Paleolithic Totem Venuses become the later Goddesses of the Neolithic and beyond?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Part one (ancestor archetype totem?): ref, ref, ref, ref

Part two (archetype “femaleness” tutelary spirit protector?): ref, ref, ref, ref

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Sitting Female statuette: Paleolithic (30,000-12,000 years ago) Totem Venuses become the later Goddesses of the Neolithic (12,000-4,000 years ago) and beyond? I believe there are deep similarities and cultural connections.

A So-Called “Venus” Figurine: Prehistoric Female Statuette

I think it may have started as an ancestor archetype totem, then archetype “femaleness” spirit protector, then finally protector goddesses…?

NEOLITHIC FIGURINES: SOME GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

“Statuettes of human beings and animals, mostly small and made of clay, elements of the Neolithic world of symbols and imagery. Although at first glance they seem quite diverse, the greater part of clay statuettes nonetheless follows an imaging scheme that was already developed during the 11,000-10,000 years ago. Figures of the Palaeolithic period with common bent legs can-not stand; their heads were bowed/lowered.” ref

“Neolithic figures, in contrast, are commonly free-standing and their view is often directed upwards, as can be observed in the statuette from Mureybet. Aside from free-standing figures, there are also several seated figures in Neolithic statuary, like-wise with the head tilted back and the face directed forward or upwards. Emerging here, in contrast to Palaeolithic statuettes, is something new in form, which presumably should also express something new in the way of thinking as well as execution.” ref

“The Neolithic invention of depiction was very successful. Corresponding statuettes were produced for over five thousand years, until at the end of the 7,200-6,000 years ago the production of anthropomorphic art was completely abandoned in many regions or was replaced regionally by new conceptions. Clay figurines were created in the crescent of Neolithic cultures in the Near East, Anatolia, and Southeastern Europe.” ref

“Yet, their emergence was not ubiquitous. No clay statuettes were produced in the distribution areas of pottery with cardial and impresso decoration, especially in Northern Africa, Spain, and Southern France. The invention of the figural pictorial scheme during the Early Neolithic (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A) constitutes the foundation for the entire further history of Neolithic clay figures. Within a geographic sphere, extending from the Tigris to the Middle Danube Rivers, this pictorial scheme varied within a narrow range.” ref

“The position of the arms was variable, so that different types of images can be discerned. General and basic characteristics of figural art to underscore here are axial symmetrical structure, frontality, and stylization. Axial symmetry dwindled only in seated figures with legs folded to the side, especially in Anatolia and Greece. However, attempts to lessen axial symmetry did not catch on in the Balkan Peninsula.” ref

“The restriction of Neolithic figurines to only a few representational types implies that they were not just secondary decorative works or children’s toys. They were far more an expression of the self-perception and the self-reassurance of these early farming communities. A new economic basis of subsistence was not the sole great change effected by the “Neolithic revolution”; transformation from hunter-gatherer societies to rural farming societies was a more complex process,  associated with it was also a basic transformation in thinking and a change in the system of social symbols.” ref

“The dissemination of an agricultural way of life towards the West followed, as of around 9,000-8,000 years ago, in a new model of village organization. No special cult houses that replaced large communal buildings for cultic purposes are attested in Neolithic villages of the following times. Quite the opposite: the structures are all of almost the same size and shape. And in the emerging bundle of different innovative techniques, through which the farming economy and way of life spread abroad, were also anthropomorphic figurines. Clay figures still appear in settlements of the Pottery Neolithic period, but their form is clearly more elaborate. Further, there is a greater variety in the types of Halaf art, as noticeable in the finds from Domuztepe.” ref

“This variety in types is displayed in several small collections of figurines, for example, in the settlement of Girikihaciyan. In Tülintepe, east of Elazığ, two settlement phases could be distinguished: one phase of the early and one phase of the Late Chalcolithic period. The figurines found there, thought to be females because of their breasts, have marked elongated heads. The face is shown with protruding eyes, eyebrows, and a nose in relief. The same can be noted in the head of a statuette found in TilHuzur-Yayvantepe. Even in details, statuettes from the sphere of the Halaf culture display the same configuration.” ref

Tutelary Deities 

“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 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Aurignacian Culture

Gravettian Culture

Magdalenian Culture

Kebaran culture

U6 related Culture Haplogroup U6 (Back migration to Africa of U6: 30,000 years ago) 

Iberomaurusian Culture

Ust’-Ishim man

Basal Eurasian

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Chauvet cave

“The Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in the Ardèche department of southeastern France is a cave that contains some of the best-preserved figurative cave paintings in the world, as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life. It is located near the commune of Vallon-Pont-d’Arc on a limestone cliff above the former bed of the river Ardèche, in the Gorges de l’Ardèche. The dates have been a matter of dispute but a study published in 2012 supports placing the art in the Aurignacian period, approximately 32,000–30,000 years ago. A study published in 2016 using additional 88 radiocarbon dates showed two periods of habitation, one from 37,000 to 33,500 years ago and the second from 31,000 to 28,000 years ago, with most of the black drawings dating to the earlier period.” ref

“Hundreds of animal paintings have been cataloged, depicting at least 13 different species, including some rarely or never found in other ice age paintings. Rather than depicting only the familiar herbivores that predominate in Paleolithic cave art, i.e. horses, aurochs, mammoths, etc., the walls of the Chauvet Cave feature many predatory animals, e.g., cave lions, leopards, bears, and cave hyenas. There are also paintings of rhinoceroses. Typical of most cave art, there are no paintings of complete human figures, although there is one partial “Venus” figure composed of what appears to be a vulva attached to an incomplete pair of legs. Above the Venus, and in contact with it, is a bison head, which has led some to describe the composite drawing as a Minotaur. There are a few panels of red ochre hand prints and hand stencils made by blowing pigment over hands pressed against the cave surface. Abstract markings—lines and dots—are found throughout the cave. There are also two unidentifiable images that have a vaguely butterfly or avian shape to them. This combination of subjects has led some students of prehistoric art and cultures to believe that there was a ritual, shamanic, or magical aspect to these paintings.” ref

“One drawing, later overlaid with a sketch of a deer, is reminiscent of a volcano spewing lava, similar to the regional volcanoes that were active at the time. If confirmed, this would represent the earliest known drawing of a volcanic eruption. The artists who produced these paintings used techniques rarely found in other cave art. Many of the paintings appear to have been made only after the walls were scraped clear of debris and concretions, leaving a smoother and noticeably lighter area upon which the artists worked. Similarly, a three-dimensional quality and the suggestion of movement are achieved by incising or etching around the outlines of certain figures. The art is also exceptional for its time for including “scenes”, e.g., animals interacting with each other; a pair of woolly rhinoceroses, for example, are seen butting horns in an apparent contest for territory or mating rights.” ref

Aurignacian burials (around 37,000-30,000 years ago) belong to the early phase of this period in Europe. Examples have been excavated at Cave of Cavillon, Liguria – a burial wearing a cap of netted whelk shells with a border of deer’s teeth, red ochre around the face, and a bone awl at the side. ref

Aurignacian in the Zagros region dates back to about 35,500 years ago at Yafteh Cave, Lorestan, Iran. ref 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

“The Venus of Hohle Fels (ancestor archetype totem?) dates back at least 35,000 years to the Aurignacian cultural period of Europe (43,000 to 26,000 years ago) and the start of woman as a totem. That Aurignacian culture (Animist-Totemist) was succeeded around 33,000 years ago by Gravettian culture of Europe (Animist-Totemist-Shamanist) at around 31,000 years ago with their first Venus figurine. However, most so-called Venus figurines date from the Gravettian cultural period dating between 26,000 –21,000 years ago. This cultural period too, was overtaken by the Magdalenian cultural period of Europe (Animist-Totemist-Shamanist) (17,000 to 12,000 years ago) (archetype “femaleness” spirit protector?) ending their last Female statuette the Venus of Monruz which may date back about 11,000 years ago.” ref

I surmise these figurines are archetypal female ancestor figures first expressing both fertility and the gatherer cult evolving around mainly women in hunting-gathering culture. As the Neolithic revolution comes along the main hunting-gathering culture rituals are adapted and replaced. However, the changes are not random because farming is in some sense just an extension of the gathering culture rather than the hunting culture. Therefore, one can see the reason it more predominantly utilizes both fertility and the gatherer cult and I think changes the archetypal female figures from the likely ancestor predecessors to new goddesses as the needs had changed. Some figures are clearly women, some are somewhat indeterminate presumed women, a few could be asexual but are presumed female and a few could be homosexual male/transwomen thus in that way a female as well.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Goddesses / Archetype ancestor shapes relating to the three realms and moon phases: Waxing, Full, and Waning Moon: As well as relating to Heaven, Earth, and Underworld. The figure with the arms up likely represents both bull horns and the worship and parse/dancing for the heavens. It seemingly relates to different functions with different meanings but I think are all part of a widespread gatherer cult/farming paganism cult magic by shamanistic paganism.

In the picture above is a reference to the larger theme in connection with what I see as the farming paganistic Goddess cult concepts and as stated before relating to the three realms: heaven (I assumed goddess figure arms up from the Badarian culture with the earliest direct evidence of agriculture in Upper Egypt during the Predynastic Era), earth (I assumed pre-goddess archetype ancestor figure in hunter-gather shamanism Magdalenian with links to both Iberomaurusians and connections to the First Paganists or arms around the body or little to no arms), and the last the underworld (I assumed goddess figure arms down: a Badarian culture female mortuary figurine).

Venus of Courbet figure is one of many similar abstract sitting position women figurines and the oldest listed above to me is a pre-goddess expression of the mother goddesses that are more fully developed in response to the new social demands seen in the neolithic expressions of culture or full moon representation and moon references stretch back to Venus of Courbet found at one of the three sites of Courbet, Bruniquel and Montastruc, which are all very close to each other, and are often treated as a single site. The Roc du Courbet is one of a series of Upper Palaeolithic rock shelters near the village of Bruniquel, in France‘s Tarn region. It is believed that the majority of the remains recovered were derived from de Lastic’s black layer or ‘couche noire’, which is thought to date to Magdalenian V or VI.

However, the provenance of remains within this layer is not clear. Furthermore, both human and animal remains were found within not only a black layer (‘limon noir’), but also a red layer (‘limon rouge’) and a breccia deposit. The piece was excavated from Courbet Cave, Montastruc, Tarn-et-Garonne, Midi-Pyrénées, France with a sitting posture figure outlined om it dated to around 13 000 years ago, locally the Late Magdalenian period of the Upper Palaeolithic, towards the end of the last Ice Age. The headless figure is shown from the side, bending to the right, with the large rounded buttocks and thigh carefully drawn. The thin torso features a small sharp triangle that may indicate the breasts, or perhaps arms held out and on the legs.

Similar to The Venus figures of Neuchâtel – Monruz as well as The Venus figures of Petersfels (Engen). One of the last and smallest Venus Figurines to be carved during the era of Paleolithic art, the Venus of Monruz (also known as the “Venus of Neuchatel” or the “Venus of Neuchatel–Monruz“) is a pendant made of black jet, in the shape of a stylized female body in a sitting posture with an engorged buttocks and no arms. It was discovered in Switzerland. It is among the world’s oldest items of jewellery art, and exemplifies prehistoric sculpture created during the final phase of Magdalenian art, which ended 12,000-10,000 years ago. The Monruz venus bears a strong resemblance to the Venus of Engen (“Frauenidol von Engen”), one of a dozen jet pendants excavated from the shelter of Petersfels (Baden-Wurtemberg), in Germany, except that the Engen figurine is dated to 15,000 years ago. Another jet figurine is the Venus of Pekarna, which dates to 14,500 years ago. The Magdalenian was the richest period of prehistoric art, notably in the craft of cave painting, although it also witnessed exceptional sculptures like the Venus of Eliseevichi. ref, ref

I dont totally agree with these articles but it’s very informative:

Function of Predynastic Female Figurines from the Badarian to the Late Naqada II Periods (Honours Thesis, Monash University, 2013)

Supernatural Pregnancies Common Features and New Ideas concerning Upper Paleolithic Feminine Imagery Duncan Caldwell

A Study Of Anthropomorphic Figurines In The Neolithic

“In the Neolithic, figurines largely appear at a time when human cultures were going through significant and critical changes, so significant and critical that the period has often been referred to as the “Neolithic revolution.” These figurines do not appear in every Neolithic society but seem to be common to a great many. Nor do they appear continuously through time in each culture where they are found. Agriculture and sedentism begin to replace the lifeways of the hunter-gatherer nomads, and some of the earliest clear examples of public architecture and ceremonial gatherings begin to show up in the material records of such places as Nevalı Çori, Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük. Prior to the invention of writing, symbols and signs appear in the archaeological record in the form of pictographs, petroglyphs, murals, pottery designs, and figurines. These artifacts are among the precious few sources of information about cultures long dead before the advent of writing.” ref

“The Neolithic periods of Southwest Asia and Southeastern Europe total at least 403 anthropomorphic figurines, around 11,000 to 4,300 years ago, 148 (36.7%) were from sites in Southwest Asia and 255 (63.3%) were from sites in Southeastern Europe mostly of terracotta and stone, a disproportionate number of figurines are representative of the female sex compared to male as well as that asexual-figurines are also equally disproportionate. Although most Neolithic societies may have differences among the many commonalities that these cultures shared are small portable figurines of terracotta and, sometimes, stone. Anthropomorphic figurines are recovered in a variety of archaeological contexts, many of which can be clearly defined as domestic, burial, and ritual. In Bulgaria and Moldavia, for instance, figurines are frequently found in association with Neolithic cemeteries. Neolithic figurines filled a variety of roles which included rituals for curing, protection, initiation, and marriage, as well as to support oral narratives.” ref

“Anthropomorphic figurines are also very striking examples of Neolithic artifacts that have the potential to act as external symbolic storage. The quality of individual identity within Chalcolithic Bulgarian settlements by analyzing figurines within burials. Offers five methods of decoration: incising, piercing, painting, piercing and painting, and non-decoration, and sexual identities in the figurines excavated: female (69%), male (less than 1%) and asexual (31%) thus probably multi-sexual and multi-gendered culture. Most male figurines dominated the cemeteries and female figurines prevailed in the domestic spaces, a significant presence of asexual figurines were found throughout the Neolithic and Chalcolithic.” ref

“Many figurines express obesity and while obesity is definitely represented in the archaeological records of Neolithic cultures, the discontinuity between the obesity in figurines found at Çatalhöyük and the body types excavated. To date, no clear evidence has been discovered that would indicate a body was that of an obese or robust person. The mortuary data retrieved thus far from Çatalhöyük are far from conclusive and at least one case of a burial “special treatment” could exist of a person that was obese.” ref

“The Neolithic in Southeastern Europe begins by many accounts (e.g., Talalay at around 8,500 years ago). In southern Greece and the Aegean, a large corpus of anthropomorphic figurines emerge in many places beginning around this time in the regions of Thessaly and Central Greece, Macedonia, and Crete. The region of Greece that has, to date, produced the most Neolithic figurines. The Sesklo culture in Thessaly at Dimini Sesklo and Achilleion. Notably, Sesklo figurines share many attributes with those of the Near East, such as seated posture, conical shaped heads, and coffee-bean or cowrie-shaped eyes.” ref

“North of Greece, the Karanovo culture begins in the Eastern Balkan region at about 7,800 years ago and figurines produced are marked by “focus[ed] attention on faces and hips, buttocks and the pubis”. In the Central Balkans,theVinča Complex begins around 7,265 and the figurines from this culture are very striking with distinctive triangular, mask-like faces, detailed incisions, and symmetrical perforations. Several other regions in Southeastern Europe also provide a rich body of distinct anthropomorphic figurine styles. The Tisza culture in Hungary emerged during the Late Neolithic (around 6,970-6,380 years ago), the Cucuteni culture in modern Romania and Moldavia flourished from around. 6,800-5,500 years ago.” ref

“And closer to the Adriatic but still on the Balkan Peninsula, the Butmir culture is dated to around 7,300-6,200 years ago also in the Middle and Late Neolithic periods. Also considered to be within Southeastern Europe are the island sites of Malta and Sardinia. Malta was first settled by Neolithic farmers around 7,000 years ago and through the Final Neolithic, the island produced a rich body of figurines modeled in clay or carved from stone and bone. Malone notes that current evidence supports the idea that Sardinia was occupied continuously from the Mesolithic to the Early Neolithic which began on the island around 7,230 years ago. The figurines of Sardinia are more likely to be carved of stone than modeled in clay and many are found carved from tuff, marble, alabaster, gypsum, and steatite.” ref

“It is also possible that the idea that figurines are not simply media that communicate messages or store information but also to express or be utilized as representations that have meanings that can change over time and vary from observer to observer. The mental representation of the figurine becomes the ideas and concepts held by the observer, likely influenced the figurine’s context as it was used in domestic, ritual, and ceremonial settings. Posture for most figurines is a central attribute though often one that includes a combination of limb positions. So while standing and seated are two very general descriptions of posture, the positions of limbs could define the figurine as seated with a left leg crossed over the right, legs folded underneath the figure, or even kneeling. Figurines, of course, do not have an agency that is independent of humans.” ref

“Southeastern Europe contributed a more diverse and dispersed set of sites to the corpus, with a majority of 73 (18.1%) originating from sites in Romania. Other significant contributors were sites in the regions of Bulgaria (34 figurines at 8.4%), Central Greece (23figurines at 5.7%), Sardinia (23 figurines at 5.7%), Serbia (22 figurines at 5.6%), Malta (21figurines at 5.2%), and the Peloponnese of Greece (19 figurines at 4.7%). Other contributing sites were in the regions of Kosovo (10 figurines at 2.5%), Hungary (9 figurines at 2.2%), Bosnia(9 figurines at 2.2%), and then Crete, Macedonia, and Moldavia (each with 3 figurines at 0.7%). A single contributing Neolithic figurine was from Italy which was 0.3% of the corpus.” ref

“A male figurine from Nevalı Çori dating to between 10,500 and 9,900 years ago that appears to be wearing a belt or sash around the hips that may have a leopard design. This stylistic motif is similar to that of the somewhat younger design associated with an anthropomorphic figure in a mural at Çatalhöyük also of a male(s) (which could represent a hunting cult).
If their creators fashioned figurines to represent bodies they knew best, then many or most of the creators may have been female since figurines that are clearly male represent a small percentage of the corpus but what would it mean in relation to the very high percentage of asexual figurines in the Neolithic, (could mean trans/intersex people or that they were for use by several male and female individuals, or diverse gendered duties, maybe a little of both?).” ref

The often largely forgotten Gender Fluidity in the Goddesses and Gods

“Many cultures have gods, demi-gods, and heroes with both male and female attributes. In Hindu mythology, Shiva is seduced by Vishnu’s female avatar, Mohini, giving birth to the god Shasta (Ayyappa). Shiva himself is often represented as Ardhanarishvara, an androgynous composite of Shiva and Parvati with a body that is male on the right-hand side and female on the left. Arjuna, the great warrior of the Mahabharata epic, spent a year as a woman, during which he took the name of Brihannala and taught song and dance to the princess Uttara.” ref

“The Mesopotamian Ishtar, the beautiful goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex, is sometimes represented with a beard to emphasize her more bellicose side. She could change a man into a woman, and the assinnu, kurgarru, and kuku’u who performed her cult had both male and female features. After the hero Gilgamesh rejected her offer of marriage, Ishtar unleashed the Bull of Heaven, ultimately leading to the death of Enkidu, whom Gilgamesh loved more than anyone: “Hear me, great ones of Uruk/ I weep for Enkidu, my friend/ Bitterly mourning like a woman mourning.” ref

“Hapi, the Egyptian god of the annual flooding of the Nile, brought such fertility as to be regarded by some as the father of the gods: he is generally depicted as intersex, with pendulous breasts and a ceremonial false beard.
To seduce the nymph Callisto, Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, took the form of the goddess Artemis.” ref

Ten Intersex Goddesses and Gods

“Many cultures have had religions and beliefs that feature human-like gods and goddesses, most of them being specifically male or female. However, for some, creation and fertility was not always a female feature, and many concepts of nature and the universe could only be explained from a dipole perspective. Sometimes, being intersex was a result of magical or mysterious events. 1. Hermaphroditus (Greek), 2. Agdistis (Phrygian, Greek, Roman), 3.“Hapi (Egyptian), 4. Ardhanarishvara (Hindu), 5. Lan Caihe (China), 6. Ymir (Norse), 7. Ometeotl (Aztec), 8. Jehovah (Hermetic Kabbalah), 9. Phanes (Greek), and Ahsonnutli (Navaho).” ref

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Netiv Hagdud

“Netiv HaGdud is a moshav and Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Located in the Jordan Valley around twenty kilometers north of Jericho, it falls under the jurisdiction of Bik’at HaYarden Regional Council.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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10,800-10,000 years old “Göbekli Tepe, engraving of a female person from layer II.” ref

“Gobekli Tepe is an archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey approximately 15 km (9 mi) as the crow flies or 30 km (19 mi) by car, northeast of the city of Şanlıurfa. The tell (artificial mound) has a height of 15 m (50 ft) and is about 300 m (1,000 ft) in diameter. It is approximately 760 m (2,500 ft) above sea level. The tell includes two phases of use, believed to be of a social or ritual nature, dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BCE. During the first phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected—the world’s oldest known megaliths. Dated at around 9,500 BEC, these megaliths are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Trialetian culture (16,000–8000 years ago) the Caucasus, Iran, and Turkey, likely involved in Göbekli Tepe. Migration 1?

Haplogroup R possible time of origin about 27,000 years in Central Asia, South Asia, or Siberia:

• Mal’ta–Buret’ culture (24,000-15,000 years ago)
• Afontova Gora culture (21,000-12,000 years ago)
• Trialetian culture (16,000–8000 years ago)
• Samara culture (7,000-6,500 years ago)
• Khvalynsk culture (7,000-6,500 years ago)
• Afanasievo culture (5,300-4,500 years ago)
• Yamna/Yamnaya Culture (5,300-4,500 years ago)
• Andronovo culture (4,000–2,900 years ago) ref

Trialetian sites

Caucasus and Transcaucasia:

• Edzani (Georgia)
• Chokh (Azerbaijan), layers E-C200
• Kotias Klde, layer B” ref

Eastern Anatolia:

• Hallan Çemi (from ca. 8.6-8.5k BC to 7.6-7.5k BCE)
• Nevali Çori shows some Trialetian admixture in a PPNB context” ref

Trialetian influences can also be found in:

• Cafer Höyük
• Boy Tepe” ref

Southeast of the Caspian Sea:

• Hotu (Iran)
• Ali Tepe (Iran) (from cal. 10,500 to 8,870 BCE)
• Belt Cave (Iran), layers 28-11 (the last remains date from ca. 6,000 BCE)
• Dam-Dam-Cheshme II (Turkmenistan), layers7,000-3,000 BCE)” ref

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12,000-year-old Gobekli Tepe: “first human-made pagan temple”

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Lajja Gauri Style

1.  Lajja Gauri. China, Majiayao. 3,200-2,000 BCE or around 5,220 to 4,020 years ago. ref
2.  Lajja Gauri. India, Kashmir. ref
3.  Lajja Gauri. Egypt. ref
4.  Lajjā Gaurī a lotus-headed Hindu goddess. ref
5.  Lajja Gauri. Nepal. ref
6.  Lajjā Gaurī lotus-headed goddess. India. ref

Sheela na gig Style

1.  Sheela na gig. Ireland. ref
2. Sheila Na Gig. ref
3. Sheila Na Gig. ref
4. Sheela na gig. Ireland. ref

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Possibly around 9,000 years ago from Catal Hoyuk, Turkey This claimed sitting man figure with a proposed bushy beard, could just be a woman’s face similar to the other obese women found there.

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Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city” around 9,500 to 7,700 years ago (Turkey)

Seated Mother Goddesses when depicted as fat, to me, generally should be thought originally depict the meaning FULL MOON or the lesser association with the sun that mainly limited until Neolithic agriculture the such as seen in the based on the 7 position of the Sun in the sky throughout a solar day like Sun’s “dawn” sun emerging in the morning, (also starting as creator once mother turned to father just as in the connections to the moon’s waxing crescent), then “civil twilight” high noon(full moon), daylight hours or “dusk” starting to get dark or metaphorically die (moon’s waning crescent).

Therefore, the goddess cults associated with the moon in full are also part of the stages of the sun like a full sun: ie. pregnant/pseudo-pregnant or fertile/life producing maybe a birthing throne also a reference to fertility, thus a Mother Goddess. I could even be that she is in the process of giving birth while seated on her throne, which has two hand rests in the form of feline (leopard or panther) heads. The statuette, one of several iconographically similar ones found at the site, is associated with other corpulent prehistoric goddess figures that are sitting or standing that are fat, of which the most famous is the Venus of Willendorf. When it was found, in a grain-bin; she may have intended to protect the harvest and grain, its head and hand rest of the right side were missing and current head and the hand rest are modern replacements. This is but one of the presumed goddess figures found at Çatal Höyük, north of the Taurus Mountains in a fertile agricultural region of South-Anatolia/Turkey. Many statues found here, which seem to suggest a representation of a generalized Great goddess cult, who headed the pantheon of an essentially equalitarian culture if we are taking our clues from this site of Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city” around 9,500 to 7,700 years ago (Turkey).ref, ref, ref

“Catal Hoyuk was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7100-5700 BCE or 9,120-7,720 years ago, and flourished around 7000 BCE or 9,020 years ago. Çatalhöyük is located overlooking the Konya Plain, southeast of the present-day city of Konya (ancient Iconium) in Turkey, approximately 140 km (87 mi) from the twin-coned volcano of Mount Hasan. The eastern settlement forms a mound that would have risen about 20 m (66 ft) above the plain at the time of the latest Neolithic occupation. There is also a smaller settlement mound to the west and a Byzantine settlement a few hundred meters to the east. The prehistoric mound settlements were abandoned before the Bronze Age. A channel of the Çarşamba River once flowed between the two mounds, and the settlement was built on alluvial clay which may have been favorable for early agriculture.” ref

“Çatalhöyük has strong evidence of an egalitarian society, as no houses with distinctive features (belonging to royalty or religious hierarchy, for example) have been found so far. The most recent investigations also reveal little social distinction based on gender, with men and women receiving equivalent nutrition and seeming to have equal social status, as typically found in Paleolithic cultures. Children observed domestic areas. They learned how to perform rituals and how to build or repair houses by watching the adults make statues, beads, and other objects. Çatalhöyük’s spatial layout may be due to the close kin relations exhibited amongst the people. It can be seen, in the layout, that the people were “divided into two groups who lived on opposite sides of the town, separated by a gully.” Furthermore, because no nearby towns were found from which marriage partners could be drawn, “this spatial separation must have marked two intermarrying kinship groups.” This would help explain how a settlement so early on would become so large.” ref

“In upper levels of the site, it becomes apparent that the people of Çatalhöyük were gaining skills in agriculture and the domestication of animals. Female figurines have been found within bins used for storage of cereals, such as wheat and barley, and the figurines are presumed to be of a deity protecting the grain. Peas were also grown, and almonds, pistachios, and fruit were harvested from trees in the surrounding hills. Sheep were domesticated and evidence suggests the beginning of cattle domestication as well. However, hunting continued to be a major source of food for the community. Pottery and obsidian tools appear to have been major industries; obsidian tools were probably both used and also traded for items such as Mediterranean sea shells and flint from Syria. There is also evidence that the settlement was the first place in the world to mine and smelt metal in the form of lead. Noting the lack of hierarchy and economic inequality, historian Murray Bookchin has argued that Çatalhöyük was an early example of anarcho-communism.” ref

“Conversely, a 2014 paper argues that the picture of Çatalhöyük is more complex and that while there seemed to have been an egalitarian distribution of cooking tools and some stone tools, unbroken quern-stones and storage units were more unevenly distributed, indicating social inequality. Private property existed but shared tools also existed. It was also suggested that Çatalhöyük was slowly becoming less egalitarian, with greater inter-generational wealth transmission, though there may have been efforts to try to stop this.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Bear-Goddess & Three Bulls

Hybrid imagery and symbolism at Çatal Höyük to which I surmise could express the mother-bear goddess (ie. roaring that could represent thunderstorms like lions or bulls in association with goddesses). The three bulls to me could represent the three stages of the moon. Mother goddess at the site of Catal Hoyuk in Turkey. Although the art of Çatal Höyük may indicate an association between men, hunting and wild animals, and between women and plants and agriculture, current evidence indicates neither a patriarchy nor a matriarchy, but possibly a society in which gender did not rigidly determine one’s role in life. ref, ref

I surmise that there is an expression in goddess representation that relates to the three realms sky goddess with the upturned arms relating to the waxing crescent, the fat sitting goddess is a representation to the full moon and the arms turned down are a representation of the waning crescent. And it this way both up and down arms represent metaphorical bullhorns and why goddesses are associated with bulls or as bulls. Especially, with paganism.

Could it be that the emergence of this new goddess cult of the sitting mother goddess in the Levant, somehow related to the new problems these Neolithic women faced as there was a decrease in mean age at death for Neolithic females which may be the result in higher levels or maternal risk associated with child-birth. It is intriguing to consider the shifts in perceptions and behaviors surrounding women’ health, pregnancy, and childbirth, and kin relations that might extend from such changes. Studies point to increasing fertility and higher birth rates among some newly sedentary groups. ref

Goddess and the Bull and what of the smaller figurines from Neolithic contexts in the southern Levant?

Neolithic Levantine figurines are typically deposited in domestic fill, rather than pits, caches, or other distinctive features. Some are made of stone, but most are made of clay. Breakage patterns suggest that some of the figurines may have been intentionally broken. The stone examples indicate perhaps different meanings attached to different kinds of rituals being performed as in a more personal domestic cult (involving an association with mother goddess) and an additional clan ancestor cult many seem male in expression some with erect or presented phallus and the many associations in art like that at Çatalhöyük it wich groups of men are believed to be performing ritual hunting scenes that may involve group taunting of the horned animals (involving an association with horned animals such as the bull-horns being both a part of the early phallus phenomena as well as a representation of the moons emerging crescent or dissipating crescent associated with arms of the goddess). In terms of sex/gender identification, there are figurines that encode no recognizable clues about sex or gender. And there are also examples of figurines with dual-sex connotations. While the majority exhibit a female form, there are also examples of male figurines. ref, ref

“Neolithic figurine mother goddess and/or wise grandmother ancestor-spirit figure (seemingly this represented a real person possibly as the representations of fat rolls seem to be too anatomically correct to be a guess) or a little of both most likely and has been proposed as serving a ritual purpose. The figure is 6.7 inches tall, weighs 2.2 lbs, and was made of marmoreal stone. Along with the fact that unlike some others found in garbage pits this figurine was found beneath a platform along with a piece of obsidian which suggests that it may have been placed there as part of some ritual. Çatal Höyük is recognized as one of the best archaeological sites in the world for understanding prehistoric humanity. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date. While most of the world was populated by nomadic hunter-gatherers, Çatal Höyük was a large “honeycomb city” settlement with as many as 10,000 people described as a massive labyrinth of mud-brick houses which has 18 successive layers of building. “These figurines symbolize old women that have high status in the society instead of goddesses,” excavation supervisor Professor Ian Hodder of Stanford University said about the figurines that have distinctive bellies, breasts, and hips.” ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük

“The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (also Çatal Höyük) is a baked-clay, nude female form, seated between feline-headed arm-rests. It is generally thought to depict a corpulent and fertile Mother goddess in the process of giving birth while seated on her throne, which has two hand rests in the form of feline (lioness, leopard, or panther) heads in a Mistress of Animals motif. The statuette, one of several iconographically similar ones found at the site, is associated to other corpulent prehistoric goddess figures, of which the most famous is the Venus of Willendorf. It is a neolithic sculpture shaped by an unknown artist, and was completed in approximately 6000 BCE.” ref

Kubaba

“Kubaba is the only queen on the Sumerian King List, which states she reigned for 100 years – roughly in the Early Dynastic III period (ca. 2500–2330 BCE) of Sumerian history. A connection between her and a goddess known from Hurro–Hittite and later Luwian sources cannot be established on the account of spatial and temporal differences. Kubaba is one of very few women to have ever ruled in their own right in Mesopotamian history. Most versions of the king list place her alone in her own dynasty, the 3rd Dynasty of Kish, following the defeat of Sharrumiter of Mari, but other versions combine her with the 4th dynasty, that followed the primacy of the king of Akshak. Before becoming monarch, the king list says she was an alewife, brewess or brewster, terms for a woman who brewed alcohol.” ref 

“Kubaba was a Syrian goddess associated particularly closely with Alalakh and Carchemish. She was adopted into the Hurrian and Hittite pantheons as well. After the fall of the Hittite empire, she continued to be venerated by Luwians. A connection between her and the similarly named legendary Sumerian queen Kubaba of Kish, while commonly proposed, cannot be established due to spatial and temporal differences. Emmanuel Laroche proposed in 1960 that Kubaba and Cybele were one and the same. This view is supported by Mark Munn, who argues that the Phrygian name Kybele developed from Lydian adjective kuvavli, first changed into kubabli and then simplified into kuballi, and finally kubelli. However, such an adjective is a purely speculative construction.” ref

Cybele

“Cybele (Phrygian: “Kubileya/Kubeleya Mother”, perhaps “Mountain Mother”) is an Anatolian mother goddess; she may have a possible forerunner in the earliest neolithic at Çatalhöyük, where statues of plump women, sometimes sitting, have been found in excavations. Phrygia‘s only known goddess, she was probably its national deity. Greek colonists in Asia Minor adopted and adapted her Phrygian cult and spread it to mainland Greece and to the more distant western Greek colonies around the 6th century BCE. In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception. She became partially assimilated to aspects of the Earth-goddess Gaia, of her possibly Minoan equivalent Rhea, and of the harvest–mother goddess Demeter. Some city-states, notably Athens, evoked her as a protector, but her most celebrated Greek rites and processions show her as an essentially foreign, exotic mystery-goddess who arrives in a lion-drawn chariot to the accompaniment of wild music, wine, and a disorderly, ecstatic following.” ref

“Uniquely in Greek religion, she had a eunuch mendicant priesthood. Many of her Greek cults included rites to a divine Phrygian castrate shepherd-consort Attis, who was probably a Greek invention. In Greece, Cybele became associated with mountains, town and city walls, fertile nature, and wild animals, especially lions. In Rome, Cybele became known as Magna Mater (“Great Mother”). The Roman State adopted and developed a particular form of her cult after the Sibylline oracle in 205 BCE recommended her conscription as a key religious ally in Rome’s second war against Carthage (218 to 201 BCE). Roman mythographers reinvented her as a Trojan goddess, and thus an ancestral goddess of the Roman people by way of the Trojan prince Aeneas. As Rome eventually established hegemony over the Mediterranean world, Romanized forms of Cybele’s cults spread throughout Rome’s empire. Greek and Roman writers debated and disputed the meaning and morality of her cults and priesthoods, which remain controversial subjects in modern scholarship.” ref

Throned/Seated Mother Goddess of Çatal Höyük

Bulls and Lions represent the roaring in the Sky Produced by Thunderstorms.

The around 8,000 to 7,500 years old Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (also Çatal Höyük) is a baked-clay, nude female form, seated between feline-headed arm-rests possible lionesses, reportedly found n a grain bin similarly to a 7,200-year-old pottery and food offering “model” in what appears to be a grain silo, the current oldest example of a ritual propitiating the gods to preserve the crops or harvest, surmise archaeologists. Found at the Tel Tsaf site turned out to have silos for intensive food storage, thus the unique vessel purportedly attesting to evidence of sacred paganistic food storage rituals Israeli. ref, ref

The silos at Tel Tsaf reached a storage capacity estimated at 15–30 tons of grain, a clear indication of the accumulation of surpluses on a scale unprecedented in the ancient Near East. Also found at Tel Tsaf was a 7,000-year-old copper awl unearthed at the site of Tel Tsaf, Israel, suggesting that cast metal technology was introduced to the region centuries earlier than previously thought. Tel Tsaf is dated to around 7,200–6,700 years ago, the Wadi Rabah culture phase is dated to around 7,500 to 6,500 years ago, and pre-dating the Ghassulian culture phase dated to around 6,400 to 5,500 years ago centered in Jordan. ref, ref, ref, ref

Copper metallurgy was likely developed in the northern fertile crescent and there are isolated copper axes and adzes are known from Catalhoyuk in Anatolia Mesopotamia by around 9,500 years ago and the earliest known copper is found in Syria at sites such as Tell Halaf, about 8,500 years ago. The Halaf culture ranges around 8,100 to 7,100 years ago. The period is a continuous development out of the earlier Pottery Neolithic and is located primarily in south-eastern Turkey, Syria, and northern Iraq, although the Halaf-influenced material is found throughout Greater Mesopotamia. ref, ref

At also spelled Ain al-Fijah or Ein el-Jarba there seems like “food-offering ritual jars” is an Early copper age settlement ascribed to the Wadi Rabah culture, dating to the 6th millennium BC, located ca. 20 km south-east of Haifa, Israel in the Jezreel Valley. A Hole-mouth Jar from Ain al-Jerba site, decorated with reliefs of two sides of a dancing human figures, with deer masks. ref

This Çatal Höyük seated female figure is a woman, however, I think we need to grasp the ancient mindset that is not the same as traditional notions of gender as we think of them today. We have to open this conception as they likely did back ten allowing for intrinsic variabilities such as a woman could shapeshift or the like into a male or a male turn female or they could simultaneously be a montage of both as well as could become animals or even forces of nature once only seen as spirits. Thus, it is us who understand such things when we assess the gender concepts in ancient goddesses and gods a gender fluidity or belief espouse in various ways to we are only starting to re-acquire not like god gender is not always easily defined and one can hold competing gender natures and as a concept of fluid rather than fixed state of being possible including notions of gender as there is also a large number of sexless figurines. I don’t believe in the goddess believers notions of universal Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, I don’t claim matriarchy never happened it just was no universal not the norm as it seems there was more a general egalitarianism, than patriarchy. According to Heide Göttner-Abendroth, a reluctance to accept the existence of matriarchies might be based on a specific culturally biased notion of how to define matriarchy: because in a patriarchy men rule over women, a matriarchy has frequently been conceptualized as women ruling over men, while she believed that matriarchies are egalitarian. ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Hacilar is an early human settlement in southwestern Turkey. Ceramics from Hacilar show similarities with those of the Halaf culture from about the same period. There are also similarities in their figurines. ref

The origins of Europe’s first farmers: The role of Hacılar and Western Anatolia. Discoveries in Western Anatolia have shed new light on the origins of Europe’s first farmers. Early Neolithic communities in Greece and the Balkans shared a common ancestry in Western Anatolia at the site of Hacilar from Turkey and this link provides a more complex and accurate picture of the spread of farming to Southeast Europe. There could be three chrono-geographical horizons (two definites, one tentative), each characterized by a different Neolithic ‘package’. Repeated migrations from the Central Anatolian plateau, and further on from the Levant, probably spread farming to Europe in the second half of the after 9,000 years ago. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“At Khramis Didi Gora, wine found at Stone Age sites in Georgia. Scientists say the oldest evidence of winemaking to date has been found at an archeological site in Georgia from the end of the Stone Age. Residues found in six jars at two ancient village sites dating back to between 5400-5000 BCE or 7,420-7,020 years ago show the chemical signature of wine, reports a team led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, the Georgian National Museum, and the University of Toronto. That makes it 600 to 1,000 years older than evidence of winemaking found in the Zagros Mountains of Iran that had previously been the oldest. (Although evidence of a “grog” made of fermented grapes, Hawthorne berries, honey, and rice beer has been found in Jiahu, China, from as far back as 7000 BCE or around 9,020 years ago.)” ref

Shulaveri-Shomu culture

“Shulaveri-Shomu culture is a Late Neolithic/Eneolithic culture that existed on the territory of present-day Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, as well as parts of northern Iran. The culture is dated to the mid-6th or the early-5th millennium BCE 7,520-6,820 years ago and is thought to be one of the earliest known Neolithic cultures. Shulaveri-Shomu culture covers the 6th-5th millennia BC. According to the material culture examples found in the sites depict that the main activities of the population were farming and breeding. Shulaveri culture predates the Kura-Araxes culture which flourished in this area around 4000–2200 BCE. Later on, in the middle Bronze Age period (c. 3000–1500 BCE), the Trialeti culture emerged. Sioni culture of Eastern Georgia possibly represents a transition from the Shulaveri to the Kura-Arax cultural complex.” ref 

“Building mud-brick circular, oval and semi-oval architecture is typical for this culture. The buildings were in different sizes based on their aim of use. The larger ones with diameters ranging from 2 to 5 m. were used as living areas, while smaller buildings were used as storage (1-2 m diameter). They were researched well during the digging at Shomutepe in Azerbaijan and Shulaveri in Georgia. Especially in recent years as a result of archaeological research in the area of Goytepe, the Shulaveri-Shomutepe culture has been identified as belonging to the 7th millennium BCE and the second half of the 6th millennium. Although Shulaveri-Shomutepe complex firstly was attributed to the Eneolithic era, it is now considered as a material and cultural example of the Neolithic era except the upper layers where metal objects have been discovered as in Khramis Didi-Gora and Arucho I.” ref

“Sulaveri-Shomu culture is distinguished by circular mud-brick architectures, domestic animals breeding and cultivating cereals. Handmade pottery with engraved decorations, blades, burins, and scrapers made of obsidian, tools made of bone and antler, besides rare examples of metal items, remains of plant, such as wheat, pips, barley, and grape, as well as animal bones (pigs, goats, dogs, and bovids) have been discovered during the excavations. Anthropomorphic figurines of mainly seated women found in the sites represent the items used for religious purposes relating to the fertility cult. Pestles revealed in Shulaveri-Shomu sites were mainly made of basalt (50%), metamorphic rocks (34%), and sandstones (11 %). Territorial clay was used in the production of earthenware. Basalt and grog, later plant materials were used as temper in pottery.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Raqefet Cave

13,000-year-old stone mortars offers the earliest known physical evidence of an extensive ancient beer-brewing operation.

“The find comes on the heels of a July report that archaeologists working in northeastern Jordan discovered the charred remains of bread baked by Natufians some 11,600 to 14,600 years ago. According to the Stanford scientists, the ancient beer residue comes from 11,700 to 13,700 years old. Through laboratory analysis, other archaeological evidence found in the cave, and the wear of the stones, the team discovered that the ancient Natufians used species from seven plant families, “including wheat or barley, oat, legumes and bast fibers (including flax),” according to the article. “They packed plant-foods, including malted wheat/barley, in fiber-made containers and stored them in boulder mortars. They used bedrock mortars for pounding and cooking plant-foods, including brewing wheat/barley-based beer likely served in ritual feasts ca. 13,000 years ago,” the scientists write. “It has long been speculated that the thirst for beer may have been the stimulus behind cereal domestication, which led to a major social-technological change in human history; but this hypothesis has been highly controversial,” the Stanford authors say. “We report here of the earliest archaeological evidence for cereal-based beer brewing by a semi-sedentary, foraging people.” ref

“Beer making was an integral part of rituals and feasting, a social regulatory mechanism in hierarchical societies,” said Stanford’s Wang. The Raqefet Cave discovery of the first man-made alcohol production, the cave also provides one of the earliest pieces of evidence of the use of flower beds on gravesites, discovered under human skeletons. “The Natufian remains in Raqefet Cave never stop surprising us,” co-author Prof. Dani Nadel, of the University of Haifa’s Zinman Institute of Archaeology, said in a press release. “We exposed a Natufian burial area with about 30 individuals, a wealth of small finds such as flint tools, animal bones and ground stone implements, and about 100 stone mortars and cupmarks. Some of the skeletons are well-preserved and provided direct dates and even human DNA, and we have evidence for flower burials and wakes by the graves.” ref

“And now, with the production of beer, the Raqefet Cave remains provide a very vivid and colorful picture of Natufian lifeways, their technological capabilities, and inventions,” he said. Stanford’s Liu posited that the beer production was of a religious nature because its production was found near a graveyard. “This discovery indicates that making alcohol was not necessarily a result of agricultural surplus production, but it was developed for ritual purposes and spiritual needs, at least to some extent, prior to agriculture,” she said. “Alcohol making and food storage were among the major technological innovations that eventually led to the development of civilizations in the world, and archaeological science is a powerful means to help reveal their origins and decode their contents,” said Liu. “We are excited to have the opportunity to present our findings, which shed new light on a deeper history of human society.” ref

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Kelteminar culture

“The Kelteminar culture (5500–3500 BCE) was a Neolithic archaeological culture of sedentary fishermen occupying the semi-desert and desert areas of the Karakum and Kyzyl Kum deserts and the deltas of the Amu Darya and Zeravshan rivers in the territories of ancient Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The Kelteminar culture was replaced by the Tazabagyab culture. The Kelteminar people practiced a mobile hunting, gathering, and fishing subsistence system. Over time, they adopted stockbreeding. With the Late Glacial warming, up to the Atlantic Phase of the Post-Glacial Optimum, Mesolithic groups moved north into this area from the Hissar (6000–4000 BCE). These groups brought with them the bow and arrow and the dog, elements of what Kent Flannery has called the “broad-spectrum revolution”. Russian scientists hold that Kelteminar culture is related to the Pit–Comb Ware culture and belongs to the Finno-Ugric peoples. The Kelteminar people lived in huge houses (size 24m x 17m and height 10m), which housed the whole tribal community of about 100-120 people. They adorned themselves with beads made of shells. They manufactured stone axes and miniature trapezoidal flint arrowheads. For cooking, they used clay vessels produced without the potter’s wheel. The Kelteminar economy was based on sedentary fishing and hunting.” ref

The Kelteminar & Botai Cultures

“Kazakhstan is another European nation that has received too little attention on both the blog and the podcast. For this reason, we’re going to step back into the prehistoric and look at two of the earliest modern human cultures to grace this country which is the largest land-locked country in the world. But, before we get into these cultures we might want to explain why Kazakhstan is European. Other than human ancestors it seems the earliest people to inhabit Kazakhstan was the Kelteminar Culture. Confusingly, in light of the preceding paragraph, the Kelteminar Culture was a sedentary culture of fishermen that settled around the Aral Sea in modern Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.” ref

“Kazakhstan is largely populated by Kazakh people, one of the many Turkic descendants in the Eurasian world. But I’ve decided to include Kazakhstan in our discussion of Europe over countries like its neighbors Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for more reasons than they happen to be a bit further west. One reason we’ve included Kazakhstan is because of its association with the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Of course, both Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were part of the Soviet Empire, but not nearly as many European ethnic people were forcefully moved east into Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan as they were to Kazakhstan. Another reason for the inclusion is their link to the more ancient Turkish nomadic group of Cuman people who we mentioned in our post on Transnistria. Again, Cumania had stretched into the other countries but not isn’t as deeply rooted. The reason for the importance of the Cuman people is that they influenced more western places like Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine. But the primary reason we’ve chosen to include Kazakhstan is because a lot of lists of European countries include them and we’re just trying to cover as much European history as possible so we’ll throw them in there for good measure.” ref

“The Kelteminar Culture lasted from roughly 6000 – 3000 BCE (or before or after, the evidence is scant). What we do know though is they built larger houses, probably to house multi-generational families. They hunted and gathered. But, they were not nomadic. They subsisted primarily on fishing. But unlike the Vinča culture in Serbia, another fishing community they made mother goddess statues rather than fish-man goddesses. The Kelteminar Culture was primarily a neolithic culture but began to dabble in copper working and thus, became a Chalcolithic culture. As they advanced in metallurgy they became a Bronze Age culture that exported its wares throughout the Caucuses and Eastern and Central Europe (as well as western Asia).” ref

“The Kelteminar Culture left its legacy in a number of subsequent Bronze Age cultures. The subsequent Zamin-Babis tribes took the Kelteminar Culture, evolved it, and moved eastward into Asia. This is sometimes referred to as the Suyargan Culture that came into existence around 2000 BCE. The Suyargan Culture was a small part of the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex that stretched into Asia so we won’t cover it much. But, the BMAC for short was a pretty technologically advanced Bronze Age amalgamation of various cultures in the region. We won’t go into it much but the BMAC was a bit of an interlocutor between European civilizations and other eastern civilizations with artifacts traveling through its territory from Europe to the Indus Valley and back the other way. Not our normal sphere of topic but interesting nonetheless.” ref

“Ancient Kazakhstan is one of the places in the Eurasian region where horsemanship first laid down its roots. One of the earliest cultures to ride horses in the region was the Botai Culture that lasted from around 3700-3100 BCE. The Botai and the Kelteminar are connected through a cultural interchange of sorts, each influencing the other. The Botai were primarily agricultural compared to the Kelteminar’s seafood preference. What makes the Botai especially unique is their use of domesticated horses. While they may not have been the first to break the wild horses of the Eurasian steppe, their use of domesticated horses as far back as 3500 BCE makes them a prime candidate for ‘first’ status on this issue. Incredibly, some of the horse riding equipment first developed by the Botai is remarkably similar to the equipment used today, see the pictures of the boots to the left. The Botai domestication of horses marked a huge step in the advancement of human culture. For this reason alone, the Botai, and Kazakhstan, in general, have had a major impact on the development of Europe.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Birdmen of Koutroulou Magoula

“Archaeologists have uncovered more than 300 clay figurines depicting male and female forms, as well as human-bird hybrids, at Koutroulou Magoula, a Neolithic settlement in central Greece. Ranging from 3-4cm to 10-12cm in length (about 1-4.5in), the models were scattered all over the 4ha site (nearly 10 acres), with some recovered from the foundations of houses, and others found around hearths and in post-holes. ‘The techniques of making the figurines vary, but a common method involves a clay core, around which the rest of the body is built. ‘The range of imagery is very varied, including male and female figures, some with no indication of gender, and also bird-human hybrids, some of which have a kind of four-legged base.’” ref

“Lying about 260km (160 miles) north of Athens, the site was occupied between c.5800-5300 BCE and comprises a 5.5m (18ft) tell with at least three terraces surrounded by concentric ditches. It was inhabited by a community of a few hundred farmers living in sophisticated houses that reused the same building footprint for successive generations. ‘This type of home would normally have stone foundations with mud-brick on top, but our investigations have found buildings preserved with stone walls up to a meter in height, suggesting that the walls may have been built entirely of stone – something not typical of the period,’ said Professor Hamilakis. ‘The tell is much larger than average, and the construction of its ditches must have been a major communal effort, though to date there are no signs of a centralized authority.’” ref

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“Badarian period, social stratification a starting to emerge within mortuary sites. Grave goods became telling of status. Upper classes had fancier designed ceramics, sometimes ivory figures, more elaborate cosmetic palettes, and crafted knifes located within their burials. Middle and lower classes also had similar items, like black topped ceramic and cosmetic palettes, though they were often much less showy in design.” ref

“By the time Naqada I takes place, social stratification is much more pronounced. Grave goods founds within rich and poor graves had more striking contrast, additionally there begins to a separation between gravesites for the very wealthy and the poorer classes. Grave goods like ceramics become more impressive, with smoother edges and more precision. Additionally, new goods like ivory and bone combs, slate palettes, flaked fishtail knives, and stone tools become begin to show up in graves. Additionally, the complexity of existing goods like the cosmetic palettes increases, as can be seen with the design of the elephant carved into one. Another interesting development in the stratification of Upper Predynastic mortuary practices is the development of tombs, which are grave complexes for the more wealthy members of society.” ref

“By the time Naqada II comes around, Predynastic Upper Egypt experienced increasing social complexity with large populations and an emerging state. Additionally, the difference between the rich and poor becomes more pronounced. In Naqada II there are some graves that are clearly elite, holding specialty goods like figurines, pallets depicting boats and humans, mace heads, beads, and weapons. The level of wealth increases during this time, but along with this comes the stratification of classes. It is interesting how as society develops and becomes more complex, it is inevitable that social stratification increases.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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1. From a Gerzeh/Naqada II Late Predynastic Egyptian palette with a goddess “Bat/Hathor” cow-head sun/stars motif.
2. From a Hierakonpolis late Gerzeh/Naqada II Predynastic or early Naqada III Proto-Dynastic Egyptian porphyry fluted bowl with two reliefs on the rim, one of which was a goddess “Hathor/Bat” cow-head sun/stars motif.
3. From an Abydos tomb, u-210 which held a small seal with a goddess “Bat/Hathor” sun/stars motif from the Gerzeh/Naqada II Late Predynastic Egyptian period.
4. A Mongolian Copper Age bull sun/star shamanism petroglyph
5. A Mongolian Bronze Age deer sun/star shamanism petroglyph symbol.
6. A Kyrgyzstan Saimaly-Tash possibly Bronze Age shamanism cow-sun person symbol petroglyph.
7. Similar X-ray style images among different peoples of the North from Siberia to Central Asia with shamanism petroglyphs of horned animals with sun symbols from possibly as old as the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Shamanism (beginning around 30,000 years ago)

Shamanism (such as that seen in Siberia Gravettian culture: 30,000 years ago). Gravettian culture (34,000–24,000 years ago; Western Gravettian, mainly France, Spain, and Britain, as well as Eastern Gravettian in Central Europe and Russia. The eastern Gravettians, which include the Pavlovian culture). And, the Pavlovian culture (31,000 – 25,000 years ago such as in Austria and Poland). 31,000 – 20,000 years ago Oldest Shaman was Female, Buried with the Oldest Portrait Carving.

Shamanism is approximately a 30,000-year-old belief system and believe in spirit-filled life and/or afterlife that can be attached to or be expressed in things or objects and these objects can be used by special persons or in special rituals that can connect to spirit-filled life and/or afterlife. If you believe like this, regardless of your faith, you are a hidden shamanist.

Around 29,000 to 25,000 years ago in Dolní Vestonice, Czech Republic, the oldest human face representation is a carved ivory female head that was found nearby a female burial and belong to the Pavlovian culture, a variant of the Gravettian culture. The left side of the figure’s face was a distorted image and is believed to be a portrait of an elder female, who was around 40 years old. She was ritualistically placed beneath a pair of mammoth scapulae, one leaning against the other. Surprisingly, the left side of the skull was disfigured in the same manner as the aforementioned carved ivory figure, indicating that the figure was an intentional depiction of this specific individual. The bones and the earth surrounding the body contained traces of red ocher, a flint spearhead had been placed near the skull, and one hand held the body of a fox. This evidence suggests that this was the burial site of a shaman. This is the oldest site not only of ceramic figurines and artistic portraiture but also of evidence of early female shamans. Before 5,500 years ago, women were much more prominent in religion.

Archaeologists usually describe two regional variants: the western Gravettian, known namely from cave sites in France, Spain, and Britain, and the eastern Gravettian in Central Europe and Russia. The eastern Gravettians include the Pavlovian culture, which were specialized mammoth hunters and whose remains are usually found not in caves but in open air sites. The origins of the Gravettian people are not clear, they seem to appear simultaneously all over Europe. Though they carried distinct genetic signatures, the Gravettians and Aurignacians before them were descended from the same ancient founder population. According to genetic data, 37,000 years ago, all Europeans can be traced back to a single ‘founding population’ that made it through the last ice age. Furthermore, the so-called founding fathers were part of the Aurignacian culture, which was displaced by another group of early humans members of the Gravettian culture. Between 37,000 years ago and 14,000 years ago, different groups of Europeans were descended from a single founder population. To a greater extent than their Aurignacian predecessors, they are known for their Venus figurines. ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, & ref

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Paganism (beginning around 12,000 years ago)

Paganism (such as that seen in Turkey: 12,000 years ago). Gobekli Tepe: “first human-made temple” around 12,000 years ago. Sedentism and the Creation of goddesses around 12,000 years ago as well as male gods after 7,000 years ago. Pagan-Shaman burial in Israel 12,000 years ago and 12,000 – 10,000 years old Paganistic-Shamanistic Art in a Remote Cave in Egypt. Skull Cult around 11,500 to 8,400 Years Ago and Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city” around 10,000 years ago.

Paganism is approximately a 12,000-year-old belief system and believe in spirit-filled life and/or afterlife that can be attached to or be expressed in things or objects and these objects can be used by special persons or in special rituals that can connect to spirit-filled life and/or afterlife and who are guided/supported by a goddess/god, goddesses/gods, magical beings, or supreme spirits. If you believe like this, regardless of your faith, you are a hidden paganist.

Around 12,000 years ago, in Turkey, the first evidence of paganism is Gobekli Tepe: “first human-made temple” and around 9,500 years ago, in Turkey, the second evidence of paganism is Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city”. In addition, early paganism is connected to Proto-Indo-European language and religion. Proto-Indo-European religion can be reconstructed with confidence that the gods and goddesses, myths, festivals, and form of rituals with invocations, prayers, and songs of praise make up the spoken element of religion. Much of this activity is connected to the natural and agricultural year or at least those are the easiest elements to reconstruct because nature does not change and because farmers are the most conservative members of society and are best able to keep the old ways.

The reconstruction of goddesses/gods characteristics may be different than what we think of and only evolved later to the characteristics we know of today. One such characteristic is how a deity’s gender may not be fixed, since they are often deified forces of nature, which tend to not have genders. There are at least 40 deities and the Goddesses that have been reconstructed are: *Pria, *Pleto, *Devi, *Perkunos, *Aeusos, and *Yama.

The reconstruction of myths can be connected to Proto-Indo-European culture/language and by additional research, many of these myths have since been confirmed including some areas that were not accessible to the early writers such as Latvian folk songs and Hittite hieroglyphic tablets. There are at least 28 myths and one of the most widely recognized myths of the Indo-Europeans is the myth, “Yama is killed by his brother Manu” and “the world is made from his body”. Some of the forms of this myth in various Indo-European languages are about the Creation Myth of the Indo-Europeans.

The reconstruction of rituals can be connected to Proto-Indo-European culture/language and is estimated to have been spoken as a single language from around 6,500 years ago. One of the earliest ritual is the construction of kurgans or mound graves as a part of a death ritual. kurgans were inspired by common ritual-mythological ideas. Kurgans are complex structures with internal chambers. Within the burial chamber at the heart of the kurgan, elite individuals were buried with grave goods and sacrificial offerings, sometimes including horses and chariots.

The speakers of Pre-Proto-Indo-European lived in Turkey and it associates the distribution of historical Indo-European languages with the expansion around 9,000 years ago, with a proposed homeland of Proto-Indo-European proper in the Balkans around 7,000 years ago. The Proto-Indo-European Religion seemingly stretches at least back around 6,000 years ago or likely much further back and I believe Paganism is possibly an approximately 12,000-year-old belief system.

The earliest kurgans date to 6,000 years ago and are connected to the Proto-Indo-European in the Caucasus. In fact, around 7,000 years ago, there appears to be pre-kurgan in Siberia. Around 7,000 to 2,500 years ago and beyond, kurgans were built with ancient traditions still active in Southern Siberia and Central Asia, which display the continuity of the archaic forming methods. Kurgan cultures are divided archaeologically into different sub-cultures such as Timber Grave, Pit Grave, Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnish, and Kuman–Kipchak. Kurgans have been found from the Altay Mountains to the Caucasus, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria. Around 5,000 years ago, kurgans were used in the Ukrainian and Russian flat unforested grasslands, and their use spread with migration into eastern, central, and northern Europe, Turkey, and beyond. ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, & ref

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Progressed organized religion (around 5,000 years ago)

Progressed organized religion (such as that seen in Egypt: 5,000 years ago “The First Dynasty dates to 5,150 years ago”). This was a time of astonishing religion development and organization with a new state power to control. Around the time of 5,000 to 4,000 years ago, saw the growth of these riches, both intellectually and physically, became a source of contention on a political stage, and rulers sought the accumulation of more wealth and more power.

*The First Dynasty* Date: 3,150 B.C.E. (5,150 years ago) and the Beginning Rise of the Unequal State Government Hierarchies, Religions and Cultures Merger

The Pharaoh in ancient Egypt was the political and religious leader holding the titles ‘Lord of the Two Lands’ Upper and Lower Egypt and ‘High Priest of Every Temple’. In 5,150 years ago the First Dynasty appeared in Egypt and this reign was thought to be in accordance with the will of the gods; but the office of the king itself was not associated with the divine until later.
Around 4,890 years ago during the Second Dynasty, the King was linked with the divine and reign with the will of the gods. Following this, rulers of the later dynasties were equated with the gods and with the duties and obligations due to those gods. As supreme ruler of the people, the pharaoh was considered a god on earth, the intermediary between the gods and the people, and when he died, he was thought to become Osiris, the god of the dead. As such, in his role of ‘High Priest of Every Temple’, it was the pharaoh’s duty to build great temples and monuments celebrating his own achievements and paying homage to the gods of the land. Among the earliest civilizations that exhibit the phenomenon of divinized kings are early Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.

In 5,150 years ago the First Dynasty appeared in Egypt with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by the king Menes (now believed to be Narmer). Menes/Narmer is depicted on inscriptions wearing the two crowns of Egypt, signifying unification, and his reign was thought to be in accordance with the will of the gods; but the office of the king itself was not associated with the divine until later. During the Second Dynasty of Egypt 4,890-4,670 years ago King Raneb (also known as Nebra) linked his name with the divine and his reign with the will of the gods. Following Raneb, the rulers of the later dynasties were equated with the gods and with the duties and obligations due to those gods. As supreme ruler of the people, the pharaoh was considered a god on earth. The honorific title of `pharaoh’ for a ruler did not appear until the period known as the New Kingdom 3,570-3,069 years ago. Monarchs of the dynasties before the title of `pharaoh’ from the New Kingdom were addressed as `your majesty’ by foreign dignitaries and members of the court and as `brother’ by foreign rulers; both practices would continue after the king of Egypt came to be known as a pharaoh. Ref Ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Low Gods “Earth” or Tutelary deity and High Gods “Sky” or Supreme deity

“An Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth. Earth goddesses are often associated with the “chthonic” deities of the underworld. Ki and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi/Bhūmi, etc. traced to an “Earth Mother” complementary to the “Sky Father” in Proto-Indo-European religion. Egyptian mythology exceptionally has a sky goddess and an Earth god.” ref

“A mother goddess is a goddess who represents or is a personification of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother. In some religious traditions or movements, Heavenly Mother (also referred to as Mother in Heaven or Sky Mother) is the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky father or God the Father.” ref

“Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as “sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “sky father” god with an “earth mother” goddess (pairings of a sky mother with an earth father are less frequent). A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with “sky” not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Neopagans often apply it with impunity to sky goddesses from other regions who were never associated with the term historically. The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky.” ref

“In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept in polytheistic religions of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon and is often either a reigning or former King of the Gods. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics, such as Ra. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother“. “Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter and Germanic Týr, Tir or Tiwaz, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).” ref

Tutelary deity

“A tutelary (also tutelar) is a deity or spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of “tutelary” expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship. In late Greek and Roman religion, one type of tutelary deity, the genius, functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Korean shamanism, jangseung and sotdae were placed at the edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the Seonangdang. In Philippine animism, Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. Such as: Maria Makiling is the deity who guards Mt. Makiling and Maria Cacao and Maria Sinukuan. In Shinto, the spirits, or kami, which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. And similarly, Native American beliefs such as Tonás, tutelary animal spirit among the Zapotec and Totems, familial or clan spirits among the Ojibwe, can be animals.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Austronesian beliefs such as: Atua (gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori or the Hawaiians), Hanitu (Bunun of Taiwan‘s term for spirit), Hyang (Kawi, Sundanese, Javanese, and Balinese Supreme Being, in ancient Java and Bali mythology and this spiritual entity, can be either divine or ancestral), Kaitiaki (New Zealand Māori term used for the concept of guardianship, for the sky, the sea, and the land), Kawas (mythology) (divided into 6 groups: gods, ancestors, souls of the living, spirits of living things, spirits of lifeless objects, and ghosts), Tiki (Māori mythology, Tiki is the first man created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne and represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures). ” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Mesopotamian Tutelary Deities can be seen as ones related to City-States 

“Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and Ur; Ancient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon); the five Philistine city-states; the Berber city-states of the Garamantes; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth); the Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as Florence, Siena, Ferrara, Milan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice, which became powerful thalassocracies; the Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen Itza, Tikal, Copán and Monte Albán); the central Asian cities along the Silk Road; the city-states of the Swahili coast; Ragusa; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov; and many others.” ref

“The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BCE; also known as Protoliterate period) of Mesopotamia, named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. City-States like Uruk and others had a patron tutelary City Deity along with a Priest-King.” ref

“Chinese folk religion, both past, and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. Such as Tu Di Gong (Earth Deity) is the tutelary deity of a locality, and each individual locality has its own Earth Deity and Cheng Huang Gong (City God) is the guardian deity of an individual city, worshipped by local officials and locals since imperial times.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Hinduism, personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata, while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata. Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva is the patron of yogis and renunciants. City goddesses include: Mumbadevi (Mumbai), Sachchika (Osian); Kuladevis include: Ambika (Porwad), and Mahalakshmi. In NorthEast India Meitei mythology and religion (Sanamahism) of Manipur, there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. Tibetan Buddhism has Yidam as a tutelary deity. Dakini is the patron of those who seek knowledge.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens. Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion:

You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.” ref

“Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion. The tutelary deity of a man was his Genius, that of a woman her Juno. In the Imperial era, the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult. An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo. Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era, when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised the goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games (ludi) in her honor.” ref

“Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus). The Capitoline Triad of Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii, and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna, whose oracle was renowned.” ref

“The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele) as “tower-crowned” represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day Rheims), the tutelary was Mars Camulus.” ref 

Household deity (a kind of or related to a Tutelary deity)

“A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as well as in folklore across many parts of the world. Household deities fit into two types; firstly, a specific deity – typically a goddess – often referred to as a hearth goddess or domestic goddess who is associated with the home and hearth, such as the ancient Greek Hestia.” ref

“The second type of household deities are those that are not one singular deity, but a type, or species of animistic deity, who usually have lesser powers than major deities. This type was common in the religions of antiquity, such as the Lares of ancient Roman religion, the Gashin of Korean shamanism, and Cofgodas of Anglo-Saxon paganism. These survived Christianisation as fairy-like creatures existing in folklore, such as the Anglo-Scottish Brownie and Slavic Domovoy.” ref

“Household deities were usually worshipped not in temples but in the home, where they would be represented by small idols (such as the teraphim of the Bible, often translated as “household gods” in Genesis 31:19 for example), amulets, paintings, or reliefs. They could also be found on domestic objects, such as cosmetic articles in the case of Tawaret. The more prosperous houses might have a small shrine to the household god(s); the lararium served this purpose in the case of the Romans. The gods would be treated as members of the family and invited to join in meals, or be given offerings of food and drink.” ref

“In many religions, both ancient and modern, a god would preside over the home. Certain species, or types, of household deities, existed. An example of this was the Roman Lares. Many European cultures retained house spirits into the modern period. Some examples of these include:

• Brownie (Scotland and England) or Hob (England) / Kobold (Germany) / Goblin / Hobgoblin
• Domovoy (Slavic)
• Nisse (Norwegian or Danish) / Tomte (Swedish) / Tonttu (Finnish)
• Húsvættir (Norse)” ref

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

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

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

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

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

“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:

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

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref

Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref

Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref

Sikhism around 548–478 years old. ref

Bahá’í around 200–125 years old. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Expressions of Atheistic Thinking:

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

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

ref, ref, ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

The “Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries”

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

Why Does Power Bring Responsibility?

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

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

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

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

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

The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist (YouTube)

Cory Johnston: Mind of a Skeptical Leftist @Skepticallefty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Thought on the Evolution of Gods?

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

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

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