-known mythologies feature moon goddesses, including the Greek goddess Selene, the Roman goddess Luna, and the Chinese goddess Chang’e. Several goddesses including Artemis, Hecate, and Isis did not originally have lunar aspects, and only acquired them late in antiquity due to syncretism with the de facto Greco-Roman lunar deity Selene/Luna. In traditions with male gods, there is little evidence of such syncretism, though the Greek Hermes has been equated with the male Egyptian lunar god Thoth.” ref
“Male lunar gods are also common, such as Sin of the Mesopotamians, Mani of the Germanic tribes, Tsukuyomi of the Japanese, Igaluk/Alignak of the Inuit, and the Hindu god Chandra. The original Proto-Indo-European lunar deity appears to have been male, with many possible derivatives including the Homeric figure of Menelaus. Cultures with male moon gods often feature sun goddesses. An exception is Hinduism, featuring both male and female aspects of the solar divine. The ancient Egyptians had several moon gods including Khonsu and Thoth, although Thoth is a considerably more complex deity. Set represented the moon in the Egyptian Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky Days.” ref
List of Solar Deities
“A solar deity is a god or goddess who represents the Sun, or an aspect of it, usually by its perceived power and strength. Solar deities and Sun worship can be found throughout most of recorded history in various forms. The following is a list of solar deities. A dawn god or goddess is a deity in a polytheistic religious tradition who is in some sense associated with the dawn. These deities show some relation with the morning, the beginning of the day, and, in some cases, become syncretized with similar solar deities.” ref, ref
People don’t commonly teach religious history, even that of their own claimed religion. No, rather they teach a limited “pro their religion” history of their religion from a religious perspective favorable to the religion of choice.
Do you truly think “Religious Belief” is only a matter of some personal choice?
Do you not see how coercive one’s world of choice is limited to the obvious hereditary belief, in most religious choices available to the child of religious parents or caregivers? Religion is more commonly like a family, culture, society, etc. available belief that limits the belief choices of the child and that is when “Religious Belief” is not only a matter of some personal choice and when it becomes hereditary faith, not because of the quality of its alleged facts or proposed truths but because everyone else important to the child believes similarly so they do as well simply mimicking authority beliefs handed to them. Because children are raised in religion rather than being presented all possible choices but rather one limited dogmatic brand of “Religious Belief” where children only have a choice of following the belief as instructed, and then personally claim the faith hereditary belief seen in the confirming to the belief they have held themselves all their lives. This is obvious in statements asked and answered by children claiming a faith they barely understand but they do understand that their family believes “this or that” faith, so they feel obligated to believe it too. While I do agree that “Religious Belief” should only be a matter of some personal choice, it rarely is… End Hereditary Religion!
Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey
“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref
We are like believing machines we vacuum up ideas, like Velcro sticks to almost everything. We accumulate beliefs that we allow to negatively influence our lives, often without realizing it. Our willingness must be to alter skewed beliefs that impend our balance or reason, which allows us to achieve new positive thinking and accurate outcomes.
My thoughts on Religion Evolution with external links for more info:
- (Pre-Animism Africa mainly, but also Europe, and Asia at least 300,000 years ago), (Pre-Animism – Oxford Dictionaries)
- (Animism Africa around 100,000 years ago), (Animism – Britannica.com)
- (Totemism Europe around 50,000 years ago), (Totemism – Anthropology)
- (Shamanism Siberia around 30,000 years ago), (Shamanism – Britannica.com)
- (Paganism Turkey around 12,000 years ago), (Paganism – BBC Religion)
- (Progressed Organized Religion “Institutional Religion” Egypt around 5,000 years ago), (Ancient Egyptian Religion – Britannica.com)
- (CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS after 4,000 years ago) (Origin of Major Religions – Sacred Texts)
- (Early Atheistic Doubting at least by 2,600 years ago) (History of Atheism – Wikipedia)
“Religion is an Evolved Product” and Yes, Religion is Like Fear Given Wings…
Atheists talk about gods and religions for the same reason doctors talk about cancer, they are looking for a cure, or a firefighter talks about fires because they burn people and they care to stop them. We atheists too often feel a need to help the victims of mental slavery, held in the bondage that is the false beliefs of gods and the conspiracy theories of reality found in religions.
Understanding Religion Evolution:
- Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago)
- Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago)
- Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago)
- Shamanism (Siberia: 30,000 years ago)
- Paganism (Turkey: 12,000 years ago)
- Progressed organized religion (Egypt: 5,000 years ago), (Egypt, the First Dynasty 5,150 years ago)
- CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago)
- Early Atheistic Doubting (at least by 2,600 years ago)
“An Archaeological/Anthropological Understanding of Religion Evolution”
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.
Quick Evolution of Religion?
Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago) pre-religion is a beginning that evolves into later Animism. So, Religion as we think of it, to me, all starts in a general way with Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits), then this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago) (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 (Siberia/Russia: 30,000 years ago) (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 (Turkey: 12,000 years ago) (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). Progressed organized religion (Egypt: 5,000 years ago) with CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago).
Historically, in large city-state societies (such as Egypt or Iraq) starting around 5,000 years ago culminated to make religion something kind of new, a sociocultural-governmental-religious monarchy, where all or at least many of the people of such large city-state societies seem familiar with and committed to the existence of “religion” as the integrated life identity package of control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine, but this juggernaut integrated religion identity package of Dogmatic-Propaganda certainly did not exist or if developed to an extent it was highly limited in most smaller prehistoric societies as they seem to lack most of the strong control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine (magical beliefs could be at times be added or removed). Many people just want to see developed religious dynamics everywhere even if it is not. Instead, all that is found is largely fragments until the domestication of religion.
Religions, as we think of them today, are a new fad, even if they go back to around 6,000 years in the timeline of human existence, this amounts to almost nothing when seen in the long slow evolution of religion at least around 70,000 years ago with one of the oldest ritual worship. Stone Snake of South Africa: “first human worship” 70,000 years ago. This message of how religion and gods among them are clearly a man-made thing that was developed slowly as it was invented and then implemented peace by peace discrediting them all. Which seems to be a simple point some are just not grasping how devastating to any claims of truth when we can see the lie clearly in the archeological sites.
I wish people fought as hard for the actual values as they fight for the group/clan names political or otherwise they think support values. Every amount spent on war is theft to children in need of food or the homeless kept from shelter.
Here are several of my blog posts on history:
- To Find Truth You Must First Look
- (Magdalenian/Iberomaurusian) Connections to the First Paganists of the early Neolithic Near East Dating from around 17,000 to 12,000 Years Ago
- Natufians: an Ancient People at the Origins of Agriculture and Sedentary Life
- Possible Clan Leader/Special “MALE” Ancestor Totem Poles At Least 13,500 years ago?
- Jewish People with DNA at least 13,200 years old, Judaism, and the Origins of Some of its Ideas
- Baltic Reindeer Hunters: Swiderian, Lyngby, Ahrensburgian, and Krasnosillya cultures 12,020 to 11,020 years ago are evidence of powerful migratory waves during the last 13,000 years and a genetic link to Saami and the Finno-Ugric peoples.
- The Rise of Inequality: patriarchy and state hierarchy inequality
- 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
- Ritualistic Bird Symbolism at Gobekli Tepe and its “Ancestor Cult”
- Male-Homosexual (female-like) / Trans-woman (female) Seated Figurine from Gobekli Tepe
- Could a 12,000-year-old Bull Geoglyph at Göbekli Tepe relate to older Bull and Female Art 25,000 years ago and Later Goddess and the Bull cults like Catal Huyuk?
- Sedentism and the Creation of goddesses around 12,000 years ago as well as male gods after 7,000 years ago.
- Alcohol, where Agriculture and Religion Become one? Such as Gobekli Tepe’s Ritualistic use of Grain as Food and Ritual Drink
- Neolithic Ritual Sites with T-Pillars and other Cultic Pillars
- Paganism: Goddesses around 12,000 years ago then 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
- Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Pre-Capitalism)
- Shaman burial in Israel 12,000 years ago and the Shamanism Phenomena
- Need to Mythicized: gods and goddesses
- 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?
- 10,400 – 10,100 Years Ago, in Turkey the Nevail Cori Religious Settlement
- 9,000-6,500 Years Old Submerged Pre-Pottery/Pottery Neolithic Ritual Settlements off Israel’s Coast
- Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city” around 9,500 to 7,700 years ago (Turkey)
- Cultic Hunting at Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city”
- Special Items and Art as well as Special Elite Burials at Catal Huyuk
- New Rituals and Violence with the appearance of Pottery and People?
- Haplogroup N and its related Uralic Languages and Cultures
- Ainu people, Sámi people, Native Americans, the Ancient North Eurasians, and Paganistic-Shamanism with Totemism
- Ideas, Technology and People from Turkey, Europe, to China and Back again 9,000 to 5,000 years ago?
- First Pottery of Europe and the Related Cultures
- 9,000 years old Neolithic Artifacts Judean Desert and Hills Israel
- 9,000-7,000 years-old Sex and Death Rituals: Cult Sites in Israel, Jordan, and the Sinai
- 9,000-8500 year old Horned Female shaman Bad Dürrenberg Germany
- Neolithic Jewelry and the Spread of Farming in Europe Emerging out of West Turkey
- 8,600-year-old Tortoise Shells in Neolithic graves in central China have Early Writing and Shamanism
- Swing of the Mace: the rise of Elite, Forced Authority, and Inequality begin to Emerge 8,500 years ago?
- Migrations and Changing Europeans Beginning around 8,000 Years Ago
- My “Steppe-Anatolian-Kurgan hypothesis” 8,000/7,000 years ago
- Around 8,000-year-old Shared Idea of the Mistress of Animals, “Ritual” Motif
- Pre-Columbian Red-Paint (red ochre) Maritime Archaic Culture 8,000-3,000 years ago
- 7,522-6,522 years ago Linear Pottery culture which I think relates to Arcane Capitalism’s origins
- Arcane Capitalism: Primitive socialism, Primitive capital, Private ownership, Means of production, Market capitalism, Class discrimination, and Petite bourgeoisie (smaller capitalists)
- 7,500-4,750 years old Ritualistic Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine
- Roots of a changing early society 7,200-6,700 years ago Jordan and Israel
- Agriculture religion (Paganism) with farming reached Britain between about 7,000 to 6,500 or so years ago and seemingly expressed in things like Western Europe’s Long Barrows
- My Thoughts on Possible Migrations of “R” DNA and Proto-Indo-European?
- “Millet” Spreading from China 7,022 years ago to Europe and related Language may have Spread with it leading to Proto-Indo-European
- Proto-Indo-European (PIE), ancestor of Indo-European languages: DNA, Society, Language, and Mythology
- The Dnieper–Donets culture and Asian varieties of Millet from China to the Black Sea region of Europe by 7,022 years ago
- Kurgan 6,000 years ago/dolmens 7,000 years ago: funeral, ritual, and other?
- 7,020 to 6,020-year-old Proto-Indo-European Homeland of Urheimat or proposed home of their Language and Religion
- Ancient Megaliths: Kurgan, Ziggurat, Pyramid, Menhir, Trilithon, Dolman, Kromlech, and Kromlech of Trilithons
- The Mytheme of Ancient North Eurasian Sacred-Dog belief and similar motifs are found in Indo-European, Native American, and Siberian comparative mythology
- Elite Power Accumulation: Ancient Trade, Tokens, Writing, Wealth, Merchants, and Priest-Kings
- Sacred Mounds, Mountains, Kurgans, and Pyramids may hold deep connections?
- Between 7,000-5,000 Years ago, rise of unequal hierarchy elite, leading to a “birth of the State” or worship of power, strong new sexism, oppression of non-elites, and the fall of Women’s equal status
- Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite & their slaves
- Hell and Underworld mythologies starting maybe as far back as 7,000 to 5,000 years ago with the Proto-Indo-Europeans?
- The First Expression of the Male God around 7,000 years ago?
- White (light complexion skin) Bigotry and Sexism started 7,000 years ago?
- Around 7,000-year-old Shared Idea of the Divine Bird (Tutelary and/or Trickster spirit/deity), “Ritual” Motif
- Nekhbet an Ancient Egyptian Vulture Goddess and Tutelary Deity
- 6,720 to 4,920 years old Ritualistic Hongshan Culture of Inner Mongolia with 5,000-year-old Pyramid Mounds and Temples
- First proto-king in the Balkans, Varna culture around 6,500 years ago?
- 6,500–5,800 years ago in Israel Late Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Period in the Southern Levant Seems to Express Northern Levant Migrations, Cultural and Religious Transfer
- KING OF BEASTS: Master of Animals “Ritual” Motif, around 6,000 years old or older…
- Around 6000-year-old Shared Idea of the Solid Wheel & the Spoked Wheel-Shaped Ritual Motif
- “The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan; a Proto-Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna or Star of Venus?
- Religious/Ritual Ideas, including goddesses and gods as well as ritual mounds or pyramids from Northeastern Asia at least 6,000 years old, seemingly filtering to Iran, Iraq, the Mediterranean, Europe, Egypt, and the Americas?
- Maykop (5,720–5,020 years ago) Caucasus region Bronze Age culture-related to Copper Age farmers from the south, influenced by the Ubaid period and Leyla-Tepe culture, as well as influencing the Kura-Araxes culture
- 5-600-year-old Tomb, Mummy, and First Bearded Male Figurine in a Grave
- Kura-Araxes Cultural 5,520 to 4,470 years old DNA traces to the Canaanites, Arabs, and Jews
- Minoan/Cretan (Keftiu) Civilization and Religion around 5,520 to 3,120 years ago
- 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
- Stonehenge: Paganistic Burial and Astrological Ritual Complex, England (5,100-3,600 years ago)
- Around 5,000-year-old Shared Idea of the “Tree of Life” Ritual Motif
- Complex rituals for elite, seen from China to Egypt, at least by 5,000 years ago
- Around 5,000 years ago: “Birth of the State” where Religion gets Military Power and Influence
- The Center of the World “Axis Mundi” and/or “Sacred Mountains” Mythology Could Relate to the Altai Mountains, Heart of the Steppe
- Progressed organized religion starts, an approximately 5,000-year-old belief system
- China’s Civilization between 5,000-3,000 years ago, was a time of war and class struggle, violent transition from free clans to a Slave or Elite society
- Origin of Logics is Naturalistic Observation at least by around 5,000 years ago.
- Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State)
- Ziggurats (multi-platform temples: 4,900 years old) to Pyramids (multi-platform tombs: 4,700 years old)
- Did a 4,520–4,420-year-old Volcano In Turkey Inspire the Bible God?
- Finland’s Horned Shaman and Pre-Horned-God at least 4,500 years ago?
- 4,000-year-Old Dolmens in Israel: A Connected Dolmen Religious Phenomenon?
- Creation myths: From chaos, Ex nihilo, Earth-diver, Emergence, World egg, and World parent
- Bronze Age “Ritual” connections of the Bell Beaker culture with the Corded Ware/Single Grave culture, which were related to the Yamnaya culture and Proto-Indo-European Languages/Religions
- Low Gods (Earth/ Tutelary deity), High Gods (Sky/Supreme deity), and Moralistic Gods (Deity enforcement/divine order)
- The exchange of people, ideas, and material-culture including, to me, the new god (Sky Father) and goddess (Earth Mother) religion between the Cucuteni-Trypillians and others which is then spread far and wide
- Koryaks: Indigenous People of the Russian Far East and Big Raven myths also found in Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and other Indigenous People of North America
- 42 Principles Of Maat (Egyptian Goddess of the justice) around 4,400 years ago, 2000 Years Before Ten Commandments
- “Happy Easter” Well Happy Eostre/Ishter
- 4,320-3,820 years old “Shimao” (North China) site with Totemistic-Shamanistic Paganism and a Stepped Pyramid
- 4,250 to 3,400 Year old Stonehenge from Russia: Arkaim?
- 4,100-year-old beaker with medicinal & flowering plants in a grave of a woman in Scotland
- Early European Farmer ancestry, Kelif el Boroud people with the Cardial Ware culture, and the Bell Beaker culture Paganists too, spread into North Africa, then to the Canary Islands off West Africa
- Flood Accounts: Gilgamesh epic (4,100 years ago) Noah in Genesis (2,600 years ago)
- Paganism 4,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism)
- When was the beginning: TIMELINE OF CURRENT RELIGIONS, which start around 4,000 years ago.
- Early Religions Thought to Express Proto-Monotheistic Systems 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 with the Great Sky Spirit/God Tiān (天)?
- Confucianism’s Tiān (Shangdi god 4,000 years old): Supernaturalism, Pantheism or Theism?
- Yes, Your Male God is Ridiculous
- Mythology, a Lunar Deity is a Goddess or God of the Moon
- Sacred Land, Hills, and Mountains: Sami Mythology (Paganistic Shamanism)
- Horse Worship/Sacrifice: mythical union of Ruling Elite/Kingship and the Horse
- The Amorite/Amurru people’s God Amurru “Lord of the Steppe”, relates to the Origins of the Bible God?
- Bronze Age Exotic Trade Routes Spread Quite Far as well as Spread Religious Ideas with Them
- Sami and the Northern Indigenous Peoples Landscape, Language, and its Connection to Religion
- Prototype of Ancient Analemmatic Sundials around 3,900-3,150 years ago and a Possible Solar Connection to gods?
- Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)
- 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.
- Myths and Folklore: “Trickster gods and goddesses”
- 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?
- Dené–Yeniseian language, Old Copper Complex, and Pre-Columbian Mound Builders?
- No “dinosaurs and humans didn’t exist together just because some think they are in the bible itself”
- Sacred Shit and Sacred Animals?
- 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?
- 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.
- Ancient Alien Conspiracy Theorists: Misunderstanding, Rhetoric, Misinformation, Fabrications, and Lies
- Misinformation, Distortion, and Pseudoscience in Talking with a Christian Creationist
- Judging the Lack of Goodness in Gods, Even the Norse God Odin
- Challenging the Belief in God-like Aliens and Gods in General
- A Challenge to Christian use of Torture Devices?
- Yes, Hinduism is a Religion
- Trump is One of the Most Reactionary Forces of Far-right Christian Extremism
- Was the Bull Head a Symbol of God? Yes!
- Primate Death Rituals
- Christian – “God and Christianity are objectively true”
- Australopithecus afarensis Death Ritual?
- You Claim Global Warming is a Hoax?
- Doubter of Science and Defamer of Atheists?
- I think that sounds like the Bible?
- History of the Antifa (“anti-fascist”) Movements
- Indianapolis Anti-Blasphemy Laws #Free Soheil Rally
- Damien, you repeat the golden rule in so many forms then you say religion is dogmatic?
- Science is a Trustable Methodology whereas Faith is not Trustable at all!
- Was I ever a believer, before I was an atheist?
- Atheists rise in reason
- Mistrust of science?
- Open to Talking About the Definition of ‘God’? But first, we address Faith.
- ‘United Monarchy’ full of splendor and power – Saul, David, and Solomon? Most likely not.
- Is there EXODUS ARCHAEOLOGY? The short answer is “no.”
- Lacking Proof of Bigfoots, Unicorns, and Gods is Just a Lack of Research?
- Religion and Politics: Faith Beliefs vs. Rational Thinking
- Hammer of Truth that lying pig RELIGION: challenged by an archaeologist
- “The Hammer of Truth” -ontology question- What do You Mean by That?
- Navigation of a bad argument: Ad Hominem vs. Attack
- Why is it Often Claimed that Gods have a Gender?
- Why are basically all monotheistic religions ones that have a male god?
- Shifting through the Claims in support of Faith
- Dear Mr. AtHope, The 20th Century is an Indictment of Secularism and a Failed Atheist Century
- An Understanding of the Worldwide Statistics and Dynamics of Terrorist Incidents and Suicide Attacks
- Intoxication and Evolution? Addressing and Assessing the “Stoned Ape” or “Drunken Monkey” Theories as Catalysts in Human Evolution
- Sacred Menstrual cloth? Inanna’s knot, Isis knot, and maybe Ma’at’s feather?
- Damien, why don’t the Hebrews accept the bible stories?
- Dealing with a Troll and Arguing Over Word Meaning
- Knowledge without Belief? Justified beliefs or disbeliefs worthy of Knowledge?
- Afrocentrism and African Religions
- Crecganford @crecganford offers history & stories of the people, places, gods, & culture
- Empiricism-Denier?
I am not an academic. I am a revolutionary that teaches in public, in places like social media, and in the streets. I am not a leader by some title given but from my commanding leadership style of simply to start teaching everywhere to everyone, all manner of positive education.
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Low Gods “Earth” or Tutelary deity and High Gods “Sky” or Supreme deity
“An Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth. Earth goddesses are often associated with the “chthonic” deities of the underworld. Ki and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi/Bhūmi, etc. traced to an “Earth Mother” complementary to the “Sky Father” in Proto-Indo-European religion. Egyptian mythology exceptionally has a sky goddess and an Earth god.” ref
“A mother goddess is a goddess who represents or is a personification of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother. In some religious traditions or movements, Heavenly Mother (also referred to as Mother in Heaven or Sky Mother) is the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky father or God the Father.” ref
“Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as “sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “sky father” god with an “earth mother” goddess (pairings of a sky mother with an earth father are less frequent). A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with “sky” not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Neopagans often apply it with impunity to sky goddesses from other regions who were never associated with the term historically. The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky.” ref
“In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept in polytheistic religions of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon and is often either a reigning or former King of the Gods. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics, such as Ra. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother“. “Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter and Germanic Týr, Tir or Tiwaz, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).” ref
Tutelary deity
“A tutelary (also tutelar) is a deity or spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of “tutelary” expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship. In late Greek and Roman religion, one type of tutelary deity, the genius, functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Korean shamanism, jangseung and sotdae were placed at the edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the Seonangdang. In Philippine animism, Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. Such as: Maria Makiling is the deity who guards Mt. Makiling and Maria Cacao and Maria Sinukuan. In Shinto, the spirits, or kami, which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. And similarly, Native American beliefs such as Tonás, tutelary animal spirit among the Zapotec and Totems, familial or clan spirits among the Ojibwe, can be animals.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Austronesian beliefs such as: Atua (gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori or the Hawaiians), Hanitu (Bunun of Taiwan‘s term for spirit), Hyang (Kawi, Sundanese, Javanese, and Balinese Supreme Being, in ancient Java and Bali mythology and this spiritual entity, can be either divine or ancestral), Kaitiaki (New Zealand Māori term used for the concept of guardianship, for the sky, the sea, and the land), Kawas (mythology) (divided into 6 groups: gods, ancestors, souls of the living, spirits of living things, spirits of lifeless objects, and ghosts), Tiki (Māori mythology, Tiki is the first man created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne and represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures). ” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref
Mesopotamian Tutelary Deities can be seen as ones related to City-States
“Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and Ur; Ancient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon); the five Philistine city-states; the Berber city-states of the Garamantes; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth); the Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as Florence, Siena, Ferrara, Milan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice, which became powerful thalassocracies; the Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen Itza, Tikal, Copán and Monte Albán); the central Asian cities along the Silk Road; the city-states of the Swahili coast; Ragusa; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov; and many others.” ref
“The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BCE; also known as Protoliterate period) of Mesopotamia, named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. City-States like Uruk and others had a patron tutelary City Deity along with a Priest-King.” ref
“Chinese folk religion, both past, and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. Such as Tu Di Gong (Earth Deity) is the tutelary deity of a locality, and each individual locality has its own Earth Deity and Cheng Huang Gong (City God) is the guardian deity of an individual city, worshipped by local officials and locals since imperial times.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Hinduism, personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata, while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata. Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva is the patron of yogis and renunciants. City goddesses include: Mumbadevi (Mumbai), Sachchika (Osian); Kuladevis include: Ambika (Porwad), and Mahalakshmi. In NorthEast India Meitei mythology and religion (Sanamahism) of Manipur, there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. Tibetan Buddhism has Yidam as a tutelary deity. Dakini is the patron of those who seek knowledge.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens. Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion:
You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.” ref
“Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion. The tutelary deity of a man was his Genius, that of a woman her Juno. In the Imperial era, the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult. An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo. Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era, when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised the goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games (ludi) in her honor.” ref
“Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus). The Capitoline Triad of Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii, and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna, whose oracle was renowned.” ref
“The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele) as “tower-crowned” represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day Rheims), the tutelary was Mars Camulus.” ref
Household deity (a kind of or related to a Tutelary deity)
“A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as well as in folklore across many parts of the world. Household deities fit into two types; firstly, a specific deity – typically a goddess – often referred to as a hearth goddess or domestic goddess who is associated with the home and hearth, such as the ancient Greek Hestia.” ref
“The second type of household deities are those that are not one singular deity, but a type, or species of animistic deity, who usually have lesser powers than major deities. This type was common in the religions of antiquity, such as the Lares of ancient Roman religion, the Gashin of Korean shamanism, and Cofgodas of Anglo-Saxon paganism. These survived Christianisation as fairy-like creatures existing in folklore, such as the Anglo-Scottish Brownie and Slavic Domovoy.” ref
“Household deities were usually worshipped not in temples but in the home, where they would be represented by small idols (such as the teraphim of the Bible, often translated as “household gods” in Genesis 31:19 for example), amulets, paintings, or reliefs. They could also be found on domestic objects, such as cosmetic articles in the case of Tawaret. The more prosperous houses might have a small shrine to the household god(s); the lararium served this purpose in the case of the Romans. The gods would be treated as members of the family and invited to join in meals, or be given offerings of food and drink.” ref
“In many religions, both ancient and modern, a god would preside over the home. Certain species, or types, of household deities, existed. An example of this was the Roman Lares. Many European cultures retained house spirits into the modern period. Some examples of these include:
- Brownie (Scotland and England) or Hob (England) / Kobold (Germany) / Goblin / Hobgoblin
- Domovoy (Slavic)
- Nisse (Norwegian or Danish) / Tomte (Swedish) / Tonttu (Finnish)
- Húsvættir (Norse)” ref
“Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble. Because of their immediacy they had arguably more influence on the day-to-day affairs of men than the remote gods did. Vestiges of their worship persisted long after Christianity and other major religions extirpated nearly every trace of the major pagan pantheons. Elements of the practice can be seen even today, with Christian accretions, where statues to various saints (such as St. Francis) protect gardens and grottos. Even the gargoyles found on older churches, could be viewed as guardians partitioning a sacred space.” ref
“For centuries, Christianity fought a mop-up war against these lingering minor pagan deities, but they proved tenacious. For example, Martin Luther‘s Tischreden have numerous – quite serious – references to dealing with kobolds. Eventually, rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor deities, until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century. Since the 20th century this literature has been mined for characters for role-playing games, video games, and other fantasy personae, not infrequently invested with invented traits and hierarchies somewhat different from their mythological and folkloric roots.” ref
“In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its origin in totemism. In reality, this distinction is somewhat academic, since totemism may be regarded as a particularized manifestation of animism, and something of a synthesis of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s Totem and Taboo, both totem and taboo are outward expressions or manifestations of the same psychological tendency, a concept which is complementary to, or which rather reconciles, the apparent conflict. Freud preferred to emphasize the psychoanalytic implications of the reification of metaphysical forces, but with particular emphasis on its familial nature. This emphasis underscores, rather than weakens, the ancestral component.” ref
“William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist, and jurist, traced the origin of domestic deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system thought to have existed also in the neolithic, and the forerunner of Indo-European religion. In his analysis of the Indo-European household, in Chapter II “The House Spirit”, Section 1, he states:
The belief which guided the conduct of our forefathers was … the spirit rule of dead ancestors.” ref
“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:
It is thus certain that the worship of deceased ancestors is a vera causa, and not a mere hypothesis. …
In the other European nations, the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Kelts, the House Spirit appears with no less distinctness. … [T]he existence of that worship does not admit of doubt. … The House Spirits had a multitude of other names which it is needless here to enumerate, but all of which are more or less expressive of their friendly relations with man. … In [England] … [h]e is the Brownie. … In Scotland this same Brownie is well known. He is usually described as attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks. His favorite gratification was milk and honey.” ref
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“These ideas are my speculations from the evidence.”
I am still researching the “god‘s origins” all over the world. So you know, it is very complicated but I am smart and willing to look, DEEP, if necessary, which going very deep does seem to be needed here, when trying to actually understand the evolution of gods and goddesses. I am sure of a few things and less sure of others, but even in stuff I am not fully grasping I still am slowly figuring it out, to explain it to others. But as I research more I am understanding things a little better, though I am still working on understanding it all or something close and thus always figuring out more.
Sky Father/Sky God?
“Egyptian: (Nut) Sky Mother and (Geb) Earth Father” (Egypt is different but similar)
Turkic/Mongolic: (Tengri/Tenger Etseg) Sky Father and (Eje/Gazar Eej) Earth Mother *Transeurasian*
Hawaiian: (Wākea) Sky Father and (Papahānaumoku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*
New Zealand/ Māori: (Ranginui) Sky Father and (Papatūānuku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*
Proto-Indo-European: (Dyḗus/Dyḗus ph₂tḗr) Sky Father and (Dʰéǵʰōm/Pleth₂wih₁) Earth Mother
Indo-Aryan: (Dyaus Pita) Sky Father and (Prithvi Mata) Earth Mother *Indo-European*
Italic: (Jupiter) Sky Father and (Juno) Sky Mother *Indo-European*
Etruscan: (Tinia) Sky Father and (Uni) Sky Mother *Tyrsenian/Italy Pre–Indo-European*
Hellenic/Greek: (Zeus) Sky Father and (Hera) Sky Mother who started as an “Earth Goddess” *Indo-European*
Nordic: (Dagr) Sky Father and (Nótt) Sky Mother *Indo-European*
Slavic: (Perun) Sky Father and (Mokosh) Earth Mother *Indo-European*
Illyrian: (Deipaturos) Sky Father and (Messapic Damatura’s “earth-mother” maybe) Earth Mother *Indo-European*
Albanian: (Zojz) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*
Baltic: (Perkūnas) Sky Father and (Saulė) Sky Mother *Indo-European*
Germanic: (Týr) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*
Colombian-Muisca: (Bochica) Sky Father and (Huythaca) Sky Mother *Chibchan*
Aztec: (Quetzalcoatl) Sky Father and (Xochiquetzal) Sky Mother *Uto-Aztecan*
Incan: (Viracocha) Sky Father and (Mama Runtucaya) Sky Mother *Quechuan*
China: (Tian/Shangdi) Sky Father and (Dì) Earth Mother *Sino-Tibetan*
Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian: (An/Anu) Sky Father and (Ki) Earth Mother
Finnish: (Ukko) Sky Father and (Akka) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*
Sami: (Horagalles) Sky Father and (Ravdna) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*
Puebloan-Zuni: (Ápoyan Ta’chu) Sky Father and (Áwitelin Tsíta) Earth Mother
Puebloan-Hopi: (Tawa) Sky Father and (Kokyangwuti/Spider Woman/Grandmother) Earth Mother *Uto-Aztecan*
Puebloan-Navajo: (Tsohanoai) Sky Father and (Estsanatlehi) Earth Mother *Na-Dene*
ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref
Hinduism around 3,700 to 3,500 years old. ref
Judaism around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (The first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew” dated to around 3,000 years ago Khirbet Qeiyafa is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley. And many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed around 2,500) ref, ref
Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)
“Judaism is an Abrahamic, its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions.” ref
“Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel, essentially polytheistic, with a plethora of gods and goddesses. Heading the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with his consort, the goddess Asherah; below them were second-tier gods and goddesses such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, all of whom had their own priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees, and a third and fourth tier of minor divine beings, including the mal’ak, the messengers of the higher gods, who in later times became the angels of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh, however, was not the ‘original’ god of Israel “Isra-El”; it is El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, whose name forms the basis of the name “Israel”, and none of the Old Testament patriarchs, the tribes of Israel, the Judges, or the earliest monarchs, have a Yahwistic theophoric name (i.e., one incorporating the name of Yahweh).” ref
“El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity“, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ‘ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil-, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ‘El or ‘Il include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period. ʼĒl is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, ʼĒl played a role as father of the gods, of creation, or both. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, ʾil mlk is understood to mean “ʼĒl the King” but ʾil hd as “the god Hadad“. The Semitic root ʾlh (Arabic ʾilāh, Aramaic ʾAlāh, ʾElāh, Hebrew ʾelōah) may be ʾl with a parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning “gods” is ʾilhm, equivalent to Hebrew ʾelōhîm “powers”. In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for “god” by biblical commentators. However the documentary hypothesis for the Old Testament (corresponds to the Jewish Torah) developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis.” ref
Jainism around 2,599 – 2,527 years old. ref
Confucianism around 2,600 – 2,551 years old. ref
Buddhism around 2,563/2,480 – 2,483/2,400 years old. ref
Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref
Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref
Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref
Knowledge to Ponder:
Stars/Astrology:
- Possibly, around 30,000 years ago (in simpler form) to 6,000 years ago, Stars/Astrology are connected to Ancestors, Spirit Animals, and Deities.
- The star also seems to be a possible proto-star for Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna, or Star of Venus.
- Around 7,000 to 6,000 years ago, Star Constellations/Astrology have connections to the “Kurgan phenomenon” of below-ground “mound” stone/wood burial structures and “Dolmen phenomenon” of above-ground stone burial structures.
- Around 6,500–5,800 years ago, The Northern Levant migrations into Jordon and Israel in the Southern Levant brought new cultural and religious transfer from Turkey and Iran.
- “The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan may have connections to the European paganstic kurgan/dolmens phenomenon.
“Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Different cultures have employed forms of astrology since at least the 2nd millennium BCE, these practices having originated in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Most, if not all, cultures have attached importance to what they observed in the sky, and some—such as the Hindus, Chinese, and the Maya—developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Islamicate world and eventually Central and Western Europe. Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person’s personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects; the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems.” ref
Around 5,500 years ago, Science evolves, The first evidence of science was 5,500 years ago and was demonstrated by a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world. ref
Around 5,000 years ago, Origin of Logics is a Naturalistic Observation (principles of valid reasoning, inference, & demonstration) ref
Around 4,150 to 4,000 years ago: The earliest surviving versions of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, which was originally titled “He who Saw the Deep” (Sha naqba īmuru) or “Surpassing All Other Kings” (Shūtur eli sharrī) were written. ref
Hinduism:
- 3,700 years ago or so, the oldest of the Hindu Vedas (scriptures), the Rig Veda was composed.
- 3,500 years ago or so, the Vedic Age began in India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization.
Judaism:
- around 3,000 years ago, the first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew”
- around 2,500 years ago, many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed
Myths: The bible inspired religion is not just one religion or one myth but a grouping of several religions and myths
- Around 3,450 or 3,250 years ago, according to legend, is the traditionally accepted period in which the Israelite lawgiver, Moses, provided the Ten Commandments.
- Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, a collection of ancient religious writings by the Israelites based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh, or Old Testament is the first part of Christianity’s bible.
- Around 2,400 years ago, the most accepted hypothesis is that the canon was formed in stages, first the Pentateuch (Torah).
- Around 2,140 to 2,116 years ago, the Prophets was written during the Hasmonean dynasty, and finally the remaining books.
- Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections:
- The first five books or Pentateuch (Torah).
- The proposed history books telling the history of the Israelites from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon.
- The poetic and proposed “Wisdom books” dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world.
- The books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God:
- Henotheism:
- Exodus 20:23 “You shall not make other gods besides Me (not saying there are no other gods just not to worship them); gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves.”
- Polytheism:
- Judges 10:6 “Then the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; thus they forsook the LORD and did not serve Him.”
- 1 Corinthians 8:5 “For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords.”
- Monotheism:
- Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.
Around 2,570 to 2,270 Years Ago, there is a confirmation of atheistic doubting as well as atheistic thinking, mainly by Greek philosophers. However, doubting gods is likely as old as the invention of gods and should destroy the thinking that belief in god(s) is the “default belief”. The Greek word is apistos (a “not” and pistos “faithful,”), thus not faithful or faithless because one is unpersuaded and unconvinced by a god(s) claim. Short Definition: unbelieving, unbeliever, or unbelief.
Expressions of Atheistic Thinking:
- Around 2,600 years ago, Ajita Kesakambali, ancient Indian philosopher, who is the first known proponent of Indian materialism. ref
- Around 2,535 to 2,475 years ago, Heraclitus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor or modern Turkey. ref
- Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, according to The Story of Civilization book series certain African pygmy tribes have no identifiable gods, spirits, or religious beliefs or rituals, and even what burials accrue are without ceremony. ref
- Around 2,490 to 2,430 years ago, Empedocles, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. ref
- Around 2,460 to 2,370 years ago, Democritus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher considered to be the “father of modern science” possibly had some disbelief amounting to atheism. ref
- Around 2,399 years ago or so, Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher was tried for sinfulness by teaching doubt of state gods. ref
- Around 2,341 to 2,270 years ago, Epicurus, a Greek philosopher known for composing atheistic critics and famously stated, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?” ref
This last expression by Epicurus, seems to be an expression of Axiological Atheism. To understand and utilize value or actually possess “Value Conscious/Consciousness” to both give a strong moral “axiological” argument (the problem of evil) as well as use it to fortify humanism and positive ethical persuasion of human helping and care responsibilities. Because value-blindness gives rise to sociopathic/psychopathic evil.
While hallucinogens are associated with shamanism, it is alcohol that is associated with paganism.
The Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries Shows in the prehistory series:
Show two: Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show tree: Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show four: Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show five: Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show six: Emergence of hierarchy, sexism, slavery, and the new male god dominance: Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves!
Prehistory: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” the division of labor, power, rights, and recourses: VIDEO
Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Pre-Capitalism): VIDEO
Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves: VIEDO
Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State): VIEDO
Paganism 4,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism): VIEDO
I do not hate simply because I challenge and expose myths or lies any more than others being thought of as loving simply because of the protection and hiding from challenge their favored myths or lies.
The truth is best championed in the sunlight of challenge.
An archaeologist once said to me “Damien religion and culture are very different”
My response, So are you saying that was always that way, such as would you say Native Americans’ cultures are separate from their religions? And do you think it always was the way you believe?
I had said that religion was a cultural product. That is still how I see it and there are other archaeologists that think close to me as well. Gods too are the myths of cultures that did not understand science or the world around them, seeing magic/supernatural everywhere.
I personally think there is a goddess and not enough evidence to support a male god at Çatalhöyük but if there was both a male and female god and goddess then I know the kind of gods they were like Proto-Indo-European mythology.
This series idea was addressed in, Anarchist Teaching as Free Public Education or Free Education in the Public: VIDEO
Our 12 video series: Organized Oppression: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of power (9,000-4,000 years ago), is adapted from: The Complete and Concise History of the Sumerians and Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia (7000-2000 BC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szFjxmY7jQA by “History with Cy“
Show #1: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Samarra, Halaf, Ubaid)
Show #2: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power
Show #3: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Uruk and the First Cities)
Show #4: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (First Kings)
Show #5: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Early Dynastic Period)
Show #6: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power
Show #7: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Sargon and Akkadian Rule)
Show #9: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Gudea of Lagash and Utu-hegal)
Show #12: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Aftermath and Legacy of Sumer)
The “Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries”
Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ Atheist Leftist @Skepticallefty & I (Damien Marie AtHope) @AthopeMarie (my YouTube & related blog) are working jointly in atheist, antitheist, antireligionist, antifascist, anarchist, socialist, and humanist endeavors in our videos together, generally, every other Saturday.
Why Does Power Bring Responsibility?
Think, how often is it the powerless that start wars, oppress others, or commit genocide? So, I guess the question is to us all, to ask, how can power not carry responsibility in a humanity concept? I know I see the deep ethical responsibility that if there is power their must be a humanistic responsibility of ethical and empathic stewardship of that power. Will I be brave enough to be kind? Will I possess enough courage to be compassionate? Will my valor reach its height of empathy? I as everyone, earns our justified respect by our actions, that are good, ethical, just, protecting, and kind. Do I have enough self-respect to put my love for humanity’s flushing, over being brought down by some of its bad actors? May we all be the ones doing good actions in the world, to help human flourishing.
I create the world I want to live in, striving for flourishing. Which is not a place but a positive potential involvement and promotion; a life of humanist goal precision. To master oneself, also means mastering positive prosocial behaviors needed for human flourishing. I may have lost a god myth as an atheist, but I am happy to tell you, my friend, it is exactly because of that, leaving the mental terrorizer, god belief, that I truly regained my connected ethical as well as kind humanity.
Cory and I will talk about prehistory and theism, addressing the relevance to atheism, anarchism, and socialism.
At the same time as the rise of the male god, 7,000 years ago, there was also the very time there was the rise of violence, war, and clans to kingdoms, then empires, then states. It is all connected back to 7,000 years ago, and it moved across the world.
Cory Johnston: https://damienmarieathope.com/2021/04/cory-johnston-mind-of-a-skeptical-leftist/?v=32aec8db952d
The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist (YouTube)
Cory Johnston: Mind of a Skeptical Leftist @Skepticallefty
The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist By Cory Johnston: “Promoting critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics by covering current events and talking to a variety of people. Cory Johnston has been thoughtfully talking to people and attempting to promote critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics.” http://anchor.fm/skepticalleft
Cory needs our support. We rise by helping each other.
Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ @Skepticallefty Evidence-based atheist leftist (he/him) Producer, host, and co-host of 4 podcasts @skeptarchy @skpoliticspod and @AthopeMarie
Damien Marie AtHope (“At Hope”) Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist. Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Poet, Philosopher, Advocate, Activist, Psychology, and Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Historian.
Damien is interested in: Freedom, Liberty, Justice, Equality, Ethics, Humanism, Science, Atheism, Antiteism, Antireligionism, Ignosticism, Left-Libertarianism, Anarchism, Socialism, Mutualism, Axiology, Metaphysics, LGBTQI, Philosophy, Advocacy, Activism, Mental Health, Psychology, Archaeology, Social Work, Sexual Rights, Marriage Rights, Woman’s Rights, Gender Rights, Child Rights, Secular Rights, Race Equality, Ageism/Disability Equality, Etc. And a far-leftist, “Anarcho-Humanist.”
I am not a good fit in the atheist movement that is mostly pro-capitalist, I am anti-capitalist. Mostly pro-skeptic, I am a rationalist not valuing skepticism. Mostly pro-agnostic, I am anti-agnostic. Mostly limited to anti-Abrahamic religions, I am an anti-religionist.
To me, the “male god” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 7,000 years ago, whereas the now favored monotheism “male god” is more like 4,000 years ago or so. To me, the “female goddess” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 11,000-10,000 years ago or so, losing the majority of its once prominence around 2,000 years ago due largely to the now favored monotheism “male god” that grow in prominence after 4,000 years ago or so.
My Thought on the Evolution of Gods?
Animal protector deities from old totems/spirit animal beliefs come first to me, 13,000/12,000 years ago, then women as deities 11,000/10,000 years ago, then male gods around 7,000/8,000 years ago. Moralistic gods around 5,000/4,000 years ago, and monotheistic gods around 4,000/3,000 years ago.
Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):
Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism
My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com