The Mytheme of Ancient North Eurasian Sacred-Dog belief and similar motifs are found in Indo-European, Native American, and Siberian comparative mythology

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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34,000 years old Paleolithic dog or wolf-dog hybrid skulls found in Razboinichya Cave, Siberia

Dog Domestication, Shamanism, and Emerging “Sacred Companion” Mortuary Rituals between 33,000 to 12,000 years ago?

24,000 Years Old Proto-North Eurasian Language (Ancient North Eurasian) migrations? Became: Proto-Afroasiatic, Proto-Sino-Tibetan, Proto-Transeurasian, Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Yeniseian, Proto-Na-Dene, Proto-Caucasian, Sumerian, Proto-Austronesian, and the Basque language

Dogs in Religion

“Dogs have played a role in the religion, myths, tales, and legends of many cultures. In mythology, dogs often serve as pets or as watchdogs. Stories of dogs guarding the gates of the underworld recur throughout Indo-European mythologies and may originate from Proto-Indo-European religion. Historian Julien d’Huy has suggested three narrative lines related to dogs in mythology. One echoes the gatekeeping noted above in Indo-European mythologies—a linkage with the afterlife; a second “related to the union of humans and dogs”; a third relates to the association of dogs with the star Sirius. Evidence presented by d’Huy suggests a correlation between the mythological record from cultures and the genetic and fossil record related to dog domestication.” ref

“The Ancient Egyptians are often more associated with cats in the form of Bastet, yet here too, dogs are found to have a sacred role and figure as an important symbol in religious iconography. Dogs were associated with Anubis, the jackal headed god of the underworld. At times throughout its period of being in use the Anubieion catacombs at Saqqara saw the burial of dogs. Anput was the female counterpart of her husband, Anubis, she was often depicted as a pregnant or nursing jackal, or as a jackal wielding knives. Other dogs can be found in Egyptian mythology. Am-heh was a minor god from the underworld.” ref

“He was depicted as a man with the head of a hunting dog who lived in a lake of fire. Duamutef was originally represented as a man wrapped in mummy bandages. From the New Kingdom onwards, he is shown with the head of a jackal. Wepwawet was depicted as a wolf or a jackal, or as a man with the head of a wolf or a jackal. Even when considered a jackal, Wepwawet usually was shown with grey, or white fur, reflecting his lupine origins. Khenti-Amentiu was depicted as a jackal-headed deity at Abydos in Upper Egypt, who stood guard over the city of the dead.” ref

God “Set” Animal

“In art, Set is usually depicted as an enigmatic creature referred to by Egyptologists as the Set animal, a beast not identified with any known animal, although it could be seen as a resembling an aardvark, an African wild dog, a donkey, a hyena, a jackal, a pig, an antelope, a giraffe, an okapi, a saluki, or a fennec fox. The animal has a downward curving snout; long ears with squared-off ends; a thin, forked tail with sprouted fur tufts in an inverted arrow shape; and a slender canine body. Sometimes, Set is depicted as a human with the distinctive head.” ref

“Some early Egyptologists proposed that it was a stylized representation of the giraffe, owing to the large flat-topped “horns” which correspond to a giraffe’s ossicones. The Egyptians themselves, however, used distinct depictions for the giraffe and the Set animal. During the Late Period, Set is depicted as a donkey or as a man wearing a donkey’s-head mask.” ref

“The earliest representations of what might be the Set animal comes from a tomb dating to the Amratian culture (“Naqada I”) of prehistoric Egypt (3790–3500 BCE or 5,812-5,522 years ago), though this identification is uncertain. If these are ruled out, then the earliest Set animal appears on a ceremonial macehead of Scorpion II, a ruler of the Naqada III phase. The head and the forked tail of the Set animal are clearly present on the mace. In the Book of the Faiyum, he is depicted with a flamingo head.” ref

“Set (or Greek: Seth) is a god of deserts, storms, disorder, violence, and foreigners in ancient Egyptian religion. In Ancient Greek, the god’s name is given as Sēth (Σήθ). Set had a positive role where he accompanies Ra on his barque to repel Apep, the serpent of Chaos. Set had a vital role as a reconciled combatant.  He was lord of the Red Land, where he was the balance to Horus‘ role as lord of the Black Land.” ref

“In ancient Egyptian astronomy, Set was commonly associated with the planet Mercury. Since he is related to the west of Nile which is the desert, he is sometimes associated with a lesser deity, Ha, god of the desert, which is a deity depicted as a man with a desert determinative on his head. Set is the son of Geb, the Earth, and Nut, the Sky; his siblings are Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys. He married Nephthys and fathered Anubis and in some accounts, he had relationships with the foreign goddesses Anat and Astarte. From these relationships is said to be born a crocodile deity called Maga.” ref

Was-sceptre

“The was (Egyptian wꜣs “power, dominion”) sceptre is a symbol that appeared often in relics, art, and hieroglyphs associated with the ancient Egyptian religion. It appears as a stylized animal head at the top of a long, straight staff with a forked end. Was sceptres were used as symbols of power or dominion, and were associated with ancient Egyptian deities such as Set or Anubis as well as with the pharaoh. Was sceptres also represent the Set animal. In later use, it was a symbol of control over the force of chaos that Set represented.” ref

“In a funerary context the was sceptre was responsible for the well-being of the deceased, and was thus sometimes included in the tomb-equipment or in the decoration of the tomb or coffin. The sceptre is also considered an amulet. The Egyptians perceived the sky as being supported on four pillars, which could have the shape of the was. This sceptre was also the symbol of the fourth Upper Egyptian nome, the nome of Thebes (called wꜣst in Egyptian).” ref

“Was sceptres were depicted as being carried by gods, pharaohs, and priests. They commonly occur in paintings, drawings, and carvings of gods, and often parallel with emblems such as the ankh and the djed-pillar. Remnants of real was sceptres have been found. They are constructed of faience or wood, where the head and forked tail of the Set animal are visible. The earliest examples date to the First Dynasty. The Was (wꜣs) is the Egyptian hieroglyph character representing power.” ref

“A sceptre (British English) or scepter (American English) is a staff or wand held in the hand by a ruling monarch as an item of royal or imperial insignia. Figuratively, it means a royal or imperial authority or sovereignty. The Was and other types of staves were signs of authority in Ancient Egypt. For this reason they are often described as “sceptres”, even if they are full-length staffs. One of the earliest royal sceptres was discovered in the 2nd Dynasty tomb of Khasekhemwy in Abydos. Kings were also known to carry a staff, and Pharaoh Anedjib is shown on stone vessels carrying a so-called mks-staff. The staff with the longest history seems to be the heqa-sceptre (the “shepherd’s crook”).” ref

“The sceptre also assumed a central role in the Mesopotamian world, and was in most cases part of the royal insignia of sovereigns and gods. This is valid throughout the whole Mesopotamian history, as illustrated by both literary and administrative texts and iconography. The Mesopotamian sceptre was mostly called ĝidru in Sumerian and ḫaṭṭum in Akkadian. The ancient Tamil work of Tirukkural dedicates one chapter each to the ethics of the sceptre. According to Valluvar, “it was not his spear but the sceptre which bound a king to his people.” Among the early Greeks, the sceptre (Ancient Greek: σκῆπτρον, skeptron, “staff, stick, baton”) was a long staff, such as Agamemnon wielded (Iliad, i) or was used by respected elders (Iliad, xviii. 46; Herodotus 1. 196), and came to be used by judges, military leaders, priests, and others in authority.” ref

“It is represented on painted vases as a long staff tipped with a metal ornament. When the sceptre is borne by Zeus or Hades, it is headed by a bird. It was this symbol of Zeus, the king of the gods and ruler of Olympus, that gave their inviolable status to the kerykes, the heralds, who were thus protected by the precursor of modern diplomatic immunity. When, in the Iliad, Agamemnon sends Odysseus to the leaders of the Achaeans, he lends him his sceptre.Among the Etruscans, sceptres of great magnificence were used by kings and upper orders of the priesthood. Many representations of such sceptres occur on the walls of the painted tombs of Etruria. The British Museum, the Vatican, and the Louvre possess Etruscan sceptres of gold, most elaborately and minutely ornamented.” ref

“The Roman sceptre probably derived from the Etruscan. Under the Republic, an ivory sceptre (sceptrum eburneum) was a mark of consular rank. It was also used by victorious generals who received the title of imperator, and its use as a symbol of delegated authority to legates apparently was revived in the marshal’s baton. In the First Persian Empire, the Biblical Book of Esther mentions the sceptre of the King of Persia. Esther 5:2 “When the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court, she obtained favor in his sight; and the king held out to Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand.” ref

“So Esther came near, and touched the top of the scepter.”Under the Roman Empire, the sceptrum Augusti was specially used by the emperors, and was often of ivory tipped with a golden eagle. It is frequently shown on medallions of the later empire, which have on the obverse a half-length figure of the emperor, holding in one hand the sceptrum Augusti, and in the other the orb surmounted by a small figure of Victory.” ref

“The baton can most likely be traced back to the mace, with ancient Kings and Pharaohs often being buried with ceremonial maces. The ceremonial baton is a short, thick stick-like object, typically in wood or metal, that is traditionally the sign of a field marshal or a similar high-ranking military officer, and carried as a piece of their uniform. The baton is distinguished from the swagger stick in being thicker and effectively without any practical function. A staff of office is rested on the ground; a baton is not. Unlike a royal sceptre that is crowned on one end with an eagle or globe, a baton is typically flat-ended.” ref

Earth diver, Axis Mundi, and World Turtle Mythology

Water and Mythology: Water Deities and Creation

Lake Baikal and Myths of Creation: Primordial waters, Supernatural Creatures of water, and the Mounds of creation

Hounds of the Underworld: Cerberus, Garmr, Anubis, and More

“An Underworld’s Best Friend: Dogs are typically thought of as man’s best friend and guardian of the household, where they protect children, land, and livestock. It is no wonder that they are also used as guardians of the underworld and the afterlife. They guard the entrances to the realms of the dead and accompany the psychopompic lords and ladies as they travel their own lands and the lands of the living. They are fierce, loyal, and brave, and those who stand against them must be daring, mad, or both, as they are not peaceful or polite.” ref

Cerberus

“Arguably the most famous of such hounds in the Western world is Cerberus (the Latinized version of the Greek Kerberos), the three-headed guardian of Hades, who served as the underworld’s eponymous ruler. Cerberus watched for those attempting to enter and exit the nether region and was adept at sniffing out living intruders. Having a penchant for live meat, only the dead were safe to enter Hades’ land. Born of the half-woman/half-serpent Echidna and the feared Typhon, Cerberus lived up to his monstrous parents’ image. Not only did the hound have three heads, but it was also said to have a mane of live serpents and a serpent’s tail. While this is the standard description of the animal, it has also been said to have as many as 50 or 100 heads, but never less than two. Its siblings were the famous hydra and chimera as well as the two-headed Orthrus, another hellhound that figures into Greek mythology.” ref

“In general, Cerberus was an unstoppable guard dog. However, there were ways around him. He was lulled to sleep by Orpheus, though unless you are a legendary musician, this may not be the best idea to try. It is also possible to knock the beast out with drugged food, which also shows he has a non-carnivore side, as the successful use of this trick used oatcakes. If all else fails, having the strength of a demi-god would also work. Heracles, hero and strongman of legend, overpowered Cerberus using only his body and was able to drag it back to the world above as the last of his 12 labors. Here he set the dog to guard the secret groves of Demeter. Cerberus’ utility in the afterlife continued into the Christian era. Dante writes of Cerberus being the punishment for gluttons, rending their souls for eternity, although here he is described as a great worm rather than a canine.” ref

Garmr

“Norse tradition holds that the dog Garmr (Old Norse for “rag”) guards Nilfheim, the lowest of the nine realms in Norse cosmology, where the dead who have not died in battle find themselves. Little is written about Garmr’s responsibilities for Hel, the ruler of Nilfheim; however, the hound does play a role at Ragnarök. His howl will be heard at the start of the world’s end, and he and the god Tyr will give the other his fatal blow. He is sometimes confused with the great wolf Fenrir, but the two are indeed distinct animals, with Garmr guarding Hel’s abode and Fenrir having been chained by the gods.” ref

“Garmr is mentioned in the two best sources of Norse mythology, the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda. These are collections of Old Norse poems and literature that describe the Norse Deities, as well as heroes in Germanic lore. The poem Grímnismál, which gives the best examples of things, mentions Garm (an alternate spelling) as the best of hounds. One of Garmr’s few listed duties is given in the Poetic Edda, as he howls when Odin approaches his master’s realm. It is in the Poetic Edda that we learn of his howls at Ragnarök and from the Prose Edda of his fight with Tyr, saying, “He is the greatest monster, and he shall do battle with Tyr, and each becomes the other’s slayer.” ref

Cŵn Annwn, the Hounds of Annwn

“From Welsh tales, the Cŵn Annwn are the spectral hunting hounds of Arawn, the ruler of the Welsh Otherworld Annwn. The hounds are said to be of white coloration with red ears, red being the color associated with death for the Celts and white being associated with the supernatural. They are found primarily in the First Branch of the Mabinogi. This is the first part of a collection of Welsh mythology, the Mabinogion, which also happens to be the earliest extant British prose literature. Here they are shown to be hunting a stag and help set up the initial meeting between their master and Pwyll, a Welsh prince that is the focus of the first branch. In the Fourth Branch, they are mentioned, although not by name, as also having as a master Gwyn ap Nudd. Both Arawn and Gwyn are lords of the Otherworld and of the Fair Folk.” ref

“Folklore of the Cŵn Annwn exists into modern times, where they are said to hunt the area around the mountain Cadair Idris, where their howling foretells the death of those who hear it. It is also said their howling is louder the further away they are, with the volume becoming softer and softer as they near their prey. They are also said to hunt with the hag Mallt-y-Nos, Matilda of the Night, to run with King Arthur’s cousin Culhwch, and even resemble the hounds of Da Derga from Irish legend. A Celtic relative of the Hounds are the Scottish Cù-Sìth. This hound was a harbinger of death and would take a person’s soul away to the afterlife. Its only warning was three loud and frightening bays that would be heard across the landscape.” ref

The Wild Hunt

“A fixture of Northern, Western, and Central European mythology, the Wild Hunt transcends several pantheons. Its leaders include the Anglo-Saxon god Woden, the Gaulish deity Cernunnos, Arawn, and Gwyn ap Nudd, who were written about above, Irish folk hero Fionn mac Cumhaill, and the French Hellequin, who was an emissary of the Christian devil, and many more. The Wild Hunt is a group of ghostly hunters and hounds that pursue humans, sometimes the living and sometimes the souls of the departed, to take the souls back to the Underworld. In some cases they just hunted the evil-doer, but in others they hunted anyone the Hunt found. The traditions of the Hunt vary across and within regions. While the leader is always legendary, whether a deity or a hero of renown, the other members of the hunt range from normal hounds to supernatural hounds, such as the Cŵn Annwn above, or even fairies in the guise of dogs.” ref

“You could escape the hounds by different methods. Throwing them bread would sometimes work, as would staying directly in the center of the road. Not looking directly at the pack was also a possible safety measure, but sometimes it was best to join in the Hunt and help them in their activities. These methods of safety not only depended on who the leader was and what region you are in, but they even changed within region, so there is no exact way of ensuring the Hunt would not use you as their prey. Beyond the hounds and the leader, members of the Hunt would include fairies, demons, and the souls of the departed. There are still sightings of the hunt in modern time, with folklore evolving to give the Hunt a similar purpose to the Norse Valkyries, for they would take slain British soldiers into the afterlife.” ref

Anubis

“It would be remiss not to at least mention Anubis. Obviously he is not an animal himself, but rather is a deity of the Egyptian afterlife and mummification. His sacred animal is the jackal and shares their appearance, having the head of that canine. Before the responsibility was given to Osiris, it was he who would weigh the hearts of the deceased to determine whether the soul would enter the underworld or be devoured by Ammit, a hideous monster. He is also associated with mummification, which is an embalming process used by the ancient Egyptians to prepare the body for its journey into the afterlife. Even after Osiris took over the position of weighing the heart, it was Anubis who would act as a guide for the souls in the afterlife, bringing them across the threshold from life and leading them to Osiris.” ref

Hounds in Christian and Modern Mythology

“Most of the pagan myths that involve hounds managed to stay after the advent of Christianity, with the animals coming from hell now, rather than the Otherworlds. These hellhounds typically follow the pattern of having black fur, glowing red eyes, a baleful howl, and a malodorous odor. They may haunt graveyards or desolate moors, or may roam the country side. Their typical function is to hunt humans in order to take the souls to Hell. There is the Barghest from northern England around Yorkshire, who preys on lonely travelers. The Black Shuck is another English dog, a ghostly animal from the Norfolk, Essex, and Suffolk areas whose name comes from the regional term for shaggy, and may have been the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes story “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” The yeth hound is a headless dog, said to be the spirit of an unbaptized child, and makes horrible crying noises as it roams the countryside.” ref

“In southern Mexico and Central America folklore, the Cadejo is a big black dog that haunts travelers who walk late at night on rural roads. The term is also common in American blues music, such as with Robert Johnson’s 1937 song, Hellhound on My Trail, from an American folk tale that involves selling one’s soul to the devil for musical fame, with the devil sending hellhounds to collect when the contract came up. The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse has ties to the Wild Hunt, as riders in the sky who boded no human well. Western United States folklore has the Ghost Riders, a ghastly collection of eerie cowboys who haunt the skies across the American frontier. Similar to the Ghost Riders, the Buckriders were ghosts and devils who were seen in Germany and Belgium, riding the night skies on the backs of Satan’s own goats. Whether they maintained their fierceness in modern times (and sometimes becoming even more wicked) or they have turned into tales (tails?) for the nursery, the hound is a permanent fixture in mythology and folklore, keeping its position as man’s best friend, whether that “man” is human, fae, or a god/goddess.” ref

    OLKLORE PARALLELS BETWEEN SIBERIA AND SOUTH ASIA AND THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE EURASIAN STEPPES

Myth 1 – the guard (usually a dog) cannot defend the human figures created by God from the antagonist; Myth 2 – the guard (usually a dog) successfully drives away the antagonist who tried to destroy God’s creation; Myth 3 – the antagonist is a horse or a cow (among the Oirats).

“According to the myth about the origin of man recorded among the people of Eastern Europe and Siberia, the creator set a dog to guard the half-made human fgures, but the antagonist bribed the guard and spoiled the creation, making humans vulnerable to disease. The creator told the dog to become the servant of man. Texts recorded in India (mostly among the Munda-speaking groups), the Dards of the Hindu Kush and the Abkhasians, though partly similar to the Northern Eurasian ones, do not share some important details: the antagonist is a horse, it tried to destroy man, but a dog drove it away. In the Mongolian (more precisely, the Oirat) version, a cow acts instead of a horse, but in other respects, this variant is similar to the Abkhasian ones. Negative associations related to the horse are rather widespread in Europe and Central Asia. Stories about the creation of man recorded in northern and southern Eurasia stemmed from the anthropogenic myth that was known to the Indo-Europeans of the Bronze Age. South Asia and the European–Siberian zone also shares other tales, in particular the Earth-diver myth. Their analysis opens possibilities for reconstructing the early mythology of the inhabitants of the Eurasian steppe.” ref

“Anthropogenic tale about the man, the dog, and the horse In the folklore of the people of Eastern Europe and Siberia, there are motifs that produce some association with either Christianity or Zoroastrianism, but that do not have parallels in the canonic texts of these religions. In particular, such motifs are incorporated in the story about the creation of man. The widespread variant is as follows. The creator makes the bodies of people, sets a dog to guard them, and goes away for a while. The antagonist bribes the guard with a fur coat, gets to the bodies, and spits on them, making people subject to disease and death. Coming back, the creator turns the bodies inside out so that the dirt would be concealed from sight and punishes the dog, who from then on becomes the servant of man and eats garbage. In such a form, the myth has been recorded among the Russians of the central and northern parts of Russia, the Ukrainians, Udmurt, Mari, Mordvinians, Chuvash, Mansi, Khanty, Nenets, western Evenki, different groups of the Yakuts, the Russian-speaking people of mixed ancestry living in Russkoye Ustye, the Kumandins, Tubalar,
Khakas, Tofa, and Buryats*.” ref

“The same tale was probably known to the Lithuanians, though the publication that I consulted has but a short retelling. Some variants preserve the core of the story but add different details. In particular, the Komi speak about a child who was guarded by a dog and the evil Omöl who spat on the child. The motifs of the creator who went away to get the soul for the man, and of turning human bodies inside out are absent. The latter of these motifs can be used only in those variants according to which the creator himself makes the human fgures live. If the figures are given a soul not by the creator but by the antagonist, or if the problem was not to make the figures alive but to make them strong and durable, the motif of turning the bodies inside out is not found. It is absent among the Khanty, most of the groups of the Nenets and Evenki, the Mongols, Altaians, Shor, Negidal, and Lamut.” ref

“Among the western Evenki, several different versions are recorded besides the standard one. According to one of them, certain “workers” of Khargi (the creator) let Kheveki (the antagonist) approach the human figures. In another version, the “assistant” of Kheveki is the raven who was punished by the creator the same way as the dog in more typical variants, i.e. since then it has been feeding on garbage. This story has not been reported in Kazakhstan though it has been recorded among the “Siberian Kirghiz.” The devil made the weather terribly cold, the dog had to hide itself, and the devil spat on man. Coming back, the creator did not punish the guard but recognized that the dog could do nothing having no fur coat, so the creator himself and not the antagonist gave to the dog its fur. “The acquittal” of the dog sets this version apart from the usual Siberian versions.” ref

“The farthest from the basic scheme is the Oroch version, located at the eastern periphery of the tale’s circulation and isolated territorially from the others. In the Oroch text, the dog itself proves to be the antagonist because, despite the creator’s warning, it itself fed the man and made him alive. As a result, people lost the hard covering on their skin that now is preserved only on the fingers and toes (the nails). The text of the southern Selkup leaves the impression of being distorted and partially forgotten: loz (a devil) makes the dog change its skin, which was originally as hard as the nails of humans. Nothing is told about the destiny of man himself.” ref

“Despite the obvious elements of the Christian Apocryphal tradition in some texts, the ultimate origin of corresponding motifs is far from being clear. The names of protagonists in the Siberian and Volga–Permian versions are not borrowed from the Russians but belong to local mythological personages. And what is most important, the hypothesis of the development of the tale from the “Abrahamic” mythology runs counter to the Southern Eurasian versions. The latter lack any traces of the dualistic cosmovision, the antagonist in them is a personage who is far from being equal with the creator, and the role of the antagonist is usually fulfilled by a horse. Such versions are recorded among the people who speak languages of different families.” ref

“The Wakhi speak one of the Pamir languages, which are part of the Eastern Iranian branch. The Kalashi and Kho of the Eastern Hindu Kush speak the Dardic languages, which either stand slightly closer to Indo-Aryan than to the Iranian group or are a special branch of the Indo-Aryan stock. The Oroan (or Kurux) language is Northern Dravidian, spread over the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, and the neighboring areas; the Gondi language is Central Dravidian, spread mostly over Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Orissa. The Limbu, Kachari (their language is close to Bodo), and Mizo (otherwise called Lushei) live in the Himalaya piedmont areas of Nepal, Northeast India, and in the adjacent part of Myanmar and speak the Tibeto-Burman languages. The BarelaBhilala in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh speak Bhili, an Indo-Aryan language.” ref

“The language of the Khasi of the Meghalaya state in eastern India is Austro-Asiatic. All other South Asian groups familiar with the tale in question speak Munda languages which, like the Khasi, belong to the Austro-Asiatic family but form a different branch. The Munda, including the Mundari, Korku, Santali, Birjia, Birhor, Kharia, and others, live in eastern and central areas of India. Almost all variants recorded in India and Nepal were studied, and the number of the recorded versions is the highest among the Oraons (10), Mundari (6), Santali, and Korku (3 in each case). A typical variant is as follows. God takes mud, makes figures of a man and a woman, and lets them dry. A horse or two horses, often winged, come and break the figures.” ref

“The creator makes a dog or two dogs who drive the horses away. The horse is punished, being deprived of its wings, and is obliged to serve man and be harnessed and beaten. The horse wanted to destroy man just because it was afraid that man would harness it. In one of the Korku stories, trees try to destroy the figures of man, being afraid that man would begin to cut them. The Dardic version is similar to the Indian ones. Before the creation of the man, the world was populated by horses. They tried to trample down the figure of Adam that was made of mud, but the dog did not let them to do it and till now, remains the guard of the man. The navel on the human body is the trace of the horse’s hoof.” ref

“To this main group of texts, there should be added others that lack some details, e.g. the guard is not mentioned at all or (in some Mundari versions) it is not a dog, but a tiger or spider. Among the Dards and the Munda-speaking groups, such versions with minor alterations exist along with the typical ones. Among the Wakhi and Limbu, the complete texts (with the dog as a guard) are not known. The Wakhi said that the man created by God was handsome, but the covetous horse kicked the half-ready figure, and because of this all the people have some physical imperfection. God punished the horse by making it the servant of man*. In the Limbu myth, Niwa-Buma made the first man out of gold, and he was perfect, but an envious horse monster broke the figure.” ref

“Niwa-Buma created the man anew out of ashes and chicken dung, and punished the horse. Now it has to walk on four legs and not on two as before and is a beast of burden. Among the Mizo, Kachari, and Khasi, the antagonists who try to destroy human figures are a snake, an evil spirit, or brothers of the creator. The role played by the dog in these texts is the same as in most of the others. In India, the most distant, both geographically and by its content, is the tradition of the Barela-Bhilala. A goddess makes the human figures, “the sky queen of the eagles” tries to destroy them, a male personage kills her, and the high god-creator inserts souls into the human bodies.” ref

“We should also mention “a late Zoroastrian legend”. After creating the first man Gaiomard, Ormuzd commissioned seven sages to guard him from Akhriman, but they could not fulfill the task. So Ormuzd put the dog ZarrƯngoš (“yellow ears”) as a guard and since then this dog protects from demons the souls who go to the Beyond. There is no such story in “Avesta” though it does not exclude the possibility that it could have existed in the oral tradition from early times. The cases described above demonstrate that the variants from Northern and Southern Eurasia have important differences.” ref

“In Siberia and Eastern Europe, the dog failed to fulfill its task, while in the southern versions, it successfully drove the antagonist away and defended the human figures. The northern traditions explain not only how man was created but also why he is subject to disease and death, but in the southern tradition, this last theme is absent. Nevertheless, the northern and the southern versions are similar enough to exclude the possibility of a chance coincidence. Nowhere else similar tales have been recorded. Only one text of the Plains Ojibwa in Canada is slightly reminiscent of the Eurasian ones. Weese-ke-jak makes a human figure of stone and steps back to admire it.” ref

“A bear rubs itself against the figure, it falls down and is broken. Weese-ke-jak makes a new figure of mud, and that’s why human beings are weak. The similarity with the Eurasian texts is chance because among the Ojibwa, the essential detail is not the interference of a particular antagonist but the opposition between durable and fragile materials to make man. Such an opposition is typical for stories that explain the origin of death in North America’s Northwest. There is but one historical scenario capable of explaining parallels between the South Asian and European–Siberian variants of the tale. Since both regions are separated by the steppe belt, these steppe territories could have been the area of the initial spread of the story.” ref

“The terminus ante quem for the emergence of the tale is defined by the time of contacts between the people of the steppe origin and the inhabitants of South Asia. Variants recorded among the different groups of the Munda are of special interest for us. At the present time most of the “tribal” people of India are dispersed over vast territories, some groups have changed their linguistic affiliation over the last few centuries. However, the areas where the number of speakers of the corresponding languages is now the highest are mostly the same as in the past. The principal area of the spread of the Munda languages is the Chota Nagpur plateau (state of Jharkhand with adjacent territories). The Santali, Ho, Mundari, Birhor, Asur (including Birjia), and other groups that speak languages of the northern branch of the Munda live there. To the south, mostly in the Koraput district of Orissa state, Bondo, Sora, and other languages of the southern branch of the Munda are located.” ref

“Much to the west, in Maharashtra state, the Korku language is localized, which belongs to the northern branch. The position of Kharia and Juang is not certain. Formerly, these languages were classified as belonging to the southern Munda, but according to the recent classification, they belong to the Northern division. The Juang speakers live in northern Orissa, and Kharia is spoken practically across the same area as Mundari. Initially, the Munda family broke into the southern and northern branches, then Kharia and Juang split from the northern branch, after this Bondo and Sora separated from each other, and at last, Korku lost contacts with the other languages. The lexicostatistics give only approximate assessments of age but still help to create a rough chronology and to establish the successive steps of the splitting of language branches.” ref

“The disintegration of the Munda family began in the early 2nd millennium BCE (the separation of the northern and southern branches), while the isolation of the Korku took place in the mid-1st millennium BCE. The myth about the creation of the human figures and an attempt to destroy them is recorded among the northern Munda including the Korku. It should be noted, that the Korku mythology is poorly known while the materials on the Bondo and Sora are rather rich. The fact that five versions have been found among the Korku indicates that the tale is very popular there. At the same time we can be sure that the Bondo and Sora were not familiar with it. It means that the Munda could have adopted the tale between ca 1700 (after the separation of the southern Munda) and 900 BCE (before the separation of the Korku).” ref

“The age estimations, as I have already mentioned, are approximate, but both the 3rd millennium BCE and the middle of the 1st millennium BCE are practically excluded. The tale is not recorded among the Juang, and the only Kharia version is similar to the versions of the Mundari. Because the Kharia was in contact with the Mundari, the existence of the version of the tale in their case is not significant. However, the absence of the tale among the southern Munda is significant just because these groups were not in contact with the northern Munda for a long time. The Dravidian languages of India are mostly localized to the south of the Munda languages.” ref

“The Oraon language (which is Northern Dravidian) and the Northern Munda languages are spoken in the nearby villages, and the Oraons have the largest number of recorded versions of the tale. However, the Gondi, who speak Central Dravidian languages and have few contacts with the Mundari have only one version, while no cases at all are reported from other Dravidian groups. The Oraon texts are identical to the Mundari variants and could have either been borrowed from the Mundari or from the original possessors of the tale, whose language was not Austroasiatic. The Tibeto-Burman people of South Asia live on the Himalaya piedmont.” ref

“Though both motifs, the horse as the antagonist and the dog as the guard, are found in their tales, the first motif is recorded only among the Limbu of Nepal while the second is found among the Kachari and Mizo who live in the more eastern areas, already on the Indian territory. The mythologies of Northwest India and of the Lepcha of Sikkim are quite well investigated, and there remains no doubt that the tale in question was not known to most of the Tibeto-Burman people. The same can be said about the Khasi. In the Khasi text, the dog as a guard is present, but the antagonist is not a horse but some unspecified evil spirit. The Munda and Khasi languages are both Austroasiatic but belong to different branches of this family.” ref

“The Austroasiatic people outside of India are not familiar with this tale. When it comes to the Bhili (the Barela-Bhilala are a subgroup of them), only scarce data on their mythology exists, but the tales that are recorded show links with the “tribal” people of Eastern India and not with the Indo-Aryans. What language the Bhili spoke before they adopted an Indo-Aryan language is unknown, but it could well have belonged to the Munda family. The absence of both the horse and the dog in the Barela-Bhilala myth is understandable because their traditional mythology gradually lost its elements under the influence of the dominant non-Bhili culture. Though the Munda can definitely be considered the main South Asian possessors of the story in question, they must also have borrowed it. Firstly, this tale is absent among the southern Munda and among other Austrasian people besides the Khasi.” ref

“Secondly, the horse, whose role in this story is very important, was brought to South Asia by the Indo-Europeans. Bones of the Equidae from Harappa sites do not belong to the domestic horse. The cultural change on the western periphery of the Indian subcontinent becomes visible starting ca 1400 BCE and was probably related to the coming of the Eastern Iranians. The first Indo-Aryans remain invisible archaeologically, just as the traces of most other migrations known from written sources or linguistic data. However, the linguists and archaeologists almost unanimously put the time of the Indo-Aryan arrival in India within the interval between 1900 and 1200 BCE.” ref

“There are no stories about an attempt to destroy human figures made by the deity either in Sanskrit texts or in the folklore of modern people who speak the Indo-Aryan languages, besides the Barela-Bhilala. But, as mentioned above, such stories have been recorded among the speakers of Dardic languages of the Eastern Hindu Kush. Therefore, it is probable that the tale in question was brought to India by the Dards or some group closely related to them. The traces of these people were wiped out by the Indo-Aryans who spoke a related language and came later. The time of the first Indo-European arrival in India fits well the suggested time of the borrowing of the tale in question by the native people of the sub-continent, i.e. between the disintegration of the Proto-Munda and the split of Korku.” ref

“According to the areal pattern of the spread of the story in South Asia (mainly between the Himalaya and the eastern parts of Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand), it was brought by the groups which moved along the Ganges Valley. As it was mentioned, the Wakhi are the bearers of the story in the Pamir area. They could have borrowed it from the Dards or from their Saka ancestors. It is difficult to say if the Eastern Iranians of Turkestan were familiar with the story, but it is very probable that this myth was formerly quite widespread in the Eurasian steppes. The Abkhasian and Mongolian materials bear witness to such a reconstruction.” ref

“Among the Abkhasians, the story was discovered. One text was recorded by the ethnologist M. Bartsyts from her mother, and another by the folklorist V. Kogonia*. The version recorded by Bartyts is as follows. At the time of the creation of the world, man was made of mud, but the devil sent horses to trample him because otherwise, man would torment them all the time. The man managed to take a handful of mud from his abdomen and threw it at the attackers. The lumps of mud turned into dogs and drove the horses away. According to V. Kogonia’s version, the dog also defends man by its own initiative and not upon the order of the creator. God made man of mud.” ref

“The devil warned horses, “If the man becomes alive, you are doomed, kill him!” The horses rushed at the man, but the dogs drove them away. That’s why the man and the dog are considered to be close to each other. These texts have no parallels in the Caucasus. The tale could have become known there due to the contacts between the local people and the steppe Indo-Europeans who did not leave any direct descendants in the area (the coming of the Alans–Ossetians is dated to a later time)**. The publisher of the Russian translation of the Mongolian or, more precisely the Oirat (Derbet) version, kindly let me know that the text had been recorded in Ubsunur Aimak. This tale shares some traits with the Caucasian stories. God modeled of mud two human figures. A cow came and caught one figure with a horn; it fell down and broke.” ref

“The fragments turned into a dog, and since then, the dog barks at the cow. The dog and the man have a common origin; that’s because their bones are similar. Both in the Oirat and in the Abkhasian variant, the dog was not set by the creator to guard the figure of the man but emerged at the very moment when the antagonist attacked the creation. Also, only in these variants the affinity of the dog and the man is specially emphasized. It is appropriate to recall the extremely high status of the dog in the Zoroastrian tradition. Because this tale has a narrowly localized distribution in Mongolia, the probability of it having been brought to the Caucasus with the Genghiz Khan army is small.” ref

“Both at the western and eastern peripheries of the Great Steppe, the tale must have had a single ultimate source –the steppe Indo-Europeans. They alone could have maintained ties with Caucasian natives, the South Asian Munda, and some people in Mongolia, from whom the story was eventually inherited by the Oirats. It is significant that in the Oirat version the role of the antagonist is played not by the horse but by the cow. Among the Mongolian and Turkic people of Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia, the horse has almost a sacred status while the bull or the cow can have negative associations. In some of the Kazakh, Altai, Tuvinian, Mongol (the Oirat included), Yakut as well as Nenets etiological legends the cow or bull is the embodiment of severe frost, or they are considered responsible for the existence of winter. In the Tuvinian and Yakut myths, the mean bull is directly opposed to the good horse who desired warmth.” ref

“On the contrary, among the peoples of Europe and more rarely of the Caucasus and Central Asia (Ancient Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Gagauz, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Norwegians, Danes, Lithuanians, Latvians, Veps, Finns, Komi, Ossetians, Tajik) as well as in the Middle Persian Avestan tradition, the horse is considered to be the adversary of God, and demonic cannibal horses are described in narratives. In Ancient Greece, just as among the Siberian Turks, the bull was contrasted with the horse, but the signs in this opposition were different, the bull was considered good (bees emerged from its corpse) and the horse bad (wasps or drones emerged).” ref 

“One of the Norwegian tales is directly associated with the South Asian and Caucasian myths. The devil decided to create a beast that would run across the whole earth and destroy human beings. He tried to make this monster alive by spitting on it, but in vain. God made it live, told it to become a horse and to serve man. Horny swellings on horses’ hooves are traces of the devil’s spit. The last version of the tale that should be mentioned is recorded in the far North among the Nganasans. The primeval mother gave birth to a child, a small branch of willow. Her husband planted it, but “disease came and spoiled it.” ref

“The man asked his wife to give him another child so that the latter would defend the former. The second child proved to be a reindeer without horns. He asked his father to give him horns to fight worms and evil beasts, received one horn of ivory and another of stone, and destroyed the beasts. The Nganasan myth is more similar to the southern and not to the northern variants because here the guard successfully drives away the antagonist. Nganasan origins were a complex process, where different components mixed together, including the Tungus, the Samoyed proper (whose language was adopted), and a local substratum of unknown linguistic affiliation.” ref

“No available evidence supports the idea of language contacts between the ancestral Samoyed and Indo-Europeans of the steppes*, but the archaeological materials evidence a movement of the descendants of the Pazyryk culture of the Altai far to the north. In any case, the people of the taiga and tundra zones had to borrow the variant of the myth that survived in Taimyr from the inhabitants of the steppe. Later this variant was almost completely superseded by the European–Siberian version.” ref

Dog as Goddesses and Gods 

Deities depicted as dogs or whose myths and iconography are associated with dogs.

“Goddesses: Artemis, Diana (mythology), Hecate, Mana Genita, and Sopdet.” ref

“Gods: Ares, Leshy, Lugus, Simargl, Sirius (mythology), Typhon, and Xolotl.” ref

“In a related Siberian Buriat myth the creator god ordered the water bird to dive into the waters and bring back some earth to use to build the world. The new world was corrupted by Shiktur, the devil. While the creator went off to Heaven to get souls for his newly created humans, Shiktur tricked the dog who was guarding them and then spit on the new creation, stamping it with the evil that exits alongside good to this day.” ref

“Some people of Mongolia say that in the beginning, along with the waters, there was the sky god and his two sons, Ulgen Tenger and Erleg Khan. Ulgen was given the upper world and Erleg the lower world space that would become Earth. Ulgen sent the loon into the depths to bring up mud with which to form land. After the loon failed, a duck succeeded in finding a bit of mud on which Ulgen fell asleep. Then Ulgen’s brother tried to steal the mud from his brother, but this only made it grow. Once, while Ulgen was away, his brother tricked a guardian dog—exactly as in the Buriat myth—and spat on the new humans, thus condemning them forever to the diseases and pains to which animals and humans are subject.” ref

“Siouan-speaking tribes tell earth-diver myths in which the creative agent is a figure who is better known as a trickster than a creator. Among the Crow there is the story of Coyote (Dog-like), who sent the duck into the primeval sea to find the soil with which to begin creating the world. Coyote breathed on the mud and it became Earth. He then made plants, animals and people. At some point, however, something of the Devil side of the trickster emerged in the appearance of a figure called Little Coyote, whose amoral acts lead to war, suffering, and death in the new world. The Assiniboine say that the trickster Iktome was the creator and that it was Muskrat who, like the diving hero of the Anishinabe myth, lost his life in the process of diving successfully for the creative mud. Iktome, like Coyote, possessed something of the old Devil within himself. When the frog argued with him, the trickster killed him, thus introducing death into the world, and Iktome taught the Assiniboine how to steal horses from others.” ref

“The earth-diver creation myth type can be found in many parts of the world, but is particularly important in Central Asia, India, and Native North America. It is a myth type that stresses the creation of Earth as opposed to the larger cosmos. Animals often play an important role in the creation, as do the primeval waters and often an evil force that balances the good in a dualistic tension. Several strains within the earth-diver myth type are evident. These are the Indian, the Central Asian, the Algonquian North American, the Siouan North American, and a major variant, the Iroquoian North American, which contains the motif of the woman who falls from the sky. Elements of the earth-diver form exist among many California Native Americans and among peoples as far afield as the Finns and Hungarians, the Fiji Islanders, the Ainu of Japan, and the Yoruba of Africa.” ref

“The fully developed earth-diver myth usually begins with the primeval waters and usually with a creator, or sometimes two creators, intent on creating Earth. Also present are various animals, who prove to be necessary assistants. Typically, these animals are sent on missions into the watery depths to bring up sufficient primal material—prima materia—to make the creation of Earth possible. In the Indian Vishnu Purana, Brahman, the essence of existence, in his form as the creator god Brahma, awoke and decided that there was earth below the primordial waters that were everywhere. Brahma took the form of a great boar and dove down “to find Mother Earth.” He raised up the earth to where it floats now—a “mighty vessel”—on the original waters. Eventually this world, like all others before it and after it, will be destroyed and a new one created, reflecting the presence of Shiva the Destroyer, Brahma the Creator, and Vishnu the Preserver in the eternal and ultimate reality that is Brahman. The non-Hindu Birhor people of India say that the creator arose by way of a lotus stem from the waters, that he sat on the lotus and from there sent various animals to find the mud necessary for the creation of the world. All the animals failed until the lowly leech was able to swallow some mud and spit it into the creator’s hand. This mud became the source of the new earth and its humans. For the Garo of India it was a beetle who was finally able to gather clay from under the waters. Using this clay, the creator made Earth and decorated her with sky, clouds, and plant life. Eventually he made the first Garo as well.” ref

“The people of Central Asia and their possible relatives among the Romanians of Europe follow the earth-diver pattern but add the elements of the undermining devil or second creator. The Altaic people teach that in the beginning there was nothing but the primordial waters until one day two black geese appeared. One of the geese was the creator, and the other was the devil, who would become the first human. The devil/man insisted on trying to fly higher than the creator and the creator forced him into the waters and sent him to dive down to find rocks and earth with which to build the world. When God asked the devil/man to bring him more earth, he did so, but he hid some in his mouth, thinking he would create his own world when the creator was not looking. Both the earth that he handed the god and the earth in his mouth began immediately to grow. The Devil was forced to spit out the stolen material, and it became wetlands.” ref

“The most complex earth-diver myths in North America are those of the Iroquoian speakers and people directly influenced by them. Their complexity comes primarily with the addition of the Maiden from the Sky story that typically precedes the familiar Algonquian and Siouan type earth-diver story. In addition, the Iroquoian myths introduce the twins—one good, one evil—whose struggle against each other reflects the reality of the world.” ref

The Mohawk myth tells of a place in the sky where human-like people lived in peace and tranquility until a series of events lead to the fall of a young woman named Earth to a darker world below where there existed only the primeval waters and some animals. The animals arranged for her to land on the back of Turtle. Earth then instructed the animals to dive into the waters for mud to be used in the creation of the world. After many tries by many animals, Muskrat succeeded, and out of the mud, the Woman from the Sky made the world and directed the process by which it was planted with corn, squash, and other staple plants. The Cherokee tell a very similar tale, as do the Onondaga, the Seneca, the Tuscurora, the Wyandot, and the Huron. As in the Algonquian tales, Turtle is a central figure for all of these tribes, as is, almost always, Muskrat.

“In most of the Iroquoian versions of the earth-diver tale we find the story of the twins produced by the Sky Woman or her daughter. Both continue the process of creation. The good twin creates things that will benefit humanity and the world, the bad twin does the opposite. The twins, for example, Good Mind and Bad Mind in the Tuscurora myth, here stand in the same relationship to each other as the creator and Devil-would-be-creator in the Central Asian and Siouan myths. The twins eventually fight, and although the good twin wins the fight, he cannot altogether eliminate his brother’s evil deeds and thoughts from the world.” ref

“The ur earth-diver myth, in its various incarnations, can be interpreted in several ways. It reflects cultural struggles, a religious sense of basic duality in the world and the human experience—a struggle essentially between good and evil—and a psychological departure from a state of the unconscious or subconscious life to the level of full consciousness. Above all, the earth-diver myth shares with the emergence myth the metaphor of birth.” ref

“In the Iroquoian myths, for example, we begin in the paradisiacal, deathless world of the sky. Typically a maiden in that world becomes pregnant and falls or is thrown through a hole in the heavenly ground to the formless and dark world below. As a cultural dream the myth seems to tell us that there is some sort of divine purpose behind our world and that it has to do with the creativity that is pregnancy and birth and, therefore, death—a purpose that is foreign to the paradise of the sky where the cycles of life and existence do not exist. The representative of the creative cycle of our earthly experience is contained in the woman who falls from the sky. She is the first priestess of Mother Earth—the world we live in that is dominated by the life cycles. The essential nature of Mother Earth is that she gives birth and devours her progeny in a never-ending process. The animals who see the woman falling live on or in the unformed chaotic waters—the maternal waters of potential creation—they know that they must provide a place for her landing. When she lands—typically on the Turtle’s back—she initiates the creative diving process. It is here, in the diving itself, that the earth-diver myth truly begins.” ref

“In all earth-diver myths, the animals are sent one by one to find the necessary creative material at the bottom of the waters. These divers are generally ordinary. They possess no supernatural powers; they are us. Whether we see the dive as a metaphor for a necessary descent into the unconscious world in search of consciousness, as a symbol of our purpose in the world to make creation conscious of itself, or as an essential religious truth— that it is Mother Earth who is the source of all life—the dive is as treacherous as that of so many heroes who journey into the underworld in search of something lost. In many myths, divers lose their lives in the service of the creative act. They are the expendable activating seeds of a new creation, and finally one of them succeeds in bringing up the sacred material of the mother; the clump of mud that stands in for the cosmic egg of the creation from chaos myth. The birth metaphor continues as the mud is placed on the Turtle’s back. Someone touches it, activates it, and it begins to grow, like a fetus, until it is Earth—Turtle Island—itself, the chaotic Mother power made conscious and orderly. Plants and more animals, including the human variant, are created, that is, are born of the Mother.” ref

“In the versions of the earth-diver myth that contain the twin motif, we have a meditation on the duality inherent in our experience of human life and existence itself. Things are born, they live, but then they die. The Mother gives but she also takes. One age gives way to another. Pain and conflict are an evident aspect of life. The two sides of the duality that pervade life are represented by the twins or by the conflict between the creator and his devil-trickster assistant. The twins are both offspring of Mother Earth or her representative on Turtle Island, and the devil creator is related in some close way to the good creator. These conflicts between two forces are the conflicts that rage within us all or, as Charles Long suggests, they can be expressions of the old cultural conflict between the hunter/ gatherer and agricultural ways of life (189). In the Iroquoian myths, for example, the bad twin creates powerful and dangerous animals—animals of the hunt. The good twin—favored by his mother—creates good domestic animals and edible plants. In some Iroquoian myths the woman who falls from the sky, the culture heroine who teaches the people how to live on the new earth, dies or is killed, and out of her body elements of the cosmos are made. She becomes, in that motif, an example of the world parent phenomenon and, most important, a literal expression of the feminine nature of the universe; she realizes her potential as Mother Earth.” ref

“The Japanese creation myth painted a picture of a muddy ocean which covered the world at the beginning of time. A god and goddess, Izanagi and Izanami, became curious about what was beneath the ocean. Izanagi took his staff and threw it into the ocean. As he lifted it back up some lumps of earth fell off into the water. These became the islands of Japan. No being dove beneath the waters to find mud, but the element of earth being covered by water and a being bringing the earth up is there. The creation myth of Christians and Jews does not tell of God diving into the water to bring up mud, but Genesis 1:2 says Òthe Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.Ó Therefore according to the Torah and Bible the Earth was once covered entirely by water.” ref

Mythological canines

“Around 20,000 to 25,000 years ago, a branch of Ancient North Eurasian people mixed with Ancient East Asians, which led to the emergence of Ancestral Native American, Ancient Beringian, and Ancient Paleo-Siberian populations. It is unknown exactly where this population admixture took place, and two opposing theories have put forth different migratory scenarios that united the Ancient North Eurasians with ancient East Asian populations. Later, ANE populations migrated westward into Europe and admixed with European Western hunter-gatherer (WHG)-related groups to form the Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) group, which later admixed with Caucasus hunter-gatherers to form the Western Steppe Herder group, which became widely dispersed across Eurasia during the Bronze Age. ANE ancestry has spread throughout Eurasia and the Americas in various migrations since the Upper Paleolithic, and more than half of the world’s population today derives between 5 and 42% of their genomes from the Ancient North Eurasians.” ref

“Significant ANE ancestry can be found in Native Americans, as well as in Europe, South Asia, Central Asia, and Siberia. It has been suggested that their mythology may have featured narratives shared by both Indo-European and some Native American cultures, such as the existence of a metaphysical world tree and a fable in which a dog guards the path to the afterlife. Ancient North Eurasian associated Y-chromosome haplogroups are P-M45, and its subclades R and Q. Haplogroup P is inferred to have originated around 44,000 years ago in Southeast Asia and is downstream to Haplogroup K2b found among the Tianyuan man in Northern China. Their maternal haplogroup belonged to subclades of haplogroup U. Since the term ‘Ancient North Eurasian’ refers to a genetic bridge of connected mating networks, scholars of comparative mythology have argued that they probably shared myths and beliefs that could be reconstructed via the comparison of stories attested within cultures that were not in contact for millennia and stretched from the Pontic–Caspian steppe to the American continent.” ref

“The mytheme of the dog guarding the Otherworld possibly stems from an older Ancient North Eurasian belief, as suggested by similar motifs found in Indo-European, Native American, and Siberian mythology. In Siouan, Algonquian, Iroquoian, and in Central and South American, beli was a test. The Siberian Chukchi and Tungus believed in a guardian-of-the-afterlife dog and a spirit dog that would absorb the dead man’s soul and act as a guide in the afterlife. In Indo-European myths, the figure of the dog is embodied by Cerberus, Sarvarā, and Garmr. In Zoroastrianism, two four-eyed dogs guard the bridge to the afterlife called Chinvat Bridge. Anthony and Brown note that it might be one of the oldest mythemes recoverable through comparative mythology.” ref

“A second canid-related series of beliefs, myths, and rituals connected dogs with healing rather than death. For instance, Ancient Near Eastern and Turkic–Kipchaq myths are prone to associate dogs with healing and generally categorize dogs as impure. A similar myth-pattern is assumed for the Eneolithic site of Botai in Kazakhstan, dated to 3500 BC, which might represent the dog as absorber of illness and guardian of the household against disease and evil. In Mesopotamia, the goddess Nintinugga, associated with healing, was accompanied or symbolized by dogs. Similar absorbent-puppy healing and sacrifice rituals were practiced in Greece and Italy, among the Hittites, again possibly influenced by Near Eastern traditions.” ref

Humans and Dogs

“The Western Eurasian dog population (European) was then partially replaced by a human-mediated translocation of Asian dogs at least 6400 years ago, a process that took place gradually after the arrival of the eastern dog population.” ref

Study: At Least Five Dog Lineages Existed 11,000 Years Ago: http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/five-dog-lineages-paleolithic-09012.html

“A recent study of dozens of ancient dog genomes suggests that these lineages were all established by at least 11,000 years ago. Based on their morphology and context, additional potential dogs may be present at Pleistocene Siberian sites such as Afontova Gora, Diuktai Cave, and Verkholenskaia Gora, although their status has yet to be established. In the Americas, the earliest confirmed archaeological dog remains, based on combined morphological, genetic, isotopic, and contextual evidence, are from the Koster and Stilwell II sites, which have been dated to ∼10,000 years ago.” https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/6/e2010083118.full.pdf

“Swedish farmers and their dogs are both descended from canines of the Near East, suggesting that man and dog followed the development of agriculture together through Europe. On the other hand, German farmers 7,000 years ago came from the Near East, but their dogs didn’t.” https://bigthink.com/the-past/ancient-dogs/

Research on Dogs adds understanding to human history as well because as humans moved, there can be detected a clear link to new types of dogs highlighting a deep connection between humans then other animals and their dogs and makes since they were in mythology as gardens of the afterlife. http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/five-dog-lineages-paleolithic-09012.html

Tell-tail signs of dual dog domestication: https://www.scienceintheclassroom.org/research-papers/tell-tail-signs-dual-dog-domestication

Dog domestication and the dual dispersal of people and dogs into the Americas: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/6/e2010083118

Diet adaptation in dog reflects spread of prehistoric agriculture: https://www.nature.com/articles/hdy201648

A refined proposal for the origin of dogs: the case study of Gnirshöhle, a Magdalenian cave site: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83719-7

Dogs ‘first domesticated in China’ https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-04/27/content_24875302.htm

The Origins of Dogs, Our best friends’ earliest lineage is shrouded in mystery. New genetic research may finally reveal their roots. https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-origins-of-dogs

Rethinking dog domestication by integrating genetics, archeology, and biogeography https://www.pnas.org/content/109/23/8878

“Burial remains of a dog that lived over 7,000 years ago in Siberia suggest the male Husky-like animal probably lived and died similar to how humans did at that time and place, eating the same food, sustaining work injuries, and getting a human-like burial.” https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna41830341

“Pet dog buried 6,000 years ago is earliest evidence of its domestication in Arabia. The ancient tomb where the remains were found is one of the oldest in the region, dating back to about 4300 B.C. The tomb had been used by many generations over a period of around 600 years during the Neolithic-Chalcolithic era. It was also built above ground, which was unusual for the time because it would be easily seen by grave robbers, according to the researchers.” https://www.livescience.com/earliest-evidence-dog-domestication-arabian-peninsula.html

“At least 15,000 years ago, dogs were buried with humans. Near Lake Baikal, dogs were buried in cemeteries 7,000 years ago “lying down” or “sitting up.” One with stone tools and a round pebble placed in its mouth. Another dog wore a necklace of elk-tooth human jewelry, for the afterlife. This dog was buried about 7,000 years ago near Lake Baikal in southern Siberia with stone tools and a round pebble placed in its mouth. At least 15,000 years ago, dogs were getting buried with humans. When dogs died near Lake Baikal, the human hunter-gatherers treated them as family. The dogs buried in cemeteries 7,000 years ago near Lake Baikal in southern Siberia, one with stone tools and a round pebble placed in its mouth. The dogs were in “sleeping” or “sitting up” positions. Another dog wore a necklace of elk-tooth jewelry that humans wore obvious gifts, presumably offerings into the dog graves meant for the afterlife. Like people when they died, they’d transport the dog long distances to these cemeteries,” Losey said in a phone interview from his office at the University of Alberta. “They’d put items on its body in the grave – spoons, necklaces, arrowheads, antlers from roe deer – the same grave goods they’d leave in the graves of humans. “People had long lives with those dogs – the dogs we found were mostly older dogs, so they’d been with these people for years.” They ate the same food. Chemical tests on dog and human bones showed both were eating a lot of fish. “Given that the dogs weren’t fishing, it means they were fed.” Losey could tell from DNA and from dog skeletons that the Lake Baikal dogs were medium-sized, with yellow and white thick fur and heads shaped like modern Siberian huskies. “If you saw them walking down the street, you’d recognize them immediately as dogs and not wolves.” They worked for their living, likely hauling sleds and guarding camps full of children and grandmothers from predators and rival bands of hunters. “But there was clearly also an emotional bond,” Losey said.” https://www.kansas.com/news/local/article142279974.html

“Near Lake Baikal on the Siberian steppes, archeologists were opening 7,000-year-old graves. The bodies had been carefully interred. One was buried with a long, carved spoon. Another had been honored with a necklace of elk teeth.” When the first farmers came to Europe from what is now eastern Turkey, they didn’t adopt the dogs already living there. They brought their own.” https://lethbridgenewsnow.com/2020/10/29/they-came-with-dogs-genomes-show-canines-humans-share-long-history/

“The site at Lake Baikal points to some of the earliest evidence of dog domestication but also suggests dogs were held in the same high esteem as humans. ‘The dogs were being treated just like people when they died. An ancient cemetery where dogs were buried like humans (remains shown) between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago is shedding light on our close relationship with man’s best friend. Prized canines were buried wearing decorative collars, or with objects such as spoons, suggesting people believed they had souls in the afterlife. Some of the graves contain artifacts such as spoons and collars, suggesting people thought the dogs had souls and access to an afterlife.” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3485496/Ancient-burials-reveal-dogs-man-s-best-friend-Canines-treated-like-humans-8-000-years-ago.html

“Canids as persons: Early Neolithic dog and wolf burials, Cis-Baikal, Siberia” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027841651100002X

“This 8,000-Year-Old Rock Art Is The Earliest Depiction of Domesticated Dogs” https://www.sciencealert.com/1000-year-old-rock-art-saudi-arabia-earliest-depiction-domestic-dogs-hunting

Tel Tsaf

“is an archaeological site located in the central Jordan Valley, south-east of Beit She’an. Tel Tsaf is dated to ca. 5200–4700 BCE or 7,222-6,722 years ago, sometimes called the Middle Chalcolithic, a little-known period in the archaeology of the Levant, post-dating the Wadi Rabah phase and pre-dating the Ghassulian Chalcolithic phase.” ref

“The excavations unearthed four architectural complexes. Each consists of a closed courtyard with rounded or rectangular rooms and numerous rounded silos. Four burials were found within or adjacent to silos. Outside the settlement a well was cut into the water table, approximately 6.5 m in depth. Common finds included numerous flints, pottery, and animal bones.” ref

“The terms “Tel Tsaf Decoration” or “Tsafian” were derived from an assemblage of painted pottery, consisting mainly of relatively elaborate vessels bearing geometric decoration using red and black paint on a white slip background. The decoration was executed in two steps: first, white wash was applied to the upper part of the vessel, while the lower part was covered with red wash. Second, the patterns were painted in continuous horizontal bands on the upper part of the vessel. The painting was executed with a fine brush, in some cases 0.5 mm.” ref

“Other finds included about 150 clay sealings (bullae) and a rich assemblage of imported exotic items including artifacts of basalt and obsidian, beads, sea shells, Nilotic shell, and a few pottery sherds of the Ubaid culture of north Syria. This is the first reported occurrence of Ubaid sherds in an excavation in the southern Levant.” ref

Tel Tsaf Silos

“The silos are cylindrical, barrel-shaped structures with an outer diameter between 2 and 4 m. The base is a podium, probably built to protect the cereals from rodents. It consists of several courses of bricks sealed inside with lime plaster. The silos demonstrate several universal principles guiding the construction of silos worldwide, past and present:

1. Rounded sides, giving the structure a cylindrical shape. This form better withstands the pressure exerted by the contents, which is distributed evenly onto the sides of the silo and does not create excessive stress at the base or the corners as is the case with a rectilinear shape.

2. Building of a number of silos near one another allows for greater ease of handling than one big installation. This facilitates separation of grain from different years or different crops. In the event of fire, humidity, rodent or insect infestation, some of the stored grain may be spared.

3. Organization of silos in adjacent rows facilitates their arrangement within a confined space. The stability of silo shape over considerable periods of time and large geographical regions provide an outstanding case in human architecture.” ref

Tel Tsaf and the Oldest metal artifact found in the Southern Levant

“An awl made of cast-metal copper and dated to the late sixth millennium or early fifth millennium BCE was found in 2007 during excavations. It was part of the grave goods accompanying the burial of a woman wearing a belt decorated with 1,668 ostrich eggshell beads. This is the most elaborate burial of its period in the entire Levant, the presence of the awl being an indication of the high prestige enjoyed by metal objects in that time and region. The fact that the grave was dug inside an abandoned silo is an indication for both the high status of the woman, and the importance ascribed to the silo. The chemical composition of the copper let the researchers believe that the awl originated in the Caucasus, from a distance of ca. 1,000 kilometers.” ref 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Anubis

“Anubis, also known as Inpu, Inpw, Jnpw, or Anpu in Ancient Egyptian (Coptic: ⲁⲛⲟⲩⲡ, romanized: Anoup), is the god of funerary rites, protector of graves, and guide to the underworld, in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head. Like many ancient Egyptian deities, Anubis assumed different roles in various contexts. Depicted as a protector of graves as early as the First Dynasty (c. 3100 – c. 2890 BCE), Anubis was also an embalmer. By the Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BCE) he was replaced by Osiris in his role as lord of the underworld. One of his prominent roles was as a god who ushered souls into the afterlife. He attended the weighing scale during the “Weighing of the Heart”, in which it was determined whether a soul would be allowed to enter the realm of the dead.” ref

“Anubis is one of the most frequently depicted and mentioned gods in the Egyptian pantheon; however, no relevant myth involved him. Anubis was depicted in black, a color that symbolized regeneration, life, the soil of the Nile River, and the discoloration of the corpse after embalming. Anubis is associated with his brother Wepwawet, another Egyptian god portrayed with a dog’s head or in canine form, but with grey or white fur. Historians assume that the two figures were eventually combined. Anubis’ female counterpart is Anput. His daughter is the serpent goddess Kebechet.” ref

““Anubis” is a Greek rendering of this god’s Egyptian name. Before the Greeks arrived in Egypt, around the 7th century BC, the god was known as Anpu or Inpu. The root of the name in ancient Egyptian language means “a royal child.” Inpu has a root to “inp”, which means “to decay.” The god was also known as “First of the Westerners,” “Lord of the Sacred Land,” “He Who is Upon his Sacred Mountain,” “Ruler of the Nine Bows,” “The Dog who Swallows Millions,” “Master of Secrets,” “He Who is in the Place of Embalming,” and “Foremost of the Divine Booth.” The positions that he had were also reflected in the titles he held such as “He Who Is upon His Mountain,” “Lord of the Sacred Land,” “Foremost of the Westerners,” and “He Who Is in the Place of Embalming.” ref

“In Egypt’s Early Dynastic period (c. 3100 – c. 2686 BCE), Anubis was portrayed in full animal form, with a “jackal” head and body. A jackal god, probably Anubis, is depicted in stone inscriptions from the reigns of Hor-Aha, Djer, and other pharaohs of the First Dynasty. Since Predynastic Egypt, when the dead were buried in shallow graves, jackals had been strongly associated with cemeteries because they were scavengers which uncovered human bodies and ate their flesh. In the spirit of “fighting like with like,” a jackal was chosen to protect the dead, because “a common problem (and cause of concern) must have been the digging up of bodies, shortly after burial, by jackals and other wild dogs which lived on the margins of the cultivation.” ref

“In the Old Kingdom, Anubis was the most important god of the dead. He was replaced in that role by Osiris during the Middle Kingdom (2000–1700 BCE). In the Roman era, which started in 30 BCE, tomb paintings depict him holding the hand of deceased persons to guide them to Osiris. The parentage of Anubis varied between myths, times and sources. In early mythology, he was portrayed as a son of Ra. In the Coffin Texts, which were written in the First Intermediate Period (c. 2181–2055 BCE), Anubis is the son of either the cow goddess Hesat or the cat-headed Bastet. Another tradition depicted him as the son of Ra and Nephthys.” ref

“The Greek Plutarch (c. 40–120 AD) reported a tradition that Anubis was the illegitimate son of Nephthys and Osiris, but that he was adopted by Osiris’s wife Isis:

For when Isis found out that Osiris loved her sister and had relations with her in mistaking her sister for herself, and when she saw a proof of it in the form of a garland of clover that he had left to Nephthys – she was looking for a baby, because Nephthys abandoned it at once after it had been born for fear of Set; and when Isis found the baby helped by the dogs which with great difficulties lead her there, she raised him and he became her guard and ally by the name of Anubis.” ref

“George Hart sees this story as an “attempt to incorporate the independent deity Anubis into the Osirian pantheon.” An Egyptian papyrus from the Roman period (30–380 CE) simply called Anubis the “son of Isis.” In Nubia, Anubis was seen as the husband of his mother Nephthys. In the Ptolemaic period (350–30 BCE), when Egypt became a Hellenistic kingdom ruled by Greek pharaohs, Anubis was merged with the Greek god Hermes, becoming Hermanubis. The two gods were considered similar because they both guided souls to the afterlife.” ref

“The center of this cult was in uten-ha/Sa-ka/ Cynopolis, a place whose Greek name means “city of dogs.” In Book XI of The Golden Ass by Apuleius, there is evidence that the worship of this god was continued in Rome through at least the 2nd century. Indeed, Hermanubis also appears in the alchemical and hermetical literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Although the Greeks and Romans typically scorned Egyptian animal-headed gods as bizarre and primitive (Anubis was mockingly called “Barker” by the Greeks), Anubis was sometimes associated with Sirius in the heavens and Cerberus and Hades in the underworld.  In his dialogues, Plato often has Socrates utter oaths “by the dog” (Greek: kai me ton kuna), “by the dog of Egypt”, and “by the dog, the god of the Egyptians”, both for emphasis and to appeal to Anubis as an arbiter of truth in the underworld.” ref

Anubis Roles

As jmy-wt (Imiut or the Imiut fetish) “He who is in the place of embalming“, Anubis was associated with mummification. He was also called ḫnty zḥ-nṯr “He who presides over the god’s booth”, in which “booth” could refer either to the place where embalming was carried out or the pharaoh’s burial chamber. In the Osiris myth, Anubis helped Isis to embalm Osiris. Indeed, when the Osiris myth emerged, it was said that after Osiris had been killed by Set, Osiris’s organs were given to Anubis as a gift. With this connection, Anubis became the patron god of embalmers; during the rites of mummification, illustrations from the Book of the Dead often show a wolf-mask-wearing priest supporting the upright mummy.” ref

Protector of tombs

Anubis was a protector of graves and cemeteries. Several epithets attached to his name in Egyptian texts and inscriptions referred to that role. Khenty-Amentiu, which means “foremost of the westerners” and was also the name of a different canine funerary god, alluded to his protecting function because the dead were usually buried on the west bank of the Nile. He took other names in connection with his funerary role, such as tpy-ḏw.f (Tepy-djuef) “He who is upon his mountain” (i.e. keeping guard over tombs from above) and nb-t3-ḏsr (Neb-ta-djeser) “Lord of the sacred land”, which designates him as a god of the desert necropolis.” ref

“The Jumilhac papyrus recounts another tale where Anubis protected the body of Osiris from Set. Set attempted to attack the body of Osiris by transforming himself into a leopard. Anubis stopped and subdued Set, however, and he branded Set’s skin with a hot iron rod. Anubis then flayed Set and wore his skin as a warning against evil-doers who would desecrate the tombs of the dead. Priests who attended to the dead wore leopard skin in order to commemorate Anubis’ victory over Set. The legend of Anubis branding the hide of Set in leopard form was used to explain how the leopard got its spots. Most ancient tombs had prayers to Anubis carved on them.” ref

Shapeshifters: found among Totemists, Shamanists, and Paganists?

Hell and Underworld mythologies starting maybe as far back as 7,000 to 5,000 years ago with the Proto-Indo-Europeans?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“The ANE lineage is defined by association with the MA-1, or “Mal’ta boy“, the remains of an individual who lived during the Last Glacial Maximum, 24,000 years ago in central Siberia. Populations genetically similar to MA-1 were an important genetic contributor to Native Americans, Europeans, Ancient Central Asians, South Asians, and some East Asian groups (such as the Ainu people), in order of significance.” ref

“Groups partially derived from the Ancient North Eurasians: Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (R1a-M417, around 8,400 years ago), Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer (around 8,000 years ago), Ancient Beringian/Ancestral Native American (around 11,500 years ago), West Siberian Hunter-Gatherer, Western Steppe Herders (closely related to the Yamnaya culture), Late Upper Paeolithic Lake Baikal (14,050-13,770 years ago), Lake Baikal Holocene (around 11,650 years ago to the present), Jōmon people, pre-Neolithic population of Japan (and present-day Ainu people).” ref

“Since the term ‘Ancient North Eurasian’ refers to a genetic bridge of connected mating networks, scholars of comparative mythology have argued that they probably shared myths and beliefs that could be reconstructed via the comparison of stories attested within cultures that were not in contact for millennia and stretched from the Pontic–Caspian steppe to the American continent.” ref

“For instance, the mytheme of the dog guarding the Otherworld possibly stems from an older Ancient North Eurasian belief, as suggested by similar motifs found in Indo-European, Native American, and Siberian mythology. In Siouan, Algonquian, Iroquoian, and in Central and South American beliefs, a fierce guard dog was located in the Milky Way, perceived as the path of souls in the afterlife, and getting past it was a test. The Siberian Chukchi and Tungus believed in a guardian-of-the-afterlife dog and a spirit dog that would absorb the dead man’s soul and act as a guide in the afterlife. In Indo-European myths, the figure of the dog is embodied by Cerberus, Sarvarā, and Garmr. Anthony and Brown note that it might be one of the oldest mythemes recoverable through comparative mythology.” ref

“A second canid-related series of beliefs, myths, and rituals connected dogs with healing rather than death. For instance, Ancient Near Eastern and Turkic–Kipchaq myths are prone to associate dogs with healing and generally categorized dogs as impure. A similar myth-pattern is assumed for the Eneolithic site of Botai in Kazakhstan, dated to 3500 BC, which might represent the dog as absorber of illness and guardian of the household against disease and evil. In Mesopotamia, the goddess Nintinugga, associated with healing, was accompanied or symbolized by dogs. Similar absorbent-puppy healing and sacrifice rituals were practiced in Greece and Italy, among the Hittites, again possibly influenced by Near Eastern traditions.” ref

32,000-21,000 years ago Yana Culture, at the Yana Woolly Rhinoceros Horn Site in Siberia, with genetic proximity to Ancient North Eurasian populations (Mal’ta and Afontova Gora), but also Ust-Ishim, Sunghir, and to a lesser extent Tianyuan, as well as similarities with the Clovis culture

The Gravettian culture (Europe) shared ritual ideas and The Ancient North Eurasian culture (Asia) 24,000 years ago

Discussing Ancient North Eurasians migrations: genetics, religion, and rape; (rape 25,000 years ago?) from a lingering patriarchal past, can we find a humanistic secular feminist future?

24,000 Years Old Proto-North Eurasian Language (Ancient North Eurasian) migrations? Became: Proto-Afroasiatic, Proto-Sino-Tibetan, Proto-Transeurasian, Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Yeniseian, Proto-Na-Dene, Proto-Caucasian, Sumerian, Proto-Austronesian, and the Basque language

Groups partially derived from the Ancient North Eurasians

My Thoughts on the Mal’ta–Buret’ culture‘s  Ancient North Eurasian “R” (Y-DNA) Migrations and its Possible relations/influence on Afroasiatic and Proto-Indo-European languages

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

Epipalaeolithic Near East 20,000 to 9,000 years ago and the Emergence of Advanced Culture as well as New Religion?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Trialetian peoples which I think we’re more male-centric and involved in the creation of Göbekli Tepe, from its start around Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (12,000 – 10,800 years ago) began with their influence and this is seen in animal deities many clearly male and the figures also being expressively male themed as well at first, and only around Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (10,800 – 8,500 years ago) or so it seems with what I am guessing is new Epigravettian peoples with a more female-centric style (reminiscent but less than the Gravettians known for Venus figurines) influence from migration into the region, to gain new themes that add a female element both with A totem pole seeming to express birth or something similar and graffiti of a woman either ready for sex or giving birth or both. and Other bare figures seem to show a similar body position reminiscent of the graffiti of a woman.

Epigravettians Join the Religious Partying at Gobekli Tepe?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Pottery before the Pre-Pottery Neolithic? Pre-Pottery Neolithic (10000 – 6500 BCE) and Pottery Neolithic (7000–5000 BCE)

First Pottery of Europe and the Related Cultures

Ganj Dareh

“The oldest settlement remains on the site date back to ca. 10,000 years ago, and have yielded the earliest evidence for goat domestication in the world. The only evidence for domesticated crops found at the site so far is the presence of two-row barley. Ganj Dareh is important in the study of Neolithic ceramics in Luristan and Kurdistan. This is a period beginning in the late 8th millennium, and continuing to the middle of the 6th millennium BCE. Also, the evidence from two other excavated sites nearby is important, from Tepe Guran, and Tepe Sarab (shown on the map in this article). They are all located southwest of Harsin, on the Mahidasht plain, and in the Hulailan valley.” ref

At Ganj Dareh, two early ceramic traditions are evident. One is based on the use of clay for figurines and small geometric pieces like cones and disks. These are dated ca. 7300-6900 BCE. The other ceramic tradition originated in the use of clay for mud-walled buildings (ca. 7300 BC). These traditions are also shared by Tepe Guran, and Tepe Sarab. Tepe Asiab is also located near Tepe Sarab, and may be the earliest of all these sites. Both sites appear to have been seasonally occupied. Another site from the same period is Chia Jani, also in Kermanshah. Chia Jani is located about 60 km southwest from Ganj Dareh. Ali Kosh is also a related site of the Neolithic period.” ref

“Researchers sequenced the genome from the petrous bone of a 30-50-year-old woman from Ganj Dareh, GD13a. mtDNA analysis shows that she belonged to Haplogroup X. She is phenotypically similar to the Anatolian early farmers and Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers. Her DNA revealed that she had black hair, brown eyes, and was lactose intolerant. The derived SLC45A2 variant associated with light skin was not observed in GD13a, but the derived SLC24A5 variant, which is also associated with the same trait, was observed. “GD13a is genetically closest to the ancient Caucasus hunter-gatherers identified from human remains from Georgia (Satsurblia Cave and Kotias Klde). She belonged to a population (Neolithic Iranians) that was genetically distinct from the Neolithic Anatolian farmers.” ref

“In terms of modern populations, she shows the relative highest genetic affinity with the Baloch people, Makran Baloch, and Brahui people. Also genetically close to GD13a were ancient samples from Steppe populations (Yamanya & Afanasievo) that were part of one or more Bronze Age migrations into Europe, as well as early Bronze Age cultures in that continent (Corded Ware) in line with previous relationships observed for the Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers. Most Neolithic Iranian specimens from Ganj Dareh were found to belong to the paternal haplogroup R2a. The to date oldest sample of haplogroup R2a was observed in the remains of a Neolithic human from Ganj Dareh in western Iran (c. 10,162 years old). A late Neolithic sample (I1671) was found to belong to Haplogroup G2a.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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My “Steppe-Anatolian-Kurgan hypothesis” 9,000/8,000-7,000 years ago

Proto-Indo-European (PIE), ancestor of Indo-European languages: DNA, Society, Language, and Mythology

Yamnaya culture or at least Proto-Indo-European Languages/Religions may actually relate back to North Asia?

7,020 to 6,020-year-old Proto-Indo-European Homeland of Urheimat or proposed home of their Language and Religion

Indo-European language Trees fit an Agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8,000 – 9,500 years ago?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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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12,000 years of climate changes that coincided/influenced culture impacts: periods and events in climate history; affecting seeming changes in places, people movements/behaviors, and culture persuasions

Pic ref 

Ancient Women Found in a Russian Cave Turn Out to Be Closely Related to The Modern Population https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-women-found-in-a-russian-cave-turn-out-to-be-closely-related-to-the-modern-population

Abstract

“Ancient genomes have revolutionized our understanding of Holocene prehistory and, particularly, the Neolithic transition in western Eurasia. In contrast, East Asia has so far received little attention, despite representing a core region at which the Neolithic transition took place independently ~3 millennia after its onset in the Near East. We report genome-wide data from two hunter-gatherers from Devil’s Gate, an early Neolithic cave site (dated to ~7.7 thousand years ago) located in East Asia, on the border between Russia and Korea. Both of these individuals are genetically most similar to geographically close modern populations from the Amur Basin, all speaking Tungusic languages, and, in particular, to the Ulchi. The similarity to nearby modern populations and the low levels of additional genetic material in the Ulchi imply a high level of genetic continuity in this region during the Holocene, a pattern that markedly contrasts with that reported for Europe.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Ritual, Religion, Elites, Language, and Civilization relating to Neolithic and Ancient China

Ideas, Technology and People from Turkey, Europe, to China and Back again 9,000 to 5,000 years ago?

To understand the spread of shared ideas across the world, don’t just think of the Middle East, look to China too.

Haplogroup X in China, Egypt, North Africa, Caucasus, Central Asia, and European alludes to shared connected similarities and in ideas or behaviors.

HISTORY OF CHINA relates to the History of Europe?

Investigating Asian Shamanism: “Wu” (Chinese shaman) and (Chinese shamanism) “Wuism” or “Wu” religion as well as Others to Understand

8,600-year-old Tortoise Shells in Neolithic graves in central China have Early Writing and Shamanism

6,720 to 4,920 years old Ritualistic Hongshan Culture of Inner Mongolia with 5,000-year-old Pyramid Mounds and Temples

China’s Civilization between 5,000-3,000 years ago, was a time of war and class struggle, violent transition from free clans to a Slave or Elite society

Complex rituals for elite, seen from China to Egypt, at least by 5,000 years ago

4,320-3,820 years old “Shimao” (North China) site with Totemistic-Shamanistic Paganism and a Stepped Pyramid

State Capitalism: economies of the Soviet Union/Eastern Bloc, Maoist China/current China relate to state capitalism

Ritual Mound Migrations: Kurgans, Dolmens, and later Pyramids likely all trace back to Siberia, helping show how Yeniseian languages, may have influenced Proto-Indo-European languages

Sacred Mounds, Mountains, Kurgans, and Pyramids may hold deep Mythology connections?

Rethinking Hunter-Gatherer Conceptions of Simplicity and Grasping How Some Were Complex Hunter/Fisher-Gatherers

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Ainu people, Sámi people, Native Americans, the Ancient North Eurasians, and Paganistic-Shamanism with Totemism

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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C-M217 Na-Dene and Yeniseian Languages and Religion relatedness from Asia connecting to the Americas

Haplogroup N from China to Fennoscandia: Migrations and Relationship of Language (Dene-Yeniseian and Uralic), DNA, and Cultures

Shamanism Among the Peoples of the North: Uralic, Transeurasian, Dené–Yeniseian, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, and Eskaleut languages

Dené–Yeniseian language, Old Copper Complex, and Pre-Columbian Mound Builders?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Indigenous Pre-Columbian Brazilian Shell Mounds and Amazonian Earthworks, Q-DNA migrations and the Spread of Culture and Religious thinking

Indigenous Peoples in Brazil and the Amazon: Somewhat Similar Mythology and Religion (animism/totemism/shamanism/paganism), Languages, Clans, Chiefdoms, Axis Mundi (path to/from the sky, Cord/Pole, World Tree/Tree of Life, Mountain/Hill/Mound, etc.)

Indigenous Religion and Monuments of the Land: Ancient Earthworks/Rockworks; Rings and Mounds in Canada

Prehistoric Pacific Northwest: Shell Mounds, Culture, Religion, Migrations, Languages, Clans, Power/Elites, Inequality, and Slavery

Investigating and Visiting Several Prehistoric Indian Mounds in Florida; Culture, Religion, and Power

Choctaw tribe’s Creation mythology and their Mound of Creation, Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, Muskogean languages, and the Eagle dance

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Koryaks: Indigenous People of the Russian Far East and Big Raven myths also found in Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and other Indigenous People of North America

Origins of ‘Transeurasian’ languages traced to Neolithic millet farmers in north-eastern China about 9,000 years ago

“A study combining linguistic, genetic, and archaeological evidence has traced the origins of a family of languages including modern Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Mongolian and the people who speak them to millet farmers who inhabited a region in north-eastern China about 9,000 years ago. The findings outlined on Wednesday document a shared genetic ancestry for the hundreds of millions of people who speak what the researchers call Transeurasian languages across an area stretching more than 5,000 miles (8,000km).” ref

“Millet was an important early crop as hunter-gatherers transitioned to an agricultural lifestyle. There are 98 Transeurasian languages, including Korean, Japanese, and various Turkic languages in parts of Europe, Anatolia, Central Asia, and Siberia, various Mongolic languages, and various Tungusic languages in Manchuria and Siberia. This language family’s beginnings were traced to Neolithic millet farmers in the Liao River valley, an area encompassing parts of the Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the region of Inner Mongolia. As these farmers moved across north-eastern Asia over thousands of years, the descendant languages spread north and west into Siberia and the steppes and east into the Korean peninsula and over the sea to the Japanese archipelago.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Paganism: spread of Haplogroup J and its Seeming connection of Bull Worship

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Roots of a changing early society 7,200-6,700 years ago Jordan and Israel

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

Sky Father/Sky Mother “High Gods” or similar gods/goddesses of the sky more loosely connected, seeming arcane mythology across the earth seen in Siberia, China, Europe, Native Americans/First Nations People and Mesopotamia, etc.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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The exchange of people, ideas, and material-culture including, to me, the new god (Sky Father) and goddess (Earth Mother) religion between the Cucuteni-Trypillians and others which is then spread far and wide?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Neolithic Jewelry and the Spread of Farming in Europe Emerging out of West Turkey

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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The Dnieper–Donets culture between 7,800/7,200 to 6,400/6,200 years ago, steppe and forest-steppe areas north of the Black Sea

5th—4th millennium BCE Dnieper–Donets culture and East Eurasian lineages (of C haplogroup, like C4a related to Tungusic peoples of Siberia) in ancient mtDNA from the North Pontic Region

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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My Thoughts on Possible Migrations of “R” DNA and Proto-Indo-European?

Proto-Indo-European (PIE), ancestor of Indo-European languages: DNA, Society, Language, and Mythology

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art 

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Who were the Groups migrating and merging with the previous Groups of Europe 9,000 to 7,000 years ago?

My “Steppe-Anatolian-Kurgan hypothesis” 9,000/8,000-7,000 years ago

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

White (light complexion skin) Bigotry and Sexism started 7,000 years ago?

Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves!

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art 

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Yamnaya culture or at least Proto-Indo-European Languages/Religions may actually relate back to North Asia?

Bronze Age “Ritual” connections of the Bell Beaker culture with the Corded Ware/Single Grave culture, which were related to the Yamnaya culture and Proto-Indo-European Languages/Religions

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Sintashta culture

“The Sintashta culture is a Middle Bronze Age archaeological culture of the Southern Urals, dated to the period c. 2200–1900 BCE. It is the first phase of the Sintashta–Petrovka complex, c. 2200–1750 BCE. The culture is named after the Sintashta archaeological site, in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, and spreads through Orenburg Oblast, Bashkortostan, and Northern Kazakhstan. Widely regarded as the origin of the Indo-Iranian languages, whose speakers originally referred to themselves as the Aryans, the Sintashta culture is thought to represent an eastward migration of peoples from the Corded Ware culture.” ref

“The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare. Sintashta settlements are also remarkable for the intensity of copper mining and bronze metallurgy carried out there, which is unusual for a steppe culture. Among the main features of the Sintashta culture are high levels of militarism and extensive fortified settlements, of which 23 are known.” ref

“Radiocarbon dating indicates that the Sintashta culture dates to between c. 2200 and 1750 BCE, roughly contemporary with the associated Abashevo and Petrovka cultures. Some authors date the Petrovka culture slightly later, from c. 1900 BCE. In Cis-Urals, burial sites Berezovaya and Tanabergen II showed Sintashta culture established there c. 2290–1750 BCE (68.2% probability), and the earliest values of this culture, in Trans-Urals, at the burial sites Sintashta II and Kamenny Ambar-5 (Kurgan 2) are c. 2200–2000 BCE. Chariots appear in southern Trans-Urals region in middle and late phases of the culture, c. 2050-1750 BCE. Blöcher et al. (2023) consider Sintashta-Petrovka period came to an end in Trans-Urals c. 1900–1800 BCE.” ref

“Anthony (2007) assumes that probably the people of the Sintashta culture spoke “Common-Indo-Iranian”. This identification is based primarily on similarities between sections of the Rig Veda, a religious text which includes ancient Indo-Iranian hymns recorded in Vedic Sanskrit, and the funerary rituals of the Sintashta culture as revealed by archaeology. Some cultural similarities with Sintashta have also been found to be common with the Nordic Bronze Age of Scandinavia. There is linguistic evidence of interaction between Finno-Ugric and Indo-Iranian languages, showing influences from the Indo-Iranians into the Finno-Ugric culture. From the Sintashta culture the Indo-Iranian followed the migrations of the Indo-Iranians to Anatolia, the Iranian plateau and the Indian subcontintinent. From the 9th century BCE onward, Iranian languages also migrated westward with the Scythians back to the Pontic steppe where the proto-Indo-Europeans came from.” ref

“The preceding Abashevo culture was already marked by endemic intertribal warfare; intensified by ecological stress and competition for resources in the Sintashta period. This drove the construction of fortifications on an unprecedented scale and innovations in military technique, such as the invention of the war chariot. Increased competition between tribal groups may also explain the extravagant sacrifices seen in Sintashta burials, as rivals sought to outdo one another in acts of conspicuous consumption analogous to the North American potlatch tradition. Sintashta artifact types such as spearheads, trilobed arrowheads, chisels, and large shaft-hole axes were taken east.” ref 

“Many Sintashta graves are furnished with weapons, although the composite bow associated later with chariotry does not appear. Higher-status grave goods include chariots, as well as axes, mace-heads, spearheads, and cheek-pieces. Sintashta sites have produced finds of horn and bone, interpreted as furniture (grips, arrow rests, bow ends, string loops) of bows; there is no indication that the bending parts of these bows included anything other than wood. Arrowheads are also found, made of stone or bone rather than metal. These arrows are short, 50–70 cm long, and the bows themselves may have been correspondingly short. Sintashta culture, and the chariot, are also strongly associated with the ancestors of modern domestic horses, the DOM2 population. DOM2 horses originated from the Western Eurasia steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don, but not in Anatolia, during the late fourth and early third millennia BCE. Their genes may show selection for easier domestication and stronger backs.” ref

“The Sintashta economy came to revolve around copper metallurgy. Copper ores from nearby mines (such as Vorovskaya Yama) were taken to Sintashta settlements to be processed into copper and arsenical bronze. This occurred on an industrial scale: all the excavated buildings at the Sintashta sites of Sintashta, Arkaim, and Ustye contained the remains of smelting ovens and slag. Around 10% of graves, mostly adult males, contained artifacts related to bronze metallurgy (molds, ceramic nozzles, ore, and slag remains, metal bars, and drops). However, these metal-production related grave goods rarely co-occur with higher-status grave goods. This likely means that those who engaged in metal production were not at the top of the social-hierarchy, even though being buried at a cemetery evidences some sort of higher status.” ref

“Much of Sintashta metal was destined for export to the cities of the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) in Central Asia. The metal trade between Sintashta and the BMAC for the first time connected the steppe region to the ancient urban civilisations of the Near East: the empires and city-states of modern Iran and Mesopotamia provided a large market for metals. These trade routes later became the vehicle through which horses, chariots, and ultimately Indo-Iranian-speaking people entered the Near East from the steppe.” ref

“Allentoft et al. 2015 analyzed the remains of four individuals ascribed to the Sintastha culture. One male carried Y-haplogroup R1a and mt-J1c1b1a, while the other carried Y-R1a1a1b and mt-J2b1a2a. The two females carried U2e1e and U2e1h respectively. The study found a close autosomal genetic relationship between peoples of Corded Ware culture and Sintashta culture, which “suggests similar genetic sources of the two,” and may imply that “the Sintashta derives directly from an eastward migration of Corded Ware peoples.” Sintashta individuals and Corded Ware individuals both had a relatively higher ancestry proportion derived from Central Europe, and both differed markedly in such ancestry from the population of the Yamnaya Culture and most individuals of the Poltavka Culture that preceded Sintashta in the same geographic region.” ref

“Individuals from the Bell Beaker culture, the Únětice culture, and contemporary Scandinavian cultures were also found to be closely genetically related to Corded Ware. A particularly high lactose tolerance was found among Corded Ware and the closely related Nordic Bronze Age. In addition, the study found samples from the Sintashta culture to be closely genetically related to the succeeding Andronovo culture. Narasimhan et al. 2019 analyzed the remains of several individuals associated with the Sintashta culture. mtDNA was extracted from two females buried at the Petrovka settlement. They were found to be carrying subclades of U2 and U5. The remains of fifty individuals from the fortified Sintastha settlement cemetery of Kamennyi Ambar-5 were analyzed.” ref

“This was the largest sample of ancient DNA ever sampled from a single site. The Y-DNA from thirty males was extracted. Eighteen carried R1a and various subclades of it (particularly subclades of R1a-Z417): R1a-Z645 (4 individuals), R1a-Z93 (1), R1a-Z94 (1), R1a-Z2124 (4), R1a-Z2125 (1), R1a-FT287785 (1), R1a-Z2123 (1), and R1a-Y874* (1); five carried subclades of R1b (particularly subclades of R1b1a1a), two carried Q1a and a subclade of it, one carried I2a1a1a, and four carried unspecified R1 clades. The majority of mtDNA samples belonged to various subclades of U, while W, J, T, H, and K also occurred. A Sintashta male buried at Samara was found to be carrying R1b1a1a2 and J1c1b1a.” ref

“The authors of the study found the majority of Sintashta people (ca. 80%) to be closely genetically related to the people of the Corded Ware culture, the Srubnaya culture, the Potapovka culture, and the Andronovo culture. These were found to harbor mixed ancestry from the Yamnaya culture and peoples of the Central European Middle Neolithic, like the Globular Amphora culture.^[59][60] The remaining sampled Sintashta individuals belonged to various ancestral types different from the majority population, with affinities to earlier populations such as Eneolithic samples collected at Khvalynsk and hunter-gatherers from Tyumen Oblast in western Siberia. This indicates that the Sintashta settlement of Kamennyi Ambar was a cosmopolitan site that united a genetically heterogeneous population in a single social group. Estimates based on DATES (Distribution of Ancestry Tracts of Evolutionary Signals) suggest that genetic characteristics typical of the Sintashta culture formed by c. 3200 BCE.” ref

“The dispersal of the DOM2 genetic lineage, believed to be the ancestor of all modern domesticated horses, is linked with the populations which preceded the Sintashta culture and their expansions. A genetic study published in 2021 suggests that these horses were selectively bred for desired traits, including docility, stress tolerance, endurance running, and higher weight-carrying thresholds.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Between 7,000-5,000 Years ago, rise of unequal hierarchy elite, leading to a “birth of the State” or worship of power, strong new sexism, oppression of non-elites, and the fall of Women’s equal status

Swing of the Mace: the rise of Elite, Forced Authority, and Inequality begin to Emerge 8,500 years ago?

Totemism, Tribalism, Clan, and Power: (band, tribe, chiefdom, and state)

Women of POWER: Matrilineal Chiefdoms and Matrilineal clans as well as Women as Chief/King or Warrior Women

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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My thoughts on Dolmen origins and migrations, as well as Snail Shell Middens or Snail Burials/Turtle Shell Burials, and links from “Y-DNA R (R1a, R1b, and R2a)” migrations

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Agriculture religion (Paganism) with farming reached Britain between about 7,000 to 6,500 or so years ago and seemingly expressed in things like Western Europe’s Long Barrows

Religious/Ritual Ideas, including goddesses and gods as well as ritual mounds or pyramids from Northeastern Asia at least 6,000 years old, seemingly filtering to Iran, Iraq, the Mediterranean, Europe, Egypt, and the Americas?

KING OF BEASTS: Master of Animals “Ritual” Motif, around 6,000 years old or older…

Sumerian Creator Being was a Female, not Male possibly around 6,000 years ago or more

Stars: Ancestors, Spirit Animals, and Deities (around 6,000 years ago, with connections to shamanism at 30,000 years ago and possibly further back to 40,000 years ago with totemism)

The Rise of Power and the 6000-year-old Shared Idea of the Solid Wheel as well as the Spoked Wheel-Shaped Ritual Motif

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Haplogroup N and its related Uralic Languages and Cultures

Haplogroup N from China to Fennoscandia: Migrations and Relationship of Language (Dene-Yeniseian and Uralic), DNA, and Cultures

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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The Center of the World “Axis Mundi” and/or “Sacred Mountains” Mythology Could Relate to the Altai Mountains, Heart of the Steppe, as well as a hub for Shamanism

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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6,500–5,800 years ago Late Copper Age Container-Graves in a cave from Northern Israel suggests Migrations from Turkey and Iran, followed by Cultural and Religious Transfer in the Area

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Bronze Age “Ritual” connections of the Bell Beaker culture with the Corded Ware/Single Grave culture, which were related to the Yamnaya culture and Proto-Indo-European Languages/Religions

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Bronze Age Exotic Trade Routes Spread Quite Far as well as Spread Religious Ideas with Them

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Kura-Araxes Cultural 5,520 to 4,470 years old DNA traces to the Canaanites, Arabs, and Jews

Two Anarchists: Cory Johnston and Damien Marie AtHope, address the Israel and Palestine conflict

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.

• By day the “Bible God” was in a cloud pillar.
• By night the “Bible God” was in a fire pillar.

Did a 4,520–4,420-year-old Volcano In Turkey Inspire the Bible God?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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My thoughts on Dolmen origins and migrations, as well as Snail Shell Middens or Snail Burials/Turtle Shell Burials, and links from “Y-DNA R (R1a, R1b, and R2a)” migrations

Kurgans 7,000/6,000 years ago/Dolmens 7,000/6,000 years ago: funeral, ritual, and other?

4,000-year-Old Dolmens in Israel: A Connected Dolmen Religious Phenomenon?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Sacred Menstrual cloth? Inanna’s knot, Isis knot, and maybe Ma’at’s feather?

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Swing of the Mace: the rise of Elite, Forced Authority, and Inequality begin to Emerge 8,500 years ago?

Mace (bludgeon)

“A mace is a blunt weapon, a type of club or virge that uses a heavy head on the end of a handle to deliver powerful strikes. A mace typically consists of a strong, heavy, wooden, or metal shaft, often reinforced with metal, featuring a head made of stone, bone, copper, bronze, iron, or steel. The head of a military mace can be shaped with flanges or knobs to allow greater penetration of plate armour.” ref

“The length of maces can vary considerably. The maces of foot soldiers were usually quite short (two or three feet, or sixty to ninety centimetres). The maces of cavalrymen were longer and thus better suited for blows delivered from horseback. Two-handed maces could be even larger.” ref

“Maces are rarely used today for actual combat, but many government bodies (for instance, the British House of Commons and the U.S. Congress), universities, and other institutions have ceremonial maces and continue to display them as symbols of authority. They are often paraded in academic, parliamentary, or civic rituals and processions. The Middle English word “mace” comes from the French “masse” (short for “Masse d’armes”) meaning ‘large hammer’, a hammer with a heavy mass at the end.” ref

“The mace was developed during the Upper Paleolithic from the simple club, by adding sharp spikes of flint or obsidian. In Europe, an elaborately carved ceremonial flint mace head was one of the artifacts discovered in excavations of the Neolithic mound of Knowth in Ireland, and Bronze Age archaeology cites numerous finds of perforated mace heads.” ref

“In ancient Ukraine, stone mace heads were first used nearly eight millennia ago. The others known were disc maces with oddly formed stones mounted perpendicularly to their handle. The Narmer Palette shows a king swinging a mace. See the articles on the Narmer Macehead and the Scorpion Macehead for examples of decorated maces inscribed with the names of kings.” ref

“Calcite mace head, 7-6th millennium BCE, Syria. The problem with early maces was that their stone heads shattered easily and it was difficult to fix the head to the wooden handle reliably. The Egyptians attempted to give them a disk shape in the predynastic period (about 3850–3650 BCE or 5,672 years ago) in order to increase their impact and even provide some cutting capabilities, but this seems to have been a short-lived improvement.” ref

“A rounded pear form of mace head known as a “piriform” replaced the disc mace in the Naqada II period of pre-dynastic Upper Egypt (3600–3250 BCE) and was used throughout the Naqada III period (3250–3100 BCE). Similar mace heads were also used in Mesopotamia around 2450–1900 BCE. On a Sumerian Clay tablet written by the scribe Gar.Ama, the title Lord of the Mace is listed in the year 3100 BCE. The Assyrians used maces probably about nineteenth century BCE and in their campaigns; the maces were usually made of stone or marble and furnished with gold or other metals, but were rarely used in battle unless fighting heavily armoured infantry.” ref

“An important, later development in mace heads was the use of metal for their composition. With the advent of copper mace heads, they no longer shattered and a better fit could be made to the wooden club by giving the eye of the mace head the shape of a cone and using a tapered handle. The Shardanas or warriors from Sardinia who fought for Ramses II against the Hittites were armed with maces consisting of wooden sticks with bronze heads. Many bronze statuettes of the times show Sardinian warriors carrying swords, bows, and original maces.” ref

“Persians used a variety of maces and fielded large numbers of heavily armoured and armed cavalry (see Cataphract). For a heavily armed Persian knight, a mace was as effective as a sword or battle axe. In fact, Shahnameh has many references to heavily armoured knights facing each other using maces, axes, and swords. The enchanted talking mace Sharur made its first appearance in Sumerian/Akkadian mythology during the epic of Ninurta.” ref

“The Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata describe the extensive use of the gada in ancient Indian warfare as gada-yuddha or ‘mace combat’. The ancient Romans did not make wide use of maces, probably because of the influence of armour, and due to the nature of the Roman infantry’s fighting style which involved the pilum (spear) and the gladius (short sword used in a stabbing fashion), though auxiliaries from Syria Palestina were armed with clubs and maces at the battles of Immae and Emesa in 272 CE. They proved highly effective against the heavily armoured horsemen of Palmyra.” ref

Comparative Mythology

“Since the term ‘Ancient North Eurasian’ refers to a genetic bridge of connected mating networks, scholars of comparative mythology have argued that they probably shared myths and beliefs that could be reconstructed via the comparison of stories attested within cultures that were not in contact for millennia and stretched from the Pontic–Caspian steppe to the American continent.” ref

“For instance, the mytheme of the dog guarding the Otherworld possibly stems from an older Ancient North Eurasian belief, as suggested by similar motifs found in Indo-European, Native American, and Siberian mythology. In Siouan, Algonquian, Iroquoian, and in Central and South American beliefs, a fierce guard dog was located in the Milky Way, perceived as the path of souls in the afterlife, and getting past it was a test. The Siberian Chukchi and Tungus believed in a guardian-of-the-afterlife dog and a spirit dog that would absorb the dead man’s soul and act as a guide in the afterlife. In Indo-European myths, the figure of the dog is embodied by Cerberus, Sarvarā, and Garmr. Anthony and Brown note that it might be one of the oldest mythemes recoverable through comparative mythology.” ref

“A second canid-related series of beliefs, myths, and rituals connected dogs with healing rather than death. For instance, Ancient Near Eastern and Turkic–Kipchaq myths are prone to associate dogs with healing and generally categorized dogs as impure. A similar myth-pattern is assumed for the Eneolithic site of Botai in Kazakhstan, dated to 3500 BCE or 5,522 years ago, which might represent the dog as absorber of illness and guardian of the household against disease and evil. In Mesopotamia, the goddess Nintinugga, associated with healing, was accompanied or symbolized by dogs. Similar absorbent-puppy healing and sacrifice rituals were practiced in Greece and Italy, among the Hittites, again possibly influenced by Near Eastern traditions.” ref

Proto-Indo-European mythology

“Proto-Indo-European mythology is the body of myths and deities associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language. Although the mythological motifs are not directly attested – since Proto-Indo-European speakers lived in preliterate societies – scholars of comparative mythology have reconstructed details from inherited similarities found among Indo-European languages, based on the assumption that parts of the Proto-Indo-Europeans’ original belief systems survived in the daughter traditions.” ref

“The Proto-Indo-European pantheon includes a number of securely reconstructed deities, since they are both cognates – linguistic siblings from a common origin –, and associated with similar attributes and body of myths: such as *Dyḗws Ph₂tḗr, the daylight-sky god; his consort *Dʰéǵʰōm, the earth mother; his daughter *H₂éwsōs, the dawn goddess; his sons the Divine Twins; and *Seh₂ul, a solar goddess. Some deities, like the weather god *Perkʷunos or the herding-god *Péh₂usōn, are only attested in a limited number of traditions – Western (European) and Graeco-Aryan, respectively – and could therefore represent late additions that did not spread throughout the various Indo-European dialects.” ref

“Some myths are also securely dated to Proto-Indo-European times, since they feature both linguistic and thematic evidence of an inherited motif: a story portraying a mythical figure associated with thunder and slaying a multi-headed serpent to release torrents of water that had previously been pent up; a creation myth involving two brothers, one of whom sacrifices the other in order to create the world; and probably the belief that the Otherworld was guarded by a watchdog and could only be reached by crossing a river.” ref

“Various schools of thought exist regarding possible interpretations of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European mythology. The main mythologies used in comparative reconstruction are Indo-Iranian, Baltic, Roman, and Norse, often supported with evidence from the Celtic, Greek, Slavic, Hittite, Armenian, Illyrian, and Albanian traditions as well.” ref

The canine guardian

“In a recurrent motif, the Otherworld contains a gate, generally guarded by a multi-headed (sometimes multi-eyed) dog who could also serve as a guide and ensured that the ones who entered could not get out. The Greek Cerberus and the Hindu Śárvara most likely derive from the common noun *Ḱérberos (“spotted”). Bruce Lincoln has proposed a third cognate in the Norse Garmr, although this has been debated as linguistically untenable.” ref

“The motif of a canine guardian of the entrance to the Otherworld is also attested in Persian mythology, where two four-eyed dogs guard the Chinvat Bridge, a bridge that marks the threshold between the world of the living and the world of the dead. The Videvdat (Vendidad) 13,9 describes them as ‘spâna pəšu.pâna’ (“two bridge-guarding dogs”).” ref

“A parallel imagery is found in Historical Vedic religion: Yama, ruler of the underworld realm, is said to own two four-eyed dogs who also act as his messengers and fulfill the role of protectors of the soul in the path to heaven. These hounds, named Shyama (Śyāma) and Sabala, are described as the brood of Sarama, a divine female dog: one is black and the other spotted.” ref

“Slovene deity and hero Kresnik is also associated with a four-eyed dog, and a similar figure in folk belief (a canine with white or brown spots above its eyes – thus, “four-eyed”) is said to be able to sense the approach of death. In Nordic mythology, a dog stands on the road to Hel; it is often assumed to be identical with Garmr, the howling hound bound at the entrance to Gnipahellir.” ref

“In Albanian folklore, a never-sleeping three-headed dog is also said to live in the world of the dead. Another parallel may be found in the Cŵn Annwn (“Hounds of Annwn”), creatures of Welsh mythology said to live in Annwn, a name for the Welsh Otherworld. They are described as hell hounds or spectral dogs that take part in the Wild Hunt, chasing after the dead and pursuing the souls of men.” ref

“Remains of dogs found in grave sites of the Iron Age Wielbark culture, and dog burials of Early Medieval North-Western Slavs (in Pomerania) would suggest the longevity of the belief. Another dog-burial in Góra Chełmska and a Pomeranian legend about a canine figure associated with the otherworld seem to indicate the existence of the motif in Slavic tradition.” ref

“In a legend from Lokev, a male creature named Vilež (“fairy man”), who dwells in Vilenica Cave, is guarded by two wolves and is said to take men into the underworld. Belarusian scholar Siarhiej Sanko suggests that characters in a Belarusian ethnogenetic myth, Prince Bai and his two dogs, Staury and Gaury (Haury), are related to Vedic Yama and his two dogs. To him, Gaury is connected to Lithuanian gaurai ‘mane, shaggy (of hair)’.” ref

“An archeological find by Russian archeologist Alexei Rezepkin at Tsarskaya showed two dogs of different colors (one of bronze, the other of silver), each siding the porthole of a tomb. This imagery seemed to recall the Indo-Aryan myth of Yama and his dogs.” ref

“The mytheme possibly stems from an older Ancient North Eurasian belief, as evidenced by similar motifs in Native American and Siberian mythology, in which case it might be one of the oldest mythemes recoverable through comparative mythology. The King of the Otherworld may have been Yemo, the sacrificed twin of the creation myth, as suggested by the Indo-Iranian and, to a lesser extent, by the Germanic, Greek, and Celtic traditions.” ref

Proto-Indo-European Gods and goddesses

“The archaic Proto-Indo-European language (4500–4000) had a two-gender system which originally distinguished words between animate and inanimate, a system used to separate a common term from its deified synonym. For instance, fire as an active principle was *h₁n̥gʷnis (Latin ignis; Sanskrit Agní), while the inanimate, physical entity was *péh₂ur (Greek pyr; English fire). During this period, Proto-Indo-European beliefs were still animistic and their language did not yet make formal distinctions between masculine and feminine, although it is likely that each deity was already conceived as either male or female.” ref

“Most of the goddesses attested in later Indo-European mythologies come from pre-Indo-European deities eventually assimilated into the various pantheons following the migrations, like the Greek Athena, the Roman Juno, the Irish Medb, or the Iranian Anahita. Diversely personified, they were frequently seen as fulfilling multiple functions, while Proto-Indo-European goddesses shared a lack of personification and narrow functionalities as a general characteristic. The most well-attested female Indo-European deities include *H₂éwsōs, the Dawn, *Dʰéǵʰōm, the Earth, and *Seh₂ul, the Sun.” ref

“It is not probable that the Proto-Indo-Europeans had a fixed canon of deities or assigned a specific number to them. The term for “a god” was *deywós (“celestial”), derived from the root *dyew, which denoted the bright sky or the light of day. It has numerous reflexes in Latin deus, Old Norse Týr (< Germ. *tīwaz), Sanskrit devá, Avestan daeva, Irish día, or Lithuanian Dievas. In contrast, human beings were synonymous of “mortals” and associated with the “earthly” (*dʰéǵʰōm), likewise the source of words for “man, human being” in various languages.” ref

“Proto-Indo-Europeans believed the gods to be exempt from death and disease because they were nourished by special aliments, usually not available to mortals: in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, “the gods, of course, neither eat nor drink. They become sated by just looking at this nectar”, while the Edda tells us that “on wine alone the weapon-lord Odin ever lives … he needs no food; wine is to him both drink and meat”. Sometimes concepts could also be deified, such as the Avestan mazdā (“wisdom”), worshipped as Ahura Mazdā (“Lord Wisdom”); the Greek god of war Ares (connected with ἀρή, “ruin, destruction”); or the Vedic protector of treaties Mitráh (from mitrám, “contract”).” ref

“Gods had several titles, typically “the celebrated”, “the highest”, “king”, or “shepherd”, with the notion that deities had their own idiom and true names which might be kept secret from mortals in some circumstances. In Indo-European traditions, gods were seen as the “dispensers” or the “givers of good things” (*déh₃tōr h₁uesuom). Compare the Irish god Dagda / Dagdae, “Good God” or “Shining God” from Proto-Celtic *Dago-deiwos, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰagʰo- (“shining”) (< *dʰegʷʰ- (“to burn”)) +*deywós (“divinity”), also Old Irish deg-, dag-, from Proto-Celtic *dagos (compare Welsh da ‘good’, Scottish Gaelic deagh ‘good’).” ref

“Although certain individual deities were charged with the supervision of justice or contracts, in general, the Indo-European gods did not have an ethical character. Their immense power, which they could exercise at their pleasure, necessitated rituals, sacrifices, and praise songs from worshipers to ensure they would in return bestow prosperity to the community. The idea that gods were in control of the nature was translated in the suffix *-nos (feminine -nā), which signified “lord of”. According to West, it is attested in Greek Ouranos (“lord of rain”) and Helena (“mistress of sunlight”), Germanic *Wōðanaz (“lord of frenzy”), Gaulish Epona (“goddess of horses”), Lithuanian Perkūnas (“lord of oaks”), and in Roman Neptunus (“lord of waters”), Volcanus (“lord of fire-glare”) and Silvanus (“lord of woods”).” ref

Pantheon

“Linguists have been able to reconstruct the names of some deities in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) from many types of sources. Some of the proposed deity names are more readily accepted among scholars than others. According to philologist Martin L. West, “the clearest cases are the cosmic and elemental deities: the Sky-god, his partner Earth, and his twin sons; the Sun, the Sun Maiden, and the Dawn; gods of storm, wind, water, fire; and terrestrial presences such as the Rivers, spring and forest nymphs, and a god of the wild who guards roads and herds.” ref

Cucuteni–Trypillia culture

“The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture (Romanian: Cultura Cucuteni and Ukrainian: Трипільська культура), also known as the Tripolye culture (Russian: Трипольская культура), is a Neolithic–Eneolithic archaeological culture (c. 5500 to 2750 BCE) of Eastern Europe. The majority of Cucuteni–Trypillia settlements consisted of high-density, small settlements (spaced 3 to 4 kilometers apart), concentrated mainly in the Siret, Prut, and Dniester river valleys.” ref

“It extended from the Carpathian Mountains to the Dniester and Dnieper regions, centered on modern-day Moldova and covering substantial parts of western Ukraine and northeastern Romania, encompassing an area of 350,000 km2 (140,000 sq mi), with a diameter of 500 km (300 mi; roughly from Kyiv in the northeast to Brașov in the southwest). During its middle phase (c. 4000 to 3500 BCE), populations belonging to the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture built the largest settlements in Neolithic Europe, some of which contained as many as three thousand structures and were possibly inhabited by 20,000 to 46,000 people.” ref

“One of the most notable aspects of this culture was the periodic destruction of settlements, with each single-habitation site having a lifetime of roughly 60 to 80 years. The purpose of burning these settlements is a subject of debate among scholars; some of the settlements were reconstructed several times on top of earlier habitational levels, preserving the shape and the orientation of the older buildings. One particular location; the Poduri site in Romania, revealed thirteen habitation levels that were constructed on top of each other over many years.” ref

“The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture is commonly divided into Early, Middle, and Late periods, with varying smaller sub-divisions marked by changes in settlement and material culture. A key point of contention lies in how these phases correspond to radiocarbon data. The following chart represents this most current interpretation:

• Early (Pre-Cucuteni I–III to Cucuteni A–B, Trypillia A to Trypillia BI–II):5800 to 5000 BCE• Middle (Cucuteni B, Trypillia BII to CI–II): 5000 to 3500 BCE• Late (Horodiştea–Folteşti, Trypillia CII): 3500 to 3000 BCE” ref

Early period (5800–5000 BCE)

“The roots of Cucuteni–Trypillia culture can be found in the Starčevo–Körös–Criș and Vinča cultures of the 6th to 5th millennia, with additional influence from the Bug–Dniester culture (6500–5000 BCE). During the early period of its existence (in the fifth millennium BCE), the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture was also influenced by the Linear Pottery culture from the north, and by the Boian culture from the south.” ref

“Through colonization and acculturation from these other cultures, the formative Pre-Cucuteni/Trypillia A culture was established. Over the course of the fifth millennium, the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture expanded from its ‘homeland’ in the Prut–Siret region along the eastern foothills of the Carpathian Mountains into the basins and plains of the Dnieper and Southern Bug rivers of central Ukraine.” ref

“Settlements also developed in the southeastern stretches of the Carpathian Mountains, with the materials known locally as the Ariuşd culture (see also: Prehistory of Transylvania). Most of the settlements were located close to rivers, with fewer settlements located on the plateaus. Most early dwellings took the form of pit-houses, though they were accompanied by an ever-increasing incidence of above-ground clay houses. The floors and hearths of these structures were made of clay, and the walls of clay-plastered wood or reeds. Roofing was made of thatched straw or reeds.” ref

“The inhabitants were involved with animal husbandry, agriculture, fishing, and gathering. Wheat, rye, and peas were grown. Tools included ploughs made of antler, stone, bone, and sharpened sticks. The harvest was collected with scythes made of flint-inlaid blades. The grain was milled into flour by quern-stones. Women were involved in pottery, textile– and garment-making, and played a leading role in community life. Men hunted, herded the livestock, made tools from flint, bone, and stone.” ref

“Of their livestock, cattle were the most important, with swine, sheep, and goats playing lesser roles. The question of whether or not the horse was domesticated during this time of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture is disputed among historians; horse remains have been found in some of their settlements, but it is unclear whether these remains were from wild horses or domesticated ones.” ref

“Clay statues of females and amulets have been found dating to this period. Copper items, primarily bracelets, rings, and hooks, are occasionally found as well. A hoard of a large number of copper items was discovered in the village of Cărbuna, Moldova, consisting primarily of items of jewelry, which were dated back to the beginning of the fifth millennium BCE. Some historians have used this evidence to support the theory that a social stratification was present in early Cucuteni culture, but this is disputed by others.” ref

“Pottery remains from this early period are very rarely discovered; the remains that have been found indicate that the ceramics were used after being fired in a kiln. The outer color of the pottery is a smoky grey, with raised and sunken relief decorations. Toward the end of this early Cucuteni–Trypillia period, the pottery begins to be painted before firing. The white-painting technique found on some of the pottery from this period was imported from the earlier and contemporary (5th millennium) Gumelnița–Karanovo culture.” ref

“Historians point to this transition to kiln-fired, white-painted pottery as the turning point for when the Pre-Cucuteni culture ended and Cucuteni Phase (or Cucuteni–Trypillia culture) began. Cucuteni and the neighboring Gumelniţa–Karanovo cultures seem to be largely contemporary; the “Cucuteni A phase seems to be very long (4600–4050) and covers the entire evolution of the Gumelnița–Karanovo A1, A2, B2 phases (maybe 4650–4050).” ref

Middle period (5000–3500 BCE)

“In the middle era, the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture spread over a wide area from Eastern Transylvania in the west to the Dnieper River in the east. During this period, the population immigrated into and settled along the banks of the upper and middle regions of the Right Bank (or western side) of the Dnieper River, in present-day Ukraine. The population grew considerably during this time, resulting in settlements being established on plateaus, near major rivers and springs.” ref

“Their dwellings were built by placing vertical poles in the form of circles or ovals. The construction techniques incorporated log floors covered in clay, wattle-and-daub walls that were woven from pliable branches and covered in clay, and a clay oven, which was situated in the center of the dwelling. As the population in this area grew, more land was put under cultivation. Hunting supplemented the practice of animal husbandry of domestic livestock.” ref

Tools made of flint, rock, clay, wood, and bones continued to be used for cultivation and other chores. Much less common than other materials, copper axes, and other tools have been discovered that were made from ore mined in Volyn, Ukraine, as well as some deposits along the Dnieper river. Pottery-making by this time had become sophisticated, however, they still relied on techniques of making pottery by hand (the potter’s wheel was not used yet).” ref

“Characteristics of the Cucuteni–Trypillia pottery included a monochromic spiral design, painted with black paint on a yellow and red base. Large pear-shaped pottery for the storage of grain, dining plates, and other goods, was also prevalent. Additionally, ceramic statues of female “goddess” figures, as well as figurines of animals and models of houses dating to this period, have also been discovered.” ref

“Some scholars have used the abundance of these clay female fetish statues to base the theory that this culture was matriarchal in nature. Indeed, it was partially the archaeological evidence from Cucuteni–Trypillia culture that inspired Marija Gimbutas, Joseph Campbell, and some latter 20th-century feminists to set forth the popular theory of an Old European culture of peaceful, egalitarian (counter to a widespread misconception, “matristic” not matriarchal), goddess-centred neolithic European societies that were wiped out by patriarchal, Sky Father-worshipping, warlike, Bronze-Age Proto-Indo-European tribes that swept out of the steppes north and east of the Black Sea.” ref

Late period (3500–3000 BCE)

“During the late period, the Cucuteni–Trypillia territory expanded to include the Volyn region in northwest Ukraine, the Sluch and Horyn Rivers in northern Ukraine, and along both banks of the Dnieper river near Kyiv. Members of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture who lived along the coastal regions near the Black Sea came into contact with other cultures. Animal husbandry increased in importance, as hunting diminished; horses also became more important.” ref

“Outlying communities were established on the Don and Volga rivers in present-day Russia. Dwellings were constructed differently from previous periods, and a new rope-like design replaced the older spiral-patterned designs on the pottery. Different forms of ritual burial were developed where the deceased were interred in the ground with elaborate burial rituals. An increasingly larger number of Bronze Age artifacts originating from other lands were found as the end of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture drew near.” ref

Decline and end: Decline and end of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture

“There is a debate among scholars regarding how the end of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture took place. According to some proponents of the Kurgan hypothesis of the origin of Proto-Indo-Europeans, and in particular the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, in her book “Notes on the chronology and expansion of the Pit-Grave Culture” (1961, later expanded by her and others), the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture was destroyed by force. Arguing from archaeological and linguistic evidence, Gimbutas concluded that the people of the Kurgan culture (a term grouping the Yamnaya culture and its predecessors) of the Pontic–Caspian steppe, being most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language, effectively destroyed the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture in a series of invasions undertaken during their expansion to the west.” ref

“Based on this archaeological evidence Gimbutas saw distinct cultural differences between the patriarchal, warlike Kurgan culture and the more peaceful egalitarian Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, which she argued was a significant component of the “Old European cultures” which finally met extinction in a process visible in the progressing appearance of fortified settlements, hillforts and the graves of warrior-chieftains, as well as in the religious transformation from the matriarchy to patriarchy, in a correlated east–west movement. In this, “the process of Indo-Europeanization was a cultural, not a physical, transformation and must be understood as a military victory in terms of successfully imposing a new administrative system, language, and religion upon the indigenous groups. Accordingly, these proponents of the Kurgan hypothesis hold that this invasion took place during the third wave of Kurgan expansion between 3000–2800 BCE, permanently ending the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture.” ref

“In his 1989 book In Search of the Indo-Europeans, Irish-American archaeologist J. P. Mallory, summarising the three existing theories concerning the end of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, mentions that archaeological findings in the region indicate Kurgan (i.e. Yamnaya culture) settlements in the eastern part of the Cucuteni–Trypillia area, co-existing for some time with those of the Cucuteni–Trypillia.” ref

“Artifacts from both cultures found within each of their respective archaeological settlement sites attest to an open trade in goods for a period, though he points out that the archaeological evidence clearly points to what he termed “a dark age,” its population seeking refuge in every direction except east. He cites evidence of the refugees having used caves, islands, and hilltops (abandoning in the process 600–700 settlements) to argue for the possibility of a gradual transformation rather than an armed onslaught bringing about cultural extinction.” ref

“The obvious issue with that theory is the limited common historical life-time between the Cucuteni–Trypillia (4800–3000 BCE) and the Yamnaya culture (3300–2600 BCE); given that the earliest archaeological findings of the Yamnaya culture are located in the Volga–Don basin, not in the Dniester and Dnieper area where the cultures came in touch, while the Yamnaya culture came to its full extension in the Pontic steppe at the earliest around 3000 BCE, the time the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture ended, thus indicating an extremely short survival after coming in contact with the Yamnaya culture. Another contradicting indication is that the kurgans that replaced the traditional horizontal graves in the area now contain human remains of a fairly diversified skeletal type approximately ten centimeters taller on average than the previous population.” ref

“In the 1990s and 2000s, another theory regarding the end of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture emerged based on a climatic change that took place at the end of their culture’s existence that is known as the Blytt–Sernander Sub-Boreal phase. Beginning around 3200 BCE, the earth’s climate became colder and drier than it had ever been since the end of the last Ice age, resulting in the worst drought in the history of Europe since the beginning of agriculture. The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture relied primarily on farming, which would have collapsed under these climatic conditions in a scenario similar to the Dust Bowl of the American Midwest in the 1930s.” ref

“According to The American Geographical Union,

The transition to today’s arid climate was not gradual, but occurred in two specific episodes. The first, which was less severe, occurred between 6,700 and 5,500 years ago. The second, which was brutal, lasted from 4,000 to 3,600 years ago. Summer temperatures increased sharply, and precipitation decreased, according to carbon-14 dating. According to that theory, the neighboring Yamnaya culture people were pastoralists, and were able to maintain their survival much more effectively in drought conditions. This has led some scholars to come to the conclusion that the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture ended not violently, but as a matter of survival, converting their economy from agriculture to pastoralism, and becoming integrated into the Yamnaya culture.” ref

“However, the Blytt–Sernander approach as a way to identify stages of technology in Europe with specific climate periods is an oversimplification not generally accepted. A conflict with that theoretical possibility is that during the warm Atlantic period, Denmark was occupied by Mesolithic cultures, rather than Neolithic, notwithstanding the climatic evidence. Moreover, the technology stages varied widely globally. To this must be added that the first period of the climate transformation ended 500 years before the end of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture and the second approximately 1400 years after.” ref

Dnieper–Donets culture

“David Anthony (2007) dated the beginning of the Dnieper-Donets culture, is roughly between 5800/5200 BCE. It quickly expanded in all directions, eventually absorbing all other local Neolithic groups. By 5200 BCE, the Dnieper-Donets culture II followed, which ended between 4400/4200 BCE. Note that the unsourced entry in the Ukrainian graphic contradicts both Telegin’s and Anthony’s chronology and geography.” ref

“The Dnieper–Donets culture (ca. 5th—4th millennium BCE) was a Mesolithic and later Neolithic culture which flourished north of the Black Sea ca. 5000-4200 BCE or 7,022-6,222 years ago. It has many parallels with the Samara culture, and was succeeded by the Sredny Stog culture. The Dnieper–Donets culture was distributed in the areas north of the Black Sea. Throughout its existence, rapid population growth and an expansion towards the steppe is noticeable.” ref

“There are parallels with the contemporaneous Samara culture to the north. Striking similarities with the Khvalynsk culture and the Sredny Stog culture have also been detected. A much larger horizon from the upper Vistula to the lower half of Dnieper to the mid-to-lower Volga has therefore been drawn. Influences from the Dnieper–Donets culture and the Sredny Stog culture on the Funnelbeaker culture have been detected. An origin of the Funnelbeaker culture from the Dnieper–Donets culture has been suggested, but this is very controversial.” ref

“The Dnieper–Donets culture was contemporary with the Bug–Dniester culture. It is clearly distinct from the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture. The Dnieper–Donets culture is known from more than 200 sites. Few settlements from the Dnieper–Donets culture are known, but a few semi-subterranean huts have been found. These huts were covered in bark. The presence of exotic goods in Dnieper-Donets graves indicates exchange relationships with the Caucasus.” ref

“The Dnieper–Donets culture was originally a hunter-gatherer culture. The economic evidence from the earliest stages is almost exclusively from hunting and fishing. Among the sources of food hunted and foraged by the Dnieper-Donets people were aurochs, elk, red deer, roe, wild boar, fox, wildcat, hare, bear, and onager. Their diet was primarily high protein, with meat, fish, and nuts being consumed.” ref

“From around 5200 BCE, the Dnieper-Donets people began keeping cattle, sheep, and goat. Other domestic animals kept included pig, horse and dog. During the following centuries, domestic animals from the Dnieper further and further east towards the Volga–Ural steppes, where they appeared ca. 4700-4600 BC. From about 4200 BCE, the Dnieper–Donets culture adopted agriculture. Domestic plants that have been recovered include millet, wheat, and pea. Evidence from skeletal remains suggests that plants were consumed.” ref

“The Dnieper–Donets culture is well known for about thirty of its cemeteries that have been discovered. These contain around 800 individuals. It is evident that funerals were complex events that had several phases. In later times the deceased in the Dnieper–Donets culture were sometimes buried individually. This shift has been suggested as evidence of a shift towards increasing individualism. Dnieper–Donets burials have been found near the settlement of Deriivka, which is associated with the Sredny Stog culture.” ref

“Burials are mostly in large pits where the deceased were periodically placed and covered with ocher. The deceased was typically exposed for a time before their bones were collected and buried. On other occasions, the ceased was buried in the flesh without exposure. Deceased Dnieper-Donets people sometimes had only their skulls buried, at other times the entire bodies. The variants of Dnieper-Donets burial often appear in the same pits. Animal bones has also been found in the graves.” ref

“Certain Dnieper-Donets burials are accompanied with copper, crystal, or porphyry ornaments, shell beads, bird-stone tubes, polished stone maces, or ornamental plaques made of boar’s tusk. The items, along with the presence of animal bones and sophisticated burial methods, appear to have been a symbol of power. Certain deceased children were buried with such items, which indicates that wealth was inherited in Dnieper-Donets society. Very similar boar-tusk plaques and copper ornament have been found at contemporary graves of the Samara culture in the middle Volga area. Maces of a different type than those of Dnieper-Donets have also been found. The wide adoption of such a status symbol attests to a change in the politics of power.” ref

“The Dnieper–Donets culture continued using Mesolithic technology, but later phases see the appearance of polished stone axes, later flint, and the disappearance of microliths. These tools were sometimes deposited in graves. Dnieper-Donets pottery was initially pointed-based, but in later phases, flat-based wares emerge. Their pottery is completely different from those made by the nearby Cucuteni–Trypillia culture. The importance of pottery appears to have increased throughout the existence of the Dnieper–Donets culture, which implies a more sedentary lifestyle.” ref

“The early use of typical point base pottery interrelates with other Mesolithic cultures that are peripheral to the expanse of the Neolithic farmer cultures. The special shape of this pottery has been related to transport by logboat in wetland areas. Especially related are Swifterbant in the Netherlands, Ellerbek and Ertebølle in Northern Germany and Scandinavia, “Ceramic Mesolithic” pottery of Belgium and Northern France (including non-Linear pottery such as La Hoguette, Bliquy, Villeneuve-Saint-Germain), the Roucadour culture in Southwest France and the river and lake areas of Northern Poland and Russia.” ref

“In accordance with the Kurgan hypothesis, J. Mallory (1997) suggested that the Dnieper-Donets people were Pre–Indo-European-speakers who were absorbed by Proto-Indo-Europeans expanding westwards from steppe-lands further east. David Anthony (2007) believes that the Dnieper-Donets people almost certainly spoke a different language from the people of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture.” ref

“The areas of the upper Dniester in which the Dnieper–Donets culture was situated have mostly Baltic river names. That and the close relationship between the Dnieper–Donets culture and contemporary cultures of northeast Europe have caused the Dnieper–Donets culture to be identified with the later Balts. The precise role of the culture and its language to the derivation of the Pontic-Caspian cultures, such as Sredny Stog and Yamnaya culture, is open to debate, but the display of recurrent traits points to longstanding mutual contacts or to underlying genetic relations.” ref

Dnieper–Donets culture Physical type

“The physical remains recovered from graves of the Dnieper–Donets culture have been classified as “Proto-Europoid“. They are predominantly characterized as late Cro-Magnons with large and more massive features than the gracile Mediterranean peoples of the Balkan Neolithic. Males averaged 172 cm in height, which is much taller than contemporary Neolithic populations.” ref

“Its rugged physical traits are thought to have genetically influenced later Indo-European peoples. Physical anthropologists have pointed out similarities in the physical type of the Dnieper-Donets people with the Mesolithic peoples of Northern Europe. The peoples of the neighboring Sredny Stog culture, which eventually succeeded the Dnieper–Donets culture, were of a more gracile appearance.” ref

Dnieper–Donets culture Genetics: Deriivka § Genetics

See also: Zvejnieki burial ground § Archaeogenetics, Iron Gates Mesolithic § Genetics, Motala § Archaeogenetics, Khvalynsk § Archaeogenetics, Samara culture § Genetics, Sredny Stog culture § Genetics, Khvalynsk culture § Genetics, Yamnaya culture § Archaeogenetics, Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer, Pitted Ware culture § Genetics, Kunda culture § Genetics, Narva culture § Genetics, and Pit–Comb Ware culture § Genetics

“Mathieson et al. (2018) analyzed 32 individuals from three Eneolithic cemeteries at Deriivka, Vilnyanka, and Vovnigi, which Anthony (2019a) ascribed to the Dnieper–Donets culture. These individuals belonged exclusively to the paternal haplogroups R and I (mostly R1b and I2), and almost exclusively to the maternal haplogroup U (mostly U5, U4, and U2). This suggests that the Dnieper-Donets people were “distinct, locally derived population” of mostly of Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) descent, with Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) admixture.” ref

“The WHG admixture appears to have increased in the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic. Unlike the Yamnaya culture, whose genetic cluster is known as Western Steppe Herder (WSH), in the Dnieper–Donets culture no Caucasian Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) or Early European Farmer (EEF) ancestry has been detected. At the Vilnyanka cemetery, all the males belong to the paternal haplogroup I, which is common among WHGs. David W. Anthony suggests that this influx of WHG ancestry might be the result of EEFs pushing WHGs out of their territories to the east, where WHG males might have mated with EHG females.” ref

“Dnieper-Donets males and Yamnaya males carry the same paternal haplogroups (R1b and I2a), suggesting that the CHG and EEF admixture among the Yamnaya came through EHG and WHG males mixing with EEF and CHG females. According to Anthony, this suggests that the Indo-European languages were initially spoken by EHGs living in Eastern Europe.” ref

Successors

“The Dnieper–Donets culture was succeeded by the Sredny Stog culture, its eastern neighbor, with whom it co-existed for a time before being finally absorbed. The Dnieper–Donets culture and the Sredny Stog culture were in turn succeeded by the Yamnaya culture. The Mikhaylovka culture, the Novodanilovka group, and the Kemi Oba culture displays evidence of continuity from the Dnieper–Donets culture.” ref

Mytheme

“In structuralism-influenced studies of mythology, a mytheme is a fundamental generic unit of narrative structure (typically involving a relationship between a character, an event, and a theme) from which myths are thought to be constructed—a minimal unit that is always found shared with other, related mythemes and reassembled in various ways (“bundled”) or linked in more complicated relationships. For example, the myths of Greek Adonis and Egyptian Osiris share several elements, leading some scholars to conclude that they share a source, i.e. images passed down in cultures or from one to another, being ascribed new interpretations of the action depicted, as well as new names in various readings of icons.” ref

“Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), who gave the term wide circulation, wrote, “If one wants to establish a parallel between structural linguistics and the structural analysis of myths, the correspondence is established, not between mytheme and word but between mytheme and phoneme.” The structuralist analyzer of folk tales, Vladimir Propp, treated the individual tale as the unit of analysis. The unitary mytheme, by contrast, is the equivalent in myth of the phonemes, morphemes, and sememes into which structural linguistics divides language, the smallest possible units of sound, structure, and meaning (respectively) within a language system.” ref

“In the 1950s Claude Lévi-Strauss first adapted this technique of language analysis to analytic myth criticism. In his work on the myth systems of primitive tribes, working from the analogy of language structure, he adopted the French term mythème, with the assertion that the system of meaning within mythic utterances parallels closely that of a language system. Roman Jakobson varies this idea, treating mythemes as concepts or phonemes which have no significance in themselves but whose significance might be shown by sociological analysis. Philosophers such as Daniel Dennett have also used the term “mytheme”. Lev Manovich uses the terms seme and mytheme in his book, The Language of New Media, to describe aspects of culture that computer images enter into dialog with.” ref

Aztec religion and Dogs

“Dogs had a major religious and symbolic significance to the Aztec peoples of central Mexico. Several ancient burial sites for dogs have been discovered in Mexico. Xolotl, an Aztec god of death, was depicted as a dog-headed monster.” ref

“In Aztec mythology, the Fourth Sun disappeared in a great flood. A man and a woman survived inside a log and were washed up upon a beach, where they promptly built a fire and roasted some fish. The smoke from the fire upset the stars Citlallatonac and Citlalicue, angering the great god Tezcatlipoca. In his fury, he severed their heads and stitched them onto their rears, creating the first dogs. Among the Aztecs, the god Xolotl was a monstrous dog. During the creation of the Fifth Sun, Xolotl was hunted by Death and escaped him by transforming himself first into a sprout of maize, then into maguey leaves, and finally as a salamander in a pool of water. The third time that Death found Xolotl, he trapped and killed him.” ref

“Three important foodstuffs were produced from the body of this mythological dog. Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Dead, had the bones of man in the underworld, kept over from the previous creations. Xolotl descended to the underworld to steal these bones so that man could be reborn in the new creation of the Fifth Sun. Xolotl managed to recover the bones and brought man to life by piercing his penis and bleeding upon them. Xolotl was seen as an incarnation of the planet Venus as the Evening Star (the Morning Star was his twin brother Quetzalcoatl). Xolotl was the canine companion of the Sun, following its path through both the sky and the underworld. Xolotl’s strong connection with the underworld, death, and the dead is demonstrated by the symbols he bore. In the Codex Borbonicus Xolotl is pictured with a knife in his mouth, a symbol of death, and has black wavy hair like the hair worn by the gods of death.” ref

“The fourteenth 13-day period of the tonalpohualli ritual calendar started with the day ce itzcuintli (1-dog) and people, especially rulers, were fated to be especially lucky if born on this day. The tenth day of the xiuhpohualli 20-day agricultural calendar, itzcuintli (dog), was governed by Mictlantecuhtli, the grim lord of the dead. In the Postclassic, when an Aztec commoner died he had to pass through each of the nine levels of Mictlan, the underworld. Mictlan was only reached after four years of wandering, accompanied by a dog that had been cremated with the deceased. The first level of Mictlan was called Apanoayan (where one crosses the river), this place was also known as Itzcuintlan (the Place of Dogs) because of the many dogs that roamed the near shore. A dog that recognised its former owner would carry him across the river on its back.” ref

“In some accounts, the dogs on the shore act differently according to their colour, yellow dogs would carry the soul of the deceased across the river, while white dogs refuse because they have just washed themselves and black dogs refuse because either they have just swum the river or because they are dirty. In Aztec folklore, the ahuizotl was a dog-like water monster with a hand on the end of its coiled tail. It was said to dwell underwater near river banks and would drag the unwary to a watery death. The victim’s soul would be carried off to Tlalocan, one of the three Aztec paradises. A similar belief existed among the neighbouring Purépechas, their dog-god was called Uitzimengari and he saved the souls of drowned people by carrying them across to the Land of the Dead.” ref

Dogs in Mesoamerican folklore and myth

“Dogs have occupied a powerful place in Mesoamerican folklore and myth since at least the Classic Period right through to modern times. A common belief across the Mesoamerican region is that a dog carries the newly deceased across a body of water in the afterlife. Dogs appear in underworld scenes painted on Maya pottery dating to the Classic Period and even earlier than this, in the Preclassic, the people of Chupícuaro buried dogs with the dead. In the great Classic Period metropolis of Teotihuacan, 14 human bodies were deposited in a cave, most of them children, together with the bodies of three dogs to guide them on their path to the underworld.” ref

“The Xoloitzcuintli is a hairless dog from Mesoamerica. Archaeological evidence has been found in the tombs of the Colima, Mayan, Toltec, Zapotec, and Aztec people dating the breed to over 3500 years ago. Long regarded as guardians and protectors, the indigenous peoples believed that the Xolo would safeguard the home from evil spirits as well as intruders. In ancient times the Xolos were often sacrificed and then buried with their owners to act as guide to the soul on its journey to the underworld. These dogs were considered a great delicacy, and were consumed for sacrificial ceremonies – including marriages and funerals. In many versions of the 20-day cycle of the Mesoamerican calendar, the tenth day bears the name dog. This is itzcuintli in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, tz’i’ in the K’iche’ Maya language and oc in Yucatec Maya. Among the Mixtecs, the tenth day was taken by the coyote, ua.” ref

“Maya burials from the Classic Period are frequently found with associated animal remains, often dogs. For example, in the ruins of the Classic Maya city of Kaminaljuyu in Guatemala, a dog was found interred with a sitting skeleton, along with grave goods offered to the deceased. The frequent finds of dog skeletons in Classic Maya burials confirms that the belief that dogs guided the souls of the departed on their journey into the underworld already existed at this time. The dog is sometimes depicted carrying a torch in the surviving Maya codices, which may be a reference to the Maya tradition that the dog brought fire to mankind.” ref

“In the Postclassic Popul Vuh of the K’iche’ Maya of highland Guatemala, dogs and turkeys killed the people of the second age in retaliation for the people beating them. The people who escaped this fate were transformed into monkeys. Another account in the Popol Vuh describes the Hero twins sacrificing a dog that belonged to the Lords of the Underworld, also known as Xibalba. After the dog was dead, the Hero Twins brought it back to life. The Lords were so impressed that they asked the twins to sacrifice and resurrect them. In the end, the Hero Twins sacrificed the Lords of Xibalba and did not follow through on bringing them back to life. This made it possible for humans to live on earth. The story linked dogs with renewal and human life. Dogs are associated with death and have the job of leading people into the Underworld. They represent fire and are protectors of the hearth, two components of Maya life.” ref

Chinese Tradition and Dogs

“The dog is one of the 12 animals honored in Chinese astrology. The second day of the Chinese New Year is considered to be the birthday of all dogs and Chinese people often take care to be kind to dogs on that day. In China, Korea, and Japan, dogs are viewed as kind protectors. Panhu is a dragon-dog who transformed into a man and married a princess.” ref

“The Dog (狗) is eleventh of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. The Year of the Dog is associated with the Earthly Branch symbol 戌. The character 狗, also refers to the actual animal while 戌, also refers to the zodiac animal.” ref

“For thousands of years, a twelve-year cycle named after various real or mythological animals has been used in Southeast Asia. This twelve-year cycle, sometimes referred to as the “Chinese zodiac,” associates each year in turn with a certain creature, in a fixed order of twelve animals, after which it returns to the first in the order, the Rat. The eleventh in the cycle is the Dog. One account is that the order of the beings-of-the-year is due to their order in a racing contest involving swimming across a river, in the Great Race. The reason for the Dog finishing the race second from last despite generally being a talented swimmer is explained as being due to its playful nature: the Dog played and frolicked along the way, thus delaying completing the course and reaching the finishing line.” ref

“The personalities of people born in Dog years are popularly supposed to share certain attributes associated with Dogs, such as loyalty or exuberance; however, this would be modified according to other considerations of Chinese astrology, such as the influences of the month, day and hour of birth, according to the traditional system of Earthly Branches, in which the zodiacal animals are also associated with the months and times of the day (and night), in twelve two-hour increments. The Hour of the Dog is 7 to 9 p.m. and the Dog is associated with the ninth lunar month.” ref

“Dogs are an important motif in Chinese mythology. These motifs include a particular dog which accompanies a hero, the dog as one of the twelve totem creatures for which years are named, a dog giving first provision of grain which allowed current agriculture, and claims of having a magical dog as an original ancestor in the case of certain ethnic groups.” ref

“There are various myths and legends in which various ethnic groups claimed or were claimed to have had a divine dog as a forebear, one of these is the story of Panhu. The legendary Chinese sovereign Di Ku has been said to have a dog named Panhu. Panhu helped him win a war by killing the enemy general and bringing him his head and ended up with marriage to the emperor’s daughter as a reward. The dog carried his bride to the mountainous region of the south, where they produced numerous progeny. Because of their self-identification as descendants from these original ancestors, Panhu has been worshiped by the Yao people and the She people, often as King Pan, and the eating of dog meat tabooed (Yang et al 2005, 52–53).” ref

“This ancestral myth is also has been found among the Miao people and Li people (Yang et al 2005, 100 and 180). An early documentary source for the Pan-hu origin myth is by the Jin dynasty (266–420) author Gan Bao, who records this origin myth for a southern (that is, south of the Yangzi River) ethnic group which he refers to as “Man” (蠻) (Mair October, 1998: 3-5 and note 3, 31–32).” ref

“One of the stock heroic supernatural beings with mighty martial prowess in Chinese culture is Erlang, a character in Journey to the West. Erlang has been said to have a dog. In the epic novel, Journey to the West Erlang’s dog helps him in his fight against the evolved-monkey hero, Sun Wukong, critically biting him on the leg. Later on in the story, Sun Wukong with Erlang (now both on the same side) and their companions-in-fight battle against a Nine-headed Insect monster, when, again, Erlang’s small hound comes to the rescue and defeats by biting off the monster’s retractable head, which popped in and out of its torso: the monster then flees, dripping blood, off into the unknown.” ref

“The author of the Journey to the West comments that this is the origin of the “nine-headed blood-dripping bird”, and that this trait was passed on to its descendant. Anthony C. Yu, editor and translator of Journey to the West associates this bird with the ts’ang kêng of Chinese mythology. The Tiangou (“Heavenly Dog”) has been said to resemble a black dog or meteor, which is thought to eat the sun or moon during an eclipse, unless frightened away. According to the myths of various ethnic groups, a dog provided humans with the first grain seeds enabling the seasonal cycle of planting, harvesting, and replanting staple agricultural products by saving some of the seed grains to replant, thus explaining the origin of domesticated cereal crops.” ref

“This myth is common to the Buyi, Gelao, Hani, Miao, Shui, Tibetan, Tujia, and Zhuang peoples. A version of this myth collected from ethnic Tibetan people in Sichuan tells that in ancient times grain was tall and bountiful, but that rather than being duly grateful for the plenty that people even used it for personal hygiene after defecation, which so angered the God of Heaven that he came down to earth to repossess it all. However, a dog grasped his pant leg, piteously crying, and so moving God of Heaven to leave a few seeds from each type of grain with the dog, thus providing the seed stock of today’s crops. Thus it is said that because humans owe their possession of grain seed stocks to a dog, people should share some of their food with dogs.” ref

“Another myth, of the Miao people, recounts the time of the distantly remote era when dogs had nine tails, until a dog went to steal grains from heaven, and lost eight of its tails to the weapons of the heavenly guards while making its escape, but bringing back grain seeds stuck onto its surviving tail. According to this, when Miao people hold their harvest celebration festival, the dogs are the first to be fed. The Zhuang and Gelao peoples have a similar myth explaining why it is that the ripe heads of grain stalks are curly, bushy, and bent – just so as is the tail of a dog.” ref

“Numerous statuary of Chinese guardian lions exist, which are often called “Fu Dogs” “Foo Dogs“, “Fu Lions“, “Fo Lions“, and “Lion Dogs“. Modern lions are not native in the area of China, except perhaps the extreme west; however, their existence was well known, and associated symbolism and ideas about lions were familiar; however, in China, artistic representations of lions tended to be dog-like. Indeed, “[t]he ‘lion’ which we see depicted in Chinese paintings and in sculpture bears little resemblance to the real animal, which, however, plays a big part in Chinese folklore.” The reasons for referencing “guardian lions” as “dogs” in Western cultures may be obscure, however, the phenomenon is well known.” ref

Ancient Beliefs and Dogs

“In ancient Mesopotamia, from the Old Babylonian period until the Neo-Babylonian, dogs were the symbol of Ninisina, the goddess of healing and medicine, and her worshippers frequently dedicated small models of seated dogs to her. In the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, dogs were used as emblems of magical protection. There is a temple in Isin, Mesopotamia, named é-ur-gi7-ra which translates as “dog house”. Enlilbani, a king from the Old Babylonian First Dynasty of Isin, commemorated the temple to the goddess Ninisina.” ref

“Although there is a small amount of detail known about it, there is enough information to confirm that a dog cult did exist in this area. Usually, dogs were only associated with the Gula cult, but there is some information, like Enlilbani’s commemoration, to suggest that dogs were also important to the cult of Ninisina, as Gula was another goddess who was closely associated to Ninisina. More than 30 dog burials, numerous dog sculptures, and dog drawings were discovered when the area around this Ninisina temple was excavated. In the Gula cult, the dog was used in oaths and was sometimes referred to as a divinity.” ref

“In Persian mythology, two four-eyed dogs guard the Chinvat Bridge. During archaeological diggings, the Ashkelon dog cemetery was discovered in the layer dating from when the city was part of the Persian Empire. It is believed the dogs may have had a sacred role – however, evidence for this is not conclusive.” ref

Hinduism and Dogs

Dogs in Hinduism

“In Hindu mythology, Yama, the god of death, owns two watchdogs who have four eyes. They are said to watch over the gates of Naraka. The hunter god Muthappan from the North Malabar region of Kerala has a hunting dog as his mount. Dogs are found in and out of the Muthappan Temple and offerings at the shrine take the form of bronze dog figurines. The dog (Shvan) is also the vahana or mount of the Hindu god Bhairava. Yudhishthira had approached heaven with his dog who was the god Yama himself, therefore among many Hindus, the common belief exists that caring for or adopting dogs can also pave the way to heaven. Dogs are also shown in the background in the iconography of Hindu deities like Dattatreya, many times dogs are also shown in the background in the iconography of deities like Khandoba. In Valmiki Ramayana there’s a tale about a dog receiving justice, passed by king Rama.” ref

Zoroastrianism and Dogs

“In Zoroastrianism, the dog is regarded as an especially beneficent, clean and righteous creature, which must be fed and taken care of. The dog is praised for the useful work it performs in the household, but it is also seen as having special spiritual virtues. Dogs are associated with Yama who guards the gates of afterlife with his dogs just like Hinduism. A dog’s gaze is considered to be purifying and to drive off daevas (demons). It is also believed to have a special connection with the afterlife: the Chinwad Bridge to Heaven is said to be guarded by dogs in Zoroastrian scripture, and dogs are traditionally fed in commemoration of the dead. Ihtiram-i sag, “respect for the dog”, is a common injunction among Iranian Zoroastrian villagers.” ref

“Detailed prescriptions for the appropriate treatment of dogs are found in the Vendidad (a subdivision of the Zoroastrian holy scripture Avesta), especially in chapters 13, 14 and 15, where harsh punishments are imposed for harm inflicted upon a dog and the faithful are required to assist dogs, both domestic and stray, in various ways; often, help or harm to a dog is equated with help and harm to a human. The killing of a dog (“a shepherd’s dog, or a house-dog, or a Vohunazga [i.e. stray] dog, or a trained dog”) is considered to lead to damnation in the afterlife. A homeowner is required to take care of a pregnant dog that lies near his home at least until the puppies are born (and in some cases until the puppies are old enough to take care of themselves, namely six months). If the homeowner does not help the dog and the puppies come to harm as a result, “he shall pay for it the penalty for wilful murder”, because “Atar (Fire), the son of Ahura Mazda, watches as well (over a pregnant dog) as he does over a woman”. It is also a major sin if a man harms a dog by giving it bones that are too hard and become stuck in its throat, or food that is too hot, so that it burns its throat.” ref 

“Giving bad food to a dog is as bad as serving bad food to a human. The believers are required to take care of a dog with a damaged sense of smell, to try to heal it “in the same manner as they would do for one of the faithful” and, if they fail, to tie it lest it should fall into a hole or a body of water and be harmed. Both according to the Vendidad and in traditional Zoroastrian practice, dogs are allotted some funerary ceremonies analogous to those of humans. In the Vendidad, it is stated that the spirits of a thousand deceased dogs are reincarnated in a single otter (“water dog”), hence the killing of an otter is a terrible crime that brings drought and famine upon the land and must be atoned either by the death of the killer or by the killer performing a very long list of deeds considered pious, including the healing of dogs, raising of puppies, paying of fines to priests, as well as killing of animals considered noxious and unholy (cats, rats, mice and various species of reptiles, amphibians, and insects).” ref

^“Sagdid is a funeral ceremony in which a dog is brought into the room where the body is lying so that it can look on it. “Sagdid” means “dog sight” in the Middle Persian language of Zoroastrian theological works. There are various spiritual benefits thought to be obtained by the ceremony. It is believed that the original purpose was to make certain that the person was really dead since the dog’s more acute senses would be able to detect signs of life that a human might miss. A “four-eyed” dog, that is one with two spots on its forehead, is preferred for sagdid. The traditional rites involving dogs have been under attack by reformist Zoroastrians since the mid-19th century, and they had abandoned them completely by the late 20th century. Even traditionalist Zoroastrians tend to restrict such rites to a significant extent nowadays (late 20th – early 21st century).” ref

Greek Mythology and Dogs

“Dogs were closely associated with Hecate in the Classical world. Dogs were sacred to Artemis and Ares. Cerberus is a three-headed, dragon-tailed watchdog who guards the gates of Hades. Laelaps was a dog in Greek mythology. When Zeus was a baby, a dog, known only as the “golden hound” was charged with protecting the future King of Gods. In Homer‘s epic poem the Odyssey, when the disguised Odysseus returns home after 20 years, he is recognized only by his faithful dog, Argos, who has been waiting all this time for his return.” ref

“Based on Greek mythology, three of the 88 constellations in Western astronomy also represent dogs:

• Canis Major (the Great Dog, whose brightest star, Sirius, is also called the Dog Star)
• Canis Minor (the Little Dog)
• Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs)” ref

Norse Beliefs and Dogs

“In Norse mythology, a bloody, four-eyed dog called Garmr guards Helheim. Also, Fenrir is a giant wolf who is a child of the Norse god Loki, who was foretold to kill Odin in the events of Ragnarok.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Proto-Indo-European mythology

Sumerian religion/ Mesopotamian mythology

Egyptian mythology

Greek mythology

Hindu mythology

Buddhist mythology

Hell and Underworld mythologies starting maybe as far back as 7,000 to 5,000 years ago with the Proto-Indo-Europeans?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

People don’t commonly teach religious history, even that of their own claimed religion. No, rather they teach a limited “pro their religion” history of their religion from a religious perspective favorable to the religion of choice.