7,500-4,750 years old Ritualistic Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine

by | Jul 4, 2019 | Blog

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

A 7,500-4,750 years old paganistic ritual culture of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine. With goddess and other figurines as well as sun temples. Also, with symbols like the yin and yang were not in China until oracle bones around 3,200 years ago, and not in Chinese philosophy until the 2,400 years ago. ref, ref

“Figurines also differ in poses – standing or sitting. Near the sitting figurines, mostly at the earlier stages of the culture, stylised little chairs were often found. Researchers call some of them “horned”, since their backs are shaped as horns with their edges pointing upwards. Such “horned” images, or a crescent with its horns pointing upwards as a component of the ancient AllatRa sign, were often depicted on ceramics as well as on clay models of Trypillian houses. There are also figurines with “hats” having a shape of a crescent with its horns pointing upwards, which provides some researchers with a ground to associate such female images with lunar symbolism and call them Lunar Goddesses. Moreover, some researchers believe that the placement of such figures on a chair-throne emphasizes a special status of women in the society.” ref  

Picture Link: ref 

Picture Link: ref 

 Areas populated by the earliest Neolithic farmers in Europe, 9,000-4,000 years ago.  

“In Europe, the earliest Neolithic cultures emerged in Thessaly, a region in eastern Greece, from the late 10,000-8,000 years ago. The wild ancestors of domesticated animals (sheep and goat) and cultivated plants (wheat, barley, lentil and pea) can still be found in the Near East, which points to the origins of the Neolithic culture of the Balkans. The settlers’ material culture and Near Eastern (Armenoid) anthropological type provide further evidence of their origins.” ref 

“In the late 7th minimum BC, early farmers reached the northern boundary of the Balkan Peninsula, giving rise to the Criş culture that represented a large Mid-Danube Neolithic community. Its members advanced far to the east to the basins of the Prut, the middle Dniester and the Southern Buh. These influences shaped Ukraine’s earliest Neolithic culture, known as the ‘Buh-Dniester culture’, around 7,700 years ago.” ref 

“A new stage in the Neolithic colonization of Europe began in the mid-6th minimum BC when early farmers advanced from the middle Danube to the north of the Alps and the Carpathian Mountains. The Criş culture gave rise to the Linear Pottery culture in what is now Hungary. Its members quickly spread westwards to the Paris Basin and eastwards to southern Poland, Volhynia, the Dniester region and Moldova. Colonization of the forested area of Central Europe was made possible by the implementation of the slash-and-burn agricultural technique.” ref 

“The agricultural colonization of Europe stopped at the southern frontier of the Middle European Plain: the North German lowlands, the Polish Plain and Polissia. Abounding in sands, clays and marshes left behind by a glacier and overgrown with impenetrable forests, this territory was not attractive to farmers. This is why it remained home to Europe’s aboriginal forest-dwelling hunters. However, due to the intensive use of bows and arrows in hunting, the numbers of forest ungulates (aurochs, elk, deer, roe and wild boars) declined sharply. A crisis of the hunting economy forced European hunters to first adopt earthenware from Neolithic colonists and then learn farming and cattle-breeding skills.” ref 

“Thus, two parallel ancient worlds took shape in Europe around the 5th century BC (7,000-6,000 years ago). Europe’s southern part was inhabited by Neolithic farmers and cattle-breeders from the Near East. The forests in the north continued to be populated by hunters and fishers. These were distant descendants of near-glacial communities that hunted mammoths, bison and moose, and ancestors of the contemporary European people. The skills of production agriculture were disseminated through the forest belt much later than in the Balkan Peninsula and the Danube region. Neolithic innovations were borrowed by the indigenous forest population from their southern neighbors together with words of Near Eastern origin.” ref 

“The border between the two cultures also cut across Ukraine. Hunting and fishing would predominate in Polissia and Eastern Ukraine for a long time to come, while Right-Bank Ukraine, which was close to the Danube region, quickly adopted hoe agriculture and cattle breeding. The conversion of Ukraine, much like Central Europe, to production-based Neolithic culture took place under influences that originated in the Balkan Peninsula and filtered through the Danube region. From the 7th to 5th minimum BC (9,000-6000 years ago), four powerful waves of migrants came from the Danube region: the Grebenyky culture (Odesa region) and the Neolithic Criş, Linear Pottery and Cucuteni-Trypillian cultures. The arrival of Cucuteni-Trypillian farmers who settled in the forest-steppe zone between the middle Dniester and the southern part of the Kyiv region in the late 6th minimum BC resulted in the final triumph of the production economy in Right-Bank Ukraine.” ref 

Who were the Trypillians?

“More than 100 years ago, Vicenty Khvoika conducted excavations near the village of Trypillia in the Kyiv region, thus initiating the study of this significant phenomenon in Ukraine. However, contrary to popular belief, Khvoika was not the first to discover this ancient culture. Even before he made his finds, the same culture was known to Polish and Romanian archaeologists as the ‘Painted Ceramics’ culture and the ‘Cucuteni’ culture, respectively. The culture took shape in present-day Romania and Moldova on the basis of several cultural expressions of the Balkan-Danube Neolithic era. Moving eastwards, the carriers of the Cucuteni culture crossed the Dniester in the late 6th millennium BC and reached the Dnieper at a point between Kyiv and Cherkasy around the middle of the 4th  minimum BC (6,000-5,000 years ago).” ref 

“The economy of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture in the territories of modern-day Romania, Moldova and Right-Bank Ukraine revolved around growing wheat, barley and peas and breeding cattle, goats, sheep and pigs. When land was depleted, the Trypillians moved eastward, gradually colonizing all chernozem (black soil) lands from the Carpathians to the Dnieper that were suitable to their farming system.” ref 

“Trypillian rectangular wattle and daub homes are a typical example of the Balkan tradition of house construction. Numerous clay vessels and figurines of women that have been found in Trypillian settlements are also convincing proof of the Balkan origins of this culture. The Mediterranean anthropological type of the Trypillians provides further evidence. It has been reconstructed based on rare skeletal remains of Trypillians themselves and through anthropological studies of Neolithic burial places in the Balkan Peninsula and the Danube region.” ref 

Trypillian agriculture reached a peak and was on the verge of becoming a civilization complete with cities, a writing system and a state, but ultimately failed to develop these aspects. Huge settlements (Maidanetske, Talianky, Dobrovody, etc.) with up to 3,000 inhabitants and the area of 200-400 hectares did not have urban structure. In other words, these were large rural-type settlements, not cities. A Trypillian state and a Trypillian writing system are topics that have not been raised even by the boldest researchers.” ref 

Proto-cities and an elaborate system of signs suggest that the Trypillian culture can be viewed as a proto-civilization that was emerging concurrently with the earliest states in the Near East. However, the Trypillians ultimately failed to cross this threshold because of deficiencies in their economy and natural calamities that befell them in the late 4th minimum BC. The Trypillians were able to complete agricultural colonization of the forest-steppe zone in Right-Bank Ukraine stretching from the Prut to the Dniester owing to a warm humid climate in the 6th to the 5th minimum BC (8,000-6,000 years ago). The extensive system of hoe agriculture caused black-soil depletion in Right-Bank Ukraine, and the economic potential of the region was exhausted. The increasingly dry climate and the advancing steppe delivered the final blow to the Trypillian agricultural economy, causing it to disintegrate around 3,000 BC (5,000 years ago).” ref  

“Some scientific data, primarily from archaeological sources, permits genetic attribution of the Balkan Neolithic era (including its Ukrainian form, the Trypillian culture) to specific ethnic communities in the Near East. The primary suspects are the Hatti from Southern Anatolia and the Hurrians, a related people that lived in the upper Tigris and Euphrates. Because the Neolithic colonization of the Balkan Peninsula and the Danube region began precisely from Anatolia, which was home to the Hatti and partly to the Hurrians, it is no surprise that the Balkan Neolithic culture exhibits a powerful Hattic-Hurrian influence. The Neolithic cultures of the Danube region and Right-Bank Ukraine have distinct parallels to Asia Minor, according to archaeological, anthropological and paleolinguistic data.” ref  

“The genetic connection between the Balkan Neolithic culture—and through it the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture—with the South Anatolian (pre-Hattic) centre of Neolithization suggests that, ethnolinguistically, the earliest farmers in the Balkan Peninsula, the lower Danube and Right-Bank Ukraine were most likely related to the pre-Hatti people. This is also true of the Trypillian culture in Right-Bank Ukraine as the northeasternmost manifestation of the Balkan Neolithic proto-civilization.” ref  

“Around 6000 years ago the Trypillians were the advanced well-developed civilization of the ancient world. They were the community of crops growers living in the territory of modern Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. They developed agriculture, pottery, weaving and metallurgy, thereby changing the historical period, ended the Stone Age and began the era of metallurgy, starting it with copper.” ref 

“The Trypillians used to burn down their settlements every 50-70 years and move to a new place. The temple in Nebelivka was burned too and clay altars and remains of the walls  scorched and turned into ceramics. On some fragments the prints of the rope were preserved, which fastened the wooden pillars with other elements of the building structure. The temple in Nebelivka was divided into several sections. One third was occupied by the inner courtyard, and in two thirds sanctuaries with altars were located. Earlier, archaeologists have found clay models of Trypillya temples with the architecture similar to the structure of the religious building in Nebelivka. The clay model has the same proportions as the temple itself. One third of the area is occupied by the courtyard, two thirds – by a closed premise. Its scheme is also similar to the structure of the Karnak Temple in Egypt. Although the building in Nebelivka has no granite columns and its size is smaller than the Egyptian counterpart, both have common features: the courtyard, the front entrance and the central altar, which are located on the same axis, pointing to the place where the sun rises on a special day of the solar calendar. The central axis of the Karnak Temple is oriented toward the sun rising on the day of the winter solstice.” ref 

“Only that day the sun beam entered the chamber where the altar was located through a series of gates, openings and passages and filled it with light. This phenomenon was called the “solar miracle.” Nebelivka temple is oriented toward the east, and thus to the point of equinox. On the equinox day, the sunlight passed through the main gate, through the entrance to the temple and lit the central altar No. 7. In the dark temple, the altar, covered with red clay, shone in the rays of the sun. In the spring equinox in most ancient civilizations, a new year, a new turn of the spiral of time began. This is a day of cosmic harmony. When the world is balanced and the duration of the day and night is the same. On the spring equinox day for most ancient civilizations a new year began, a new turn of the spiral of time. This is a day of cosmic harmony, when the world is balanced and the duration of day and night is the same.” ref 

Picture Links: ref, ref, ref  

“The study of the settlements of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture provides important insights into the early history of Europe. The Cucuteni-Trypillia culture, which existed in the present-day southeastern European nations of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine during the Neolithic Age and Copper Age, from approximately 7,500 to 4,750 years ago, left behind thousands of settlementruins containing a wealth of archaeological artifacts attesting to their cultural and technologicalcharacteristics.” ref 

Nebelivka: a village in Novoarkhanhelsk Raion, Kirovohrad Oblast, Ukraine. 

“A major archaeological site of the Neolithic Trypillia culture is located in the village. Dating to around 6,000-5,000 years ago, It was one of the largest settlements of the culture, covering an area of 260–300 hectares and home to up to 17,000 people. Other archaeological remains found in the village include a number of Bronze Age kurgans (3rd millennium BCE), evidence of Iron Age(2nd millennium BCE) and Chernyakhov culture (2nd–5th centuries CE) occupations, and pottery from the 17th and 18th century.” ref 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

Old Europe Ritualist Cultures: Divine Couple, Possibly animal/half-human hybrid god and goddess?

I believe this could represent a “Divine Couple,” thus relate to religion/myths. It could be speculated that this Devine Couple may represent an animal/half-human hybrid god and goddess, a ruling couple related in spirit animals or a Devine Couple of totemistic animals that relate to the clan itself even could be the mythic ancestors of the tribe believed to have been sacred/deity animals.

Left-Alter: Vădastra, Romania, 5500-5000 BCE or around 7,520 to 7,000 years ago Zoomorphic altar. ref

Right-Alter: Cucuteni Culture A phase Zoomorphic altar 4600-4000 BCE or around 6,620 to 6,000 years ago from Trușești in Romania, house no. XXIV, in its central area. ref, ref

This could relate to Hierogamy: “The ritual enactment of sexual relations between gods and goddesses in order to guarantee the fertility of crops.” ref

The cosmological symbolism also can be thought by people of the past to translated onto an animal, human form, or a mix of both. The gender at times may differ due to culture but a standard theme can be highlighted as the man was related with the pattern of the Heavens including the sun like related gods of the sun and man was the driving force of the bull (or other horned animals) like storm gods and high gods. The women also have been related to bulls like in later Egypt, but also often associate with felines/cats and the Earth or moon. Moreover, the context for the ‘Supreme Ultimate’ symbol of things like bulls and cats seen in its house shrines can be seemingly related back to places like Catal Hoyuk. ref

According to Greek mythology, the Titans were a divine race of primordial, powerful deities, such as Phoebe the female goddess was the Titaness of Brilliance and the Moon created by Goddess Gaea who was known as Mother Earth without the intervention of any man, by her own will gave birth to the Mountains and the boundless Seas in ancient Greece. Gaea also created Uranus the first ruler of the Universe and the god of Heaven/Sky to surround and cover her, they became mates producing the remaining twelve Titans. With Uranus and Gaea as lovers they thus become, for ancient Greeks, the believed first divine couple of the World. ref, ref, ref, ref

There are a few representations of a divine/royal couple enthroned, the female figure sitting in the lap of the male, in Mesopotamian iconography. In Egypt, the motif is mostly restricted to the reign of Akhenaten, seen with Nefertiti as a royal emblem, divine apparition, and erotic symbolism. This ancient divine/royal couple motif may have traveled to Egypt at a time when Mesopotamian mythological texts were used, and other motifs of eastern origin seem to have been favored. ref

“Totemism is a relationship of spiritual kinship between a human or group of humans and a particular species such as an animal; which is generally held to be an ancestor, guardian, and/or also can sometimes overlap with the human self in some way. In the pre-Christian worldview and practices of the Norse and other Germanic peoples, totemism can be thought to be manifested in two especially prominent and powerful areas: the animal helping spirits, most notably the fylgjur, and the patron animals of shamanic military societies. Many of the gods and goddesses have personal totem animals which may or may not be fylgjur. For example, Odin is particularly associated with wolves, ravens, and horses, Thor with goats, and Freya and Freyr with wild boars. It should come as no surprise, then, that their human devotees have personal totems of their own.” ref

“Fylgjur may also “mark transformations between human and animal” or shapeshifting. The idea of fylgjur as animals reflect the character of the person they represent, akin to a totem animal. Men who were viewed as a leader would often have fylgja to show their true character. This means that if they had a “tame nature”, their fylgja would typically be an ox, goat, or boar. If they had an “untame nature” they would have fylgjur such as a fox, wolf, deer, bear, eagle, falcon, leopard, lion, or a serpent. when fylgjur appears in the form of women, they are then supposedly guardian spirits for people or clans. It has been addressed that fylgja women could be considered a dís, ghost, or goddess that is attached to fate. In some literature and sagas, the fylgjur can take the form of mice, dogs, foxes, cats, birds of prey, or carrion eaters because these were animals that would typically eat such afterbirths. The word fylgja means “to accompany” like that of the Fetch in Irish folklore. It can also mean “afterbirth of a child” meaning that the afterbirth and the fylgja are connected.” ref

“One of the most ancient concepts in religion is that of the divine couple. In Sumeria, the divine couple appears as part of perhaps the earliest notion of Trinity. God the Father was symbolized as the Sun, his consort was symbolized alternately as either the Moon or the Earth, and the king was viewed as their offspring: the Son of the Sun; a living representative (or emanation) of God on Earth.
In many traditions, the gods and goddesses who comprise the divine couple are not seen as being separate or distinct entities, but rather as different aspects of one another, or even emanations of one another. In this, we see traces of an even more ancient tradition, God as the primordial androgyne.” ref

List of known divine couples in religion

“Nanna & Ningal (Sumerian) · Shamash & Aya (Sumerian) · Marduk & Sarpanit (Babylonian) · Anshar & Kishar (Akkadian) · Enlil & Ninlil (Akkadian) · Adad (Ishkur) & Shala (Akkadian) · Osiris & Isis (Egyptian) · El (Ilāh) & Athirat (Phoenician) · Hadad & Anat (Phoenician) · Hammon & Tanit (Carthaginian) · Yahweh & Asherah (Hebrew) · Teshub & Hebate (Hittite) · Sarruma & Ankara (Hittite) · Zeus & Hera (Greek) · Sol & Janus (Roman) · Jupiter & Juno (Roman) · Mitra & Varuna (Indo-Aryan) · Odin & Freya (Germanic) · Thor & Sif (Germanic) · Baldr & Nanna (Germanic)” ref

Q: What is the Lost World of Old Europe?
A: In 4500 BC, before the invention of the wheel or writing, before the first cities were built in Mesopotamia and Egypt, Old Europe was among the most sophisticated and technologically advanced places in the world. The term “Old Europe” refers to a cycle of cultures that thrived in Europe principally in the fifth and first half of the fourth millennia BC, then suffered what seems to have been a sudden collapse. ref
Q: Where in Europe did these cultures exist?
A: Old Europe refers to the cultures of southeastern Europe, centered in today’s Bulgaria and Romania, and also in parts of Moldova and Ukraine. ref
Q: What are some of the most noteworthy aspects of the pieces in the exhibition?
A: The pottery and figurines were decorated with striking designs. Female “goddess” figurines, found in almost every settlement, have triggered intense debates about the ritual and political power of women. ref
Q: Why is it called a “Lost” world?
A: Old Europe achieved a peak of creativity between 5000 and 3500 BC, but mysteriously collapsed. Later prehistoric European cultures developed in a different direction, with more widely dispersed populations, greater reliance on stockbreeding, and less investment in houses, pottery, and female symbols. Old Europe was utterly forgotten until it began to be rediscovered by archaeologists in the decades around World War I. In that sense it truly was “lost.” ref
Q: How advanced were the cultures of Old Europe?
A: At its peak, about 5000–3500 BC, Old Europe was developing many of the political, technological, and ideological signs of “civilization.” Some Old European villages grew to citylike sizes, larger than the earliest cities of Mesopotamia. Some Old European chiefs wore stunning costumes gleaming with gold, copper, and shell ornaments—displays of opulence that still surprise and puzzle archaeologists. Old European metalsmiths were, in their day, among the most advanced metal artisans in the world, and certainly the most active. ref
Q: What are the hallmarks of the cultures of Old Europe?
A: First, substantial, heavily built homes. Second, technically sophisticated pottery made of fine clays, often decorated with complex incised and painted designs. Third, figurines that portrayed females, frequently found in houses. And fourth, participation in a cycle of long-distance trade. Some of these traits—substantial houses often with room for visitors; dozens of different types of pottery (bowls, jugs, pots, pot stands, storage jars, and so on) made for elaborate service and display at social events; and figurines connected with domestic rituals—emphasized the importance of the home as a center of family, social, and ritual life. ref
Q: Why are the female figurines such a special part of the exhibition?
A: One of the most famous aspects of Old Europe is the abundance of figurines, the majority of them females. The enigmatic female-centered cults of Old Europe have generated sharp disagreement among archaeologists, historians and feminists. The exhibition includes dozens of elaborately painted and decorated female figurines of many kinds and styles. The prevalence of female images among the anthropomorphic figurines of Old Europe have suggested to some that they mirrored a matrilineal and matrifocal Old European social structure, in which women were the dominant figures in social and political life. ref
Q: What led to the sudden collapse of old Europe?
A: About 4300–4100 BC, more than six hundred settlements were burned and abandoned. People scattered and became much more mobile, depending for their food on herds of sheep and cattle rather than fields of grain. Exactly what happened to Old Europe is the subject of a long and vigorous debate. One possibility is that Old Europe collapsed in a period of intensified raiding and warfare caused by the migration into the lower Danube valley of people who were mobile herders, possibly mounted on horseback, from the steppe grasslands of Ukraine. A migration from the steppes does seem to have happened about the same time as the collapse, but whether it caused the collapse is debated. ref
Q: Did Women Rule?
A: Female figurines predominate in Old European material culture. They can be found represented individually as well as in large groups, and in contexts identified as domestic, ritual, religious, and funerary. The proliferation of female imagery throughout the fifth and fourth millennia BC has prompted some scholars to interpret Old European culture as a peaceful world where female-centered goddess worship prevailed. Males, according to this theory, played a largely secondary role in society. Some scholars, however, consider this argument idealized—in fact, many villages were fortified, weapons were buried with men, and adult males had the richest graves in cemeteries. ref
Q: What Was He Thinking?
A: One of the most famous figurines from Old Europe—“The Thinker”—represents a male seated on a low stool with his hands placed against his cheeks. The overall composition is frequently remarked upon for its affinities to modern art, and calls to mind the works of Picasso, Modigliani, and Brancusi. His unusual pose may have been meant to suggest a pensive state, but his precise thoughts, and even the meaning of his gesture, remain a matter of debate. It is important to note that the figurine’s final context was in a Hamangia grave, suggesting the possibility of a funerary significance. Is he lost in thought, or is he perhaps shown in mourning? ref
Q: Why Did They Burn Down Their Houses?
A: Archaeologists have long known that the houses in many Old European settlements were burned, but they attributed the frequent fires to warfare or natural accidents—the latter were probably a common occurrence in villages composed of thatched-roof homes. However, experimental fires set in modern replicas of Old European dwellings failed to produce the intense heat that is evident in the vitrified clay plaster of many archaeological houses. These modern experiments have convinced a number of scholars that certain Copper Age homes were filled with fuel and intentionally set ablaze. Fire is a purifying force, and was sacred in many ancient religions. In tell settlements, new houses were built on top of the leveled ruins of old burned houses, and it is possible that dwellings were destroyed by fire following the death of a revered elder or after a certain number of generations. ref
Q: Why Did They Vanish?
A: About 4300–4100 BC all of the known tell settlements in the lower Danube valley and eastern Bulgaria were burned and abandoned. Although Old European traditions survived and even thrived in the western and northern periphery of Old Europe, the tell settlements that had been occupied almost continuously for up to 2,000 years became silent mounds where sheep grazed. Marija Gimbutas of UCLA described the end of Old Europe as a war of the genders, in which patriarchal, horse-riding, Indo-European-speaking nomadic herders invaded from the arid steppes of southern Ukraine to destroy a peaceful world where females had been worshipped in Mother-Goddess cults. This idealized picture of Old Europe has not stood up to new archaeological evidence, but an alternate explanation is not yet widely accepted. It was probably a combination of declining agricultural yields, climate change, and conflict over resources, in addition to the arrival of immigrants from the steppes, that brought an end to Old Europe. ref

“The Cucuteni (and others) also made rather spectacular pottery often decorated with intricate geometric designs.” ref 

Sun imagery or swastika motifs on Cucuteni-Trypillian ceramics ref 

“The name swastika comes from Sanskrit (Devanagari: स्वस्तिक) meaning ‘conducive to well being’ or ‘auspicious’. In Hinduism, the symbol with arms pointing clockwise (卐) is called swastika, symbolizing surya (‘sun’), prosperity and good luck, while the counterclockwise symbol (卍) is called sauvastika, symbolizing night or tantric aspects of Kali.” ref 

“The earliest known use of the swastika symbol—an equilateral cross with arms bent to the right at 90° angles—was discovered carved on a 15,000-year-old ivory figurine of a bird made from mammoth tusk. The ancient engraving is hypothesized to have been used for fertility and health purposes, the pattern similar to one that is found naturally occurring on the mammoth—an animal that has been regarded as a symbol of fertility. From its earliest conception, the symbol is believed to have been positive and encouraging of life. The modern name for the icon, derived from the Sanskrit svastika, means “conducive to well-being.” It has been used by cultures around the world for myriad different purposes throughout history: as a symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism; as a stylized cross in Christianity; in ancient Asiatic culture as a pattern in art; in Greek currency; in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque architecture; and on Iron Age artifacts. While the symbol has a long history of having a positive connotation, it was forever corrupted by its use in one cultural context: Nazi Germany.” ref 

The Cucuteni–Trypillia cultural complex 

“One of the most important and best-explored early farming communities in Eastern Europe is the Late Neolithic–Chalcolithic Cucuteni–Trypillia cultural unity (CTU). CTU sites are located either in close proximity to, or within, river valleys, in most cases on natural elevations. The number of CTU sites found in the territory of Ukraine alone is about 2,100; most of them are permanent settlements. Table 2 presents the areas of the sites. The typical (median) area of Trypillia settlements is significantly smaller than their mean area at each stage because there is a relatively small number of exceptionally large settlements that affect the average but not the median area. The difference between the mean and the median areas is not very strong at the earlier stages A–BI but becomes extreme at the later stages. In such cases, the median area best represents a typical site. There is a systematic increase in the size of the settlements, with a maximum during the middle stages.” ref 

“The animal remains identified at the Trypillia sites belong to both wild species (red deer, wild boar, roe deer, elk, etc.) and domesticated species (cattle, pig, sheep/goat and horse); the relative occurrence of species varies significantly from site to site, implying considerable variations in subsistence. Cattle (and possibly horses) were used for transportation and traction as evidenced by bone structures and pottery models of sledges with ox heads found at several sites. From the early phases, CTU settlements consisted of several one- or two-storey houses, each supposedly inhabited by a single family (sometimes, several families). The population of a typical settlement (estimated 50 to 500 people) formed a basic community unit, apparently sharing the ownership of land and other resources. No communal cemeteries are known at the CTU sites from the early and middle periods. From the earliest periods onwards, female effigies were predominant among the portable figurines, possibly symbols of fecundity, as grains of wheat and barley were found included in the ceramic fabric of several figurines at the Luka-Vrublevets’ka site. There are at least two concepts concerning the origins and expansion of the CTU; in the main, it is viewed as a result of migration from west to east and south.” ref 

Mitochondrial DNA analysis of eneolithic trypillians from Ukraine reveals neolithic farming genetic roots 

“The Cucuteni-Trypillia culture complex dominated the cultural landscape of the Carpathian foothills in eastern Romania, Moldova and the territory of modern-day Ukraine west of the Dnieper River during the Eneolithic (Copper Age) period in eastern Europe, ca. 7,,400–4,700  years ago.  Spanning more than 2,000 years, TC influenced the course of human population and cultural history in eastern Europe. Some of the best-known TC accomplishments are its proto-urban mega-sites dated to 6,100–5,600 years ago. These are architectural phenomena of communal living with each site stretching over 150 hectares with a carefully planned layout and hundreds of buildings that could house more than 10,000 people. The fact that Trypillian groups carried out active trade and interactions with their neighbors is well documented in the archeological record. Trypillian neighbors to the north and northwest were the Lengyel and Funnel Beaker (FBC, also Trichterbecker or TRB) culture groups. In the south, TC interacted with the North Pontic Region (NPR) steppe populations with which TC formed a steppe-agrarian conglomerate called Usatovo ca. 5,300 years ago, which left a lasting impression on the region and beyond. Apart from the impressive burial mounds (kurgans) the Usatovo people left behind, Usatovo also likely mediated the spread of Indo-European languages across Europe, in particular helping to forge a link between the steppe and TRB groups from southeast Poland thus facilitating the establishment of Pre-Germanic dialects.” ref 

“The agricultural revolution in Eastern Europe began in the Eneolithic with the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture complex. In Ukraine, the Trypillian culture (TC) existed for over two millennia (ca. 7,400–4,700 years ago) and left a wealth of artifacts. Yet, their burial rituals remain a mystery and to date almost nothing is known about the genetic composition of the TC population. One of the very few TC sites where human remains can be found is a cave called Verteba in western Ukraine. This report presents four partial and four complete mitochondrial genomes from nine TC individuals uncovered in the cave. The results of this analysis, 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 find of two specimens belonging to haplogroup U8b1 at Verteba can be viewed as a connection of TC 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 (ca. 5,950–4,500 years ago).” ref 

Some have suggested this culture was matriarchal though I doubt that I would say it was more likely semi-egalitarian to a certain degree, with generally male led clans with women as its main spiritual/religious leaders/elders, thus a form of societal power dualism. Women controlled some cultural things similar to how the men controlled half the culture as clan leaders/elders thus the elite where both men and women but engaging in different but mostly equal power roles in different arenas. 

“The Cucuteni-Trypillia culture communities never existed in isolation; their extensive connections with neighbouring groups are recognizable in various aspects of their material culture. Contact with the East became particularly apparent during the middle phase, when the settlements expanded further eastward and grew in size. Several sites became particularly large: Vesely Kut reached 150 ha in size; Talyanky was still larger at 341 ha and had approximately 14,000 inhabitants; the area of Maydanetske was 210 ha, with 2,900 houses identified by geophysical surveying. All these settlements were surrounded by fortifications consisting of palisades and houses built next to each other. At this stage, the Trypillia sites show signs of a growing social hierarchy, primarily evident in the occurrence of élite burials. The earliest recognizable kurgan-type barrow has been found in Moldova, at the site of Kainari. It contained a female skeleton with a rich collection of grave goods consisting of ceramic vessels (Trypillia BI) and copper adornments. Several Middle Trypillia sites included stone anthropomorphic sceptres and mace heads.” ref 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref

Foreigners/Enemies Possibly Carrying Weapons 6,700 Years Ago?

Early Agricultural Era set of Invader figurines of the ritualistic Vinča Culture from Stubline (Serbia) similar to the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture expresses the context of the European Neolithic and Copper Age Societies. And this oddity in the art done by these people could represent hostel outsiders as this is not how they depict their own figurines related to them as a rationale. ref

Around the time of 9,020 to 5,020 years ago, European Neolithic and Chalcolithic societies were different in their structures ranging from hierarchical to relatively homogeneous. But just during this Epoque war became one of the modes of production, giving birth to the corresponding social institutions. Representative art clearly related to war are extremely rare and this is why the finding of the set of 43 clay figurines, 7 miniature clay ax, and 2 maceheads models which formed several groups from Vinča D site Stubline, in Serbia holds great importance as well as aids war speculations. There is the speculation that what this could represent is a troop of armed men, united around some leader, such as the larger figure and possibly a few lesser leaders. These presumed warriors could portray a group of fighters led by a military/cultural/religious leader. It is possible that Stubline set could have been used in initiation rituals or may have been intended as a visual representation of the roles of men’s society members as in a “tactical game” (which does not exclude the possibility that this set could have been made during cult practice). The biggest statuette was in the central group. In contrast to the other figurines, not only was it made more thoroughly, but its head is also modeled in more detail. So, the depicted character can be considered the ‘leader’ surrounded by a group of ‘regular’ warriors consisting of 9 people — also divisible by 3 like the smaller groups. ref

Picture ink: ref 

Though it still had some male power imbalances as seen in “evidence for Interpersonal Violence in Ukraine’s Trypillian Farming Culture around 5,900–5,450 years ago. Palaeopathological analysis of the individual considered here indicates young adult females with evidence for severe injury at, or near, the time of death, showing the Trypillia culture around 5,900–5,450 years ago engaged in inter-personal violence interactions and burial ritual in this region of Ukraine.” ref 

“The evidence for peri-mortem injury and surgery, postmortem processing and the mortuary rituals undertaken on the human remains recorded at Verteba are unique for the Trypillia culture, both in terms of the dating, context, and range of activities in evidence. We are currently in the process of assessing the crania in relation to their anthropological type (craniometrics) and correspondence the assignment of these crania to the Trypillian culture is the local strontium signatures and the burial context, this assumption is considered to be realistic at present. The full analysis of the anthropology and palaeopathology of these to our understanding of the early stages of the Trypillia culture farming population in Ukraine and to the elucidation of society in terms of inter-personal violence, possible cranial surgery or the removal of ‘discs’ as trophies, the processing of human remains in death, and the articulation of burial rites of these early farming groups.” ref 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref

13,000 Years-Old Possible Culture/Race War in Northern Sudan, with 59 Victims
 
Jebel Sahaba, there is what could potentially be a culture/race war around 13,000 years ago on the fringes of the Sahara at the east bank of the Nile in northern Sudan. Victims of the oldest known major human armed conflict. With literally dozens of arrow impact marks and fragments on and around the victims. This war crime was done by a different racial and ethnic group – part of a Levantine (Isreal, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, or Turkey) /European as well as but less likely North African peoples. ref
 
“The most ancient archaeological record of what could have been a prehistoric massacre is at the site of Jebel Sahaba, and there is the belief that it was likely committed by the Natufian culture peoples against a population associated with the Qadan culture peoples of far northern Sudan. The cemetery contains a large number of skeletons that are approximately 13,000 to 14,000 years old, almost half of them with arrowheads embedded in their skeletons, which indicates that they may have been the casualties of warfare. It has been noted that the violence, if dated correctly, likely occurred in the wake of a local ecological crisis.” ref
 
Natufian culture (believed attackers): Link
 
Qadan culture (believed victims): Link
 
It is a site with extreme violence from a different tribe from a different area. they kill men, women, and children likely the entire town and did not seem to do it for resources. It looks like torture before death was also evident and this was not a place of seeming resources one would kill for. It is likely another reason as the people who did this left and it seems did not come back or try to establish a new town or anything like that. It looks like violence for a desire to be overly cruel and it would seem some hate is a possible explanation is they were different and this led to problems.
 
“The two groups – although both part of our species, Homo sapiens – would have looked quite different from each other and were also almost certainly different culturally and linguistically. The sub-Saharan originating group had long limbs, relatively short torsos, and projecting upper and lower jaws along with rounded foreheads and broad noses, while the North African/Levantine/European originating group had shorter limbs, longer torsos, and flatter faces. Both groups were very muscular and strongly built. Certainly, the northern Sudan area was a major ethnic interface between these two different groups at around this period. Indeed the remains of the North African/Levantine/European originating population group have even been found 200 miles south of Jebel Sahaba, thus suggesting that the arrow victims were slaughtered in an area where both populations operated. What’s more, the period in which they perished so violently was one of huge competition for resources – for they appear to have been killed during a severe climatic downturn in which many water sources dried up, especially in the summertime. The climatic downturn – known as the Younger Dryas period – had been preceded by much lusher, wetter, and warmer conditions which had allowed populations to expand. But when climatic conditions temporarily worsened during the Younger Dryas, water holes dried up, vegetation wilted and animals died or moved to the only major year-round source of water still available – the Nile. Humans of all ethnic groups in the area were forced to follow suit – and migrated to the banks (especially the eastern bank) of the great river. Competing for finite resources, human groups would have inevitably clashed – and the current investigation is demonstrating the apparent scale of this earliest known substantial human conflict. Of the 59 Jebel Sahaba victims, skeletal material from two has been included in the new Early Egypt gallery. The display includes flint arrowhead fragments and a healed forearm fracture, almost certainly sustained by a victim seeking to defend himself by raising his arm during an episode of conflict. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

Warrior Cult Violence?

“This 7,000 year-old massacre and mass grave of Halberstadt, Germany above suggests that this settlement had heightened conflict and social pressures that led to this violence. This site provides a clearly differing pattern to other known massacres, representing a previously unknown practice of large-scale, male-targeted execution, And thus it sheds new light on interpersonal violence during a very key point in human prehistory.” ref

Dark skin. Blue eyes. Beard. Thin and borderline lactose-intolerant.

“That’s what scientists say man may have looked like 7,000 years ago, after studying DNA from bones discovered in a Spanish cave. The Mesolithic skeleton found at the La Brana-Arintero site in Leon is thought to be the first recovered genome of a European from that period. According to a study published on Sunday in the journal Nature, pigmentation genes extracted from a tooth of the man — dubbed La Brana 1 — reveal he had dark skin like an African-American but the blue eyes of a Scandanavian, Which suggesting the light skin of modern Europeans was not yet ubiquitous in Mesolithic times. The biggest surprise was to discover that this individual possessed African versions in the genes that determine the light pigmentation of the current Europeans,” Carles Lalueza-Fox, a researcher from the Spanish National Research Council, said in a press release accompanying the findings. While the man had dark skin, we cannot know the exact shade. La Brana 1 was a hunter-gatherer subsisting on a low-starch diet and had trouble digesting milk. “The arrival of the Neolithic, with a carbohydrate-based diet and new pathogens transmitted by domesticated animals, entailed metabolic and immunological challenges that were reflected in genetic adaptations of post-Mesolithic populations, is the ability to digest lactose, which La Brana individual could not do. But the 7,000-year-old also had an advanced immune system normally associated with modern Europeans, the study found. The researchers added that more genome analysis is necessary from the Mesolithic Period to determine whether La Brana 1’s looks were common. The group is preparing to study the remains of “La Brana 2,” another male found in the same cave.” ref

Fear of Wars Violence and the Creation of Male God around 7,000 years ago? 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

The Hamangia culture began around 7,250-7,200 years ago and lasted until around 6,550-6,500 years ago It was absorbed by the expanding Boian culture in its transition towards the Gumelnitsa. Its cultural links with Anatolia suggest that it was the result of a settlement by people from Anatolia, unlike the neighboring cultures, which appear descended from an earlier Neolithic settlement. ref

First Male God? To me, it seems he stole the goddess’s birthing stool, and possibly her power?

Cernavodă, the necropolis where the famous statues “The (MALE) Thinker” and “The Sitting Woman” were discovered and may date some time after 7,000 to 6,600 years ago. ref, ref, ref

“Is there’s a connection between Cycladic art and the “Hamangia Thinker?” These and other similar figures could relate to another Neolithic clay figure that was found at a Cucuteni-Trypillian culture site in the town of Tarpesti, Romania called the “Thinker of Tarpesti” resemblance between the Thinker of Tarpesti statue and the Hamangia Thinker statue is uncanny.” ref 

The First Expression of the Male God around 7,000 years ago?

The Balkans, where I think the first male god originates is the site of a few major Neolithic cultures, including Butmir, Vinča, Varna, Karanovo, Hamangia. And the threat of violence that accompanied the Copper Age “Kurganization” of the eastern Balkans (and the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture) is associated with an early expansion of the Proto-Indo-European people of a Kurgan culture north of the Black Sea from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe, Eurasia and parts of Asia. In Serbia, a 7,500 years ago copper axe was found at Prokuplje. The European Corded Ware culture 4,900-4,350 years ago used stone axes modeled on copper axes, imitating “mold marks” carved in the stone. ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref 

 Cucuteni-Trypillian statue entitled: Gânditorul din Târpești (The Thinker of Tarpesti) 

Prehistoric Romania

“Hoes, coulters and other tools made of antler were unearthed at nine “Schela Cladovei” settlements along the Lower Danube, suggesting that cultivation of plants began in the lands now forming Romania between around 11,500-9,500 years ago. Animal husbandry appeared 1500 or 2000 years later with the arrival of a new population—the bearers of the “Gura Baciului-Cârcea/Precriş culture“—from the southern parts of the Balkan Peninsula. They lived in pit-houses and used chiseled stone tools. They decorated their fine pottery with geographical figures and produced clay figurines. The antrophomorphic figurines of the “Hamangia culture“, which flourished in the region between the Lower Danube and the Black Sea until around 6,000 years ago, are outstanding representatives of Neolithic art. In addition to figurines, colored pottery featured the “Cucuteni-Trypillian culture” of Muntenia, northeastern Moldavia and southern Transylvania. “Cucuteni-Trypillian” settlements, which often covered an area reaching 6 hectares (15 acres), flourished until around 4,000 years ago. Production of copper tools and artifacts—pins, hooks, and pendants—and the use of gold can also be demonstrated from the last centuries of the Stone Age. Practically nothing is known of the languages spoken by the locals in this period. Historians—for instance, Vlad Georgescu and Mihai Rotea—say that the spread of Indo-European languages began in the period between 4,500-4,000 years ago. Fortified settlements and the great number of weapons—arrowheads, spears and knife blades—unearthed in them show that the stability featuring the Stone Age cultures of “Old Europe” came to an end in the same period.” ref

“The Boian culture ended through a smooth transition into the Gumelniţa culture, which also borrowed from the Vădastra culture. However, a segment of the Boian society ventured to the northeast along the Black Sea coast, encountering the late Hamangia culture, which they eventually merged with to form the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture.” 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 Cucuteni–Trypillia culture flourished in the territory of what is now Moldova, northeastern Romania and parts of Western, Central and Southern Ukraine. The culture thus extended northeast from the Danube river basin around the Iron Gates to the Black Sea and the Dnieper. It encompassed the central Carpathian Mountains as well as the plains, steppe and forest steppe on either side of the range. Its historical core lay around the middle to upper Dniester (the Podolian Upland). During the Atlantic and Subboreal climatic periods in which the culture flourished, Europe was at its warmest and moistest since the end of the last Ice Age, creating favorable conditions for agriculture in this region.” ref 

“The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, also known as Cucuteni culture (from Romanian), Trypillian culture (from Ukrainian) or Tripolye culture (from Russian).” ref 

“The Cucuteni–Tripolye cultural complex (hereafter, CTCC) formed at the north-eastern periphery of the Neolithic and Eneolithic cultural complexes of the Balkans and Danube region, and more precisely in the Siret, Prut and Dniester river valleys. At the complex’s maximum expansion, its western most border was located in the Carpathian Mountains, while the eastern bank of the River Dnieper marked its easternmost border. The northernmost sites were situated in the Ukrainian forest region, whereas the southernmost settlements and cemeteries were located in the North Pontic region. Archaeological sites are mainly represented by settlements, cemeteries and isolated burials are not numerous. The few known cemeteries were located in the so-called ‘contact zones’, highlighting the diversity of different local groups within the Cucuteni–Tripolye populations. Tripolye sites are assumed to have three distinct periods. In Ukraine, the ‘Tripolye’ complex was even divided into two cultures/divisions. The ‘Cucuteni–Tripolye’ culture is now understood as the ‘Precucuteni–Ariuşd–Cucuteni–ETC(Easterm Tripolye’ culture)–WTC(Western Tripolye’ culture) cultural complex. At the same time, the term ‘Tripolye’ indicates both the ETC and the WTC.” ref 

Picture Links:  ref 

“Around 6,500 year old model of what seems like a three story temple building.” ref

Picture Link: ref 

“The different symbols in the map refer to the locations where artifacts of some particular culture (like Vinca or Cucuteni) were found. The Danube has been high-marked so you can see why it’s called “Danube culture. There were several Danube Cultures with typically weird names, spanning the time range from about 8,000-5,000 years ago. This is a rough outline of who, when and where. The cultures outlined in the map above are shown in red.” ref 

General area of the Danube Culture consisting of several different cultures such as the Cucuteni-Trypillian and many others: 

“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  

Picture Link: ref 

Decline and end of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture

“There is a debate among scholars regarding how the end of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture took place. According to some proponents of the Kurgan hypothesis of the origin of Proto-Indo-Europeans, and in particular the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, in her book “Notes on the chronology and expansion of the Pit-Grave Culture”(later expanded by her and others), the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture was destroyed by force. Arguing from archaeological and linguistic evidence, Gimbutas concluded that the people of the Kurgan culture (a term grouping the Yamnaya culture and its predecessors) of the Pontic–Caspian steppe, being most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language, effectively destroyed the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture in a series of invasions undertaken during their expansion to the west. Based on this archaeological evidence Gimbutas saw distinct cultural differences between the patriarchal, warlike Kurgan culture and the more peaceful egalitarian Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, which she argued was a significant component of the “Old European cultures” which finally met extinction in a process visible in the progressing appearance of fortified settlements, hillforts and the graves of warrior-chieftains, as well as in the religious transformation from the matriarchy to patriarchy, in a correlated east–west movement. In this, “the process of Indo-Europeanization was a cultural, not a physical, transformation and must be understood as a military victory in terms of successfully imposing a new administrative system, language, and religion upon the indigenous groups. Accordingly, these proponents of the Kurgan hypothesis hold that this invasion took place during the third wave of Kurgan expansion between 5,000–4,800 years ago, permanently ending the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture.” ref

“In Search of the Indo-Europeans, Irish-American archaeologist J. P. Mallory, summarising the three existing theories concerning the end of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, mentions that archaeological findings in the region indicate Kurgan (i.e. Yamnaya culture) settlements in the eastern part of the Cucuteni–Trypillia area, co-existing for some time with those of the Cucuteni–Trypillia. Artifacts from both cultures found within each of their respective archaeological settlement sites attest to an open trade in goods for a period, though he points out that the archaeological evidence clearly points to what he termed “a dark age,” its population seeking refuge in every direction except east. He cites evidence of the refugees having used caves, islands and hilltops (abandoning in the process 600–700 settlements) to argue for the possibility of a gradual transformation rather than an armed onslaught bringing about cultural extinction. The obvious issue with that theory is the limited common historical life-time between the Cucuteni–Trypillia (6,800–5,000 years ago) and the Yamnaya culture (5,300–4,600 years ago); given that the earliest archaeological findings of the Yamnaya culture are located in the Volga–Don basin, not in the Dniester and Dnieper area where the cultures came in touch, while the Yamnaya culture came to its full extension in the Pontic steppe at the earliest around 5,000 years ago, the time the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture ended, thus indicating an extremely short survival after coming in contact with the Yamnaya culture. Another contradicting indication is that the kurgans that replaced the traditional horizontal graves in the area now contain human remains of a fairly diversified skeletal type approximately ten centimetres taller on average than the previous population.” ref

“Another theory regarding the end of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture emerged based on climatic change that took place at the end of their culture’s existence that is known as the Blytt–Sernander Sub-Boreal phase. Beginning around 5,200 years ago, the earth’s climate became colder and drier than it had ever been since the end of the last Ice age, resulting in the worst drought in the history of Europe since the beginning of agriculture. The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture relied primarily on farming, which would have collapsed under these climatic conditions in a scenario similar to the Dust Bowl of the American Midwest in the 1930s according to The American Geographical Union,” ref

“The transition to today’s arid climate was not gradual, but occurred in two specific episodes. The first, which was less severe, occurred between 6,700 and 5,500 years ago. The second, which was brutal, lasted from 4,000 to 3,600 years ago. Summer temperatures increased sharply, and precipitation decreased, according to carbon-14 dating. According to that theory, the neighboring Yamnaya culture people were pastoralists, and were able to maintain their survival much more effectively in drought conditions. This has led some scholars to come to the conclusion that the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture ended not violently, but as a matter of survival, converting their economy from agriculture to pastoralism, and becoming integrated into the Yamnaya culture. However, the Blytt–Sernander approach as a way to identify stages of technology in Europe with specific climate periods is an oversimplification not generally accepted. A conflict with that theoretical possibility is that during the warm Atlantic period, Denmark was occupied by Mesolithic cultures, rather than Neolithic, notwithstanding the climatic evidence. Moreover, the technology stages varied widely globally. To this must be added that the first period of the climate transformation ended 500 years before the end of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture and the second approximately 1400 years after.” ref

“PIE is estimated to have been spoken as a single language from 6,500-4,500 years ago during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has also provided insight into the culture and religion of its speakers. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of Eastern Europe. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has also provided insight into the culture and religion of its speakers. From there, further linguistic divergence led to the evolution of their current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages. Today, the descendant languages, or daughter languages, of PIE with the most native speakers are Spanish, English, Portuguese, Hindustani (Hindiand Urdu), Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, German, Persian, French, Italian and Marathi. Hundreds of other living descendants of PIE range from languages as diverse as Albanian, Kurdish, Nepali, Tsakonian, Ukrainian, and Welsh.” ref

Proto-Indo-European Religion  “Introduction to Proto-Indo-European Religion“

The Proto-Indo-European Religion is reconstructed on the basis of linguistic analysis of the languages used by Indo-European-speaking people relating to traditional Paganism, the polytheistic religion of the Indo-European-speaking people. In India, the religion mostly continues as it has for millennia. Introduction to Proto-Indo-European Religion. Indo-European Languages and Pagan Religion; includes the Pantheon, Myths, Rituals, Festivals, Food, and Farming of the Indo-Europeans which is mostly organized by the months of the year. ref

“With the emergence of sedentism comes the creation of paganism’s goddesses (fertility cult) around 12,000 years ago relating to agriculture (The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution) as well as later male gods (warrior cult) around 7,000 years ago relating to violence. And, to me, this references the male god taking the goddess’ birthing chair or seat/throne of early paganistic believed expressed magic power.” ref

  • The 7th millennium BC spanned the years 9,000-8,000 years ago. During this time, agriculture spread from Anatolia to the Balkans. In the agricultural communities of the Middle East, the cow was domesticated and use of pottery became common, spreading to Europe and South Asia, and the first metal(gold and copper) ornaments were made.
  • 8,850 – 6,800 years ago: Advanced agriculture and a very early use of pottery by the Sesclo culture in Thessaly, Greece.
  • 8,800 – 6,800 years ago: The earliest domesticated pigs in Europe, which many archaeologists believed to be descended from European wild boar, were introduced from the Middle East by Stone Age farmers. 
  • 6500 BC: Two breeds of non-wolf dogs in Scandinavia; domestic hogs in Jarmo and cattle in Turkey
  • 8,400 years ago: Cardium Pottery begins its move to west along the northern Mediterranean coast, beginning at Seskio, Thessaly
  • 8,400 years ago: Yarmukian Culture begins at Sha’ar HaGolan, Israel
  • 8,200 years ago: Firm date of move of the first farmers from Turkey across the Aegean Sea and up the Danube into Romania and Serbia
  • 8,200 years ago: The 8.2 kiloyear event was a sharp decrease in global temperatures that lasted for 200–400 years, possibly caused by an influx of glacial meltwater into the North Atlantic Ocean
  • 8,000 years ago: Agriculture fully present in the Balkans, see Old European Culture. ref

“The European Neolithic period—marked by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock, increased numbers of settlements and the widespread use of pottery—began around 9,000 years ago in Greece and the Balkans, probably influenced by earlier farming practices in Anatolia and the Near East. It spread from the Balkans along the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine(Linear Pottery culture) and along the Mediterranean coast (Cardial culture). Between 6,500-5,000 years ago, these central European neolithic cultures developed further to the west and the north, transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artefacts. In Western Europe the Neolithic period was characterised not by large agricultural settlements but by field monuments, such as causewayed enclosures, burial mounds and megalithic tombs. The Corded Ware cultural horizon flourished at the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic. During this period giant megalithic monuments, such as the Megalithic Temples of Malta and Stonehenge, were constructed throughout Western and Southern Europe.” ref

“The Boian culture originated on the Wallachian Plain north of the Danube River in southeastern Romania. At its peak, the culture expanded to include settlements in the Bărăgan Plain and the Danube Delta in Romania, Dobruja in eastern Romania and northeastern Bulgaria, and the Danubian Plain and the Balkan Mountains in Bulgaria. The culture’s geographical extent went as far west as the Jiu River on the border of Transylvania in south-central Romania, as far north as the Chilia branch of the Danube Delta along the Romanian border with Ukraine and the coast of the Black Sea, and as far south as the Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea in Greece. The Boian culture emerged from two earlier Neolithic groups: the Dudeşti culture that originated in Anatolia (present-day Turkey); and the Musical note culture (also known as the Middle Linear Pottery culture or LBK) from the northern Subcarpathian region of southeastern Poland and western Ukraine. The Boian culture ended through a smooth transition into the Gumelniţa culture, which also borrowed from the Vădastra culture. However, a segment of the Boian society ventured to the northeast along the Black Sea coast, encountering the late Hamangia culture, which they eventually merged with to form the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture. Unlike later cultures that followed, there have not been many artifacts found in Boian culture sites of sculptures or figurines. However, the oldest bone figurine in Romania was found at the Cernica site, dating back to Phase I.” ref

The Verteba Cave: A Subterranean Sanctuary of the Cucuteni-Trypillia Culture in Western Ukraine 

“In Eneolithic Europe, the complexity of mortuary differentiation increased with the complexity of the society at large. Human remains from the Verteba Cave provide a unique opportunity to study the lives, deaths and cultural practices of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture in Western Ukraine. The subterranean sanctuary of Verteba was without a doubt a rallying point of both religious and social significance. Therefore, this investigation focuses on the role and character of ritual activities, the diversity and variety of religious orientations in the Eneolithic period and the question of how and for what reason this particular cave was modified from a natural space to a sacred place. We also seek to clarify the research potential of the site in relation to highly developed and relatively wide-spread religion with direct implications for the Cucuteni-Trypillia social structure.” ref 

Ritual practice in Verteba Cave

“Neolithic populations are often argued to have had a complex burial programme; combining rites such as primary burial, secondary burial, excarnation and the ceremonial manipulation of bones. Archaeologists have interpreted these funerary rites either as expressions of territoriality, ideological masks of inequality  or ritual ways of creating relationships between the living, the dead and dwellings. There has been surprisingly little osteological research to support this grand theoretical edifice, however, the discovery of disarticulated human remains in Verteba Cave provides a unique opportunity to study the lives, deaths, and cultural practices of the Tripillian culture.” ref 

“Nonetheless, the collection does include over 300 fully preserved large ceramic vessels (measuring ca. 1 m in height), 35,000 pottery sherds and fragments of vessels, 120 anthropomorphic idols, over 60 clay items of varied functions, ca. 200 bone tools, 300 stone tools and implements as well as bone jewelry. Some of these finds are of considerable archaeological value and importance, for instance, the spectacular ‘bull head’ palette with an engraved female figure, or a green hematite disk. Throughout the 19th century, dozens of clay idols of both genders have been discovered inside Verteba Cave. They were hanging from the ceiling or driven into the walls of the cave. These artifacts create the archaeological background and setting for cultural practices in this case. The full archaeological potential of this site remains to be realized. 21 individuals were uncovered during excavations within the cave. It is likely that the volume of osteological remains will increase in the future. Taking all this into consideration, the current study aims to investigate the materials using primary referents of mortuary variability: biological, cultural (pre-treatment of skulls, disposal modes) and locational criteria.” ref 

Comprehensive Site Chronology and Ancient Mitochondrial DNA Analysis from Verteba Cave – a Trypillian Culture Site of Eneolithic Ukraine  

“Farming in Europe spread from western Anatolia after 9,000 years ago. The European Neolithic initially developed in Greece, from where it expanded northward into the Balkans, and westward along the Mediterranean coast. After 8,000 years ago Neolithic cultures of the Danube basin, such as Starčevo-Körös-Kriş and the Linear Pottery culture (Linearbandkeramik or LBK) began to appear east of the Carpathian Mountains. On the foundations laid by these and other Neolithic groups a new archaeological culture began to form in the pre-Carpathian region around 7,400 years ago. This culture became known as Precucuteni, and later as Cucuteni in Romania and Moldova, and Trypillia A (formally spelled “Trypolie” or “Tripolye”) followed by Trypillia B and C, in Ukraine. The Trypillian cultural complex (TC) existed from 7,400 to 4,700 years ago on a vast area extending from the Carpathian piedmont, east to the Dnipro River, and south to the shores of the Black Sea. As an archaeological culture TC was discovered near the village Trypillia, Ukraine TC is characterised by advanced agriculture, developed metallurgy, pottery-making, sophisticated architecture and social organisation, including the first proto-cities on European soil. TC occupies a prominent place in Eastern European archaeology but still remains largely unknown to the Western science.” ref 

“The new TC chronology identifies the following brackets for each TC phase: AII-III-3 from 7,400–6,300 years ago, BI from 6,300–6,100 years ago, BII from 6,100–5,600 years ago, CI from 5,600–5,200 years ago, and CII from 7,400–6,750 years ago. More than 40 local archaeological groups are recognized within the TC complex, with region- and group-specific variations in the styles of pottery and plastics, in many cases influenced by contemporaneous neighboring cultures. At the material culture level TC is known for a variety of painted pottery as well as anthropomorphic and zoomorphic clay figurines. While the material culture of TC has been well studied and documented, human remains are scarce. In fact, they are virtually non-existent until the CII phase, when burials of TC begin to appear on a regular basis. This creates a gap in our understanding of the biological origins of TC and in their cultural traditions, such as rituals for the dead.”  ref 

 Weapons and Warriors in Iconography of Early-agricultural European Societies 

“In the Stubline set the figurines are made unkempt, and it is the weapons that the author drew attention to: each figurine has a hole for attaching a wooden bar. It seems that those were crush weapons: 11 clay models were found among the figurines — 8 perforated axes and 3  mace-heads attached to wooden handles that were inserted into the corresponding holes in the figurines. The remaining weapons, apparently, included wooden clubs or spears. Stone mace-heads were known already during the early Neolithic in Greece. A significant number of stone mace-heads come from the Neolithic Linear Pottery culture area in Central and Western Europe. In the Copper Age they were widely spread also in the Balkan-Carpathian region. Alongside those, stone perforated axes, pickaxes made out of drilled deer prongs as well as copper axes were used.” ref 

“On the turn of the 5th and 4th millennia B.C. (7,000-5,000 years ago), some types of crush weapons expanded beyond the Balkan-Carpathian early-agricultural area: cross-shaped mace-heads and ‘scepters shaped as horse heads’ were found in the plains all the way to Fore-Caucasus and the Volga region. In respect of the ‘scepters’ we could suppose that they not only served as power attributes, but, in the first place, were a part of asymmetrical clubs. Both rough treatment of the ‘scepters’ back part, and a cusp in their upper part indicate this: this is how a ‘scepter’ could be put into a hole in the wooden handle and additionally fixed with a cord or a leather band. In the same way metal, bone or flinty elements could be inserted into the wooden handle. Chalcolithic bone and copper ‘daggers’5  could also have served as such inserts. Some ethnographic varieties of assault cudgels, such as Iroquois deer-horn war-clubs had similar inserted blades. In the Bronze Age — in the 2nd millennium B.C. (4,000-3,000 years ago) — similarly constructed ‘battle axes’ became widely spread in the whole of Europe.” ref 

“However the majority of characters from Stubline were, apparently, armed with wooden clubs, the most spread type of weapons of archaic societies. Those were widely used in prehistorical Europe: a whole collection of wooden clubs has been recently discovered during the excavation of a battle field dating back to the Bronze Age in the Tollense river valley in Northern Germany that occurred circa 3,200  years ago. A wooden club was an attribute of one of the leading heroes of Greek mythology, Heracles. Wide expansion of crush weapons poses a question whether in the Copper Age and the Neolithic age there were helmets, armour and shields made of organic materials, and so not surviving till our time. Such wooden, woven and leather armour is well-known through ethnographic collections from different parts of the world. Were the described figurines supplemented with additional details made of organic materials? This could explain their slipshod making.” ref 

“Against the background of numerous traces of military conflicts and finds of weapons, evidence in the form of the Neolithic and Copper Age artworks that would clearly demonstrate characters related to this sphere is comparatively scarce. The most expressive collection — big figurines (20–30 cm tall, sometimes hollow) depicting sitting men — comes from the digs of the settlements of the late Neolithic Tisza culture, that developed based on Balkan traditions in the Tisza river basin in Eastern Hungary in the first half of the 5th millennium B.C. (7,000-6,000 years ago). Among those, the most famous is ‘God with a Sickle’ from Szegvár-Tűzköves. Besides a bracelet and a belt, emphasising the character’s status, a bended cudgel or a metal sickle-shaped weapon clutched in his right hand serves as the main attribute (a similar metal object over 0,5 m long was accidentally found near Lake Balaton). In the same settlement, similar sculptures were found, one of them together with an axe model.” ref 

“Fragments of lookalike figurines were also found in other Tisza settlements. The height of the sculpture or a shaped vessel from Vesto Magor, according to one reconstruction, could reach 80 cm. Tisza sculptures, most probably, did not depict abstract gods, but rather more specific characters: ancestors of lineage groups, lineage chiefs, leaders who often turn into folklore and mythology characters with time. Alongside male ones, female characters also exist. But these sculptures and anthropomorphic vessels are, likely, a local thing, because there are no direct analogies in the late Neolithic and early Eneolithic Balkan-Carpathian cultures.” ref 

“Separate male figurines are present also in the Balkan-Lower Danube region cultures — Vinča and Gumelniţa — however their attribution and iconography require further elaboration. By contrast, a rather expressive collection of male figurines comes from the Cucuteni–Trypillia area. Those are distinctly attributed by a belt and a shoulder belt (fig. 8) [56]. Sitting or standing male figurines with a belt and a baldric constitute sets together with female ones. There are no armed figurines among those. However the fact draws attention that in the whole area of early-agricultural Balkan-Carpathian cultures there are numerous small clay models of copper or stone axes. One could consider them children’s toys, but these could also have been part of installations with figurines from perished organic materials, similar to the Tisza culture sculpture — the abovementioned statuette from Szegvár-Tűzköves where, according to the reconstruction, the axe was attached with a wooden handle, same as with Stubline figurines.” ref 

Thus, a Copper Age warrior ‘portrait’ does not look expressive enough. Among finds of anthropomorphic figurines, female statuettes prevail, and figurine sets are mostly directly related to meaning fields not associated with war. This could be explained with various reasons: small plastics association with home and home production — the area of female labour, matrilineal structure, etc. This question has not been resolved yet. However we cannot expect mass finds of any decorative art objects reflecting military activity of Europe’s early farmers. Here we can cite an example of Minoan art, where, judging by palace frescoes and small figurines, female images are also the central ones. As Judith Weingarten, a researcher of Minoan culture, noted, its art somewhat resembles 17th century Dutch art — the ‘Golden Age’ of Dutch painting when violent wars frequent during that age were almost not represented in art work.” ref 

Military Unions in the Structure of Neolithic and Eneolithic European Societies  

“One of the fruitful trends in contemporary art studies is the social history of art. Through discovering the dialectics of interconnections between the society, its structure, its ecology and development characteristics, and the imagery in its art, one can more comprehensively expose the aspects of artworks interpretation and present the society itself. Based on archaeological materials, European Neolithic and Eneolithic societies form a rather non-homogeneous picture. On the one hand, there are societies with clearly distinctive differences in groups statuses. So, social hierarchy can be expressed in various burial ground materials like in the famous Varna Necropolis in Bulgaria, where only several burials out of almost 300 (<0.5%) had sets of gold adornments. The structure of settlements and the patterns of material distribution in their different parts can also indicate social hierarchy. Like, for example, in Polgár-Csőszhalom in Hungary, where a fortified hillfort dominates the surrounding settlement or, possibly, in Parța in Romania, where a similar structure was found (a fortified part and surrounding buildings). On the other hand, alongside those different societies exist, where status hierarchy cannot be traced clearly enough, like, for example, in Cucuteni–Trypillia.” ref 

“Here there are no distinctive clusters in the settlement structure that would indicate connection with the elite. Settlements either had a radial layout formed by dwellings that were built in circles, or consisted of several groups of buildings. And if any defense structures were built, e. g. ditches and ramparts, they surrounded the entire settlement rather than its part. There is also no significant difference in the buildings inventory. So, what was the structure of the society that had a settlement in Stubline? Stubline settlement was part of a settlement cluster, but at this stage it is hard to tell whether it was a system existing at the same time or a number of successive villages. Judging by lack of dense cultural layer deposits, this was not a longterm tell settlement with its higher status relative to other settlements in the area, but rather a site that existed a limited number of years within a fairly mobile system of territory development. The settlement numbers about 200–250 buildings surrounded with a defensive ditch. In the course of its existence, the area of the settlement was expanded through enclosing  another area with a ditch that was later built-up.” ref 

 It was in this part, close to the external ditch, where the building stood in which the statuettes were found. Stubline layout reconstructions based on magnetometric survey are vary: it could be either formed by parallel rows of dwellings or their groups. It is not possible to determine this without further excavations. However there is obviously no centre that could be linked to a dominant group in the social hierarchy system. Consequently, we can assume that the settlement population formed a relatively egalitarian society. The researcher supposes that between 1,250 and 1,750 people could have lived in this settlement together. Based on the assumed population count, the number of adult men accounts for 25–30%, or about 300–550 men. A squad of almost 50 warriors depicted in the composition amounts to a significant part of the possible military force of the settlement.” ref 

“Based on ethnographic and historical parallels, similar groups could have been formed under various principles. One of them provides for a system of age classes, most extensively described in terms of East African cattle-breeding and farmer societies — Galla, Konso, Nuer, Maasai, etc. The number of age classes may vary from 3 to 5–6. They include the entire population from children to the elderly. Among them, groups of young men and unmarried men of around 18–25 years old stand out that performed military duties. Inside those groups, there is an own hierarchy in the form of military chiefs and division into the senior and the junior. Transition from one age class into another one involves going through a coming-of-age ceremony. We would like to draw an attention to another fact favouring this comparison. The mentioned for the purposes of comparison East African societies are characterised with a relatively high level of mobility.” ref 

“It is typical not only for the cattle-breeders, but also for early-agricultural groups that practice extensive farming with forced, due to resource exhaustion, periodic moving of settlements to a new place. Such settlement options, alongside more persistent ones (based on forming multi-layered long-term settlements), were widely practiced outside the vast area of early-agricultural societies of the Balkan-Carpathian circle during the Neolithic and Copper Age. Evidence of age classes and male societies is also traceable in European Antiquity. The role of male societies in Sparta was described by Yu.V.Andreev. The issue of distinguishing age classes in Athens, Sparta and on Crete was studied by N.Kennell. The Roman army structure with its division into principes, hastati and triarii possibly also reflects an archaic system of age classes. Such organisation principles based on horizontal connections could have been widely spread in European prehistorical societies of the Neolithic era and the Bronze Age.” ref  

 “Here below is a chart from the Encyclopaedia of the Trypillian Civilization demonstrates how major types of figurines were developing by periods:” ref 

“The total number of figurines discovered all over the area of the culture distribution is around 12 thousand, including about 3 thousand figurines found in Ukraine. There are over 100 settlements in the territory of Ukraine, where such artifacts have been found. As it has been mentioned in Part 1, the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture existed for over 2.5 thousand years. Just like any phenomenon, over such a period of time it gradually transformed, passing through the following stages: emergence – formation – development – advanced period – decline – extinction. This got further reflected in various local versions of the culture (there are about 60 of such versions today, as we’ve said above). Therefore, such cultural phenomenon as TAPA was constantly developing and transforming, too, and also had its regional differences. Figurines vary in sexual characteristics – female, male (though there are much less male ones than female ones), androgyne(combining features of both sexes), and children’s (e.g. stylised figurines of a child in mother’s arms). As for androgynes, historian and philosopher Mircea Eliade suggests that this phenomenon may be explained as a universal and sexless deity, which at the earthly plane may combine features of both sexes. researcher Natalia Burdo mentions the following:

In ancient mythology androgyne is a dualistic character with female and male features. It symbolises the principle of balance between the two opposite principles (masculine – feminine, active – passive), reflected in anthropomorphic codes. Androgyny is determined by both the idea of unity that preceded diversity of the world, and the idea of the primordial chaos and non-division of the universe between heaven (the male principle) and earth (the feminine principle).” ref

“Historians and archaeologists study all the trends, analyse and classify figurines. For example, famous archaeologist Mikhail Videyko notes the following: Figurines are very different by their overall appearance, poses, gestures, and decorative elements. There are more than fifteen various images embodied in Trypillian terracotta items, including the Bird Goddess, the Snake Goddess, the Cow Goddess, Oranta, Madonna, paired female deities, Androgyne, and Warrior.” ref

“Distribution of copper and new technology in the steppe area from the different production centers. I-VI are production regions (metalworking centers): I) Tisza – Transylvania; II) Middle Danube; III) Thracian – Lower Danube; IV) Carpathian-Dnieper; V) Northern Pontic; VI) Middle Volga.” ref 

“The Copper Age began in Bulgaria ca. 7,200–7,000 years ago, but Old European copper-trade network included the Pontic–Caspian steppe groups only after ca. 6,600 years ago. In the period ca. 6,800–6,000 years ago, Trypillia ceramic imports appear at the Neolithic Dnieper sites. In the forest-steppe region, they occur on a number of sites belonging to the Kyiv–Cherkassy variant of the Dnieper–Donets community, and later imports reach into the forest zone, into the territory of the Pit–Comb Ware culture. Prestige objects begin to appear at this time on the north Pontic region, too, marking the beginning of the prestige exchange.” ref 

There is no gap between the Neolithic cemeteries of Nikolskoe, Lysogorskoe or Mariupol and the emergence of the first Sredni Stog burials, which mark the advent of the Eneolithic. In fact, certain prestige objects appear in Neolithic cemeteries before their demise, and flint workshops on the Donets—which become quite relevant during the beginning of prestige exchange in the region—can be traced back to the late Neolithic (Mariupol) industry.” ref 

“The expansion of Khvalynsk–Novodanilovka connected Early Eneolithic sites, from the Lower Danube (Suvorovo, Cernavodă I) to the Kuban region, bordering on the pre-Caucasus region (with pre-Maikop Trans-Kuban culture) to the steppe and forest-steppe Volga region of the Khvalynsk culture. The expansion of Suvorovo to the Lower Danube, with its contact with rich local agricultural settlements, sets into motion a long-distance prestige exchange system, and the tradition of rich burial assemblages that expands through cultures of the north-west and north Pontic region.” ref 

“The economy of the region included sheep–goat, cattle, and horse bones, and it seems that sedentarism was the rule, with hunting playing a significant part in the diet. Trade in this period was based around copper and copper artefacts, from two main extraction regions: the Middle Danube area and Thrace. Finds from the steppe up to Khvalynsk show that Novodanilovka was associated not only with the distribution of the first copper artefacts in the steppe, but also with the establishment of an independent metalworking focus in the Black Sea region, which used Thracian–Lower Danubian and Middle Danubian ore, as well as Trypillian, Varna, and Gumelniţa technology.” ref 

“The lack of complex copperworking in early Khvalynsk suggests that all the copper finds in the Volga and pre-Caucasus region were imports from the west, and rich copper assemblages in the Dnieper and Donets regions seem to occur at regular intervals or suitable stopping places along the main route, which—together with the flint processing remains—points to north Pontic groups as intermediaries.” ref 

“Metal hoards of the initial Chalcolithic (ca. 6,800–6,200 years ago) coexist with the first great wave of the Alpine jadeites. The Danubian axe and adze hoards phenomenon flourishes in central Europe, covering the area between the Meuse and the Vistula rivers. By 6,600/6,500 years ago, a ‘Europe of hoards’ extends from Brittany to the Carpathian Mountains, in non-metalworking Neolithic societies. Isolated finds of giant (‘elite’) mounds, the Carnac mounds, built for a single individual, are found in this copperless western Europe at the same time as those in Varna I. A vast distribution network of Alpine axeheads and its corresponding hoard phenomenon in the west is thus comparable to the contemporaneous copper hammer-axe horizon in the initial east European Chalcolithic.” ref 

“Late LBK groups, including the Lengyel, Tiszapolgàr and Bodrogkeresztúr cultures, as well as contemporaneous cultures of northern and western France, like the Cerny culture of long barrows (ca. 6,800–6,300 years ago), show some burials with stereotypical grave goods (weapons for men, ornaments for women) which stand out from other burials, showing thus the elite status of certain individuals (usually males), although without much difference with other graves.” ref 

Early Sredni Stog

“The Bug–Dniester culture follows a division being proposed between an aceramic phase dated to ca. 7,500–6,900 years ago and a ceramic phase ca. 6,900–6,400 years ago, with apparent similarities in fabric, form, and decoration of pottery with the parallel developments in the Dnieper–Donets culture. This change marks the transition from Mesolithic hunter-gatherer societies to Neolithic ones, featuring domesticated animals and arable agriculture (wheat and barley, as well as millet, oats, vetch and rye) to differing degrees.” ref 

“The early Sredni Stog culture is characterised by a distinctive incised line and dot decoration, that spans from the Lower Don in the east to the Cucuteni–Trypillia settlements. Similar pottery decoration connected these cultures to earlier north Pontic Neolithic decorative features. Typical assemblages of these sites include typologically distinctive flint and stone artefacts, such as long knife-like blades, triangular flint spears and arrowheads, and flat axe-adzes, as well as distinctive perforated antler artefacts.” ref 

“Early Sredni Stog settlements in the north Pontic area include the earliest burials of Stril’cha Skelya, Oleksandriia on the Oskol (a tributary of the Donets), Aleksandrovsk on the Donets, Igren VIIII, Razdolnoe on the Kalmius, as well as Vasylivka, Deriïvka 2 on the Dnieper, the island of Vinogradny, and Sredni Stog II; possibly some burials of the Lower Don, a border with the eastern region, may have part of the culture, too. Contacts with neighbouring steppe cultures are evident in imported Sredni Stog materials in the Khvalynsk settlement of Kara-Khuduk in the Caspian region, and in pre-Maikop Svobodnoe in the Kuban region.” ref 

“Chronologically, the culture corresponds to the Cucuteni–Trypillia A3–4 and B1 agricultural settlements (ca. 6,800–6,000 years ago), which show the same type of pottery in terms of technique and decoration, also found in Gumelniţa A2 (ca. 6,500–5,950 years ago). The first copper and gold objects in the north Pontic region are associated with this period. Flint extraction and flint-working loci including mines appear in the Donets zone, the products of which correspond to artefacts from prestige burial assemblages. Oleksandriia was one such flint-processing locus, where a large quantity of both finished projectile tips, axes, long blades, semi-finished products, and also production waste was found.” ref 

“Early contacts of north Pontic populations with the Hamangia culture from the Dobruja region (ca. 7,250–6,500 years ago) is seen in imports including adornments from copper, cornelian, marine shells and pots in steppe sites, and plates from bone and nacre, pendants from teeth of red deer in Hamangia sites. The Hamangia influence was especially important in the burial rites of the steppe population, and may have caused the use of stone in graves and above them, pits with alcove, and new adornments of burial clothes. The strongest impact is seen to the north of the Sea of Azov in the early Sredni Stog culture, with the adoption of the new religious element potentially connected with the formation of the centre of steppe metal working.” ref 

Cucuteni–Trypillia

“The Cucuteni–Trypillia agrarian culture sites show complicated rules and networks of social organisation at different levels, which may be reconstructed as follows:

· The household level shows open communication between neighbors and the whole settlement, linking together neighboring households but not separating them from others (peaceful neighborhood principle);

· Specialization between households at an economic level in respect to their integration in processing primary (e.g. cereal) and secondary (e.g. weaving) products, with smaller houses showing more primary activity, and larger houses showing fewer activities of primary subsistence production;

· Household clusters of ca. 5 houses link households spatially (house-ring principle), potentially based on generational contracts / lineages;

· The economic and political linkage of households to quarters, represented by mega-structures as the focal point and by supra-household economic specializations (mega-structure principle);

· The overall settlement, which needs a political institution to direct the spatial planning of the site and combined economic activities (mega-site principle).” ref 

“During the 5th millennium (7,000-6,000 years ago), a strong, long-lasting, east–west orientated exchange network can be observed in the north Pontic area between the Cucuteni–Trypillian culture in the forest-steppe and north Pontic groups of the coastal steppe, including the site at Deriïvka. These close interactions were also maintained between the north Pontic and Khvalynsk populations, and it seems to have been driven by an interest in metal objects. In fact, the Khvalynsk centre of metalworking was formed under western influences, among which the Early Trypillian centre dominated.” ref 

“The exchange systems in the north Pontic area during the Eneolithic included intercommunal exchange within likely related ethnolinguistic groups (such as the Sredni Stog internal exchange of natural resources, like flint materials);  exchange with the nearest neighbours (such as prestigious exchange between Sredni Stog and the Trypillian, Kyiv–Cherkassy, Donets and Middle Don cultures, as well as northern Caucasus and Crimea); and long distance exchange, made far from friendly villages, probably created under the Khvalynsk–Novodanilovka network.” ref 

“The revolution of herding, travel, and raiding—and thus the change in the steppe—had come with horseback riding, appearing ca. 6,800 years ago in early Khvalynsk, and spreading south- and eastward with Suvorovo–Novodanilovka elites. They came from the eastern steppe, and they were probably involved in raiding and trading with the north and west Pontic areas during the Trypillian B1 period, before and during the collapse of Old Europe.” ref 

“At the end of this period, the system of interrelationships disappears: there are no late Sredni Stog pottery in Cucuteni–Trypillia; the pottery changes; there is no evidence for the production and distribution of flint artifacts of the old type; and new types of arrow- and spearheads with distinctive notched bases substitute the old projectile points in the region.” ref 

Forest Zone

“The first pottery appeared around the ancient Lake Saimaa basin ca. 7,100 years ago, followed by the Early Asbestos Ware (EAW) culture ca. 6,700 years ago, which used asbestos as a tempering material. This culture was the prevailing type of archaeological assemblage for several hundred years, but declined and disappeared around the early 4th millennium BC. (6,000-5,000 years ago)” ref 

“In mixed forest regions of the central Russian lowland to the Volga area and the Kama valley, Mesolithic–Neolithic hunter-gatherer groups like Lyalovo (ca. 7,000–5,650 years ago) and Volosovo (ca. 5,650–4,300 years ago) show late pricked and comb–stamped ceramic. The characteristic settlement shows partially sunken earth-houses or dugouts (poluzemlyanki), and vessels are simply formed, with a round or pointed base and imprint-decorated outer surfaces. Tools include harpoons made of flint, bone, and horn. Copper objects are rare findings, but bone or stone animal figures are typical and associated with forest fauna, such as bears, fish, beavers, etc.” ref 

“In the southern area, near the north Pontic forest zone up to the Don River, this stage of Rudnyaya culture shows continuity in relation to the previous Late Neolithic period, and cultural interaction is observed with the eastern Baltic area and through the Western Dvina.” ref 

Early Uralians

“Two individuals of the 5th millennium BC, presumably from early Sredni Stog, show continuity with ancestry similar to the previous samples of the north Pontic area: one from Deriïvka (ca. 6,4630 years ago), and one from Vovnihy (ca. 6,430 years ago) of hg. I2a1b1a2-CTS10057. Another sample from Deriïvka (ca. 6,870 years ago) is a clear outlier, with fully Anatolian farmer-like ancestry—clustering closely with Balkan Neolithic and Chalcolithic samples—but shows haplogroup I2a1b1-M223, and thus probably continuity of the male population.” ref 

“In the Balkans, Copper Age populations contain significantly more hunter-gatherer-related ancestry, contemporary with the ‘resurgence’ of hunter-gatherer ancestry in central Europe and Iberia, and consistent with changes in funerary rites ca. 6,500 years ago to extended supine burial, in contrast to the Early Neolithic tradition of flexed burials. An important population replacement is supported by the presence of mtDNA haplogroups H, HV, W, K, and T in twenty-eight Trypillian samples from the Verteba Cave, contrasting with typical pre-Eneolithic lineages. Trypillian samples of the Middle Eneolithic  show mostly Anatolian-related ancestry (ca. 80%) with contribution of hunter-gatherer ancestry (ca. 20%) intermediate between WHG and EHG, consistent with the local population.” ref 

“Based on the lack of individuals of R1a1a-M198 lineages during the 6th and 5th millennium BC—the most likely Early Uralic speakers—in the sampled populations from the Pontic–Caspian area, and their presence there and among Baltic hunter-gatherers during the Mesolithic, it is possible that communities of this lineage were at this time mainly part of the forest or forest-steppe regions from the Middle and Upper Dnieper basin, and spread to the south (“resurging” in the area) only after the Khvalynsk–Novodanilovka expansion.” ref 

“This wide distribution of haplogroup R1a1-M459 in the eastern European forests is supported by an individualfrom Yuzhnyy Oleni Ostrov (ca. 8,300 years ago), of hg. R1a1-M459, reported as both outside and (tentatively) within the R1a1a-M198 tree; the individual from Khvalynsk (ca. 6,600 years ago), of hg. R1a1-M459 (xR1a1a1-M417), probably R1a1b-YP1272, like a later Maykop sample from the Northern Caucasus Piedmont (ca. 5,230 years ago); an individual from Serteya VIII (ca. 6,000 years ago), of hg. R1a-M420 (Chekunova et al. 2014); and a sample from Kudruküla, Estonia (ca. 5,000 years ago), of hg. R1a1b-YP1272. Contacts between the Upper Dnieper–Upper Don forest cultures and those of the forest-steppe continued during the Neolithic, which justifies their eventual infiltration down the Dnieper during the so-called steppe ‘hiatus’.” ref 

“New research has revealed that agriculture came to Europe amid a wave of immigration from the Middle East during the Neolithic period. The newcomers won out over the locals because of their sophisticated culture, mastery of agriculture — and their miracle food, milk.
A 7,200-year-old posthole was found that relates to a large Neolithic settlement in the Upper Franconia region of northern Bavaria. The remains of this large Neolithic settlement held more than 40 houses were unearthed, as well as skeletons, a spinning wheel, bulbous clay vessels, cows’ teeth and broken sieves for cheese production — a typical settlement of the so-called Linear Pottery culture (named after the patterns on their pottery).” ref 

“This ancient culture provided us with bread baking. At around 7,300 years ago, everyone in Central Europe was suddenly farming and raising livestock. The members of the Linear Pottery culture kept cows in wooden pens, used rubbing stones and harvested grain. Within less than 300 years, the sedentary lifestyle had spread to the Paris basin. The reasons behind the rapid shift have long been a mystery. Was it an idea that spread through Central Europe at the time, or an entire people?” ref 

Peaceful Cooperation or Invasion?

“Many academics felt that the latter was inconceivable. Agriculture was invented in the Middle East, but many researchers found it hard to believe that people from that part of the world would have embarked on an endless march across the Bosporus and into the north. A small group of immigrants inducted the established inhabitants of Central Europe into sowing and milking with “missionary zeal.” The new knowledge was then quickly passed on to others. This process continued at a swift pace, in a spirit of “peaceful cooperation,” according to Lüning. But now doubts are being raised on that explanation. The new settlers also had something of a miracle food at their disposal. They produced fresh milk, which, as a result of a genetic mutation, they were soon able to drink in large quantities.” ref 

“The result was that the population of farmers grew and grew. New excavations in Turkey, as well as genetic analyses of domestic animals and Stone Age skeletons, paint a completely different picture. At around 9,000 years ago, a mass migration of farmers began from the Middle East to Europe. These ancient farmers brought along domesticated cattle and pigs. There was no interbreeding between the intruders and the original population.” ref 

“Lastly, the Cucuteni–Trypillia Cultural unity (CTU)7,400–4,700, mostly the territory of modern Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. From the very beginning of its evolution, the CTU possessed a developed agricultural technology with a wide spectrum of domesticated plants and animals. We present palaeoeconomy reconstructions of pre-modern agriculture selecting, wherever required, features specific for the CTU, and paying special attention to the self-consistency of all the elements of the model within the constraints provided by the archaeological, environmental and technological evidence available. With full appreciation of the tentative and approximate nature of any estimates of this kind, our calculations firmly demonstrate the sustainability of the CTU agriculture. Our models include several equally important elements. We start with the calorific content of the palaeodiet suggested by archaeological data, stable isotope analyses of human remains, and palynology studies in the area. We allow for all known domestic and wildlife elements of the diet and provide plausible estimates of the pre-modern yield of ancient cereal varieties and its dependence on the rainfall and duration of continuous land cultivation. Importantly, we pay proper attention to the labor costs of various seasonal parts of the agricultural cycle, not only for an individual but also for the farmer’s family (with its majority of weak and young members not capable of hard physical labor); this was rarely, if ever, done systematically in the earlier studies of pre-modern agri- 43 culture.” ref 

“Finally, we put our results into the context of the exploitation territory and catchment analysis to translate the subsistence needs and strategy of an individual to those of settlements of various sizes. Many (but not all) aspects of the economy are conveniently summarised in terms of the labor return, the ratio of the amount of food energy produced to the energy spent or, equivalently, the total amount of laborer-time available to the working time. Another important aspect of the agricultural activities is the relation of the labor productivity to the time available to seasonal agricultural activities. Of those, the land preparation for sowing causes the strongest time stress. We address this aspect of the problem using the published results of experiments on tillage, reaping, threshing and winnowing using primitive tools and/or traditional techniques. The simplest subsistence strategy, based on a complex of cereals, domestic and wild animal products, with fallow cropping, appears to be capable of supporting an isolated, relatively small farming community of 100–300 people even without recourse to technological improvements such as the use of manure fertiliser.” ref 

“The most important factor limiting the size of such a community is the labor productivity and the labor cost of land cultivation with hand tools. The time stress at the crop sowing time can be relieved by reducing the fraction of cereals in the diet to about 25% in terms of calorific content. Reduction in the soil fertility with time, estimated here from the continuous agricultural experiment on virgin land at Sanborn (Missouri, USA), suggests that soil fertility around such a settlement would be depleted within 60–100 years even with a fallow system. This factor can determine the lifetime of a farming village. Such settlements are typical of earliest Trypillia Stage A. A larger settlement of several hundred people could function in isolation, and with a larger fraction of cereals in the diet, only with technological innovations; for example, the use of manure fertiliser and, most importantly, the use of the ard for land tilling. The ard relieves radically the extreme time pressure at the time of soil preparation for sowing. There is archaeological evidence for the use of ard from the Trypillia Stage BI. Another constraint on the settlement size arises from the fact that animal husbandry is land-extensive, and the distance to the grazing area increases very rapidly with the settlement size. It appears that very large settlements of a few hundred hectares in area could function only if supported by satellite farming villages. In turn, this implies division of labor, sufficiently complex social relations, stable exchange channels, etc.: altogether, a proto-urban character of such settlements. Arable agriculture is more labor expensive and involves stronger seasonal time stress than animal husbandry.” ref 

“However, variations in the labor return with the fraction of cereals in the diet indicate that a diet dominated by cereals is more flexible in the sense that labor redistribution between obtaining food from cereals and domestic animals does not affect the labor return significantly but leads to a seasonal redistribution of the labor costs. This feature can be relevant to the mitigation of the risk of failed crops: when cereals dominate in the diet, applying more effort to the livestock is easy in this respect. Another ways to counter the risk is the use of the manure fertiliser as it significantly reduces the yield variability. We quantify this using the Sanborn experimental data. Yet another strategy to handle the agricultural risks is the storage of an annual supply of grain to be used when the harvest is low.” ref 

“Typical labor returns of order  = 6–8 if using hand tools for the tillage and  = 10 for the ard tillage imply that keeping such a storage is indeed possible. In a family of six with two members fit for hard agricultural labor (so that each of the workers feeds three people), the minimum labor return required for immediate subsistence is  = 3. Any effort beyond this figure can be used to produce a surplus, part of which can be stored as insurance. Even when the insurance grain storage has been laid out, there is sufficient reserve in the labor return to produce surplus food that can be exchanged or traded externally. However, the tillage bottleneck prevents significant surplus grain being produced unless the ard is used to till the land. Thus, exchange networks, labor division, etc., can indeed be expected to develop starting from the middle CTU stages. 44 The significant fraction of cattle and horses in the CTU faunal assemblages and osteometric evidence of their use for traction suggest that agricultural activities involved more than one (extended) family to justify the costs of maintaining animals for anything other than food.” ref 

“Reducing the fraction of cattle in the herd from the nominal figure 0.35 to 0.25 (say, at the expense of the caprines), and simultaneously increasing the fraction of milked animals from 0.5 to 0.7 to keep the number of milking cows the same, reduces the annual subsistence labor cost from 47 to 22 person-day/person/year and the labor return increases from 7.8 to 8.3. This example (illustrative and not necessarily realistic) clearly demonstrates the costs of keeping traction animals and stresses advantages of cooperation between farmers who need animal traction only for limited periods in the seasonal agricultural cycle. A heard of thirty cattle may be a minimum herd size for reproductive maintenance of a herd. The need to combine the resources of several farming households may be another factor that determines the minimum size of an isolated farming village. It is tempting to apply the palaeoeconomy model to later stages of the CTU development and to larger settlements. However, larger settlements are rare and, hence each of them is special. Therefore, such an application should be based on careful analysis of the landscape and environment at the giant CTU settlements. Work was done for Maydanetske. In addition, quantitative analysis of connections between CTU sites, e.g., suggested by pottery typology, is required to assess the intensity of exchange networks.” ref 

7,000-6,200 years ago ref 

6,200-5,800 years ago ref 

 “Heavy things” indicate all kinds of axes, adzes, chisels and daggers.” ref 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref 

Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey 

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

My thoughts on Religion Evolution with external links for more info:

“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: Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, Paganism & Progressed organized religion”

Understanding Religion Evolution:

“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:

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. 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

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:

“Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble. Because of their immediacy they had arguably more influence on the day-to-day affairs of men than the remote gods did. Vestiges of their worship persisted long after Christianity and other major religions extirpated nearly every trace of the major pagan pantheons. Elements of the practice can be seen even today, with Christian accretions, where statues to various saints (such as St. Francis) protect gardens and grottos. Even the gargoyles found on older churches, could be viewed as guardians partitioning a sacred space.” ref

“For centuries, Christianity fought a mop-up war against these lingering minor pagan deities, but they proved tenacious. For example, Martin Luther‘s Tischreden have numerous – quite serious – references to dealing with kobolds. Eventually, rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor deities, until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century. Since the 20th century this literature has been mined for characters for role-playing games, video games, and other fantasy personae, not infrequently invested with invented traits and hierarchies somewhat different from their mythological and folkloric roots.” ref

“In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its origin in totemism. In reality, this distinction is somewhat academic, since totemism may be regarded as a particularized manifestation of animism, and something of a synthesis of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s Totem and Taboo, both totem and taboo are outward expressions or manifestations of the same psychological tendency, a concept which is complementary to, or which rather reconciles, the apparent conflict. Freud preferred to emphasize the psychoanalytic implications of the reification of metaphysical forces, but with particular emphasis on its familial nature. This emphasis underscores, rather than weakens, the ancestral component.” ref

“William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist, and jurist, traced the origin of domestic deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system thought to have existed also in the neolithic, and the forerunner of Indo-European religion. In his analysis of the Indo-European household, in Chapter II “The House Spirit”, Section 1, he states:

The belief which guided the conduct of our forefathers was … the spirit rule of dead ancestors.” ref

“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:

It is thus certain that the worship of deceased ancestors is a vera causa, and not a mere hypothesis. …

In the other European nations, the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Kelts, the House Spirit appears with no less distinctness. … [T]he existence of that worship does not admit of doubt. … The House Spirits had a multitude of other names which it is needless here to enumerate, but all of which are more or less expressive of their friendly relations with man. … In [England] … [h]e is the Brownie. … In Scotland this same Brownie is well known. He is usually described as attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks. His favorite gratification was milk and honey.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref

Hinduism around 3,700 to 3,500 years old. ref

 Judaism around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (The first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew” dated to around 3,000 years ago Khirbet Qeiyafa is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley. And many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed around 2,500) ref, ref

Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)

“Judaism is an Abrahamic, its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions.” ref

“Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel, essentially polytheistic, with a plethora of gods and goddesses. Heading the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with his consort, the goddess Asherah; below them were second-tier gods and goddesses such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, all of whom had their own priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees, and a third and fourth tier of minor divine beings, including the mal’ak, the messengers of the higher gods, who in later times became the angels of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh, however, was not the ‘original’ god of Israel “Isra-El”; it is El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, whose name forms the basis of the name “Israel”, and none of the Old Testament patriarchs, the tribes of Israel, the Judges, or the earliest monarchs, have a Yahwistic theophoric name (i.e., one incorporating the name of Yahweh).” ref

“El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity“, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ‘ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil-, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ‘El or ‘Il include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period. ʼĒl is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, ʼĒl played a role as father of the gods, of creation, or both. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, ʾil mlk is understood to mean “ʼĒl the King” but ʾil hd as “the god Hadad“. The Semitic root ʾlh (Arabic ʾilāh, Aramaic ʾAlāh, ʾElāh, Hebrew ʾelōah) may be ʾl with a parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning “gods” is ʾilhm, equivalent to Hebrew ʾelōhîm “powers”. In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for “god” by biblical commentators. However the documentary hypothesis for the Old Testament (corresponds to the Jewish Torah) developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis.” ref

 

Jainism around 2,599 – 2,527 years old. ref

Confucianism around 2,600 – 2,551 years old. ref

Buddhism around 2,563/2,480 – 2,483/2,400 years old. ref

Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref

Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref

Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref

Sikhism around 548–478 years old. ref

Bahá’í around 200–125 years old. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, 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.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Expressions of Atheistic Thinking:

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

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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 one: Prehistory: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” the division of labor, power, rights, and recourses.

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!

Show seven: Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State)

Show eight: Paganism 4,000 years old: Moralistic gods after the rise of Statism and often support Statism/Kings: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism)

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 (Eridu: First City 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 (King Lugalzagesi and the First Empire)

Show #7: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Sargon and Akkadian Rule)

Show #8: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Naram-Sin, Post-Akkadian Rule, and the Gutians)

Show #9: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Gudea of Lagash and Utu-hegal)

Show #10: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Third Dynasty of Ur / Neo-Sumerian Empire)

Show #11: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Amorites, Elamites, and the End of an Era)

Show #12: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Aftermath and Legacy of Sumer)

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

The “Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries”

Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ Atheist Leftist @Skepticallefty & I (Damien Marie AtHope) @AthopeMarie (my YouTube & related blog) are working jointly in atheist, antitheist, antireligionist, antifascist, anarchist, socialist, and humanist endeavors in our videos together, generally, every other Saturday.

Why Does Power Bring Responsibility?

Think, how often is it the powerless that start wars, oppress others, or commit genocide? So, I guess the question is to us all, to ask, how can power not carry responsibility in a humanity concept? I know I see the deep ethical responsibility that if there is power their must be a humanistic responsibility of ethical and empathic stewardship of that power. Will I be brave enough to be kind? Will I possess enough courage to be compassionate? Will my valor reach its height of empathy? I as everyone, earns our justified respect by our actions, that are good, ethical, just, protecting, and kind. Do I have enough self-respect to put my love for humanity’s flushing, over being brought down by some of its bad actors? May we all be the ones doing good actions in the world, to help human flourishing.

I create the world I want to live in, striving for flourishing. Which is not a place but a positive potential involvement and promotion; a life of humanist goal precision. To master oneself, also means mastering positive prosocial behaviors needed for human flourishing. I may have lost a god myth as an atheist, but I am happy to tell you, my friend, it is exactly because of that, leaving the mental terrorizer, god belief, that I truly regained my connected ethical as well as kind humanity.

Cory and I will talk about prehistory and theism, addressing the relevance to atheism, anarchism, and socialism.

At the same time as the rise of the male god, 7,000 years ago, there was also the very time there was the rise of violence, war, and clans to kingdoms, then empires, then states. It is all connected back to 7,000 years ago, and it moved across the world.

Cory Johnston: https://damienmarieathope.com/2021/04/cory-johnston-mind-of-a-skeptical-leftist/?v=32aec8db952d  

The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist (YouTube)

Cory Johnston: Mind of a Skeptical Leftist @Skepticallefty

The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist By Cory Johnston: “Promoting critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics by covering current events and talking to a variety of people. Cory Johnston has been thoughtfully talking to people and attempting to promote critical thinking, social justice, and left-wing politics.” http://anchor.fm/skepticalleft

Cory needs our support. We rise by helping each other.

Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ @Skepticallefty Evidence-based atheist leftist (he/him) Producer, host, and co-host of 4 podcasts @skeptarchy @skpoliticspod and @AthopeMarie

Damien Marie AtHope (“At Hope”) Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist. Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Poet, Philosopher, Advocate, Activist, Psychology, and Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Historian.

Damien is interested in: Freedom, Liberty, Justice, Equality, Ethics, Humanism, Science, Atheism, Antiteism, Antireligionism, Ignosticism, Left-Libertarianism, Anarchism, Socialism, Mutualism, Axiology, Metaphysics, LGBTQI, Philosophy, Advocacy, Activism, Mental Health, Psychology, Archaeology, Social Work, Sexual Rights, Marriage Rights, Woman’s Rights, Gender Rights, Child Rights, Secular Rights, Race Equality, Ageism/Disability Equality, Etc. And a far-leftist, “Anarcho-Humanist.”

I am not a good fit in the atheist movement that is mostly pro-capitalist, I am anti-capitalist. Mostly pro-skeptic, I am a rationalist not valuing skepticism. Mostly pro-agnostic, I am anti-agnostic. Mostly limited to anti-Abrahamic religions, I am an anti-religionist. 

To me, the “male god” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 7,000 years ago, whereas the now favored monotheism “male god” is more like 4,000 years ago or so. To me, the “female goddess” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 11,000-10,000 years ago or so, losing the majority of its once prominence around 2,000 years ago due largely to the now favored monotheism “male god” that grow in prominence after 4,000 years ago or so. 

My Thought on the Evolution of Gods?

Animal protector deities from old totems/spirit animal beliefs come first to me, 13,000/12,000 years ago, then women as deities 11,000/10,000 years ago, then male gods around 7,000/8,000 years ago. Moralistic gods around 5,000/4,000 years ago, and monotheistic gods around 4,000/3,000 years ago. 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):

Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism

My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This