Animism and Totemism Religion Migrations, eventually to Australia, relate to a much earlier Transfer from Neanderthals to Anatomically Modern Humans?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“There are two geographically plausible routes that have been proposed for humans to emerge from Africa: through the current Egypt and Sinai (Northern Route), or through Ethiopia, the Bab el Mandeb strait, and the Arabian Peninsula (Southern Route).” ref

“Although there is a general consensus on the African origin of early modern humans, there is disagreement about how and when they dispersed to Eurasia. This paper reviews genetic and Middle Stone Age/Middle Paleolithic archaeological literature from northeast Africa, Arabia, and the Levant to assess the timing and geographic backgrounds of Upper Pleistocene human colonization of Eurasia. At the center of the discussion lies the question of whether eastern Africa alone was the source of Upper Pleistocene human dispersals into Eurasia or were there other loci of human expansions outside of Africa? The reviewed literature hints at two modes of early modern human colonization of Eurasia in the Upper Pleistocene: (i) from multiple Homo sapiens source populations that had entered Arabia, South Asia, and the Levant prior to and soon after the onset of the Last Interglacial (MIS-5), (ii) from a rapid dispersal out of East Africa via the Southern Route (across the Red Sea basin), dating to ~74,000-60,000 years ago.” ref

“Within Africa, Homo sapiens dispersed around the time of its speciation, roughly 300,000 years ago. The so-called “recent dispersal” of modern humans took place about 70–50,000 years ago. It is this migration wave that led to the lasting spread of modern humans throughout the world. The coastal migration between roughly 70,000 and 50,000 years ago is associated with mitochondrial haplogroups M and N, both derivative of L3. Europe was populated by an early offshoot that settled the Near East and Europe less than 55,000 years ago. Modern humans spread across Europe about 40,000 years ago, possibly as early as 43,000 years ago, rapidly replacing the Neanderthal population.” ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Animism: a belief among some indigenous people, young children, or all religious people!

Over 100,000 years ago or so, Southern Africa, in the Land before and the beginning Time of Animism: LINK

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Explaining the Earliest Religious Expression, that of Animism (beginning 100,000 to 70,000 years ago?) to Totemism (beginning 30,000 to 3,000 years ago?) in Southern Africa: LINK

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Our origins originate from Southern African (NOT THE FIRST ANCESTORS EVER AS THAT WOULD BE NORTH AFRICA AROUND 300,000 YEARS AGO TO EAST AFRICA AROUND 200,000 YEARS AGO OR SO BUT RATHER OUR LAST MAIN COMMON ANCESTORS AROUND 100,000 YEARS AGO), with a population divergence around 120,000 to 110,000 years ago and this is after the two other main areas of North and East Africa either migrated south or largely went extinct around 100,000 years ago. This is the most recent glacial era that consisted of a larger pattern of glacial and interglacial periods beginning around 115,000 which may have influenced both the migrating south and possibly could connect to some of the influences relating to the extinctions as well. Moreover, as these Ancient Southern African peoples developed over time, they also expanded out from there to populate the globe, and the DNA of us all points to a southern African origin. Furthermore, it seems as they expanded back out, they either replaced the other populations in central and east Africa that may have been left or absorbed any remaining individuals. ref

Southern African Middle Stone Age sites:

(Ap) Apollo 11; (BAM) Bambata; (BBC) Blombos Cave; (BC) Border Cave; (BGB)Boegoeberg; (BPA) Boomplaas; (BRS) Bushman Rock Shelter; (BUN) Bundu Farm; (CF)Cufema Reach; (CK) Canteen Kopje; (COH) Cave of Hearths; (CSB) Cape St Blaize; (DK)Die Kelders Cave 1; (DRS) Diepkloof Rock Shelter; (EBC) Elands Bay Cave; (FL) Florisbad; (≠GI) ≠Gi; (HP) Howiesons Poort; (HRS) Hollow Rock Shelter; (KD) Klipdrift; (KKH) Klein Kliphuis; (KH) Khami; (KK) Kudu Koppie; (KP) Kathu Pan; (KRM) Klasies River Main Site; (L) Langebaan; (MBA) Mumbwa Caves; (MC) Mwulu’s Cave; (MEL)Melikane; (MON) Montagu Cave; (NBC) Nelson Bay Cave; (NG) Ngalue; (NT) Ntloana Tšoana; (OBP) Olieboomspoort; (PC) Peers Cave; (POC) Pockenbank; (PL) Plover’s Lake; (POM) Pomongwe; (PP) Pinnacle Point; (RCC) Rose Cottage Cave; (RED) Redcliff; (RHC) Rhino Cave; (SCV) Seacow Valley; (SFT) Soutfontein; (SEH) Sehonghong; (SIB)Sibudu Cave; (SPZ) Spitzkloof Rock Shelter; (SS) Sunnyside 1; (STB) Strathalan Cave B; (STK) Sterkfontein; (TR) Twin Rivers; (UMH) Umhlatuzana; (VR) Varsche Rivier 003; (WPS) White Paintings Shelter; (WK) Wonderkrater; (WW) Wonderwerk; (YFT)Ysterfontein 1; (ZOM) Zombepata Cave. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“When researchers completed the final analysis of the Human Genome Project in April 2003, they confirmed that the 3 billion base pairs of genetic letters in humans were 99.9 percent identical in every person. It also meant that individuals are, on average, 0.1 percent different genetically from every other person on the planet. And in that 0.1 percent lies the mystery of why some people are more susceptible to a particular illness or more likely to be healthy than their neighbor – or even another family member.” ref

Pic ref 

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“The earliest ancestors of anatomically modern Homo sapiens emerged in a region south of the Zambezi River in Botswana, Africa, according to a new analysis of modern human’s mitochondrial genomes (mtDNA or mitogenome) from the L0 lineage, the oldest known mtDNA lineage on Earth.” ref

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Did Pleistocene Africans use the spearthrower‐and‐dart?

“Well, evidence grows apace for ever-more ancient bow-and-arrow use. List of age estimates, locations, and current evidence bundles for the use of either arrows or darts by/before 30,000 years ago, the list may not be exhaustive, but we suggest that it broadly summarizes current knowledge (MSA = middle stone age).” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“There were at least several “out-of-Africa” dispersals of modern humans, possibly beginning as early as 270,000 years ago, including 215,000 years ago to at least Greece, and certainly via northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula about 130,000 to 115,000 years ago. These early waves appear to have mostly died out or retreated by 80,000 years ago.” ref

“The most significant “recent” wave out of Africa took place about 70,000–50,000 years ago, via the so-called “Southern Route“, spreading rapidly along the coast of Asia and reaching Australia by around 65,000–50,000 years ago, (though some researchers question the earlier Australian dates and place the arrival of humans there at 50,000 years ago at earliest, while others have suggested that these first settlers of Australia may represent an older wave before the more significant out of Africa migration and thus not necessarily be ancestral to the region’s later inhabitants) while Europe was populated by an early offshoot which settled the Near East and Europe less than 55,000 years ago.” ref

• “An Eastward Dispersal from Northeast Africa to Arabia 150,000–130,000  years ago based on the finds at Jebel Faya dated to 127,000 years ago (discovered in 2011). Possibly related to this wave are the finds from Zhirendong cave, Southern China, dated to more than 100,000 years ago. Other evidence of modern human presence in China has been dated to 80,000 years ago.” ref
• “The most significant out of Africa dispersal took place around 50–70,000 years ago via the so-called Southern Route, either before or after the Toba event, which happened between 69,000 and 77,000 years ago. This dispersal followed the southern coastline of Asia, and reached Australia around 65,000-50,000 years ago, or according to some research, by 50,000 years ago at earliest. Western Asia was “re-occupied” by a different derivation from this wave around 50,000 years ago, and Europe was populated from Western Asia beginning around 43,000 years ago.” ref
• “Wells (2003) describes an additional wave of migration after the southern coastal route, namely a northern migration into Europe at circa 45,000 years ago. However, this possibility is ruled out by Macaulay et al. (2005) and Posth et al. (2016), who argue for a single coastal dispersal, with an early offshoot into Europe.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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(Popular-Archaeology.com) – “MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION (OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS)—As more DNA sequencing data continues to become available, including extinct hominids, a new human origins study has been performed that augments a trio of influential papers published in 2016 in the journal Nature. The papers all confirmed the “Out of Africa” origins of modern humans, while disagreeing on the timing of when a more southern migration route (into Southeast Asia and Australia) may have occurred. 

The new study, performed by geneticists at Harvard Medical School, provides an expanded framework for researchers to study human origins, drawing upon extensive DNA sampling—10 representative modern human populations and all archaic hominid DNA sequenced. After accounting for interbreeding events involving the archaic hominids, their model features a major eastern-western population split once modern humans left Africa, dating back to at least 45,000 years ago, with Australians and New Guineans inside the eastern group. 

“We view our model as a detailed synthesis of existing data and a good basis for further work,” said Mark Lipson, lead author on the paper from the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. Lipson, along with colleague David Reich, of Harvard, the Broad Institute, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, published the study in the advance online edition of the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. Their model supports a radiation of modern human populations shortly after leaving Africa, matching the work of archaeologists, although the “southern route” question is still not fully resolved. 

“We don’t see evidence of ancestry from an early southern dispersal in present-day populations, although we can’t rule out a small proportion,” added Lipson. He also urges caution until more DNA data is in hand. “There is some older archaeological evidence from Asia, and while our results suggest that the earliest inhabitants probably would not have been closely related to Asian and Australian populations today, it would be extremely interesting to see DNA from those sites,” he said. Their hope is that analysis of additional ancient samples within the framework of their study and the other recent papers will continue to refine our understanding of human origins.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Modern Humans start around 50,000 years ago Helped by Feminization

A Link Between Autism and Testosterone? 

Religions continuing in our modern world, full of science and facts, should be seen as little more than a set of irrational conspiracy theories of reality. Nothing more than a confused reality made up of unscientific echoes from man’s ancient past. Rational thinkers must ask themselves why continue to believe in religions’ stories. Religion myths which are nothing more than childlike stories and obsolete tales once used to explain how the world works, acting like magic was needed when it was always only nature. These childlike religious stories should not even be taken seriously, but sadly too often they are.

Often without realizing it, we accumulate beliefs that we allow to negatively influence our lives. In order to bring about awareness, we need to be willing to alter skewed beliefs. Rational thinkers must examine the facts instead of blindly following beliefs or faith. Below is a collection of researched information such as archaeology, history, linguistics, genetics, art, science, sociology, geography, psychology, philosophy, theology, biology, and zoology. It will make you question your beliefs with information, inquiries, and ideas to ponder and expand on. The two main goals are to expose the evolution of religion starting by around 100,000 years ago and to offer challenges to remove the rationale of faith. It is like an intervention for belief in myths that have plagued humankind for way too long. We often think we know what truth is nevertheless this can be but a vantage point away from losing credibility if we are not willing to follow valid and reliable reason and evidence.

The door of reason opens not once but many times. Come on a journey to free thought where the war is against ignorance and the victor is a rational mind. Understanding Religion Evolution: Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago), * Animism (such as that seen in Africa: 100,000 years ago), *Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago), * Shamanism (beginning around 30,000 years ago), *Paganism (beginning around 12,000 years ago), * Progressed organized religion (around 5,000 years ago), * CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago), and * Early Atheistic Doubting (at least by around 2,600 Years Ago)

In a general way, it all starts with Animism (a theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits) and this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (a theoretical belief in a mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item), which then enlists a full-time specific person to perform this worship and believed interaction as Shamanism (a theoretical belief in access and influence with spirits through rituals). In addition, there is the further employment of myths and gods added to all the above, which is Paganism and is often a lot more nature-based than most current top world religions, thus hinting to their close link to more ancient religious thinking from which it stems.

My hypothesis is expressed with an explanation of the building of a theoretical house (modern religions development). It seems ancient peoples had to survived amazing threats in a “dangerous universe by superstition perceived as good and evil”, and human “immorality or imperfection of the soul”, which was thought to affect the still living and led to ancestor worship. Presumably, this ancestor worship led to the belief in supernatural beings, which some of these were turned into the belief in gods. This feeble myth called gods were just a human conceived idea that was “made from nothing into something over and over, changing again and again, taking on more as they evolve, and all the while, they are thought to be special.” However, it is just supernatural animistic spirit-belief perceived as sacred.

Historically, around 5,000 years ago, in large city-state societies such as Egypt or Iraq culminated to make religion into something kind of new, a sociocultural-governmental-religious monarchy, where all or at least many of the people of such large city-state societies seem familiar with and committed to the existence of “religion” as the integrated life identity package of control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine. However, this juggernaut integrated religion identity package of Dogmatic-Propaganda certainly did not exist or if developed to an extent, it was highly limited in most smaller prehistoric societies as they seem to lack most of the strong control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine. These magical beliefs could be at times be added or removed and many people just want to see developed religious dynamics everywhere, even if it is not. Instead, all that is found is largely fragments until the domestication of religion.

Religions, as we think of them today, are a new fad, even if they go back to around 6,000 years in the timeline of human existence. This amounts to almost nothing when seen in the long slow evolution of religion that started at least around 70,000 years ago with one of the oldest ritual worship. This message of how religion and gods are intertwined with humans is clearly a man-made idea that was developed slowly as it was invented, reinvented, and implemented piece by piece, which discredits them all. This seems to be a simple point, which some are just not grasping how devastating this is to any claims of truth when we can see the lie clearly in the archeological sites.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Aboriginal Totemism:

• Individual Totemism
• Sex Totemism
• Moiety Totemism
• Section and Subsection Totemism
• Clan Totemism
• Local Totemism
• Conception totemism
• Birth totemism
• Dream Totemism
• Multiple totemism
• 2 Major Categoriess
• Aboriginal Australia

Totemism in Australia is linked to the Dreamtime – the time before time – the time outside time  – the time of creation, when the ancestral beings, the totemic ancestors, roamed the land, giving birth to the people of the various totemic groups and naming the animals, plants, landscape features, etc. ref

Dreamtime, which is generally understood as the traditional Aboriginal religion, revolves around the Dreamtime. Totems are also an important part of Aboriginal religious identity. Totems are symbols from the natural world that serve to identify people and their relationships with one another in the social world. For instance, a family or clan may be associated with a certain bird. That bird’s nature, whether it is ferocious or peaceful, a bird of prey or a songbird, is associated with the family or clan that uses it as its totem. The religious world of the Aboriginal Australians is inhabited by ghosts of the dead, as well as a variety of spirits who control certain aspects of the natural world, such as the Rainbow Serpent, who brings rain. Rituals are performed to placate these spirits and also to increase the fertility of certain species of animals that are important to the Aborigines. Since the colonization of Australia, many Aboriginal people have converted to Christianity, either by choice or through the influence of education in mission schools. For generations, European colonists would remove children from Aboriginal families and send them to Christian schools. This practice was thought to be in the best interests of the Aborigines. Resentment over these kidnappings is still strong. In some Aboriginal societies, there were both male and female rituals that marked the passage from childhood to adulthood.

Ceremonial boomerangs probably originated as flat pointed sticks in the Barrow Creek to Tennant Creek region. An addition of the three-barred black design over a background of white dots was enough to shift the object to a sacred one. The painted end was held aloft during ceremonies. Ceremonial boomerangs where usually painted in ochres which have a religious connection to Africa and many places throughout the world (a hidden red ochre religion). Ochre is the earliest known pigment used by humans to paint our world–perhaps as long ago as 300,000 years ago. Natural iron-rich oxides provided red-yellow-brown paints and dyes for a wide range of prehistoric uses, including but in no way limited to rock art paintings, pottery, wall paintings and cave art, and human tattoos. Other documented or implied uses are as medicines, as a preservative agent for animal hide preparation, and as a loading agent for adhesives (called mastics). Ochre is often associated with human burials: for example, the Upper Paleolithic cave site of Arene Candide has an early use of ochre at a burial of a young man 23,500 years ago. The site of Paviland Cave in the UK, dated to about the same time, had a burial so soaked in red ochre he was (somewhat mistakenly) called the “Red Lady”. Boomerangs on the islands off the north Australian coast were usually used only for ceremony, as “wangal” clapsticks or as ceremonial dance props. The Aboriginal Wangal people were part of the Eora (a.k.a. Dharawal, Darug, Dharuk) language speaking group, who contributed to contemporary Australian English words like dingo, woomera, wallaby, wombat, and waratah. Sydney’s geomorphology 20,000 years ago was very different to what it is today. In the middle of the last ice age, the Sydney coast was around 9 miles to the east and what is now Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) was freshwater creeks and rivers. Wangal predecessors would have been living in the now-submerged coastal area. As sea levels rose to their present levels, peoples living on the coast would have been forced inland. Painted forms of a rare hooked boomerang has no direct evidence of its use in hunting nor used in fighting but defiantly was used ceremonially in the Cooper Creek region.

Death in Aboriginal Australian societies was accompanied by complex rituals. Among the Walpiri of central Australia, a wife would have to isolate herself from the rest of the community upon the death of her husband. She would live in a “widows’ camp” for a period of one to two years. During that time she would communicate through a system of sign language. She was not permitted to speak during this period. If a woman chose not to follow these traditions, her husband’s ghost could steal her soul, which would lead to her death. Ceremonial boomerangs are richly decorated with Aboriginal artwork, relating specifically to the corroboree or ceremony they are being used in. Depictions of boomerangs being thrown at animals such as kangaroos appear in some of the oldest rock art in the world, the Indigenous Australian rock art of the Kimberly region, which is potentially up to 40,000 years old. The early history of the first peoples is held within an oral tradition, archeological evidence and petroglyphs. Stencils and paintings of boomerangs also appear in the rock art of West Papua, including on Bird’s Head Peninsula and Kaimana, likely dating to the Last Glacial Maximum when lower sea levels led to cultural continuity between Papua and Arnhem Land in Northern Australia. The oldest surviving Australian Aboriginal boomerangs come from a cache found in a peat bog in the Wyrie Swamp of South Australia and date to 10,000 years ago. The existence of boomerangs is a weapon used by Indigenous Australians for hunting considered possible within ancient Europe Poland 23,000-year-old piece of curved mammoth tusk that some ancient artisan carved into the aerodynamic shape of a boomerang found in a cave in southern Poland with other human artifacts, Germany 800-400 BC), Egypt 4,000 yeas ago, India, America, Middle East, but there is no proof that these throwing sticks had ability to come back to the thrower. Australian boomerang specimens have been found in deposits that suggest they are about 10,000 years old, but evidence that humans have been using the devices for thousands of years has also come from Asia, Africa and North America. in Jutland, has been given a 5,000 B.C. date and curved throwing sticks related to the boomerang were used by people as diverse as the Eskimos, Hopi and Polynesians. oak boomerang from 300 B.C. was found in a bog in Holland. Historical evidence also points to the use of non-returning boomerangs by the Native Americans of California and Arizona, and inhabitants of southern India for killing birds and rabbits. Indeed, some boomerangs were not thrown at all, but were used in hand to hand combat by Indigenous Australians. Boomerangs can be variously used as hunting weapons, percussive musical instruments, battle clubs, fire-starters, decoys for hunting waterfowl, and as recreational play toys. The smallest boomerang may be less than 10 centimetres (4 in) from tip to tip, and the largest over 180 centimetres (6 ft) in length. Tribal boomerangs may be inscribed and/or painted with designs meaningful to their makers. Papunya art consists of various paint colors like yellow (representing the sun), brown (the soil), red (desert sand) and white (the clouds and the sky). These are traditional Aboriginal colours. Papunya paintings can be painted on anything though traditionally they were painted on rocks, in caves, etc. The paintings were mostly images of animals or lakes, and the Dreamtime. Stories and legends were depicted on caves and rocks to represent the artists’ religion and beliefs. The Aboriginal community of Yirrkala, just outside Nhulunbuy, is internationally known for bark paintings the imagery of the Aboriginal culture, depicted in ceremonial body art and many of the sacred sites, rock and cave paintings, used very few colors, as they were often made from what was available locally. The colors were often mined from ‘ochre pits’, being used for both painting and ceremonies. The ochre was even traded between clans and at one time could only be collected by specific men within the clan. Some of the ochre pits throughout Australia can be viewed today as tourist attractions. There was variation in the symbolic representation of some rock art and paintings, depending on the tribe or region of Australia that you belong to. Traditionally, most boomerangs used by aboriginal groups in Australia were ‘non-returning’. These weapons sometimes called “throw sticks” or “kylies”, were used for hunting a variety of prey.

Earth Dying, Earth Reborn – Dreamtime Story from Karraur Tribe storyteller: Once, the earth was completely dark and silent; nothing moved on its barren surface. Inside a deep cave below the Nullabor Plain slept a beautiful woman, the Sun. The Great Father Spirit gently woke her and told her to emerge from her cave and stir the universe into life. The Sun Mother opened her eyes and darkness disappeared as her rays spread over the land; she took a breath and the atmosphere changed; the air gently vibrated as a small breeze blew. The Sun Mother then went on a long journey; from north to south and from east to west she crossed the barren land. The earth held the seed potencies of all things, and wherever the Sun’s gentle rays touched the earth, their grasses, shrubs and trees grew until the land was covered in vegetation. In each of the deep caverns in the earth, the Sun found living creatures which, like herself, had been slumbering for untold ages. She stirred the insects into life in all their forms and told them to spread through the grasses and trees, then she woke the snakes, lizards, and other reptiles, and they slithered out of their deep hold. As the snakes moved through and along the earth they formed rivers, and they themselves became creators, like the Sun. Behind the snakes’ mighty rivers flowed, teeming with all kinds of fish and water life. Then she called for the animals, the marsupials, and the many other creatures to awake and make their homes on the earth. The Sun Mother then told all the creatures that the days would from time to time change from wet to dry and from cold to hot, and so she made the seasons. One day while all the animals, insects and other creatures were watching, the Sun traveled far in the sky to the west and, as the sky shone red, she sank from view and darkness spread across the land once more. The creatures were alarmed and huddled together in fear. Sometime later, the sky began to glow on the horizon to the east and the Sun rose to smile into the sky again. The Sun Mother thus provided a period of rest for all her creatures by making this journey each day.

Every single facet of Aboriginal life comes from the Dreamtime. Aboriginal land ownership is based on spiritual beliefs and ties formed in the Dreamtime. Totems represent the link between Aborigines and the ancestrial creative beings. Humans receive spiritual identification from these totems at birth or just before pregnancy in the form of a dream or a physical experience. Spiritual values, law, and education is of extreme importance and still passed down from generation to generation, encoded within the Dreamtime stories. The Australian landscape stands as testimony to every Dreamtime saga. The land IS the Aborigine… every rock, every pool, every stone and every sandhill IS the Dreamtime.

Without the land, there is no culture. Pan-Australian mythology Rainbow Serpent, the Australian Carpet Python, being one of the forms the ‘Rainbow Serpent’ character may take in ‘Rainbow Serpent’ myths where many Aboriginal groups widely distributed across the Australian continent all appeared to share variations of a single (common) myth telling of an unusually powerful, often creative, often dangerous snake or serpent of sometimes enormous size closely associated with the rainbows, rain, rivers, and deep waterholes. ‘Rainbow Serpent’ is a term created to describe what he identified to be a common, recurring myth. Working in the field in various places on the Australian continent, he noted the key character of this myth (the ‘Rainbow Serpent’) is variously named:

Kanmare (Boulia, Queensland); Tulloun: (Mount Isa, Queensland); Andrenjinyi (Pennefather River, Queensland), Takkan (Maryborough, Queensland); Targan (Brisbane, Queensland); Kurreah (Broken Hill, New South Wales);Wawi (Riverina, New South Wales), Neitee & Yeutta (Wilcannia, New South Wales), Myndie (Melbourne, Victoria); Bunyip (Western Victoria); Arkaroo (Flinders Ranges, South Australia); Wogal (Perth, Western Australia); Wanamangura (Laverton, Western Australia); Kajura (Carnarvon, Western Australia); Numereji (Kakadu, Northern Territory).

This ‘Rainbow Serpent’ is generally and variously identified by those who tell ‘Rainbow Serpent’ myths, as a snake of some enormous size often living within the deepest waterholes of many of Australia’s waterways; descended from that larger being visible as a dark streak in the Milky Way, it reveals itself to people in this world as a rainbow as it moves through water and rain, shaping landscapes, naming and singing of places, swallowing and sometimes drowning people; strengthening the knowledgeable with rainmaking and healing powers; blighting others with sores, weakness, illness, and death. The term ‘Rainbow Serpent’ is now commonly used and familiar to broader Australian and international audiences, as it is increasingly used by government agencies, museums, art galleries, Aboriginal organisations and the media to refer to the pan-Australian Aboriginal myth specifically, and as a shorthand allusion to Australian Aboriginal mythology generally.

Australian Aboriginal culture includes a number of practices and ceremonies centered on a belief in the Dreamtime. Reverence for the land and oral traditions are emphasized. Language groupings and tribal divisions exhibit a range of individual cultures. Australian Aboriginal art has existed for thousands of years and ranges from ancient rock art to modern watercolor landscapes. Aboriginal music has developed a number of unique instruments. Contemporary Australian aboriginal music is predominantly of the country music genres. Indigenous Australians did not develop a system of writing.

Aboriginal body painting or art and personal ornamentation is an ancient tradition which carries deep spiritual significance for the Australian Indigenous People. Body painting ranges from simply smearing clay or natural ochres from the earth onto the skin to detailed geometric paintings on the torso, face and limbs. Their cultural rituals including body painting differ between Aboriginal Tribes and topographic location. It is related to spiritual matters and is very creative in character. The specific designs and motifs used by the Aboriginals reveal their relationships to their family group, social position, tribe, precise ancestors, totemic fauna and tracts of land. In Arnhem Land the people decorate the bodies of young boys for initiation ceremonies. They are painted in tribe/clan totems to the upper body and thighs.

In Eastern Arnhem Land (Yolngu) the men are painted according to their Moiety (Clan/blood line) either Dhuwa or Yirritia. Moiety names are commonly used as convenient labels of address or as a means of social identification. Generational moieties are commonly found in the desert regions of Australia and are important in the organisation of ritual life. Moiety affiliation can have implications for the organisation and performance of ritual, for example in determining camping and seating arrangements. Moieties are often named and are often associated with special emblems or totems – for example Kilpara (Eaglehawk) and Makwara (Crow). A person usually marries someone of the opposite moiety and is forbidden to marry into his or her own moiety. For instance, in north east Arnhem Land, Yolngu clans are divided into moieties called Yirritja and Dhuwa, each of which owns distinct lands and descends from different Creation Ancestors. If a man is Dhuwa, then his wife is Yirritja, and vice versa. Women of the desert painted their upper chest, shoulders and breasts for communal women’s ceremonies. In art, moiety can play an important role in determining the subjects (Dreamings) which an artist may paint. Colour varies between different regions of Australia and tribes. Clay is often used as a colour source, as is as ochre, when at hand. Many tribes use precise colour pairing such as pink and red or yellow and white.

Feathers, leaves and plant materials are also used to add colour to arm and leg ornaments. Animal fat is often mixed with paint so that they stay longer on the body because most ceremonies last for days. Such ceremonies involve storytelling, singing and dancing. Aboriginals use different items and ways to decorate the body include scars, feathers, shells, teeth, ornaments, face paint, and body paint. Symbols are greatly used and can represent many things about the person who uses it. It is often used to tell a spiritual story. Only specific relatives are given the right to paint another woman’s body. It is not appropriate for women to paint themselves for ceremony. The long communal painting and decorating process is part of the entire ritual right through to the dance and main singing.

At the end of each performance the body painting is smeared and disguised or obliterated, just as the stamping feet of performers ultimately destroys the design on the ground. Every type of painting and decoration corresponds to Aboriginal laws, regulations or convention, as well as religious functions. They also represent a particular region or tribe. Symbols are used to communicate the social status of a person, his or her age, totemic duties, and the role he or she plays within the family group. Hunting ceremonies, circumcision ceremonies for boys from Arnhem Land display specific painting on their chests and the men who perform their rite-of-passage ceremony are also painted.

Aboriginal Ceremonies, such as corroboree which is a ceremonial meeting for Australian Aboriginal people. A senior artist and elder once stated ‘song was the first idea, the principle of sharing which underlies our system’. Each song, like each design or painting, is part of a moment in a larger story. Songs make up a song series or a ‘songline’ which is a map of the country based on the travels of the Dreaming ancestors. To knowledgeable Aboriginal people, seeing a painting or a design will call to mind a song. Many senior painters sing as they paint the story of the song. Ceremonies play an important role in Tiwi culture.

Traditionally each ceremony had its own form, which could vary depending upon the circumstances, and these were transmitted orally. There are two main ceremonial events performed involve the Kulama (yam) ceremony, and the mortuary or Pukumani ceremony (sometimes spelt Pukamani). The Kulama ceremony occurs towards the end of the wet season celebrating life and involves three days and nights of ritual body paintings, singing and dancing complete with the eating of yams according to a ritual custom.

Concentric circles often appear as the main element of contemporary Tiwi patterns, representing the Kulama circle or ceremonial dancing ground. The Pukumani ceremony is the Tiwi people’s burial ceremony and includes singing, dancing and the making of special carved poles called tutini as well as tungas and armbands. These large poles are made from the trunk of the ironwood tree and are carved and decorated to celebrate the dead person’s life and spiritual journey. Performance of this ceremony ensures that the spirit of the dead person goes from the living world into the spirit world. The Pukumani is a public ceremony and provides a forum for artistic expression through song, dance, sculpture and body painting.

The ceremony occurs approximately six months after the deceased has been buried. The Tiwi believe that the dead person’s existence in the living world is not finished until the completion of the ceremony. The final Pukumani is the climax of a series of ceremonies that traditionally continued for many months after the burial of the dead. There is usually one iliana (minor ceremony) at the time of death and then many months later the final Pukumani. The ceremony culminates in the erection of monumental carved and decorated Pukumani poles which take many months to prepare and are impressive gifts to placate the spirit of the dead. Pukumani poles are placed around the burial site during the ceremony. They symbolize the status and prestige of the deceased.

Participants in the ceremony are painted with natural ochres in many different designs, transforming the dancers and providing protection against recognition by the spirit of the deceased. Those participants closely related to the deceased wear decorated armbands (pamajini) during the performance. Pamajini, are woven from the leaves of the pandanus or screw palm and are decorated with natural ochres and the feathers of the white cockatoo. The white cockatoo’s association with the Pukumani ceremony extends beyond the use of its feathers for headbands and armbands. It is believed to keep a sentinel eye on wayward spirits lost on route to the island of the dead. During all ceremonies a series of dances (yoi) are performed; some are totemic and some serve to act out the narrative of newly composed songs. Aside from these creative and illustrative performances, there are those that certain kin – such as the mother, father, sibling and widow – must dance.

When all is concluded and the last wailing notes of the amburu (death song) have died away, the grave is deserted and the burial poles allowed to decay. Not long before the death of Purrukapali, when all animals and birds were still men and women, Purutjikini, a boobook owl man and his wife Pintoma, a barn owl woman decided to perform the first Kulama ceremony. The white-headed sea eagle Jirakati was the first initiate and still wears the ceremonial paint. At the close of the creation period, the spirit performed a second and complete Kulama ceremony. This included the preparation of the poisonous Kulama yam when not properly prepared for food and the performance of all stages of initiation. The Kulama yam is a round root vegetable found in the surrounding monsoon forest. Large round concentric circles often appear as the main element of contemporary Tiwi paintings, representing the Kulama circle or ceremonial dancing ground. They are icons of Tiwi spiritual belief.

Fire Scalarization (act or process of scalarizing fire and smoke) a smoking ceremony is a cleansing ritual performed on special occasions, is an ancient custom among Indigenous Australians that involves burning various native plants to produce smoke, which is believed to have cleansing properties and the ability to ward off bad spirits. Fire, smoke, and fumes from burning special plants are used as medicine and for ceremonies and rituals. A special fire pit is dug and branches placed on top of the coals. The sick person lies down on the branches and breathes in the smoke. Children are held over the fumes for a few minutes. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders these ceremonies bring together all aspects of their culture – song, dance, body decoration, sculpture, and painting. Fire has been an essential survival tool for humans to live in the desert for tens of thousands of years. It has played and continues to play a role in many aspects of life: warmth, hunting, cooking, tool making, communication, land management & medicine. 

It is the man’s job to start the fire & the woman’s job to keep it burning. Traditionally desert Aboriginal men would use a sawing motion to make fire. The base was made by cutting a wedge shape out of a soft wooden shield, tinder was then placed in the wedge (soft grass or kangaroo droppings). The edge of an amirre (spear thrower) or alye (boomerang) were then passed in a sawing motion across the cavity until the tinder was smoldering. Once the kangaroo dung was smoldering it was dropped into a hand full of dry grass and lightly blown to ignite the flame.  Fire was a form of communication, as in when water supplies were running low one of the men would travel to where they knew the next reliable source of water would be. On his way, he would take a firestick and burn small patches of grass as he went. If the waterhole had sufficient water, he would build up a stockpile grass, wood, a few green leaves, and branches. When he lit it the thick smoke would signal the family that it was time to shift camp to this new location. They could easily follow the freshly burnt out pathway to the waterhole.

Fire-stick farming, “Burning off”, as it is often called, to facilitate hunting and to change the composition of plant species, adding additional food for kangaroos by fertilizing the ground and increasing the number of young plants, practice regularly and systematically burning patches of vegetation used in Central to Northern Australia where Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory regard “Fire-stick Farming” as “looking after the land” at least held animist notions connected to fire must be assumed (animist notions perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and perhaps even words—as animate and alive) and such sacred land stewardship was good resources husbandry. Animism encompasses the beliefs that all material phenomena have agency, that there exists no hard and fast distinction between the spiritual and physical (or material) world, and that soul or spirit or sentience exists not only in humans, but also in other animals, plants, rocks, geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment, including thunder, wind, and shadows.

Fire-stick farming, was also practiced by Indigenous Australians who regularly used fire to burn vegetation had the long-term effect of turning dry forest into savanna, increasing the population of nonspecific grass-eating species like the kangaroo but also may have contributed to the extinction of a number of large animal species in Australia with body mass greater than 100 lb (monotremes, marsupials, birds and reptiles) implicates the ecological disturbance caused by fire-stick farming. “Imperceptive overkill”, where anthropogenic pressures take place gradually and slowly wipe out megafauna, has been suggested.

Chemical analysis of fragments of eggshells of Genyornis newtoni, a flightless bird that became extinct in Australia, from over 200 sites, revealed scorch marks consistent with cooking in human-made fires, presumably the first direct evidence of human contribution to the extinction of a species of the Australian of large animals body mass greater than 100 lb. Evidence-based on accurate optically stimulated luminescence and uranium-thorium dating of megafaunal remains suggests that humans were the ultimate cause of the extinction of megafauna in Australia.

The dates derived show that all forms of megafauna on the Australian mainland became extinct in the same rapid timeframe, approximately 46,000 years ago around the period when the earliest humans first arrived in Australia. Furthermore, early Australian Aborigines appear to have rapidly eliminated the megafauna of Tasmania about 41,000 years ago (following the formation of a land bridge to Australia about 43,000 years ago as ice age sea levels declined) without using fire to modify the environment there. Therefore, the vegetation in Australia was actually an Aboriginal ritual artifact.

The ceremony often surrounds food resources both lack of them and with their substantial acquisition. Songs and dances were exchanged often at large ceremonial gatherings when many people gathered together and when trade goods were also exchanged. These gatherings often occurred at a time and place when there was plenty of food. Fire had a number of functions in Aboriginal culture. One use was for signaling, the once well-known smoke signals in movies. Another was for clearing tracks through the bush and keeping poisonous snakes away from them, making it easier to move through the bush. This function of fire was used regularly to keep tracks clear in thick bush in the Blue Mountains and the dense tea-tree scrub in western Tasmania. It was also used to keep tracks clear through the tall tropical grasslands of Arnhem Land.

All across the continent fire was used to flush animals from grass to make them easier to hunt. Unlike the fire regime in Tasmania, where the rainforest was cleared by fire to allow food plants to grow, the Anbara from Arnhem Land-use a variety of the burning regime that avoided the rainforest patches because they provided many food plants that were susceptible to fire, not regenerating after burning. Among the Anbara there are strong ritual prohibitions against burning: jungles that are the home of spirits that would blow smoke into the eyes of the fire-lighters and blind them. The Anbara say that fire is necessary to clean up the country, they regarded unburnt grassland as neglected. Aboriginal People never put out their fires, campfires were left burning, as were signal fires, those lit in sequence to indicate the direction traveled by humans or kangaroos, or hunting fires. They lit fires so apparently casually that they have been called ‘peripatetic pyromaniacs’. There are similarities between prehistoric Australian megafauna and some mythical creatures from the Aboriginal Dreamtime.

The evidence suggests that the stone technology which Aboriginal people had been using with little modification for over 40,000 years diversified and specialized in the last 5,000 years. Aboriginal burning may well have affected Australian vegetation, but that by far the greatest effect has occurred over the last 5,000 years. NUMBUK YABBUN Aboriginal culture burns the leaves of BOREEN, specifically the acacia, they perform a cleansing ceremony, when entering or leaving the country they hold a NUMBUK YABUN “Smoking ceremony such as burns the leaves.” This burning also pays respect to the country, the old people and the BURRINILIING (bare kneeling to ancestors).  NUMBUK is also part of general ceremonial purposes, both for NAIN (men) and NGOWAL (women). The sloping ground around it makes a natural bowl or amphitheater with shelter from the wind. Here, clan groups would rest after their journey to the NADYUNG “healing waters.”

Tjurunga or churinga are objects of religious significance by Central Australian Aboriginal Arrernte (Aranda, Arundta) groups.

Walkabout refers to a commonly held belief that Australian Aborigines would undergo a rite of passage journey during adolescence by living away from their family group area.

References

Insoll, T. (2012). The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of ritual and religion. Oxford, United Kingdom. Oxford University Press.

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Who were the indigenous people of Indonesia before the Chinese and Indians came?

Early human migrations

Sequencing of one Aboriginal genome from an old hair sample in Western Australia revealed that the individual was descended from people who migrated into East Asia between 62,000 and 75,000 years ago. This supports the theory of a single migration into Australia and New Guinea before the arrival of Modern Asians (between 25,000 and 38,000 years ago) and their later migration into North America.

This dispersal is separate and I think is around the time totemism enters the region from Arcane Early Europe by way of Siberia and thus Aisa, the one that gave rise to modern Asians 25,000 to 38,000 years ago. We also find evidence of gene flow between populations of the two dispersal waves prior to the divergence of Native Americans from modern Asian ancestors. It is surmised from DNA that a split between Europeans and Asians dating to 17,000 to 43,000 years before the present. ref

Mitochondrial haplogroups A, B and G originated about 50,000 years ago, and bearers subsequently colonized Siberia, Korea, and Japan, by about 35,000 years ago. Several phenotypical traits associated with Mongoloids with a single mutation of the EDAR gene, dated to c. 35,000 years ago. A Paleolithic site on the Yana River, Siberia, at 71°N, lies well above the Arctic Circle and dates to 27,000 radiocarbon years before present, during glacial times. This site shows that people adapted to this harsh, high-altitude, Late Pleistocene environment much earlier than previously thought. ref

Moreover, the mitogenome of a 35,000-year-old Homo sapiens from Europe (Peștera Muierii 1 individual from Romania) supports a Palaeolithic back-migration to Africa. The Peștera Muierii 1 individual mitogenome was a basal for haplogroup U6*, not previously found in any ancient or present-day humans. The derived U6 haplotypes are predominantly found in present-day North-Western African populations. Concomitantly, those found in Europe have been attributed to recent gene-flow from North Africa.

The presence of the basal haplogroup U6* in South East Europe (Romania) at 35,000 years ago confirms a Eurasian origin of the U6 mitochondrial lineage. Consequently, we propose that the Peștera Muierii 1 individual lineage is an offshoot to South East Europe that can be traced to the Early Upper Paleolithic back migration from Western Asia to North Africa, during which the U6 lineage diversified, until the emergence of the present-day U6 African lineages.

After the dispersal of modern humans Out of Africa, hominins with similar morphology to present-day humans appeared in the Western Eurasian fossil record around 45,000–40,000 years ago, initiating the demographic transition from ancient human occupation (Neandertals) to modern human (Homo sapiens) expansion on to the continent.

The first insights of the genetics of early Eurasian modern humans were recently provided by four ancient human genomes: Ust’-Ishim (Western Siberia, 45,000 years ago), Kostenki (Russia, 39,000–36,000 years ago), Fumane 2 (Italy, 41,000–39,000 years ago) and Peştera cu Oase (Romania, 37,000–42,000 years ago). Population genetic analyses of modern-day human mitochondrial haplogroup distributions suggest that in conjunction with the Eurasian expansion, some populations initiated a back-migration to North Africa.

Although the first genome of an ancient African individual (Ethiopia, 4,000-5,000 years ago) identified a back-migration from Eurasia to Africa within the at last 4.500 years, the scarcity of older human remains in North Africa has prevented researchers from obtaining direct evidence of such a migratory phenomenon during the Paleolithic period. We present the mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of the Peştera Muierii 1 (PM1) remains from Romania, directly dated to 35,000 years ago, which sheds new light on the Early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) migrations in Eurasia and North Africa.ref

Haplogroup U6 has a very wide geographic distribution across the northern half of Africa, the Middle East and most of western and southern Europe. It has been found at low frequencies as far north as the Baltic and as far east as Central Asia and Iran. It is most common in North-West Africa, especially among the Mozabites (28%) and Kabyles (18%) of Algeria, as well as Mauritanians (14%) and Canary Islanders (13.5%).

Other regions with frequencies of U6 exceeding 1% include 6-8% in Morocco and coastal Algeria, 5% in Tunisia, 4% in Libya, 2.5% in Lebanon, Portugal, Egypt and Oman, 2% in Cyprus, Sudan, Ethiopia and Guinea-Bissau, 1.5% in Saudi Arabia, and 1% in Syria, Jordan and in Spain. Isolated pockets of high U6 frequencies have been reported in Iberia, notably 8.5% in Huelva (western Andalusia) by Hernández et al. 2014, 7% in northern Portugal by Pereira et al. 2000, 4.3% in northern Portugal, 4% in central Spain and 2.5% in central Portugal by Ottoni et al. 2011, and 2.6% in Catalonia by by Garcia et al. 2011. U6 is only found at trace frequencies among Ashkenazi Jews and in most of Europe. The highest frequencies observed in Europe outside Iberia are in south-west France (1.4%), Brittany (0.7%), in Tuscany (0.6%), Sicily (0.5%) and southern Italy (0.5%).

Therefore, although now found primarily in western, northern and north-eastern Africa, haplogroup U6 descends from the western Eurasian haplogroup U, and therefore represents a back migration to Africa. Secher et al. (2014) estimated that U6 arose very approximately 35,000 years ago (±11 ky), during the Early Upper Paleolithic, and prior to the Last Glacial Maximum. ref

Neanderthals ‘kept our early ancestors out of Europe’ 

Two Paleolithic harpoons, at least 60,000 years old, decorated with geometric figures discovered at Veyrier near Geneva. Which is younger than a beautifully-carved 90,000-year-old bone harpoon used to hunt giant catfish in present-day the Democratic Republic of the Congo. ref

Our ancestors had interbred with Neanderthals 55,000 years ago, possibly in the Middle East. Modern humans and Neanderthals interbred in Europe, an analysis of 40,000-year-old DNA suggests. ref

50,000-year-old Skull May Show Human-Neanderthal Hybrids Originated in Levant,

not Europe as Thought

Research into ancient genomics and archaeology has shed light into the first humans in Europe, who appear in the record approximately 45,000 years ago. Neanderthals disappeared from the region 5,000 years later. The nature of their relationship is being revealed with every new discovery and breakthrough. ref

Neanderthals and modern humans belong to the same genus (Homo) and inhabited the same geographic areas in Asia for 30,000–50,000 years; genetic evidence indicates while they may have interbred with non-African modern humans, they are separate branches of the human family tree (separate species). ref

So, around the time we fully interact with Neanderthals in Europe Totemism emerges about 50,000 years ago. And, around the time all interact with Neanderthals is over we see Shamanism emerge about 30,000 years ago, could this just be a coincidence, I don’t really think so.

Upper Paleolithic (totemism in Europe between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago)

“Cultures Aurignacian Associated with Paleo-humans/Paleolithic lifestyle“

The Levantine Aurignacian: a closer look

Ust’-Ishim man 45,000-year-old remains of a male hunter-gatherer,

(I presume a totemist or connected to the firsts totemic peoples by around 50,000 years ago

then by 30,000 years ago are shamanistic-totemists)

one of the early modern humans to inhabit western Siberia.

Ust’-Ishim man has been classified as belonging to Y-DNA haplogroup K2a*, belonged to mitochondrial DNA haplogroup R*. Before 2016 they had been classified as U*. Both of these haplogroups and descendant subclades are now found among populations throughout Eurasia, Oceania and The Americas. When compared to other ancient remains, Ust’-Ishim man is more closely related, in terms of autosomal DNA to Tianyuan man, found near Beijing and dating from 42,000 to 39,000 years ago; Mal’ta boy (or MA-1), a child who lived 24,000 years ago along the Bolshaya Belaya River near today’s Irkutsk in Siberia, or; La Braña man – a hunter-gatherer who lived in La Braña (modern Spain) about 8,000 years ago. ref

World’s oldest, 29,000-year-old net sinkers found in Korea

From a cave in South Korea have found evidence that suggests human beings were using sophisticated techniques to catch fish as far back as 29,000 years ago. Pryor to the South Korean find, the oldest fishing implements were believed to be fishing hooks, made from the shells of sea snails, that was found on a southern Japanese island and said to date back some 23,000 years. ref

Zagros Aurignacian from Yafteh cave, Iran, Early Baradostian culture at Yafteh cave in the Zagros mountains dated around 40,000-35,000 years ago. The Baradostian culture was an Upper Paleolithic flint industry culture found in the Zagros region in the border-country between Iraq and Iran. The site held a rich collection of ornaments made of marine shells, tooth and hematite have been discovered in the early Upper Paleolithic deposits with dates clustered around 28,000–35,000 thousand years ago. Yafteh cave has clear evidence pointing to an Aurignacian connection dating back to about 35,500 years ago possibly providing a culture link from West Asia to Europe, I would propose by way of Siberia. ref, ref, ref

The earliest known petroglyphs are in Timareh dating back to 40,800 years ago. The earliest known pictographs in Iran are in Yafteh cave in Lorestan Provinceand date back 40,000 years. Pictographs that contain pictures drawn by pigments like smut, crystallized blood, ochre, that were employed by binders like animal fats, blood, seed oil and organic compounds, or a mixture of all materials mentioned above. Lorestan has the most and oldest pictographs in Iran. Yafteh cave in Lorestan has pictographs dating back to 40,000 years ago.Compared to petroglyphs, pictographs in Iran are scarce and rare. ref

Discoveries Challenge Beliefs on Humans’ Arrival in the Americas

Paleontologists in Uruguay published findings in November suggesting that humans hunted giant sloths there about 30,000 years ago. All the way in southern Chile, Tom D. Dillehay, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University, has shown that humans lived at a coastal site called Monte Verde as early as 14,800 years ago. Stone tools in northeast Brazil as early as 22,000 years ago, proves that humans reached what is now northeast Brazil as early as 22,000 years ago. ref 

Their discovery adds to the growing body of research upending a prevailing belief of 20th-century archaeology in the United States known as the Clovis model, which holds that people first arrived in the Americas from Asia about 13,000 years ago. “If they’re right, and there’s a great possibility that they are, that will change everything we know about the settlement of the Americas,” said Walter Neves, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of São Paulo whose own analysis of an 11,000-year-old skull in Brazil implies that some ancient Americans resembled aboriginal Australians more than they did Asians.ref

The earliest radiocarbon dates from the site support the theory that humans first reached the New World by at least 17,000 to 15,000 years ago or more. To read more in-depth about these early people, go to “America, in the Beginning.” ref

Similarities and differences in Animism and Totemism

Totemism: to me, is an approximately 50,000-year-old belief system, is a belief associated with animistic religions. The totem is usually an animal or other natural figures that spiritually represents a group of related people such as a clan. Totem poles of the Pacific Northwest of North America are monumental poles of heraldry. While the term totem is derived from the North American Ojibwe language, belief in tutelary spirits and deities is not limited to indigenous peoples of the Americas but common to a number of cultures worldwide. ref

40,000 years old Aurignacian Lion Figurine Early Totemism?

Aurignacian sites in Europe

Around 38,000 years old engraving of an aurochs with seeming totemism expression from southwestern France. The piece involves a complicated image of an aurochs with and surrounded by a row of dots on a stone slab. From the Aurignacian culture, a modern human tool making and artistic culture of Upper Paleolithic Europe. A massive diversification and specialization tools during the time of the Aurignacian culture (between 43,000 and 38,000 years ago) facilitated its distinctive artwork.

In particular, the invention of an engraving tool known as the burin made remarkable rock engravings possible. Although anatomically modern humans first appeared around 100,000 years ago, the Aurignacian culture is widely considered to represent the first modern humans to settle in Europe. Also located in the Vézère Valley, not far from Abri Blanchard, are the Cave Paintings of Lascaux. One of the most famous archeological sites in the world, the Paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux are remarkable for both their size and the quality of their preservation. Believed to date to sometime around 20,000 years ago, they are among the oldest known cave paintings in existence.ref

Aurignacian Culture Migrations?

There seem to be some findings that may support the theory that the Aurignacian culture could have arisen from the Ahmarian, which began spreading from the Middle East toward Europe some 45,000 years ago. There is also evidence that while expanding through Europe, some Aurignacians returned to the Middle East some 38,000 years ago.

In some cases, they reoccupied the same caves their ancestors had used thousands of years before, including Manot Cave itself containing tools typical of Aurignacian culture, as well as remains belonging to the Ahmarian, according to the study published last month in the journal Science Advances. Manot Cave, Aurignacian layers in Manot dated from 38,000 to 34,000 years ago, contains layer upon layer of flint tools, animal bones, hearths and other remains of human habitation spanning tens of thousands of years.

Specifically, it seems to have been occupied from about 55,000 years ago to at least 30,000 years ago. According to the archaeologists, the Ahmarian levels in Manot date to between 46,000 and 42,000 years ago, which predates the earliest Aurignacian sites in Europe. This supports the idea that the Aurignacian grew out of the Ahmarian as humans migrated out of the Middle East through Lebanon, Turkey, and the Balkans – areas which also host Ahmarian and early Aurignacian sites that are progressively younger in age, but it cannot know with certainty whether this return of the Aurignacian to the Middle East was caused by contact between neighboring groups of people, or actual migrations of entire populations. ref

Archaeological and palaeontological evidence strongly suggest that the initial modern colonization of eastern Europe and central Asia should be related to the spread of techno-complexes assigned to the Initial Upper Palaeolithic. This first expansion may have started as early as 48,000 years ago. The earliest phases of the Aurignacian complex (Protoaurignacian and Early Aurignacian) seem to represent another modern wave of migrations, starting in the Levant area. ref

The Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka (or Bhim Baithaka) lie 45 km south of Bhopal at the southern edge of the Vindhyachal hills. South of those rock shelters, successive ranges of the Satpura hills rise. Thick vegetation covers the entire area. Abundant natural resources include perennial water supply, natural shelters, rich forest flora, and fauna, bearing a significant resemblance to similar rock art sites such as Kakadu National Park in Australia, the cave paintings of the Bushmen in Kalahari Desert, and the Upper Paleolithic Lascaux cave paintings in France.

The rock shelters and caves of Bhimbetka have a number of interesting paintings which depict the lives and times of the people who lived in the caves, including scenes of childbirth, communal dancing, and drinking, and religious rites and burials, as well as the natural environment around them. Executed mainly in red and white with the occasional use of green and yellow with themes taken from the everyday events of eons ago, the scenes usually depict hunting, dancing, music, horse and elephant riders, animal fighting, honey collection, decoration of bodies, disguises, masking and household scenes. Animals such as bisons, tigers, lions, wild boar, elephants, antelopes, dogs, lizards, and crocodiles have been abundantly depicted. In some cases, popular religious and ritual symbols also appear often. ref 

Two Types of Totemism:

• Animistic/Pre-Shamanistic(to me, male-leaning, more geared to “Individual-totemism and much less Clan-totemism”)-Totemism
• Totemistic-(to me, female-leaning, more geared to “Group-totemism”)-Early-Shamanism

I hypothesize that both Totemism and Shamanism Disperse somewhat together as a complementary set of varied beliefs as either one of two main persuasions, totemistic-(female leaning, to me, more geared to “Group-totemism” Acephalous/Gynocentrism–Egalitarian–Equalitarian/Matrilineal–Matriarchy)-Early-Shamanism and/or Animistic/Pre-Shamanistic-(male leaning, to me, more geared to “Individual-Clan-totemism” Acephalous/Hierarchical–Heterarchy–Homoarchy/Patrilineal–Patriarchy)-Totemism which this must be thought of as only in a general kind of way, rather than only one-type each or that both where varied.

I think, likely both held diversity almost from the beginning, so they latter becoming even more diverse through tome also seems logical, which after that became more area stylized or splitting of the two. Such as, a possibility that true totemism as I think fully developed in Europe, not Africa: approximately 50,000-year-old belief system and that Shamanism: an approximately 30,000-year-old belief system by way of Siberia only to later find its way I think through Turkey to the Middle East maybe by around 12,000 years ago, referenced in the shaman burial of that time than out from there to Africa by way of Neolithic farmers from western Eurasia who, about 8,000 years ago, brought agriculture to Europe then began to return to Africa aided by DNA info from a 4,500-year-old hunter-gatherer, known as Mota man, were found in a cave. ref 

And at least by 3,000 years ago this southern migrations had spread to Africa, as it was by 3,000 years ago Europen DNA took that long to get to southern Africa through  “The widespread use of iron weapons which replaced bronze weapons rapidly disseminated throughout the Near East(North Africa, southwest Asia) by around 3,000 years ago.” ref 

As well as where both Early Shamanism around 30,000 to 20,000 years ago: Sungar (Russia) and Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic) taken along with European totemism by way of Siberiathrough Austronesians migrations) all the way to Aboriginal Religion.

Group Totemism was traditionally common among peoples in Africa, India, Oceania (especially in Melanesia), North America, and parts of South America. These peoples include, among others, the Australian Aborigines, the African Pygmies, and various Native American peoples—most notably the Northwest Coast Indians (predominantly fishermen), California Indians, and Northeast Indians. Moreover, group totemism is represented in a distinctive form among the Ugrians and west Siberians (hunters and fishermen who also breed reindeer) as well as among tribes of herdsmen in North and Central Asia. ref

Group/Clan Totemism is a group claiming common descent in the male or female line. They share a common relationship with 1 or more natural phenomena. For the members of this unit, the clan, the totem is a symbol of membership of the unit. It is recognised for the members of this clan and those of other clans. This totem has strong territorial and mythological ties associated with it, and it is believed that it can warn them of approaching danger. Some distinguish between matrilineal social clan totemism and patrilineal clan totemism. Matrilineal clan totemism is widespread throughout eastern Australia – Queensland, New South Wales, western Victoria and eastern South Australia. There is also a small area in the southwest of Western Australia. The genera translation of the word for this totem is ‘flesh’ or ‘meat’ – the person is ‘of one flesh’ with his totem. The totems connected with matrilineal phratries of western Arnhem Land are not the center of cult life, and the members of the phratry don’t have a special attitude towards it. The totems of the matrilineal social clans are the center of cult life. An example among the Dieri is the mardu.

It is really an avunculineal (of the mother’s brother’s line) cult totem. Patrilineal clan cult totemism, bindara, is also found in this tribe. Patrilineal clan totemism was present in parts of Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Cape York, coastal areas of New South Wales and Queensland, central Victoria, along the lower Murray and the Coorong district and among the Lake Eyre groups. The best example was among the Jaraldi, Dangani, etc. and northeastern Arnhem Land. In eastern Arnhem Land a combination of aspects, including non-totemic, were associated with the clan. A clan has several totemic cults, and these can be associated with more than one linguistic group. In central Australia totemic combinations were apparent but less strongly so.ref

Individual totemism is widely disseminated. It is found not only among tribes of hunters and harvesters but also among farmers and herdsmen. Individual totemism is especially emphasized among the Australian Aborigines and the American Indians. Studies of shamanism indicate that individual totemism may have predated group totemism, as a group’s protective spirits were sometimes derived from the totems of specific individuals. To some extent, there also exists a tendency to pass on an individual totem as hereditary or to make taboo the entire species of animal to which the individual totem belongs.ref

Individual Totemism Patrilineality: Aboriginal Australia

Only 1 person is involved in a special relationship with some natural species, or a particular member of that species. The relationship is a personal one, not usually shared r inherited. There are actually cases of inheritance, as, among the Wuradjeri, a youth may be given a totem during his initiation. There is also a form of ‘assistant totemism‘, in which a totem animal may serve as a familiar, or ‘second self’ for a native doctor. There is another form among the Wuradjeri, a native doctor may take a 10-12 year-old-child from the main camp and ‘sing’ the assistant into him (bala or jarawajewa – ‘meat’ or totem within him, or the ‘spirit animal’.

In that case, the bala is of patrilineal descent. It is widely distributed throughout New South Wales. Native doctors have spirit snakes in central, north and north-western Australia, associated with the Rainbow Serpent. The patrilineally inherited totem serves as an assistant in its physical and well as its spiritual form, among the Jaraldri on the Lower Murray. There are some songmen in western Arnhem Land who specialize in gossip songs, dealing with contemporary people. These songmen usually attribute new songs with a non-inherited familiar, a spirit or creature, that reveals itself in a dream. ref 

Moreover, Among the Wiradjuri, an Aboriginal people, totem clans are divided among two subgroups and corresponding matrilineal moieties. The group totem, named “flesh,” is transmitted from the mother. In contrast to this, individual totems belong only to the medicine men and are passed on patrilineally. Such an individual totem is named bala, “spirit companion,” or jarawaijewa, “the meat (totem) that is within him.” It is said: “To eat your jarawaijewa is the same as if you were to eat your very own flesh or that of your father.” The individual totem is also a helper of the medicine man. By singing, for instance, the medicine man can send out his totem to kill an enemy; the totem enters the chest of the enemy and devours his viscera. The transmission of the individual totem to novices is done through the father or the grandfather, who, of course, himself is also a medicine man.ref

Humans in Australia

75,000 – 55,000 Years Ago – (Australia), found evidence that the Aborigines are descendants of people who left Africa before Asians and Europeans became distinct groups. Moreover, genetic analysis and archaeological evidence have shown Aborigines inhabited Australia for 55,000 years and human remains dated to about 45,000 years ago found near Lake Mungo help further support this conclusion.

60,000 Years Ago – Lake Mungo (Australia) found mitochondrial DNA evidence from a 60,000 year-old-male so primitive that it raises questions some believed recent African origin for humans showing we may need to rethink how we came to be modern humans. The main theory of multiregionalism, which suggests that people coming from Africa interbred with earlier humans already living in other places. Of course, these earlier humans “our ancestors” first arose in Africa, then around 100,000 years ago or so then spread throughout the world and subsequent later humans mixed with the more primitive humans leading to us. Y chromosome DNA seems to point that human lineage could be possibly traced to a single population living in somewhere in Africa about 60,000 years ago. ref

44,000 Years Ago – Lake Mungo (Australia), found evidence of a burial that seems to have a ritual nature as it was sprinkled with lots of red ochre. The use of red ochre in burial evidence by ancient Australians it could have been brought along with them as part of religious rituals or burial rights from Africa. ref

42,000 to 45,000 years ago evidence indicates that humans first arrived in Papua New Guinea. They were descendants of migrants out of Africa, in one of the early waves of human migration. Agriculture was developed in the New Guinea highlands around 9,000 years ago, making it one of the few areas in the world where people independently domesticated plants. A major migration of Austronesian-speaking peoples to coastal regions of New Guinea took place around 2,500 years ago. This has been correlated with the introduction of pottery, pigs, and certain fishing techniques.ref

42,000-22,000 years ago, Ice age art in Indonesia reveals how spiritual life transformed en route to Australia. Cave discoveries suggest Indigenous Australians’ strong connection with animals may have its roots in the exotic species their ancestors encountered in Sulawesi, an Indonesian island east of Borneo. Modern humans had first colonized Australia by 50,000 years ago. 42,000-year-old shells used as “jewellery” East Timor and cave art as that found at one cave, a depiction of a human hand is at least 40,000 years old. It was made by someone pressing their palm and fingers flat against the ceiling and spraying red paint around them. Next to the hand stencil is a painting of a Babirusa that was created at least 35,400 years ago compatible in age with the spectacular cave paintings of rhinos, mammoths and other animals from France and Spain, a region I see as the birth of totemism 50,000 years ago spread out from there.

Also recovered were stone tools inscribed with crosses, leaf-like motifs and other geometric patterns, the meaning of which is obscure. 40,000-year-old art in Indonesia means that rock art probably arose in Africa well before our species set foot in Europe, although an Asian origin is also conceivable. Artifacts date to between 30,000 to 22,000 years ago and include disc-shaped beads made from the tooth of a babirusa, a primitive pig found only on Sulawesi, and a “pendant” fashioned from the finger bone of a bear cuscus, a large possum-like creature also unique to Sulawesi. Ornaments manufactured from the bones and teeth of babirusas and bear cuscuses – two of Sulawesi’s most characteristic endemic species – implies that the symbolic world of the newcomers changed to incorporate these never-before-seen creatures. Thousands of animal bones and teeth are found, but only a tiny fraction are from babirusas. The near-absence of babirusas from the cave inhabitants’ diet, coupled with the portrayal of these animals in their art, and use of their body parts as “jewellery”, suggests these rare and elusive creatures had acquired particular symbolic value in ice age human culture, which I see as totemism and taboo. ref

Humans first settled in East Timor 42,000 years ago. Descendants of at least three waves of migration are believed still to live in East Timor. The first is described by anthropologists as people of the Veddo–Australoid type. Around 5,000 years ago, a second migration brought Melanesians. The earlier Veddo-Australoid peoples withdrew at this time to the mountainous interior. Finally, Proto-Malays arrived from south China and north Indochina. ref

Eastern Indonesian gene pool consists of East Asian as well as Melanesian components, as might be expected based on linguistic evidence, but also harbors generally considered indigenous eastern Indonesian signatures that perhaps reflect the initial occupation of the Wallacea by aboriginal hunter-gatherers already in Palaeolithic times. In addition, a small fraction of DNA data shared between eastern Indonesians and Australian Aborigines likely reflecting an ancient link between Asia and Australia. All Austronesian (AN) languages trace back to a common ancestral language (Proto-AN) and are thought to have spread by an expansion that started about 5,500–6,000 years ago in Taiwan with an assumed ultimate origin in East Asia. The AN languages of the Nusa Tenggara Timur and eastern Timor area are generally assumed to be related belonging to the Central-Malayo-Polynesian (CMP) subfamily. However, the existence of this subfamily has been questioned, and it is also unknown where exactly in Southeast Asia Proto-Malayo-Polynesian was spoken, probably in the Philippines–Sulawesi area. ref, ref, ref 

It is further believed that AN languages exist in EI since about 4,000 years ago, and AN speakers—on their dispersal from Taiwan— replaced or admixed with NAN-speaking regional aboriginal hunter-gatherers living in Southeast Asia (including EI) already since Palaeolithic times. Like the AN languages of the Nusa Tenggara Timur and eastern Timor area, the non-Austronesian (NAN) also called Papuan languages of this region have also been shown to be related with each other with a linguistic hypothesis suggesting that NAN speakers in the region of Nusa Tenggara Timur and eastern Timor trace back to the expansion of the Trans-New Guinea Phylum (TNG) that started about 10,000 years ago in the highlands of eastern (now Papua) New Guinea. ref, ref, ref 

The currently known archaeological sites for modern humans in EI date back to about 30–37,000 years ago in eastern Timor and northern Maluku (Bellwood 1996). However, older dates of 43,000 years ago from southern Thailand, as well as evidence that modern humans were in New Guinea at least 40,000 years ago and in Australia at least 50,000 years ago, raise the expectation that the initial colonization of EI by modern humans occurred more than 50,000 years ago. In addition, archaeological sites with Neolithic dates of about 4,500–3,800 years ago are known from Flores and of about 4,400–3,400 years ago from eastern Timor, which have been associated with the Neolithic spread of farmers from Taiwan via Southeast Asia, Island Melanesia into Polynesia. This Neolithic spread is usually associated with the spread of AN speakers. ref, ref, ref 

It has been suggested that the AN-speaking Neolithic farmers arrived in EI via an eastern route via Sulawesi (and perhaps the northern Maluku) rather than a western route via Java. Genetic evidence from the human-specific bacterial parasite Helicobacter pylori, also points to a Taiwanese origin and Out-of-Taiwan spread of AN speakers. In addition, this model disagrees with human genetic data such as the Taiwanese origin of the major Asian nonrecombining Y-chromosomal (NRY) haplogroup in Island Melanesia (O-M110), the Taiwanese origin of the B4a1a mtDNA haplogroup shared among Taiwanese Aborigines, Melanesians, and Polynesians, and the genetic affinities of Polynesians and Micronesians with Taiwanese Aborigines as revealed from 890 autosomal DNA markers. ref, ref, ref 

Overall, the linguistic and archaeological data suggest at least two or three distinct migration waves influenced EI: an initial colonization at least 50,000 years ago; the expansion of AN speakers about 4,000 years ago and possibly an immigration of NAN speakers either before or around the same time of the AN arrival. DNA haplogroup Q1, and possibly Q2, could reflect an ancient shared ancestry between EI and New Guinea, that is, the Pleistocene aboriginal hunter-gather population. The origin of haplogroup Q1  is around 50,000 years ago and Q2 is around 35,000 years ago. ref, ref, ref 

20,000 years ago and before Aboriginal people were had spread through the entire continent of Australia caring for their cultural and religious thinking and behaviors with them. At around 15,000 – 12,000 years ago at Kow Swamp in Northern Victoria, Aborigines where wearing kangaroo teeth headbands similar to those worn by men and women in the Central Desert in the 19th century. Land bridges between mainland Australia and Tasmania are flooded. Tasmanian Aboriginal people become isolated for the next 13,000 to 12,000 years.

12,000 years ago Australia, the aboriginal cave paintings of beehives. Bees can be misinterpreted as representing other, more esoteric or otherworldly creatures. For instance, spiraling circles appear frequently in rock art, and on occasion have been interpreting to represent planetary alignments or symbols of advanced civilizations. In Australia, there is rock art in the form of spiraling circles from the sacred storehouse of Australia Honey Ant shamans, who hunted Honey Ants as the only source of honey in an otherwise dry and arid desert landscape. The rocks are located in a valley where shamans performed rituals designed to increase their supply of honey, for the sacred nectar provided a variety of medicinal and nutritional uses. Ironically, the conical images hints at the origins of the ancient Labyrinth design, a structure that played an important role in Egyptian, Greek, and of course, Atlantian mythology, cultures that venerated the bee. Therefore, as always, bee mythology, like all mythology, is just trying to turn magic properties out of non-magic nature.

“The Rainbow-Serpent (totemistic) Myth of Australia”

9,000 – 6,000 years ago Australia, Earliest visible evidence of Aboriginal Religion connected with the Rainbow Serpent beliefs. 8,000 years ago the Torres Strait Islands are formed when the land bridge between Australia and New Guinea is submerged by rising seas. Dreamtime (or The Dreaming or Tjukurrpa or Jukurrpa) stories tell of the great spirits and totems during creation, in animal and human form that molded the barren and featureless earth. The Rainbow Serpent is believed to have come from beneath the ground and created huge ridges, mountains, and gorges as it pushed upward. The Rainbow Serpent is understood to be of immense proportions and inhabits deep permanent waterholes and is in control of life’s most precious resource, water.

The myth of the Wawalag sisters marks the importance of the female menstruation process and led to the establishment of the Kunapipi blood ritual of the goddess, in which the indigenous Australians allegorically recreate the Rainbow Serpent eating the Wawalag sisters through dance and pantomime, and can be regarded as a fertility ritual. Female menstruation is sacred to many indigenous Australian cultures because it distinguishes the time when a female is capable of bringing life into the world, putting a woman on the same level of creative abilities as the Rainbow Serpent. 

It is for this reason that men will attempt to mimic this holy process by cutting their arms and/or penises and letting their blood run over their own bodies, each other’s bodies, and even into a woman’s uterus. Men will sometimes mix their blood with a women’s menstrual blood, letting them flow together in a ceremonial unification of the sexes. The earliest known rock drawings of the Rainbow Serpent date back to more than 6,000 years ago. Because of its connections with fertility, the Rainbow Serpent is often illustrated as a vagina, and vice versa. Some rock art has been discovered in which the Rainbow Serpent was drawn mouth open and tongue out to represent the vaginal opening and streaming of menstrual blood.

The Rainbow Serpent is also identified as a healer and can pass on its properties as a healer to humans through a ritual. In some cultures, the Rainbow Serpent is considered to be the ultimate creator of everything in the universe. In some cultures, the Rainbow Serpent is male; in others, female; in yet others, the gender is ambiguous or the Rainbow Serpent is hermaphroditic or bisexual, thus an androgynous entity. Some commentators have suggested that the Rainbow Serpent is a phallic symbol, which fits its connection with fertility myths and rituals. When the Serpent is characterized as female or bisexual, it is sometimes depicted with breasts. Other times, the Serpent has no particular gender. 

The Serpent has also been known to appear as a scorpion or another animal or creature. In some stories, the Serpent is associated with a bat, sometimes called a “flying fox” in Australian English, engaged in a rivalry over a woman. Some scholars have identified other creatures, such as a bird, crocodile, dingo, or lizard, as taking the role of the Serpent in stories. In all cases, these animals are also associated with water. Among the Australian Aborigines, totemism called Kobong involves many totem clans including Dingo and Water-Hen. All birds were originally totems and ancestors of all aboriginals in the ‘Dreamtime’ The Rainbow Serpent has also been identified with the bunyip, a fearful, water-hole dwelling creature in Australian mythology.

The Rainbow Serpent or Rainbow Snake is a common deity (also known as Wagyl, Wuagyl, etc.) often seen as a kind of creator deity and a common motif in the art and religion of AboriginalAustralia. It is named for the obvious identification between the shape of a rainbow and the shape of a snake. Some scholars believe that the link between snake and rainbow suggests the cycle of the seasons and the importance of water in human life. When the rainbow is seen in the sky, it is said to be the Rainbow Serpent moving from one waterhole to another. There are innumerable names and stories associated with the serpent, all of which communicate the significance and power of this being within Aboriginal traditions. 

It is viewed as a giver of life, through its association with water, but can be a destructive force if angry. The Luritja people, native to the remote deserts of central Australia, once told stories about a fire devil coming down from the Sun, crashing into Earth and killing everything in the vicinity. The local people feared if they strayed too close to this land they might reignite some otherworldly creature. The legend describes the crash landing of a meteor in Australia’s Central Desert about 4,700 years ago, says University of New South Wales (UNSW) astrophysicist Duane Hamacher.

The Aboriginal people of Victoria had developed a varied and complex set oflanguages, tribal alliances, and trading routes, beliefs and social customs that involved totemism, superstition, initiation and burial rites, and tribal moeties that regulated sexual relationships and marriage. Ayers Rock is also known by its Aboriginal name ‘Uluru’. It is a sacred part of Aboriginal creation mythology or dreamtime – reality being a dream. Uluru is considered one of the great wonders of the world and one of Australia’s most recognizable natural icons. Uluru is a large magnetic mound large not unlike Silbury Hill in England. It is located on a major planetary grid point much like the Great Pyramid in Egypt. But for most Aborigines, spiritual beliefs are derived from a sense of belonging to the land, to the sea, to other people, and to one’s culture. Ayers Rock is a large sandstone rock formation in central Australia, in the Northern Territory. Traditional Aboriginal people regard all land as sacred, and the songs must be continually sung to keep the land “alive” and the Dreaming Spirits “also deposited the spirits of unborn children and determined the forms of human society,” thereby establishing tribal law and totemic paradigms. The whole system of totemic belief reflects the social structure, depending on whether hunter-gatherers (Australia) or farmers (Central Africa) and this implies beliefs and mode of thought differ and thus several simultaneous systems exist throughout the world.ref, ref

DNA from the Denisovan Siberian cave-dwellers from the has been found in the Aboriginal descendants of the first settlers on the continent. And separate studies suggest that the ability of Tibetans to withstand the effects of hypoxia in low-oxygen environments is linked to a gene absent in Neanderthals but present in Denisovans. ‘Where the interbreeding event(s) between Denisovans and early modern humans actually took place are currently unknown. There is also now evidence from fossil teeth that modern humans were in southern China at least 80,000 years ago, and in Sumatra about 65,000 years ago. So populations conected to those are much more likely than Denisovans to have been the first colonizers of Australia, an event now dated to at least 65,000 years ago. Denisovans where an archaic species lived in Altai Mountains of southern Russia, yet their DNA shows up in populations across Southeast Asia. Examining DNA from a finger bone excavated in Siberia, researchers concluded that the Denisovans migrated from Siberia to tropical parts of Asia and that they interbred with modern humans in South-East Asia 44,000 years ago, before Australia separated from Papua New Guinea approximately 11,700 years BP.

They contributed DNA to Aboriginal Australians along with present-day New Guineans and an indigenous tribe in the Philippines known as Mamanwa. Scholars have long been flummoxed as to why the language spoken by 90 percent of Australia’s Aborigines is relatively young—approximately 4,000 years old according to language experts—if their ancestors had occupied the continent so much earlier. One possible answer has been that a second migration into Australia by people speaking this language occurred around 4,000 years ago. The authors of the new study, however, say a previously unidentified internal dispersal of Aborigines that swept from the northeast across Australia around that time led to the linguistic and cultural linking of the continent’s indigenous people. Although they had a sweeping impact on ancient Australian culture, these “ghost-like” migrants mysteriously disappeared from the genetic record. A few immigrants appear in different villages and communities around Australia.

They change the way people speak and think; then they disappear, like ghosts. And people just carry on living in isolation the same way they always have. This may have happened for religious or cultural reasons that we can only speculate about. But in genetic terms, we have never seen anything like it before.” One other notable finding from the DNA study is evidence of an “uncharacterized” hominin group that interbred with modern humans as they migrated through southeast Asia on their way to Australia. Four percent of Aboriginal Australian DNA comes from a distant relative of Denisovans (an extinct human species from Siberia). It has been found that there was a migration of genes from India to Australia around 4,000 years ago.

The researchers had two theories for this: either some Indians had contact with people in Indonesia who eventually transferred those genes from India to Australian Aborigines, or that a group of Indians migrated all the way from India to Australia and intermingled with the locals directly. Their research also shows that these new arrivals came at a time when dingoes first appeared in the fossil record, and when Aboriginal peoples first used microliths in hunting. In addition, they arrived just as one of the Aboriginal language groups was undergoing a rapid expansion. Blood samples from some Warlpiri Tribe of Aboriginal Australians, who are not representative of all Aboriginal Tribes in Australia and descended from ancient Asians whose DNA is still somewhat present in Southeastern Asian groups, although greatly diminished. The Warlpiri DNA also lacks certain information found in modern Asian genomes, and carries information not found in other genomes, reinforcing the idea of ancient Aboriginal isolation. ref, ref, ref, ref

Figguring things out with rock art and DNA

In Australia, rock art seems to start near the cost as if it possibly comes from outside, to me, with dates up to 28,000 years in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, depicting traditional ways, mythical creatures, and ancient songlines, while other art is found next door to the west in Queensland in the North part of Australia dates up to 15,000 years old have been recorded. ref,ref

Both of the oldest rock art sites (early totemism, to me) are relatively close to and south under Indonesia and East Temore even older rock art sites.

We must not forget that evidence puts humans were in southern China at least 80,000 years ago, and in Sumatra, an Indonesian island by about 65,000 years ago. A collection of ostrich eggshell jewelry dating to 45,000 to 50,000 years ago is found at Denisova cave in the Altai region, Siberia and this is telling as ostrich is a large flightless bird native to Africa. ref, ref

Denisovans lived in Altai Mountains of southern Russia, Siberia yet their DNA shows up in populations across Southeast Asia, concluded that Denisovans or ones caring heavy Denisovan DNA migrated from Siberia to tropical parts of Asia and it is thought that they interbred with modern humans in South-East Asia around 44,000 years ago, then only after that spread to Australia. 41,000 years old Denisovan finger bone fragment of a juvenile female who lived in the remote Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, a cave that has also been inhabited by Neanderthals and modern humans.

Denisovans shared a common origin with Neanderthals, that they ranged from Siberia to Southeast Asia, and that they lived among and interbred with the ancestors of some modern humans, with about 3% to 5% of the DNA of Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians and around 6% in Papuans deriving from Denisovans.

A comparison with the genome of another Neanderthal from the Denisova cave with artifacts showing an intermittent presence going back 125,000 years is near the border with China and Mongolia revealed local interbreeding with local Neanderthal DNA representing 17% of the Denisovan genome, and evidence of interbreeding with an as yet unidentified ancient human lineage. Analysis of DNA from two teeth found in layers different from the finger bone revealed an unexpected degree of mtDNA divergence among Denisovans. Two teeth belonging to different members of the Denisova cave population have been reported. In November 2015, a tooth fossil containing DNA was reported to have been found and studied.

Denisovans and Neanderthals split from Homo sapiens around 744,000 years ago and diverged from each other 300 generations after that. Moreover, Denisovans were actually a sister group to the Neanderthals, branching off from the human lineage 600,000 years ago, and diverging from Neanderthals, probably in the Middle East, 200,000 years later. Furthermore an upper molar from a young adult, dating from about the same time (the finger was from level 11 in the cave sequence, the tooth from level 11.1). The tooth differed in several aspects from those of Neanderthals, while having archaic characteristics similar to the teeth of Homo erectus. They performed mitochondrial DNA analysis on the tooth and found it to have a sequence different from but similar to that of the finger bone, indicating a divergence time about 7,500 years before, and suggesting that it belonged to a different individual from the same population.

Denisovans were extremely robust, perhaps similar in build to the Neanderthals. mtDNA sequence from the femur of a 400,000-year-old Homo heidelbergensis from the Sima de los Huesos cave in Spain was found to be related to that of the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, but closer to the latter. Later analysis of nuclear DNA sequences from two specimens showed they were more closely related to Neanderthals rather than to Denisovans, while one of these samples also had the Denisovan-related mtDNA. The authors suggest that the mtDNA found in these specimens represent an archaic sequence indicative of Neanderthal’s kinship with Denisovans that was subsequently lost in Neanderthals due to replacement by a more modern-human-related sequence.

Analysis of genomes of modern humans shows that they mated with at least two groups of Archaic humans: Neanderthals (more similar to those found in the Caucasus than those from the Altai region) and Denisovans. Approximately 1-4% of the DNA of non-African modern humans is shared with Neanderthals, suggesting interbreeding. Tests comparing the Denisova hominin genome with those of six modern humans – a ǃKung from South Africa, a Nigerian, a Frenchman, a Papua New Guinean, a Bougainville Islander and a Han Chinese – showed that between 4% and 6% of the genome of Melanesians(represented by the Papua New Guinean and Bougainville Islander) derives from a Denisovan population; a later study puts the amount at 1.11% (with an additional contribution from some different and yet unknown ancestor).

This DNA was possibly introduced during the early migration to Melanesia. These findings are in concordance with the results of other comparison tests which show a relative increase in allele sharing between the Denisovan and the Aboriginal Australian genome, compared to other Eurasians and African populations; however, it has been observed that Papuans, the population of Papua New Guinea, have more allele sharing than Aboriginal Australians. Denisovan ancestry is shared also by Australian Aborigines, and smaller scattered groups of people in South-East Asia, such as the Mamanwa, a Negrito people in the Philippines though not all Negritos were found to possess Denisovan genes; Onge Andaman Islanders and Malaysian Jehai, for example, were found to have no significant Denisovan inheritance. These data place the interbreeding event in mainland South-East Asia, and suggest that Denisovans once ranged widely over eastern Asia. Based on the modern distribution of Denisova DNA, Denisovans may have crossed the Wallace Line, with Wallacea serving as their last refugium.

A paper by Kay Prüfer in 2013 said that mainland Asians and Native Americans had around 0.2% Denisovan ancestry. it has been suggested, in the absence of genomic evidence, that the Red Deer Cave people of China were the result of interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Denisovans within a few thousands of years of the end of the last glacial period. Evidence of a minimum 0.5% Neanderthal gene flows into the Denisovans. The Denisovan genome shared more derived alleles with the Altai Neanderthal genome from Siberia than with the Vindija cave Neanderthal genome from Croatia and the Mezmaiskaya cave Neanderthal genome from the Caucasus, suggesting that the gene flow came from a population that was more closely related to the Altai Neanderthal. there were at least two distinct populations of Denisovans, and that a second introgression event from Denisovans into humans occurred. Genetic evidence for this second interbreeding event is found in various modern South and East Asian populations: the Han Chinese, Japanese, and the Dai people.

The Denisovan component in the genomes of these East Asian populations is close to the sequenced Denisovan genome from the Altai cave than it is to the Denisovan component found in the genomes of Papuans. Thus, the Papuans must have derived their Denisovan DNA component from a separate introgression event involving a different Denisovan population than that which contributed the introgression seen in South and East Asians. South Asians and East Asians have comparable levels of Denisovan admixture but South Asians like Oceanians had only one detectable introgression event.ref

60,000 years old early evidence of the human use of symbols, in the form of patterns engraved upon ostrich eggshell water containers from Diepkloof Rock Shelter is a prehistoric cave in Western Cape, South Africa. It contains one of “most complete and continuous later Middle Stone Age sequences in southern Africa” stretching from before 130,000 BP to about 45,000 BP and encompassing pre-Stillbay, Stillbay, Howiesons Poort, and post-Howiesons Poort periods.

From 70,000-74,000 years ago stone tools like bifaces and bifacial points are present while less complex forms such as backed artifacts occur from 70,000-60,000 years ago and are subsequently replaced with unifacial points. 270 fragments of ostrich eggshell containers have been found covered with engraved geometric patterns. The fragments have a maximum size of 20–30 mm, though a number have been fitted into larger 80 × 40 mm fragments. It is estimated that fragments from 25 containers have been found. Eggshell fragments have been found throughout the period of occupation of the cave but those with engraving are found only in several layers within the Howiesons Poort period. These occur across 18 stratigraphic units, suggesting the tradition of engraving lasted for several thousand years. 

The engraving consists of abstract linear repetitive patterns, including a hatched band motif. One fragment has two parallel lines that might have been circular around the container. Seemingly it has been suggested that they form “a system of symbolic representation in which collective identities and individual expressions are clearly communicated, suggesting social, cultural, and cognitive underpinnings that overlap with those of modern people.” A large number of marked pieces shows that there were rules for composing designs but having room within the rules to allow for individual and/or group preferences.” Earlier finds than this exist of symbolism in early Africa, such as the 75,000-year-old engraved ochre chunks found in the Blombos cave, but these are isolated and difficult to tell apart from meaningless doodles. Blombos Cave is also important which contains Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits currently dated at between c. 100,000 and 70,000 years ago. ref, ref

The oldest rock art in West Europe is 40,800 years old prehistoric dots and crimson hand stencils from El Castillo Cave in Spain (not too far from what may be the origin of Proto-Aurignacian and Early Aurignacian evidence at Labeko Koba), which it is thought humans arrived around El Castillo Cave at least by about 41,500 years ago. ref

Hunting weapons manufactured from osseous raw materials first appeared in Europe during the Aurignacian, more specifically during its earliest stage ( Early Aurignacian ) about 40,000 years ago, though a few possible and controversial examples from the Proto-Aurignacian have been reported. Projectile points constitute the main component of osseous equipment in the Spanish Aurignacian. Two different types follow one after the other chronologically: split-based points during the Early Aurignacian and then simple-based point during the evolved Aurignacian. With rare exceptions, antler is the chosen material to produce these projectile points.Contrary to bone work—which uses fragments recovered from food activities to make domestic tools—antler exploitation is unconnected to food activities and is instead driven by projectile production. This form of antler exploitation integrates, for the first time during the European Paleolithic, an organic material into the technical sphere. ref

There are 42,000-year-old shells used as “jewelry” East Timor and cave art as that found at one cave, a depiction of a human hand is at least 40,000 years old. Humans first settled in East Timor 42,000 years ago. on the northwestern side of the island surrounded by Indonesian West Timor. Australia is the country’s southern neighbor, separated by the Timor Sea. Descendants of at least three waves of migration are believed still to live in East Timor. The first is described by anthropologists as people of the Veddo–Australoid type. ref, ref

A collection of ostrich eggshell jewelry dating to 45,000 to 50,000 years ago is found at Denisova cave in the Altai region, Siberia and this is telling as ostrich is a large flightless bird native to Africa. ref, ref

In India, starting around 25,000-30,000 years tribes painted their stories on rock faces all over India. And we have two ostrich eggshell beads from Bhimbetka, south of Bhopal India and three from Patne, Maharashtra India dating to around 39,000 to 25,000 years ago relate to these finds. Some of the Bhimbetka rock shelters feature prehistoric cave paintings and the earliest are about 30,000 years old showing themes such as animals, early evidence of dance and hunting. The Bhimbetka rock shelters specimens were found in the neck region of an Upper Paleolithic human burial (in shelter No. III A-28), possibly forming part of a necklace made up of beads. In all, some forty-one Indian sites have yielded fragments of Pleistocene ostrich eggshell. ref, ref, ref

DNA extracted from the fossilized skeleton, Kostenki 14 or  K-14, who once was a short, dark-featured man from approx. 36,000 years ago who died along the Middle Don River in Kostenki-Borshchevo, Russia. The DNA also had about 1% more Neandertal DNA than do Europeans and Asians today and he also carried the signature of the shadowy western Asians, including a boy who lived 24,000 years ago at Mal’ta in central Siberiaseeming to then connect to, an even older 45,000-year-old human Ust’-Ishim man from west-Siberian  had shown — that humans and Neandertals mixed early, before 45,000 years ago, perhaps in the Middle East. ref, ref

A pendant with two incised holes in a tropical seashell restricted to the Mediterranean basin, we seem to have here important evidence of the connections and, probably, of the origins of the population that used these shells as beads for necklaces. A small number of bone fragments and stone artifacts are perhaps as early as around 44,000 to 46,000 years ago. ref, ref

There are shell ornaments in a limestone cave in Eastern Morocco dating to around 72,000 years ago along with evidence of shells, already known from as old as 110,000 to 82,000-year-old Aterian deposits in the cave occupations include pre-Mousterian, Aterian, and Iberomaurusianlithic industries. ref, ref

This is interesting to go with beads made from sea snail discovered at Skhul in Israel and dated to between 100,000 and 135,000 years ago. ref Around 75,000 years ago, in a cave near the southern Cape shoreline in South Africa, a human drilled tiny holes into the shells of snails and strung them as beads.ref

Back to 200,000-year-old shell beads from Libya and a 300,000-year-old wolf tooth pendant from Austria and evidence of 300,000 year old red ochre from prehistoric uses that are varied but often are seen in arcane burials and other uses including but in no way limited to rock art paintings, pottery, wall paintings and cave art, and human tattoos. What must be understood is these seeming human behaviors of Pre-Animism: Portable Rock Art which is at least 300,000-year-old seems more reasonable as we had evolved even as early humans living 300,000 Years Ago already had what we think of as basically modern human faces. ref, ref, ref, ref

So, as stated before, while humans seem to first settle in East Timor 42,000 years ago and a 39,900 years old hand stencil that is from the Leang Timpuseng Cave on the Island of Sulawesi in Indonesia also includes some of the most ancient animal paintings, all made by Aborigine migrants who were probably heading for Australia. and the image of the “pig-deer” at the Sulawesi Cave, Indonesia, dating to as old as 35,400 years ago. ref, ref, ref

Then there is a 39,900 years old hand stencil that is from the Leang Timpuseng Cave on the Island of Sulawesi. The site also includes some of the most ancient animal paintings, all made by Aborigine migrants who were probably heading for Australia. Humans first settled in East Timor 42,000 years ago. Descendants of at least three waves of migration are believed still to live in East Timor. The first is described by anthropologists as people of the Veddo–Australoid type. Cave Paintings in East Kalimantan (Borneo) Indonesia, which is to the south and east are islands of Indonesia: Java and Sulawesi., and before sea levels rose at the end of the last Ice Age, Borneo was part of the mainland of Asia with Java and Sumatra.

The first group comprises two caves situated in the middle of a cliff about 30 meters apart. They contain roughly 60 hand stencils concentrated in only two to three panels. The disposition of the stencils indicates the panels intentionally organized. The other group, 80 km westwards, comprises three large chambers with at least 200 figures including more than 140 handprints. More than 20 of them have anthropo-and zoo-morphic features in the form of linear or punctuated marks inside the stencil blanks. Moreover, painted on the roof of a “laminoir”, about one meter high, three bovine figures larger than one meter are to be seen.

They seem to be clear representations of an almost-vanished wild small cow. The next two features appear to be deer involved in a hunting scene and are associated with some pairs of hand stencils. Some handprints have internal linear tracks evoking tattooing figures like those still executed by Mentawi communities in the Siberut Islands (South Sumatra), as well as the “X ray” drawings frequently present in some Australian Aboriginal pictorial expression. With origins probably predating the arrival of Austronesians into Borneo 4,000-5,000 years ago, that culture-area or a “Rock Art Culture”, could correspond to the period when climatic and marine changes occurred at the end of Pleistocene. ref, ref, ref

And at Chauvet Cave, in France, human occupation was in two phases, one running from 37,000 to 33,500 years ago and the second from 31,000 to 28,000 years ago. ref

30,000 years old rock art found at Apollo 11 Cave (Namibia) South West Africa. And according to charcoal radiocarbon dated from 27,500 to 25,500 BP. The slabs found in the cave are referred to as the Apollo 11 Stones. Besides the slabs, the cave contained several white and red paintings. The subject of paintings ranged from simple geometric patterns to bees may belong to a period as far back as 10,400 years ago. Moreover, the indigenous people in the region, the OvaHimba, are a monotheistic people who worship the God Mukuru, as well as their clan’s ancestors (ancestor reverence). Mukuru only blesses, while the ancestors can bless and curse. Each family has its own sacred ancestral fire, which is kept by the fire-keeper.

The fire-keeper approaches the sacred ancestral fire every seven to eight days in order to communicate with Mukuru and the ancestors on behalf of his family. Often, because Mukuru is busy in a distant realm, the ancestors act as Mukuru’s representatives. The OvaHimba traditionally believe in omiti, which some translate to mean witchcraft but which others call “black magic” or “bad medicine”. Some OvaHimba believe that death is caused by omiti, or rather, by someone using omiti for malicious purposes. Additionally, some believe that evil people who use omiti have the power to place bad thoughts into another’s mind or cause extraordinary events to happen (such as when a common illness becomes life-threatening). But users of omiti do not always attack their victim directly; sometimes they target a relative or loved one. Some OvaHimba will consult a traditional African diviner-healer to reveal the reason behind an extraordinary event, or the source of the omiti.ref, ref

27,000-year-old dramatic murals dating from the Gravettian culture and 18,000 years ago art at Pech Merle Cave which may date from the later Magdalenian era. ref

27,000 to 19,000 years ago, Cosquer cave art of various pieces, the older art consisting of 65 hand stencils and other related motifs, dating to 27,000 years ago (the Gravettian Era), and the newer art of signs and 177 animals dating to 19,000 years ago (the Solutrean Era), representing both “classical” animals such as bison, ibex, and horses, but also marine animals such as auks and a man with a seal’s head. ref

There are others in Europe but let us get back to 26,000 years ago in Papua New Guinea Karawari Caves where the rock paintings are part of a continuous culture of representation that may date back to the first people to settle in these hills perhaps more than 26,000 years ago. ref

In India, we have two ostrich eggshell beads from Bhimbetka, south of Bhopal India and three from Patne, Maharashtra India dating to around 39,000 to 25,000 years ago relate to these finds. The Bhimbetka rock sheltersspecimens were found in the neck region of an Upper Paleolithic human burial (in shelter No. III A-28), so it has been suggested that they formed part of a necklace made up of beads of perishable materials. While the Patne specimens range from 7 mm to about 10 mm diameter and are rather angular, those from Bhimbetka measure about 6 and 7 mm respectively and are well rounded. In all, some forty-one Indian sites have yielded fragments of Pleistocene ostrich eggshell. ref

DNA appears 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. It has been found that the ancestral node of the phylogenetic tree of all the mitochondrial DNA haplogroups typically found in Central Asia, West Asia, and Europe are also to be found in South Asia at relatively high frequencies. The inferred divergence of this common ancestral node is estimated to have occurred slightly less than 50,000 years ago. In India, the major maternal lineages are various M subclades, followed by R and U sublineages. These mitochondrial haplogroups’ coalescence times have been approximated to date to 50,000 years ago. The major paternal lineages represented by Y chromosomes are haplogroups R1a1, R2, H, L and J2. Many researchers have argued that Y-DNA Haplogroup R1a1 (M17) is of autochthonous South Asian origin. However, proposals for a Central Asian origin for R1a1 are also quite common. ref

R1a1-M458 and R1a1-Z280 were typical for the Hungarian population groups, whereas R1a1-Z93 was typical for Malaysian Indians and the Hungarian Roma. Inner and Central Asia is an overlap zone for the R1a1-Z280 and R1a1-Z93 lineages. This pattern implies that an early differentiation zone of R1a1-M198 conceivably occurred somewhere within the Eurasian Steppes or the Middle East and Caucasus region as they lie between South Asia and Eastern Europe. The detection of the Z93 paternal genetic imprint in the Hungarian Roma gene pool is consistent with South Asian ancestry and amends the view that H1a-M82 is their only discernible paternal lineage of Indian heritage. ref

Haplogroup R1a, or haplogroup R-M420 is distributed in a large region in Eurasia, extending from Scandinavia and Central Europe to southern Siberia and South Asia. While R1a originated around 22,000 to 25,000 years ago, its subclade M417 (R1a1a1) diversified ca. 5,800 years ago. The distribution of M417-subclades R1a-Z282 (including R1a-Z280) in Central and Eastern Europe and R1a-Z93 in Asia suggesting that R1a1a diversified within the Eurasian Steppes or the Middle East and Caucasus region. The place of origin of these subclades plays a role in the debate about the origins of Proto-Indo-Europeans. R-M173, also known as R1, has been common throughout Europe and South Asia since pre-history. Possible place of origin of R1 South Asia, Southwest Asia or Central Asia.

Haplogroup P1 (P-M45), the immediate ancestor of Haplogroup R, likely emerged in Southeast Asia. Some descendant Haplogroup R or R-M207,  subclades have been found since pre-history in Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. Others have long been present, at lower levels, in parts of West Asia and Africa. The only confirmed example of basal R* has been found, in 24,000-year-old remains, known as MA1, found at Mal’ta–Buret’ culture near Lake Baikal in Siberia. Inner and Central Asia is an overlap zone for the R1a1-Z280 and R1a1-Z93 lineages [which] implies that an early differentiation zone of R1a1-M198 conceivably occurred somewhere within the Eurasian Steppes or the Middle East and Caucasus region as they lie between South Asia and Central- and Eastern Europe.  Indo-European migrations and Indo-Aryan migrations and R1a the distribution and age of R1a1 points to an ancient migration corresponding to the spread by the Kurgan people in their expansion from the Eurasian steppe. ref, ref, ref

Early Shamanism/and continuing totemism around 34,000 -30,000 years ago: Sungar (Russia) show a symbolic use of beads and pendents (A burial at Sunghir, USSR (S1) involve such things as a beaded cap on his head with ornamentals—pendants made of Arctic fox teeth and beads of ivory which date to about 30,000 years old). ref, ref

These early humans seem to have had possable taboos around inbreeding at least 34,000 years ago and developed surprisingly sophisticated social and mating networks to avoid it, new research has found. The study, reported in the journal Science, examined genetic information from the remains of anatomically modern humans who lived during the Upper Paleolithic, a period when modern humans from Africa first colonized western Eurasia. The results suggest that people deliberately sought partners beyond their immediate family and that they were probably connected to a wider network of groups from within which mates were chosen, in order to avoid becoming inbred.

This suggests proof of early totmistic taboo in Europe or at least Siberia by seeming to purposely avoid it at a surprisingly early stage in prehistory. The symbolism, complexity and time invested in the objects and jewelry found buried with the remains also suggests that it is possible that they developed rules, ceremonies and rituals to accompany the exchange of mates between groups, which perhaps foreshadowed modern marriage ceremonies, and may have been similar to those still practiced by hunter-gatherer communities in parts of the world today. ref

Coliboaia Cave rock art from Romania dated to 32,000 and 35,000 years old at Chauvet Cave in southwestern France, where 37,000 to 35,000-year-old figures were drawn using a similar technique. And Fumane Cave Paintings (37,000 years ago) in Italy that also holds evidence at around 44,000 years old unusual modifications on several bird species that are not clearly relatable to feeding or utilitarian uses (i.e., lammergeier, Eurasian black vulture, golden eagle, red-footed falcon, common wood pigeon, and Alpine chough). Cut, peeling, and scrape marks, as well as diagnostic fractures and a breakthrough, is observed exclusively on wings, indicating the intentional removal of large feathers, some assume this was done by Neandertals.ref, ref

On the Hatay coast of southern Turkey, a terminal pedal phalanx of a very large raptor with a notch cut into its anterior proximal end has been found in layer B at Üçağızlı Cave dated to around 29,000 years ago and beads accumulation rates for shell beads, bones, and stone tools paralleled one another through time, indicating that ornament discard followed the pulse of daily life at this site that ranges from 41,000-29,000 years ago. ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“The shaman is, above all, a connecting figure, bridging several worlds for his people, traveling between this world, the underworld, and the heavens. He transforms himself into an animal and talks with ghosts, the dead, the deities, and the ancestors. He dies and revives. He brings back knowledge from the shadow realm, thus linking his people to the spirits and places which were once mythically accessible to all.–anthropologist Barbara Meyerhoff” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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20,000 to 15,000 years ago, Bradshaw (Gwion Gwion) rock art or rock paintings, Bradshaw figures are terms used to describe one of the two major regional traditions of rock art found in the north-west Kimberley region of Western Australia. Aboriginal names, the most common of which are Gwion Gwion or Giro Giro. The art consists primarily of human figures ornamented with accessories such as bags, tassels, and headdresses. That unlike with Wandjina art, Aboriginal people showed little interest in the Bradshaw paintings, are said to represent depictions of bush spirits or D’imi, and as no animals, but only human-shaped figures are presented they can be presumed as probably representing spirits or those in dance communing with or as a spirit. ref

It is thought that they can be separated into two individual styles of ‘Bradshaw paintings’, which he named ‘Tassel’ and ‘Sash’ for dominant clothing features. He also identified two variants, which he named ‘Elegant Action figures’ and ‘Clothes Peg figures’. Tassel style figures are the earliest, most detailed and largest a date of around 19,300 years ago seems around the oldest. Sash style figures are depicted as more robust and the accouterments depicted are slightly different: a three-pointed sash or bags attached to the figures belts begin to be shown. ref

Elegant Action Figures seem quite different from the Tassel and Sash figures, which are almost always shown running, kneeling or hunting with multi-barbed spears and boomerangs. Stylistically, they are believed to fall between the sash and Clothes Peg Figures. Clothes Peg Figures also referred to as Straight Part Figures are depicted in a stationary pose and painted with red pigment. The material culture depicted with these figures includes multi-barbed spears, spear-throwers, and woven bags. This is the most recent style. The anatomical detail common in the earlier styles is missing, and many of the images are shown in aggressive stances. ref

At least one panel shows a battle with opponents arrayed in ranks opposite each other. suggested an age of 15,000 to 22,000 years for the paintings. Around 15,000 years ago, the archaeological record shows that Aboriginals in the Kimberleys began using stone points in place of multi-barbed spears, but there is no record of this change of technology in the Bradshaw paintings. When the Kimberley region was first occupied circa 40,000 years ago, the region consisted of open tropical forest and woodlands. During the glacial maximum, 25,000 to 15,000 years ago, the sea level was some 460 ft below its present level, with the coastline extending around 250 miles further to the north-west. Australia thus was connected to New Guinea, and the Kimberley was separated from Southeast Asia (Wallacea) by a strait approximately 56 miles wide. Rainfall decreased by 40% to 50% depending on the region. After around 10,000 years of stable climatic conditions, temperatures began cooling and winds became stronger, leading to the beginning of an ice-age.ref

When the Kimberley region was first occupied circa 40,000 years ago, the region consisted of open tropical forest and woodlands. An Aboriginal Australian genome reveals separate human dispersals into Asia. are descendants of an early human dispersal into eastern Asia,  separate from the one that gave rise 25,000 to 38,000 years ago prior to the divergence of Native Americans from modern Asian ancestors. The dingo reached Australia about 4,000 years ago, indirectly implying human contact, which some have linked to changes in language and stone tool technology to suggest substantial cultural changes at the same time. During the glacial maximum, 25,000 to 15,000 years ago, the sea level was some 460 ft below its present level, with the coastline extending around 250 miles further to the north-west. Australia thus was connected to New Guinea, and the Kimberley was separated from Southeast Asia (Wallacea) by a strait approximately 56 miles wide. Rainfall decreased by 40% to 50% depending on the region. After around 10,000 years of stable climatic conditions, temperatures began cooling and winds became stronger, leading to the beginning of an ice-age. ref, ref

Approximately 4,000 years ago there in the emergence of Wandjina art in the Kimberley region northernmost part of Western Australia, which is thought to have been colonized at least by about 41,000 years ago. The stories of the Wandjina and the artwork depicting them remain important to the Mowanjum Community of Indigenous people. The broad-stroke artwork of the Wandjina rock art dates around 3800–4000 years ago. The emergence of this art style follows the end of a millennium-long drought that gave way to a wetter climate characterized by regular monsoons. The Wandjina paintings have common colors of black, red and yellow on a white background. The spirits are depicted alone or in groups, vertically or horizontally depending on the dimensions of the rock, and are sometimes depicted with figures and objects like the Rainbow Serpent or yams. Common composition is with large upper bodies and heads that show eyes and nose, but typically no mouth. Two explanations have been given for this: they are so powerful they do not require speech and if they had mouths, the rain would never cease. Around the heads of Wandjina are lines or blocks of color, depicting lighting coming out of transparent helmets.ref, ref

Up to 46% of Aboriginal Australian males carried either basal C* (C-M130*), C1b2b* (C-M347*) or C1b2b1 (C-M210), before contact with and significant immigration by Europeans. The Aboriginal Australian genome holds Haplogroup C DNA Possible time of origin 53,000 years ago and a Possible place of origin South Asia with the highest diversity is observed in Southeast Asia, and its northward expansion in East Asia started approximately 40,000 years ago. One variation of note of the many is C-V20 (C1a2; previously C6) is found at low frequencies amongst Southern Europeans. Such as the 35,000-year-old remains of a hunter-gatherer from the Goyet Caves (Namur, Belgium) and another dating to around 30,000-year-old remains of a hunter-gatherer from Dolni Vestonice (Moravia, Czech Republic) were found with this haplogroup.ref

20,000 to 15,000 years ago, Bradshaw (Gwion Gwion) rock art or rock paintings, Bradshaw figures are terms used to describe one of the two major regional traditions of rock art found in the north-west Kimberley region of Western Australia. Aboriginal names, the most common of which are Gwion Gwion or Giro Giro. The art consists primarily of human figures ornamented with accessories such as bags, tassels, and headdresses. That unlike with Wandjina art, Aboriginal people showed little interest in the Bradshaw paintings, are said to represent depictions of bush spirits or D’imi, and as no animals, but only human-shaped figures are presented they can be presumed as probably representing spirits or those in dance communing with or as a spirit.

It is thought that they can be separated into two individual styles of ‘Bradshaw paintings’, which he named ‘Tassel’ and ‘Sash’ for dominant clothing features. He also identified two variants, which he named ‘Elegant Action figures’ and ‘Clothes Peg figures’. Tassel style figures are the earliest, most detailed and largest a date of around 19,300 years ago seems around the oldest. Sash style figures are depicted as more robust and the accouterments depicted are slightly different: a three-pointed sash or bags attached to the figures belts begin to be shown.

Elegant Action Figures seem quite different from the Tassel and Sash figures, which are almost always shown running, kneeling or hunting with multi-barbed spears and boomerangs. Stylistically, they are believed to fall between the sash and Clothes Peg Figures. Clothes Peg Figures also referred to as Straight Part Figures are depicted in a stationary pose and painted with red pigment. The material culture depicted with these figures includes multi-barbed spears, spear-throwers, and woven bags. This is the most recent style. The anatomical detail common in the earlier styles is missing, and many of the images are shown in aggressive stances.

At least one panel shows a battle with opponents arrayed in ranks opposite each other. suggested an age of 15,000 to 22,000 years for the paintings. Around 15,000 years ago, the archaeological record shows that Aboriginals in the Kimberleys began using stone points in place of multi-barbed spears, but there is no record of this change of technology in the Bradshaw paintings. When the Kimberley region was first occupied circa 40,000 years ago, the region consisted of open tropical forest and woodlands. During the glacial maximum, 25,000 to 15,000 years ago, the sea level was some 460 ft below its present level, with the coastline extending around 250 miles further to the north-west. Australia thus was connected to New Guinea, and the Kimberley was separated from Southeast Asia (Wallacea) by a strait approximately 56 miles wide. Rainfall decreased by 40% to 50% depending on the region. After around 10,000 years of stable climatic conditions, temperatures began cooling and winds became stronger, leading to the beginning of an ice-age. ref

When the Kimberley region was first occupied circa 40,000 years ago, the region consisted of open tropical forest and woodlands. An Aboriginal Australian genome reveals separate human dispersals into Asia. are descendants of an early human dispersal into eastern Asia,  separate from the one that gave rise 25,000 to 38,000 years ago prior to the divergence of Native Americans from modern Asian ancestors. The dingo reached Australia about 4,000 years ago, indirectly implying human contact, which some have linked to changes in language and stone tool technology to suggest substantial cultural changes at the same time. During the glacial maximum, 25,000 to 15,000 years ago, the sea level was some 460 ft below its present level, with the coastline extending around 250 miles further to the north-west. Australia thus was connected to New Guinea, and the Kimberley was separated from Southeast Asia (Wallacea) by a strait approximately 56 miles wide. Rainfall decreased by 40% to 50% depending on the region. After around 10,000 years of stable climatic conditions, temperatures began cooling and winds became stronger, leading to the beginning of an ice-age. ref, ref

Approximately 4,000 years ago there in the emergence of Wandjina art in the Kimberley region northernmost part of Western Australia, which is thought to have been colonized at least by about 41,000 years ago. The stories of the Wandjina and the artwork depicting them remain important to the Mowanjum Community of Indigenous people. The broad-stroke artwork of the Wandjina rock art dates around 3800–4000 years ago. The emergence of this art style follows the end of a millennium-long drought that gave way to a wetter climate characterized by regular monsoons. The Wandjina paintings have common colors of black, red and yellow on a white background. The spirits are depicted alone or in groups, vertically or horizontally depending on the dimensions of the rock, and are sometimes depicted with figures and objects like the Rainbow Serpent or yams. Common composition is with large upper bodies and heads that show eyes and nose, but typically no mouth. Two explanations have been given for this: they are so powerful they do not require speech and if they had mouths, the rain would never cease. Around the heads of Wandjina are lines or blocks of color, depicting lighting coming out of transparent helmets.ref, ref

Up to 46% of Aboriginal Australian males carried either basal C* (C-M130*), C1b2b* (C-M347*) or C1b2b1 (C-M210), before contact with and significant immigration by Europeans. The Aboriginal Australian genome holds Haplogroup C DNA Possible time of origin 53,000 years ago and a Possible place of origin South Asia with the highest diversity is observed in Southeast Asia, and its northward expansion in East Asia started approximately 40,000 years ago. One variation of note of the many is C-V20 (C1a2; previously C6) is found at low frequencies amongst Southern Europeans. Such as the 35,000-year-old remains of a hunter-gatherer from the Goyet Caves (Namur, Belgium) and another dating to around 30,000-year-old remains of a hunter-gatherer from Dolni Vestonice (Moravia, Czech Republic) were found with this haplogroup. ref

18,000 and 22,000 years old numerous painted rock fragments could be Bushman Art from Southern Africa, where is surmised that the earliest existing Bushman paintings are thought to go back at least 10,000 years ago or more. Bushman paintings and engravings are found in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe. The art is extremely varied in subject matter and differs from region to region. ref

12,000 years ago, Bubalus Period is the earliest known period of Saharan rock art. Most of the engravings from this period have been dated between 12,000 to 9,000 years ago. There are no images of pottery, cattle, or crops, which means that these carvings were most likely produced by a hunter-gatherer culture and not by a pastoralist culture, although the two may have existed simultaneously during a brief period of time. The majority of the rock engravings in the Large Wild Fauna style are located in what is known as the Maghreb region of the Sahara, encompassing a wide area spanning across Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia – specifically, the Fezzan region of southwestern Libya. During a period of time when the desert was well-watered and fertile, this region was populated by nomadic groups known today as the Berbers (from the Greek “barbarian,” a term they used for all foreigners). Humans are normally shown as tiny figures dwarfed by the immensity of these animals and are often shown holding boomerangs or throwing sticks, clubs, axes or bows. Depictions of hippo, crocodile and even fish are fairly common during this period but are not found in later periods of Saharan art. ref, ref

12,000 – 10,000 years old Shamanistic Art in a Remote Cave in Egypt

9,000 years ago, Ancestral Sandawe Art (Eastern Africa) includes early, fairly large, naturalistic images of animals with occasional geometric patterns found mainly in central Tanzania’s Kondoa Province at the western edge of the Great Rift Valley. The later art includes images depict people drawn wearing skirts with strange hairstyles and/or headdresses as well as body decoration and are frequently shown holding bows and arrows. Animals depicted are apparently involved in hunting and domestic scenes. ref

There is a debate concerning the geographical origins of Haplogroup M Ancestor L3 Possible place of origin in South Asia, Southeast Asia, or Northeast Africa and its sibling most recent common ancestor date than some subclades of haplogroup N such as haplogroup R. Both lineages are thought to have been the main surviving lineages involved in the out of Africa migration (or migrations) because all indigenous lineages found outside Africa belong to haplogroup M or haplogroup N. The presence of M1 in Africa is the result of a back-migration from Asia which occurred sometime after the Out of Africa migration 40,000 years ago. ref

Mitochondrial lineage M1 traces an early human backflow to Africa, an age of the African haplogroup M1 is younger than those for other M Asiatic clades. In contradiction to the hypothesis of an eastern Africa origin for modern human expansions out of Africa, the most ancestral M1 lineages have been found in Northwest Africa and in the Near East, instead of in East Africa. The M1 geographic distribution and the relative ages of its different subclades clearly correlate with those of haplogroup U6, for which a Eurasian ancestor has been demonstrated. M1, or its ancestor, had an Asiatic origin. The earliest M1 expansion into Africa occurred in northwestern instead of eastern areas; this early spread reached the Iberian Peninsula even affecting the Basques. The majority of the M1a lineages found outside and inside Africa had a more recent eastern Africa origin. Both western and eastern M1 lineages participated in the Neolithic colonization of the Sahara. The striking parallelism between subclade ages and geographic distribution of M1 and its North African U6 counterpart strongly reinforces this scenario. ref

It seems that radiation in Africa of Y-chromosome M168 derived lineages and L3 mtDNA lineages preceded the out-of-Africa expansion. Two possible out-of-Africa routes have been proposed: A southern coastal route bordering the Read Sea and a Eurasian continental route through the Levant. Based on mitochondrial phylogeography it was proposed that M lineages expanded with the coastal route to southern Asia and Oceania and N lineages by the continental route to Eurasia. However, the posterior detection of primitive N lineages are also seen in southern areas as India and Australia. Another related disjunctive yet not settled is whether M and N (and its main branch R) arose inside or outside Africa. The detection of a basal branch of haplogroup M in Africa (M1) gave support to the idea that haplogroup M originated in eastern Africa and was carried towards Asia with the out-of-Africa expansion. ref, ref

The alternative hypothesis, that haplogroup M1 could trace a posterior backflow to Africa from Asia, considered by several authors has not yet gained experimental support because, until now, no ancestral M1 lineages have been found outside Africa. According to this theory, anatomically modern humans carrying ancestral haplogroup L3 lineages were involved in the Out of Africa migration from East Africa into Asia. Somewhere in Asia, the ancestral L3 lineages gave rise to haplogroups M and N. The ancestral L3 lineages were then lost by genetic drift as they are infrequent outside Africa. The hypothesis of Asia as the place of origin of macrohaplogroup M is supported by the following:

1. The highest frequencies worldwide of macrohaplogroup M are observed in Asia, specifically in Bangladesh, China, India, Japan, Nepal, and Tibet, where frequencies range from 60%-80%. The total frequency of M subclades is even higher in some populations of Siberia or the Americas, but these small populations tend to exhibit strong genetic drift effects, and often their geographical neighbors exhibit very different frequencies.
2. Deep time depth >50,000 years of western, central, southern and eastern Indian haplogroups M2, M38, M54, M58, M33, M6, M61, M62 and the distribution of macrohaplogroup M, do not rule out the possibility of macrohaplogroup M arising in Indian population.
3. With the exception of the African specific M1, India has several M lineages that emerged directly from the root of haplogroup M.
4. Only two subclades of haplogroup M, M1, and M23, are found in Africa, whereas numerous subclades are found outside Africa (with some discussion possible only about sub-clade M1, concerning which see below).
5. Specifically concerning M1

• Haplogroup M1 has a restricted geographic distribution in Africa, being found mainly in North Africans and East Africa at low or moderate frequencies. If M had originated in Africa around before the Out of Africa migration, it would be expected to have a more widespread distribution
• According to Gonzalez et al. 2007, M1 appears to have expanded relatively recently. In this study, M1 had a younger coalescence age than the Asian-exclusive M lineages.
• The geographic distribution of M1 in Africa is predominantly North African/supra-equatorial and is largely confined to Afro-Asiatic speakers, which is inconsistent with the Sub-Saharan distribution of sub-clades of haplogroups L3 and L2that have similar time depths.
• One of the basal lineages of M1 lineages has been found in Northwest Africa and in the Near East but is absent in East Africa.
• M1 is not restricted to Africa. It is relatively common in the Mediterranean, peaking in Iberia. M1 also enjoys a well-established presence in the Middle East, from the South of the Arabian Peninsula to Anatolia and from the Levant to Iran. In addition, M1 haplotypes have occasionally been observed in the Caucasus and the Trans Caucasus, and without any accompanying L lineages. M1 has also been detected in Central Asia, seemingly reaching as far as Tibet.
• The fact that the M1 sub-clade of macrohaplogroup M has a coalescence age which overlaps with that of haplogroup U6 (a Eurasian haplogroup whose presence in Africa is due to a back-migration from West Asia) and the distribution of U6 in Africa is also restricted to the same North African and Horn African populations as M1 supports the scenario that M1 and U6 were part of the same population expansion from Asia to Africa.
• The timing of the proposed migration of M1 and U6-carrying peoples from West Asia to Africa (between 40,000 to 45,000 ybp) is also supported by the fact that it coincides with changes in climatic conditions that reduced the desert areas of North Africa, thereby rendering the region more accessible to entry from the Levant. This climatic change also temporally overlaps with the peopling of Europe by populations bearing haplogroup U5, the European sister clade of haplogroup U6. ref, ref

To shed light on this haplogroup M1 clade represents the main branches of M1 with the most probable age and origin of this clade involves secondary expansions in Africa and Eurasia. When Indian M30 is compared to the rare M sequence previously detected in two Palestinians, it is evident that it belongs to the Indian super-clade M4’30, as it shares the basal mutation 12007. More specifically it belongs to the M30 branch because it also has transition 15431. M30 has a broad geographic, ethnic and linguistic range in India. It has been detected in northern and southern India, in Australoid and Caucasoids, and in Dravid and Indo-European speakers. So, instead of an autochthonous Near East M lineage, its presence in Palestine is probably due to a recent gene flow from India. It is surprising that none of the three M1c complete sequences have an eastern Africa ancestry: one (Jor771) has a Levantine origin and the other two belong to West sub-Saharan Africa (SER558) and West Mediterranean (VAL1881) areas. ref

The latter two sequences conform a new M1c1 subclade. In relation to the M1abde cluster, it is also surprising that one lineage that directly branched out from the root (BER957) has a northwestern, not eastern, Berber ancestry. All the rest of lineages shared the 813 transition forming the M1abd cluster. Again, an isolate offshoot of Basque ancestry (BASV82) sprouts from its root. Subclade M1b restricted to East Africans was identified. M1a is the most prominent clade in eastern Africa. However, its expansion occurred later than the other M1 branches as M1a2 can testify to a posterior spread of M1a to western Asia. ref

17,200 to 31,700 years ago sees the origin of Haplogroup Q-M242, with some of the highest frequencies seen in the Siberian indigenous people the Kets (93.8%), Selkups (66.4%), who are a Samoyedic ethnic group native to Northern Siberia and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The Y-chromosome haplogroup Q has three major branches: Q1, Q2, and Q3. Q1 is found in both Asia and the Americas where it accounts for about 90% of indigenous Native American Y-chromosomes; Q2 is found in North and Central Asia, but little is known about the third branch, Q3, also named Q1b-L275. Here, we combined the efforts of population geneticists and genetic genealogists to use the potential of full Y-chromosome sequencing for reconstructing haplogroup Q3 phylogeography and suggest possible linkages to events in population history. Haplogroup Q3-L275, derived from the oldest known split within Eurasian/American haplogroup Q, most likely occurred in West or Central Asia in the Upper Paleolithic period. During the Mesolithic and Neolithic epochs, Q3 remained a minor component of the West Asian Y-chromosome pool and gave rise to five branches (Q3a to Q3e), which spread across West, Central and parts of South Asia. Around 3–4 millennia ago (Bronze Age), the Q3a branch underwent a rapid expansion, splitting into seven branches, some of which entered Europe. Distribution of Q-M242 demonstrated, in agreement with the previous studies, the haplogroup’s presence throughout Asia and the Americas with frequency peaks in America and Central Siberia.

There are three major trunks: Q1, Q2, and Q3. The first two trunks split into multiple branches, some of which are known to be purely Asian, while others are both Asian and (extant or extinct) American and references therein).  Haplogroup Q3-L275 is confined to West Asia and neighboring parts of Central and South Asia – mainly Pakistan, West India, and up to 7% in Iran. The map based on genealogical project data also reveals the presence of haplogroup Q3-L275 in West Asia and neighboring areas, with a maximum frequency in Pakistan, but also throughout Europe. Q-M242 is the predominant Y-DNA haplogroup among Native Americans and several peoples of Central Asia and Northern Siberia. It is also the predominant Y-DNA of the Akha tribe in northern Thailand and the Dayak people of Indonesia, who are the native people of Borneo.

The Dayak In the past, were feared for their headhunting practices (the ritual is also known as Ngayau by the Dayaks) and the origin of this was believed to be meeting one of the mourning rules given to them by a spirit in their mainly, animist as well as somewhat totemism beliefs. Haplogroup Q3-L275 represents the oldest known split within Eurasian/American haplogroup Q, and most likely occurred in West or Central Asia in the Upper Paleolithic period. Haplogroup Q is thought to have originated in Central Asia or North Asia during of shortly after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 26,000 to 19,000 years ago). Q descends from haplogroup P, which is also the ancestor of haplogroups R1a and R1b. Haplogroup Q quickly split into two main branches: Q1a and Q1b. The northern Q1a tribes expanded over Siberia as the climate warmed up after the LGM. Some Q1a crossed the still frozen Bering Strait to the American continent some time between 16,500 and 13,000 years ago. Q1b tribes stayed in Central Asia and later migrated south towards the Middle East.

• Q1a (L472, MEH2) : found among the Koryaks of eastern Siberia
  • Q1a1 (F1096)
    • Q1a1a (F746)
      • Q1a1a1 (M120) : observed in Mongolia, Japan and India
    • Q1a1b (M25) : observed in Mongolia, Siberia, northern India, the Middle East, Italy and Ireland
      • Q1a1b1 (L712): found in Central & Eastern Europe (probably Hunnic and/or Mongolian)
        • Q1a1b1a (L713)
  • Q1a2 (L56, M346): found in Kazakhstan, Russia, Armenia and Hungary
    • Q1a2a (L53): found among the Mongols
      • Q1a2a1 (L54)
        • Q1a2a1a (CTS11969)
        • Q1a2a1a1 (M3): the main subclade of Native Americans
        • Q1a2a1a2 (L804): found in Germany, Scandinavia and Britain
        • Q1a2a1a2a (L807): observed in Britain
        • Q1a2a1b (Z780): found among Native Americans, notably in Mexico
        • Q1a2a1c (L330): the main subclade of the Mongols, also found among the Kazakhs and Uzbeks, as well as in Ukraine, Turkey and Greece (probably Mongolian and Turkic)
    • Q1a2b (L940): found in Central Asia, Afghanistan, India, Russia, Georgia, Hungary, Poland and Germany
      • Q1a2b1 (L527): found almost exclusively in Scandinavia and places settled by the Vikings
      • Q1a2b2 (L938): observed in Anatolia, Lithuania, Britain and Portugal
        • Q1a2b2a (L939): observed in Britain
    • Q1a2c (M323)
• Q1b (L275): found among the Tatars of Russia, in Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan
  • Q1b1 (M378): observed in Kazakhstan, India and Germany
    • Q1b1a (L245): found in the Middle East, among the Jews, in Central Europe, and in Sicily
      • Q1b1a1 (L272.1): found in Sicily (probably Phoenician) ref, ref, ref,ref, ref, ref

Y-HG Q in Indian population, exhibits at 2.38% of Y-HG Q individuals in India with an ancestral state at M120, M25, M3 and M346 markers, indicating an absence of already known Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 sub-haplogroups. An ancestral state Q* and a novel sub-branch Q5, not reported elsewhere, in Indian subcontinent, though in low frequency. A novel subgroup Q4 was identified recently which is also restricted to Indian subcontinent. The most plausible explanation for these observations could be an ancestral migration of individuals bearing ancestral lineage Q* to Indian subcontinent followed by an autochthonous differentiation to Q4 and Q5 sublineages later on. However, other explanations of, either the presence of both the sub-haplogroups (Q4 and Q5) in ancestral migrants or recent migrations from central Asia, cannot be ruled out till the distribution and diversity of these subgroups is explored extensively in Central Asia and other regions. ref

By 20,000 years ago, a number of novel cultural developments are detectable, particularly in the Island Melanesian and this pattern of episodic change intensifies in the Holocene (Green 2003). There are competing colonization scenarios for Pleistocene Australia, with some indication of more fluid population movements in the interior. In New Guinea-Island Melanesia, one language family (a branch of Austronesian) was introduced from the west only approximately 3,500 years ago. The hundreds of other heterogeneous languages spoken there are referred to as non-Austronesian or Papuan and fall into more than 20 different families, which are not demonstrably related. The largest of these is the Trans-New Guinea Phylum, which has been reconstructed for all the languages of the central cordillera of New Guinea or approximately 70% of the languages of the interior. It is thought to be at least 8,000–12,000 years old. The Aboriginal Australian languages are less diverse. ref, ref

The one major family, Pama-Nyungan, that may be derived from a single protolanguage spoken approximately 10,000 years ago includes all the Australian languages outside the northwest, and one speculation associated it with the spread of the Small-Tool Tradition. In sum, the linguistic and archaeological data suggest little to no contact between the two regions subsequent to their initial settlement, with considerably more inland mobility in Australia than within New Guinea. Haplogroups P and Q were especially common in New Guinea-Island Melanesia, and other variants that belong to P were also found in Australia (B̂, Ĥ and Î of Huoponen et al. 2001; 1b, 1c, and 1d). haplogroup Q in its expanded definition is complex, with at least two major starlike branches and occurs primarily in populations in New Guinea-Island Melanesia. ref, ref

It has not been found in Australia. P1 and Q1, which have their greatest diversities in New Guinea, have approximately the same coalescence times, while that of the Island Melanesian branch Q2 is smaller (younger). The accepted schematic relationships of P and Q to the other mtDNA branches of the African root, L3, are shown in figure 1. Earlier studies indicated that these two haplogroups constituted approximately 90% of the observed mtDNA haplotypes in New Guinea. Haplogroup P branching from the African root L3 based on whole-genome sequencing. In contrast to Q, the different branches of P share only one defining mutation (15607), the terminal branches are generally very long, and only P1 from Melanesia has extensive internal branching. Q2 expanded approximately 36,000 years ago, more than 10,000 years later than Q1 and P1 at approximately 50,000 years. The distributions of P and Q do not completely overlap. Q is the more common of the two, and within New Guinea, the only place that Q has not been found is the South Coast. ref, ref

Haplogroup P is infrequent in the western half of New Guinea and very unevenly distributed through the eastern half of the island. East of New Guinea, P is rare in Island Melanesia except in certain islands of the Louisiade Archipelago off the Papuan Tip. Q2 is found primarily in certain Papuan-speaking groups of New Britain, which indicates that its origin lies in this part of Island Melanesia. In New Ireland, P and Q are both very rare, with Q2 present in low frequency in the Madak, who used to speak a Papuan language. Q1 occurs frequently in most, but not all, Papuan-speaking areas. The starlike networks of P1 and Q1 independently suggest the same ancient population expansion in New Guinea subsequent to first settlement approximately 50,000 years ago, followed by the expansion of Q2 in adjacent Island Melanesia somewhat more than 10,000 years later. ref, ref

In addition, the extremely localized distributions of specific haplotypes within the branches of Q and P are consistent with the highly restricted female movement within the region over the following millennia. The absence of Q in Australia, plus the very separate branch distributions of P in Australia and in New Guinea, indicates an almost complete (female) isolation between the two regions. The single shared haplogroup (P3) only occurs in New Guinea in a restricted southwestern region. Also, the New Guinea branch of P3 is distinctive, suggesting that its Australian connection is very old. The first female settlers of Sahul might have effectively been members of the same population, possibly even entering at one place—this cannot be ascertained—but, if that was the case, then they split into two groups shortly afterward and remained effectively isolated thereafter. ref, ref

Specific links of haplogroups P and Q to other branches within macro-haplogroups M and N remain unresolved. The best candidates for close Q relationships are some other Island Melanesian M haplogroups designated “other” in the last two tables and figures as well as the very limited M haplotypes reported in Aboriginal Australian populations. No convincing ties to other particular branches of M or N outside the Southwest Pacific have yet been presented, which means that the ancient Eurasian origins of these people remain an open question. 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). ref, ref

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 travelled 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. ref, ref

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. 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 (1750 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 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 maority 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. ref, ref

Haplogroup P also known as P-P295 and K2b2 is dated to around 35,000 years ago and the possible place of origin is possibly South East Asia/East Asia. Many ethnic groups with high frequencies of P1, also known as P-M45 and K2b2a, are located in Central Asia and Siberia: 35.4% among Tuvans, 28.3% among Altaian Kizhi, and 35% among Nivkh males. Modern South Asian populations also feature P1 at low to moderate frequencies. In South Asia it is most frequent among the Muslims of Manipur (33%), but this may be due to a very small sample size (nine individuals). It is possible that many cases of P-M45* in South Asia and Central Asia are unresolved members of subclades such as Haplogroups R2 and Q. P1 (M45) likely originated in East Asia or Southeast Asia, even though basal P1* (P1xQ, R) is now most common among individuals in Eastern Siberia and Central Asia. Both P* and its precursor, K2b, reach their highest rates among members of the Aeta (or Agta) people of Luzon in the Philippines, and; Luzon is also the only location where P*, P1 and haplogroup P2 (P-B253; K2b2b), the only other primary subclade of P*, have been found together. ref, ref

Haplogroup C is around 53,000 years old, Possible place of origin South Asia. Haplogroup C is found in ancient populations on every continent except Africa and is the predominant Y-DNA haplogroup among males belonging to many peoples indigenous to East Asia, Central Asia, Siberia, North America and Oceania. The haplogroup is also found at moderate frequencies among certain indigenous populations of South Asia and Southeast Asia as well as low frequencies among some populations of Europe. The highest diversity is observed in Southeast Asia, and its northward expansion in East Asia started approximately 40,000 years ago. Males carrying C-M130 are believed to have migrated to the Americas some 6,000-8,000 years ago and was carried by Na-Dené-speaking peoples into the northwest Pacific coast of North America. a proposal connecting Na-Dene (excluding Haida) to the Yeniseian languages of central Siberia into a Dené–Yeniseian family was published and well received by a number of linguists. It was proposed in a 2014 paper that the Na-Dene languages of North America and the Yeniseian languages of Siberia had a common origin in a language spoken in Beringia, between the two continents. ref, ref

Na-Dené (including Haida) belongs to the much broader Dené–Caucasian superfamily, which also contains the North Caucasian languages, Sino-Tibetan languages, and Yeniseian languages. Some of the links subsumed by the Dené–Caucasian proposal were suggested much earlier. Linguist Edward Sapir considered the hypothesis that the Sino-Tibetan languages are related to Na-Dené nearly a century ago. The various subtypes of Haplogroup C-M130 being found at high frequency amongst indigenous Australians, Polynesians, Vietnamese, Kazakhs, Mongolians, Manchurians, Koreans, and indigenous inhabitants of the Russian Far East; and at moderate frequencies elsewhere throughout Asia and Oceania, including India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia. Up to 46% of Aboriginal Australian males carried either basal C* (C-M130*), C1b2b* (C-M347*) or C1b2b1 (C-M210). C* (M130) was also identified in prehistoric remains, dating from 34,000 years BP, found in Russia and known as “Kostenki 14“. ref, ref

Found at low concentrations in Eastern Europe, where it may be a legacy of the invasions/migrations of the Huns, Turks and/or Mongols during the Middle Ages. Found at especially high frequencies in Buryats, Daurs, Hazaras, Itelmens, Kalmyks, Koryaks, Manchus, Mongolians, Oroqens, and Sibes, with a moderate distribution among other Tungusic peoples, Koreans, Ainus, Nivkhs, Altaians, Tuvinians, Uzbeks, Han Chinese, Tujia, Hani, and Hui. The highest frequencies of Haplogroup C-M217 are found among the populations of Mongolia and Far East Russia, where it is the modal haplogroup. ref, ref

Haplogroup C-M217 is the only variety of Haplogroup C-M130 to be found among Native Americans, among whom it reaches its highest frequency in Na-Dené populations. 35,000-year-old remains of a hunter gatherer from the Goyet Caves (Namur, Belgium) and a 30,000-year-old remains of a hunter gatherer from Dolni Vestonice (Moravia, Czech Republic) were found with this haplogroup. C-RPS4Y (now C-RPS4Y711) (xM38) Y-DNA is quite common among populations of the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara and independent East Timor: 13/31 = 41.9% Lembata, 16/71 = 22.5% Flores, 5/43 = 11.6% Solor, 10/96 = 10.4% Adonara, 3/39 = 7.7% East Timor, 1/26 = 3.8% Alor, 1/38 = 2.6% Pantar. All C-RPS4Y(xM38) individuals except the singleton from Alor were described as Austronesian speakers. ref, ref

Haplogroup C (mtDNA), around 23,900 years ago with a possible place of origin is Central Asia. This DNA is believed to have arisen somewhere between the Caspian Sea and Lake Baikal some 24,000 years BCE. It is a descendant of the haplogroup M. While mtDNA subclade C1f now seemingly extinct was found in remains of 3 people found in north-western Russia and dated to 7,500 years ago and the Aconcagua mummy high altitude burial identified its mtDNA lineage belongs to the subclade C1bi tied to a seven-year-old boy, dated to around 500 years ago at 17,400 ft) on Aconcagua in Mendoza, Argentina. ref

The main Y-DNA lineage among Polynesians is C2a1 (P33), not found outside Polynesia senso stricto but reaching there frequencies of 63-90% (excepted Tonga where it’s only 33%). This is a clear founder effect in this population. C2a1 is clearly derived from a Melanesian superset C2a (M208) still found as C2a(xC2a1) at low frequencies in Samoa (8%) and Tahiti (4%) but also in Vanuatu (2%) and coastal Papua (13%). C2a establishes a probably genetic link of Polynesians with Lapita culture and Melanesian peoples in general. The other major Polynesian haplogroup is O3a2 (P201), which would seem to have originated in Philippines and maybe arrived there via Micronesia. Melanesian populations also sport some lineages that are not common among other Oceanic-speaker peoples, notably K, M, and S. However they are irregularly shared with Wallacea (Eastern Indonesia, East Timor). Like C2 these lineages coalesced in the region soon after colonization by Homo sapiens.

In the motherly side of things genetic, the absolutely dominant mtDNA lineage among Polynesians (the so-called Polynesian motif) is B4a1a1, which ultimately stems from East or rather SE Asia. However, it probably arrived to the region (again) via Melanesia, albeit maybe somewhat tangentially. Haplogroup B is believed to have arisen in Asia some 50,000 years before present. Its ancestral haplogroup was haplogroup R. The greatest variety of haplogroup B is in China. It is therefore likely that it underwent its earliest diversification in mainland East or South East Asia. A subclade of B4b (which is sometimes labeled B2) is one of five haplogroups found among the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the others being A, C, D, and X. Because the migration to the Americas by the ancestors of indigenous Americans is generally believed to have been from northeastern Siberia via Beringia, it is surprising that Haplogroup B and Haplogroup X have not been found in Paleo-Siberian tribes of northeastern Siberia.

However, Haplogroup B has been found among Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic populations of Siberia, such as Tuvans, Altays, Shors, Khakassians, Yakuts, Buryats, Mongols, Negidals, and Evenks. This haplogroup is also found among populations in China, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Korea, Laos, Madagascar, Malaysia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Mongolia, the Philippines, Polynesia, Taiwan, Thailand, Tibet, and Vietnam. ref, ref

Although haplogroup B, in general, has been found in many Siberian population samples, the subclade that is phylogenetically closest to American B2, namely B4b1, has been found mainly in populations of southern China and Southeast Asia, especially Filipinos and Austronesian speakers of eastern Indonesia (approx. 8%) and the aborigines of Taiwan and Hainan (approx. 7%). However, B4b1 has been observed in populations as far north as Turochak and Choya districts in the north of Altai Republic (3/72 = 4.2% Tubalar), Miyazaki and Tokyo, Japan (approx. 3%), South Korea (4/185 = 2.2%), Tuva (1/95 = 1.1% Tuvan), and Hulunbuir(1/149 = 0.7% Barghut). ref, ref

N1 is the only sub-clade of haplogroup N that has been observed in Africa. However, N1a is the only one in East Africa: this haplogroup is even younger and is not restricted to Africa, N1a has also been detected in Southern Siberia and was found in a 2,500-year-old Scytho-Siberian burial in the Altai region. The mitochondrial DNA variation in isolated “relict” populations in southeast Asia supports the view that there was only a single dispersal from Africa. The distribution of the earliest branches within haplogroups M, N, and R across Eurasia and Oceania provides additional evidence for a three-founder-mtDNA scenario and a single migration route out of Africa. ref, ref

These findings also highlight the importance of the Indian subcontinent in the early genetic history of human settlement and expansion. Therefore, N’s history is similar to M and R which have their most probably origin in South Asia. Haplogroup N is the ancestral haplogroup to almost all clades today distributed in Europe and Oceania, as well as many found in Asia and the Americas. It is believed to have arisen at a similar time to haplogroup M. Haplogroup N subclades like haplogroup U6 are also found at high to low frequencies in the Northwest and northeast Africa due to a back migration from Europe or Asia during the Paleolithic ca. 46,000 ybp, the estimated age of the basal U6* clade. The haplogroup N descendant lineage U6 has been found among Iberomaurusian specimens at the Taforalt site, which date from the Epipaleolithic. The N1b subclade has been observed in an individual belonging to the Mesolithic Natufian culture. Additionally, haplogroup N has been found among ancient Egyptian mummies excavated at the Abusir el-Meleq archaeological site in Middle Egypt, which date from the Pre-Ptolemaic/late New Kingdom, Ptolemaic, and Roman periods. ref, ref

The rare basal haplogroup N* has been found among fossils belonging to the Cardial and Epicardial culture (Cardium pottery) and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. Basal N* now occurs at its highest frequencies among the Soqotri (24.3%). And speaking of the Sowotri people, most of them belong to the paternal haplogroup J, bearing the basal J*(xJ1,J2) clade at its highest frequencies (71.4%). The remaining individuals mainly carry the J1 subclade (14.3%). Haplogroup J it is the next most common mtDNA lineages borne by Soqotri individuals after haplogroup N are the haplogroups J (9.2% J*; 3.1 J1b), T (7.7% T2; 1.2% T*), L3 (4.3% L3*), H (3.1%), and R (1.2 R*). Undifferentiated haplogroup N is especially common in the Horn of Africa, constituting around 20% of maternal lineages among Somalis. It is also found at low frequencies among Algerians and Reguibate Sahrawi. ref, ref

• Haplogroup N1’5
  • Haplogroup N1 – found in West Eurasia.
    • Haplogroup N1b – found in Middle East, Egypt (Gurna), Caucasus and Europe. Also found among the Natufians.
    • N1a’c’d’e’I
      • Haplogroup N1c – Northern Saudi Arabia, Turkey 
      • N1a’d’e’I
        • Haplogroup N1d – India
        • N1a’e’I
        • Haplogroup N1a – Arabian Peninsula and Northeast Africa. Found also in Central Asia and Southern Siberia.
        • N1e’I
        • Haplogroup N1e – found in Balochs, Burushos, and Buryats
        • Haplogroup I – West Eurasia and South Asia.
  • Haplogroup N5 – found in India.
• Haplogroup N2
  • Haplogroup N2a – small clade found in West Europe.
  • Haplogroup W – found in Western Eurasia and South Asia
• Haplogroup N8 – found in China.
• Haplogroup N9 – found in Far East.
  • Haplogroup N9a – East Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia.
  • Haplogroup N9b – found in Japan and the lower basin of the Amur River.
  • Haplogroup Y – found especially among Nivkhs, Ulchs, Negidals, Ainus, and the population of Nias Island, with a moderate frequency among other Tungusic peoples, Koreans, Mongols, Koryaks, Itelmens, Chinese, Japanese, Tajiks, Island Southeast Asians (including Taiwanese aborigines), and some Turkic peoples
• Haplogroup N10 – found in China and Southeast Asia.
• Haplogroup N11 – found in China and the Philippines.
• Haplogroup O or N12- found among indigenous Australians and the Floresians of Indonesia.
• Haplogroup N13 – indigenous Australians
• Haplogroup N14 – indigenous Australians
• Haplogroup N21 – In ethnic Malays from Malaysia and Indonesia.
• Haplogroup N22 – Southeast Asia and Japan
• Haplogroup A – found in Central and East Asia, as well as among Native Americans.
• Haplogroup S – extended among indigenous Australians
• Haplogroup X – found most often in Western Eurasia, but also present in the Americas.
  • Haplogroup X1 – found primarily in North Africa as well as in some populations of the Levant, notably among the Druze
  • Haplogroup X2 – found in Western Eurasia, Siberia and among Native Americans
• Haplogroup R – a very extended and diversified macro-haplogroup.
• Additionally, there are some unnamed N* lineages in South Asia, among indigenous Australians and the Ket people of central Siberia. ref, ref

(newscientist.com) – “The moment she flipped the first one, she knew the trip had been worthwhile. The X and straight lines were symbols she had seen together and separately on various cave walls. Now here they were, with the X sandwiched between two lines to form a compound character. As she turned each tooth over, more and more decorations were revealed. In the end, 48 were etched with single signs or combinations, many of which were also found in caves. Whether or not the symbols are actually writing depends on what you mean by “writing”, says d’Errico. Strictly speaking, a full system must encode all of human speech, ruling the Stone Age signs out. 

But if you take it to mean a system to encode and transmit information, then it’s possible to see the symbols as early steps in the development of writing. That said, cracking the prehistoric code (see “What do they mean?“) may prove impossible. “Something we call a square, to an Australian Aborigine, might represent a well,” says Clottes. For d’Errico, we will never understand the meaning of the symbols without also considering the animal depictions they are so often associated with. 

“It is clear that the two make sense together,” he says. Similarly, cuneiform is composed of pictograms and counting tallies. A ration, for instance, is represented by a bowl and human head, followed by lines to denote quantity. Von Petzinger points out another reason to believe the symbols are special. “The ability to realistically draw a horse or mammoth is totally impressive,” she says. “But anybody can draw a square, right? To draw these signs you are not relying on people who are artistically gifted.” In a sense, the humble nature of such shapes makes them more universally accessible – an important feature for an effective communication system. 

“There’s a broader possibility for what they could be used for, and who was using them.” More than anything, she believes the invention of the first code represents a complete shift in how our ancestors shared information. For the first time, they no longer had to be in the same place at the same time to communicate with each other, and information could survive its owners. The quest is far from over. Von Petzinger plans to expand her Stone Age dictionary by adding in the wealth of signs on portable objects, in caves on other continents and maybe even those found beneath the waves (see “Diving for art“). 

“We only have part of the picture now. We are on the cusp of an exciting time.” What do they mean? Geometric marks left alongside murals of animals have attracted the curiosity and scrutiny of archaeologists for decades, although it’s only recently that one researcher, Genevieve von Petzinger, has begun systematically cataloguing them all into a searchable database to try to determine their significance (see main story). For French prehistorian Henri Breuil, who studied cave art in the early 20th century, the paintings and engravings were all about hunting and magic. In the abstract symbols, he saw representations of traps and weapons – meanings that were intrinsically linked to the larger paintings. In the 1960s, the French archaeologist André Leroi-Gourhan declared that lines and hooks were male signs, whereas ovals and triangles were female. Some of this interpretation has stuck. 

Circles and inverted triangles are still often cited in the literature as representations of the vulva. It is worth noting that many of the earlier scholars studying cave art were men, which may have led to gender biases in their interpretations. “It’s interesting that it was predominantly male archaeologists doing this work early on, and there were a whole lot of vulvas being identified everywhere. This could have been a product of the times, but then again, many cultures do place importance on fertility,” says von Petzinger. Later, South African archaeologist David Lewis-Williams proposed a neuropsychological interpretation for some symbols. 

Like many of his peers, Lewis-Williams believes that at least some Stone Age art was made during or after hallucinogenic trips, perhaps as part of shamanic rituals. If so, the symbols could simply be literal representations of hallucinations. Some studies suggest that drugs and migraines can both provoke linear and spiral patterns, not unlike those seen in ice age art. But the sad truth is that without a time machine, we may never really know what our ancestors were communicating with these signs. Diving for art? Some of the most stunning cave art in Europe was only discovered in 1985, when divers found the mouth of the Cosquer cave 37 metres below the Mediterranean coastline near Marseilles in southern France. 

Its entrance had been submerged as sea levels rose after the last ice age. Chances are, other similar caves are waiting to be discovered. So von Petzinger has teamed up with David Lang of OpenROV in Berkeley, California, which makes low-cost, underwater robots. Next year, they plan to use them to hunt for submerged cave entrances off Spain’s north coast. The region is rich in painted caves, many close to the shoreline, so it seems likely that others could be hiding below the waves. If they find any, the pair will send in the remote-controlled mini-submarines, armed with cameras, to safely explore the new sites.” ref

40,000 to 50,000 years ago, the Emergence of Norm Violations

Around 50,000 to 40,000 years ago there seems to be the emergence of norm violations relating to what I think is totemistic cultural influenced behavior, on what research suggests is moral disgust. This early moralistic totemism or “taboo” beliefs, which, to me, relates to genetic evidence of possible moral disgust with genetics showing that after 40,000 years ago there is an extreme lowering of incest behaviors also coinciding with the emergence of more complex cave art, figurines, and personal adornments around 50,000 to 40,000 years ago. All this and more offers some confirming evidence of my thoughts on totemism’s emergence around 50,000 years ago in western Europe, seen in the Pre-Aurignacian Neanderthal “Châtelperronian” and/or by the Early Aurignacian or Proto-Aurignacian times.

 In the video “Robert Sapolsky: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst“ (17 or so minutes in) states the emergence of norm violations of moral disgust occurred around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago which is about the time that genetics shows after 40,000 years ago there was an extreme lowering of insect behaviors coinciding with the emergence of more complex cave art, figurines, and personal adornments all confirming my thoughts on totemism emerging after 50,000 years ago in Europe by the Early Aurignacian or Proto-Aurignacian stage. And in the video “DNA Mammoths, Neanderthals, and Your Ancestors,” it also quickly including the evidence for early people following incest taboos, are clearly evident after 40,000 years ago by genetics. Which, to me, likely connects to the motivations adopted by societies believing in Totemism. ref, ref

BOOMERANG HISTORY

The Non Returning Boomerang

The boomerang was invented between 25,000 to 50,000 years ago. The oldest boomerang, discovered in Poland, is 20,000 years old. It was the first man made object heavier than air to fly. The first boomerangs were used for hunting and killing. The hunting type could be hurled at distances of 150 to 200 yards. They hovered just above the ground at high speed killing small animals or stunning larger ones like kangaroos. These boomerangs were up to three feet across weighing 5 to 10 pounds. They were made from the roots of the mulga or wattle tree. This is because boomerangs would chip or break off if the grain of the wood didn’t have the same pattern as the shape of the boomerang. The roots of these trees already had the right shape. This killing boomerang did not return. ref

The Returning Boomerang

The Aborigines are credited with inventing the returning boomerang. The returning boomerang probably developed over time by the Aborigines through trial and error. Prehistoric man at first would throw stones or sticks. At some point he realized that a curved stick actually created more accuracy and velocity. He then further refined and shaped these sticks to produce what became known as the hunting or fighting boomerang. At some point, certain of these boomerangs would return back to the direction of the thrower. Again, through further refinement, these lightweight boomerangs were actually caught by the first inventor of the returning boomerang. The returning boomerang, however, was always used for sport by the Aborigines. ref

Believe it or not, the returning boomerang is actually less accurate then the hunting and killing boomerang. All boomerangs fall into four categories:

• Hunting — These are heavy. Traveling just above the ground, they can kill a small animal or stun a larger one.
• Killing — These are held. They were used in hand to hand combat. Think of them as a curved club.
• Music — Two are clapped together to produce a rhythm or sound effect.
• Returning — Originally made of wood, most of these boomerangs are now made of plastic or resin using computer technology. ref

Thinking about how Totemic cultures, can, to me, be said to likely start in Europe and disperse else were through religious transfer, connected through genes or otherwise. The initial settlement of Australia occurred between 47,000–55,000 years ago. Aboriginal Australians and New Guineans is different, implying a long separation that started at least 30 KYA. Did the colonisers enter Sahul via present-day New Guinea and subsequently spread southwards to Australia, or were there different routes into Sahul, such that one or more groups entered Australia via the ancient northwestern coast that is now submerged under the Timor and Arafura Seas? Furthermore, a mix of genetic, archeological, anthropological and linguistic data have suggested later migration(s) to Australia in the Holocene epoch, particularly from the Asian sub-continent.

The basal para-group K2b* has not been identified among living males or ancient remains. K2b1 (P397/P399) known previously as Haplogroup MS, and Haplogroup P (P-P295), also known as K2b2 are the only primary clades of K2b. K2b1, its subclades and P* are virtually restricted geographically to South East Asia and Oceania. Today, P is most commonly found in Oceania, especially in Papuans, Melanesians, indigenous Australians, and Filipinos. It was found in the Aeta of Bataan at 40%. Whereas, in a striking contrast, P1 (P-M45) and its primary subclades Q and R now make up “the most frequent haplogroup in Europe, the Americas, and Central Asia and South Asia”. Estimated dates for the branching of K, K2, K2b and P point to a “rapid diversification” within K2 “that likely occurred in Southeast Asia”, with subsequent “westward expansions” of P*, P1, Q and R. ref, ref, ref

• R1, has been common throughout Europe and South Asia since pre-history. Interestingly, haplogroups R and Q, which make up the majority of paternal lineages in Europe, Central Asia and the Americas, represents the only subclade with K2b that is not geographically restricted to Southeast Asia and Oceania. Haplogroup R, is believed to have arisen during the Upper Paleolithic era, about 27,000 years ago. Only one confirmed example of basal R* has been found, in 24,000 year old remains, known as MA1, found at Mal’ta–Buret’ culture near Lake Baikal in Siberia. The wide geographical distribution of R1b, in particular, has also been noted living examples found in Central Asia include the “deepest subclade” of R-M269 (R1b1a1a2) – the most numerous branch of R1b in Western Europe. ref

M1 in Africa is the result of a back-migration from Asia which occurred sometime after the Out of Africa migration 40,000 years ago. ref

THE KULBULAKIAN CULTURE IN THE CONTEXT OF AURIGNACIAN IN ASIA

The idea and concept behind Totemism is that people have a spiritual connection or kinship with creatures or objects in nature, making the practice very similar to Animism. ref

Animism is more holistic, and feminine in nature things even is nature has tricksters and malevolence it is also protective and helpful. There s spirits and supernatural beings both animal and human as well as nonhuman supernatural things or being but in general would be attributed to a somewhat personal ancestor grandmother/grandfather or great grandmother/grandfather, not as much of what we think about like a god today. 

Animism (from Latin anima, “breath, spirit, life”) is the religious belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork and perhaps even words—as animated and alive. Animism is the oldest known type of belief system in the world that even predates paganism. It is still practised in a variety of forms in many traditional societies. Animism is used in the anthropology of religion as a term for the belief system of many indigenous tribal peoples, especially in contrast to the relatively more recent development of organized religions. Although each culture has its own different mythologies and rituals, “animism” is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples’ “spiritual” or “supernatural” perspectives. The animistic perspective is so widely held and inherent to most animistic indigenous peoples that they often do not even have a word in their languages that corresponds to “animism” (or even “religion”); the term is an anthropological construct. ref  

Totemism is less holistic and somewhat masculine in nature compared to Animism with the heavily supported taboos and clan structure (things are separated and must stay separated with sacred and profane, off-limits and allowed, or clean and unclean running one’s entire lives. Things in nature are to be controlled or feared, things in nature have danger and can be evil, but it is also can be used for good and can be helpful for protection. There are spirits that I made thinner than Animism as it has to share space with the metaphorical clan ancestor there is also supernatural beings both animal and human-like Animism, but where animisms animals are calmer less harmful like the bird that is a stork referencing life, and the shake is smiling. Whereas, in totemism, this same template is changed through similar. The totemism bird is a vulture referencing a thing of death, not life, and the snake has its teeth barred as a threat. Like Animism, there are nonhuman supernatural things or being but in general would be attributed to a somewhat nonpersonal shared clan ancestor grandmother/grandfather or great grandmother/grandfather, not as much of what we think about like a god today.

“Totemism, system of belief in which humans are said to have kinship or a mystical relationship with a spirit-being, such as an animal or plant. The entity, or totem, is thought to interact with a given kin group or an individual and to serve as their emblem or symbol. The term totemism has been used to characterize a cluster of traits in the religion and in the social organization of many peoples. Totemism is manifested in various forms and types in different contexts and is most often found among populations whose traditional economies relied on hunting and gathering, mixed farming with hunting and gathering, or emphasized the raising of cattle. The term totem is derived from the Ojibwa word ototeman, meaning “one’s brother-sister kin.” The grammatical root, ote, signifies a blood relationship between brothers and sisters who have the same mother and who may not marry each other. In English, the word totem was introduced in 1791 by a British merchant and translator who gave it a false meaning in the belief that it designated the guardian spirit of an individual, who appeared in the form of an animal—an idea that the Ojibwa clans did indeed portray by their wearing of animal skins.” ref 

“It was reported at the end of the 18th century that the Ojibwa named their clans after those animals that live in the area in which they live and appear to be either friendly or fearful. The first accurate report about totemism in North America was written by a Methodist missionary, Peter Jones, himself an Ojibwa, who died in 1856 and whose report was published posthumously. According to Jones, the Great Spirit had given toodaims(“totems”) to the Ojibwa clans, and because of this act, it should never be forgotten that members of the group are related to one another and on this account may not marry among themselves. Totemism is a complex of varied ideas and ways of behavior based on a worldview drawn from nature. There are ideological, mystical, emotional, reverential, and genealogical relationships of social groups or specific persons with animals or natural objects, the so-called totems. It is necessary to differentiate between group and individual totemism.” ref

“These forms share some basic characteristics, but they occur with different emphases and in different specific forms. For instance, people generally view the totem as a companion, relative, protector, progenitor, or helper, ascribe to it superhuman powers and abilities, and offer it some combination of respect, veneration, awe, and fear. Most cultures use special names and emblems to refer to the totem, and those it sponsors engage in partial identification with the totem or symbolic assimilation to it. There is usually a prohibition or taboo against killing, eating, or touching the totem. Although totems are often the focus of ritual behavior, it is generally agreed that totemism is not a religion. Totemism can certainly include religious elements in varying degrees, just as it can appear conjoined with magic. Totemism is frequently mixed with different kinds of other beliefs, such as ancestor worship, ideas of the soul, or animism. Such mixtures have historically made the understanding of particular totemistic forms difficult. Social or collective totemism is the most widely disseminated form of this belief system.” ref

“It typically includes one or more of several features, such as the mystic association of animal and plant species, natural phenomena, or created objects with unilineally related groups (lineages, clans, tribes, moieties, phratries) or with local groups and families; the hereditary transmission of the totems (patrilineal or matrilineal); group and personal names that are based either directly or indirectly on the totem; the use of totemistic emblems and symbols; taboos and prohibitions that may apply to the species itself or can be limited to parts of animals and plants (partial taboos instead of partial totems); and a connection with a large number of animals and natural objects (multiplex totems) within which a distinction can be made between principal totems and subsidiary ones (linked totems). Group totems are generally associated or coordinated on the basis of analogies or on the basis of myth or ritual. Just why particular animals or natural things—which sometimes possess no economic worth for the communities concerned—were originally selected as totems is often based on eventful and decisive moments in a people’s past. Folk traditions regarding the nature of totems and the origin of the societies in question are informative, especially with regard to the group’s cultural presuppositions.” ref

“For example, a group that holds that it is derived directly or indirectly from a given totem may have a tradition in which its progenitor was an animal or plant that could also appear as a human being. In such belief systems, groups of people and species of animals and plants can thus have progenitors in common. In other cases, there are traditions that the human progenitor of a kin group had certain favorable or unfavorable experiences with an animal or natural object and then ordered that his descendants respect the whole species of that animal. Group totemism was traditionally common among peoples in Africa, India, Oceania (especially in Melanesia), North America, and parts of South America. These peoples include, among others, the Australian Aborigines, the African Pygmies, and various Native American peoples—most notably the Northwest Coast Indians (predominantly fishermen), California Indians, and Northeast Indians.” ref

“Moreover, group totemism is represented in a distinctive form among the Ugrians and west Siberians (hunters and fishermen who also breed reindeer) as well as among tribes of herdsmen in north and Central Asia. Individual totemism is expressed in an intimate relationship of friendship and protection between a person and a particular animal or a natural object (sometimes between a person and a species of animal); the natural object can grant special power to its owner. Frequently connected with individual totemism are definite ideas about the human soul (or souls) and conceptions derived from them, such as the idea of an alter ego and nagualism—from the Spanish form of the Aztec word naualli, “something hidden or veiled”—which means that a kind of simultaneous existence is assumed between an animal or a natural object and a person; i.e., a mutual, close bond of life and fate exists in such a way that in case of the injury, sickness, or death of one partner, the same fate would befall the other member of the relationship.” ref 

“Consequently, such totems became most strongly tabooed; above all, they were connected with family or group leaders, chiefs, medicine men, shamans, and other socially significant persons. Studies of shamanism indicate that individual totemism may have predated group totemism, as a group’s protective spirits were sometimes derived from the totems of specific individuals. To some extent, there also exists a tendency to pass on an individual totem as hereditary or to make taboo the entire species of animal to which the individual totem belongs. Individual totemism is widely disseminated. It is found not only among tribes of hunters and harvesters but also among farmers and herdsmen. Individual totemism is especially emphasized among the Australian Aborigines and the American Indians.” ref

“Among the Wiradjuri, an Aboriginal people who traditionally lived in New South Wales (Australia), totem clans are divided among two subgroups and corresponding matrilineal moieties. The group totem, named “flesh,” is transmitted from the mother. In contrast to this, individual totems belong only to the medicine men and are passed on patrilineally. Such an individual totem is named bala, “spirit companion,” or jarawaijewa, “the meat (totem) that is within him.” There is a strict prohibition against eating the totem. Breach of the taboo carries with it sickness or death. It is said: “To eat your jarawaijewa is the same as if you were to eat your very own flesh or that of your father.” The medicine man identifies himself with his personal totem. Every offense or injury against the totem has its automatic effect upon the man who commits it. It is a duty of the totem to guard the ritualist and the medicine man while he is asleep. In the case of danger or the arrival of strangers, the animal goes back into the body of the medicine man and informs him. After the death of the medicine man, the animal stands watch as a bright flickering light near the grave.” ref

“The individual totem is also a helper of the medicine man. The medicine man emits the totem in his sleep or in a trance so that it can collect information for him. In this tradition, sorcery may also be practiced by the medicine man. By singing, for instance, the medicine man can send out his totem to kill an enemy; the totem enters the chest of the enemy and devours his viscera. The transmission of the individual totem to novices is done through the father or the grandfather, who, of course, himself is also a medicine man. While the candidate lies on his back, the totem is “sung into” him. The blood relative who is transmitting the totem takes a small animal and places it on the chest of the youngster. During the singing, the animal supposedly sinks slowly into his body and finally disappears into it. The candidate is then instructed on how he has to treat the animal that is his comrade, and he is further instructed in song and the ritual concentration that is necessary to dispatch the totem from his body.” ref

“Among the Nor-Papua of New Guinea, patrilineal, exogamous groups (consanguineous sibs) are spread over several villages and are associated with animals, especially fish. They believe that they are born from totems, and they make them taboo. Children are given an opportunity to decide during their initiation whether they will respect the paternal or maternal totem. Each group of relatives has a holy place to which the totem animal brings the souls of the dead and from which the souls of children are also believed to come. Totem animals are represented in various manifestations: as spirit creatures in sacred flutes, in disguises, and in figures preserved in each man’s house. At the end of initiation ceremonies, the totems are mimicked by the members of the group. Among the Iban of Sarawak (Malaysia), individual totemism has been the tradition. Particular persons dream of a spirit of an ancestor or a dead relative; this spirit appears in a human form, presents himself as a helper and protector, and names an animal (or sometimes an object) in which he is manifested.” ref 

“The Iban then observe the mannerisms of animals and recognize in the behavior of the animals the embodiment of their protector spirit (ngarong). Sometimes, members of the tribe also carry with them a part of such an animal. Not only this particular animal, but the whole species, is given due respect. Meals and blood offerings are also presented to the spirit animal. Young men who wish to obtain such a protector spirit for themselves sleep on the graves of prominent persons or seek out solitude and fast so that they may dream of a helper spirit. Actually, only a few persons can name such animals as their very own. Individuals with protector spirits have also attempted to require from their descendants the respect and the taboo given the animal representing the spirit. As a rule, such descendants do not expect special help from the protector spirit, but they observe the totemistic regulations anyway. The Birhor, a people that were traditionally residents of the jungle of Chotanagpur Plateau in the northeast Deccan (India), are organized into patrilineal, exogamous totem groups.” ref 

“According to one imperfect list of 37 clans, 12 are based on animals, 10 on plants, 8 on Hindu castes and localities, and the rest on objects. The totems are passed on within the group, and tales about the tribe’s origins suggest that each totem had a fortuitous connection with the birth of the ancestor of the clan. The Birhor think that there is a temperamental or physical similarity between the members of the clan and their totems. Prohibitions or taboos are sometimes cultivated to an extreme degree. In regard to eating, killing, or destroying them, the clan totems are regarded as if they were human members of the group. Moreover, it is believed that an offense against the totems through a breach of taboo will produce a corresponding decrease in the size of the clan. If a person comes upon a dead totem animal, he must smear his forehead with oil or a red dye, but he must not actually mourn over the animal; he also does not bury it. The close and vital relationship between the totem and the clan is shown in a definite ceremony: the yearly offering to the chief spirit of the ancestral hill. Each Birhor community has a tradition of an old settlement that is thought to be located on a hill in the area.”ref 

“Once a year, the men of each clan come together at an open place. The elder of the clan functions as the priest who gives the offering. A diagram with four sections is drawn on the ground with rice flour. In one of these, the elder sits while gazing in the direction of the ancestral hill. The emblem of the particular totem is placed in one of the other sections of the diagram; depending on the circumstances, this emblem could be a flower, a piece of horn or skin, a wing, or a twig. This emblem represents the clan as a whole. If an animal is needed for such a ceremony, it is provided by the members of another clan who do not hold it as a totem. The Birhor show great fear of the spirits of the ancestral hill and avoid these places as far as possible. Among the Kpelle people of Liberia there is not only group totemism but also individual totemism. Both kinds of totems are referred to variously as “thing of possession,” “thing of birth,” or “thing of the back of men.” These phrases express the idea that the totem always accompanies, belongs to, and stands behind one as a guide and warner of dangers. The totem also punishes the breach of any taboo. Kpelle totems include animals, plants, and natural phenomena. The kin groups that live in several villages were matrilineal at an earlier time, but during the 20th century they began to exhibit patrilineal tendencies.” ref 

“The group totems, especially the animal totems, are considered as the residence of the ancestors; they are respected and are given offerings. Moreover, a great role is played by individual totems that, in addition to being taboo, are also given offerings. Personal totems that are animals can be transmitted from father to son or from mother to daughter; on the other hand, individual plant totems are assigned at birth or later. The totem also communicates magical powers. It is even believed possible to alter one’s own totem animal; further, it is considered an alter ego. Persons with the same individual totem prefer to be united in communities. The well-known leopard confederation, a secret association, seems to have grown out of such desires. Entirely different groups produce patrilineal taboo communities that are supposedly related by blood; they comprise persons of several tribes. The animals, plants, and actions made taboo by these groups are not considered as totems. In a certain respect, the individual totems in this community seem to be the basis of group totemism.”ref 

“The most significant “recent” Out of Africa wave took place about 70,000 years ago, via the so-called “Southern Route”, spreading rapidly along the coast of Asia and reaching Australia by around 65,000–50,000 years ago. While Europe was populated by an early offshoot which settled the Near East and Europe less than 55,000 years ago.”  ref

All populations before around 40,000 years ago where way more inbred and then after that is has a great decrease, to which I hypothesize could be genetic evidence of the emergence of INCEST-PROHIBITION hints at the taboo in Totemism. ref

“Totem and Taboo”

“The Horror of Incest” concerns incest taboos adopted by societies believing in totemism.

Totemism is a belief system scattered world-wide mainly by hunting and gathering peoples, which seems to diminish when agricultural becomes predominant. Totemism seems expressed all over the North American especially the west cost indigenous peoples, in Peru, in Guiana, what was the African Gold Coast, in India, the South Seas islands, Australia, Siberia, Egypt and Semitic regions. It is thought that the current true totemism is found only among Australian Aborigines, North, and South American indigenous peoples, in New Guinea, and parts of Africa and India. But it is Australia, America, and Africa that are the three main areas where totemism has been found in its most highly developed and widespread forms. ref

Totemism is approximately a 50,000-year-old belief system and believe in spirit-filled life and/or afterlife that can be attached to or be expressed in things or objects. If you believe like this, regardless of your faith, you are a hidden totemist.

Toetmism may be older as there is evidence of what looks like a Stone Snake in South Africa, which may be the “first human worship” dating to around 70,000 years ago. Many archaeologists propose that societies from 70,000 to 50,000 years ago such as that of the Neanderthals may also have practiced the earliest form of totemism or animal worship in addition to their presumably religious burial of the dead. Did Neanderthals help inspire Totemism? There is Neanderthals art dating to around 65,000 years ago in Spain. ref, ref

Based on archaeological evidence from caves around 300,000 to 50,000 years ago, suggests that a widespread Neanderthal bear-cult existed. Animal cults from 50,000 to 10,000 years ago, such as the bear cult may have had their origins in these hypothetical 300,000 to 50,000 years ago animal cults. 50,000 to 10,000 years ago, animal worship intertwined with hunting rites. For instance, archaeological evidence from art and bear remains reveals that the bear cult apparently had involved a type of sacrificial bear ceremonialism, in which a bear was shot with arrows, then was finished off by a shot in the lungs, and ritualistically buried near a clay bear statue covered with bear fur with the skull of the bear buried separately.

100,000 to 50,000 years ago, there is an increased use of red ochre at several sites in Africa. Red ochre is thought to have played an important role in rituals. 42,000 years ago, there is a ritual burial of a man covered in red ochre at Lake Mungo in Australia. Around 40,000 years ago in Europe, an abundance of fossil evidence includes elaborate burials of the dead with Venus female figurines and cave art also involving red ochre.

Around 45,000 to 30,000 years ago, the Aurignacian culture created figurines that have been found depicting faunal representations of the time period associated with now-extinct mammals, including mammoths, rhinoceros, and Tarpan, along with anthropomorphized depictions that may be interpreted as some of the earliest evidence of religion. Many 35,000-year-old animal figurines such as mammoths and horses were discovered in the Vogelherd Cave in Germany. The production of ivory beads for body ornamentation was also important to the Aurignacian.

The oldest cave art is found in the Cave of El Castillo in Spain, in early Aurignacian dated at around 40,000 years, the time when it is believed that homo sapiens migrated to Europe from Africa. The next oldest cave art is found in the Chauvet Cave in France, dating to around 37,000 to 33,500 years ago (Aurignacian period: Totemism) and the second from 31,000 to 28,000 years ago (Gravettian period: Shamanism) with most of the black drawings dating to the earlier period. What is interesting is the Neanderthals favor the color black as well that may connect to their transferring some of their ideas to modern humans.

Chauvet Cave appears to have been used by humans during two distinct periods: the Aurignacian and the Gravettian. Most of the artwork dates to the earlier Aurignacian period (30,000 to 32,000 years ago) and the later Gravettian occupation, which occurred 25,000 to 27,000 years ago. The art features a larger variety of wild animals such as lions, panthers, bears, and hyenas. There are no examples of complete human figures in these cave art. The cave art is believed to represent religious thought by modern humans. ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, & ref

• 50,000 years ago: the earliest sewing needle found. Made and used by Denisovans.
• 50,000–30,000 years ago: Mousterian Pluvial in North Africa. The Sahara desert region is wet and fertile. Later Stone Age begins in Africa.
• 45,000–43,000 years ago: European early modern humans.
• 45,000–40,000 years ago: Châtelperronian culture in France.
• 42,000 years ago: Paleolithic flutes in Germany.
• 42,000 years ago: earliest evidence of advanced deep sea fishing technology at the Jerimalai cave site in East Timor—demonstrates high-level maritime skills and by implication the technology needed to make ocean crossings to reach Australia and other islands, as they were catching and consuming large numbers of big deep sea fish such as tuna.
• 41,000 years ago: Denisova hominin lives in the Altai Mountains.
• 40,000 years ago: Aurignacian culture begins in Europe.
• 40,000 years ago: oldest known figurative art the zoomorphic Löwenmensch figurine.
• 40,000–30,000 years ago: human settlement (Aboriginal Australians) in Sydney, Perth, and Melbourne.
• 40,000–20,000 years ago: oldest known ritual cremation, the Mungo Lady, in Lake Mungo, Australia.
• 35,000 years ago: one of the oldest known figurative art of a human figure as opposed to a zoomorphic figure (Venus of Hohle Fels).” ref 

Totemism, Animism and North Asian (Mongolians & Siberians) Indigenous Ontologies

Analysis of modern human genomes reveals that humans interbred with Neanderthals between 37,000 and 86,000 years ago, resulting in the DNA of humans outside Africa containing between 1.5 and 2.1 percent DNA of Neanderthal origin. Neanderthal DNA in modern humans occurs in broken fragments; however, the Neanderthal DNA in Ust’-Ishim man occurs in clusters, indicating that Ust’-Ishim man lived in the immediate aftermath of the genetic interchange. The genomic sequencing of Ust’-Ishim man has led to refinement of the estimated date of mating between the two hominin species to between 52,000 and 58,000 years ago. Modern Tibetans were identified as the modern population that has the most alleles in common with Ust’-Ishim man. Siberian and East Asian populations shared 38% of their ancestry” to Ust’-Ishim man. Ust’-Ishim is more closely related to modern East Asian and Oceanian populations than to modern West Eurasian populations, such as the current residents of the Ust’-Ishim area. 

Modern West Eurasians are more closely related to other ancient remains. UI sequence against its own subclade, let’s assume that it’s indeed belongs to mhg R. While UI is the oldest known modern human sample, its mtDNA falls within the youngest, as defined by existing mtDNA phylogenies, macrohaplogroup. Notably, all of most ancient DNA samples from a wide range of geographic locations belong to the same mhg R: Kostenki in the Russian steppe at 32,000 BP is hg U, Tianyuan in south China at 40,000 is hg B, Mal’ta in South Siberia at 24,000 YBP is hg U. Presumably older mhgs N and M haven’t been found in the earliest samples. Mhg R enjoys the widest worldwide distribution now as it apparently did 45-40,000 years ago. Although autosomally UI, as we have seen, is closer to East Eurasians than to West Eurasians, mtDNA hg R is prominent in Europe (the oldest European mtDNA haplogroup is U, which is part of mhg R), while mhgs M and N are barely found in Europe and have mostly East Eurasian distribution. One intriguing exception is hg X that is somewhat frequent in the Middle East and North Africa and then in North America. In Europe it shows up only from Neolithic times and is pervasive but thinly spread across the continent. It’s distribution and time of origin in Europe fits well with the distribution of the “Basal Eurasian” autosomal component, and, as I argued above,

Amerindians seem to partake in the “Basal Eurasian” component as well, just like they have mtDNA hg X. UI’s Y-DNA belongs to hg K (xLT), according to Fu et al. According to Gregory Magoon, it shares several mutations with the newly discovered, among Dravidian-speaking Telugu in South Asia, Y-DNA hg X (also known as K2a or K-M2335), which supposedly leads to the main East Asian NO cluster of lineages. The NO cluster is not found in the Americas. The main Amerindian has P and Q, which are rare in Asia, the most dominant European hg R (attested in MA-1 but reintroduced to Europe en masse by Indo-Europeans) as well as Papua New Guinean/Australian has M and S are currently thought of as belonging to the MPS (also known as K2b) cluster (see link).ref

Totemism is found in the people of Africa(where pre-totemism is almost may have turned more like totemism by 75,000 seen in the Stone Snake of South Africa: “first human worship” 70,000 years ago that then was expanded and formalized in as it made it to Europe), I have  a hunch that true totemism as I think fully developed in Europe only later returned then flourished in Africa possibly expressed in this evidence Call it humanity’s unexpected U-turn. One of the biggest events in the history of our species is the exodus out of Africa some 65,000 years ago, the start of Homo sapiens‘ long march across the world. 

Now a study of southern African genes shows that, unexpectedly, another migration took western Eurasian DNA back to the very southern tip of the continent 3000 years ago (Humanity’s forgotten return to Africa revealed in DNA). After early humans migrated out of Africa around 60,000 years ago, they bumped into Neanderthals somewhere in what is now the Middle East. Some got rather cosy with each other. As their descendants spread across the world to Europe, Asia and eventually the Americas, they spread bits of Neanderthal DNA along with their own genes. But because those descendants did not move back into Africa until historical times, most of this continent remained a Neanderthal DNA-free zone. Or so it seemed at the time. Now it appears that the Back to Africa migration 3000 years ago carried a weak Neanderthal genetic signal deep into the homeland. ref

Totemism is found in the people of the Middle East,

• Grave of the Middle East’s Oldest Witch/Female Shaman 

Totemism is found in the people of Asia, like China (especially Siberia and Mongolia) but alsoSouth East Aisa,

• Asian Shamanism

Totemism is found in the people of Australia, Australia & Aboriginal Religion at least around 50,000 years old, which may express a heavy influence by what seems is African animism (such as that similar to Negrito ethnic groups, as I think is like carried the Africanized animism beliefs and as they don’t have an expression of totemism along with the first signs of burial in Australia also seeming to only express Africanized animism beliefs not totemism beliefs, I think this could relate to European totemism by way of Siberia through Austronesians migrations) and possibly the totemism in Australia aboriginals could relate to that expression seen in the 70,000-year-old snake or is may express the later interactions with Indigenous peoples of Oceania who interacted with others such as Austronesians. 

One salient feature of Negrito religion is its noticeable lack of systematization. Consequently, it has a secondary place in Negrito ideology. Because the animistic beliefs and practices of Philippine Negritos are individualistic and sporadic, they exert less control over the people’s daily lives than do the religious systems of other, non-Negrito animistic societies in the Philippines. In time, the spread of other language groups such as Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien, and Sino-Tibetan (such as Chinese) led to the assimilation and eventual sinicization of all (proto) Austronesian-speaking populations that remained on the mainland (a process which continues today in Taiwan). ref

• Australian Aboriginal Shamanism 

Totemism is found in the people of Austronesia, Archaeological evidence demonstrates a technological connection between the farming cultures of the “south”, meaning Southeast Asia and Melanesia, and sites that are first known from mainland China; whereas a combination of archaeological and linguistic evidence has been interpreted as supporting a “northern” origin for the Austronesian language family in mainland southern Chinaand Taiwan. Australian totemism, thought by some to be uniquely Australian, fits the Austronesian model. So was it a transfer of Australian totemism into Austronesian totemism, or the other way around? The Negrito peoples show strong physical similarities with the pygmy peoples of Africa but are genetically closer to their surrounding populations in Austronesia. 

They may have descended from an early split from the Late Pleistocene Out-of-Africa migration. The Negrito (/nɪˈɡriːtoʊ/) are several different ethnic groups who inhabit isolated parts of South and Southeast Asia. Their current populations include the Andamanese peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Semang and Batek people of Peninsular Malaysia, the Maniq people of Southern Thailand, and the Aeta people, Ati people, and 30 other ethnic groups in the Philippines. Genetic research has shown that the Negritos have existed as a separate group for a long time, comparable to the Australoid and Southwest Pacific groups. This has often been interpreted to the effect that they are remnants of the original expansion from Africa some 70 ,000 years ago. ref

• Austronesia, beliefs such as ancestor worship, animism, and shamanism are also practiced. ref

Totemism is found in the people of Eastern and Western Europe

• Shamanism in Europe

Totemism is found in the people of the Arctic polar region

• Shamanism Arctic polar region

Universals in Religion? 

Research concerning religion based on cognitive psychology, neuroscience, cultural anthropology, and archaeology is beginning to reach maturity, and a number of generalizations can now be seen to be shared between all modern religious systems these shared beliefs are best explained as deriving from our evolutionary origins. 

These ‘universals’ include: the cosmos and its living creatures have inherent worth, religious and ecological preservation are integrally linked to individuals and communities have responsibility towards the environment, the world is infused with supernatural agency: humanity is spiritually linked to (and affected by) the cosmos, individuals maintain social relationships with supernatural agents, individuals generally entertain highly anthropomorphic expectations about these supernatural agents, the minds of supernatural agents are implicitly expected to function like our own, even though this is at odds with our explicit beliefs about them, individuals are usually willing to subscribe to the religious norms of their own social groups at the expense of being viewed as wrong by other groups, individuals are only aware of some of their beliefs; a large amount of implicit or unconscious tenets underlying them, religious beliefs are often concerned with issues of purification and danger, invoking ritual behavior designed to deal with these. – Adapted from: Insoll, T. (2012). The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of ritual and religion. Oxford, United Kingdom. Oxford University Press.

Religious Belief is Nothing Special

In general, religious belief is a geography issue and not because of any truth in the belief. This is evident in how 73% of the world’s religionists live in countries in which their religious persuasion makes up a majority of the population Pew Research Center studies show. So, stop thinking you were somehow blessed to be born into the one true religion.

If you are a religious believer, may I remind you that faith in the acquisition of knowledge is not a valid method worth believing in. Because, what proof is “faith”, of anything religion claims by faith, as many people have different faith even in the same religion?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref 

Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey 

“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref

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

Expressions of Atheistic Thinking:

• Around 2,600 years ago, Ajita Kesakambali, ancient Indian philosopher, who is the first known proponent of Indian materialism. ref
• Around 2,535 to 2,475 years ago, Heraclitus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor or modern Turkey. ref
• Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, according to The Story of Civilization book series certain African pygmy tribes have no identifiable gods, spirits, or religious beliefs or rituals, and even what burials accrue are without ceremony. ref
• Around 2,490 to 2,430 years ago, Empedocles, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. ref
• Around 2,460 to 2,370 years ago, Democritus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher considered to be the “father of modern science” possibly had some disbelief amounting to atheism. ref
• Around 2,399 years ago or so, Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher was tried for sinfulness by teaching doubt of state gods. ref
• Around 2,341 to 2,270 years ago, Epicurus, a Greek philosopher known for composing atheistic critics and famously stated, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?” ref

This last expression by Epicurus, seems to be an expression of Axiological Atheism. To understand and utilize value or actually possess “Value Conscious/Consciousness” to both give a strong moral “axiological” argument (the problem of evil) as well as use it to fortify humanism and positive ethical persuasion of human helping and care responsibilities. Because value-blindness gives rise to sociopathic/psychopathic evil.

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