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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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   Proto-Indo-European language

“Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE or its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from 4500 to 2500 BCE during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years.” ref

“According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. The Kurgan hypothesis, first put forward in 1956 by Marija Gimbutas, has become the most popular. It proposes that the original speakers of PIE were the Yamnaya culture associated with the kurgans (burial mounds) on the Pontic–Caspian steppe north of the Black Sea. According to the theory, they were nomadic pastoralists who domesticated the horse, which allowed them to migrate across Europe and Asia in wagons and chariots. By the early 3rd millennium BCE, they had expanded throughout the Pontic–Caspian steppe and into eastern Europe. Other theories include the Anatolian hypothesis, which posits that PIE spread out from Anatolia/Turkey with agriculture around 9000 BCE, the Armenian hypothesis, the Paleolithic continuity paradigm, and the indigenous Aryans theory.” ref

“The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has provided insight into the pastoral culture and patriarchal religion of its speakers. As speakers of Proto-Indo-European became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations, the regional dialects of Proto-Indo-European spoken by the various groups diverged, as each dialect underwent shifts in pronunciation (the Indo-European sound laws), morphology, and vocabulary. Over many centuries, these dialects transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. From there, further linguistic divergence led to the evolution of their current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages. Today, the descendant languages of PIE with the most native speakers are Spanish, English, Portuguese, Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu), Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, German, Persian, French, Marathi, Italian, and Gujarati.” ref

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

“Origins of ‘Transeurasian’ languages traced to Neolithic millet farmers. Research finds language family that includes modern Japanese, Korean and Turkish spread largely due to agriculture. 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). The findings illustrate how humankind’s embrace of agriculture after the ice age powered the dispersal of some of the world’s major language families. Millet was an important early crop as hunter-gatherers transitioned to an agricultural lifestyle.” ref

Did Indo-European Languages Stem From a Trans-Eurasian Original Language

by Xavier Rouard

“In my study, The Odyssey of Gauls and Slavs from North-Western India to Europe, I conclude, on the basis of linguistic, genetic and archaeological studies that the peopling of Europe took place from N-W India, Pakistan, Iran, the Caucasus, and Anatolia, creating a proto-Indo-Mediterranean culture. These studies give credit to the linguistic matches I found between Gaulish, Slavic, Dravidian, and Burushaski (250 Dravidian and 160 Burushaski words out of 500 Gaulish/Slavic words).” ref

“A study published in Science, Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family, also tends to strengthen this theory. It states that there are two competing hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European language family. The conventional view places the homeland in the Pontic steppes about 6000 years ago. An alternative hypothesis claims that these languages spread from Anatolia with the expansion of farming 8000 to 9500 years ago. Using Bayesian phylogeographic approaches, together with basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages to model the expansion of the family and test these hypotheses, this study concludes in a decisive support to an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin, as both the inferred timing and root location of the Indo-European language trees it with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8000 to 9500 years ago.” ref

“A map from this study clearly places the origin of Indo-Iranian languages between North-Western India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Caspian Sea, and Zagros, which would before the original homeland of Dravidian and Indo-European languages, and shows close links between Indo-Iranian, Caucasian, and Anatolian languages, which clearly plead for a formation of Indo-European languages in this region from before 8.000 BCE, according to the dates indicated in this study. This theory could be also attested by the interesting Burushaski language of Northern Pakistan which, according to Michael Witzel’sstudy Origin and Development of Language in South Asia: Phylogeny Versus Epigenetics? mixes features from Dravidian, Sanskrit, and Caucasian languages and shares the vigesimal numeration with Dravidian, Caucasian, and Basque (vimsati, twenty in Dravidian, could even have given vingt, twenty in French).” ref

“The interesting study of Simon Greenhill, The shape and tempo of language evolution, places Burushaski between Kannada (a Dravidian language), Hindi, Caucasian languages, and Basque, which also supports its archaic character. The Ukrainian archaeologist Iurii Mosenkis also underlines the links of Burushaski, which he considers as very archaic, with Sino-Caucasian and Indo-European languages as Armenian, Phrygian, and paleo-Balkan languages.” ref

“According to the recent study Rapid radiation of the inner Indo-European languages: an advanced approach to Indo-European lexicostatistics, these languages stem from an original Eurasian language, which included Samoyedic languages from Siberia and split between 18.000 and 8.000 BCE. A very interesting study of the University of Québec, Classification of the Indo-European languages using a phylogenetic network approach, underlines the close links between Celtic, Slavic, and Indo-Iranian languages, considering that this maybe the evidence of a much closer common ancestry between these families than generally thought, or of an intensive migration of the ancestors of the involved nations.” ref

“The timeframe set in these studies also its, besides the expansion of agriculture from Anatolia, with the development of megalithism, which expanded, according, in particular to the Ukrainian archaeologist Iurii Mosenkis, jointly with Dravidian religion and language, from Zagros (around 10.000 BCE) to Çatal Höyük (7.400-6.200 BCE), Vinča (6.000-4.000 BCE) and Gaul, where megalithism developed from around 5.000 BCE. It also is with genetic data from ancient DNA, which attest that 30% of the French genetic pool, mainly Anatolian and Basque, came at the Neolithic, as haplogroups Y-DNA H2, I-M170, and R1b, found from Iran, Anatolia, and the Balkans to Gaul and characteristic of megalithic DNA. The presence of DravidianhaplogroupsH2, as well as L-M20 (found in South CaucasusandSouthernEurope), attests of the Dravidian component of this Neolithic migration.” ref

“Another study, Global Picture of Genetic Relatedness and The Evolution of Humankind, published in Biology in 2020, underlines the major role of Central Eurasia (Central Asia, Iran, Caucasus) in the transmission of genes, the peoples which genes are the most diversified, as Uighurs, Azerbaijani, Uzbeks and Iranians, carrying roughly equal genetic contributions from the Middle East, Europe, China, and India.” ref

“As concerns Europeans, this study clearly shows that Neolithic migrations strongly modeled the European genome by bringing Middle-Eastern, and in particular Anatolian, genes (40%), in the same proportion as the genes of original hunter-gatherers (40%). Indian genes spread in decreasing proportion in Iran (20%), the Caucasus (14%), and Europe (5%). Arctic and Siberian genes mostly spread in North-Eastern Europe (15% against 5% elsewhere). Finally, African genes spread mostly in Southern Europe (10% in Spain and 7% in Italy). This study strengthens the theory of a major Neolithic migration from India and Central Asia to the Caucasus, Anatolia, and Europe by the Balkans and Northern Africa.” ref

“Central Asia, at the crossroad of these influences, appears as a very serious candidate original homeland of the ancestor of Indo-European, Dravidian, and Ibero-Caucasian languages, of which Burushaski, which could have come from Altay, bringing also Altaic linguistic elements, as well as haplogroups R1a and R1b, which originated from Southern Siberia and spread to Europe, would be an archaic remnant, as Kalasha, the archaic Indo-Aryan language of the Pamir. This spread is also corroborated by archaeological discoveries dating from the Gravettian in Altay, Pamir, and Uzbekistan, according to researchers as Marcel Otte, and this first migration brought haplogroup R1b in Italy (Villabruna, 14.000 BCE), in France (12.000 BCE), and in Serbia (11.000 BCE).” ref

“This major early migration for the peopling of Europe from Anatolia and the Caucasus is also corroborated by the study A major Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b Holocene era founder effect in Central and Western Europe, by Natalie Myreset al. The alleged Pamirian origin of haplogroup L-M20, carried by 15% by the Burushos and25%oftheKalash,foundintheCaucasus,butalsoinSouthernEurope,aswellasthePamirianorigin of Bulgarian genes, as according to a study of Slavyan Stoilov, and the proximity of the genes of Pamirian Tajiks and European genes according to Evelyne Heyer also plead in this direction. The presence of features of Pamirian languages in Thracian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Albanian, and Aromanian, the language of Vlachs, as bac, a sheepfold in Burushaski, bacijain Balkan languages, and zamiina, earth in Burushaski, close to zemlja, earth, reinforces this theory. It could explain that the name of Zalmoxis, Thracian Grand Priest considered as being at the origin of Druidism, would come from Dravidian.” ref

“The presence even in French of wordsclose to Burushaski linked to pastoralism and agriculture (terre, earth, close to ter, mountainpasture, bélier, ram, close to belis, ewe, lamb, bouc, he-goat, close to buc, he-goat, charrue, plow, close to har, plow, pomme, apple, close to phamol, fruit), family (maman, mother, close to mama, mother, papa, father, close to bapo, father), human body (cœur, heart, close to guru, heart, bouche, mouth, close to buk, throat), as well as feu, close to phu, servir, serve, closet ser, serve, je, I, close to je, I, also close to ja, I in Slavic, le, the, close to le, the, and to articles found in Balkan languages, and the presence in Gaulish, French, and Slavic of many Dravidian and Burushaski words quoted in this study, undoubtedly plead for a migration linked to the expansion of pastoralism and agriculture from Central Asia and the confines of India to the Caucasus, Anatolia, the Balkans, and Western Europe at the Neolithic.” ref

“This migration is attested by the arrival in France of goats carrying genes from Central Asia and Pakistan. It brought to Europe an archaic Euro-Asiaticlanguage, mixing features of the most archaic Indo-European languages of India and Anatolia, Dravidian, Elamite, Altaic, and Ibero-Caucasian languages, taking part in the formation of Indo-European languages, of which Burushaski, classified by the famous linguist Eric Hampas the most archaic Indo-European language linked to Indo-Hittite, is a remnant.” ref

“According to Csaba Barnabas Horvath’s study, How Eurasia was born, published by International relations quarterly, Burushaski was the first language spoken on the Iranian plateau, before being replaced by Elamo-Dravidian and later Indo-European. This tends to confirm the anteriority of Burushaski and the theory that this language, as well as Elamo-Dravidian, contributed to the formation of Indo-European languages. I will quote Rongxing Guo’s Chinese study Wadier: A New History of Civilizations -What do the Ancestral Voices and Glyphs Say? according to whom all ancient civilizations, Chinese, Indian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, European, but also American would stem from an ancestral civilization in which wadi and various variants as wan, meaning river, valley, forest, mountain, mother-earth, can be found with a religious connotation in numerous languages as Dravidian and Gaulish.” ref

“The root was can also be found in names of Gods as Dewa, Siwa, or Yahweh. Other words as mako, child, or mena, think, which can be found in many languages as Gaulish, could also come from this original language. As a conclusion, I can agree with Mel Copeland who, in his review of my paper below, underlines, on the basis of his paper Eurasian linguistic foundations, published on Academia, that the formation of Eurasian languages appears to have occurred on a stretch reaching from the Balkans to the Altaï mountains, together with the expansion of pastoralism, probably from at least 10.000 BCE.” ref

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Seeking the First Speakers of Indo-European Language

https://harvardmagazine.com/2022/08/indo-european-languages

“More than 5,000 years ago, Caucasus hunter-gatherers from the highlands between the Black and Caspian Seas traveled west to Anatolia and north to the steppe, splitting their Proto-Indo-European language into two branches. From the steppe, their Yamnaya horse-herder descendants spread their language and genes into daughter languages and cultures across Eurasia. Border colors indicate the geographic origins of five source populations before their migrations (shown by correspondingly colored arrows), while the pie charts show the post-migration admixtures in these regions. (2022).” ref

“A NEW STUDY OF ANCIENT DNA from 727 individuals who lived in the regions cradling the southern half of the Black Sea, and extending into the Levant and western Iran, narrows the hunt for the origins of Indo-European languages—spoken today as a first language by almost half the world’s population. The research also documents genetic homogenization and stability among the population of farmers living between about 15,000 and 7,000 years ago in what is now Turkey, sheds new light on how an early form of Indo-European language may have spread in ancient Greece, and reveals the surprising discovery that the ancestry of the population of Rome during the Imperial period was drawn principally from Anatolia. These findings are the result of a 206-person collaboration led by staff scientist Iosif Lazaridis of the David Reich lab at Harvard, and by Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg of the Reich lab and the Ron Pinhasi lab at the University of Vienna (Reich, a professor of genetics and of human evolutionary biology, and Pinhasi, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology, are co-senior authors of the three related studies published today in Science.) The group’s work more than doubles the amount of ancient DNA from this region, and extends Reich’s pioneering studies of early human origins forward into periods for which there start to be scattered historical records.” ref

“Indo-European languages are the first language of more than 3 billion people in Europe, across northern India, the Iranian plateau, and as far east as Siberia (and on other continents as a result of colonialism, including in the United States). Beginning almost 500 years ago, scholars began to notice similarities between languages such as Sanskrit and Latin, and as the field of linguistics matured, it became clear that hundreds of such languages were connected by common root words. But where and when did the original language arise, and who spoke it? Answering such questions has in the past been principally the work of archaeologists, linguists, and physical anthropologists. But more recently, as the analysis of ancient DNA has improved—aided by the 2015 discovery that DNA in the petrous bone of the inner ear can survive for millennia even in warm climates—geneticists, collaborating with experts in material culture and language, are making important contributions to the study of human history. (For a recent feature on the development of this science, see “Telling Humanity’s Story through DNA.”)” ref

“Among the startling discoveries of the past decade has been that Indo-European languages seem not to have been spread by Anatolian farmers living in what is now Turkey, as was commonly thought, but rather by horse-herding nomads who lived on the Eurasian steppe, a people called the Yamnaya. A host of linguistic evidence suggesting this possibility was first marshaled persuasively by archaeologist David Anthony in his 2007 book, The Horse, the Wheel and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppe Shaped the Modern World. “I made the right guesses,” says Anthony modestly, now working with Reich in retirement as an associate of the department of human evolutionary biology. In 2015, genetic evidence published by Reich and colleagues proved Anthony was on target. They showed that the Yamnaya spread more than language throughout Eurasia: beginning about 5,000 years ago, their genes began to appear everywhere from northern Europe to the Indian subcontinent.” ref

The new science data from a 206-person collaboration (2022) on the possible origins of proto-Indo-European that were addressed in the last video with a proposed origin in the general area of South Caucasus. “Stating that more than 5,000 years ago, Caucasus hunter-gatherers from the highlands between the Black and Caspian Seas traveled west to Anatolia and north to the steppe, splitting their Proto-Indo-European language into two branches.” https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2022/08/indo-european-languages

The South Caucasus, also known as Transcaucasia or the Transcaucasus, is a geographical region on the border of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, straddling the southern Caucasus Mountains. The South Caucasus roughly corresponds to modern Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, which are sometimes collectively known as the Caucasian States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Caucasus

It was a scientific DNA and migrations model that offered reasoned speculations that contradicted past held beliefs or speculations such as the Kurgan hypothesis (the previously reasoned speculation) That the Indo-European homeland may have been in the steppes of Ukraine and Russia, as speculated from DNA at the time (2015) stating back then that research seemed to suggest herders north of the Black Sea were early speakers of Proto-Indo-European, the ancient tongue that gave rise to hundreds of languages, including English which matched what is called the “Kurgan hypothesis.” https://www.science.org/content/article/mysterious-indo-european-homeland-may-have-been-steppes-ukraine-and-russia

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists.  PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE or 6,522-4,522 years ago, during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has provided insight into the pastoral culture and patriarchal (male-dominated power structure) religion of its speakers. The Pontic–Caspian steppe, stretching from the northern shores of the Black Sea to the northern area around the Caspian Sea. Mainly southern and eastern Ukraine, across to the Russian Northern Caucasus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontic%E2%80%93Caspian_steppe

But other scholars question the 206-person collaboration (2022) team’s conclusion about the origins of a different cultural shift, the spread of Indo-European languages. Nearly every language spoken in Europe today stems from a common root, shared with Indian languages. Researchers have for years traced it to the Bronze Age Yamnaya, who rode both east and west from the steppes which matchs what is called the “Kurgan hypothesis.” But the 206-person collaboration (2022) team of the new paper argues the Black Sea steppe “Kurgan hypothesis” wasn’t the birthplace of Indo-European, but rather a stop along a journey that began earlier and farther to the south, perhaps around modern-day Armenia. https://www.science.org/content/article/phenomenal-ancient-dna-data-set-provides-clues-origin-farming-early-languages

However, Guus Kroonen, a linguist at Leiden University, says this contradicts linguistic data. The early people of the Caucasus would have been familiar with farming, he says, but the deepest layers of Indo-European have just one word for grain and no words for legumes or the plow. Those speakers “weren’t very familiar with agriculture,” he says. “The linguistic evidence and the genetic evidence don’t seem to match.” Lazaridis says it’s possible the root tongue “was originally a hunter-gatherer language,” and so lacked terms for farming. The team agrees more evidence of “Proto-Indo-Anatolians” is needed, but says the Caucasus is a promising place to look. Throughout, the papers address some critiques of previous ancient DNA work. Some archaeologists have complained that earlier research attributed almost everything—status, identity, power shifts—to pulses of migration recorded in DNA. But the new papers acknowledge, for example, that some migrations into Anatolia may not have been relevant or even perceptible to those living at the time. “That’s a response to criticisms coming from the archaeological literature,” says Hartwick College archaeologist emeritus David Anthony, who is not a co-author but has worked with the team. “It’s really healthy.”  In another example, Yamnaya were buried in elite tombs after they moved into the region north of Greece, suggesting a link between ancestry and social status. But during the later Mycenaean period in Greece—the time Homer mythologized—the new data suggest Yamnaya descendants had little impact on Greek social structure. Some archaeologists still think the papers claim too much influence for ancestry. “DNA cannot tell us anything about how people shape their life worlds, what their social status was,” says archaeologist Joseph Maran of Heidelberg University. He says terms like “Yamnaya ancestry” suggest the Yamnaya spread by moving directly from place to place, rather than through a complex mingling of their descendants with local populations over centuries or more. “Equating history with ‘mobility’ and ‘migrations’ is … old-fashioned.”

https://www.science.org/content/article/phenomenal-ancient-dna-data-set-provides-clues-origin-farming-early-languages

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Proto-Indo-European (PIE)

https://scientificamerican.com/article/new-evidence-fuels-debate-over-the-origin-of-modern-languages/

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Kurgan hypothesis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan_hypothesis

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Anatolian hypothesis

https://slideplayer.com/slide/9061981/

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Anatolian hypothesis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolian_hypothesis

Indo-European Languages Originated From Anatolia?

https://scitechdaily.com/disease-mapping-methods-indicate-that-indo-european-languages-originated-from-anatolia/

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Research Shows Indo-European Languages Originated in Turkey (2012)

“The Indo-European languages belong to one of the widest spread language families of the world. For the last two millennia, many of these languages have been written, and their history is relatively clear. But controversy remains about the time and place of the origins of the family. The majority view in historical linguistics is that the homeland of Indo-European is located in the Pontic steppes – present-day Ukraine – around 6,000 years ago. The evidence for this comes from linguistic paleontology: in particular, certain words to do with the technology of wheeled vehicles are arguably present across all the branches of the Indo-European family; and archaeology tells us that wheeled vehicles arose no earlier than this date. The minority view links the origins of Indo-European with the spread of farming from Anatolia 8,000-9,500 years ago. The team’s innovative Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of Indo-European linguistic and spatial data, including basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages, decisively supports this theory. The linguists report their results in a paper in the journal Science.” ref

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Indo-European Languages

https://scitechdaily.com/disease-mapping-methods-indicate-that-indo-european-languages-originated-from-anatolia/

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Proto-Indo-European (PIE)

https://scientificamerican.com/article/new-evidence-fuels-debate-over-the-origin-of-modern-languages/

Caspian Sea

https://researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-the-Caspian-Sea-and-surrounding-countries-modified-from-an-original-map-provided_fig1_313864880

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

Ancient Human Genomes…Present-Day Europeans – Johannes Krause (Video)

Ancient North Eurasian (ANE)

Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG)

Western Hunter-Gatherers (WHG)

Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer (SHG)

Early European Farmers (EEF)

A quick look at the Genetic history of Europe

“The most significant recent dispersal of modern humans from Africa gave rise to an undifferentiated “non-African” lineage by some 70,000-50,000 years ago. By about 50–40 ka a basal West Eurasian lineage had emerged, as had a separate East Asian lineage. Both basal East and West Eurasians acquired Neanderthal admixture in Europe and Asia. European early modern humans (EEMH) lineages between 40,000-26,000 years ago (Aurignacian) were still part of a large Western Eurasian “meta-population”, related to Central and Western Asian populations. Divergence into genetically distinct sub-populations within Western Eurasia is a result of increased selection pressure and founder effects during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, Gravettian). By the end of the LGM, after 20,000 years ago, A Western European lineage, dubbed West European Hunter-Gatherer (WHG) emerges from the Solutrean refugium during the European Mesolithic. These Mesolithic hunter-gatherer cultures are substantially replaced in the Neolithic Revolution by the arrival of Early European Farmers (EEF) lineages derived from Mesolithic populations of West Asia (Anatolia and the Caucasus). In the European Bronze Age, there were again substantial population replacements in parts of Europe by the intrusion of Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) lineages from the Pontic–Caspian steppes. These Bronze Age population replacements are associated with the Beaker culture archaeologically and with the Indo-European expansion linguistically.” ref 

“As a result of the population movements during the Mesolithic to Bronze Age, modern European populations are distinguished by differences in WHG, EEF, and ANE ancestry. Admixture rates varied geographically; in the late Neolithic, WHG ancestry in farmers in Hungary was at around 10%, in Germany around 25%, and in Iberia as high as 50%. The contribution of EEF is more significant in Mediterranean Europe, and declines towards northern and northeastern Europe, where WHG ancestry is stronger; the Sardinians are considered to be the closest European group to the population of the EEF. ANE ancestry is found throughout Europe, with a maximum of about 20% found in Baltic people and Finns. Ethnogenesis of the modern ethnic groups of Europe in the historical period is associated with numerous admixture events, primarily those associated with the Roman, Germanic, Norse, Slavic, Berber, Arab and Turkish expansions. Research into the genetic history of Europe became possible in the second half of the 20th century, but did not yield results with a high resolution before the 1990s. In the 1990s, preliminary results became possible, but they remained mostly limited to studies of mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal lineages. Autosomal DNA became more easily accessible in the 2000s, and since the mid-2010s, results of previously unattainable resolution, many of them based on full-genome analysis of ancient DNA, have been published at an accelerated pace.” ref

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“Main migratory and trade movements in Eurasia since the Neolithic. The nomadic mongoloid Xiongnu people established their first empire in the Northern regions of Mongolia between 209 BCE and 93 CE to migrate thereafter to Central Europe, where they mingled.” ref

“Asian varieties of millet made their way from China to the Black Sea region of Europe by 5000 BCE or 7,000 years ago.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millet

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

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

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

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“Altaic (also called Transeurasian) is a proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are currently scattered over most of Asia north of 35 °N and in some eastern parts of Europe, extending in longitude from Turkey to Japan. The group is named after the Altai mountain range in the center of Asia.” ref

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Tracing population movements in ancient East Asia through the linguistics and archaeology of textile production – 2020

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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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Ancient North Eurasians ancestors are closely related to the Yamnaya culture

“The Yamnaya culture, also known as the Yamnaya Horizon, Yamna culture, Pit Grave culture, or Ochre Grave culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BCE. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition (yamnaya) a Russian adjective that means ‘related to pits (yama)’, as these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers. The people of the Yamnaya culture were likely the result of a genetic admixture between the descendants of Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers (EHG) and people related to hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus (CHG), an ancestral component which is often named “Steppe ancestry”, with additional admixture of up to 18% from Early European Farmers. Their material culture was very similar to the Afanasevo culture, and the populations of both cultures are genetically indistinguishable.” ref

“They lived primarily as nomads, with a chiefdom system and wheeled carts and wagons that allowed them to manage large herds. The people of the Yamnaya culture are also closely connected to Final Neolithic cultures, which later spread throughout Europe and Central Asia, especially the Corded Ware people and the Bell Beaker culture, as well as the peoples of the Sintashta, Andronovo, and Srubnaya cultures. Back migration from Corded Ware also contributed to Sintashta and Andronovo. In these groups, several aspects of the Yamnaya culture are present. Genetic studies have also indicated that these populations derived large parts of their ancestry from the steppes. The Yamnaya culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans, and the Pontic-Caspian steppe is the strongest candidate for the Urheimat (original homeland) of the Proto-Indo-European language.” ref

“According to Jones et al. (2015) and Haak et al. (2015), autosomal tests indicate that the Yamnaya people were the result of a genetic admixture between two different hunter-gatherer populations: distinctive “Eastern Hunter-Gatherers” (EHG), from Eastern Europe, with high affinity to the Mal’ta–Buret’ culture or other, closely related people from Siberia and a population of “Caucasus hunter-gatherers” (CHG) who probably arrived from the Caucasus or Iran. Each of those two populations contributed about half the Yamnaya DNA. This admixture is referred to in archaeogenetics as Western Steppe Herder (WSH) ancestry. Admixture between EHGs and CHGs is believed to have occurred on the eastern Pontic-Caspian steppe starting around 5,000 BCE, while admixture with Early European Farmers (EEF) happened in the southern parts of the Pontic-Caspian steppe sometime later.” ref

“As Yamnaya Y-DNA is exclusively of the EHG and WHG type, displaying genetic continuity from the paternal lineages of the Dnieper-Donets culture, the admixture appears to have occurred predominantly between EHG males, and CHG and EEF females. Haplogroup R1b, especially subclades of R1b-M269, is the most common Y-DNA haplogroup found among both the Yamnaya and modern-day Western Europeans. Additionally, a minority are found to belong to haplogroup I2. They are found to belong to a wider variety of mtDNA haplogroups, including U, T, and haplogroups associated with Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers and Early European Farmers.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“Migration from Siberia behind the formation of Göbeklitepe: Expert states. People who migrated from Siberia formed the Göbeklitepe, and those in Göbeklitepe migrated in five other ways to spread to the world, said experts about the 12,000-year-old Neolithic archaeological site in the southwestern province of Şanlıurfa.“ The upper paleolithic migrations between Siberia and the Near East is a process that has been confirmed by material culture documents,” he said.” ref

“Semih Güneri, a retired professor from Caucasia and Central Asia Archaeology Research Center of Dokuz Eylül University, and his colleague, Professor Ekaterine Lipnina, presented the Siberia-Göbeklitepe hypothesis they have developed in recent years at the congress held in Istanbul between June 11 and 13. There was a migration that started from Siberia 30,000 years ago and spread to all of Asia and then to Eastern and Northern Europe, Güneri said at the international congress.” ref

“The relationship of Göbeklitepe high culture with the carriers of Siberian microblade stone tool technology is no longer a secret,” he said while emphasizing that the most important branch of the migrations extended to the Near East. “The results of the genetic analyzes of Iraq’s Zagros region confirm the traces of the Siberian/North Asian indigenous people, who arrived at Zagros via the Central Asian mountainous corridor and met with the Göbeklitepe culture via Northern Iraq,” he added.” ref

“Emphasizing that the stone tool technology was transported approximately 7,000 kilometers from east to west, he said, “It is not clear whether this technology is transmitted directly to long distances by people speaking the Turkish language at the earliest, or it travels this long-distance through using way stations.” According to the archaeological documents, it is known that the Siberian people had reached the Zagros region, he said. “There seems to be a relationship between Siberian hunter-gatherers and native Zagros hunter-gatherers,” Güneri said, adding that the results of genetic studies show that Siberian people reached as far as the Zagros.” ref

“There were three waves of migration of Turkish tribes from the Southern Siberia to Europe,” said Osman Karatay, a professor from Ege University. He added that most of the groups in the third wave, which took place between 2600-2400 BCE, assimilated and entered the Germanic tribes and that there was a genetic kinship between their tribes and the Turks. The professor also pointed out that there are indications that there is a technology and tool transfer from Siberia to the Göbeklitepe region and that it is not known whether people came, and if any, whether they were Turkish.” ref

“Around 12,000 years ago, there would be no ‘Turks’ as we know it today. However, there may have been tribes that we could call our ‘common ancestors,’” he added. “Talking about 30,000 years ago, it is impossible to identify and classify nations in today’s terms,” said Murat Öztürk, associate professor from İnönü University. He also said that it is not possible to determine who came to where during the migrations that were accepted to have been made thousands of years ago from Siberia. On the other hand, Mehmet Özdoğan, an academic from Istanbul University, has an idea of where “the people of Göbeklitepe migrated to.” ref

“According to Özdoğan, “the people of Göbeklitepe turned into farmers, and they could not stand the pressure of the overwhelming clergy and started to migrate to five ways.” “Migrations take place primarily in groups. One of the five routes extends to the Caucasus, another from Iran to Central Asia, the Mediterranean coast to Spain, Thrace and [the northwestern province of] Kırklareli to Europe and England, and one route is to Istanbul via [Istanbul’s neighboring province of] Sakarya and stops,” Özdoğan said. In a very short time after the migration of farmers in Göbeklitepe, 300 settlements were established only around northern Greece, Bulgaria, and Thrace. “Those who remained in Göbeklitepe pulled the trigger of Mesopotamian civilization in the following periods, and those who migrated to Mesopotamia started irrigated agriculture before the Sumerians,” he said.” 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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey 

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

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

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

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

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

Tutelary deity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:

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

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref

Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref

Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref

Sikhism around 548–478 years old. ref

Bahá’í around 200–125 years old. ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

The “Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries”

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

Why Does Power Bring Responsibility?

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

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

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

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

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

The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist (YouTube)

Cory Johnston: Mind of a Skeptical Leftist @Skepticallefty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Thought on the Evolution of Gods?

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

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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

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

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