Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious

6,000-year-old mural from Jordan;

a Proto-Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna or Star of Venus?

I believe they may be, and to me, thus possibly could have some connections to the central Asain deity Tian which may also be related to Tengri.

Goddesses Ishtar/Inanna were worshipped in Sumer at least as early as the Uruk period (6000 – 5,100 years ago). ref

“The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan. “The Ghassulian Star” was made before people could write, back when everyone either hunted and gathered or lived in small farming villages. The figures were painted with black, brown, red, white and yellow natural mineral paints; mud and lime walls were the canvas. The painting features a giant star, animals and masked figures sporting what look a lot like googly eyes. ref

Ghassulian refers to a culture and an archaeological stage dating to the Middle and Late Chalcolithic Period in the Southern Levant (6,400 – 5,500 years ago). Its type-site, Teleilat Ghassul (Teleilat el-Ghassul, Tulaylat al-Ghassul), is located in the eastern Jordan Valley near the northern edge of the Dead Sea, in modern Jordan.

The Ghassulian stage was characterized by small hamlet settlements of mixed farming peoples, who had immigrated from the north and settled in the southern Levant – today’s Jordan, Israel and Palestine. ^[3] People of the Beersheba Culture (a Ghassulian subculture) lived in underground dwellings – a unique phenomenon in the archaeological history of the region – or in houses that were trapezoid-shaped and built of mud-brick. Those were often built partially underground (on top of collapsed underground dwellings) and were covered with remarkable polychrome wall paintings. Their pottery was highly elaborate, including footed bowls and horn-shaped drinking goblets, indicating the cultivation of wine. Several samples display the use of sculptural decoration or of a reserved slip (a clay and water coating partially wiped away while still wet). The Ghassulians were a Chalcolithic culture as they used stone tools but also smelted copper. Funerary customs show evidence that they buried their dead in stone dolmens and also practiced Secondary burial. Settlements belonging to the Ghassulian culture have been identified at numerous other sites in what is today southern Israel, especially in the region of Beersheba, where elaborate underground dwellings have been excavated. The Ghassulian culture correlates closely with the Amratian of Egypt and also seems to have affinities (e.g., the distinctive churns, or “bird vases”) with early Minoan culture in Crete. ref

“Between 5,800 – 5,350 years ago, the Ghassulian culture emerged based on an economy specializing in smelting the copper that Sumerian (Uruk) cities imported from the Southern Levant and the Upper Euphrates. The Ghassulians also erected dolmen monuments, similar to megalithic burial structures found not only in Western Europe, but also in the Western Caucasus. An unexpected link with the Uruk dispersions of the Caucasus has been suggested for the Nahal Mishmar “Cave of the Treasure” discovered in the Judean Desert. The fine metalwork discovered in this desert cache includes pieces crafted in a long period 7,000 – 5,500 years ago, as if this cache was buried to protect valuable cultural artifacts (possibly from temple sites) from robbers during the Ubaid-Uruk transition period. Adding to the archaeological mystery, the only comparable metalwork from this period has been discovered far away in the Maykop burial north of the Black Sea. Archaeologists have also suggested Ghassulian contacts with the Aegean and Upper Egypt (Amratian culture), suggesting that these East Mediterranean copper smelters played a dynamic role connecting far-flung cultures. Notably, the Ghassulian culture flourished at the time and location some linguists have suggested the Proto-Semitic languages first emerged (approximately 5,750 years ago, probably in the East Mediterranean).5 These later developed to become the Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Hebrew languages spoken not only in Canaan, but also throughout the Mediterranean, Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa. In Europe, this period was less favorable. The “Old European” civilization of the CBMP dissolved between 5,500 – 5,200 years ago, partly regrouping near the Aegean Sea (preserving the foundations for the seagoing Minoan-Mycenaean civilizations), and some adapting to new pastoral lifeways near the Black Sea (such as the Usatovo culture. Despite the centrality of ancient Sumer, early Mesopotamia has rarely been discussed in the context of human genetic structure, and the effects of Sumerian expansions in reshaping the world genetic landscape remain to be discovered. However, the potential of urban centers using new technological toolkits (fueling population growth and giving an early demographic advantage over neighboring Mesolithic societies) suggests that Sumer might have played a formative role in West Eurasian demographic history. To help establish a historical foundation for examining the multi-layered genetic structure of the Middle East, this article will outline three phases of Sumerian civilization: (1) Founding of urban settlements during the Ubaid period; (2) Dispersion of Sumerian populations to the Caucasus Mountains and Asia during the Uruk period (including related Kura-Araxes migrations, possibly related to the spread of satem IE languages); and (3) Back-migrations to the Fertile Crescent (in response to events at the periphery of the Sumerian world) during the Middle Bronze Age. Ubaid Period Foundations (8,500 – 5,800 years ago). The foundations of Sumerian civilization were laid during the Ubaid Period (8,500 – 5,800 years ago). In this period, the first Mesopotamian cities were founded, starting with the world’s first capital, Eridu. Probably under the guidance of a priestly bureaucratic elite, these settlements were organized in a tripartite hereditary social structure: integrating farm laborers, nomadic pastoralists (animal herders), and hunting-fishing peoples as urban citizens. This urban culture spread outwards to establish a vast “Ubaid horizon” (2,000 km across) between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. The flow of Ubaid material culture stimulated developments in more distant regions. In the Northern Levant, the Ubaid civilization absorbed neighboring Halaf dry farming (non-irrigation) settlements (perhaps Afroasiatic speaking predecessors of the Akkadians and Assyrians). Reaching even further beyond these rivers, Ubaid related (Hassuna-Samarra) pottery types and clay artwork have been found throughout the Aegean, Anatolia, and East Mediterranean. According to the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, these shared craft forms appeared simultaneously in Southeastern Europe and West Asia around 8,700 – 8,500 years ago. Map of West Eurasian cultures during the Ubaid period. Sumer (the Ubaid heartland) is highlighted in red. Possible language families in neighboring areas are listed in italics. In Europe, this Ubaid related material culture was the basis of what Gimbutas dubbed the “Old European” civilization of the Balkan Peninsula and Central Europe, later splitting into local variant traditions around 7,000 years ago. More recently, Evgeny Chernykh has documented evidence for a large Carpatho-Balkan Metallurgical Province composed of densely settled communities (of up to 15,000 people each) connected by shared copper technology. This network of settlements flourished between 7,500 – 5,500 years ago, before dissolving around 5,200 years ago. In the later part of the Ubaid period, another peripheral Copper Age culture emerged in South Asia: the Mehrgarh III or Togau Phase (6,300 – 5,800 years ago) that brought an influx of new collective burial customs, ceramic styles, and copper technology (possibly from West Asia). Other cultural centers that emerged during the Ubaid period included Nabta Playa in Africa, possibly constructed by early populations of the “Green Sahara” (Neolithic Subpluvial; 9,000 – 5,500 years ago), when the landscape of Northern Africa resembled the ecologically rich savannahs of present-day Kenya, and the Badarian and Amratian (Predynastic Upper Egyptian) cultures emerged along the Nile River. Because of their “early adopter” status, these dense Ubaid period settlements in Mesopotamia, Southeastern Europe, and South Asia potentially played a key role in shaping later demographic history. The Kurgan Culture and the Indo-Europeanization of Europe considered the Chalcolithic “Old European” civilization pre-IE and suggested that the Proto-Indo-European (IE) languages emerged only later with “Kurgan” culture of the Eurasian steppe. However, this article suggests instead that the Proto-Indo-European language emerged in Ubaid period Southeastern Europe (possibly derived from older West Asian Indo-Hittite languages), later diverging into Eurasian satem and Mediterranean centum IE varieties after the collapse of the CBMP around 5,200 years ago. This would be consistent with linguistic evidence for PIE origins around 6,000 years ago and early contacts with the Uralic (North Eurasian), Caucasian (West Asian), and Afroasiatic (East Mediterranean) languages in West Eurasia. However, it is probable that no modern culture fully represents these ancestral founding populations. Nevertheless, traces of this ancestral population structure might to some extent be preserved in West Asian populations with a tradition of endogamy (such as Assyrian Christians, Druze, etc.). However, ancient DNA would be needed to examine these relationships in more detail.” ref

The Star of Ishtar or Star of Inanna

Goddesses Ishtar/Inanna were worshipped in Sumer at least as early as the Uruk period (6000 – 5,100 years ago). The Star of Ishtar or Star of Inanna is a symbol of the ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna and her East Semitic counterpart Ishtar. Alongside the lion, it was one of Ishtar’s primary symbols. Because Ishtar was associated with the planet Venus, the star is also known as the Star of Venus.

“Happy Easter” Well Happy Eostre/Ishter

The star of Inanna usually had eight points, though the exact number of points sometimes varies. Six-pointed stars also occur frequently, but their symbolic meaning is unknown. It was Inanna’s most common symbol and, in later times, it became the most common symbol of the goddess Ishtar, Inanna’s East Semitic counterpart. It seems to have originally borne a general association with the heavens, but, by the Old Babylonian Period, it had come to be specifically associated with the planet Venus, with which Ishtar was identified. Starting during this same period, the star of Ishtar was normally enclosed within a circular disc. During later times, slaves who worked in Ishtar’s temples were sometimes branded with the seal of the eight-pointed star. On boundary stones and cylinder seals, the eight-pointed star is sometimes shown alongside the crescent moon, which was the symbol of Sin, god of the Moon, and the rayed solar disk, which was a symbol of Shamash, the god of the Sun. ref

Astarte (Greek: Ἀστάρτη, Astártē) is the Hellenized form of the Middle Eastern goddess Astoreth (Northwest Semitic), a form of Ishtar (East Semitic), worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity. The name is particularly associated with her worship in the ancient Levant among the Canaanites and Phoenicians. She was also celebrated in Egypt following the importation of Levantine cults there. The name Astarte is sometimes also applied to her cults in Mesopotamian cultures like Assyria and Babylonia. Astarte is one of a number of names associated with the chief goddess or female divinity of those peoples. She is recorded in Akkadian as As–dar–tu, the masculine form of Ishtar. The name appears in Ugaritic as ʻAthtartor ʻAṭtart, in Phoenician as Ashtart or Aštart, in Hebrew as Ashtoret. The Hebrews also referred to the Ashtarot or “Astartes” in the plural. The EtruscanPyrgi Tablets record the name Uni-Astre. Astarte was connected with fertility, sexuality, and war. Her symbols were the lion, the horse, the sphinx, the dove, and a star within a circleindicating the planet Venus. Pictorial representations often show her naked. She has been known as the deified morning and/or evening star. The deity takes on many names and forms among different cultures and according to Canaanite mythology, is one and the same as the Assyro-Babylonian goddess Ištar, taken from the third millennium BC Sumerian goddess Inanna, the first primordial goddess of the planet Venus. Inanna was also known by the Aramaic people as the god Attar, whose myth was construed in a different manner by the people of Greece to align with their own cultural myths and legends, when the Canaanite merchants took the First papyrus from Byblos (the Phoenician city of Gebal) to Greece sometime before the 8th century by a Phoenician called Cadmus the first King of Thebes. Astarte riding in a chariot with four branches protruding from roof, on the reverse of a Julia Maesa coin from Sidon. Astarte was worshipped in Syria and Canaan beginning in the first millennium BC (around 3,000 years ago) and was first mentioned in texts from Ugarit. She came from the same Semitic origins as the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, and an Ugaritic text specifically equates her with Ishtar. Her worship spread to Cyprus, where she may have been merged with an ancient Cypriot goddess. This merged Cypriot goddess may have been adopted into the Greek pantheon in Mycenaean and Dark Agetimes to form Aphrodite. Stephanie Budin, however, argues that Astarte’s character was less erotic and more warlike than Ishtar originally was, perhaps because she was influenced by the Canaanite goddess Anat, and that therefore Ishtar, not Astarte, was the direct forerunner of the Cypriot goddess. Greeks in classical, Hellenistic, and Roman times occasionally equated Aphrodite with Astarte and many other Near Eastern goddesses, in keeping with their frequent practice of syncretizing other deities with their own. Other major centers of Astarte’s worship were the Phoenician city-states of Sidon, Tyre, and Byblos. Coins from Sidon portray a chariot in which a globe appears, presumably a stone representing Astarte. “She was often depicted on Sidonian coins as standing on the prow of a galley, leaning forward with right hand outstretched, being thus the original of all figureheads for sailing ships.” In Sidon, she shared a temple with Eshmun. Coins from Beirut show Poseidon, Astarte, and Eshmun worshipped together. Other centers were Cythera, Malta, and Eryx in Sicily from which she became known to the Romans as Venus Erycina. A bilingual inscription on the Pyrgi Tablets dating to about 500 BC found near Caere in Etruria equates Astarte with Etruscan Uni-Astre, that is, Juno. At CarthageAstarte was worshipped alongside the goddess Tanit. The Aramean goddess Atargatis (Semitic form ʻAtarʻatah) may originally have been equated with Astarte, but the first element of the name Atargatis appears to be related to the Ugaritic form of Asherah‘s name: Athirat. ref

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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A silver disc with an engraving of an eight-pointed star that was discovered in Tel Gezer.

Tel Gezer (also Tell el-Jezer) is an archaeological site in the foothills of the Judaean Mountains at the border of the Shfela region roughly midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In the Early Bronze Age, an unfortified settlement covered the tell. It was destroyed in the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE and abandoned for several hundred years. It became a major fortified Canaanite city-state in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. It was later destroyed by fire and rebuilt. In the Middle Bronze Age (first half of the 2nd millennium BCE), Gezer became a major city, well fortified and containing a large cultic site. The Canaanite city was destroyed in a fire, presumably in the wake of a campaign by the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III (ruled 3,479–3,425 years ago). The oldest known historical reference to the city is to be found on an inscription of conquered sites at Thutmose’s temple at Karnak. The Tell Amarna letters, dating from the 14th century BCE, include ten letters from the kings of Gezer swearing loyalty to the Egyptian pharaoh. The city-state of Gezer (named Gazru in Babylonian) was ruled by four leaders during the 20-year period covered by the Amarna letters. Discoveries of several pottery vessels, a cache of cylinder seals and a large scarab with the cartouche of Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III attest to the existence of a city at Gezer’s location in the 14th century BCE – one that was apparently destroyed in that century – and suggest that the city was inhabited by Canaanites with strong ties to Egypt. The Amarna letters mention kings of Gezer swearing loyalty to the Egyptian Pharaoh. Its importance was due in part to the strategic position it held at the crossroads of the ancient coastal trade route linking Egypt with Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia, and the road to Jerusalem and Jericho, both important trade routes. Cultic remains discovered at the site were a row of ten large standing stones, known as massebot, oriented north-south, the tallest of which was 3 meters high, with an altar-type structure in the middle, and a large, square, stone basin. The exact purpose of these megaliths is still debated, but they may have constituted a Canaanite “high place” from the Middle Bronze Age, 3,600 years ago. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Monotheism is distinguished from henotheism, a religious system in which the believer worships one god without denying that others may worship different gods with equal validity, and monolatrism, the recognition of the existence of many gods but with the consistent worship of only one deity. Monotheism has been defined as the belief in the existence of only one god that created the world, is all-powerful and intervenes in the world. A broader definition of monotheism is the belief in one god. A distinction may be made between exclusive monotheism, and both inclusive monotheism and pluriform (panentheistic) monotheism which, while recognizing various distinct gods, postulate some underlying unity. The broader definition of monotheism characterizes the traditions of Bábism, the Bahá’í Faith, Balinese Hinduism, Cao Dai (Caodaiism), Cheondoism (Cheondogyo), Christianity, Deism, Eckankar, Hindu sects such as Shaivism and Vaishnavism, Islam, Judaism, Mandaeism, Rastafari, Seicho no Ie, Sikhism, Tengrism (Tangrism), Tenrikyo (Tenriism), Yazidism, and Zoroastrianism, and elements of pre-monotheistic thought are found in early religions such as Atenism, ancient Chinese religion, and Yahwism. Quasi-monotheistic claims of the existence of a universal deity date to the Late Bronze Age, with Akhenaten‘s Great Hymn to the Aten. A possible inclination towards monotheism emerged during the Vedic period in Iron-Age South Asia. The Rigveda exhibits notions of monism of the Brahman, particularly in the comparatively late tenth book, which is dated to the early Iron Age, e.g. in the Nasadiya sukta. Since the 2,600 years ago, Zoroastrians have believed in the supremacy of one God above all: Ahura Mazda as the “Maker of All” and the first being before all others. Nonetheless, Zoroastrianism was not strictly monotheistic because it venerated other yazatas alongside Ahura Mazda. Ancient Hindu theology, meanwhile, was monist, but was not strictly monotheistic in worship because it still maintained the existence of many gods, who were envisioned as aspects of one supreme God, Brahman. Numerous ancient Greek philosophers, including Xenophanes of Colophon and Antisthenes believed in a similar polytheistic monism that came close to monotheism, but fell short. Judaism was the first religion to conceive the notion of a personal monotheistic God within a monist context. The concept of ethical monotheism, which holds that morality stems from God alone and that its laws are unchanging, first occurred in Judaism, but is now a core tenet of most modern monotheistic religions, including Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and Bahá’í Faith. Around 2,800 years ago, the worship of YHWH in Israel was in competition with many other cults, described by the Yahwist faction collectively as Baals. The oldest books of the Hebrew Bible reflect this competition, as in the books of Hosea and Nahum, whose authors lament the “apostasy” of the people of Israel, threatening them with the wrath of God if they do not give up their polytheistic cults. Ancient Israelite religion was originally polytheistic; the Israelites worshipped many deities, including El, Baal, Asherah, and Astarte. YHWH was originally the national god of the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah. As time progressed, the henotheistic cult of Yahweh grew increasingly militant in its opposition to the worship of other gods. Later, the reforms of King Josiah imposed a form of strict monolatrism. After the fall of Judah to Babylon, a small circle of priests and scribes gathered around the exiled royal court, where they first developed the concept of YHWH as the sole God of the world. Amenhotep IV initially introduced Atenism in Year 5 of his reign (3,348/3346 years ago) during the 18th dynasty of the New Kingdom. He raised Aten, once a relatively obscure Egyptian Solar deity representing the disk of the sun, to the status of Supreme God in the Egyptian pantheon. The orthodox faith system held by most dynasties of China since at least the Shang Dynasty (3,766 years ago) until the modern period centered on the worship of Shangdi (literally “Above Sovereign”, generally translated as “God”) or Heaven as an omnipotent force. This faith system pre-dated the development of Confucianism and Taoism and the introduction of Buddhism and Christianity. It has features of monotheism in that Heaven is seen as an omnipotent entity, a noncorporeal force with a personality transcending the world. From the writings of Confucius in the Analects, it is known Confucius believed that Heaven cannot be deceived, Heaven guides people’s lives and maintains a personal relationship with them, and that Heaven gives tasks for people to fulfill in order to teach them of virtues and morality. However, this faith system was not truly monotheistic since other lesser gods and spirits, which varied with locality, were also worshiped along with Shangdi. Still, later variants such as Mohism (2,470 – 2,391 years ago) approached true monotheism, teaching that the function of lesser gods and ancestral spirits is merely to carry out the will of Shangdi, akin to angels in Abrahamic religions. The first – 上, Shàng – means “high”, “highest”, “first”, “primordial”; the second – 帝, Dì – is typically considered as a short hand for huangdi （皇帝）in modern Chinese, the title of the emperors of China first employed by Qin Shi Huang, and is usually translated as “emperor”. The word itself is derived from Three “Huang” and Five “Di”, including Yellow Emperor (Huangdi 黃帝), the mythological originator of the Chinese civilization and the ancestor of the Chinese race. However, 帝 refers to the High God of Shang, thus means “deity” (manifested god). Thus, the name Shangdi should be translated as “Highest Deity”, but also have the implied meaning of “Primordial Deity” or “First Deity” in Classical Chinese. The deity preceded the title and the emperors of China were named after him in their role as Tianzi, the sons of Heaven. In the classical texts the highest conception of the heavens is frequently identified with Shang Di, who is described somewhat anthropomorphically. He is also associated with the pole star. The conceptions of the Supreme Ruler (Shang Di) and of the Sublime Heavens (Huang-t’ien)afterward coalesce or absorb each other. The earliest references to Shangdi are found in oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty in the around 4,000 years ago, although the later work Classic of History claims yearly sacrifices were made to him by Emperor Shun, even before the Xia Dynasty. “Shang Di” is the pinyin romanization of two Chinese characters that in modern Chinese, the title of the emperors of China first employed by Qin Shi Huang, and is usually translated as “emperor”, the mythological originator of the Chinese civilization and the ancestor of the Chinese race. However, 帝 refers to the High God of Shang, thus means “deity” (manifested god). Thus, the name Shangdi should be translated as “Highest Deity”, but also have the implied meaning of “Primordial Deity” or “First Deity” in Classical Chinese. In the classical texts, the highest conception of the heavens is frequently identified with Shang Di, who is described somewhat anthropomorphically. He is also associated with the pole star. The conceptions of the Supreme Ruler (Shang Di) and of the Sublime Heavens (Huang-t’ien)afterward coalesce or absorb each other. Under Shangdi or his later names, the deity received sacrifices from the ruler of China in every Chinese dynasty annually at a great Temple of Heaven in the imperial capital. Following the principles of Chinese geomancy, this would always be located in the southern quarter of the city. During the ritual, a completely healthy bull would be slaughtered and presented as an animal sacrifice to Shangdi. It is important to note that Shangdi is never represented with either images or idols. Instead, in the center building of the Temple of Heaven, in a structure called the “Imperial Vault of Heaven”, a “spirit tablet” (神位, shénwèi) inscribed with the name of Shangdi is stored on the throne, Huangtian Shangdi (皇天上帝). During an annual sacrifice, the emperor would carry these tablets to the north part of the Temple of Heaven, a place called the “Prayer Hall For Good Harvests”, and place them on that throne. It was during Ming and Qing dynasty, when Roman Catholicism was introduced by Jesuit Priest Matteo Ricci, that the idea of “Shangdi” started to be applied to the Christian conception of God. While initially, he utilized the term Tianzhu, Ricci gradually changed the translation into “Shangdi” instead. His usage of Shangdi was contested by Confucians, as they believed that the concept of Tian and “Shangdi” is different from that of Christian’s God: Zhōng Shǐ-shēng, through his books, stated that Shangdi only governs, while Christian’s God is a creator, and thus differ. Ricci’s translation also invited the displeasure of Dominicans and that of the Roman Curia; On March 19, 1715, Pope Clement XI released the Edict Ex Illa Die, stating that Catholics must use “Tianzhu” instead of “Shangdi” for Christianity’s God. ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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tars: Ancestors, Spirit Animals, and Deities (at least back to around 6,000 years ago)

Stars, to me as a religious belief relate to: Ancestors, Spirit Animals, and Deities 

(at least back to around 6,000 years ago, with connections to shamanism)

Journeys to the Sun: Heavenly Symbols in Shamanism and Rock Art of Siberia and Central Asia

List of solar deities

Need to Mythicized: gods and goddesses

Sun Worship

by Patti Wigington

The summer solstice, the sun is at its highest point in the sky. Many ancient cultures marked this date as significant, and the concept of sun worship is one nearly as old as mankind itself. In societies that were primarily agricultural, and depending on the sun for life and sustenance, it is no surprise that the sun became deified. While many people today might take the day to grill out, go to the beach, or work on their tans, for our ancestors the summer solstice was a time of great spiritual import. The Egyptian peoples honored Ra, the sun god. For people in ancient Egypt, the sun was a source of life. It was power and energy, light and warmth. It was what made the crops grow each season, so it is no surprise that the cult of Ra had immense power and was widespread. Ra was the ruler of the heavens. He was the god of the sun, the bringer of light, and patron to the pharaohs. According to legend, the sun travels the skies as Ra drives his chariot through the heavens. Although he originally was associated only with the midday sun, as time went by, Ra became connected to the sun’s presence all day long. The Greeks honored Helios, who was similar to Ra in his many aspects. Homer describes Helios as “giving light both to gods and men.” The cult of Helios celebrated each year with an impressive ritual that involved a giant chariot pulled by horses off the end of a cliff and into the sea. In many Native American cultures, such as the Iroquois and Plains peoples, the sun was recognized as a life-giving force. Many of the Plains tribes still perform a Sun Dance each year, which is seen as a renewal of the bondman has with life, earth, and the growing season. In MesoAmerican cultures, the sun was associated with kingship, and many rulers claimed divine rights by way of their direct descendency from the sun. Sun worship is found in Babylonian texts and in a number of Asian religious cults. Today, many Pagans honor the sun at Midsummer, and it continues to shine its fiery energy upon us, bringing light and warmth to the earth. Sun worship is found in Persia, the Middle East, and Asia. As part of the cult of Mithra, early Persian societies celebrated the rising of the sun each day. The legend of Mithra may well have given birth to the Christian resurrection story. Honoring the sun was an integral part of ritual and ceremony in Mithraism, at least as far as scholars have been able to determine. One of the highest ranks one could achieve in a Mithraic temple was that of heliodromus, or sub-carrier. Sun worship has also been found in Babylonian texts and in a number of Asian religious cults. Today, many Pagans honor the sun at Midsummer, and it continues to shine its fiery energy upon us, bringing light and warmth to the earth. ref

Sedentism and the Creation of goddesses around 12,000 years ago as well as male gods after 7,000 years ago.

Sun and Moon Goddesses

The sun, moon, planets, and stars have been worshipped as gods in a number of cultures.

The following is a list of solar deities:

• African mythology
• Australian Aboriginal mythology
• Ainu mythology
• Arabian mythology
• Aztec mythology
• Baltic mythology
• Basque mythology
• Brazilian mythology
• Buddhist mythology
• Canaanite mythology
• Celtic mythology
• Chinese mythology
• Egyptian mythology
• Etruscan mythology
• Germanic mythology
• Greek mythology
• Hindu mythology
• Hittite mythology
• Incan mythology
• Inuit mythology
• Japanese mythology
• Lusitanian mythology
• Māori mythology
• Maya mythology
• Mesopotamian mythology
• Minoan mythology
• Muisca mythology
• Native American mythology
• Norse mythology
• Persian mythology
• Polynesian mythology
• Roman mythology
• Sami mythology
• Slavic mythology
• Turkic mythology
• Zoroastrianism
• Zunism

Star-worship may have evolved from the awe felt at the beauty, regularity, mystery, and power of the heavenly bodies (especially of the sun) and in response to their effect, real or imagined, on terrestrial and human life. The sun and moon, in particular, are perceived as the givers of time (time being measures by their motions) and the sun as the regulator of the cycle of the seasons. Star-worship usually accompanies, indeed triggers, the early development of Astronomy and calendrics and sanctions the parallel growth of Astrology. This was certainly so in Mesopotamia in the last 4,000 years ago and in Central America such as among the Maya. Star-worship probably underlies the prehistoric megalithic astronomical sites of northern Europe [e.g. Stonehenge] and similar sites in North America the Big Horn medicine wheel. From Mesopotamia, star-worship passed into Graeco-Roman culture. Sun-worship became, in the 3rd-century CE, something of an official religion in the Roman empire, contemporary ideology seeing in the divine emperor (Emperor-Worship) a terrestrial counterpart of the sun as sovereign of the universe. At the same time, Mithras was worshipped as a solar god ( see Mithraism ) and his mysteries incorporated much arcane astral lore. There are no known Mesopotamian tales about the end of the world, although it has been speculated that they believed that this would eventually occur. This is largely because Berossus wrote that the Mesopotamians believed the world to last “twelve times twelve sars“; with a sar being 3,600 years, this would indicate that at least some of the Mesopotamians believed that the Earth would only last 518,400 years. Berossus does not report what was thought to follow this event, however. ref, ref

• Astronomy: (from Greek: ἀστρονομία) is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets; the phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma-ray bursts, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, all phenomena that originate outside Earth’s atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with the study of the Universe as a whole. Astronomy is one of the oldest of the natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, Maya, and many ancient indigenous peoples of the Americas performed methodical observations of the night sky. Historically, astronomy has included disciplines as diverse as astrometry, celestial navigation, observational astronomy and the making of calendars, but professional astronomy is now often considered to be synonymous with astrophysics.  ref
• Astrology: Astrology is the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial objects as a means for divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events. Astrology has been dated to at least 4,000 years ago or more, and has its roots in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and some – such as the Indians, Chinese, and Maya – developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Early evidence for humans making conscious attempts to measure, record, and predict seasonal changes by reference to astronomical cycles, appears as markings on bones and cave walls, which show that lunar cycles were being noted as early as 25,000 years ago. This was a first step towards recording the Moon’s influence upon tides and rivers, and towards organising a communal calendar. Farmers addressed agricultural needs with increasing knowledge of the constellations that appear in the different seasons—and used the rising of particular star-groups to herald annual floods or seasonal activities. By the 3rd millennium BCE, civilisations had sophisticated awareness of celestial cycles, and may have oriented temples in alignment with heliacal risings of the stars. Scattered evidence suggests that the oldest known astrological references are copies of texts made in the ancient world. The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa thought to be compiled in Babylon around 1700 BCE. A scroll documenting an early use of electional astrology is doubtfully ascribed to the reign of the Sumerian ruler Gudea of Lagash (c. 2144 – 2124 BCE). This describes how the gods revealed to him in a dream the constellations that would be most favourable for the planned construction of a temple. However, there is controversy about whether these were genuinely recorded at the time or merely ascribed to ancient rulers by posterity. The oldest undisputed evidence of the use of astrology as an integrated system of knowledge is therefore attributed to the records of the first dynasty of Mesopotamia (1950–1651 BCE). This astrology had some parallels with HellenisticGreek (western) astrology, including the zodiac, a norming point near 9 degrees in Aries, the trine aspect, planetary exaltations, and the dodekatemoria (the twelve divisions of 30 degrees each). The Babylonians viewed celestial events as possible signs rather than as causes of physical events. The system of Chinese astrology was elaborated during the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE) and flourished during the Han Dynasty (2nd century BCE to 2nd century CE), during which all the familiar elements of traditional Chinese culture – the Yin-Yang philosophy, theory of the five elements, Heaven and Earth, Confucian morality – were brought together to formalise the philosophical principles of Chinese medicine and divination, astrology and alchemy. ref

• Shamanism: an approximately 30,000-year-old belief system
• “Shamans and Symbols” addressing the picture above with sun symbols and horned animals of the sun
• 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
• 9,000-8,500 year old horned Female shaman Bad Dürrenberg Germany
• Black, White, and Yellow Shamanism?
• Similarity in Shamanism?

I believe there is a connection with:

“Sky-Burials” and “Star-People/Worship including Star-Ancestors/Spirit Animals/Deities“

‘Sky Burial’ theory and its possible origins at least

12,000 years ago to likely 30,000 years ago or older.

Shamanistic SASH PAINTING from Australia dated to around 19,000 years ago.

A group of delicately painted human figures in the Kimberley area of northwest Australia, which were to become known as the Bradshaws. These paintings, some tens of thousands of which exist, are similar in style to so-called “dynamic” figures from neighboring Arnhem Land, and although the Bradshaw figures are difficult to date, comparison with the Arnhem Land paintings suggests they were made before around 10,000 years ago. One painting was scientifically dated to around 19,000 years ago. Bradshaws are elegantly painted human figures who wear a panoply of ceremonial gear, including sashes (as in this example, worn at the waist), headdresses, whisks, skirts, armlets, and tassels—objects that are still worn today in Irian Jaya and which suggest a long tradition of ritual clothing and art in the region. Modern Australian aborigines do not know the meaning of the figures, believing they were painted by a bird that applied its own blood to the rock with its beak. Interestingly, the characteristic fine strokes—some as narrow as 1 millimeter—indicate that the most probable implement used to create these paintings was a feather quill. Technically, Bradshaws are exceptional examples of fine painting, in which specific brushstrokes and holding techniques, deliberate use of pressure, and variable directions of stroke have been observed. Moreover, this is not a limited expression, as bizarre, vaguely human figures in rock art have long puzzled viewers. They look a little like people yet clearly they’re something else. Why do they have weird heads, often without facial features? Why do they often have fewer than five fingers on each hand (or occasionally more)? Why do they have long torsos and missing limbs? It has been argued that many odd figures in rock art, including the spirals, dots, and therianthropes (figures that combine human and animal characteristics) were images typical of a visionary trance brought on by chanting, drumming, fasting, and taking hallucinogenic drugs. In relation to the Drakensberg (South Africa) rock art paintings, reviewing stories told by San (Bushmen/Khoi San) people and recorded since the 19^th century. Some told of a shaman catching a “rain beast” – usually a female ox, eland, elephant or another large herbivore. This was done through a trance, with the help of the group chanting, drumming, and dancing. Then the beast was sacrificed, and rain would fall where the beast was killed. Interestingly, two San men that Patricia Vinnicombe interviewed saw the therianthropes in this image as mythical people of an earlier race, the First Bushmen, not images of transformed shamans. ref, ref

Understanding Religion Evolution: Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, Paganism & Progressed organized religion

“Star-People/Worship”

The term “star people” was taken from an existing Native American spiritual concept. Native American Star People legends, what might be termed the folklore traditions of various Indian tribes, of having been in contact with extraterrestrials, or as being their ancestors, as a study of human societies and cultures, as anthropology, so that the more incredible aspects of this topic might be afforded a conventional context. It may be perhaps the norm for native legends to reference the Sky, and ancient interactions with those who dwell in the sky, or that resulted in celestial fixtures, such as the formation of the Pleiades, due to events on earth. ref

The term “star worship” (Astrolatry) references the worship of stars and other heavenly bodies as deities, or the association of deities with heavenly bodies. The most common instances of this are sun gods and moon gods in polytheistic systems worldwide. Also notable is the association of the planets with deities in Babylonian, and hence in Greco-Roman religion, viz. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Babylonian astronomy from early times associates stars with deities, but the heavens as the residence of an anthropomorphic pantheon, and later of monotheistic God and his retinue of angels, is a later development, gradually replacing the notion of the pantheon residing or convening on the summit of high mountains. It has been argued that there is a parallelism of the “stellar theology” of Babylon and Egypt, both countries absorbing popular star-worship into the official pantheon of their respective state religions by identification of gods with stars or planets. Kurgan culture in the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). The term is derived from the Russian kurgan (курган), meaning tumulus or burial mound referenced as the Kurgan hypothesis explaining the “kurganized” cultures, such as the Globular Amphora culture to the west. From these kurganized cultures came the immigration of Proto-Greeks to the Balkans and the nomadic Indo-Iranian cultures to the east around 2500 BC. Astrolatry does not appear to have been common in the Levant prior to the Iron Age (possibly around or after 3,200 – 2,550) and becomes popular under Assyrian (2,911 – 2,609) influence. Who emerged as the most powerful state in the known world at the time, coming to dominate the Ancient Near East, East Mediterranean, Asia Minor, Caucasus, and parts of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa, eclipsing and conquering rivals such as Babylonia, Elam, Persia, Urartu, Lydia, the Medes, Phrygians, Cimmerians, Israel, Judah, Phoenicia, Chaldea, Canaan, the Kushite Empire, the Arabs, and Egypt. As the people settled in the new land, they became exposed to Assyrian cultural ideas such as “royal ideologies, religious ideas, and mythologies…” and it “was incessantly propagated to all segments of the population through imperial art, emperor cult, religious festivals, and the cults of Aššur, Ištar, Nabû, Sîn and other Assyrian gods.” This was a process known as “Assyrianization.” The process of Assyrianization was a gradual process that occurred through generations of intermarriages, military participation, and daily interaction with Assyrian people (those who weren’t descended from the deportees’ generations earlier). Through the generations of cultural and linguistic exchange, there came to be a homogenous Assyrian identity. Mesopotamian religion refers to the religious beliefs and practices of the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, particularly Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, and Babylonia at least 5,500 years ago. ref, ref, ref

“Theological” astrology

In some countries of the ancient world of view of astrology were entirely theological, i.e. religious. So in the Babylon astrology of the planet were considered if not as gods then one of the forms of their embodiment. Ancient Indians also saw in planets of gods which it was possible to influence prayers and magic ceremonies.

Relation to astrology in different religions

Buddhism  Hermeticism  Gnosticism  Taoism  Old Russian paganism  Jainism  Zoroastrianism  Religions of Indians of America  Hinduism  Islam  Judaism  Cabbala  Confucianism  Manichaeism  Mithraism  Neopythagoreanism  Neoplatonism  Orphism  Sabaism  Jehovah’s Witnesses  Christianity  Church of Light

STAR-WORSHIP: By Executive Committee of the Editorial Board., M. Seligsohn

“Star-Worship Among the Israelites”

This [astrolatry/astrotheology] is perhaps the oldest form of idolatry practiced by the ancients. According to Wisdom xiii. 2, the observation of the stars in the East very early led the people to regard the planets and the fixed stars as gods. The religion of the ancient Egyptians is known to have consisted preeminently of sun-worship. Moses sternly warned the Israelites against worshiping the sun, moon, stars, and all the host of heaven (Deut. iv. 19, xvii. 3); it may be said that the prohibition of making and worshiping any image of that which is in heaven above (Ex. xx. 4; Deut. v. 8) implies also the stars and the other celestial bodies. The Israelites fell into this kind of idolatry, and as early as the time of Amos they had the images of Siccuth and Chiun, “the stars of their god” (Amos v. 26, R. V.); the latter name is generally supposed to denote the planet Saturn. That the kingdom of Israel fell earlier than that of Judah is stated (II Kings xvii. 16) to have been due, among other causes, to its worshiping the host of heaven. But the kingdom of Judah in its later period seems to have out-done the Northern Kingdom in star-worship. Of Manasseh it is related that he built altars to all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of Yhwh, and it seems that it was the practice of even kings before him to appoint priests who offered sacrifices to the sun, the moon, the planets, and all the host of heaven. Altars for star-worship were built on the roofs of the houses, and horses and chariots were dedicated to the worship of the sun (ib. xxi. 5; xxiii. 4-5, 11-12). Star-worship continued in Judah until the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign (621 B.C.), when the king took measures to abolish all kinds of idolatry (ib.). But although star-worship was then abolished as a public cult, it was practiced privately by individuals, who worshiped the heavenly bodies, and poured out libations to them on the roofs of their houses (Zeph. i. 5; Jer. viii. 2, xix. 13). Jeremiah (vii. 18) describes the worship of the queen of heaven to have been more particularly common among the women. Ezekiel, who prophesied in the sixth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin (591 B.C.), describes the worship of the sun as practiced in the court of the Temple (Ezek. viii. 16et seq.), and from Jer. xliv. 17 et seq. it may be seen that even after the destruction of the Temple the women insisted on continuing to worship the queen of heaven. In Job (xxxi. 26 et seq.) there is an allusion to the kissing of the hand in the adoration of the moon (see Moon, Biblical Data). According to Robertson Smith (“The Religion of the Semites,” p. 127, note 3, Edinburgh, 1889), star-worship is not of great antiquity among the Semites in general, nor among the Hebrews in particular, for the latter adopted this form of idolatry only under the influence of the Assyrians. But Fritz Hommel (“Der Gestirndienst der Alten Araber,” Munich, 1901) expresses the opposite opinion. He points to the fact that the Hebrew root which denotes the verb “to swear” is the same as that which denotes “seven,” and claims that this fact establishes a connection between swearing and the seven planets; and he furthermore declares that there are many Biblical pieces of evidence of star-worship among the ancient Hebrews. Thus, the fact that Terah, Abraham’s father, had lived first at Ur of the Chaldees, and that later he settled at Haran (Gen. xi. 31), two cities known from Assyrian inscriptions as places of moon-worship, shows that Abraham’s parents were addicted to that form of idolatry. According to legend, Abraham himself worshiped the sun, moon, and the stars before he recognized the true God in Yhwh (see Abraham in Apocryphal and Rabbinical Literature). The golden calf, Hommel declares, was nothing more than an emblem of the moon-god, which, in the Assyrian inscription, is styled “the youthful and mighty bull” and the lord of the heavenly hosts (comp. “Yhwh Ẓeba’ot,” which term is intentionally omitted from the Pentateuch). He assigns the same character to the two calves made by Jeroboam several centuries later (I Kings xii. 28). The ancient Hebrews, being nomads, like the Arabs favored the moon, while the Babylonians, who were an agricultural nation, preferred the sun. But, as appears from Ezek. xx. 7-8, the moon-worship of the Israelites, even while they were still in Egypt, was combined with sun-worship. The close similarity between the ancient Hebrews and the southern Arabs has led Hommel furthermore to find allusion to moon-worship in such Hebrew names as begin with “ab” (= “father”), as in “Abimelech” and “Absalom,” or with “‘am” (= “uncle”), as in “Amminadab” and “Jeroboam,” because these particles, when they appear in the names of southern Arabs, refer to the moon. The term “star-worship” (“‘abodat kokabim u-mazzalot”) in the Talmud and in post-Talmudic literature is chiefly a censor’s emendation for “‘abodah zarah.” In connection with star-worship, it is related in the Mishnah (‘Ab. Zarah iv. 7) that the Rabbis (“zeḳenim”) were asked if God dislikes idolatry why He did not destroy the idols. The Rabbis answered: “If the heathen worshiped only idols perhaps God would have destroyed the objects of their adoration, but they worship also the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the host of heaven, and God can not destroy the world on account of the heathen.” ref

Astrotheology and Shamanism

Stellar allusions appear early in the history of religions. In Shaman: The Wounded Healer anthropologist Joan Halifax explains that the shamanic “realization of a solar identity” experienced by the tribal priest reveals to her or him the “deepest structures of the psyche.” The shamanic practices of hunter-gatherer societies rely on drugs, fasting, dance and other trance-inducing techniques to produce a state of religious ecstasy. In this state, the shaman feels as if she or he receives personally and communally meaningful information from an astral dimension. In her survey of shamanic traditions, Halifax includes examples of shamanic art that depict human forms embellished with radiant auras and interprets such images as expressions of the psyche’s core. If shamanism, with its emphasis on direct transcendental experience, typifies hunter-gatherer societies, then a ceremonialized expression of the stellar calling seems to be the derivative religious form in agrarian societies. When human societies organized themselves around farming, then rituals, ceremonies, and pageantries tended to supplant personal revelation as the focus of religious life. Human labor became increasingly fragmented, and other influences—lunar, atmospheric, and finally terrestrial—gave rise to pantheons, doctrines, and creeds. The religious sensibility’s solar orientation got grounded and became vitiated among these competing influences. But a handful of civilizations, rather than sprout a pantheon of nature gods, remained steadfastly solar. Mircea Eliade, in Patterns in Comparative Religion, characterizes a peculiarity of the most consistently sun-centric civilizations. A solar deity remained the primary focus of the local religion, he observes, in those civilizations that came to exercise the greatest historical import.

“It is really only in Egypt, Asia, and in primitive Europe that what we call sun worship ever attained sufficient popularity to become at any time, as in Egypt for instance, really dominant. If you consider that, on the other side of the Atlantic, the solar religion was developed only in Peru and Mexico, only, that is, among the two ‘civilized’ peoples of America, the only two who attained any level of real political organization, then you cannot help discerning a certain connection between the predominance of sun religions and what I may call ‘historic’ destinies. It could be said that where ‘history is on the march,’ thanks to kings, heroes, or empires, the sun is supreme.” ref

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Sky Burials: Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, and Paganism

Ancestor Belief Connections to the Star people or the People of the Stars?

A Lakota legend speaks of seven maidens being chased by a bear. On their knees, they prayed for divine intervention, the result being that the ground beneath them erupted, high into the air, lifting them out of harm’s way, as the bear clawed at the risen ground. The result was Devil’s Tower (Wyoming), the bear’s claws having carved vertical geological features into the rock, and the seven maidens having been installed above as the Pleiades. The Hopi believe their ancestors came from the Pleiades, the place, or people they call Chuhukon, or, those who cling together, a reference it seems to that tightly grouped starry cluster, as it appears to the naked eye. Likewise, early Dakota legends speak of the Pleiades, or Tiyami, as the abode of the ancestors. Other native oral histories, or legends, speak of an origin, if not in the Pleiades, then in the stars generally, or other constellations. The Cree, for example, arrived on earth from the stars, as spirits, and then became human beings. The Zuni Indians offer one of many belief systems, if not actual experiences, related to ancestors who came from the sky, a phrasing that has since morphed into the more new age Star People reference, as opposed to Sky People. ref

Astrology India and Japan

In India, there is a long-established and widespread belief in astrology. It is commonly used for daily life, particularly in matters concerning marriage and career, and makes extensive use of electional, horary and karmic astrology. Indian politics have also been influenced by astrology. It is still considered a branch of the Vedanga. Recent genome studies appear to show that most South Asians are descendants of two major ancestral components, one restricted to South Asia (Ancestral South Indian) and the other component (Ancestral North Indian) more closely related to those in Central Asia, West Asia and Europe. The macrohaplogroup M which is considered as a cluster of the proto-Asian maternal lineages represents more than 60% of South Asian MtDNA. Virtually all modern Central Asian MtDNA M lineages seem to belong to the Eastern Eurasian (Mongolian) rather than the South Asian subtypes of haplogroup M, which indicates that no large-scale migration from the present Turkic-speaking populations of Central Asia occurred to India. The absence of haplogroup M in Europeans, compared to its equally high frequency among South Asians, East Asians and in some Central Asian populations contrasts with the Western Eurasian leanings of South Asians. Due to its great age, haplogroup M is a mtDNA lineage which does not correspond well to present-day ethnic groups. It is found among Siberian, Native American, East Asian, Southeast Asian, Central Asian, South Asian, Melanesian, European, Northeast African, and various Middle Eastern populations at varying frequencies.  Moreover, recently it has been detected ancient gene flow from early modern humans into Eastern Neanderthals from the Altai Mountains in Siberia at roughly 100,000 years ago. These data contrast with the phylogenetic hypothesis of a sole and fast dispersal of modern humans out of Africa around 60 kya following a southern route. In principle, it could be adduced, as it was in the case of the early human remains from Skhul and Qafzeh in the Levant, that the presence in China and Siberia of modern humans at that time was the result of a genetically unsuccessful exit from Africa. Among the descendant lineages of haplogroup M are C, D, E, G, Q, and Z. Z and G are found in North Eurasian populations, C and D exists among North Eurasian and Native American populations, E is observed in Southeast Asian populations, and Q is common among Melanesian populations. The lineages M2, M3, M4, M5, M6, M18, and M25 are exclusive to South Asia, with M2 reported to be the oldest lineage on the Indian sub-continent. M1 has been observed among ancient Egyptian mummies excavated at the Abusir el-Meleq archaeological site in Middle Egypt, which date from the Pre-Ptolemaic/late New Kingdom and Roman periods. Fossils at the Early Neolithic site of Ifri n’Amr or Moussa in Morocco, which have been dated to around 5,000 BCE, have also been found to carry the M1 subclade. These ancient individuals bore an autochthonous Maghrebi genomic component that peaks among modern Berbers, indicating that they were ancestral to populations in the area. The ancient Egyptian aristocrats Nakht-Ankh and Khnum-Nakht were also found to belong to the M1a1 subclade. The half-brothers lived during the 12th Dynasty, with their tomb located at the Deir Rifeh cemetery in Middle Egypt. Haplotypes with HVSI transitions defining 16129- 16223-16249-16278-16311-16362; and 16129-16223-16234-16249-16211-16362 have been found in Thailand and among the Han Chinese (Fucharoen et al., 2001; Yao et al., 2002) and these were originally thought to be members of Haplogroup M1. However, on the basis of currently available FGS sequences, carriers of these markers have been found to be in the D4a branch of Haplogroup D, the most widespread branch of M 1 in East Asia. There are two principal branches, D4 and D5’6. D1 is a basal branch of D4 that is widespread and diverse in the Americas. D2, which occurs with high frequency in some arctic and subarctic populations (especially Aleuts), is a subclade of D4e1 parallel to D4e1a and D4e1c, so it properly should be termed D4e1b. D3, which has been found mainly in some Siberian populations and in Inuit of Canada and Greenland, is a branch of D4b1c.

• D4 (3010, 8414, 14668): The subclade D4 is the most frequently occurring mtDNA haplogroup among modern populations of northern East Asia, such as Japanese, Okinawans, Koreans, and Mongolic– or Tungusic-speaking populations of northern China. D4 is also the most common haplogroup among the Buryats and Khamnigans of the Buryat Republic, the Kalmyks of the Kalmyk Republic, and the Telenghits and Kazakhs of the Altai Republic. Spread also all over China, Southeast Asia, Siberia, Central Asia, and indigenous peoples of the Americas.
• D5’6 (16189): Mainly in East Asia and Southeast Asia, especially among Chinese people. Generally lower in Siberia, Central Asia, and East India, though the D5a2a2 subclade is prevalent among the Yakuts of Siberia. ref, ref, ref, ref

Carriers of human mitochondrial DNA macrohaplogroup M colonized India from southeastern Asia

In Japan, there is strong belief in astrology has led to dramatic changes in the fertility rate and the number of abortions in the years of Fire Horse. Adherents believe that women born in hinoeuma years are unmarriageable and bring bad luck to their father or husband. In 1966, the number of babies born in Japan dropped by over 25% as parents tried to avoid the stigma of having a daughter born in the hinoeuma year. In Japan, DNA flow in a general way goes something like, Palaeolithic to Jomon 40,000-12,000 years ago (N9b 65%, D4h2 17%, G1b 11%. M7a 7%) Yayoi 3,000-1,700 years ago (D4 is most common in the Japanese and Yayoi populations), and Historical 1,700 BP. ref, ref

Religious transfer to Japan 675

In 513 Dan Yangi a “confucian” scholar was dispatched to Japan from Baekje in southwest Korea further distributing Chinese philosophies such as Wu Xing (five elements) as well as yin and yang. It was accepted as a practical system of divination. These practices were influenced further by Taoism, Buddhism and Shintoism, and around 675 it had evolved into the system of Onmyodo (The Way of Yin and Yang) is a traditional Japanese esoteric cosmology. It is thought that Onmyodo took in elements from Taoism including magical elements such as katatagae (changing directions), monoimi (talismans with monoimi on it), henbai (protection ceremony), and ceremonies to Taoistic gods such as the Taizan Fukun originally a Chinese deity of the Eastern mountain Taizan (where the souls of the dead congregated then judged for good and evil deeds by Taizan Fukun) also known as the Great Emperor of the mountain peak. Taizan Fukun was also identified with Enma/Yama the god of hell in Buddhism who is believed to have power over life and judges souls of the dead deciding who goes to heaven or hell. The word Enma comes from Yama in Sanskrit and Pali, a language for Buddhist writings in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand. He is said to be a human ancestor in the Rigveda (an ancient Indian sacred book). Ref, Ref, Ref, Ref, Ref, Ref

Religious transfer to Japan 6th century

Northern Han Chinese Was Shaped Prior to 3,000 Years Ago

The History of China — Over 3,000 Years of Civilization

While it is true that a geographic barrier maintains genetic difference if there is any, but it is irrelevant to a more interesting question: whether southern and northern populations are descendants of the same population or, alternatively, populations that arrived in China from different sources. Furthermore, the understanding of the origin of the populations in East Asia may shed light on the populations of Siberia and America. revealed a clear distinction between southern and northern Chinese populations, although the number of Chinese populations included in this phylogeny is small. Three northern Chinese populations clustered with the Japanese and Korean as expected. The southern populations in this phylogeny are not representative because three of the five southern populations are Taiwanese Aborigines speaking Austronesian languages. , but some populations analyzed in this study were included in Bowcock et al. (Cambodian, Karitiana, Mayan, Australian, New Guinean, Italian, Zaire Pygmy, Central Republic Pygmy, and Lissongo). Populations from East Asia form a distinctive cluster indicating a common ancestry shared among those groups. Taiwanese Aborigines populations derived from the southern population cluster from the continent, indicating the probable origin of those populations and probably Polynesians. The analyses of metric and nonmetric cranial traits of modern and prehistoric Siberian and Chinese populations showed that Siberians are closer to Northern Chinese and Mongolian than European. The same notion holds for the facial flatness. European populations did not appear in Siberia, western Mongolia, and China until the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Furthermore, cranial and dental analyses have linked the Arctic peoples, Buryat and east Asians with American Indians, which arrived through Beringia (Bering land bridge) somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago. These observations are generally consistent with the genetic evidence based on this research and mitochondrial DNA data. Therefore, it is more likely that ancestors of Altaic-speaking populations originated from an East Asian population that was originally derived from Southeast Asia, although the current Altaic-speaking populations undeniably admixed with later arrives from mid-Asia and Europe (see link). The possibility of early northern route migration from mid-Asia to Siberia is doubtful, given the fact that the last glacier started to recede only 15,000 years ago (see link). ref

Symbolic stars and Chinese astrology

“The symbolic stars” is sometimes translated literally, as “gods and devils”; but in fact, the symbolic stars do not relate to any ghosts or celestial beings— in this case, “shen” means beneficial influence, and “sha” means baneful influence of the cyclical signs of the heavenly stems and earthly branches. In Chinese astrology, there are more than 180 symbolic stars. The calculation of the symbolic stars is logically connected to the theory of Yin and Yang, Five Elements, Ten Gods theory, Na Yin melodic elements theory, Twelve Energy States, etc. The symbolic stars are like the “leaves” of the heavenly stems and earthly branches in the big tree of Chinese astrology and can provide a very specific information in the horoscope analysis. The symbolic stars are used in many methods of Chinese astrology and metaphysics: Four Pillars of Destiny, Zi wei dou shu, Da Liu Ren, and Feng Shui.

Chinese astrology is based on the traditional astronomy and calendars. The development of Chinese astrology is tied to that of astronomy, which came to flourish during the Han Dynasty (2nd century BC to 2nd century AD). Chinese astrology has a close relation with Chinese philosophy(theory of the three harmony: heaven, earth, and water), and uses the principles of yin and yang and concepts that are not found in Western astrology, such as the Wu Xing teachings, the 10 Celestial stems, the 12 Earthly Branches, the lunisolar calendar (moon calendar and sun calendar), and the time calculation after year, month, day, and shichen. Recently, a large number of graves were excavated at a necropolis called Hengbei located in the southern part of Shanxi Province, China, on the Central Plain (link), that dates back to approximately 3,000 years ago (Zhou dynasty), a key transitional period for the rise of the Han Chinese. In a previous study investigating when haplogroup Q1a1 entered the genetic pool of the Han Chinese, we analyzed Y chromosome single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from human remains excavated from the Hengbei (HB) site and identified haplogroups for 27 samples. Haplogroup Q is found predominantly in Central Siberia, Central Asia and among Native Americans. Approximately 90% of pre-Columbian Native Americans belonged to haplogroup Q, and all descend from the branch Q1a2a1 (L54), including various subclades of Q1a2a1a1 (M3) and Q1a2a1a2 (Z780). In Europe haplogroup Q is found chiefly in southern Sweden (5%), among Ashkenazi Jews (5%), and is various isolated pockets in central and Eastern Europe such as the Rhône-Alpes region of France, southern Sicily, southern Croatia, northern Serbia, parts of Poland and Ukraine. Šarić et al. (2013) also found 6.1% of haplogroup Q out of 412 samples from the island of Hvar in southern Croatia (accompanied by 2% of East Asian mtDNA haplogroup F). ref, ref 

The Han Culture and Chinese Traditional Religion

The majority of China consists of the Han people (93.3%), “Chinese traditional patriarchal religion”, “Clan-based traditional patriarchal religion” or “Chinese traditional primordial religion” is used to define the traditional religious system organized around the worship of ancestor-gods. Chinese traditional primordial religion as faith in God (Shangdi)’s original form. Moreover, Chinese folk religion (Chinese popular religion) or Han folk religion is the religious tradition of the Han people (an East Asian ethnic group), including veneration of forces of nature and ancestors, exorcism of harmful forces, and a belief in the rational order of nature which can be influenced by human beings and their rulers as well as spirits and gods. Worship is devoted to a multiplicity of gods and immortals, who can be deities of phenomena, of human behavior or progenitors of lineages. Stories regarding some of these gods are collected into the body of Chinese mythology. By the eleventh century (Song period) these practices had been blended with Buddhist ideas of karma (one’s own doing) and rebirth, and Taoist teachings about hierarchies of gods, to form the popular religious system which has lasted in many ways until the present day. Chinese religions have a variety of sources, local forms, founder backgrounds, and ritual and philosophical traditions. Despite this diversity, there is a common core that can be summarised as four theological, cosmological, and moral concepts: such as Tian (天), Heaven. The Han Chinese trace a common ancestry to the Huaxia, a name for the initial confederation of agricultural tribes living along the Yellow River. The ethnic stock to which the Han Chinese originally trace their ancestry from were confederations of late neolithic and early bronze-age agricultural tribes known as the Huaxia During the Warring States (2,475–2,221 year ago), the self-awareness of the Huaxia identity developed and took hold in ancient China. Initially, Huaxia defined mainly a civilized society that was distinct and stood in contrast to what was perceived as the barbaric peoples around them. The name Han was derived from the Han dynasty, which succeeded the short-lived Qin dynasty, and is historically considered to be the first golden age of China’s Imperial era due to the power and influence it projected over much of East Asia. Han Chinese maintain cultural affinities to Chinese territories outside of their host locale through ancestor worship and clan associations. The Xia Dynasty (4,070–3,600) — Early Bronze Age China. Possibly the first dynasty in ancient China, it’s generally believed that the Xia Dynasty consisted of several clans, living along the Yellow River. There was a bronze age Yellow River civilization at this time at Erlitou in Henan, however, artifacts don’t show conclusively that this was the Xia Dynasty of later writings so it could involve some myths. ref, ref, ref

Movement and Religious Transfer

• DNA traces Native Americans’ ancestry to Siberia
• One wave of migration from Siberia populated the Americas, DNA shows
• The Central Siberian Origin for Native American Y Chromosomes
• 12,000 – 7,000 Years Ago – Paleo-Indian Culture (The Americas)
• Shamanistic rock art from central Aboriginal Siberians and Aboriginal drums in the Americas
• 12,000 – 2,000 Years Ago – Indigenous-Scandinavians (Nordic)
• Scandinavians are the earliest Europeans | ScienceNordic
• Ancient DNA Reveals Prehistoric Gene-Flow from Siberia
• Norse did not wear helmets with horns?

It is possible to follow the genetic trail; all the way from the Kostenki genome (Kostenki 14 – A 36,000-Year-Old European), closer to hunter-gatherers in Siberia 25,000 years ago and farmers 7,000-8,000 years ago in Spain, Luxembourg, and Sweden, up to present-day Europeans. “Actually, the Kostenki genome was closer to Danes, Swedes, Finns, and Russians than to Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Germans. The separation time between Asians and Europeans relates to the Kostenki genome therefore likely a time around 37,000 years ago. Here the lines must have split, while the 45,000-year-old genome from the recently discovered Ust’ Ishim in Siberia sets the limit in the other direction. This gives the answer to one of the biggest questions in the history of mankind; scientists now know that it is within the 8,000-year gap that Europeans and Asians went their separate ways. It turns out that Scandinavians are more closely related to the Kostenki man than any other now-living population. This means that Scandinavians are the earliest Europeans. However, the genome also indicates that many European traits, including those from the Middle East, were already present in the first Europeans. ref

Historical summary of the migrations from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe to other parts of Europe

• 6,200-5,900 years ago: Late Copper Age horse riders invade the old Balkanese tell settlements of eastern Romania and Bulgaria. Most of the towns and villages of the Gumelnita, Varna and Karanovo VI cultures are abandoned. A new hybrid culture emerge, the Suvorovo-Cernavodă culture (6,000-5,200 years ago), which will expand further south to the Aegean during the Ezero period (3300-2700 BCE).
• 5,500 years ago: Other advances from the steppe into the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture lead to the formation of the hybrid Coţofeni culture, also known as Usatovo culture, in north-eastern Romania.
• 5,200-4,800 years ago: First north-west expansion of the Yamna culture from the western steppe to modern Poland, Germany, Scandinavia and Baltic countries. Creation of the Corded-Ware (or Single Grave, or Battle-Axe) culture (3200-1800 BCE).
• 4,800-4,500 years ago: Hybrid people from the Cotsofeni and Ezero cultures start moving up the Danube and settle in mass in the Hungarian plain. The southward expansion of the Abashevo, Poltakva and Catacomb cultures from the Volga-Ural to the Black Sea shores pushed more pastoralists of the late Yamna culture to Europe.
• 4,500-4,2300 years ago: Indo-Europeans expand from the Hungarian plain to Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, southern Poland and southern Germany and start the most important Central European Bronze Age culture: Unetice (or Aunjetitz).
• 4,300-4,000 years ago: The Indo-Europeans continue their advance to Western and Northern Europe, spreading the Bronze Age and the single grave tradition with them.
• 4,000-3,100 years ago: The Sea Peoples invade the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean from the north (probably from the Black Sea). This is one of the most controversial part of ancient history due to the lack of clear evidence about the origin of the Sea Peoples. The Indo-Europeans from the steppe or from Europe itself were the only warriors with sufficiently advanced weapons and knowledge of seafaring to have destroyed the powerful palace-states of Greece, Anatolia, the Levant and Egypt. It also fits the 1000-year interval otherwise lacking any major migration from the steppes, at the time when the eastern Indo-Europeans were conquering Pakistan and India from Central Asia.
• 2,800-2,550 years ago: The Cimmerians are ousted from the Pontic steppe by their cousins the Scythians coming from the Volga-Ural region and Central Asia. The Cimmerians settle in Anatolia and around modern Romania around 800 BCE. The Cimmerian culture commenced circa 1200 BCE. Some archaeologists place their origins in the North Caucasus. Some accounts have it that the Cimmerians moved to northern Germany and the Netherlands and became the ancestors of some Germanic tribes, like the Sicambri (ancestors of the Franks). The Scythians followed between 650 and 550 BCE in Transylvania, Hungary and southern Slovakia. They kept trade routes with the steppes until the Roman conquest of Pannonia and Dacia.
• 100-500 CE : The Huns from southern Siberia invade Eastern Europe, pushing the Alans (a Samartian-descended tribe) westward. The Goths, Vandals, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others cross into the Roman Empire under pressure from the new steppe migrants, which caused the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
• 550-1000 CE : The next invaders from the steppe were the Avars, who entered the lower Danube region in 562. The Avars established their dominion over the Danube basin, from central Romania to eastern Austria, from the late 6th to early 9th century.In the 4th century, some Bulgars had crossed the Caucasus into Armenia while others had already followed the Huns, then the Avars to Central Europe. The Pontic steppe and North Caucasus was ruled by the Bulgars during the Old Great Bulgaria period in the 7th century. Under pressure from the Khazars, the Bulgars split in two groups; one migrating north to Volga Bulgaria, and the other to the Carpathians founding the First Bulgarian Empire (680–1018 CE) around modern Romania and Bulgaria.The Magyars and Khazars migrated from the Ural-Volga region to modern Ukraine around 830, raided their way across the Carpathians as far as Bavaria, where they were stopped in 956, then established themselves permanently in Hungary in the 10th century and founding the Kingdom of Hungary in 1001.
• 1235-1300 CE : The Mongol Empire reached Europe around 1235 and the Mongols invaded relentlessly Bulgaria, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Austria, Croatia, Serbia and Byzantine Thrace. They were eventually defeated and expelled from Europe, but may have left some genetic traces (although very minor ones based on current evidence).
• 1350-1550 CE : The last people from Central Asia to come to Europe were the Turks, who conquered the Balkans from 1359 to 1481, then the Carpathians and Hungary from 1520 to 1566. They were not technically from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, but from areas of Central Asia settled over 4000 years ago by the Indo-Europeans from the Volga-Ural steppe. Like other Turkic peoples (Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, Tatars) the Turks supposedly brought a lot of R1a lineages with them (+ a little R1b). ref

Paleogenomics. Genomic structure in Europeans dating back at least 36,200 years.

The origin of contemporary Europeans remains contentious. We obtained a genome sequence from Kostenki 14 in European Russia dating from 38,700 to 36,200 years ago, one of the oldest fossils of anatomically modern humans from Europe. We find that Kostenki 14 shares a close ancestry with the 24,000-year-old Mal’ta boy from central Siberia, European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, some contemporary western Siberians, and many Europeans, but not eastern Asians. Additionally, the Kostenki 14 genome shows evidence of shared ancestry with a population basal to all Eurasians that also relates to later European Neolithic farmers. We find that Kostenki 14 contains more Neandertal DNA that is contained in longer tracts than present Europeans. Our findings reveal the timing of divergence of western Eurasians and East Asians to be more than 36,200 years ago and that European genomic structure today dates back to the Upper Paleolithic and derives from a metapopulation that at times stretched from Europe to central Asia. ref

• 31,000 – 20,000 years ago Oldest Shaman was Female, Buried with the Oldest Portrait Carving
•  And going back at Around 500,000 – 233,000 years ago, Oldest Anthropomorphic art (Pre-animism) is also Related to Female.
• Early Shamanism around 30,000 to 20,000 years ago: Sungar (Russia) and Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic)

Ancient DNA Reveals Prehistoric Gene-Flow from Siberia

in the Complex Human Population History of North East Europe

Archaeology sites were dated to the Mesolithic and the Early Metal Age (7,500 and 3,500 uncalibrated years Before Present). We applied a suite of population genetic analyses (principal component analysis, genetic distance mapping, haplotype sharing analyses) and compared past demographic models through coalescent simulations using Bayesian Serial SimCoal and Approximate Bayesian Computation. Comparisons of genetic data from ancient and modern-day populations revealed significant changes in the mitochondrial makeup of North East Europeans through time. Mesolithic foragers showed high frequencies and diversity of haplogroups U (U2e, U4, U5a), a pattern observed previously in European hunter-gatherers from Iberia to Scandinavia. In contrast, the presence of mitochondrial DNA haplogroups C, D, and Z in Early Metal Age individuals suggested discontinuity with Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and genetic influx from central/eastern Siberia. We identified remarkable genetic dissimilarities between prehistoric and modern-day North East Europeans/Saami, which suggests an important role of post-Mesolithic migrations from Western Europe and subsequent population replacement/extinctions. This work demonstrates how ancient DNA can improve our understanding of human population movements across Eurasia. It contributes to the description of the spatio-temporal distribution of mitochondrial diversity and will be of significance for future reconstructions of the history of Europeans. As climatic conditions improved in the early Holocene (8,000–10,000 yBP), the first human settlements appeared in the Kola Peninsula, and foraging activities intensified in the steppe-forest zone of Northern Europe leading to the widespread establishment of complex Mesolithic societies of fishermen and hunter-gatherers. At the same time, Western Europe and CE were undergoing the Neolithic transition, during which an agricultural lifestyle spread rapidly, largely due to favorable climatic and ecological conditions. The Neolithic transition is thought to have been slower and more gradual in North East Europeans (NEE) than in Western/Central Europe and to have involved little migration of early farmers from CE. From the Neolithic onwards, contacts between populations of NEE and groups living in the South are evident in archaeological and historical records . Around the Baltic, historical records describe numerous population movements that originated in Scandinavia (e.g., Viking incursions ∼800 Anno Domini, AD), Western/Central Europe (e.g., the Slavic migrations ∼700–1,000 AD) or Central/East Siberia (e.g., the Mongol invasions ∼500–700 AD). The geographical position of NEE makes it subject to influences from both Western and Eastern Eurasia, which could explain the linguistic and cultural diversity, observed in the area today. Two different linguistic families are spoken: Indo-European languages (Slavic, Baltic and Germanic) and Finno-Ugric languages (e.g., Estonian, Finnish, Mari, Saami). Saami people of Fennoscandia (northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia) are considered unique among Europeans in terms of their nomadic lifestyle and their livelihood, which is mainly based on fishing and reindeer herding. The ethnogenesis of the Saami remains unclear and two origins in Western and Eastern Europe were proposed. The Saami differ from the rest of the European populations in their reduced genetic diversity and mtDNA lineages that are otherwise very rare in European populations (haplogroups or hgs, U5b1b1a, V, Z1 , and D5). In particular, the Saami-specific U5b1b1a clade is defined by the so-called hypervariable region I (HVR-I) ‘Saami motif’ 16144C-16189C-16270T (numbering according). These lineages are also detected at low frequencies in adjacent NEE populations, which on the other hand fall within the European mtDNA diversity and appear rather homogeneous irrespective of their languages. Subtle mtDNA differences are however observed among them due to variable influences from genetically differentiated neighboring populations: central Europeans in the West, Saami in the North, and people from the VUB in the East. ref

Attila, Native Americans and DNA: A Hunny Story – Origin Hunters

Siberian & Native American Q1a

Many of clades of haplogroup Q1a are believed to have been brought by the Huns, the Mongols, and the Turks, who all originated in the Altai region and around modern Mongolia. Haplogroup Q has been identified in Iron Age remains from Hunnic sites in Mongolia by Petkovski et al. (2006)and in Xinjiang by Kang et al. (2013). Modern Mongols belong to various subclades of Q1a, including by order of frequency Q1a2a1c (L330), Q1a1a1 (M120), Q1a1b (M25) and Q1a2a2 (YP4004). Among those, the M25 subclade has been found in the North Caucasus (1000-year-old BZ640 subclade), in Poland and Hungary (1,750-year-old BZ1000 subclade), in Northern Ireland (YP1669 subclade), in Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan (Y16840 subclade) and in Arabia (F5005 subclade). Q1a is also the main paternal lineage of Native Americans. The testing of the genome of a 12,600-year-old boy (known as Anzick-1) from Clovis culture in the USA confirmed that haplogroup Q1a2a1 (L54) was already present on the American continent before the end of the Last Glaciation. The vast majority of modern Native Americans belong to the Q1a2a1a1 (M3) subclade. As this subclade is exclusive to the American continent and the Anzick boy was negative for the M3 mutation, it is likely that M3 appeared after Q1a2a1 reached America. Haplogroup Q has origins in Siberia, most likely north of the Altai Mountains.  Q is also the origin of the Native Americans. The oldest evidence to date of the presence of haplogroup Q is Europe are Q1a2-L56 samples from Mesolithic Latvia tested by Mathieson et al. (2017) and from the Khvalynsk culture (5200-4000 BCE), excavated in the middle Volga region and tested by Mathieson et al. (2016). The Khvalynsk culture is ancestral to the Yamna culture, which represents the Late Copper Age and Early Bronze Age homeland of the Proto-Indo-European speakers. Q1a2 could have traveled alongside haplogroup R1a-Z284 (via Poland) or R1b-U106 (via the Danube) to Scandinavia, or have been present there since the Mesolithic, as in Latvia. Both scenarios are possible as modern Scandinavians belong to two distinct branches of L56: Y4827 and L804. In either cases, all modern carriers of each branch seem to descend from a single ancestor who lived only some 3,000 years ago, during what was then the Nordic Bronze Age. The maternal equivalents of that Siberian Q1a2 in prehistoric Eastern Europe are probably mtDNA haplogroups C4a and C5, which have been found Mesolithic Karelia (north-western Russia), in the Neolithic Dnieper-Donets culture in Ukraine, and in the Bronze Age Catacomb culture in the Pontic Steppe. Nowadays mtDNA C is mostly found among Siberians, Mongols and Native Americans, who happen to share Y-haplogroup Q1a2 on the paternal side. The analysis of prehistoric genomes from Eastern Europe did confirm the presence of a small percentage of Amerindian-related autosomal admixture.  The majority of the Native America haplogroup is Q1a3a.  A significant Q1b and Q1a2 population are found related to Eastern Europe. Q1b’s genetic footprint using TribeMapper they fall exactly north of the Danube River and east of the Rhine.  This corresponds to the territory of the Hunnic Empire. Most likely the Huns were from eastern Asian origins.  That limited them to haplogroups C – ‘Mongol’, D – ‘Tibetan’, N – ‘Han/Finn’, O – ‘Manchurian’ and Q – ‘Altaic’.  The ethnic descriptions that I’m using are overly simplistic, just enough to give you a feel for the possible cultures present.   I surveyed DNA record sources for Russia and Europe, looking specifically for these haplogroups.  Groups D and O were isolated individuals, easily attributed to Silk Road travelers who settled in Europe.  Group C was predominantly C3 and related to the later Mongol invasion.  N was either heavily Finnic or a few isolated Siberian individuals.  Q was a different story completely. Not every European in haplogroup Q is a Hun.  There is a population of Q1a3a, a closer relation to Native Americans, living in Sweden that doesn’t correlate.  Not every Hun is a Q, there are bound to be some other groups mixed in like the isolated N individuals as well as the folks the Huns picked up along the way. When we think of the Huns, probably the first person who comes to mind is Attila.  Attila was the second to last ruler of the Huns at the height of the empire.  He died in 453 and the empire crumbled in 469 AD.  There is no evidence to say that Attila fits into either the Q1b or Q1a2 group.  If I had to pose a theory, I would say that Attila is Q1a2, part of the royal class of Huns living in Hungary. The Huns (Q1a2 & Q1b) and the Native Americans (Q1a3a) share a common Asian ancestor around 18,000 years ago, most likely from the Altai Mountain region.  Not all of the ancestral Q1a3a traveled to the new world.  Some remained in the old world and are found across Siberia and into Scandinavia.  If you live in the Americas and you have been tested as a Q, don’t automatically assume that you are Native American.  Get a deep clade SNP test for confirmation. ref, ref

Central Asian & Indo-Iranian Q1b1

While Q1a is more Mongolian, Siberian and Native American, Q1b1 (F1213) appears to have originated in Central Asia and migrated early to South Asia and the Middle East. The highest frequency of Q1b1 in Europe is found among Ashkenazi Jews (5%) and Sephardic Jews (2%), suggesting that Q1b was present in the Levant before the Jewish diaspora 2,000 years ago. In fact, Jewish Q1b all belong to the Y2200 subclade, which was formed some 2,600 years ago. Other subclades of Q1b1 are found throughout the Middle East, including, Armenia, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon (2%), and in isolated places settled by the Phoenicians in southern Europe (Crete, Sicily, south-west Iberia). This means that Q1b must have been present in the Levant at latest around 1200 BCE, a very long time before the Hunnic migrations. One hypothesis is that Q1b reached the Middle East alongside haplogroup R1a-Z93 with the Indo-Iranian migrations from Central Asia during the Late Bronze Age. The age estimate for the Middle Eastern Q1b1a (L245) branch is 4,500 years, which corresponds roughly to the beginning of the Proto-Indo-Iranian expansion to Central Asia. The other branch, Q1b1b (Y2265) is found in Central Asia, Iran, Pakistan and India, a distribution that also agrees with an Indo-Iranian dispersal. Q1b1 was probably not one of the original lineages of Proto-Indo-European speakers of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe since it is almost completely absent from Balto-Slavic and Germanic countries. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that Q1b1 was indigenous to the Ural mountains or Central Asia and was absorbed by the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-Europeans there during the Bronze Age, either during the Sintashta or Andronovo culture, then spread with the Indo-Aryans to India, Iran, and the Near East. Q1b1 probably settled in the Levant at the same time as R1a-Z93, as both lineages are found among the Jews and the Lebanese and in places historically colonized by the Phoenicians. Autosomal analyses have confirmed that all Levantine people (Jews, Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians) possess about 0.5% of Northeast Asian (Mongoloid) admixture. Since these populations lack Mongoloid mtDNA, the presence of Northeast Asian admixture can only be explained by the 2% of Q1b1 among Levantine men, the only paternal lineage of Mongoloid origin in the region. Oddly enough, the L804 branch, which descends from the same Northeast Siberian branch as the Native American M3, is now found exclusively in Germanic countries, including Scandinavia, Germany, Britain, and northern France. Like the other Scandinavian branch (L527>Y4827), its genetic diversity suggests that this lineage expanded from a single ancestor living approximately 3,000 years ago, presumably in Scandinavia, in what would have been the Nordic Bronze Age. At present, it remains unclear when and how Q1a2-L804 reached Europe in the first place, but it might have been a very long time ago, during the late glacial period or the Mesolithic period. It may well have arrived at the same time as Q-Y4827. Alternatively, L804 might have come as a minor lineage accompanying haplogroup N1c1 from Mongolia until it reached Northeast Europe during the Neolithic period, some 7,000 years ago. While Q1a is more Mongolian, Siberian and Native American, Q1b1 (F1213) appears to have originated in Central Asia and migrated early to South Asia and the Middle East. The highest frequency of Q1b1 in Europe is found among Ashkenazi Jews (5%) and Sephardic Jews (2%), suggesting that Q1b was present in the Levant before the Jewish diaspora 2,000 years ago. In fact, Jewish Q1b all belong to the Y2200 subclade, which was formed some 2,600 years ago. Other subclades of Q1b1 are found throughout the Middle East, including, Armenia, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon (2%), and in isolated places settled by the Phoenicians in southern Europe (Crete, Sicily, south-west Iberia). This means that Q1b must have been present in the Levant at latest around 1200 BCE, a very long time before the Hunnic migrations. One hypothesis is that Q1b reached the Middle East alongside haplogroup R1a-Z93 with the Indo-Iranian migrations from Central Asia during the Late Bronze Age. The age estimate for the Middle Eastern Q1b1a (L245) branch is 4,500 years, which corresponds roughly to the beginning of the Proto-Indo-Iranian expansion to Central Asia. The other branch, Q1b1b (Y2265) is found in Central Asia, Iran, Pakistan and India, a distribution that also agrees with an Indo-Iranian dispersal. Q1b1 was probably not one of the original lineages of Proto-Indo-European speakers of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe since it is almost completely absent from Balto-Slavic and Germanic countries. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that Q1b1 was indigenous to the Ural mountains or Central Asia and was absorbed by the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-Europeans there during the Bronze Age, either during the Sintashta or Andronovo culture, then spread with the Indo-Aryans to India, Iran, and the Near East. Q1b1 probably settled in the Levant at the same time as R1a-Z93, as both lineages are found among the Jews and the Lebanese and in places historically colonized by the Phoenicians. Autosomal analyses have confirmed that all Levantine people (Jews, Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians) possess about 0.5% of Northeast Asian (Mongoloid) admixture. Since these populations lack Mongoloid mtDNA, the presence of Northeast Asian admixture can only be explained by the 2% of Q1b1 among Levantine men, the only paternal lineage of Mongoloid origin in the region. ref

Altai region of Siberia may be the genetic source of Native Americans

DNA samples from modern Altai inhabitants, as well as individuals in southern Siberia, Central Asia, Mongolia, East Asia and American indigenous groups.  They found a unique mutation shared by Native Americans and southern Altaians in the Y chromosome haplogroup Q.  Also, mitochondrial haplogroups C and D in southern Altaians look like some of the founder types that arose in North America.  The team estimated that the southern Altaian lineage diverged genetically from the Native American lineage 13,000 to 14,000 years ago, which aligns with the possible movement of people from Siberia into the Americas between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago. From the sacred mountainous Altai region of southern Siberia may have been the genetic source of the earliest Native Americans, according to anthropologists at the University of Pennsylvania.  Altai was the hub of migrating human traffic between Russia, Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan 20-25,000 years ago.  They carried their Asian genetic lineages up into the far reaches of Siberia and eventually across the Beringian land bridge into the Americas. ref

World’s oldest temple built to worship the dog star | New Scientist

THE world’s oldest temple, Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey, may have been built to worship the dog star, Sirius. The 11,000-year-old site consists of a series of at least 20 circular enclosures, although only a few have been uncovered since excavations began in the mid-1990s. Each one is surrounded by a ring of huge, T-shaped stone pillars, some of which are decorated with carvings of fierce animals. Two more megaliths stand parallel to each other at the center of each ring (see illustration). Giulio Magli, an archaeoastronomer at the Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy, looked to the night sky for an answer. After all, the arrangement of the pillars at Stonehenge in the UK suggests it could have been built as an astronomical observatory, maybe even to worship the moon. Magli simulated what the sky would have looked like from Turkey when Göbekli Tepe was built. Over millennia, the positions of the stars change due to Earth wobbling as it spins on its axis. Stars that are near the horizon will rise and set at different points, and they can even disappear completely, only to reappear thousands of years later. Today, Sirius can be seen almost worldwide as the brightest star in the sky – excluding the sun – and the fourth brightest night-sky object after the moon, Venus , and Jupiter. Sirius is so noticeable that its rising and setting was used as the basis for the ancient Egyptian calendar, says Magli. At the latitude of Göbekli Tepe, Sirius would have been below the horizon until around 9300 BC, when it would have suddenly popped into view. “I propose that the temple was built to follow the ‘birth’ of this star,” says Magli. “You can imagine that the appearance of a new object in the sky could even have triggered a new religion.” “The appearance of a new object in the sky could even have triggered a new religion” Using existing maps of Göbekli Tepe and satellite images of the region, Magli drew an imaginary line running between and parallel to the two megaliths inside each enclosure. Three of the excavated rings seem to be aligned with the points on the horizon where Sirius would have risen in 9100 BC, 8750 BC and 8300 BC, respectively (arxiv.org/abs/1307.8397). The results are preliminary, Magli stresses. More accurate calculations will need a full survey using instruments such as a theodolite, a device for measuring horizontal and vertical angles. Also, the sequence in which the structures were built is unclear, so it is hard to say if rings were built to follow Sirius as it rose at different points along the horizon. Ongoing excavations might rule out any astronomical significance, says Jens Notroff, also at DAI. “We are still discussing whether the monumental enclosures at Göbekli Tepe were open or roofed,” he says. “In the latter case, any activity regarding monitoring the sky would, of course, have been rather difficult.” ref

Science conclude that Prehistoric tombs (dolmens/kurgans)such as A one 6,000-year-old as a telescope without a lens to enhanced astronomical viewing. Where, to me, did the god come from? Well, to me, it likely connects to the area of the Altai Mountains, a mountain range in Central and East Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan the heart of ancient shamanism. I think there is a connection to star worship likely beginning in ancestor worship sometimes by means of sky burial/worship where birds aid in taking loved ones or special persons to the stars/heavens Star worship. 

Astrolatry

Astrolatry is the worship of stars and other heavenly bodies as deities, or the association of deities with heavenly bodies. Unlike astrolatry, which usually implies polytheism, frowned upon as idolatrous by Christian authors since Eusebius, astrotheology is any “religious system founded upon the observation of the heavens”, and in particular, may be monotheistic. Gods, goddesses, and demons may also be considered personifications of astronomical phenomena such as lunar eclipses, planetary alignments, and apparent interactions of planetary bodies with stars. Astro-theology is used by Jan Irvin, Jordan Maxwell and Andrew Rutajit (2006) in reference to “the earliest known forms of religion and nature worship”, advocating the entheogen theory of the origin of religion. The earliest kurgans date to the 4th millennium BC in the Caucasus and are associated with the Indo-Europeans. Kurgans were built in the Eneolithic, Bronze, Iron, Antiquity and Middle Ages, with ancient traditions still active in Southern Siberia and Central Asia. Kurgan cultures are divided archeologically into different sub-cultures, such as Timber Grave, Pit Grave, Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnic, and Kuman–Kipchak. ref

Ancient virus DNA indicates that hepatitis B was circulating in Europe at least 7000 years ago.

The earliest known dolmens are dated to the 7,000 years ago in Brittany, France’s northwesternmost region. “Astronomers are exploring what might be described as the first astronomical observing tool, potentially used by prehistoric humans 6,000 years ago in Portugal. They suggest that the long, narrow entrance passages to ancient stone, or ‘megalithic’, tombs may have enhanced what early human cultures could see in the night sky, an effect that could have been interpreted as the ancestors granting special power to the initiated.” – ref

Dolmens used in this way seems like the features found in some pyramids, aiming to the stars that could have been thought to actually be ancestors or the place they go as in a possible reason to think ghosts live in the skies, that could relate to things like the zodiac. Could this also relate in some way to ‘Sky Burial’ theory and its possible origins at least 12,000 years ago to likely 30,000 years ago or older. The dolmens reached Britain, Ireland and southern Scandinavia about 6,000 years ago. Sites in central and southern Europe were constructed at a similar date. They are generally all regarded as tombs or burial chambers, despite the absence of clear evidence for this. Human remains, sometimes accompanied by artifacts, have been found in or close to the dolmens which could be scientifically dated using radiocarbon dating. However, it has been impossible to prove that these remains date from the time when the stones were originally set in place. A dolmen is a type of single-chamber megalithic, usually consisting of two or more vertical megaliths stones supporting a large flat horizontal capstone or “table”. ref

The earliest known kurgans are dated to the 6,000 years ago in the Caucasus. I think they could have so religious thinking transfer to things like pyramids. Maybe even to Ziggurats (multi-platform temples: 4,900 years old) or to Pyramids (multi-platform tombs: 4,700 years old). Ziggurats were huge religious monuments built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels. There are 32 ziggurats known at, and near, Mesopotamia. Twenty-eight of them are in Iraq, and four of them are in Iran. Ziggurats were built by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Elamites, and Assyrians as monuments to local religions. The probable predecessors of the ziggurat were temples supported on raised platforms or terraces that date from the Ubaid period during the 6,000 years ago and the latest date from the 2,600 years ago. The earliest ziggurats probably date from the latter part of the Early Dynastic Period of Sumer. Tepe Sialk ziggurat, Iran was built around 5,000 years ago and the oldest settlements in Sialk to date back from 8,000-7,500 years ago. ref, ref, ref

“Kurgan culture”:

• Bug–Dniester (6th millennium)
• Samara (5th millennium)
• Khvalynsk (5th millennium)
• Dnieper–Donets (5th to 4th millennia)
• Sredny Stog (mid-5th to mid-4th millennia)
• Maikop–Dereivka (mid-4th to mid-3rd millennia)
• Yamna (Pit Grave): This is itself a varied cultural horizon, spanning the entire Pontic–Caspian steppe from the mid-4th to the 3rd millennium.
• Usatovo culture (late 4th millennium)– Wikipedia

Kurgan barrows were characteristic of Bronze Age peoples, and have been found from the Altay Mountains to the Caucasus, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria. Kurgans were used in the Ukrainian and Russian steppes, their use spreading with migration into eastern, central, and northern Europe around 5,000 years ago. The tradition of kurgan burials was adopted by some neighboring peoples who did not have such a tradition. Various Thracian kings and chieftains were buried in elaborate mound tombs found in modern Bulgaria. Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, was buried in a magnificent kurgan in present Greece; and Midas, a king of ancient Phrygia, was buried in a kurgan near his ancient capital of Gordion. Burial mounds are complex structures with internal chambers. Within the burial chamber at the heart of the kurgan, elite individuals were buried with grave goods and sacrificial offerings, sometimes including horses and chariots. The structures of the earlier Neolithic period from the 6,000 to 5,000 years ago, and Bronze Age until the 3,000 years ago, display continuity of the archaic forming methods. They were inspired by common ritual-mythological ideas. The Ipatovo kurgan revealed a long sequence of burials from the Maykop culture 6,000 years ago, down to the burial of a Sarmatian princess of the 2,300 years ago. The Maikop kurgan dates to the 5,000 years ago. Kurgan 4 at Kutuluk near Samara, Russia, dated to 4,400 years ago, contains the skeleton of a man, estimated to have been 35 to 40 years old and about 152 cm tall. Resting on the skeleton’s bent left elbow was a copper object 65 cm long with a blade of a diamond-shaped cross-section and sharp edges, but no point, and a handle, originally probably wrapped in leather. No similar object is known from Bronze Age Eurasian steppe cultures. The Kostromskaya kurgan of the 2,700 years ago produced a famous Scythian gold stag, next to the iron shield it decorated. Apart from the principal male body with his accouterments, the burial included thirteen humans with no adornment above him, and around the edges of the burial twenty-two horses were buried in pairs. Females were buried in about 20% of graves of the lower and middle Volga river region during the Yamna and Poltavka cultures. Two thousand years later, females dressed as warriors were buried in the same region. David Anthony notes, “About 20% of Scythian–Sarmatian “warrior graves” on the lower Don and lower Volga contained females dressed for battle as if they were men, a phenomenon that probably inspired the Greek tales about the Amazons.” A near-equal ratio of male-to-female graves was found in the eastern Manych steppes and Kuban–Azov steppes during the Yamna culture. In Ukraine, the ratio was intermediate between the other two regions. ref

Pre-Scythian-Saka-Sibirian kurgans (Bronze Age)

The Bronze Pre-Scythian-Saka-Sibirian culture developed in close similarity with the cultures of Yenisei, Altai, Kazakhstan, southern, and southeast Amur regions. In the 2nd millennium BC appeared so-called “kurgans-maidans”. On a prepared platform were installed earthen images of a swan, a turtle, a snake, or other images, with and without burials. Similar structures have been found in Ukraine, India and South America. Some kurgans had facing or tiling. One tomb in Ukraine has 29 large limestone slabs set on end in a circle underground. They were decorated with carved geometrical ornamentation of rhombuses, triangles, crosses, and on one slab, figures of people. Another example has an earthen kurgan under a wooden cone of thick logs topped by an ornamented cornice up to 2 m in height. Pre-Scythian-Saka-Sibirian kurgans were surface kurgans. Underground wooden or stone tombs were constructed on the surface or underground and then covered with a kurgan. The kurgans of Bronze culture across Europe and Asia were similar to housing; the methods of house construction were applied to the construction of the tombs. Kurgan Ak-su – Aüly (12th–11th centuries BC) with a tomb covered by a pyramidal timber roof under a kurgan has space surrounded by double walls serving as a bypass corridor. This design has analogies with Begazy, Sanguyr, Begasar, and Dandybay kurgans. These building traditions survived into the early Middle Ages, to the 8th-10th centuries AD. – Wikipedia

An ancient astronomical instrument from Srubna burial of kurgan field Tavriya-1

(Northern Black Sea Coast)

“analysis of the spatial arrangement of the wells on the unique slab

from Srubna burial of kurgan field Tavriya-1 (Rostov region, Russia)”

The Kurgan was built on a natural elevation above two burials of the Bronze Age, in the overlap of one of them – the burial 2 – slab with wells was found. At the slab revealed two interrelated groups of wells, one of which – in the form of a circle, is proposed to interpret how analemmatic sundial, and a second group, consisting of disparate wells, as auxiliary astronomical markers of rising luminaries directions, to correct the position of the gnomon. As with most sundials, analemmatic sundials mark solar time rather than clock time. Getting back to the Kurgan Simultaneous location of both groups of wells on the same slab is a possible indication of one of the stages of development of the design features analemmatic sundial – setting movable gnomon and technology of measuring time with it. It may point to local origin, as the very idea of analemmatic sundial as well technology measurement of time with them. The article also describes the model analemmatic sundial, hour marks which in many cases coincide with the wells arranged in a circle, particularly in a working range from 6 to 18 hours. In the study proposed a method which can identify moments of solstices and equinoxes in ancient times with the help of the gnomon of analemmatic sundial and mobile gnomons, installed in wells belonging to the second group. The opportunity of use analemmatic sundial as moondial in a full moon night. Slab with two groups of wells is proposed to consider, as the oldest astronomical instrument discovered in the Northern Black Sea coast, which allowed to observe the apparent motion of the Sun and the Moon and allowed measure the time during the day, using analemmatic sundial and at night during the full Moon – with the help of moondial. Circle of the wells on the slab from Tavriya-1 has two protrusions – “cat ears”. We assumed that they were made to determine the axis of symmetry. In accordance with this assumption, we conducted a vertical axis Y between these two protrusions. Thus, the axis passed through a central the wells of circle. Having taken it for a possible center of analemmatic sundial, which was mounted gnomon at the equinoxes, we conducted there through horizontal axis X. Since the working part of analemmatic “the dial” must be an ellipse, we related the “cat ears” with its southern part – not a working part. Moreover, Unique plate with images of Srubna burial of tumuli group Popov Yar-2 (Ukraine) and plate of Srubna burial of tumulus field Tavriya-1 (Russia). A distinctive feature of the images is the orderliness and symmetry of the composition, as well as the location of elliptical cupped depressions. With the help of mathematical and astronomical methods, we prove that the plates with the images are the ancient sundials. At the Popov Yar-2 plate located two sundials, which worked at the same time: the analemmatic sundial and the horizontal sundial with two gnomons and the linear scale. At the Tavriya-1 plate located analemmatic sundial. On the basis of the reconstruction of the linear parameters of the gnomon of both Popov Yar-2 plate sundials and given the scale value of horizontal sundial, in the article that the potential indirect impact proto-scientific knowledge of ancient Egypt to the Srubna population in the Northern Black Sea coast. ref, ref, ref, ref

To understand fully read thess: 

• Kurgan 6,000 years ago/dolmens 7,000 years ago: funeral, ritual, and other?
• Ziggurats (multi-platform temples: 4,900 years old) to Pyramids (multi-platform tombs: 4,700 years old) 
• 4,250 to 3,400-Year-old Stonehenge from Russia: Arkaim?

Modern Europe was formed by milk-drinking Russians:

Mass migration brought new genetic make-up to continent 5,000 years ago.

“Researchers studied the DNA of skeletons from the Bronze Age period. They found white Europeans only arrived on the continent 5,000 years ago Came after a mass period of migration by the Yamnaya in southern Russia. They brought new technology and a genetic mutation allowing them to drink cow’s milk.” Ref

The Greeks did not consider the dead to be gods, but they did pay them homage and give them sacrifices – using different rituals than those for the gods of Olympus. The Greeks called the extraordinary dead – founders of cities and the like – heroes; in the simplest form, hero cult was the burial and the memorials which any respectable Greek family gave their dead but paid for by their City in perpetuity. Other men might claim divine favor by having a patron among the gods; so Alcibiades may have had both Eros and Cybele as patrons; and Clearchus of Heraclea claimed to be “son of Zeus”. When the news of his final victory, at the battle of Munda, reached Rome, the Parilia, the games commemorating the founding of the city, were to be held the next day; they were rededicated to Caesar, as if he were founder. Statues were set up to “Caesar’s Liberty“, and to Caesar himself, as “unconquered god.” He was accorded a house at public expense which was built like a temple; his image was paraded with those of the gods; his portrait was put on the coins (the first time a living man had appeared on Roman coinage). Early in 44 BC, he was called parens patriae (father of the fatherland); legal oaths were taken by his Genius; his birthday was made a public festival; the month Quinctilis was renamed July, in his honor (as June was named for Juno). At last a special priest, a flamen, was ordained for him; the first was to be Marc Antony, Caesar’s adjutant, then consul. To be served by a flamen would rank Caesar not only as divine, but as an equal of Quirinus, Jupiter, and Mars. In Cicero‘s hostile account, the living Caesar’s honours in Rome were already and unambiguously those of a full-blown god (deus). Caesar’s name as a living divinity – not as yet ratified by senatorial vote – was Divus Julius (or perhaps Jupiter Julius); divus, at that time, was a slightly archaic form of deus, suitable for poetry, implying some association with the bright heavens. A statue of him was erected next to the statues of Rome’s ancient kings: with this, he seemed set to make himself King of Rome, in the Hellenistic style, as soon as he came back from the expedition to Parthiahe was planning; but “friends” in the Senate killed him on 15 March 44 BC. An angry, grief-stricken crowd gathered in the Roman Forum to see his corpse and hear Mark Antony‘s funeral oration. Antony appealed to Caesar’s divinity and vowed vengeance on his killers. A fervent popular cult to divus Julius followed. It was forcefully suppressed but the Senate soon succumbed to Caesarian pressure and confirmed Caesar as a divus of the Roman state. A comet interpreted as Caesar’s soul in heaven was named the “Julian star” (sidus Iulium) and in 42 BC, with the “full consent of the Senate and people of Rome”, Caesar’s young heir, his great-nephew Octavian, held ceremonial apotheosis for his adoptive father. In 40 BC Antony took up his appointment as flamen of the divus Julius. Provincial cult centres (caesarea) to the divus Julius were founded in Caesarian colonies such as Corinth. Antony’s loyalty to his late patron did not extend to Caesar’s heir: but in the last significant act of the long-drawn civil war, on 1 August 31 BC, Octavian defeated Antony at Actium. An imperial cult is a form of state religion in which an emperor or a dynasty of emperors (or rulers of another title) are worshipped as demigods or deities. “Cult” here is used to mean “worship”, not in the modern pejorative sense. The cult may be one of personality in the case of a newly arisen Euhemerusfigure, or one of national identity (e.g., Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh or Empire of Japan) or supranational identity in the case of a multi-ethnic state (e.g., Imperial Era China, Roman Empire). A divine king is a monarch who is held in a special religious significance by his subjects, and serves as both head of state and a deity or head religious figure. This system of government combines theocracy with an absolute monarchy. Rome’s citizen legionaries appear to have maintained their Marian traditions. They gave cult to Jupiter for the emperor’s well-being and regular cult to State, local and personal divinities. Cult to the Imperial person and familia was generally offered on Imperial accessions, anniversaries and renewal of annual vows: a bust of the ruling emperor was kept in the legionary insignia shrine for the purpose, attended by a designated military imaginifer. By the time of the early Severans, the legions offered cult to the state gods, the Imperial divi, the current emperor’s numen, genius and domus (or familia), and special cult to the Empress as “mother of the camp.” At around this time, Mithraic cults became very popular with the military, and provided a basis for syncretic Imperial cult which absorbed Mithras into Solar and Stoic Monism as a focus of military concordia and loyalty. As Roman society evolved, so did cult to emperors: both proved remarkably resilient and adaptable. Until its confrontation by fully developed Christian orthodoxy, “Imperial cult” needed no systematic or coherent theology. ref, ref

5,000-year-old tomb in southeast Turkey gives the earliest evidence of child sacrifice

Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice in Peru May Be World’s Largest

Child sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas

Invasion vs. diffusion scenarios?

Genetic analyses show that 7,000-8,000 years ago, a closely related group of early farmers moved into Europe from the Near East, confirming the findings of previous studies. According to the “Anatolian hypothesis“, Indo-European languages were spread by the first farmers from the Near East 7,000-8,000 years ago. the “Steppe/Kurgan hypothesis“, which proposes that early Indo-European speakers were farmers on the grasslands north of the Black and Caspian Seas. Anthony’s “Revised Steppe Theory”, which David Anthony‘s The Horse, the Wheel and Language describes his “Revised Steppe Theory”. David Anthony considers the term “Kurgan culture” so lacking in precision as to be useless, instead of using the core Yamna culture and its relationship with other cultures as a point of reference. He points out that the Kurgan culture | prehistoric culture was so broadly defined that almost any culture with burial mounds, or even (like the Baden culture) without them could be included. He does not include the Maykop culture among those that he considers being IE-speaking, presuming instead that they spoke a Caucasian language. The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory or Kurgan model) or steppe theory is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and parts of Asia. It postulates that the people of a Kurgan culture in the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). The term is derived from the Russian kurgan, meaning tumulus or burial mound. Researchers have identified a massive migration of Kurgan populations (Yamna culture) which went from the Russian steppes to the center of Europe some 4,500 years ago, favoring the expansion of Indo-European languages throughout the continent. This was a time of astonishing creativity as city-states and empires emerged in a vast area stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indus Valley. The previous millennium had seen the emergence of advanced, urbanized civilizations, new bronze metallurgy extending the productivity of agricultural work, and highly developed ways of communication in the form of writing. In the 3rd millennium BC, the growth of these riches, both intellectually and physically, became a source of contention on a political stage, and rulers sought the accumulation of more wealth and more power. Along with this came the first appearances of mega-architecture, imperialism, organized absolutism, and internal revolution. The civilizations of Sumer and Akkad in Mesopotamia became a collection of volatile city-states in which warfare was common. Uninterrupted conflicts drained all available resources, energies and populations. In this millennium, larger empires succeeded the last, and conquerors grew in stature until the great Sargon of Akkad pushed his empire to the whole of Mesopotamia and beyond. It would not be surpassed in size until Assyrian times 1,500 years later. In the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the Egyptian pyramids were constructed and would remain the tallest and largest human constructions for thousands of years. Also in Egypt, pharaohs began to posture themselves as living gods made of an essence different from that of other human beings. Even in Europe, which was still largely neolithic during the same period, the builders of megaliths were constructing giant monuments of their own. In the Near East and the Occident around 5,000 years ago and religion developed and advanced to roughly the ways we are somewhat familiar to a large amount, limits were being pushed by architects and rulers. Towards the close of the millennium, Egypt became the stage of the first popular revolution recorded in history. After lengthy wars, the Sumerians recognized the benefits of unification into a stable form of national government and became a relatively peaceful, well-organized, complex technocratic state called the 3rd dynasty of Ur. This dynasty was later to become involved with a wave of nomadic invaders known as the Amorites, who were to play a major role in the region during the following centuries. In the Near East and the Occident during the around 5,000 years ago and religion developed and advanced to roughly the ways we are somewhat familiar to a large amount, limits were being pushed by architects and rulers. Towards the close of the millennium, Egypt became the stage of the first popular revolution recorded in history. After lengthy wars, the Sumerians recognized the benefits of unification into a stable form of national government and became a relatively peaceful, well-organized, complex technocratic state called the 3rd dynasty of Ur. This dynasty was later to become involved with a wave of nomadic invaders known as the Amorites, who were to play a major role in the region during the following centuries. ref, ref, ref, ref

• 5,750 years ago: The Proto-Semitic people emerged from a generally accepted urheimat in the Levant. The Proto-Semitic people would migrate throughout the Near East into Mesopotamia, Egypt, Ethiopia and the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.
• 5,700 years ago: Lothal: Indus Valley trade-port city in India.
• 5,650 years ago: Minoan culture appeared on Crete.
• 5,500 Years old birth of the State, the rise of Hierarchy, and the fall of Women’s status
• 5,300 years ago: The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilization (3300–1300 BCE; mature period 2600–1900 BCE) in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, noted for its cities built of brick, roadside drainage system and multi-storeyed houses, as well as for creating artifacts which could be linked to pre-vedic religions.
• 5,200 years ago: Helladic culture and Cycladic culture both emerge in Greece.
• 5,102 years ago: This was the beginning of Kaliyuga, a new age among the followers of Indian religions.
• 5,100 years ago: The initial form of Stonehenge was completed. The circular bank and ditch enclosure, about 110 metres (360 ft) across, may have been completed with a timber circle.
• 5,100 years ago: Newgrange, the 250,000 ton (226,796.2 tonne) passage tomb aligned to the winter solstice in Ireland, was built.
• 5,000 years ago: Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt.
• 5,000 years ago: First evidence of gold being used in the Middle East.
• 5,000 years ago: Vessels from Denmark
• 5,000 years ago: Sumerian Cuneiform emerged from the proto-literate Uruk period, allowing the codification of beliefs and creation of detailed historical religious records.
• 5,000 years ago: The second phase of Stonehenge was completed and appeared to function as the first enclosed cremation cemetery in the British Isles.
• 4,900 years ago: Beginning of the Early Dynastic Period I in Sumer.
• 4,900 years ago: Sumerianpictographs evolve into phonograms.
• 4,900 years ago: Mesopotamian wars of the Early Dynastic period.
• 4,900 years ago: Votive statues from the Square Temple of Eshnunna (modern Tell Ashmar, Iraq) were made.
• 4,900 years ago: Syria: Foundation of the city of Mari.
• 4,900 years ago: Semitic tribes occupy Assyria in northern part of the plain of Shinar and Akkad.
• 4,900 years ago: Phoenicians settle on Syrian coast, with centers at Tyre and Sidon.
• 4,900 years ago: Beginning of the period of the Sage Kings in China, also known as the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors.
• 4,900 years ago: Ziggurats (multi-platform temples: 4,900 years old) to Pyramids (multi-platform tombs: 4,700 years old)
• 4,879 years ago: Rise of the Văn Lang Kingdom and the Hồng Bàng Dynasty in northern Viet Nam.
• 4,874 years ago: The 365-day calendar year was installed in ancient Egypt
• 4,852 years ago: The beginning of the period of the Three August Ones and Five Emperors in China.
• 4,832 years ago: Estimated germination of the Methuselah Tree, the oldest known living organism
• 4,807 years ago: Suggested date for an asteroid or comet impact occurring between Africa and Antarctica, around the time of a solar eclipse on May 10, based on an analysis of flood stories. Possibly causing the Burckle crater and Fenambosy Chevron.
• 4,800 years ago: Ur becomes one of the richest cities in Sumer
• 4,800 years ago: Harp Player, from Keros, Cyclades, was made. It is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
• 4,800 years ago: Iran: Creation of the Kingdom of Elam.
• 4,800 years ago:  Seated Harp Player, from Keros, Cyclades, is made.
• 4,775 years ago: Second Dynasty wars in Ancient Egypt.
• 4,773 years ago: the 365-day calendar is introduced in Egypt.
• 4,750 years ago: End of the Early Dynastic I Period, and the beginning of the Early Dynastic II Period in Mesopotamia.
• 4,750 years ago: Estimated ending of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture in the region of modern-day Romania, Moldova, and southwestern Ukraine
• 4,700 years ago: Germination of the Bristlecone pine tree “Methuselah“, one of the oldest known trees still living now.
• 4,700 years ago: Merit-Ptah is world’s first female physician mentioned by name.
• 4,700 years ago: Old Kingdom of Egypt begins. 3rd–6th Dynasties.
• 4,700 years ago: Mesoamericans begin to plant and domesticate maize.
• 4,697 years ago: The Yellow Emperor starts to reign in China.
• 4,685 years ago: Bull lyre from the tomb of Queen Puabi, Ur (modern Muqaiyir, Iraq) was made.
• 4,640 years ago: The cultivation and weaving of silk starts to be a closely guarded secret in China.
• 4,630 years ago: Imhotep, Vizier of Egypt, constructs the Pyramid of Djoser The Djoser pyramid is a step pyramid (or proto-pyramid) is considered to be the earliest large-scale cut stone construction and was thought to function in both life and the afterlife, which was sealed with a 3.5 ton block after the burial. The symbolism of the step pyramid form, which did not survive the 3rd Dynasty, is unknown, but it has been suggested that it may be a monumental symbol of the crown, especially the royal mortuary cult, since seven small step pyramids (not tombs) were built in the provinces.
• 4,627 years ago: Construction of the Caral metropolis in Peru
• 4,600 years ago: Mature Harappan phase of the Indus Valley Civilisation begins. The cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro become large metropolises and the civilization expands to over 2,500 cities and settlements across the whole of Pakistan, much of northern India, and parts of Afghanistan and Iran, covering a region of around one million square miles, which was larger than the land area of its contemporaries Egypt and Mesopotamia combined, and also had superior urban planning and sewage systems. The civilization began using the mature Indus script for its writing system.
• 4,600 years ago: End of the Early Dynastic II Period and the beginning of the Early Dynastic IIIa Period in Mesopotamia.
• 4,600 years ago: Founding of the Chalcolithic Iberian civilizations of Los Millares and Zambujal.
• 4,600 years ago: the Indus Valley Civilisation rises to become a powerful civilization.
• 4,600 years ago: Pre-Palace Period, phase I, in Crete
• 4,600 years ago: Wild horses still provide hunting feasts in Denmark. (Clutton-Brock)
• 4,600 years ago: Large water tank, possibly a public or ritual bathing area, Mohenjo-daro, Indus Valley Civilisation, is made.
• 4,600 years ago: Butmir culture existed in Butmir, near Ilidža, Bosnia and Herzegovina, dating from the Neolithic. It is characterized by its unique pottery, and is one of the best researched European cultures from 2600-2400 BC.
• 4,600 years ago: Unified Indus Valley Civilisation.
• 4,550 years ago: Estimated date of completion of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
• 4,550 years ago: Mesannepada is king of Ur (followed by his son, A-annepadda) who founds the First Dynasty of Ur and overthrows the last king of Uruk, as well as Mesilim of Kish.
• 4,550 years ago:: Great Lyre with bull’s head, from the tomb of King Meskalamdug, Ur (modern Muqaiyir, Iraq) is made.
• 4,500 years ago: Excavation and development of the Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni at Paola, Malta, a subterranean temple complex subsequently used as a necropolis.
• 4,500 years ago: The legendary line of Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors of China is founded by the Yellow Emperor.
• 4,500 years ago: the construction of the stone circle at Stonehenge begins and continues for the next five hundred years.
• 4,500 years ago: Rice was first introduced to Malaysia
• 4,500 years ago: Scribal schools flourish throughout Sumer.
• 4,500 years ago: Assyria is established.
• 4,500 years ago: Cylinder seal from Sumer and its impression are made. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
• 4,500 years ago: Excavation and development of the Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni at Paola, Malta, a subterranean temple complex subsequently used as a necropolis.
• 4,500 years ago: Valley Temple of Khafra, Giza, is built.
• 4,500 years ago: Khafra from Giza Valley, Temple of Khafra is made. Fourth Dynasty of Egypt. Discovered by Auguste Mariette. It is now kept in Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
• 4,500 years ago: Mohenjo-daro is about 7 square miles (18 km²) in size and has a population of c. 20,000 to 50,000.
• 4, 500 years ago: Incised panel “Frying pan”, from Syros, Cyclades is made.
• 4,500 years ago: Two figures of women, from the Cyclades, are made.
• 4,494 years ago: End of Fourth Dynasty, start of Fifth Dynasty in Egypt. Construction of the Pyramids begins.
• 4,494 years ago:  “Sculptors at work”, relief from Saqqara, Fifth Dynasty. It is now at Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt.
• 4,494 years ago: The Seated Scribe, a sculpture found at Saqqara, Fifth Dynasty of Egypt is made.
• 4,494 years ago: The first of the oldest surviving religious texts, the Pyramid Texts, was composed in Ancient Egypt.
• 4,492 years ago: Traditional date for the legendary foundation of Armenia by Hayk.
• 4,492 years ago: The Armenian patriarch Hayk defeats the Babylonian king Bel (legendary account) and Hayk founds Armenia.
• 4,474 years ago: Golden age of Ur in Mesopotamia.
• 4,450 years ago: End of the Early Dynastic IIIa Period and beginning of the Early Dynastic IIIb Period in Sumer.
• 4,450 years ago: Kish is lost to Hamazi tribesmen of the Kurdistan mountains; Elam under the Awan dynasty occupies parts of Sumer.
• 4,419 years ago: Neferefre is pharaoh
• 4,410 years ago: By this time, kings in Sumer have ceased to be automatically high priests of the city deity. Infiltration and conquest of Mesopotamia by ancient Semitic-speaking peoplesbegins.
• 4,400 years ago: Construction of Stonehenge
• 4,400 years ago: Megalithic culture begins to spread through Europe and the western Mediterranean.
• 4,400 years ago: Earliest signs of Corded Ware culture from the Caucasus.
• 4,400 years ago: Southeastern Spain is settled from the Mediterranean, by people using Prehistoric Egyptian-style pottery.
• 4,400 years ago: Amorites and Canaanites occupy Syria and Lebanon.
• 4,334 years ago: Sargon of Akkad conquers Mesopotamia, establishing the Akkadian Empire.
• 4,334 years ago: City of Lothal founded under the Indus Valley Civilisation.
• 4,333 years ago: According to the Korean creation story, Dangun Wanggeom established the first Korean Empire, Gojoseon
• 4,300 years ago:  C-Group pastoralists arrive in Nubia.
• 4,300 years ago: Megalithic, Corded Ware culture and the Beaker flourish in Europe.
• 4,300 years ago: Sumerian poetry, lamenting the death of Tammuz, the shepherd god.
• 4,300 years ago: Sumerian cuneiform writing reduces pictographs still in use to about 550 BC.
• 4,300 years ago: Major religious festival in Sumeria celebrates the victory of god of spring over goddess of chaos.
• 4,300 years ago: Earliest Trojan culture.
• 4,300 years ago: Beginning of the Pengtoushan culture in China.
• 4,300 years ago: Indus Valley Civilization (Harappan) flourishing in modern day eastern Pakistan – western India.
• 4,300 years ago: Metals start to be used in Northern Europe.
• 4,300 years ago: Unetice culture emerges in the modern day Czech Republic.
• 4,300 years ago: Disk of Enheduanna, from Ur, (modern Muqaiyir, Iraq) is made.
• 4,300 years ago: “Head of a man from Nineveh” (modern Kuyunjik, Iraq) is made.
• 4,285 years ago: Enheduanna, high priestess of the moon god Nanna in Ur, was born.
• 4,254 years ago: Stela of Naram-Sin, probably from Sippar, discovered in Susa (modern Shush, Iran), is made.
• 4,250 years ago: Earliest evidence of maize cultivation in Central America.
• 4,240 years ago: Akkad, capital of the Akkadian Empire, becomes the largest city in the world, surpassing Memphis, capital of Egypt.
• 4,220 years ago: Scord of Brouster farmstead established in Shetland, Scotland
• 4.2 kiloyear event – a severe aridification event that probably lasted the entire 22nd century BC and caused the collapse of several Old World civilizations.
• 4,217 years ago: Nomadic invasions of Akkad.
• 4,200 years ago: The Minoan Civilization developed in Crete. Citizens worshipped a variety of goddesses.
• 4,150 years ago: The earliest surviving versions of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh—originally titled He who Saw the Deep (Sha naqba īmuru) or Surpassing All Other Kings (Shūtur eli sharrī)—were written.
• 4,104 years ago: Approximate date of the Biblical flood according to the Hebrew Calendar.
• 4,070 years ago: Xia Dynasty, first Chinese dynasty and government system established.
• 4,000 years ago: Kultepe? An archaeological site with a 4,000 years old women’s rights document.
• 3,700 years ago: The oldest of the Hindu Vedas (scriptures), the Rig Veda was composed.
• 3,600 years ago: The ancient development of Stonehenge came to an end.
• 3,500 years ago: The Vedic Age began in India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation.
• 3,450 years ago: This is the traditionally accepted period in which, according to legend, the Israelite lawgiver Moses gave the Ten Commandments.
• 3,351 years ago: The reign of Akhenaten, sometimes credited with starting the earliest known recorded monotheistic religion, in Ancient Egypt
• 3,300 years ago: The “standard” Akkadian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh was edited by Sin-liqe-unninni.
• 3,250 years ago: The Upanishads (Vedic texts) were composed, containing the earliest emergence of some of the central religious concepts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Astrology, Death and Human Sacrifice

BY BARRY GODDARD

“So what myths around death does astrology have? First of all, anything around astrology is myth, rather than fact. The planets as gods, influenced by starry constellations, telling us stories about our lives down here. How could that ever be ‘fact’? If you are an astrologer then you are living mythologically, so it would not make sense to have a non-mythological view of death. But back to the mythology of death and astrology, what we do have is Mercury taking dead souls to the Underworld where Pluto takes them in, once you’ve paid Charon’s fare across the river Styx. And that’s why I want to be buried with a coin in my mouth, in hhonorof that mythology, because Pluto turns up regularly for me and these sort of things continue after death. And I’m quite happy to have these 2 different things going on strongly: that I don’t know what will happen when I die, but I can trust it because life has taught me to trust whatever major stage comes next, and why should death be different?; and that I need a coin in my mouth to get to Pluto’s realm. I don’t need to add it all up logically, logic gets left far behind once you’re dead. Or thinking mythologically, something many people have forgotten how to do. But back to the mythology of death and astrology, what we do have is Mercury taking dead souls to the Underworld where Pluto takes them in, once you’ve paid Charon’s fare across the river Styx. And that’s why I want to be buried with a coin in my mouth, in honour of that mythology, because Pluto turns up regularly for me and these sort of things continue after death. And I’m quite happy to have these 2 different things going on strongly: that I don’t know what will happen when I die, but I can trust it because life has taught me to trust whatever major stage comes next, and why should death be different?; and that I need a coin in my mouth to get to Pluto’s realm. I don’t need to add it all up logically, logic gets left far behind once you’re dead. Or thinking mythologically, something many people have forgotten how to do.” ref

Human sacrifice

There are two primary types of human sacrifice: the offering of a human being to a god and the entombment or slaughter of servants or slaves intended to accompany the deceased into the afterlife. The latter practice was more common. In various places in Africa, where human sacrifice was connected with ancestor worship, some of the slaves of the deceased were buried alive with him, or they were killed and laid beneath him in his grave. The Dahomey instituted especially elaborate sacrifices at yearly ceremonies related to the cult of deceased kings. Excavations in Egypt and elsewhere in the ancient Middle East have revealed that numerous servants were at times interred with the funerary equipment of a member of the royal family in order to provide that person with a retinue in the next life. The Chinese practice of burying the emperor’s retinue with him continued intermittently until the 17th century. The sacrificial offering of humans to a god has been well attested only in a few cultures. In what is now Mexico the belief that the sun needed human nourishment led to the sacrifice of thousands of victims annually in the Aztec and Nahua calendrical maize (corn) ritual. The Inca confined wholesale sacrifices to the occasion of the accession of a ruler. The burning of children seems to have occurred in Assyrian and Canaanite religions and at various times among the Israelites. Among the African Asante, the victims sacrificed as first-fruit offerings during the Festival of New Yams were usually criminals, though slaves also were killed. Accusations of human sacrifice in ancient and modern times have been far more widespread than the ritual practice ever was. The ancient Greeks told many myths that involved human sacrifice, which has led some researchers to posit that rites among the Greeks and Romans which involved the killing of animals may have originally involved human victims. ref

‘Dark link’ between ancient human sacrifice and culture. 

In Japan, it was said that sacrificing a woman at a rushing river would placate the spirit who lived there, allowing for the construction of bridges and the safe passage of boats. In Greek myth, the warrior king Agamemnon decides to kill his own daughter in exchange for a favorable wind on the way to Troy. The Egyptians buried some of their pharaohs with dozens of servants when they died, ensuring that their needs would still be met in the afterlife. Bodies found entombed in bogs across Europe may have been slain as gifts for higher powers. The great civilizations of Mesoamerica killed people, smashed food and sank treasure to pay their debts to their gods. An analysis of more than seven dozen Austronesian cultures revealed that the practice of human sacrifices tended to make societies increasingly less egalitarian and eventually gave rise to strict, inherited class systems. In other words, ritual killings helped keep the powerful in power and everyone else in check. That finding might seem intuitive — societies in which some members are habitually killed probably value certain lives over others — but it has broader implications, the researchers said in the journal Nature. It suggests a “darker link between religion and the evolution of modern hierarchical societies,” they write, in which “ritual killings helped humans transition from the small egalitarian groups of our ancestors and the large, stratified societies. The scientists behind the Nature study used phylogenetic analysis — a tool that was originally used to plot evolutionary family trees but can also be applied by sociologists to study the development of languages — to map the relationships between the 93 cultures they were examining. This allowed them to see whether the traits they were looking for were inherited or adopted from other cultures, and helped determine the causal relationship between human sacrifice and stratification. The fear that sacrifices inspired allowed the practice to function “as a stepping-stone to help build and maintain power in early hierarchical societies. ref 

Child Sacrifice

The Minoan civilization, located in ancient Crete, is widely accepted as the first civilization in Europe. An expedition to Knossos by the British School of Athens, led by Peter Warren, excavated a mass grave of sacrifices, particularly children, and unearthed evidence of cannibalism. Clear evidence that their flesh was carefully cut away, much in the manner of sacrificed animals. In fact, the bones of slaughtered sheep were found with those of the children… Moreover, as far as the bones are concerned, the children appear to have been in good health. Startling as it may seem, the available evidence so far points to an argument that the children were slaughtered and their flesh cooked and possibly eaten in a sacrifice ritual made in the service of a nature deity to assure an annual renewal of fertility. Additionally, Rodney Castleden uncovered a sanctuary near Knossos where the remains of a 17-year-old were found sacrificed. His ankles had evidently been tied and his legs folded up to make him fit on the table… He had been ritually murdered with the long bronze dagger engraved with a boar’s head that lay besides him. At Woodhenge, a young child was found buried with its skull split by a weapon. This has been interpreted by the excavators as a child sacrifice, as have other human remains. The Ver Sacrum (“A Sacred Spring”) was a custom by which a Greco-Roman city would devote and sacrifice everything born in the spring, whether animal or human, to a god, in order to relieve some calamity. ref, ref

Child sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas

Ancient Mass Child Sacrifice in Peru May Be World’s Largest

The practice of child sacrifice in Pre-Columbian cultures, in particular, Mesoamerican and South American cultures, is well documented both in the archaeological records and in written sources. The exact ideologies behind child sacrifice in different pre-Columbian cultures are unknown but it is often thought to have been performed in order to placate certain gods. ref

Olmec Culture, Maya Culture, Teotihuacan Culture, Toltec Culture, and Aztec Culture

North America

Mound 72 at the Mississippian culture site of Cahokia, directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri, contained the remains of “scores of clearly sacrificed female retainers” as well as four headless and handless male skeletons. The roughly contemporaneous site of Dickson Mounds, some 100 miles (150 km) to the north, also contained a mass grave with four headless male skeletons.^ref

Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, and Paganism

To me, I think one can get a general understanding of the animistic/totemistic/shamanistic believed associations of Ancestors, Spirit Animals, Deities, and Stars:

• “Animist” Believe in spirit-filled life and/or afterlife
• “Totemist” Believe in spirit-filled life and/or an afterlife can be attached to or be expressed in things or objects
• “Shamanist” Believe in spirit-filled life and/or an afterlife can be attached to or be expressed in things or objects and these objects can be used by special persons or in special rituals can connect to spirit-filled life and/or afterlife
• “Paganist” Believe in spirit-filled life and/or an afterlife can be attached to or be expressed in things or objects and these objects can be used by special persons or in special rituals can connect to spirit-filled life and/or afterlife who are guided/supported by a goddess/god or goddesses/gods

 Pawnee practiced an annual Morning Star ceremony

THE ORIGIN OF THE SKIDI PAWNEE SACRIFICE TO THE MORNING STAR

by RALPH LINTON

It has been pointed out that the Morning Star sacrifice had a number of features in common with the human sacrifices of the Aztec and suggest that its presence among the Pawnee may be due to diffusion from Mexico. The principal resemblances to the Mexican practices lie in the association of the sacrifice with a worship of the heavenly bodies, the impersonation of a deity by the victim, and in parts of the actual procedure. An analysis of the Pawnee ceremony shows that although some of its features were probably of foreign origin, its underlying concepts and most of its ritual were in perfect accord with the general body of Skidi beliefs and practices. The Pawnee recognized a great number of both heavenly and earthly beings. The attributes and powers of these beings were more clearly defined than was usually the case among the Plains tribes and the most important of them deserve to be classed as gods. The earthly beings were primarily the guardians of the medicine-men while the heavenly beings were the guardians of the whole people and the rivers of most of the village and tribal sacred bundles. Nearly all the heavenly beings were identified with stars. Although our data on the other Caddoan tribes are rather scanty, stars figure largely in the mythology of all those for which we have information and it seems probable that a worship of the heavenly bodies was common to all the peoples of this stock. It was such a basic feature of Pawnee religion that if its presence was due to diffusion from Mexico this diffusion must have occurred at a very ancient time. The impersonation of a deity by the victim in the Morning Star ceremony is suggestive of one of the Mexican practices, but the resemblance is not very close. In the Mexican rites cited the victims were sacrificed to the deities whom they had impersonated. In the Pawnee rite, there was a double impersonation, the captor taking the part of the Morning Star and the girl of the Evening Star. The victim was not offered to the deity whom she had impersonated but to another being who had conquered that deity. Impersonations of deities occurred in other Pawnee ceremonies as well. A man who has offered seven eagles to the heavenly deities may furnish a robe and other accessories used in a certain ceremony when one of the greatest of the heavenly beings, Paruxti, becomes represented in the bundles. He then becomes the earthly representative of that deity for the season. During all this season he neither cuts his hair nor his nails; he wears only a buffalo robe; in short, conducts himself as Paruxti did when he visited the earth.” The Morning Star ceremony was plainly a re-enactment of the conquest of the Evening Star by the Morning Star and, as such, was quite in agreement with the general pattern of Skidi ceremonies. In theory, the Skidi Pawnee ceremonies all have as their object the performance either through drama or through ritual of the acts which were performed in the mythologic age. The ritual is a formal method of restating the acts of the supernatural beings in early times, and by this recitation of a ritual the deities of the heavens have their attention redirected toward the people on the one hand; on the other hand, people are reminded of the deeds which were done for them by the heavenly beings. The relationship between man and the supernatural world is renewed with the result that the supernatural beings, being pleased at the attention, which is usually in the form of sacrificial rites, bestowed upon them. continue their protection over the people.” The idea of sacrifice entered into practically all the Pawnee bundle ceremonies and the offering of sacrifices to the heavenly beings was one of the surest roads to the spiritual and social advancement of an individual. Dorsey (op. cit.) says: “The Morning Star told the people that he gave them bows and arrows with which to kill animals, telling them to get on the right side to shoot so that the arrow would go through the heart. As he had given them fire sticks the animal should be placed on the fire so that the smoke might ascend to the beings in the heavens. In these sacrifices by fire the blaze and smoke carry the prayers to the above, thus the smoke is the prayer bearer. This form of sacrifice was graded, the value ranging all the way from the sacrifice of the first bird shot by a boy with a toy bow to the sacrifice of a human maiden to the Morning Star, When about to make such a sacrifice to the heavens, it was customary before using the bow, the instrument of death, to pronounce the name of the Morning Star. This pronounced upon an animal or human being is the dooming to death, or it may be compared to a curse. Apart from the human being who was sacrificed to the Morning Star certain animals were especially sought after for sacrifice. These were various birds, culminating in the eagles, except the white eagle, which was never sacrificed, and certain animals such as the deer, antelope, wild-cat, otter, and buffalo, culminating in the sacrifice of a human scalp or human maiden.” It is plain that no foreign origin need be sought for such features of the Morning Star ceremony as its association with a star cult, the impersonation of a deity by the victim, or the underlying idea of sacrifice. The killing of the victim with a single arrow through the heart was also in accordance with the tribal pattern, for animal victims were supposed to be killed in this way. There are, however, other features of the ceremony which seem at variance with the pattern. Thus, although human sacrifice was only the highest of a long series of graded offerings among the Skidi, there is no proof of its existence, except in the form of scalp sacrifice, among any of the other Pawnee. Animal offerings were brought in dead and offered through fire. The human sacrifice had to be taken alive and was not burned. Moreover, the use of a scaffold, the touching of the living victim with flaming brands and clubs, the opening of the thoracic cavity and offering of blood, and the final shooting with arrows by all the men present, find no parallel in the other tribal ceremonies. It has often been stated that human sacrifices were rare among the Indians north of Mexico, but this seems to be true only in the sense that they were infrequent. There are recorded instances of the practice among many tribes and over a very wide area. Sacrifices on the death of chiefs are recorded from the Natchez and Taensa and at the burning of the Taensa temple. The Yuchi sacrificed captives to the sun on the second day of the Annual Town Ceremony, burning them at high noon at a stake in the southeast corner of the town square. Human sacrifices are also recorded among the Iroquois and Nipissing and among the Cheyenne at the time of the Sun Dance. The formality, amounting almost to a ritual, which attended the torture of prisoners among most of the eastern tribes strongly suggests that the original idea underlying this practice was also a sacrificial one, and in view of the distribution of the recorded sacrifices it seems probable that human offerings were made at one time or another by most of the tribes of the Eastern Woodlands. Human sacrifice was also present in the Southwest and may have been important there in ancient times. Bourke says: “In my journal of November 1881, made at Zuni, are the following jottings of a conversation with the old chief, Pedro Pino, who possessed a very complete knowledge of Spanish: ‘In the days of long ago all the Pueblos, Moquis, Zunis, Acoma, Laguna, Jemez, and others, had the religion of human sacrifice at the feast of fire, when the days are shortest. The victim had his throat cut and his breast opened, and his heart taken out by one of the Cochinos (priests); that was their ‘oficio’ (religion), their method of asking good fortune.” There are a number of features which seem to indicate contact with the Southeastern and Southwestern areas, and as human sacrifice was present in both these regions it is. ref

Pawnee Mythology

The Pawnee practiced an annual Morning Star ceremony, which included the sacrifice of a young girl. Though the ritual continued, the sacrifice was discontinued in the 19th Century. The origin of the skidi pawnee sacrifice to the morning star? The Iroquois are said to have occasionally sent a maiden to the Great Spirit. Atius Tirawa, which means “Father Above” in the Pawnee language (often translated, inaccurately, as “Great Spirit”), was the Creator god. Other terms used, maybe most, are Tirawahat or Tirawahut. He was believed to have taught the Pawnee people tattooing, fire-building, hunting, agriculture, speech and clothing, religious rituals (including the use of tobacco and sacred bundles), and sacrifices. He was associated with most natural phenomena, including stars and planets, wind, lightning, rain, and thunder. The wife of Tirawa was Atira, goddess of the Earth. Atira (Mother Corn) was associated with corn. The male Morning Star in the East was created first. Being the war god he wore the dress of a warrior. After him came the female Evening Star in the West. She resisted the divine plan to create humankind. Morning Star had to fight and overcome a number of forces in the western sky with his fireball to finally mate with her. The first human being thus created was a girl. Six major stars represented other gods controlled by Tirawahut. Two of them were the female Southwest and Northwest Stars. The male stars were the North, the Northeast, the Southeast and the South Stars. Some had specific tasks to fulfill. The North Star was the son of South Star. He watched over the people and had to keep his post. Northeast Star (or Big Black Meteoric Star) controlled the animals, in particular the bison. He was also in charge of the shift from day to night. According to some Skidis, this unidentified and enigmatic star was a buffalo bull carrying the heaven on his back. The mythology of the South Bands does not mention this god at all and only a number of the other star gods. Southeast Star (or Red Star) regulated the coming of day and had authority among the animals. South Star rose sometimes on the heaven to see, if his son (North Star) remained on his fixed position. South Star ruled in the land of the dead. He received no prayers and no ceremony was held in his name. Paths in the Milky Way guided the dead human beings to his dominion. The Thunder, the Lightning, the Cloud and the Wind were four great powers in the west. They obeyed the Evening Star. By means of constant song, they generated the Earth on which the first girl (the child of Evening and Morning Stars) was placed. The solar and lunar deities were Shakuru and Pah, respectively. They were the last of all gods placed in the heavens. Their offspring was a boy, and he was put on Earth, too. Aside from this, the Sun and the Moon are of relatively minor standing in the Skidi Pawnee mythology. Meteorites brought good fortune to the finders. They were seen as the children of Tirawahut send down to Earth. While the Skidi Pawnee relied to a great deal on the powers and the aid of stars and other objects in cosmos, the South Bands came through foremost by the assistance and advice of a number of animals. Yet, the gods in heaven existed, and the animals acted as go-betweeners when they instructed and guided the South Bands. The White Beaver ceremony of the Chawi served nearly the same purpose as the renewing or restarting Spring Awakening ceremony (Thunder ceremony) of the Skidi. However, foremost hibernating animals were revitalized through this rite and the corn not at all. Tirawa conferred miraculous powers on certain animals. These spirit animals, the nahurac, would act as Tirawa’s messengers and servants, and could intercede with him on behalf of the Pawnee. The nahurac had five dwellings or lodges:

• The foremost among them was Pahuk, usually translated “hill island”, a bluff on the south side of the Platte River, near the town of Cedar Bluffs in present-day Saunders County, Nebraska.
• Lalawakohtito, or “dark island”, was an island in the Platte near Central City, Nebraska.
• Ahkawitakol, or “white bank”, was on the Loup River opposite the mouth of the Cedar River in what is now Nance County, Nebraska.
• Kitzawitzuk, translated “water on a bank”, also known to the Pawnee as Pahowa, was a spring on the Solomon River near Glen Elder, Kansas. It now lies beneath the waters of Waconda Reservoir.
• The fifth lodge of the nahurac was known to the Pawnee as Pahur (/pa’hur/, translated as “hill that points the way” or “guide rock”). ref

Pawnee Celestial observation

The Pawnee seasonal rituals were tied to the observation of the stars and planets. Their earthwork lodges were built at the same time as observatories and as “microcosm” (scale-model of the universe). Each lodge “was at the same time the universe and also the womb of a woman, and the household activities represented her reproductive powers.”^[9] The lodge also represented the universe in a more practical way. The physical construction of the house required setting up four posts to represent the four cardinal directions, “aligned almost exactly with the north-south, east-west axis.” A Pawnee observatory-lodge also required an unobstructed view of the eastern sky. The lodge’s axis would be oriented east-west in such a way that the sunrise of vernal equinox would cast light on the altar. The dimensions of the lodge’s smoke hola and door would be designed to allow observation of the sky, e.g. with the smoke-hole aligned to enable observation of the Pleiades. According to one Skidi band Pawnee man at the beginning of the twentieth century, “The Skidi were organized by the stars; these powers above made them into families and villages, and taught them how to live and how to perform their ceremonies. The shrines of the four leading villages were given by the four leading stars and represent those stars which guide and rule the people.” Regular ceremonies were performed before major events, such as semi-annual buffalo hunts. Kawaha, an often-besought god of good luck, was closely connected to buffalo hunts. Many other important activities of the year were started with a ceremony, such as sowing seeds in the spring and harvesting in the fall. The most important ceremony of the Pawnee culture, the Spring Awakening ceremony, was meant to awaken the earth and ready it for planting. It can be tied to celestial observation, held at the time when the priest first tracked “two small twinkling stars known as the Swimming Ducks in the northeastern horizon near the Milky Way.” and then heard a rolling thunder from the West. (See the role of Thunder in the Creation myth). ref

Major Interpretive Models for Meaning and Function in Rock Art

• Hunting magic, animal ceremonialism, and increase rites
• Shamanism, vision quests
• Oral traditions / mythology
• Archaeoacoustics
• Archaeoastronomy
• Rites of passage
• Rain and human fertility
• Clan symbols
• Historical events

Two predominant models for understanding rock art is shamanism or hunting magic / cosmology.

Hunting Magic (which I think could generally relate to totemism or even shamanism at times) is the Oldest interpretive platform and one of the most popular during earliest attempts to understand rock art based (in part) on the distribution of rock art along game migration trails, purportedly the most discredited and I believe the most misunderstood major central postulate: game animals were immortal (often ignored in discussions on this explanation). This seems hunting magic is probably true for some art and not others as some clearly seem to refference shaminism Foragers conduct ceremonies in association with the hunt, these activities share elements of animal ceremonialism and the journey of ascent and descent typical of forager cosmology worldwide. The first half of that cycle emphasized death and postmortem rites that began with a fall festival, communal feast, pantomime dance, and sing, ancestor worship, and animal funeral. An annual ceremony of rejuvenation was timed to the new season of vegetation, normally in the spring, intended to bring humans back into harmony with the universe. This was the occasion to affirm the common origin of the tribe and emphasized rebirth, a magnification of game animals, and a reassurance of success in the coming years. Those rites would complete the journey with the reemergence of animals into the human world. The cosmic journey would finish as the game animals were led back into the world through emergence sites typically associated with underworld portals (springs, seeps, fumaroles, cracks in rocks, lakes, rivers, caves, rock shelter etc.). Many traditional hunting cultures represent an immortal Master (or Mistress) of the Animals as a central religious figure. Rock art may invoke the aid of this supernatural being and promote the deity’s fertilizing power. Hence, hunting magic may concern more than simply hunting and be about “increase rites” and the cosmic regeneration of the universe. The ethnographic record failed to support analogs for “hunting magic” among foraging cultures worldwide. The subject matter portrayed few animals as “wounded” or animals were shown escaping
hunters. Dance scenes, rituals, ceremonial artifacts, and patterned-bodied “shamans” had little to do with hunting success per se. Most locations did not provide evidence for communal kills of game. Rock art sites lacked associated hunting blinds, butchery sites, and other hunting features.
Moreover, it’s more than just hunting magic as the animals depicted played only a small part in the diet of the artisans. The ethnographic record does show an extensive emphasis on animal ceremonialism and hunting rituals. Animal depictions might equate with an increase rather than depicting their death. Evidence for communal kills in some cases does exist and there is some evidence, in certain cases, does show associations with hunting blinds, dummy hunters, and drive features. In some instances, animals portrayed are a major meat source and prey focus. Animals depicted are good to think and not necessarily just good to eat! Many anthropologists assume that the oldest religions center on individual shamanic rituals. Ethnography does not explicitly support notions that trance-related acquisition of power produces visions reproduced in rock art. But, some evidence supports the depiction of guardian spirits. Some ethnographic references indicate commoners also depict their dreams in rock
paintings – not just ritual adepts (aka shamans). Some researchers have offered that it is the local mythologies (oral traditions) that most prominently influenced the dreams or visions of native peoples in altered states of consciousness – hence the primary driver of rock art content is oral traditions. Ethnographic data supports the notion that some rock art is ceremonial and a function of rituals (rites of passage) specifically puberty. Some evidence supports the position that rock art was associated with the acquisition of power, but that power could certainly, have been acquired or manifested by common individuals instead of exclusively shamans. They didn’t necessarily need to be associated with a trance or an element of non-ordinary reality but from general dreams. Mythology needs to be given particularly serious consideration where animal-humans are depicted in art. Definition of shamanism can be applied more generally and does fit nicely with actions of ritualists in many parts of the world – including much of North American (especially California and the Great Basin). Some ethnographic data broadly seems to support the notion of the general association in some cases with the production and use of rock art. All influenced rock art – not a singular explanation, likely changed over time as well and was “polysemous” – having multiple meanings simultaneously, like Bird is a metaphor to flight may connect to Fringe on a garment for
ritualist – shaman’s “coat”. ref

Images of Yahwera were inscribed on the sites of the portals. A known portal to the home of Yahwera was located near a spring and marked with an image of the Animal Master: a humanoid figure with red circles for the face, a feathered headdress, and clawed feet next to a snake representations of the patterned body anthromorphs in the Coso rock art collection with known representation of Yahwera, the guardian of the animal spirits. The Yokuts, another tribe in the area, refer to rock art sites as “shaman’s caches,” vaults of magic power. When a shaman spoke to the rock, the portal opened, and the Spirit Master gave the shaman magic songs and wisdom. Furthermore, Yahwera can relate to “Indeterminate-sex” thus, anthropomorphic (a thing with human traits, emotions, or intentions)” LORD of the Underworld in Kawaiisu oral narratives – Zigmond and Barras. Yahwera was believed responsible for the regeneration of deceased game animals and has many voices – can sound like many animals, often comes as a quail and associated with quail or has a feather blanket, quail feather robe, quail feather skirt, in addition to being believed as fathering many quail children. Also Identified as a yellow bird– small hawk and lives in the underworld, in a deep hole, guarded by a giant snake, grizzly and brown bear.  The shaman talks to the rock, but the Spirit Master opens it. In this sense, the shaman is the intermediary. Because he can break the confines of this world, he is able to intercede for the people, asking the Spirit Master to release the game the people need to live. (I’m referring to the shaman as male though San people indicate that any male or female could accept the dangerous role of dream healer if desired.) The shaman delivers the request, not only for game but also for rain, wisdom, or cures for sickness. In this way, the shaman is acting in the same role as a modern priest, delivering the faithful’s requests to their Spirit Master. Yahwera was believed responsible for providing medicine power for ailing humans – songs or dances and provides human visitors with inexhaustible food supply – acorn, pinyon, or deer meat. Supposedly can provide good luck for hunters and displays successful hunting weaponry on the walls of his home. ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

Sikhism around 548–478 years old. ref

Bahá’í around 200–125 years old. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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