I surmise the first proto-king originates in the Balkans Varna culture’s Bulgarian cemetery dating to around 6,500 years old. Moreover, while 65 out of the 320 burials held 3100 gold objects but only five burials: 1, 4, 36, 41, and 43 comprise over 80% of the gold found. Yet of these five burials only grave 43 shown here contained an actual skeletal while the others are symbolic faces. These metaphorical burial faces, to me, both represent the clay head around 6,500 years old, found submerged in Varna Lake from the Hamangia Culture, of which I think could relate to the emergence of the first male gods.
“The oldest gold treasure in the world, belonging to the Varna culture, was discovered in the Varna Necropolis and dates to 6,600-6,200 years ago. Varna is the third-largest city in Bulgaria and the largest city and seaside resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. Situated strategically in the Gulf of Varna, the city has been a major economic, social and cultural center for almost three millennia. Varna, historically known as Odessos (Ancient Greek: Ὀδησσός), grew from a Thracian seaside settlement to a major seaport on the Black Sea.” ref, ref
“The Varna culture belongs to the later Neolithic of northeastern Bulgaria, is contemporary and closely related with Gumelnița in southern Romania, often considered as local variants. It is characterized by polychrome pottery and rich cemeteries, the most famous of which are Varna Necropolis, the eponymous site, and the Durankulak complex, which comprises the largest prehistoric cemetery in southeastern Europe.” ref
“The culture had sophisticated religious beliefs about afterlife and developed hierarchical status differences: it constitutes the oldest known burial evidence of an elite male. The end of the fifth millennium BC is the time that Marija Gimbutas, founder of the Kurgan hypothesis claims the transition to male dominance began in Europe. The high status male was buried with remarkable amounts of gold, held a war axe or mace and wore a gold penis sheath. The bull-shaped gold platelets perhaps also venerated virility, instinctive force, and warfare. Gimbutas holds that the artifacts were made largely by local craftspeople.” ref
“Burials at Varna have some of the world’s oldest gold jewelry. There are crouched and extended inhumations. Some graves do not contain a skeleton, but grave gifts (cenotaphs). The symbolic (empty) graves are the richest in gold artifacts. Around 3000 gold artifacts were found, with a weight of approximately 6 kilograms. Grave 43 contained more gold than has been found in the entire rest of the world for that epoch. Three symbolic graves contained masks of unfired clay. The weight and the number of gold finds in the Varna cemetery exceeds by several times the combined weight and number of all of the gold artifacts found in all excavated sites of the same millenium, 5000-4000 BC, from all over the world, including Mesopotamia and Egypt”.” ref
“Varna Culture Decline: The discontinuity of the Varna, Karanovo, Vinča and Lengyel cultures in their main territories and the large scale population shifts to the north and northwest are indirect evidence of a catastrophe of such proportions that cannot be explained by possible climatic change, desertification, or epidemics. Direct evidence of the incursion of horse-ridingwarriors is found, not only in single burials of males under barrows, but in the emergence of a whole complex of Indo-European cultural traits.” ref
Copper Age migrations likely motivated to escape war/violence and climate caused problems brought waves of migration from Turkey and Iran as well as ideas or possibly people as well from the Balkans to north Israel as well small parts of Jordan around 6,500–5,800 years ago.
“The Funnel Beaker Culture – “First Farmers of Scandinavia” around 6,200-4,650 years ago marks the arrival of Megalithic structures in Scandinavia from western Europe. At graves, the people sacrificed ceramic vessels that contained food along with amber jewelry and flint-axes. Flint-axes and vessels were also deposed in streams and lakes near the farmlands, and virtually all Sweden’s 10,000 flint axes that have been found from this culture were probably sacrificed in water. Ancient DNA and the peopling of the British Isles – pattern and process of the Neolithic transition 6000 years ago.” ref
The first human-caused climate change, dramatically changed how nature works, such as the way plant and animal communities were structured on Earth around 6,000 years ago.
The first human migrations spread the first plague is believed to have contributed to the plunge of Europe’s settlements around. As well as the close contact between humans and animals and the accumulation of food, likely led to poorer sanitary conditions and an increased risk of pathogen around 6,000-5,000 years ago.
The first passage tomb thought to lead to the afterlife from Ireland, close to when people first began farming in the region that seems to mark a transition towards a time when religion played a greater role in people’s lives 5,800-5,500 years ago.
The first birth of the State, the rise of Hierarchy, and the fall of Women’s status 5,500-5,000 years ago. And more than 5,000 years ago a nomadic group of shepherds rode out of the steppes of eastern Europe to conquer the rest of the continent. The group, today is known as the Yamna or Kurgan/Pit Grave culture, brought with them an innovative new technology, wheeled carts, which enabled them to quickly occupy new lands.
Proto-Indo-European H₃rḗǵs: King, Ruler
Derived terms
- *h₃rḗǵ-ō
- *h₃rēǵ-yom
- Proto-Celtic: *rīgyom
- *h₃reǵ-ō
- Proto-Germanic: *rekô
- *h₃réǵ-os
- Proto-Germanic: *rekaz
Descendants
King
“King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. The term king may also refer to a king consort, a title that is sometimes given to the husband of a ruling queen, but the title of prince consort is more common.
- In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the title may refer to tribal kingship. Germanic kingship is cognate with Indo-European traditions of tribal rulership (c.f. Indic rājan, Gothic reiks, and Old Irish rí, etc.).
- In the context of classical antiquity, king may translate in Latin as rex and in Greek as archon or basileus.
- In classical European feudalism, the title of king as the ruler of a kingdom is understood to be the highest rank in the feudal order, potentially subject, at least nominally, only to an emperor (harking back to the client kings of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire).
- In a modern context, the title may refer to the ruler of one of a number of modern monarchies (either absolute or constitutional). The title of king is used alongside other titles for monarchs: in the West, emperor, grand prince, prince, archduke, duke or grand duke, and in the Islamic world, malik, sultan, emir or hakim, etc.
- The city-states of the Aztec Empire had a Tlatoani, which were kings of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. The Huey Tlatoani was the emperor of the Aztecs.” ref
“The English term king is derived from the Anglo-Saxon cyning, which in turn is derived from the Common Germanic *kuningaz. The Common Germanic term was borrowed into Estonian and Finnish at an early time, surviving in these languages as kuningas. It is a derivation from the term *kunjom “kin” (Old English cynn) by the -inga- suffix. The literal meaning is that of a “scion of the [noble] kin”, or perhaps “son or descendant of one of noble birth” (OED).” ref
“The English term translates, and is considered equivalent to, Latin rēx and its equivalents in the various European languages. The Germanic term is notably different from the word for “King” in other Indo-European languages (*rēks “ruler”; Latin rēx, Sanskrit rājan and Irish ríg; however, see Gothic reiks and, e.g., modern German Reich and modern Dutch rijk).” ref
“The English word is of Germanic origin, and historically refers to Germanic kingship, in the pre-Christian period a type of tribal kingship. The monarchies of Europe in the Christian Middle Ages derived their claim from Christianisation and the divine right of kings, partly influenced by the notion of sacral kingship inherited from Germanic antiquity.” ref
“Monarchs can carry various titles such as emperor, empress, king, queen, raja, khan, tsar, sultan, shah, or pharaoh. Monarchies can form federations, personal unions, and realms with vassals through personal association with the monarch, which is a common reason for monarchs carrying several titles.” ref
“The succession of monarchs in many cases has been hereditical, often building dynastic periods. However, elective and self-proclaimed monarchies have also happened. Aristocrats, though not inherent to monarchies, often serve as the pool of persons to draw the monarch from and fill the constituting institutions (e.g. diet and court), giving many monarchies oligarchic elements.” ref
“The word “monarch” (Late Latin: monarchia) comes from the Ancient Greek word μονάρχης (monárkhēs), derived from μόνος (mónos, “one, single”) and ἄρχω (árkhō, “to rule”): compare ἄρχων (árkhōn, “ruler, chief”). It referred to a single at least nominally absolute ruler. In current usage, the word monarchy usually refers to a traditional system of hereditary rule, as elective monarchies are quite rare.” ref
“The similar form of societal hierarchy known as chiefdom or tribal kingship is prehistoric. Chiefdoms provided the concept of state formation, which started with civilizations such as Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley civilization. In some parts of the world, chiefdoms became monarchies. Some of the oldest recorded and evidenced monarchies were Narmer, Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt c. 3100 BCE, and Enmebaragesi, a Sumerian King of Kish c. 2600 BCE.” ref
“From earliest records, monarchs could be directly hereditary, while others were elected from among eligible members. With the Egyptian, Indian, Mesopotamian, Sudanic, reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion, and others, the monarch held sacral functions directly connected to sacrifice and was sometimes identified with having divine ancestry, possibly establishing a notion of the divine right of kings.” ref
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“Asian varieties of millet made their way from China to the Black Sea region of Europe by 5000 BCE or 7,000 years ago.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millet
Origins of ‘Transeurasian’ languages traced to Neolithic millet farmers in north-eastern China about 9,000 years ago
“A study combining linguistic, genetic, and archaeological evidence has traced the origins of a family of languages including modern Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Mongolian and the people who speak them to millet farmers who inhabited a region in north-eastern China about 9,000 years ago. The findings outlined on Wednesday document a shared genetic ancestry for the hundreds of millions of people who speak what the researchers call Transeurasian languages across an area stretching more than 5,000 miles (8,000km).” ref
“Millet was an important early crop as hunter-gatherers transitioned to an agricultural lifestyle. There are 98 Transeurasian languages, including Korean, Japanese, and various Turkic languages in parts of Europe, Anatolia, Central Asia, and Siberia, various Mongolic languages, and various Tungusic languages in Manchuria and Siberia. This language family’s beginnings were traced to Neolithic millet farmers in the Liao River valley, an area encompassing parts of the Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the region of Inner Mongolia. As these farmers moved across north-eastern Asia over thousands of years, the descendant languages spread north and west into Siberia and the steppes and east into the Korean peninsula and over the sea to the Japanese archipelago.” ref
“Altaic (also called Transeurasian) is a proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are currently scattered over most of Asia north of 35 °N and in some eastern parts of Europe, extending in longitude from Turkey to Japan. The group is named after the Altai mountain range in the center of Asia.” ref
Tracing population movements in ancient East Asia through the linguistics and archaeology of textile production – 2020
Abstract
“Archaeolinguistics, a field which combines language reconstruction and archaeology as a source of information on human prehistory, has much to offer to deepen our understanding of the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Northeast Asia. So far, integrated comparative analyses of words and tools for textile production are completely lacking for the Northeast Asian Neolithic and Bronze Age. To remedy this situation, here we integrate linguistic and archaeological evidence of textile production, with the aim of shedding light on ancient population movements in Northeast China, the Russian Far East, Korea, and Japan. We show that the transition to more sophisticated textile technology in these regions can be associated not only with the adoption of millet agriculture but also with the spread of the languages of the so-called ‘Transeurasian’ family. In this way, our research provides indirect support for the Language/Farming Dispersal Hypothesis, which posits that language expansion from the Neolithic onwards was often associated with agricultural colonization.” ref
Early Khvalynsk (4900–3900 BCE) associated with the Early Proto-Indo-European language: copper, exotic ornamental shells, and polished stone maces exchanged across the Pontic–Caspian steppes from Varna
“Archaeologist David W. Anthony and linguist Donald Ringe distinguish three different cultural stages in the evolution of the Proto-Indo-European language:
- Early (4500–4000 BCE or around 6,500-6,000 years ago), the common ancestor of all attested Indo-European languages, before the Anatolian split (Cernavodă culture; 4000 BCE); associated with the early Khvalynsk culture,
- Classic, or “post-Anatolian” (4000–3500 BCE), the last common ancestor of the non-Anatolian languages, including Tocharian; associated with the late Khvalynsk and Repin cultures,
- Late (3500–2500), in its dialectal period due to the spread of the Yamnaya horizon over a large area.” ref
Early Khvalynsk (4900–3900 BCE): Khvalynsk culture
“Domesticated cattle were introduced around 4700 BCE from the Danube valley to the Volga–Ural steppes where the Early Khvalynsk culture (4900–3900 BCE) had emerged, associated by Anthony with the Early Proto-Indo-European language. Cattle and sheep were more important in ritual sacrifices than in diet, suggesting that a new set of cults and rituals had spread eastward across the Pontic-Caspian steppes, with domesticated animals at the root of the Proto-Indo-European conception of the universe.” ref
“Anthony attributes the first and progressive domestication of horses, from taming to actually working with the animal, to this period. Between 4500 and 4200 BCE, copper, exotic ornamental shells, and polished stone maces were exchanged across the Pontic–Caspian steppes from Varna, in the eastern Balkans, to Khvalynsk, near the Volga river. Around 4500 BCE, a minority of richly decorated single graves, partly enriched by imported copper items, began to appear in the steppes, contrasting with the remaining outfitted graves.” ref
“The Anatolian distinctive sub-family may have emerged from a first wave of Indo-European migration into southeastern Europe around 4200–4000 BCE, coinciding with the Suvorovo–to–Cernavoda I migration, in the context of a progression of the Khvalynsk culture westwards towards the Danube area, from which had also emerged the Novodanilovka (4400–3800) and Late Sredny Stog (4000–3500 BCE) cultures.” ref
Late Khvalynsk/Repin (3900–3300 BCE)
“Steppe economies underwent a revolutionary change between 4200 and 3300 BCE, in a shift from a partial reliance on herding, when domesticated animals were probably used principally as a ritual currency for public sacrifices, to a later regular dietary dependence on cattle, and either sheep or goat meat and dairy products. The Late Khvalynsk and Repin cultures (3900–3300), associated with the classic (post-Anatolian) Proto-Indo-European language, showed the first traces of cereal cultivation after 4000, in the context of a slow and partial diffusion of farming from the western parts of the steppes to the east. Around 3700–3300, a second migration wave of proto-Tocharian speakers towards South Siberia led to the emergence of the Afanasievo culture (3300–2500).” ref
“The spoke-less wheeled wagon was introduced to the Pontic-Caspian steppe around 3500 from the neighboring North Caucasian Maykop culture (3700–3000), with which Proto-Indo-Europeans traded wool and horses. Interactions with the hierarchical Maykop culture, itself influenced by the Mesopotamian Uruk culture, had notable social effects on the Proto-Indo-European way of life. Meanwhile, the Khvalynsk-influenced cultures that had emerged in the Danube-Donets region after the first migration gave way to the Cernavodă (4000–3200), Usatovo (3500–2500), Mikhaylovka (3600–3000) and Kemi Oba (3700—2200) cultures, from west to east respectively.” ref
Yamnaya period (3300–2600)
“The Yamnaya horizon, associated with the Late Proto-Indo-European language (following both the Anatolian and Tocharian splits), originated in the Don–Volga region before spreading westwards after 3300 BCE, establishing a cultural horizon founded on kurgan funerals that stretched over a vast steppic area between the Dnieper and Volga rivers. It was initially a herding-based society, with limited crop cultivation in the eastern part of the steppes, while the Dnieper–Donets region was more influenced by the agricultural Tripolye culture. Paleolinguistics likewise postulates Proto-Indo-European speakers as a semi-nomadic and pastoral population with subsidiary agriculture.” ref
“Bronze was introduced to the Pontic-Caspian steppes during this period. Following the Yamnaya expansion, long-distance trade in metals and other valuables, such as salt in the hinterlands, probably brought prestige and power to Proto-Indo-European societies. However, the native tradition of pottery making was weakly developed. The Yamnaya funeral sacrifice of wagons, carts, sheep, cattle, and horse was likely related to a cult of ancestors requiring specific rituals and prayers, a connection between language and cult that introduced the Late Proto-Indo-European language to new speakers.” ref
Yamnaya chiefdoms had institutionalized differences in prestige and power, and their society was organized along patron-client reciprocity, a mutual exchange of gifts and favors between their patrons, the gods, and human clients. The average life expectancy was fairly high, with many individuals living to 50–60 years old. The language itself appeared as a dialect continuum during this period, meaning that neighboring dialects differed only slightly between each other, whereas distant language varieties were probably no longer mutually intelligible due to accumulated divergences over space and time.” ref
“As the steppe became dryer and colder between 3500 and 3000, herds needed to be moved more frequently in order to feed them sufficiently. Yamnaya distinctive identity was thus founded on mobile pastoralism, permitted by two earlier innovations: the introduction of the wheeled wagon and the domestication of the horse. Yamnaya herders likely watched over their cattle and raided on horseback, while they drove wagons for the bulk transport of water or food. Light-framework dwellings could be easily assembled and disassembled to be transported on pack animals.” ref
“Another climate change that occurred after around 3000 led to a more favourable environment allowing for grassland productivity. Yamnaya new pastoral economy then experienced a third wave of rapid demographic expansion, that time towards Central and Northern Europe. Migrations of Usatovo people towards southeastern Poland, crossing through the Old European Tripolye culture from around 3300 BCE, followed by Yamnya migrations towards the Pannonian Basin between 3100 and 2800, are interpreted by some scholars as movements of pre-Italic, pre-Celtic and pre-Germanic speakers.” ref
“The Proto-Indo-European language probably ceased to be spoken after 2500 as its various dialects had already evolved into non-mutually intelligible languages that began to spread across most of western Eurasia during the third wave of Indo-European migrations (3300–1500). Indo-Iranian languages were introduced to Central Asia, present-day Iran, and South Asia after 2000 BCE.” ref
Proto-Indo-European Society was Hierarchical
“It is generally agreed that Proto-Indo-European society was hierarchical, with some form of social ranking and various degrees of social status. It is unlikely however that they had a rigidly stratified structure, or castes such as are found in historical India. There was a general distinction between free persons and slaves, typically prisoners of war or debtors unable to repay a debt. The free part of society was composed of an elite class of priests, kings, and warriors, along with the commoners, with each tribe following a chief (*wiḱpots) sponsoring feasts and ceremonies, and immortalized in praise poetry.” ref
“The presence of kurgan graves prominently decorated with dress, body ornaments, and weaponry, along with well-attested roots for concepts such as “wealth” (*h₂ép-), “to be in need” (*h₁eg-) or “servant” (*h₂entbʰi-kʷolos, “one who moves about on both sides”; and *h₂upo-sth₂-i/o-, “one standing below”), indicate that a hierarchy of wealth and poverty was recognized. Some graves, larger than the average and necessitating a considerable number of people to be built, likewise suggest a higher status given to some individuals. These prestigious funerals were not necessarily reserved to the wealthiest person. Smiths in particular were given sumptuous graves, possibly due to the association of smithery with magic during the early Bronze Age. In general, such graves were mostly occupied by males in the eastern Don-Volga steppes, while they were more egalitarian in the western Dnieper-Donets region.” ref
Proto-Indo-European Kinship
“Linguistics has allowed for the reliable reconstruction of a large number of words relating to kinship relations. These all agree in exhibiting a patriarchal, patrilocal and patrilineal social fabric. Patrilocality is confirmed by lexical evidence, including the word *h₂u̯edh-, ‘to lead (away)’, being the word that denotes a male wedding a female. Rights, possessions, and responsibilities were consequently reckoned to the father, and wives were to reside after marriage near the husband’s family, after the payment of a bride-price.” ref
“The household (*domos) was generally ruled by the senior male of the family, the *dems-potis (‘master of the household’), and could also consist of his children, grandchildren, and perhaps unrelated slaves or servants. His wife probably also played a complementary role: some evidence suggest that she would have kept her position as the mistress (*pot-n-ih₂) of the household in the event her husband dies, while the eldest son would have become the new master. The Proto-Indo-European expansionist kinship system was likely supported by both marital exogamy (the inclusion of foreign women through marriage) and the exchange of foster children with other families and clans, as suggested by genetic evidence and later attestations from Indo-European-speaking groups.” ref
“Once established, the family lasted as long as the male stock of its founder endured, and clan or tribal founders were often portrayed as mythical beings stemming from a legendary past in Indo-European traditions. In this form of kinship organization, the individual’s genetic distance from the clan’s founding ancestor determined his social status. But if he was of exceptional prowess or virtue, the same individual could in his turn gain social prestige among the community and eventually found his own descent-group.” ref
“In the reconstructed lexicon linking the individual to the clan, *h₂erós means a ‘member of one’s own group’, ‘one who belongs to the community’ (in contrast to an outsider). It gave way to the Indo-Iranian *árya (an endonym), and probably to the Celtic *aryos (‘noble, freeman’), the Hittite arā- (‘peer, companion’), and the Germanic *arjaz (‘noble, distinguished’). It is unlikely however that the term had an ethnic connotation, and we do not know if Proto-Indo-European speakers had a term to designate themselves as a group. Another word, *h₁leudhos, means ‘people’, ‘freemen’ in a more general way.” ref
“Proto-Indo-European had several words for ‘leader’: *tagós was a general term derived from *tā̆g- (‘set in place, arrange’); *h₃rḗǵs meant a ruler who also had religious functions, with the Roman rex sacrorum (‘king of the sacred’) as a heritage of the priestly function of the king; *w(n̩)nákts designated a ‘lord’ and possessed a feminine equivalent, *wnáktih₂ (a ‘queen’); while the *wiḱpots (or *wiḱ-potis) was the chief of the settlement (*weiḱs), the seat of a tribe, clan or family.” ref
“Public feasts sponsored by such patrons were a way for them to promote and secure a political hierarchy built on the unequal mobilization of labor and resources, by displaying their generosity towards the rest of the community. Rivals competed publicly through the size and complexity of their feasts, and alliances were confirmed by gift-giving and promises made during those public gatherings. The host of the feast was called the *ghosti-potis, the ‘lord of the guests’, who honored the immortal gods and his mortal guests with gifts of food, drink, and poetry.” ref
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Ancient Human Genomes…Present-Day Europeans – Johannes Krause (Video)
Ancient North Eurasian (ANE)
Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG)
Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG)
Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer (SHG)
Early European Farmers (EEF)
A quick look at the Genetic history of Europe
“The most significant recent dispersal of modern humans from Africa gave rise to an undifferentiated “non-African” lineage by some 70,000-50,000 years ago. By about 50–40 ka a basal West Eurasian lineage had emerged, as had a separate East Asian lineage. Both basal East and West Eurasians acquired Neanderthal admixture in Europe and Asia. European early modern humans (EEMH) lineages between 40,000-26,000 years ago (Aurignacian) were still part of a large Western Eurasian “meta-population”, related to Central and Western Asian populations. Divergence into genetically distinct sub-populations within Western Eurasia is a result of increased selection pressure and founder effects during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, Gravettian). By the end of the LGM, after 20,000 years ago, A Western European lineage, dubbed West European Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) emerges from the Solutrean refugium during the European Mesolithic. These Mesolithic hunter-gatherer cultures are substantially replaced in the Neolithic Revolution by the arrival of Early European Farmers (EEF) lineages derived from Mesolithic populations of West Asia (Anatolia and the Caucasus). In the European Bronze Age, there were again substantial population replacements in parts of Europe by the intrusion of Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) lineages from the Pontic–Caspian steppes. These Bronze Age population replacements are associated with the Beaker culture archaeologically and with the Indo-European expansion linguistically.” ref
“As a result of the population movements during the Mesolithic to Bronze Age, modern European populations are distinguished by differences in WHG, EEF, and ANE ancestry. Admixture rates varied geographically; in the late Neolithic, WHG ancestry in farmers in Hungary was at around 10%, in Germany around 25%, and in Iberia as high as 50%. The contribution of EEF is more significant in Mediterranean Europe, and declines towards northern and northeastern Europe, where WHG ancestry is stronger; the Sardinians are considered to be the closest European group to the population of the EEF. ANE ancestry is found throughout Europe, with a maximum of about 20% found in Baltic people and Finns. Ethnogenesis of the modern ethnic groups of Europe in the historical period is associated with numerous admixture events, primarily those associated with the Roman, Germanic, Norse, Slavic, Berber, Arab and Turkish expansions. Research into the genetic history of Europe became possible in the second half of the 20th century, but did not yield results with a high resolution before the 1990s. In the 1990s, preliminary results became possible, but they remained mostly limited to studies of mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal lineages. Autosomal DNA became more easily accessible in the 2000s, and since the mid-2010s, results of previously unattainable resolution, many of them based on full-genome analysis of ancient DNA, have been published at an accelerated pace.” ref
“The arrival of haplogroup R1a-M417 in Eastern Europe, and the east-west diffusion of pottery through North Eurasia.” https://indo-european.eu/2018/02/the-arrival-of-haplogroup-r1a-m417-in-eastern-europe-and-the-east-west-diffusion-of-pottery-through-north-eurasia/
Ancient North Eurasian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_North_Eurasian
Ancient North Eurasian/Mal’ta–Buret’ culture haplogroup R* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal%27ta%E2%80%93Buret%27_culture
“The arrival of haplogroup R1a-M417 in Eastern Europe, and the east-west diffusion of pottery through North Eurasia.” ref
R-M417 (R1a1a1)
“R1a1a1 (R-M417) is the most widely found subclade, in two variations which are found respectively in Europe (R1a1a1b1 (R-Z282) ([R1a1a1a*] (R-Z282) and Central and South Asia (R1a1a1b2 (R-Z93) ([R1a1a2*] (R-Z93).” ref
R-Z282 (R1a1a1b1a) (Eastern Europe)
“This large subclade appears to encompass most of the R1a1a found in Europe.
- R1a1a1b1a [R1a1a1a*] (R-Z282*) occurs in northern Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia at a frequency of c. 20%.
- R1a1a1b1a3 [R1a1a1a1] (R-Z284) occurs in Northwest Europe and peaks at c. 20% in Norway.
- R1a1a1c (M64.2, M87, M204) is apparently rare: it was found in 1 of 117 males typed in southern Iran.” ref
R1a1a1b2 (R-Z93) (Asia)
“This large subclade appears to encompass most of the R1a1a found in Asia, being related to Indo-European migrations (including Scythians, Indo-Aryan migrations, and so on).
- R-Z93* or R1a1a1b2* (R1a1a2* in Underhill (2014)) is most common (>30%) in the South Siberian Altai region of Russia, cropping up in Kyrgyzstan (6%) and in all Iranian populations (1-8%).
- R-Z2125 occurs at highest frequencies in Kyrgyzstan and in Afghan Pashtuns (>40%). At a frequency of >10%, it is also observed in other Afghan ethnic groups and in some populations in the Caucasus and Iran.
- R-M434 is a subclade of Z2125. It was detected in 14 people (out of 3667 people tested), all in a restricted geographical range from Pakistan to Oman. This likely reflects a recent mutation event in Pakistan.
- R-M560 is very rare and was only observed in four samples: two Burushaski speakers (north Pakistan), one Hazara (Afghanistan), and one Iranian Azerbaijani.
- R-M780 occurs at high frequency in South Asia: India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Himalayas. The group also occurs at >3% in some Iranian populations and is present at >30% in Roma from Croatia and Hungary.” ref
R-M458 (R1a1a1b1a1)
“R-M458 is a mainly Slavic SNP, characterized by its own mutation, and was first called cluster N. Underhill et al. (2009) found it to be present in modern European populations roughly between the Rhine catchment and the Ural Mountains and traced it to “a founder effect that … falls into the early Holocene period, 7.9±2.6 KYA.” M458 was found in one skeleton from a 14th-century grave field in Usedom, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. The paper by Underhill et al. (2009) also reports a surprisingly high frequency of M458 in some Northern Caucasian populations (for example 27.5% among Karachays and 23.5% among Balkars, 7.8% among Karanogays and 3.4% among Abazas).” ref
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Ancient Women Found in a Russian Cave Turn Out to Be Closely Related to The Modern Population https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-women-found-in-a-russian-cave-turn-out-to-be-closely-related-to-the-modern-population
Abstract
“Ancient genomes have revolutionized our understanding of Holocene prehistory and, particularly, the Neolithic transition in western Eurasia. In contrast, East Asia has so far received little attention, despite representing a core region at which the Neolithic transition took place independently ~3 millennia after its onset in the Near East. We report genome-wide data from two hunter-gatherers from Devil’s Gate, an early Neolithic cave site (dated to ~7.7 thousand years ago) located in East Asia, on the border between Russia and Korea. Both of these individuals are genetically most similar to geographically close modern populations from the Amur Basin, all speaking Tungusic languages, and, in particular, to the Ulchi. The similarity to nearby modern populations and the low levels of additional genetic material in the Ulchi imply a high level of genetic continuity in this region during the Holocene, a pattern that markedly contrasts with that reported for Europe.” ref
When the First Farmers Arrived in Europe, Inequality Evolved
“Forests gave way to fields, pushing hunter-gatherers to the margins—geographically and socially. There is no clear genetic evidence of interbreeding along the central European route until the (Linear Pottery culture 5500–4500 BCE or 7,522-6,522 years ago) LBK farmers reached the Rhine. And yet the groups mixed in other ways—potentially right from the beginning. A tantalizing hint of such interactions came from Gamba’s discovery of a hunter-gatherer bone in a farming settlement at a place called Tiszaszőlős-Domaháza in Hungary. But there was nothing more to be said about that individual. Was he a member of that community? A hostage? Someone passing through?” ref
“With later evidence, the picture became clearer. At Bruchenbrücken, a site north of Frankfurt in Germany, farmers, and hunter-gatherers lived together roughly 7,300 years ago in what Gronenborn calls a “multicultural” settlement. It looks as if the hunters may have come there originally from farther west to trade with the farmers, who valued their predecessors’ toolmaking techniques—especially their finely chiseled stone arrowheads. Perhaps some hunter-gatherers settled, taking up the farming way of life. So fruitful were the exchanges at Bruchenbrücken and other sites, Gronenborn says, that they held up the westward advance of farming for a couple of centuries.” ref
“There may even have been rare exceptions to the rule that the two groups did not interbreed early on. The Austrian site of Brunn 2, in a wooded river valley not far from Vienna, dates from the earliest arrival of the LBK farmers in central Europe, around 7,600 years ago. Three burials at the site were roughly contemporaneous. Two were of individuals of pure farming ancestry, and the other was the first-generation offspring of a hunter and a farmer. All three lay curled up on their sides in the LBK way, but the “hunter” was buried with six arrowheads.” ref
Research Shows Indo-European Languages Originated in Turkey (2012)
“The Indo-European languages belong to one of the widest spread language families of the world. For the last two millennia, many of these languages have been written, and their history is relatively clear. But controversy remains about the time and place of the origins of the family. The majority view in historical linguistics is that the homeland of Indo-European is located in the Pontic steppes – present-day Ukraine – around 6,000 years ago. The evidence for this comes from linguistic paleontology: in particular, certain words to do with the technology of wheeled vehicles are arguably present across all the branches of the Indo-European family; and archaeology tells us that wheeled vehicles arose no earlier than this date. The minority view links the origins of Indo-European with the spread of farming from Anatolia 8,000-9,500 years ago. The team’s innovative Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of Indo-European linguistic and spatial data, including basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages, decisively supports this theory. The linguists report their results in a paper in the journal Science.” ref
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“Map of sites: 1. Varna I; 2. Varna II; 3. Durankulak; 4. Hotnica; 5. Ai Bunar; 6. Razgrad; 7. Varli brjag, Rosen and Medni Rid; 8. Burgas; 9. Majdanpek; 10. Akladi cheiri; 11. Belovode; 12. Darudere; 13. Novoselo; 14. Dvoinitsa reka (Bjala); 15. Gorenchiflik; 16. Kalovo; 17. Kotel; 18. Kuzdere; 19. Sungunlare; 20. Neikovo; 21. Novoselci; 22. Rakovdol. Dashed line = constraints of the KGK VI cultural complex. Mapped are the three eponymous sites Kod zadermen, Karanovo, and Gumelni ̧a. Grey areas = copper occurrences. Yellow areas = gold occurrences. Brown areas = flint occurrences.” ref
“Devnya, male grave of Varna culture; 1-burial, 2-10-pottery, 11-flint, 12-lignite, 13-gold, 14-copper, 15-mussel shells (acc. to Lichter 2001). Ryc. 7. Devnya, grób mężczyzny z kultury Varna; 1-pochówek, 2-10-ceramika, 11-krzemień, 12-lignit, 13-złoto, 14-miedź, 15-muszle (wg Lichter 2001).” ref
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Gender-differentiated burial rites in Europe of the 5th and 4th millennia BC/(7,000-6,000 to 6,000-5,000 years ago):
“Gender-differentiated burial rites have been attested in Eneolithic complexes of the cultures: Hamangia, Varna, Tiszapolgár, Bodrogkeresztúr and Lublin-Volhynia, the Late Linear Pottery culture (Brześć Kujawski group), as well as numerous regional groups of the Corded Ware and the Bell Beaker cultures.” ref
What was it about the Copper Age that encouraged people to create social hierarchies? And why in the Balkans on the shores of the Black Sea?
“The people who built the Varna cemetery had more on their minds than subsistence. “The whole population was in good health and had a well-balanced diet. These people were not rich or poor in today’s sense. They had reached a moment where they started to think about more than survival. Until the invention of metallurgy, all the tools humanity had at its disposal were crafted from stone, wood, bone, antler, or clay. But metal is much different and likely wound have been seen as magical as it could be shaped and worked into tools and decorations in a way that must have seemed otherworldly as well as achieve otherworldly power. Metal is never used up. It can be recycled endlessly.” The first metalworkers must have seemed like wizards.” ref
“But while stone and bone were widely available—materials anyone could pick up off the ground—malachite, azurite, and gold were all hard to come by. A pound of copper requires mining hundreds of pounds of copper ore; it takes up to ten tons of material to yield an ounce of gold. Mining, smelting, and working metal took special skills and lots of time. All those man-hours needed to be organized and ordered. That’s where the man in grave 43 and his fellow one-percenters came in. In this way things had changed and for the very first time humanity was forever changed to a new crucial point in human history—part of society must work with metal, and others must feed them. That separation has to be ordered and regulated, with somebody assigning roles. The person making decisions has to have a lot of power to keep society separated.” ref
“What happened to the society that once existed here? The golden age entombed in the cemetery was brief. The bones were all buried within a few centuries, between 6,600 and 6,200 years ago. What happened next is an enduring mystery. All along the lower Danube, settlements and cultures that flourished during the Copper Age come to an abrupt end around 6,000 years ago. Suddenly, settlements are abandoned; the people vanish. For six centuries afterwards, the region seems to be empty.” ref
“For decades, scholars assumed the sudden abandonment was the result of an invasion by the mounted Indo-European warriors Gimbutas had written about, rampaging through the region. More recently, researchers have begun considering another possibility—climate change. The collapse of the Copper Age coincides with a warming world, with larger swings in temperatures and rainfall. The villages that produced the gold found here are now underwater: The Black Sea was as much as 25 feet lower than it is today.” ref
7,000 year old Siberian warrior: more advanced than we would suppose?
“Buried with stone axe and horn-tipped arrow, ancient human remains have archeologists reshaping their assumptions. It is a fair assumption to say, as this fact proves, that the burial mounds emerged much earlier than the Bronze Age, in Neolithic times. In Siberia, there was found a burial mound dating to The New Stone Age (Neolithic Era) has been unearthed in Novosibirsk region. In the mound were nine people, including women and children,” ref
7,000-year-old burial mound unearthed in Siberia (pre-kurgan?)
Link for the two above Pictures: ref
Map of Early Copper Age migrations
“Thousands of horsemen may have swept into Bronze Age Europe, transforming the local population. Yamnaya from the Russian steppe, which was the homeland of these men migrated to Europe. Early Bronze Age men from the vast grasslands of the Eurasian steppe swept into Europe on horseback about 5000 years ago—and may have left most women behind. This mostly male migration may have persisted for several generations, sending men into the arms of European women who interbred with them, and leaving a lasting impact on the genomes of living Europeans. It looks like males migrating in war, with horses and wagons. calculated that there were perhaps 10 men for every woman in the migration of Yamnaya men to Europe (with a range of five to 14 migrating men for every woman).” ref
“Europeans are the descendants of at least three major migration hunter-gatherers 37,000 years ago. Then, farmers from Turkey 9000 years ago, but they initially didn’t intermingle much with the local hunter-gatherers because they brought their own families with them. Finally, 5000 to 4800 years ago, nomadic herders known as the Yamnaya swept into Europe from Russia and Ukraine, bringing with them metallurgy and animal herding skills and, possibly, Proto-Indo-European, the mysterious ancestral tongue from which all of today’s 400 Indo-European languages spring. Within a few hundred years, the Yamnaya contributed to at least half of central Europeans’ genetic ancestry.” ref
“Although war in quite likely, warfare isn’t the only explanation it is also possible that the Yamnaya men could have been more attractive mates than European farmers because they had horses and new technologies. The finding that Yamnaya men migrated for many generations also suggests that all was not right back home in the steppe.” ref
“25 new complete mitochondrial genomes of ancient individuals coming from three necropolises located in different regions of Bulgaria – Shekerdja mogila, Gabrova mogila and Bereketska mogila – dated to II-III millennium BC. The identified mtDNA haplogroup composition reflects the mitochondrial variability of Western Eurasia. In particular, within the ancient Eurasian genetic landscape, Thracians locate in an intermediate position between Early Neolithic farmers and Late Neolithic-Bronze Age steppe pastoralists, supporting the scenario that the Balkan region has been a link between Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean since the prehistoric time.” ref
“Different theories have been historically proposed about the origin of the Thracians. Today it is assumed that the Thracian culture emerged and formed in the early Bronze Age a period characterized by strong cultural changes and movements of people westward from the Steppe. During the 5th and 4th millennium BCE, the inhabitants of the eastern region of Balkans were organized in different groups of indigenous people that, over time, were named under the single ethnonym of “Thracians”. According to historical and archaeological sources, the Thracian culture flourished during the 2nd and 3rd millennia BCE. The rich cultural and historical heritage, represented by fortresses and necropolises, as well as by the world-famous Panagyurishte, Valchitran, Lukovit and Rogozen treasures, dates back to this period. In the later periods, several populations (Greeks, Macedonians, Slavs and proto-Bulgarians) arrived in the Balkans, reaching the lands occupied by Thracians and mixing with them, thus influencing their cultural and biological identity.” ref
“Early urbanism was not all positive. City growth led to crowding, craft specialisation reduced consumer choice, and power shifts–including the growth of institutions–fostered status and wealth inequalities. At Tell Brak, Syria, c 3900 BC, these stresses led to an outbreak of internal violence represented by mass graves with evidence for corpse abuse.” ref
“6,000-5,000 years ago is a time of radical transformations in the European Neolithic. Moreover, the 5,500 years ago is considered a real ‘turning point’ by many researchers. On one hand, long-distance exchanges can be traced by mapping supraregional entanglements in pottery styles, stone tools and metal objects. For example potteries with Munzingen culture (3950-3600 BC) shapes that are typical for the Upper Rhine Valley can be found on the Swiss Plateau too, or polished axes made from Vosges Mountains rocks from France were distributed as far as the Lake Constance regions situated in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. On the other hand, fundamental general changes in material culture (early copper metallurgy in the East) and ritual practices (expansion of collective burials) between the first and second part of the 4th millennium raise the issue of contacts that social groups have maintained among themselves, in time and space.” ref
Interesting info: 6,000-4,000 years ago in Hungary: THE AGE OF TRANSFORMATION
“The findings — published this week in the journal Nature Communications — suggest the arrival of agriculture was late to Northern Europe. While agriculture was firmly established throughout Central Europe some 7,000 years ago, the first Neolithic farmers and pastoralists didn’t arrive in Scandinavia until between 6,000 to 5,300 years ago. The new data suggests Scandinavia’s first farmers came from Central Europe. Along with new tools and techniques, these agriculturalists brought genetic roots that can be traced back to the Anatolian farmers, who first migrated from the Near East to Europe some 8,200 years ago. The waves of migration into Northern Europe understood from the remains of 38 different people. The remains included humans living in Scandinavia between 9,500 to 2,500 years ago.” ref
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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
A gruesome ancient skull cult ritual and new violence around 8,029-7,640 years ago.
“The skulls, were part of a complex ceremony, displaying of skulls on stakes in water, conducted on a massive (14 x 14 m) stone-packing constructed on the bottom of the shallow lake. Besides the 11 human skulls, the cultural/ritual material also includes a smaller number of human and animal bones as well as artifacts of stone, wood, including ornamented bone, and antler. Then the skulls were brought to the small lake and deposited on a wood-and-stone structure in the water. Women were hit on the back of the head, while the men were hit on the top and it’s likely these injuries are a result of purposeful acts of violence, thus seeming skull cult rituals, trophies, and relics as well as in a way is like pre-bog bodies. “Burial sites often provide clues about culture, but to date, only 200 Mesolithic human burials have been found in Scandinavia. That’s why the discovery of 11 humans and one infant in Kanalijorden is so extraordinary.” ref, ref
“The analysis discovered that up to 1 in 6 skulls exhumed in Scandinavia from the late Stone Age — between about 6,000 and 3,700 years ago — had nasty head injuries. And contrary to findings from mass grave sites of the period, women were equally likely to be victims of deadly blows.” ref
“Farming appears to have been first introduced by migrants from modern-day Turkey, and south-eastern Europe remained a contact point for different groups as agriculture took hold in Europe. And evidence shows that when farmers first spread into northern Europe, they stopped at a latitude where their crops didn’t grow well. Therefore, there were persistent boundaries between the farmers and the hunter-gatherers for a couple of thousand years.”ref
“Could this somehow relate to kidnap victims? The research indicates hunter-gatherer genes that persisted in northern Europeans came primarily from men suggesting one reason for this is that farmer women tended to be somehow integrated into hunter-gatherer communities before the men bringing questions.” ref
The Rise of Routine violence?
“Stone Age farmers, understood from 378 skulls found throughout Sweden and Denmark from between 5,900-3,700 years ago are seem to have violent wounds, which might leave evidence such as an “axe-shaped hole in the skull, [Fight, Fight, Fight: The History of Human Aggression]. Nearly 10 percent of the Swedish skulls exhibited signs of violent injury, and nearly 17 percent of the Danish skulls had such wounds. Men had more nonfatal injuries, but women were just as likely as men to have lethal head wounds — which can be identified because they never healed. That suggests these ancient herders routinely experienced violence, likely due to raids, family feuds, or other daily skirmishes with competing groups.” ref
Late Chalcolithic Cultural Collapse in South-East Europe
“Research into the Balkan Chalcolithic often overlooks the dramatic changes in society that occurred beginning in the late Fifth Millennium BCE. Most settlements were abandoned along with changes in mortuary customs, ceramic and decorative traditions, domestic rituals, crafts, housing styles, mining, and metallurgy. These changes happened at a time when these Chalcolithic societies seemed to be at their peak. Theories as to what caused these changes include migrations/invasions, anthropogenic environmental degradation, gradual internal changes through innovation and outside contacts, and climate change.” ref
“The Chalcolithic period in Southeast Europe was a remarkable and dynamic time in prehistory. It was an autonomous cultural-complex that was on the verge of what we would call civilized life with its achievements in the metallurgical industry, architecture, trade, art, ideology and the rise of craft productions and divisions of labor. It was among the most sophisticated and technologically advanced regions in the world. The Copper Age was a crucial period for the development of both technology and social complexity. There is no evidence of social hierarchy prior to this period. The centuries between 5000 and 3500 B.C. can now be seen as a crucial transition period during which early Europeans began to use metal tools, develop more complex social structures, and established far reaching cultural and trading networks.” ref
“Yet perhaps even more remarkable and deserving of research is how these societies ended. One of the most dramatic and overlooked changes to occur in the Old World prehistory was that which took place in the fourth millennium BC in Southeast Europe during what is called the Chalcolithic-Early Bronze Age transition. It was more than just a change in metallurgical technology. There is uncontestable evidence of an entire restructuring of society throughout the whole region. There were ubiquitous transformations in settlement and land use, technology, material culture, and even perhaps ideology and language. Much like the Late Bronze Age Collapse that is marked by the collapse of many of the great Bronze Age civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Late Chalcolithic collapse in the Balkans remains mysterious with a number of different hypothetical causes.” ref
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SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN CHRONOLOGY 7,300-5,500 years ago
“Copper Slag from a Baden context from Novačka Ćuprija in Serbia suggests that the use of arsenical bronze began by the late fourth millennium B.C. but the earliest evidence of worked raw copper without melting goes back to the early Neolithic in the Near East. A copper pendant was found in northern Iraq that dates to 10,700 years ago. However, the true “Copper Age” did not begin until the advent of copper smelting at the end of the 6th millennium. The Baden, Ezero, Usatovo, and Cernavoda represent a cultural complex in what is now Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldavia, and Romania that marks the transition from the Chalcolithic copper age to the Early Bronze Age in the second half of the fourth millennium. Bronze use as a diagnostic does not truly kick off until the 3rd millennium but the cultural transitions that were the origins of Bronze Age societies that will be discussed here are believed to have begun in the mid 4th millennium.” ref
“In other parts of Europe the Early Bronze Age would arrive considerably later. But what we shall see is that this restructuring of settled society would occur roughly around the same time in both Southeast, Eastern, and Central Europe. The origins of the Chalcolithic cultures go back to the beginning of the Neolithic. Here we find evidence for the beginnings of domesticated plants and animals from Southwest Asia, the first permanent settlements, and the first pottery around 6200 BC. Nearly everyone agrees with the model that has waves of migrants first entering Europe via the Aegean from Anatolia. Over the next 2500 years, these small farming communities grew into vibrant and dynamic cultures with proto-urban societies. Settlements grew in size and number. Some of the largest Vinca sites in the 5th millennium were larger than most Minoan and Mycenaean sites!” ref
“New settlements were founded on secondary areas around the periphery of the older settled regions. Many of these settlements became tells, man-made hills from the accumulated remains of centuries of nucleated occupations being built on top of the remains of older ones. One of the most massive of these tells is at Karanovo in Bulgaria. Here we find a excellent stratigraphic sequence going back to the beginning of the sixth millennium and continuing until the Early Bronze Age. Tells were an important part of the cultural landscape in the Chalcolithic, especially in the Danube valley and Thrace, in the later part of the period. The oldest tells in Europe are known from Greece and date to around 8,400 years ago. With the transition from a mobile to a sedentary way of life, tells appeared in the Eastern Balkans as well around 8,000 years ago.” ref
“By the Late Neolithic/Early Chalcolithic they were in the Lower Danube region; represented by the phases Karanovo V and VI, between 6,800-6,250 years ago, after which they were largely abandoned. It is really in the mid-fifth millennium that we see tells become the norm and many new settlements being created. Although there has been a paucity of off-tell survey in Bulgaria, the pattern from current survey data exhibits a clear tendency for a relatively even dispersion of tells across the landscape. It seems that the flat sites have more size variability, often becoming significantly larger than tell sites. However, in areas of Eastern Europe not dominated by tell settlement, small villages and hamlets continue to predominate.” ref
“Todorova has estimated that in northeastern Bulgaria alone there were over two hundred settlements in use at some time in the fifth millennium BC/7,000-6,000 years ago. However most of the Lower Danube tells were occupied for a relatively short amount of time but with rapid rates of accumulation. At least five hundred tells containing Gumelnitsa material remains have been recorded in Romania, Bulgaria, and eastern Macedonia and that they were occupied for nearly a millennium. After the middle of the sixth millennium, there were important alterations in the building organization at existing settlement tells. Changes include an increase in the size of individual buildings, an increase in the number of rooms within buildings and in the organizational complexity of the rooms and space inside these buildings and they were made of more durable materials.” ref
“The richest and well-known necropolis is at Varna. Previously, for typological and stylistic reasons, the cemetery was dated to the third and last phase of the Varna culture during the second half of the 5th millennium BC. According to new carbon dates, Varna I was placed into the 46th century BC and Varna II-III around 4450/4400 BC. The cultural context is clearly fixed by the graphite-painted pottery and other artifacts in the later Chalcolithic of Bulgaria’s Gumelnitsa phase, equivalent to the Karanova VI phase. It is at Varna that we find the earliest major assemblage of gold artifacts anywhere in the world.” ref
“The fact that only a select few graves are adorned with any gold suggests to many that this society had clear ranking with social elites. In several of the graves the deceased was buried in a contracted position, in others fully extended, a convention restricted in Bulgaria during the Chalcolithic period to the northeast of the country. There were 35 graves where no skeleton was found; these are designated ‘cenotaphs’ or ‘symbolic graves’ and three contain a mask embellished with gold. Interestingly enough, the settlement associated with the cemetery has not been discovered yet if indeed there is a single such settlement, but it is more likely on the basis of the grave goods that the cemetery holds the elite of a larger region than just the few square kilometers that constitute the territory surrounding Chalcolithic tells.” ref
“So, overall, tells started to appear after 7,500 years ago but were limited to Thrace and Macedonia and then spread to the rest of the Balkans in the 5th millennium (7,000-6,000 years ago). The CucuteniTrypillian culture in modern Ukraine, Moldova, and northeast Romania, at its peak, built the largest settlements in Neolithic Europe and with very high density but their entire village was burned every 60-80 years for reasons that are not yet clear. An intriguing dilemma arises, why were so many of these tells throughout the region abandoned and replaced by a more dispersed settlement pattern at the end of this period around 6,000 years ago?” ref
“The region of Southeast Europe/ the Balkans expressed here is to include the modern nations of Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Albania, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, and even parts of the Ukraine. Despite the increasing diversity of cultures, there was considerable homogeneity throughout the region. As a result of the development of metal mining, metallurgy and the intensification of cultural contacts, the mid-fifth millennium B.C. in southeast Europe witnessed deep integration among neighboring cultures, resulting in the formation of large cultural complexes. The different kinds of pottery overlap considerably and are found scattered throughout the region, suggesting extensive trading and interacting. Thus, it is important that we treat the whole of south east Europe as part of the same system. This setting has been named “Old Europe” by some scholars to distinguish it from the Indo-European cultures that moved in and replaced it, according to theory.” ref
“Interest and excitement in the societies of the Chalcolithic Balkans really took off with the discovery of the Varna necropolis. Up until this point it was largely believed that Neolithic and Chalcolithic societies were egalitarian. Discoveries of fantastic necropolises began to raise new questions about social inequality, trade, and craft specialization. It also had the important effect of further solidifying the uniqueness of the Chalcolithic not just technologically, from the preceding Neolithic, but also socially. This was the first time that separate cemeteries were located outside of settlements in Europe. The spectacular gold and copper adornments on just a small fraction of the total burials at Varna led to the obvious conclusion that they must have been social elites, perhaps the earliest evidence of such class differentiation. Grave 43 contained more gold than has been found in the entire rest of the world for that epoch. Some graves were empty, cenotaphs (possibly a monument to someone buried elsewhere, to a sacred ancestor or even maybe gods), but loaded with grave goods.” ref
“The findings also showed that the Varna culture had distant trade relations (possibly from the lower Volga and the Cyclades), perhaps exporting copper and salt. As one can imagine, this finding was of great interest to more anthropologically inclined archaeologists wanting to look at social processes such as social differentiation, stratification, exchange of prestige goods with other regions and even more need to understand the symbolic aspects and belief systems of the culture. The excavations of the Varna cemetery dating showed it was in use earlier than thought previously, many of them fitting into the 6,600 years ago. The results suggest it was used relatively briefly, perhaps 50 years. The Chalcolithic was now seen as a crucial stage in the cultural evolution towards civilization. the necropolis of Durankulak and shed light on the origin of the Neolithic Hamangia culture, which she identified as the most eastern group of the lower Danubian Vinca Cultural Complex in the 6th millennium and not as originating from Anatolia as was previously thought. The data gathered there has greatly enhanced our knowledge of the social and demographic structure of the Eneolithic society in the 5th mil B.C., and also on a number of cultural aspects and burial customs.” ref
“There was a link to cognate cultures in Bulgaria into large cultural blocs, such as the Kodjadermen-Gumelnita-Karanovo VI Comlex (KGK VI). This allowed the complicated character of the prehistoric development on the Balkan Peninsula to be defined in terms of pan-regional processes. At Ochorovo, she contributed to questions of Eneolithic cult and beliefs by illustrating a pantheon of gods of the sun, moon, and natural elements and contributed to our understanding of the role of idol figures of this age. The late Chalcolithic cultures (Cernavoda I and Usatovo) on the steppe margins in modern day Moldavia and far western Ukraine need to be taken into consideration to understand what changed. As well as the settlement site of Orklovka near Reni (Ukraine) with a stratigraphic succession of the Gumelnita, Gernavoda I and Usatovo cultures.” ref
“Moreover, it is also important to understand the Körös Regional Early Copper Age Tiszapolgar Culture sites on the Hungarian Plain was a multi-discipline study aimed at building a model of social organization from the period. Archaeology of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic in Hungary appears to be on the rise with specific research questions looking at aspects of demography and cultural change. Research has also been going on the other margin of the Southeast European Chalcolithic steppe margin. One Tripolye town, Tal’yanki with an estimated area of 450 hectares, would have been the largest of its time 3500 BC, even larger than Uruk (ancient city of Sumer and later of Babylonia. Uruk played a leading role in the early urbanization of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC. At its height around 4,900 years ago, Uruk probably had 50,000–80,000 residents).” ref
“The agricultural revolution in Eastern Europe began in the Eneolithic with the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture complex. In Ukraine, the Trypillian culture existed for over two millennia (around 7,400–4,700 years ago) and left a wealth of artifacts. The genetic composition of the Trypillian culture population human remains from nine Trypillian culture individuals can be found is a cave called Verteba in western Ukraine, combined with the data from previous reports, indicate that the Trypillian population at Verteba carried, for the most part, a typical Neolithic farmer package of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages traced to Anatolian farmers and Neolithic farming groups of central Europe. At the same time, the finding of two specimens belonging to haplogroup U8b1 at Verteba can be viewed as a connection of Trypillian culture population with the Upper Paleolithic European populations. At the level of mtDNA haplogroup frequencies, the TC population from Verteba demonstrates a close genetic relationship with population groups of the Funnel Beaker/ Trichterbecker cultural complex from central and northern Europe (around 5,950–4,500 years ago).” ref
“The smaller settlements are typical of the earliest Trypillia A still remain predominant at the later stages. Cucuteni–Trypillia express cultural unity in eastern Romania (Cucuteni) and in central-western Ukraine (Trypillia). A larger settlement of several hundred people could function in isolation, perhaps with a larger fraction of cereals in the diet, only with technological innovations. It appears that very large settlements of a few hundred hectares in the area could function only if supported by satellite farming villages and stable exchange networks. In turn, this implies a social division of labor and occupation, sufficiently complex social relations, stable exchange channels, etc. and altogether, a proto-urban character of such settlements located either in close proximity to, or within, river valleys, in most cases on natural elevations.” ref
“The Tripolye culture came into close contact with the world of the nomadic steppe herders (Kurgan cultures), and both influenced their culture and was, in turn, influenced by them.” ref
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Masseboth similar but much smaller than a European Menhir, dates to around 13,000-11,000 years ago in the Near East. Kurgan a burial mound over a timber burial chamber, dates to around 7,000/6,000 years ago. Dolmen a single-chamber ritual megalith, dates to around 7,000/6,000 years ago. Ziggurat a multi-platform temple around 4,900 years ago. Pyramid a multi-platform tomb, dates to around 4,700 years ago. #3 is a Step Pyramid (or proto pyramid) for the burial of Pharaoh Djoser it went through several revisions and redevelopments. First are three layers of Mastaba “house of eternity” a flat-roofed rectangular structure, then two step pyramid one on top the other, showing the evolution of ideas.
Kurgan hypothesis
“The Kurgan hypothesis postulates that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were the bearers of the Kurgan culture of the Black Sea and the Caucasus and west of the Urals. The hypothesis combined kurgan archaeology with linguistics to locate the origins of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE)-speaking peoples, named the culture “Kurgan” after their distinctive burial mounds and traced its diffusion into Europe. This hypothesis has had a significant impact on Indo-European studies. Three genetic studies in 2015 gave partial support to Gimbutas’s Kurgan theory regarding the Indo-European Urheimat. According to those studies, haplogroups R1b and R1a, now the most common in Europe (R1a is also common in South Asia) would have expanded from the Russian and Ukrainian steppes, along with the Indo-European languages; they also detected an autosomal component present in modern Europeans which was not present in Neolithic Europeans, which would have been introduced with paternal lineages R1b and R1a, as well as Indo-European languages.” ref
“The Kurgan model of Indo-European origins identifies the Pontic–Caspian steppe as the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) urheimat, and a variety of late PIE dialects are assumed to have been spoken across the region. According to this model, the Kurgan culture gradually expanded until it encompassed the entire Pontic–Caspian steppe, Kurgan IV being identified with the Yamna culture of around 5,000 years ago. The mobility of the Kurgan culture facilitated its expansion over the entire region, and is attributed to the domestication of the horse and later the use of early chariots. The first strong archaeological evidence for the domestication of the horse comes from the Sredny Stog culture north of the Azov Sea in Ukraine, and would correspond to an early PIE or pre-PIE nucleus of the 7,000 years ago.” ref
Cultures considered as part of the “Kurgan culture”:
- Bug–Dniester (6th millennium)
- Samara (5th millennium)
- Khvalynsk (5th millennium)
- Dnieper–Donets (5th to 4th millennia)
- Sredny Stog (mid-5th to mid-4th millennia)
- Maikop–Dereivka (mid-4th to mid-3rd millennia)
- Yamna (Pit Grave): This is itself a varied cultural horizon, spanning the entire Pontic–Caspian steppe from the mid-4th to the 3rd millennium.
- Usatovo culture (late 4th millennium) ref
Kurgan hypothesis Timeline
- 6,500–6,000: Early PIE. Sredny Stog, Dnieper–Donets and Samara cultures, domestication of the horse(Wave 1).
- 6,000–5,500: The Pit Grave culture (a.k.a. Yamna culture), the prototypical kurgan builders, emerges in the steppe, and the Maykop culture in the northern Caucasus. Indo-Hittite models postulate the separation of Proto-Anatolian before this time.
- 5,500–5,000: Middle PIE. The Pit Grave culture is at its peak, representing the classical reconstructed Proto-Indo-European society with stone idols, predominantly practicing animal husbandry in permanent settlements protected by hillforts, subsisting on agriculture, and fishing along rivers. Contact of the Pit Grave culture with late Neolithic Europe cultures results in the “kurganized” Globular Amphora and Baden cultures (Wave 2). The Maykop culture shows the earliest evidence of the beginning Bronze Age, and Bronze weapons and artifacts are introduced to Pit Grave territory. Probable early Satemization.
- 5,000–4,500: Late PIE. The Pit Grave culture extends over the entire Pontic steppe (Wave 3). The Corded Ware culture extends from the Rhine to the Volga, corresponding to the latest phase of Indo-European unity, the vast “kurganized” area disintegrating into various independent languages and cultures, still in loose contact enabling the spread of technology and early loans between the groups, except for the Anatolian and Tocharian branches, which are already isolated from these processes. The centum–satem break is probably complete, but the phonetic trends of Satemization remain active. ref
Yamna Culture (around 5,500-4,500 years ago)
- Also known as the Yamnaya Culture, Pit Grave Culture or Ochre Grave Culture.
“The dead were inhumed/burried in pit graves inside kurgans (burial mounds). Bodies were placed in a supine position with bent knees and covered in ochre. Wagons/carts and sacrificed animals (cattle, horse, sheep) were present in graves, a trait typical of later Indo-European cultures.” ref
“Genetic analysis of Yamnayan genomes revealed that Yamnayans were a blend of three ancestral populations. The dominant element (55 to 85%) was the Mesolithic Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG), associated with Y-haplogroups R1a and R1b. Then came the Caucasian Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) admixture, making up about 15-25% of their genomes. This admixture is mainly associated with Y-haplogroup J, and indeed one J* sample was found in Mesolithic Russia.” ref
“It has been confirmed by ancient DNA that J2b was found among Neolithic farmers from East Transcaucasia (in this case, northwest Iran), and there is convincing evidence that these J2b farmers crossed the Caucasus to settle in the Volga-Ural region during the Early Neolithic. Thirdly, there is an increasing amount of evidence that some R1b tribes crossed from the Steppe to the East Transcaucasia.” ref
“They would have returned to the Steppe with copper metallurgy during the Khvalynsk culture (5000-3800 BCE), which is ancestral to Yamna. The third admixture was the Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG), representing about 6% of Yamna genomes, although a few samples lacked it entirely. The WHG admixture is derived from Mesolithic Western Europeans descended from Late Cro-Magnons (Gravettian) and is mainly linked with Y-haplogroup I, and to a lower extent also C1a2 and F.” ref
“The Yamna DNA samples recovered from elite Kurgan graves in southern Russia belonged overwhelmingly to haplogroup R1b-Z2103, the essentially eastern branch of Indo-European R1b. The absence of other main R1b subclades is probably due to the dominance of a single royal or aristocratic lineage among the Yamnayan elite buried in Kurgans. Other R1b subclades did show up in Germany (DF27, U152) and Ireland (L21) when Steppe-derived people reached those regions between 2500 and 2000 BCE. The only non-R1b sample found in Yamna was an I2a2a-L699, a lineage descended from WHG tribes that migrated to Eastern Europe, but came back with the Indo-European migrations and is now found especially in Central and Western Europe.” ref
“Naturally Mummified Pre-dynastic Upper Egyptian Man with light skin and red hair from Gebelein, 25 mi south of Thebes dated to around 5,400 years ago.” ref
Y-chromosomal haplogroup R1b and Red hair?
First, according to DNA studies the majority of modern R1b and R1a would have expanded from the Caspian Sea along with the Indo-European languages. ref
The oldest human remains found to carry R1b include:
- Villabruna 1 (individual I9030), found in an Epigravettian culture setting in the Cismon valley (modern Veneto, Italy), who lived circa 14,000 years ago and belonged to R1b-L754,
- numerous individuals from the Mesolithic Iron Gates culture of the central Danube(modern Romania and Serbia), dating from 10,000 to 8,500 years ago – most of them falling into R1b-L754;
- two individuals, dating from circa 7,800–6,800 years ago, found at the Zvejnieki burial ground, belonging to the Narva culture (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kaliningrad Oblast and adjacent portions of Poland, Belarus and Russia) of the Baltic neolithic, both determined to belong to the R1b-P297 subclade, and;
- the “Samara hunter-gatherer” (I0124/SVP44), who lived approximately 7,500 years ago in the Volga River (Russia) area and carried R1b-L278. ref
“The Samara culture is regarded as related to contemporaneous or subsequent prehistoric cultures of the Pontic-Caspian steppe, such as the Khvalynsk, Repin and Yamna (or Yamnya) cultures. The Proto-Indo-European homeland is often linked to one or more of these cultures.” ref
“Red hair has long been associated with Celtic people. Both the ancient Greeks and Romans described the Celts as redheads. The Romans extended the description to Germanic people, at least those they most frequently encountered in southern and western Germany. It still holds true today.” ref
“Although red hair is an almost exclusively northern and central European phenomenon, isolated cases have also been found in the Middle East, Central Asia (notably among the Tajiks), as well as in some of the Tarim mummies from Xinjiang, in north-western China. The Udmurts, an Uralic tribe living in the northern Volga basin of Russia, between Kazan and Perm, are the only non-Western Europeans to have a high incidence of red hair (over 10%). So what do all these people have in common? Surely the Udmurts and Tajiks aren’t Celts, nor Germans. Yet, as we will see, all these people share a common ancestry that can be traced back to a single Y-chromosomal haplogroup: R1b.” ref
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“R1b* at high levels in Jordan, Egypt and Sudan. However, subsequent research indicates that the samples concerned most likely belong to the subclade R-V88.” ref
The Levantine & African branch of R1b (V88)
“Like its northern counterpart (R1b-M269), R1b-V88 is associated with the domestication of cattle in northern Mesopotamia. Both branches of R1b probably split soon after cattle were domesticated, approximately 10,500 years ago (8,500 BCE). R1b-V88 migrated south towards the Levant and Egypt. The migration of R1b people can be followed archeologically through the presence of domesticated cattle, which appear in central Syria around 8,000-7,500 BCE (late Mureybet period), then in the Southern Levant and Egypt around 7,000-6,500 BCE (e.g. at Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba). Cattle herders subsequently spread across most of northern and eastern Africa. The Sahara desert would have been more humid during the Neolithic Subpluvial period (c. 7250-3250 BCE), and would have been a vast savannah full of grass, an ideal environment for cattle herding.” ref
“Evidence of cow herding during the Neolithic has shown up at Uan Muhuggiag in central Libya around 5500 BCE, at the Capeletti Cave in northern Algeria around 4500 BCE. But the most compelling evidence that R1b people related to modern Europeans once roamed the Sahara is to be found at Tassili n’Ajjer in southern Algeria, a site famous pyroglyphs (rock art) dating from the Neolithic era. Some painting dating from around 3000 BCE depict fair-skinned and blond or auburn haired women riding on cows. The oldest known R1b-V88 sample in Europe is a 6,200 year-old farmer/herder from Catalonia. Autosomally this individual was a typical Near Eastern farmer, possessing just a little bit of Mesolithic West European admixture.” ref
“After reaching the Maghreb, R1b-V88 cattle herders could have crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Iberia, probably accompanied by G2 farmers, J1 and T1a goat herders. These North African Neolithic farmers/herders could have been the ones who established the Almagra Pottery culture in Andalusia in the 6th millennium BCE. R1b-V88 would have crossed the Sahara between 9,200 and 5,600 years ago, and is most probably associated with the diffusion of Chadic languages, a branch of the Afroasiatic languages. V88 would have migrated from Egypt to Sudan, then expanded along the Sahel until northern Cameroon and Nigeria. However, R1b-V88 is not only present among Chadic speakers, but also among Senegambian speakers (Fula-Hausa) and Semitic speakers (Berbers, Arabs).” ref
“Evidence of genetic stratification ascribable to the Sumerian development was provided by the Y-chromosome data where the J1-Page08 branch reveals a local expansion, almost contemporary with the Sumerian City State period that characterized Southern Mesopotamia. On the other hand, a more ancient background shared with Northern Mesopotamia is revealed by the less represented Y-chromosome lineage J1-M267*.” ref
“R1b-V88 is found among the native populations of Rwanda, South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau. The wide distribution of V88 in all parts of Africa, its incidence among herding tribes, and the coalescence age of the haplogroup all support a Neolithic dispersal. In any case, a later migration out of Egypt would be improbable since it would have brought haplogroups that came to Egypt during the Bronze Age, such as J1, J2, R1a or R1b-L23.” ref
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TOWARDS THE MEANING OF FLINT GRAVE GOODS: A CASE STUDY FROM BULGARIA
Bulgaria is renowned for its 11 prehistoric (mainly Chalcolithic or copper age) cemeteries, situated in the north-eastern part of the country. Of these, Varna is the most famous and is usually regarded as eclipsing the others. On the other hand, the Durankulak necropolis is unique even though the Durankulak cemetery’s presence of gold and copper objects is much more modest and the differentiation of grave goods deposition among individual burials is less striking, compared to Varna. At Durakulak there are, however, very interesting features. Durankulak provides an excellent opportunity to trace and reveal, diachronically, the mortuary practices characteristic of the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic communities for four principal reasons:
1 – the cemetery is associated with a tell settlement located about 200 m to the north;
2 – the excavation of 1204 burials;
3 – the one millennium time span;
4 – all stages of both the Hamangia and Varna cultures are represented in the cemetery; dates combined with the well-documented chronological sequence from another settlements belonging to the same culture provide the following chronological framework:
Early Hamangia (phases I, II) – Late Neolithic; 5250/5200–4950/4900 cal BC;
Hamangia III – beginning of the Chalcolithic; 4950/4900–4650/4600 cal BC;
Hamangia IV – Middle Chalcolithic; 4650/4600–4550/4500 cal BC;
Varna I–III – Late Chalcolithic; Varna I 4550/4500–4450/4400 cal BC;
Varna II-III 4450/4400–4250/4150 cal BC. ref
“The analysis of funerary objects can lead to a better understanding of the large, explored, but still enigmatic epistemological concept of sacred versus profane. Flint grave goods embody a primary functional role and connotation within the everyday life of our prehistoric predecessors, but also a secondary symbolic (ritual) meaning. The functional analysis of flint grave goods from the Durankulak cemetery, in north-eastern Bulgaria, in relation to the age, gender and status distinctions between the deceased, across a broad time range from the Late Neolithic (Hamangia culture) to the Late Chalcolithic (Varna culture). It is worth mentioning that the new dates from the Varna cemetery suggest an overall span of cemetery use of 83–178 years: from ~ 4560 to ~ 4450 cal BC. As the promoters of this new radiocarbon dating approach underline: “This is a period coeval with the Middle Copper Age on other sites and in other regions. The Varna dates advance by one or two centuries the beginning of the Late Copper Age in the Black Sea zone.” ref
“According to the most recent study of the Durankulak phenomenon, all changes originating in the Hamangia IV culture (e.g. arrangement of the funerary features, vertical stratigraphy by sex-and-age criteria, strictly fixed body positions for men and women, contents and layout patterns of the grave goods) were fully established and generally accepted at the beginning of the Varna culture. Mortuary practices became highly standardized with a few, minor exceptions. At the outset of this presentation of the Durankulak flint assemblages, among prestige grave goods is significant for both the question of symbolism and the adequate discerning of their relevance to other votive offerings and ritual deposits. In comparison with other grave goods, the flint implements possess a pronounced dualistic semantic position, because of their profound and inherent role, also in everyday life. One of the most important observations of the Durankulak funerary evidence is that the flint grave goods in general do not vary greatly according to the sex and age of the deceased with whom they were associated.” ref
“There are two exceptions: geometric microliths (found only in male burials) and big blades that are not found in newborn/infant burials, for example. It is noteworthy, however, that the children were obviously subjected to the same rituals and ceremonies as the adults, suggesting that, despite of their premature death, they were respected and considered as normal individuals and social group members. On the basis ‘…of the most power-full social arena of the Copper Age – the Varna cemetery…’ it is argued that the mortuary assemblages from north-east Bulgarian cemeteries represent the most elaborate sets of objects – the main significance of the term of hoard – transmitting the complex of social relations and conditions. So depending on the social context and evolutionary stage of the farming period, the sets of objects, is a materialized form of the society’s relations seen in the cemetery context, or hoards. In any case, the more complex and differentiated the social community, the more complex are the objects. Without doubt, during the Chalcolithic in north-east Bulgaria, the most complex social arena for hierarchy/status legitimization was the mortuary domain. In this respect, the most complex and sophisticated sets of objects become the grave goods and ‘ritual paraphernalia’.” ref
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“Complex networks analyses of many physical, biological and social phenomena show remarkable structural regularities, yet, their application in studying human past interaction remains underdeveloped. Here, we present an innovative method for identifying community structures in the archaeological record that allow for independent evaluation of the copper using societies in the Balkans, from 8,200 to 5,200 years ago. This is achieved this by exploring modularity of networked systems of these societies across an estimated 3000 years. Chemical data of copper-based objects from 79 archaeological sites as the independent variable for detecting most densely interconnected sets of nodes with a modularity maximization method showed results revealing three dominant modular structures across the entire period, which exhibit strong spatial and temporal significance. It is interpreted that the patterns of copper supply among prehistoric societies as reflective of social relations, which emerge as equally important as physical proximity. This highlights models of human interaction and cooperation that can be evaluated independently of established archaeological systematics, and can find wide application on any quantitative data from archaeological and historical record.” ref
“The provenance of prehistoric Balkan metallurgy, produced high-precision provenance data for more than 300 copper artifacts from this region. For the purpose of their research, they used average-link cluster analyses to group these artifacts into nine compositional groups-clusters, of which two clusters showed good agreement with the trace element pattern of two ancient copper mines in the Balkans: Majdanpek in eastern Serbia and Ai Bunar in central Bulgaria, both exploited throughout the 5th millennium BC. The broad patterns of copper circulation at this time included strong regionalisation of copper production and trade patterns, and b) noticeable shifts in copper-making industry through time. In practice, the former was drawn from cases where prehistoric Serbian metal mostly came from eastern Serbian copper mines (e.g. Majdanpek), while the latter refers to the simultaneous collapse of one copper exploitation system (e.g. 4 central and eastern Bulgaria around 6,100 years ago) and the rise of another (e.g. eastern Serbia after 6,100 years ago). These studies provided insight into the copper exploitation and acquisition practices for the first 3000 years of copper use in this part of the world; however, little is known how and if these data reflect social networks of interaction, and can we use them to independently evaluate archaeological interpretations of social or economic structures that supported the production, use and deposition of copper objects within the observed time.” ref
“Modularity analysis reveals three densely connected communities that produced and exchanged copper in the Balkans between 8,200-5,200 years ago. Four nodes (Pločnik, Durankulak, Goljamo Delcevo, Zlotska pecina) appear in more than one module in different periods (Pločnik in Modules 0, 1 and 2, Durankulak in Modules 1 and 2, Goljamo Delcevo and Zlotska pecina in Modules 0 and 1, hence different indications of color symbol/links in this figure.” ref
Habitation / Migration Maps 7,000 years ago/5,000 bce to 4,500 years ago/2,500 bce
Link for the Pictures: ref
“The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture plays a major role in the narrative since it seems to have been a source of cultural influence on the Yamnaya steppe culture which eventually overran it, which seems to confirm that there was a genetic discontinuity. Analysis of ancient human mitochondrial DNA from Verteba Cave, Ukraine: insights into the origins and expansions of the Late Neolithic-Chalcolithic Cututeni-Tripolye Culture. The burials at Verteba Cave are largely commingled and secondary in nature. A total of 68 individual bone specimens were analyzed. Most of these specimens were found in association with well-defined Tripolye artifacts. It was determined that 28 mtDNA D-Loop (368 bp) sequences and defined 8 sequence types, belonging to haplogroups H, HV, W, K, and T. These results do not suggest continuity with local pre-Eneolithic peoples, but rather complete population replacement. The constructed maximum parsimonious networks from the data and generated population genetic statistics… Finds different signatures of demographic expansion for the Tripolye people that may be caused by existing population structure or the spatiotemporal nature of ancient data. Regardless, peoples of the Tripolye Culture are more closely related to early European farmers and lack genetic continuity with Mesolithic hunter-gatherers or pre-Eneolithic groups in Ukraine. So we now know that early European farmers (EEF) were ancestors of this particular culture. Before The Indo-Europeans In Ukraine.” ref
“Around 7,500 years ago, groups began stay put and accumulate land and material goods, growing crops, building huts and shaping pottery. For the first time, farmers wanted their descendants to inherit both the agricultural plots and the technology to manage them. So, no longer able or willing to pick up and move, mankind became more likely to settle conflicts with violence.” ref
“Background The Eneolithic (~ 5,500 yrBP) site of Verteba Cave in Western Ukraine contains the largest collection of human skeletal remains associated with the archaeological Cucuteni-Tripolye Culture. Their subsistence economy is based largely on agro-pastoralism and had some of the largest and most dense settlement sites during the Middle Neolithic in all of Europe. To help understand the evolutionary history of the Tripolye people, we performed mtDNA analyses on ancient human remains excavated from several chambers within the cave.” ref
“Results Burials at Verteba Cave are largely commingled and secondary in nature. A total of 68 individual bone specimens were analyzed. Most of these specimens were found in association with well-defined Tripolye artifacts. We determined 28 mtDNA D-Loop (368 bp) sequences and defined 8 sequence types, belonging to haplogroups H, HV, W, K, and T. These results do not suggest continuity with local pre-Eneolithic peoples, but rather complete population replacement.” ref
“Conclusions Our results suggest individuals buried at Verteba Cave had overall low mtDNA diversity, most likely due to increased conflict among sedentary farmers and nomadic pastoralists to the East and North. Early Farmers tend to show demographic expansion. We find different signatures of demographic expansion for the Tripolye people that may be caused by existing population structure or the spatiotemporal nature of ancient data. Regardless, peoples of the Tripolye Culture are more closely related to early European farmers and lack genetic continuity with Mesolithic hunter-gatherers or pre-Eneolithic groups in Ukraine.” ref
“Following the establishment of farming communities in the Balkan Peninsula, a series of complex societies formed, culminating in large settlements. By 5,500 years ago, agriculture had reached Eastern Europe, in the form of the Cucuteni-Trypillian (C-T) complex in the area of present day Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine. This culture spanned close to 2,000 years and influenced much of SE Europe and the Baltic regions. It is known for elaborate anthropomorphic and animal figurines, as well as distinct elegantly painted pottery. Around 4,000 years ago, these societies began to change, with the large settlements being abandoned, and archaeological evidence suggesting contact with nomadic steppe populations from the East.” ref
“Neolithic Y chromosome bottleneck men almost exterminated themselves some 7,000 years ago, only one fertile male to every 17 women an event recorded in the bloodlines that have emerged across the world. Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East may have been consumed by carnage between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago. And, as fathers pass their Y chromosome on to their sons, entire families must have been exterminated over wide areas. It was a time when the world population is estimated to have been somewhere between five and 20 million people. To leave such a stark genetic imprint behind, as many as 9.5 million men must have been killed. Casualties from intergroup competition then tend to cluster among related males and group extinction is effectively the extinction of lineages. Essentially, the victorious clans would exterminate their opponent’s menfolk to ensure ongoing dominance and the eradication of potential competition. They would then seize the surviving women.” ref
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Interesting Info: HAMANGIA-ANATOLIA DIFFERENCES AND RESEMBLANCES AT THE LEVEL OF FUNERARY PRACTICES
Varna:
“Steppe ancestry” step by step: Khvalynsk, Sredni Stog, Repin, Yamna, Corded Ware. I6423, one of the Greece Neolithic samples referred to, which is obviously an outlier among the three used does not seem to correspond to any of the ancient DNA samples published to date. Since the Neolithic in Greece could mean any period from 8,500-5,200 years ago, a guess could be that we are talking here about some migration related to the expansion of Khvalynsk-Novodanilovka chieftains after around 6,500 years ago, because it appears on the PCA precisely on the same spot as Varna and Smyadovo outliers, and its ADMIXTURE shows similar components.” ref
This is burial 45. Male of 20-25 years, dated to around 6,400-6,200 years ago. The unique elite Khvalynsk culture male from a Yekaterinovskiy Cape burial. ref
“The Khvalynsk culture was a step culture of the first half of the 5th millennium BC, discovered at Khvalynsk on the Volga in Saratov Oblast, Russia. It was preceded by the Early Eneolithic Samara culture, from which it came, and succeeded by the Late Eneolithic, Early Yamna culture, into which it developed. A good sprinkling of calibrated C-14 readings obtained from material in the graves of the type site date the culture certainly to the approximate window, 7,000-6,500 years ago. This material is from Khvalynsk I, or Early Khvalynsk. Khvalynsk II, or Late Khvalynsk, is Late Eneolithic. In the Khvalinsk culture one finds group graves, with both individual graves or small groups sometimes under stone offers Khvalinsk culture evidences the further development of the kurgan.” ref
“Although there are disparities in the wealth of the grave goods, there seems to be no special marker for the chief. This deficit does not exclude the possibility of a chief. In the later kurgans, one finds that the kurgan is exclusively reserved for a chief and his retinue, with ordinary people excluded. This development suggests a growing disparity of wealth, which in turn implies a growth in the wealth of the whole community and an increase in population. The explosion of the kurgan culture out of its western steppe homeland must be associated with an expansion The Khvalynsk graves included metal rings and spiral metal rings. However, there is no indication of any use beyond ornamental. The quality of stone weapons and implements reaches a high point.” ref
“”Relating to burial 45 of the eneolithic cemetery called Ekaterinovsky Cape. The burial contains the skeleton of a young man with traumatic injuries of the skull, leg and hand bones of other individuals, skeleton of a young specimen of a domestic goat (Capra hircus) that was abundantly sprinkled with red ocher. Grave goods include three stone scepters of different types, a large item made of horn in the shape of a bird’s head, a stone adze, knife-like plates of quartzite, beads from the flaps of the shells (Unio), marmot cutters, decoration made from a beaver’s tooth. The uniqueness of the burial is determined by the combination of the composition of the grave goods and traces of ritual practices. To conclude, we suggest the buried man could belong to the elite of the society that left this burial ground.” ref
“Perhaps, we should correlate three very closely related damages [on the skull] with certain rituals, with which scepters could be associated. Each scepter could be a symbolic expression of a part of society, a type of activity, reaching a certain age and social status. This assumption does not seem incredible in combination with other extant, no less impressive, details of the funeral rite. Of great interest is the ornithomorphic rod of the horn. The location of the wand in the head and right half of the breast emphasizes its special significance in ritual practice and in funeral rites. Direct analogies to this product in other burial places of the cemetery are absent, and outside it authors are not known. What evidence does tell us is that late Khvalynsk became dominated early by R1b-M269, as was later Yamna, and as were early Yamna offshoots like Afanasevo and Bell Beaker. In fact, the appearance of R1b-M269* and/or L23* linked to expanding Khvalynsk could be the perfect end to the resurging theories on Armenian or Western European origin of this haplogroup.” ref
Map of the spread of horse-head scepters in the Middle Eneolithic.ref
Map of the territorial distribution of horse remains in the Middle Eneolithic period. Absolute and relative numbers. Lets not forget that we should see the horse as a means of war, as well as a means of distant travel and expansion. ref
Even more interesting is the relationship of the distribution of horse remains with archaeological complexes and horse-related symbols. Some excerpts from the conclusions of this section:
“Accounting and analysis of archeo-zoological and archaeological data proper for a horse for a vast area from the Tisza and the Middle Danube to the Caucasus and the Urals (which includes the main cultures of the western agricultural, Caucasian, and Eastern European cultural zones) clearly points to the eastern cultural zone as a zone of the originally the most important social significance of a horse as the only possible zone of the earliest domestication, horseback riding and all-round use of a horse. In relation to the eastern, the western land – the ancient Carpatho-Danubian or the Caucasian cultural zones – are secondary and subordinate to the first on the phenomenon under consideration.” ref
“On the one hand, the subsequent substantial increase in the number of horse remnants, and, on the other, the wide inclusion of the horse in cults, rituals, funerary rituals (horse pendants, ornamented metacarpus, horse bones, sacrificial altars) in the Samara culture of the Early Eneolithic of the same region definitely indicates the continuing increase in the social significance of this species of animal, which was most likely expressed in the final design of a specialized horse breeding culture and, accordingly, in a wide range of applications using a horse for riding. At the same time, we can observe the beginning of the transfer of the already domesticated horse from the original historical and geographic epicenter to other cultures of the eastern cultural zone and, in part, the cultures closest to the periphery of this zone, into the western agricultural zone (Bolgrad-Aldeni P, Pre-CuCuteni-Trypillya A).” ref
“Middle Eneolithic – early stages. One of the leading places in the remnants of the horse is in the Middle Volga region, the Khvalynsk culture. Genetically related to the Samara, the Khvalynsk I culture preserves the traditions of the ritual, cultural meaning, the treatment of the image of a horse in funerals (altars, horse bones, funerary rituals). But, At the same time, it is in this precise culture that the image of the horse, included in the social symbolism (horse-head pommel-scepter), for the first time it acquires a special, maximum social significance. That is why the appearance and subsequent widespread distribution of the social symbols in Novodanilovka-type objects can definitely be considered as another qualitative leap in the social significance of a horse – its use for military purposes for close and distant expeditions. And such an interpretation is fully confirmed from the analysis of Novodanilovka-type objects, which is the subject of discussion.” ref
“Judging by the osteological data and the typological evolution of the horse-head scepters, the Khvalynian culture and remains of the Novodanilovka type are already associated with the relatively widespread and intensive findings of domesticated horses in various areas of the eastern cultural zone (semi-desert regions of the Lower Volga and the Caspian region – Khvalynsk culture, forest-steppe and steppe from the Volga to the Dnieper – Sredni Stog, Repin cultures), and the western – agricultural (Gumelnitsa, Cucuteni A-Tripolye Bl), and the Caucasus (Pre-Maykop) zones, where, however, the horse played a very modest role.” ref
Here is some interesting reading: NEOLITHIC SETTLEMENTS ON BALKAN a comparative study between Durankulak and Sitagroi
“A 7,500-YEAR-OLD CULT COMPLEX, ‘EUROPE’S LARGEST STONE BUILDING’ IN ISLAND PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN BULGARIA’S DURANKULAK LAKE. With a total of 8 prehistoric settlements on the Durankulak Lake island, the first two of which belong to the Late Neolithic Hamangia-Durankulak Cultureand the next four – to the Chalcolithic (Aeneolithic, Copper Age) Varna Culture. What is said to be the world’s largest Paleolithic-Neolithic necropolis – containing traces of about 1400 and 1204 studied graves – dating back to 7,300-5,800 year ago – has also been found there. The first burial mounds dating to about the 3500-3400 BC are said to have mark the arrival of the proto-Thracians.” ref
Picture Link: ref
“Cannabis is indigenous to Europe and cultivation began during the Copper or Bronze age: a probabilistic synthesis of fossil pollen studies. Conventional wisdom states Cannabis sativa originated in Asia and its dispersal to Europe depended upon human transport. Various Neolithic or Bronze age groups have been named as pioneer cultivators. During the warm and wet Holocene Climactic Optimum, forests replaced steppe, and Humulus dominated. Cannabis retreated to steppe refugia. C/H pollen consistent with cultivated hemp first appeared in the Pontic-Caspian steppe refugium. GIS mapping linked cultivation with the Copper age Varna/Gumelniţa culture, and the Bronze age Yamnaya and Terramara cultures. An Iron age steppe culture, the Scythians, likely introduced hemp cultivation to Celtic and Proto-Slavic cultures.” 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
My thoughts on Religion Evolution with external links for more info:
- (Pre-Animism Africa mainly, but also Europe, and Asia at least 300,000 years ago), (Pre-Animism – Oxford Dictionaries)
- (Animism Africa around 100,000 years ago), (Animism – Britannica.com)
- (Totemism Europe around 50,000 years ago), (Totemism – Anthropology)
- (Shamanism Siberia around 30,000 years ago), (Shamanism – Britannica.com)
- (Paganism Turkey around 12,000 years ago), (Paganism – BBC Religion)
- (Progressed Organized Religion “Institutional Religion” Egypt around 5,000 years ago), (Ancient Egyptian Religion – Britannica.com)
- (CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS after 4,000 years ago) (Origin of Major Religions – Sacred Texts)
- (Early Atheistic Doubting at least by 2,600 years ago) (History of Atheism – Wikipedia)
“Religion is an Evolved Product” and Yes, Religion is Like Fear Given Wings…
Atheists talk about gods and religions for the same reason doctors talk about cancer, they are looking for a cure, or a firefighter talks about fires because they burn people and they care to stop them. We atheists too often feel a need to help the victims of mental slavery, held in the bondage that is the false beliefs of gods and the conspiracy theories of reality found in religions.
Understanding Religion Evolution:
- Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago)
- Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago)
- Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago)
- Shamanism (Siberia: 30,000 years ago)
- Paganism (Turkey: 12,000 years ago)
- Progressed organized religion (Egypt: 5,000 years ago), (Egypt, the First Dynasty 5,150 years ago)
- CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago)
- Early Atheistic Doubting (at least by 2,600 years ago)
“An Archaeological/Anthropological Understanding of Religion Evolution”
It seems ancient peoples had to survived amazing threats in a “dangerous universe (by superstition perceived as good and evil),” and human “immorality or imperfection of the soul” which was thought to affect the still living, leading to ancestor worship. This ancestor worship presumably led to the belief in supernatural beings, and then some of these were turned into the belief in gods. This feeble myth called gods were just a human conceived “made from nothing into something over and over, changing, again and again, taking on more as they evolve, all the while they are thought to be special,” but it is just supernatural animistic spirit-belief perceived as sacred.
Quick Evolution of Religion?
Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago) pre-religion is a beginning that evolves into later Animism. So, Religion as we think of it, to me, all starts in a general way with Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits), then this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item), which then enlists a full-time specific person to do this worship and believed interacting Shamanism (Siberia/Russia: 30,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in access and influence with spirits through ritual), and then there is the further employment of myths and gods added to all the above giving you Paganism (Turkey: 12,000 years ago) (often a lot more nature-based than most current top world religions, thus hinting to their close link to more ancient religious thinking it stems from). My hypothesis is expressed with an explanation of the building of a theatrical house (modern religions development). Progressed organized religion (Egypt: 5,000 years ago) with CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago).
Historically, in large city-state societies (such as Egypt or Iraq) starting around 5,000 years ago culminated to make religion something kind of new, a sociocultural-governmental-religious monarchy, where all or at least many of the people of such large city-state societies seem familiar with and committed to the existence of “religion” as the integrated life identity package of control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine, but this juggernaut integrated religion identity package of Dogmatic-Propaganda certainly did not exist or if developed to an extent it was highly limited in most smaller prehistoric societies as they seem to lack most of the strong control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine (magical beliefs could be at times be added or removed). Many people just want to see developed religious dynamics everywhere even if it is not. Instead, all that is found is largely fragments until the domestication of religion.
Religions, as we think of them today, are a new fad, even if they go back to around 6,000 years in the timeline of human existence, this amounts to almost nothing when seen in the long slow evolution of religion at least around 70,000 years ago with one of the oldest ritual worship. Stone Snake of South Africa: “first human worship” 70,000 years ago. This message of how religion and gods among them are clearly a man-made thing that was developed slowly as it was invented and then implemented peace by peace discrediting them all. Which seems to be a simple point some are just not grasping how devastating to any claims of truth when we can see the lie clearly in the archeological sites.
I wish people fought as hard for the actual values as they fight for the group/clan names political or otherwise they think support values. Every amount spent on war is theft to children in need of food or the homeless kept from shelter.
Here are several of my blog posts on history:
- To Find Truth You Must First Look
- (Magdalenian/Iberomaurusian) Connections to the First Paganists of the early Neolithic Near East Dating from around 17,000 to 12,000 Years Ago
- Natufians: an Ancient People at the Origins of Agriculture and Sedentary Life
- Possible Clan Leader/Special “MALE” Ancestor Totem Poles At Least 13,500 years ago?
- Jewish People with DNA at least 13,200 years old, Judaism, and the Origins of Some of its Ideas
- Baltic Reindeer Hunters: Swiderian, Lyngby, Ahrensburgian, and Krasnosillya cultures 12,020 to 11,020 years ago are evidence of powerful migratory waves during the last 13,000 years and a genetic link to Saami and the Finno-Ugric peoples.
- The Rise of Inequality: patriarchy and state hierarchy inequality
- Fertile Crescent 12,500 – 9,500 Years Ago: fertility and death cult belief system?
- 12,400 – 11,700 Years Ago – Kortik Tepe (Turkey) Pre/early-Agriculture Cultic Ritualism
- Ritualistic Bird Symbolism at Gobekli Tepe and its “Ancestor Cult”
- Male-Homosexual (female-like) / Trans-woman (female) Seated Figurine from Gobekli Tepe
- Could a 12,000-year-old Bull Geoglyph at Göbekli Tepe relate to older Bull and Female Art 25,000 years ago and Later Goddess and the Bull cults like Catal Huyuk?
- Sedentism and the Creation of goddesses around 12,000 years ago as well as male gods after 7,000 years ago.
- Alcohol, where Agriculture and Religion Become one? Such as Gobekli Tepe’s Ritualistic use of Grain as Food and Ritual Drink
- Neolithic Ritual Sites with T-Pillars and other Cultic Pillars
- Paganism: Goddesses around 12,000 years ago then Male Gods after 7,000 years ago
- First Patriarchy: Split of Women’s Status around 12,000 years ago & First Hierarchy: fall of Women’s Status around 5,000 years ago.
- Natufians: an Ancient People at the Origins of Agriculture and Sedentary Life
- J DNA and the Spread of Agricultural Religion (paganism)
- Paganism: an approximately 12,000-year-old belief system
- Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Pre-Capitalism)
- Shaman burial in Israel 12,000 years ago and the Shamanism Phenomena
- Need to Mythicized: gods and goddesses
- 12,000 – 7,000 Years Ago – Paleo-Indian Culture (The Americas)
- 12,000 – 2,000 Years Ago – Indigenous-Scandinavians (Nordic)
- Norse did not wear helmets with horns?
- Pre-Pottery Neolithic Skull Cult around 11,500 to 8,400 Years Ago?
- 10,400 – 10,100 Years Ago, in Turkey the Nevail Cori Religious Settlement
- 9,000-6,500 Years Old Submerged Pre-Pottery/Pottery Neolithic Ritual Settlements off Israel’s Coast
- Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city” around 9,500 to 7,700 years ago (Turkey)
- Cultic Hunting at Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city”
- Special Items and Art as well as Special Elite Burials at Catal Huyuk
- New Rituals and Violence with the appearance of Pottery and People?
- Haplogroup N and its related Uralic Languages and Cultures
- Ainu people, Sámi people, Native Americans, the Ancient North Eurasians, and Paganistic-Shamanism with Totemism
- Ideas, Technology and People from Turkey, Europe, to China and Back again 9,000 to 5,000 years ago?
- First Pottery of Europe and the Related Cultures
- 9,000 years old Neolithic Artifacts Judean Desert and Hills Israel
- 9,000-7,000 years-old Sex and Death Rituals: Cult Sites in Israel, Jordan, and the Sinai
- 9,000-8500 year old Horned Female shaman Bad Dürrenberg Germany
- Neolithic Jewelry and the Spread of Farming in Europe Emerging out of West Turkey
- 8,600-year-old Tortoise Shells in Neolithic graves in central China have Early Writing and Shamanism
- Swing of the Mace: the rise of Elite, Forced Authority, and Inequality begin to Emerge 8,500 years ago?
- Migrations and Changing Europeans Beginning around 8,000 Years Ago
- My “Steppe-Anatolian-Kurgan hypothesis” 8,000/7,000 years ago
- Around 8,000-year-old Shared Idea of the Mistress of Animals, “Ritual” Motif
- Pre-Columbian Red-Paint (red ochre) Maritime Archaic Culture 8,000-3,000 years ago
- 7,522-6,522 years ago Linear Pottery culture which I think relates to Arcane Capitalism’s origins
- Arcane Capitalism: Primitive socialism, Primitive capital, Private ownership, Means of production, Market capitalism, Class discrimination, and Petite bourgeoisie (smaller capitalists)
- 7,500-4,750 years old Ritualistic Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine
- Roots of a changing early society 7,200-6,700 years ago Jordan and Israel
- Agriculture religion (Paganism) with farming reached Britain between about 7,000 to 6,500 or so years ago and seemingly expressed in things like Western Europe’s Long Barrows
- My Thoughts on Possible Migrations of “R” DNA and Proto-Indo-European?
- “Millet” Spreading from China 7,022 years ago to Europe and related Language may have Spread with it leading to Proto-Indo-European
- Proto-Indo-European (PIE), ancestor of Indo-European languages: DNA, Society, Language, and Mythology
- The Dnieper–Donets culture and Asian varieties of Millet from China to the Black Sea region of Europe by 7,022 years ago
- Kurgan 6,000 years ago/dolmens 7,000 years ago: funeral, ritual, and other?
- 7,020 to 6,020-year-old Proto-Indo-European Homeland of Urheimat or proposed home of their Language and Religion
- Ancient Megaliths: Kurgan, Ziggurat, Pyramid, Menhir, Trilithon, Dolman, Kromlech, and Kromlech of Trilithons
- The Mytheme of Ancient North Eurasian Sacred-Dog belief and similar motifs are found in Indo-European, Native American, and Siberian comparative mythology
- Elite Power Accumulation: Ancient Trade, Tokens, Writing, Wealth, Merchants, and Priest-Kings
- Sacred Mounds, Mountains, Kurgans, and Pyramids may hold deep connections?
- Between 7,000-5,000 Years ago, rise of unequal hierarchy elite, leading to a “birth of the State” or worship of power, strong new sexism, oppression of non-elites, and the fall of Women’s equal status
- Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite & their slaves
- Hell and Underworld mythologies starting maybe as far back as 7,000 to 5,000 years ago with the Proto-Indo-Europeans?
- The First Expression of the Male God around 7,000 years ago?
- White (light complexion skin) Bigotry and Sexism started 7,000 years ago?
- Around 7,000-year-old Shared Idea of the Divine Bird (Tutelary and/or Trickster spirit/deity), “Ritual” Motif
- Nekhbet an Ancient Egyptian Vulture Goddess and Tutelary Deity
- 6,720 to 4,920 years old Ritualistic Hongshan Culture of Inner Mongolia with 5,000-year-old Pyramid Mounds and Temples
- First proto-king in the Balkans, Varna culture around 6,500 years ago?
- 6,500–5,800 years ago in Israel Late Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Period in the Southern Levant Seems to Express Northern Levant Migrations, Cultural and Religious Transfer
- KING OF BEASTS: Master of Animals “Ritual” Motif, around 6,000 years old or older…
- Around 6000-year-old Shared Idea of the Solid Wheel & the Spoked Wheel-Shaped Ritual Motif
- “The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan; a Proto-Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna or Star of Venus?
- Religious/Ritual Ideas, including goddesses and gods as well as ritual mounds or pyramids from Northeastern Asia at least 6,000 years old, seemingly filtering to Iran, Iraq, the Mediterranean, Europe, Egypt, and the Americas?
- Maykop (5,720–5,020 years ago) Caucasus region Bronze Age culture-related to Copper Age farmers from the south, influenced by the Ubaid period and Leyla-Tepe culture, as well as influencing the Kura-Araxes culture
- 5-600-year-old Tomb, Mummy, and First Bearded Male Figurine in a Grave
- Kura-Araxes Cultural 5,520 to 4,470 years old DNA traces to the Canaanites, Arabs, and Jews
- Minoan/Cretan (Keftiu) Civilization and Religion around 5,520 to 3,120 years ago
- Evolution Of Science at least by 5,500 years ago
- 5,500 Years old birth of the State, the rise of Hierarchy, and the fall of Women’s status
- “Jiroft culture” 5,100 – 4,200 years ago and the History of Iran
- Stonehenge: Paganistic Burial and Astrological Ritual Complex, England (5,100-3,600 years ago)
- Around 5,000-year-old Shared Idea of the “Tree of Life” Ritual Motif
- Complex rituals for elite, seen from China to Egypt, at least by 5,000 years ago
- Around 5,000 years ago: “Birth of the State” where Religion gets Military Power and Influence
- The Center of the World “Axis Mundi” and/or “Sacred Mountains” Mythology Could Relate to the Altai Mountains, Heart of the Steppe
- Progressed organized religion starts, an approximately 5,000-year-old belief system
- China’s Civilization between 5,000-3,000 years ago, was a time of war and class struggle, violent transition from free clans to a Slave or Elite society
- Origin of Logics is Naturalistic Observation at least by around 5,000 years ago.
- Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State)
- Ziggurats (multi-platform temples: 4,900 years old) to Pyramids (multi-platform tombs: 4,700 years old)
- Did a 4,520–4,420-year-old Volcano In Turkey Inspire the Bible God?
- Finland’s Horned Shaman and Pre-Horned-God at least 4,500 years ago?
- 4,000-year-Old Dolmens in Israel: A Connected Dolmen Religious Phenomenon?
- Creation myths: From chaos, Ex nihilo, Earth-diver, Emergence, World egg, and World parent
- Bronze Age “Ritual” connections of the Bell Beaker culture with the Corded Ware/Single Grave culture, which were related to the Yamnaya culture and Proto-Indo-European Languages/Religions
- Low Gods (Earth/ Tutelary deity), High Gods (Sky/Supreme deity), and Moralistic Gods (Deity enforcement/divine order)
- The exchange of people, ideas, and material-culture including, to me, the new god (Sky Father) and goddess (Earth Mother) religion between the Cucuteni-Trypillians and others which is then spread far and wide
- Koryaks: Indigenous People of the Russian Far East and Big Raven myths also found in Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and other Indigenous People of North America
- 42 Principles Of Maat (Egyptian Goddess of the justice) around 4,400 years ago, 2000 Years Before Ten Commandments
- “Happy Easter” Well Happy Eostre/Ishter
- 4,320-3,820 years old “Shimao” (North China) site with Totemistic-Shamanistic Paganism and a Stepped Pyramid
- 4,250 to 3,400 Year old Stonehenge from Russia: Arkaim?
- 4,100-year-old beaker with medicinal & flowering plants in a grave of a woman in Scotland
- Early European Farmer ancestry, Kelif el Boroud people with the Cardial Ware culture, and the Bell Beaker culture Paganists too, spread into North Africa, then to the Canary Islands off West Africa
- Flood Accounts: Gilgamesh epic (4,100 years ago) Noah in Genesis (2,600 years ago)
- Paganism 4,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism)
- When was the beginning: TIMELINE OF CURRENT RELIGIONS, which start around 4,000 years ago.
- Early Religions Thought to Express Proto-Monotheistic Systems around 4,000 years ago
- Kultepe? An archaeological site with a 4,000 years old women’s rights document.
- Single God Religions (Monotheism) = “Man-o-theism” started around 4,000 years ago with the Great Sky Spirit/God Tiān (天)?
- Confucianism’s Tiān (Shangdi god 4,000 years old): Supernaturalism, Pantheism or Theism?
- Yes, Your Male God is Ridiculous
- Mythology, a Lunar Deity is a Goddess or God of the Moon
- Sacred Land, Hills, and Mountains: Sami Mythology (Paganistic Shamanism)
- Horse Worship/Sacrifice: mythical union of Ruling Elite/Kingship and the Horse
- The Amorite/Amurru people’s God Amurru “Lord of the Steppe”, relates to the Origins of the Bible God?
- Bronze Age Exotic Trade Routes Spread Quite Far as well as Spread Religious Ideas with Them
- Sami and the Northern Indigenous Peoples Landscape, Language, and its Connection to Religion
- Prototype of Ancient Analemmatic Sundials around 3,900-3,150 years ago and a Possible Solar Connection to gods?
- Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)
- The Weakening of Ancient Trade and the Strengthening of Religions around 3000 years ago?
- Are you aware that there are religions that worship women gods, explain now religion tears women down?
- Animistic, Totemistic, and Paganistic Superstition Origins of bible god and the bible’s Religion.
- Myths and Folklore: “Trickster gods and goddesses”
- Jews, Judaism, and the Origins of Some of its Ideas
- An Old Branch of Religion Still Giving Fruit: Sacred Trees
- Dating the BIBLE: naming names and telling times (written less than 3,000 years ago, provable to 2,200 years ago)
- Did a Volcano Inspire the bible god?
- The Amorite/Amurru people’s God Amurru “Lord of the Steppe”, relates to the Origins of the Bible God?
- Dené–Yeniseian language, Old Copper Complex, and Pre-Columbian Mound Builders?
- No “dinosaurs and humans didn’t exist together just because some think they are in the bible itself”
- Sacred Shit and Sacred Animals?
- Everyone Killed in the Bible Flood? “Nephilim” (giants)?
- Hey, Damien dude, I have a question for you regarding “the bible” Exodus.
- Archaeology Disproves the Bible
- Bible Battle, Just More, Bible Babble
- The Jericho Conquest lie?
- Canaanites and Israelites?
- Accurate Account on how did Christianity Began?
- Let’s talk about Christianity.
- So the 10 commandments isn’t anything to go by either right?
- Misinformed christian
- Debunking Jesus?
- Paulism vs Jesus
- Ok, you seem confused so let’s talk about Buddhism.
- Unacknowledged Buddhism: Gods, Savior, Demons, Rebirth, Heavens, Hells, and Terrorism
- His Foolishness The Dalai Lama
- Yin and Yang is sexist with an ORIGIN around 2,300 years ago?
- I Believe Archaeology, not Myths & Why Not, as the Religious Myths Already Violate Reason!
- Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
- Aquatic Ape Theory/Hypothesis? As Always, Just Pseudoscience.
- Ancient Aliens Conspiracy Theorists are Pseudohistorians
- The Pseudohistoric and Pseudoscientific claims about “Bakoni Ruins” of South Africa
- Why do people think Religion is much more than supernaturalism and superstitionism?
- Religion is an Evolved Product
- Was the Value of Ancient Women Different?
- 1000 to 1100 CE, human sacrifice Cahokia Mounds a pre-Columbian Native American site
- Feminist atheists as far back as the 1800s?
- Promoting Religion as Real is Mentally Harmful to a Flourishing Humanity
- Screw All Religions and Their Toxic lies, they are all fraud
- Forget Religions’ Unfounded Myths, I Have Substantiated “Archaeology Facts.”
- Religion Dispersal throughout the World
- I Hate Religion Just as I Hate all Pseudoscience
- Exposing Scientology, Eckankar, Wicca and Other Nonsense?
- Main deity or religious belief systems
- Quit Trying to Invent Your God From the Scraps of Science.
- Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
- Ancient Alien Conspiracy Theorists: Misunderstanding, Rhetoric, Misinformation, Fabrications, and Lies
- Misinformation, Distortion, and Pseudoscience in Talking with a Christian Creationist
- Judging the Lack of Goodness in Gods, Even the Norse God Odin
- Challenging the Belief in God-like Aliens and Gods in General
- A Challenge to Christian use of Torture Devices?
- Yes, Hinduism is a Religion
- Trump is One of the Most Reactionary Forces of Far-right Christian Extremism
- Was the Bull Head a Symbol of God? Yes!
- Primate Death Rituals
- Christian – “God and Christianity are objectively true”
- Australopithecus afarensis Death Ritual?
- You Claim Global Warming is a Hoax?
- Doubter of Science and Defamer of Atheists?
- I think that sounds like the Bible?
- History of the Antifa (“anti-fascist”) Movements
- Indianapolis Anti-Blasphemy Laws #Free Soheil Rally
- Damien, you repeat the golden rule in so many forms then you say religion is dogmatic?
- Science is a Trustable Methodology whereas Faith is not Trustable at all!
- Was I ever a believer, before I was an atheist?
- Atheists rise in reason
- Mistrust of science?
- Open to Talking About the Definition of ‘God’? But first, we address Faith.
- ‘United Monarchy’ full of splendor and power – Saul, David, and Solomon? Most likely not.
- Is there EXODUS ARCHAEOLOGY? The short answer is “no.”
- Lacking Proof of Bigfoots, Unicorns, and Gods is Just a Lack of Research?
- Religion and Politics: Faith Beliefs vs. Rational Thinking
- Hammer of Truth that lying pig RELIGION: challenged by an archaeologist
- “The Hammer of Truth” -ontology question- What do You Mean by That?
- Navigation of a bad argument: Ad Hominem vs. Attack
- Why is it Often Claimed that Gods have a Gender?
- Why are basically all monotheistic religions ones that have a male god?
- Shifting through the Claims in support of Faith
- Dear Mr. AtHope, The 20th Century is an Indictment of Secularism and a Failed Atheist Century
- An Understanding of the Worldwide Statistics and Dynamics of Terrorist Incidents and Suicide Attacks
- Intoxication and Evolution? Addressing and Assessing the “Stoned Ape” or “Drunken Monkey” Theories as Catalysts in Human Evolution
- Sacred Menstrual cloth? Inanna’s knot, Isis knot, and maybe Ma’at’s feather?
- Damien, why don’t the Hebrews accept the bible stories?
- Dealing with a Troll and Arguing Over Word Meaning
- Knowledge without Belief? Justified beliefs or disbeliefs worthy of Knowledge?
- Afrocentrism and African Religions
- Crecganford @crecganford offers history & stories of the people, places, gods, & culture
- Empiricism-Denier?
I am not an academic. I am a revolutionary that teaches in public, in places like social media, and in the streets. I am not a leader by some title given but from my commanding leadership style of simply to start teaching everywhere to everyone, all manner of positive education.
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Low Gods “Earth” or Tutelary deity and High Gods “Sky” or Supreme deity
“An Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth. Earth goddesses are often associated with the “chthonic” deities of the underworld. Ki and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi/Bhūmi, etc. traced to an “Earth Mother” complementary to the “Sky Father” in Proto-Indo-European religion. Egyptian mythology exceptionally has a sky goddess and an Earth god.” ref
“A mother goddess is a goddess who represents or is a personification of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother. In some religious traditions or movements, Heavenly Mother (also referred to as Mother in Heaven or Sky Mother) is the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky father or God the Father.” ref
“Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as “sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “sky father” god with an “earth mother” goddess (pairings of a sky mother with an earth father are less frequent). A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with “sky” not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Neopagans often apply it with impunity to sky goddesses from other regions who were never associated with the term historically. The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky.” ref
“In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept in polytheistic religions of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon and is often either a reigning or former King of the Gods. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics, such as Ra. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother“. “Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter and Germanic Týr, Tir or Tiwaz, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).” ref
Tutelary deity
“A tutelary (also tutelar) is a deity or spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of “tutelary” expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship. In late Greek and Roman religion, one type of tutelary deity, the genius, functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Korean shamanism, jangseung and sotdae were placed at the edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the Seonangdang. In Philippine animism, Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. Such as: Maria Makiling is the deity who guards Mt. Makiling and Maria Cacao and Maria Sinukuan. In Shinto, the spirits, or kami, which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. And similarly, Native American beliefs such as Tonás, tutelary animal spirit among the Zapotec and Totems, familial or clan spirits among the Ojibwe, can be animals.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Austronesian beliefs such as: Atua (gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori or the Hawaiians), Hanitu (Bunun of Taiwan‘s term for spirit), Hyang (Kawi, Sundanese, Javanese, and Balinese Supreme Being, in ancient Java and Bali mythology and this spiritual entity, can be either divine or ancestral), Kaitiaki (New Zealand Māori term used for the concept of guardianship, for the sky, the sea, and the land), Kawas (mythology) (divided into 6 groups: gods, ancestors, souls of the living, spirits of living things, spirits of lifeless objects, and ghosts), Tiki (Māori mythology, Tiki is the first man created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne and represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures). ” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref
Mesopotamian Tutelary Deities can be seen as ones related to City-States
“Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and Ur; Ancient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon); the five Philistine city-states; the Berber city-states of the Garamantes; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth); the Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as Florence, Siena, Ferrara, Milan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice, which became powerful thalassocracies; the Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen Itza, Tikal, Copán and Monte Albán); the central Asian cities along the Silk Road; the city-states of the Swahili coast; Ragusa; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov; and many others.” ref
“The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BCE; also known as Protoliterate period) of Mesopotamia, named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. City-States like Uruk and others had a patron tutelary City Deity along with a Priest-King.” ref
“Chinese folk religion, both past, and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. Such as Tu Di Gong (Earth Deity) is the tutelary deity of a locality, and each individual locality has its own Earth Deity and Cheng Huang Gong (City God) is the guardian deity of an individual city, worshipped by local officials and locals since imperial times.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Hinduism, personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata, while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata. Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva is the patron of yogis and renunciants. City goddesses include: Mumbadevi (Mumbai), Sachchika (Osian); Kuladevis include: Ambika (Porwad), and Mahalakshmi. In NorthEast India Meitei mythology and religion (Sanamahism) of Manipur, there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. Tibetan Buddhism has Yidam as a tutelary deity. Dakini is the patron of those who seek knowledge.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens. Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion:
You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.” ref
“Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion. The tutelary deity of a man was his Genius, that of a woman her Juno. In the Imperial era, the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult. An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo. Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era, when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised the goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games (ludi) in her honor.” ref
“Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus). The Capitoline Triad of Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii, and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna, whose oracle was renowned.” ref
“The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele) as “tower-crowned” represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day Rheims), the tutelary was Mars Camulus.” ref
Household deity (a kind of or related to a Tutelary deity)
“A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as well as in folklore across many parts of the world. Household deities fit into two types; firstly, a specific deity – typically a goddess – often referred to as a hearth goddess or domestic goddess who is associated with the home and hearth, such as the ancient Greek Hestia.” ref
“The second type of household deities are those that are not one singular deity, but a type, or species of animistic deity, who usually have lesser powers than major deities. This type was common in the religions of antiquity, such as the Lares of ancient Roman religion, the Gashin of Korean shamanism, and Cofgodas of Anglo-Saxon paganism. These survived Christianisation as fairy-like creatures existing in folklore, such as the Anglo-Scottish Brownie and Slavic Domovoy.” ref
“Household deities were usually worshipped not in temples but in the home, where they would be represented by small idols (such as the teraphim of the Bible, often translated as “household gods” in Genesis 31:19 for example), amulets, paintings, or reliefs. They could also be found on domestic objects, such as cosmetic articles in the case of Tawaret. The more prosperous houses might have a small shrine to the household god(s); the lararium served this purpose in the case of the Romans. The gods would be treated as members of the family and invited to join in meals, or be given offerings of food and drink.” ref
“In many religions, both ancient and modern, a god would preside over the home. Certain species, or types, of household deities, existed. An example of this was the Roman Lares. Many European cultures retained house spirits into the modern period. Some examples of these include:
- Brownie (Scotland and England) or Hob (England) / Kobold (Germany) / Goblin / Hobgoblin
- Domovoy (Slavic)
- Nisse (Norwegian or Danish) / Tomte (Swedish) / Tonttu (Finnish)
- Húsvættir (Norse)” ref
“Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble. Because of their immediacy they had arguably more influence on the day-to-day affairs of men than the remote gods did. Vestiges of their worship persisted long after Christianity and other major religions extirpated nearly every trace of the major pagan pantheons. Elements of the practice can be seen even today, with Christian accretions, where statues to various saints (such as St. Francis) protect gardens and grottos. Even the gargoyles found on older churches, could be viewed as guardians partitioning a sacred space.” ref
“For centuries, Christianity fought a mop-up war against these lingering minor pagan deities, but they proved tenacious. For example, Martin Luther‘s Tischreden have numerous – quite serious – references to dealing with kobolds. Eventually, rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor deities, until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century. Since the 20th century this literature has been mined for characters for role-playing games, video games, and other fantasy personae, not infrequently invested with invented traits and hierarchies somewhat different from their mythological and folkloric roots.” ref
“In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its origin in totemism. In reality, this distinction is somewhat academic, since totemism may be regarded as a particularized manifestation of animism, and something of a synthesis of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s Totem and Taboo, both totem and taboo are outward expressions or manifestations of the same psychological tendency, a concept which is complementary to, or which rather reconciles, the apparent conflict. Freud preferred to emphasize the psychoanalytic implications of the reification of metaphysical forces, but with particular emphasis on its familial nature. This emphasis underscores, rather than weakens, the ancestral component.” ref
“William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist, and jurist, traced the origin of domestic deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system thought to have existed also in the neolithic, and the forerunner of Indo-European religion. In his analysis of the Indo-European household, in Chapter II “The House Spirit”, Section 1, he states:
The belief which guided the conduct of our forefathers was … the spirit rule of dead ancestors.” ref
“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:
It is thus certain that the worship of deceased ancestors is a vera causa, and not a mere hypothesis. …
In the other European nations, the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Kelts, the House Spirit appears with no less distinctness. … [T]he existence of that worship does not admit of doubt. … The House Spirits had a multitude of other names which it is needless here to enumerate, but all of which are more or less expressive of their friendly relations with man. … In [England] … [h]e is the Brownie. … In Scotland this same Brownie is well known. He is usually described as attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks. His favorite gratification was milk and honey.” ref
Hinduism around 3,700 to 3,500 years old. ref
Judaism around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (The first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew” dated to around 3,000 years ago Khirbet Qeiyafa is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley. And many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed around 2,500) ref, ref
Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)
“Judaism is an Abrahamic, its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions.” ref
“Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel, essentially polytheistic, with a plethora of gods and goddesses. Heading the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with his consort, the goddess Asherah; below them were second-tier gods and goddesses such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, all of whom had their own priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees, and a third and fourth tier of minor divine beings, including the mal’ak, the messengers of the higher gods, who in later times became the angels of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh, however, was not the ‘original’ god of Israel “Isra-El”; it is El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, whose name forms the basis of the name “Israel”, and none of the Old Testament patriarchs, the tribes of Israel, the Judges, or the earliest monarchs, have a Yahwistic theophoric name (i.e., one incorporating the name of Yahweh).” ref
“El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity“, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ‘ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil-, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ‘El or ‘Il include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period. ʼĒl is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, ʼĒl played a role as father of the gods, of creation, or both. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, ʾil mlk is understood to mean “ʼĒl the King” but ʾil hd as “the god Hadad“. The Semitic root ʾlh (Arabic ʾilāh, Aramaic ʾAlāh, ʾElāh, Hebrew ʾelōah) may be ʾl with a parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning “gods” is ʾilhm, equivalent to Hebrew ʾelōhîm “powers”. In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for “god” by biblical commentators. However the documentary hypothesis for the Old Testament (corresponds to the Jewish Torah) developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis.” ref
Jainism around 2,599 – 2,527 years old. ref
Confucianism around 2,600 – 2,551 years old. ref
Buddhism around 2,563/2,480 – 2,483/2,400 years old. ref
Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref
Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref
Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref
Knowledge to Ponder:
Stars/Astrology:
- Possibly, around 30,000 years ago (in simpler form) to 6,000 years ago, Stars/Astrology are connected to Ancestors, Spirit Animals, and Deities.
- The star also seems to be a possible proto-star for Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna, or Star of Venus.
- Around 7,000 to 6,000 years ago, Star Constellations/Astrology have connections to the “Kurgan phenomenon” of below-ground “mound” stone/wood burial structures and “Dolmen phenomenon” of above-ground stone burial structures.
- Around 6,500–5,800 years ago, The Northern Levant migrations into Jordon and Israel in the Southern Levant brought new cultural and religious transfer from Turkey and Iran.
- “The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan may have connections to the European paganstic kurgan/dolmens phenomenon.
“Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Different cultures have employed forms of astrology since at least the 2nd millennium BCE, these practices having originated in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Most, if not all, cultures have attached importance to what they observed in the sky, and some—such as the Hindus, Chinese, and the Maya—developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Islamicate world and eventually Central and Western Europe. Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person’s personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects; the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems.” ref
Around 5,500 years ago, Science evolves, The first evidence of science was 5,500 years ago and was demonstrated by a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world. ref
Around 5,000 years ago, Origin of Logics is a Naturalistic Observation (principles of valid reasoning, inference, & demonstration) ref
Around 4,150 to 4,000 years ago: The earliest surviving versions of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, which was originally titled “He who Saw the Deep” (Sha naqba īmuru) or “Surpassing All Other Kings” (Shūtur eli sharrī) were written. ref
Hinduism:
- 3,700 years ago or so, the oldest of the Hindu Vedas (scriptures), the Rig Veda was composed.
- 3,500 years ago or so, the Vedic Age began in India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization.
Judaism:
- around 3,000 years ago, the first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew”
- around 2,500 years ago, many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed
Myths: The bible inspired religion is not just one religion or one myth but a grouping of several religions and myths
- Around 3,450 or 3,250 years ago, according to legend, is the traditionally accepted period in which the Israelite lawgiver, Moses, provided the Ten Commandments.
- Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, a collection of ancient religious writings by the Israelites based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh, or Old Testament is the first part of Christianity’s bible.
- Around 2,400 years ago, the most accepted hypothesis is that the canon was formed in stages, first the Pentateuch (Torah).
- Around 2,140 to 2,116 years ago, the Prophets was written during the Hasmonean dynasty, and finally the remaining books.
- Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections:
- The first five books or Pentateuch (Torah).
- The proposed history books telling the history of the Israelites from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon.
- The poetic and proposed “Wisdom books” dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world.
- The books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God:
- Henotheism:
- Exodus 20:23 “You shall not make other gods besides Me (not saying there are no other gods just not to worship them); gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves.”
- Polytheism:
- Judges 10:6 “Then the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; thus they forsook the LORD and did not serve Him.”
- 1 Corinthians 8:5 “For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords.”
- Monotheism:
- Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.
Around 2,570 to 2,270 Years Ago, there is a confirmation of atheistic doubting as well as atheistic thinking, mainly by Greek philosophers. However, doubting gods is likely as old as the invention of gods and should destroy the thinking that belief in god(s) is the “default belief”. The Greek word is apistos (a “not” and pistos “faithful,”), thus not faithful or faithless because one is unpersuaded and unconvinced by a god(s) claim. Short Definition: unbelieving, unbeliever, or unbelief.
Expressions of Atheistic Thinking:
- Around 2,600 years ago, Ajita Kesakambali, ancient Indian philosopher, who is the first known proponent of Indian materialism. ref
- Around 2,535 to 2,475 years ago, Heraclitus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor or modern Turkey. ref
- Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, according to The Story of Civilization book series certain African pygmy tribes have no identifiable gods, spirits, or religious beliefs or rituals, and even what burials accrue are without ceremony. ref
- Around 2,490 to 2,430 years ago, Empedocles, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. ref
- Around 2,460 to 2,370 years ago, Democritus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher considered to be the “father of modern science” possibly had some disbelief amounting to atheism. ref
- Around 2,399 years ago or so, Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher was tried for sinfulness by teaching doubt of state gods. ref
- Around 2,341 to 2,270 years ago, Epicurus, a Greek philosopher known for composing atheistic critics and famously stated, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?” ref
This last expression by Epicurus, seems to be an expression of Axiological Atheism. To understand and utilize value or actually possess “Value Conscious/Consciousness” to both give a strong moral “axiological” argument (the problem of evil) as well as use it to fortify humanism and positive ethical persuasion of human helping and care responsibilities. Because value-blindness gives rise to sociopathic/psychopathic evil.
While hallucinogens are associated with shamanism, it is alcohol that is associated with paganism.
The Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries Shows in the prehistory series:
Show two: Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show tree: Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show four: Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show five: Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show six: Emergence of hierarchy, sexism, slavery, and the new male god dominance: Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves!
Prehistory: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” the division of labor, power, rights, and recourses: VIDEO
Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Pre-Capitalism): VIDEO
Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves: VIEDO
Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State): VIEDO
Paganism 4,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism): VIEDO
I do not hate simply because I challenge and expose myths or lies any more than others being thought of as loving simply because of the protection and hiding from challenge their favored myths or lies.
The truth is best championed in the sunlight of challenge.
An archaeologist once said to me “Damien religion and culture are very different”
My response, So are you saying that was always that way, such as would you say Native Americans’ cultures are separate from their religions? And do you think it always was the way you believe?
I had said that religion was a cultural product. That is still how I see it and there are other archaeologists that think close to me as well. Gods too are the myths of cultures that did not understand science or the world around them, seeing magic/supernatural everywhere.
I personally think there is a goddess and not enough evidence to support a male god at Çatalhöyük but if there was both a male and female god and goddess then I know the kind of gods they were like Proto-Indo-European mythology.
This series idea was addressed in, Anarchist Teaching as Free Public Education or Free Education in the Public: VIDEO
Our 12 video series: Organized Oppression: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of power (9,000-4,000 years ago), is adapted from: The Complete and Concise History of the Sumerians and Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia (7000-2000 BC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szFjxmY7jQA by “History with Cy“
Show #1: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Samarra, Halaf, Ubaid)
Show #2: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power
Show #3: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Uruk and the First Cities)
Show #4: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (First Kings)
Show #5: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Early Dynastic Period)
Show #6: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power
Show #7: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Sargon and Akkadian Rule)
Show #9: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Gudea of Lagash and Utu-hegal)
Show #12: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Aftermath and Legacy of Sumer)
The “Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries”
Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ Atheist Leftist @Skepticallefty & I (Damien Marie AtHope) @AthopeMarie (my YouTube & related blog) are working jointly in atheist, antitheist, antireligionist, antifascist, anarchist, socialist, and humanist endeavors in our videos together, generally, every other Saturday.
Why Does Power Bring Responsibility?
Think, how often is it the powerless that start wars, oppress others, or commit genocide? So, I guess the question is to us all, to ask, how can power not carry responsibility in a humanity concept? I know I see the deep ethical responsibility that if there is power their must be a humanistic responsibility of ethical and empathic stewardship of that power. Will I be brave enough to be kind? Will I possess enough courage to be compassionate? Will my valor reach its height of empathy? I as everyone, earns our justified respect by our actions, that are good, ethical, just, protecting, and kind. Do I have enough self-respect to put my love for humanity’s flushing, over being brought down by some of its bad actors? May we all be the ones doing good actions in the world, to help human flourishing.
I create the world I want to live in, striving for flourishing. Which is not a place but a positive potential involvement and promotion; a life of humanist goal precision. To master oneself, also means mastering positive prosocial behaviors needed for human flourishing. I may have lost a god myth as an atheist, but I am happy to tell you, my friend, it is exactly because of that, leaving the mental terrorizer, god belief, that I truly regained my connected ethical as well as kind humanity.
Cory and I will talk about prehistory and theism, addressing the relevance to atheism, anarchism, and socialism.
At the same time as the rise of the male god, 7,000 years ago, there was also the very time there was the rise of violence, war, and clans to kingdoms, then empires, then states. It is all connected back to 7,000 years ago, and it moved across the world.
Cory Johnston: https://damienmarieathope.com/2021/04/cory-johnston-mind-of-a-skeptical-leftist/?v=32aec8db952d
The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist (YouTube)
Cory Johnston: Mind of a Skeptical Leftist @Skepticallefty
The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist By Cory Johnston: “Promoting critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics by covering current events and talking to a variety of people. Cory Johnston has been thoughtfully talking to people and attempting to promote critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics.” http://anchor.fm/skepticalleft
Cory needs our support. We rise by helping each other.
Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ @Skepticallefty Evidence-based atheist leftist (he/him) Producer, host, and co-host of 4 podcasts @skeptarchy @skpoliticspod and @AthopeMarie
Damien Marie AtHope (“At Hope”) Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist. Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Poet, Philosopher, Advocate, Activist, Psychology, and Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Historian.
Damien is interested in: Freedom, Liberty, Justice, Equality, Ethics, Humanism, Science, Atheism, Antiteism, Antireligionism, Ignosticism, Left-Libertarianism, Anarchism, Socialism, Mutualism, Axiology, Metaphysics, LGBTQI, Philosophy, Advocacy, Activism, Mental Health, Psychology, Archaeology, Social Work, Sexual Rights, Marriage Rights, Woman’s Rights, Gender Rights, Child Rights, Secular Rights, Race Equality, Ageism/Disability Equality, Etc. And a far-leftist, “Anarcho-Humanist.”
I am not a good fit in the atheist movement that is mostly pro-capitalist, I am anti-capitalist. Mostly pro-skeptic, I am a rationalist not valuing skepticism. Mostly pro-agnostic, I am anti-agnostic. Mostly limited to anti-Abrahamic religions, I am an anti-religionist.
To me, the “male god” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 7,000 years ago, whereas the now favored monotheism “male god” is more like 4,000 years ago or so. To me, the “female goddess” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 11,000-10,000 years ago or so, losing the majority of its once prominence around 2,000 years ago due largely to the now favored monotheism “male god” that grow in prominence after 4,000 years ago or so.
My Thought on the Evolution of Gods?
Animal protector deities from old totems/spirit animal beliefs come first to me, 13,000/12,000 years ago, then women as deities 11,000/10,000 years ago, then male gods around 7,000/8,000 years ago. Moralistic gods around 5,000/4,000 years ago, and monotheistic gods around 4,000/3,000 years ago.
Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):
Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism
My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com