Thread: The late 3rd millennium BC, was a time of huge upheaval in Iberia. The existing social structures collapsed...When the dust settled, around 2200BC, a new civilisation, known as El Argar culture, emerged in this area...
People of this culture built amazing hillforts, like the La Almoloya citadel...Which were at the time also built in Eastern Mediterranean (including Greece)...And nowhere in between...
They were metalworkers and warriors...Who were buried in single graves...Located under the floors of houses...Again feature of the cultures in Eastern Mediterranean (including Greece)...And nowhere in between, and nowhere else in Iberia...
Eventually they started burying their dead in pithoi (large grain jars)...Again feature of the cultures in Eastern Mediterranean (Greece)...And nowhere in between, and nowhere else in Iberia...
This is only possible if there was a direct maritime link between somehow culturally related groups of people in Greece and Southern Spain...We know that these kind of maritime links existed since Neolithic, so no surprises there...oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/07/neolit…
Halberds, the scull slicers I talked about in this thread, which seem to have been propagated through a maritime trade links going along Atlantic and North Mediterranean coast.
Interestingly, El Argar warriors (apparently) could have been either ruled by women, or there was a group of elite women who could have played some significant role in the society (priestesses)...
Archaeologists came to this conclusion based on the same type of diadems found on the heads of women buried in the El Algar culture graves with extremely rich burial offerings...
For instance, burial from La Almoloya, with remains of a man aged 35-40, and a woman aged 25-30, buried with over 30 prestigious objects, many of which were made or embellished with silver and almost all belonging to the female. Including the diadem...
Hmmm...Bronze Age warrior society with high status women...This sounds so Old Europe...
My favourite bit: El Algar culture marks the beginning of complete male genes replacement in Iberia. All males found in El Algar burials are R1b, Yamna related... science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
Sooo...You know the story about bad macho warrior Indo-Europeans who killed all the peaceful farmer Old-European, and replaced Neolithic matriarchate with Bronze Age patriarchate and ruined everything...Things were a bit more complicated than that, it seems...
But we already saw that Indo-European vs Old-European thing is pretty much dead and buried by genetic data...I talked about this here in my post about Lengyel vs Baden culture... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2021/10/so-ind…
So more reason to laugh at the whole Indo-European vs Old-European thingy. BTW, I started laughing here, in my post about Vinča warriors (Army figurine group from Stubline) oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2016/07/vinca-…
But the important thing for me, is that here again we have proof of long distance maritime links in Bronze Age, this time between Eastern Mediterranean and South Iberia...
Which is important when we know about Irish legends talking about Bronze age immigrants (the guys who brought R1b genes, metalwork, single cyst burials, bling...) arriving to Ireland using this maritime route...
I talked about the Irish oral histories and archaeology which seems to support them in oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/p/montenegrian…
See these gold discs with crosses? These ones are from the Balkans, dated first half of the 3rd mill. BC. They appear in Ireland in the second half of the 3rd mill. BC.
I have to apologise to everyone waiting for the continuation of my thread series about Apollo, Hermes and snakes, but I got distracted...🙂 Story of my life...
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Thread: The other day I posted this article and it went completely unnoticed??? In this thread I want to present the full analysis of all 4 sides of this sarcophagus. Honestly this is as cool an example of symbolic religious calendar art as they come.
First, I definitely don't think that these panels depict funerary rituals, which is the most common interpretation of the scene ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/agia-…
I think that they could be depicting religious rituals related to Proto Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon. The "two queens and the king" mentioned In the Mycenean Greek tablets dated 1400–1200 BC.
They are also a religious calendar closely linked to the climatic calendar.
Thread: Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilisation in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.
But no...
...Mead said that the first sign of civilisation in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die...
...You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal...
Thread: Have you ever heard of shepherd's stick calendars? Here's one from Bulgaria...
In the mountains of the Balkans, up until the end of the 20th century, shepherds carried with them calendar sticks...
It was a stick with a notch cut into it for every day of the year and a cross or some other symbol for major holy days, which in Serbia are all linked to major agricultural events and major solar cycle events...
At the end of every day a piece of the stick up to the first notch, representing the previous day, was cut off from the stick. When the last piece was cut, the year was over...
Thread (a quite long one, sorry, but I think worth reading to the end): A while back @another_barbara posted this 1865 beehive panel image with this description: An interesting Shrovetide tradition from Slovenija "babo žagajo" (sawing of an old woman)...
The other day wanted to write an article about this custom, and while looking around the net for more info on the subject, I came across 1960 paper by Niko Kuret "BABO ŽAGAJO, Slovenske oblike pozabljenega obredja in njegove Evropske paralele" etno-muzej.si/sl/etnolog/slo…
In which he presents all the different versions (he knew of) of the "SAWING OF THE OLD WOMAN" ritual found in Slovenian lands, and its European parallels...
Here I will translate the most interesting bits from this paper, and will then give my interpretation of the ritual...
Thread: The žirgeliai (little horses), are common motifs on Lithuanian rooftops, placed there for protection of the house...
They are a symbolic depiction of the Ašvieniai (), Baltic counterparts of Vedic Ashvins, who are said to pull the chariot of Saulė (the Sun Goddess) through the sky. As depicted on this rooftop of a house in Nida... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C5%A1vi…
Both names, Lithuanian ašva and Sanskrit ashva, mean "horse" and are derive from the same Proto-Indo-European root for the horse – *ek'w-...
Maruts came (to earth) along with Agni (fire) from above...
The other day I read a very interesting paper "Comets and meteoritic showers in the Rigveda and their significance" by R.N. Iyengar () academia.edu/7324390/COMETS…
Most Vedas interpreters agree that Maruts are deified moisture laden monsoon storm winds, turned into rain bringing deities armed with thunder and lightning. Even I agree with that and I even wrote a thread talking about this:
But, the Mysore Palace edition of the Rigveda, which gives in 36 volumes an exhaustive introduction, the text, traditional meaning, ritual application, grammatical explanation, and the Sanskrit commentary of Sâyan says that: Vâyu (winds) and Maruts are distinctly different...