Elk staffs

This is an Elk-head staffs found in a grave in the Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov cemetery, one of the largest Early Holocene cemeteries in northern Eurasia, located in Karelia, northwest Russia...

A new radiocarbon dating, taking into account a correction for freshwater reservoir effects, suggests that the cemetery was even older than previously thought, and was used for some 100–300 years, centring on ca. 8250 to 8000 cal BP...

Around 30 elk head shaped staffs have been found from burials and settlement layers across a widespread area, extending from the Baltic region to the Urals...The map of sites where these artefacts were found...

These staffs made of antler were in use for a considerably long period from the Late Mesolithic to the Early Metal Period, and depictions of elk‐head staffs are also known from rock art sites...Like these from Alta, Norway...

All scholars seem to agree that the staffs belonged to mature individuals (especially of male gender) and that the staffs were used for some kind of ritual purpose...But the jury is still out on what that purpose exactly was...

Sources

Elk-head staffs from Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov and their widespread counterparts: old finds, new outlooks

Radiocarbon dating from Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov cemetery reveals complex human responses to socio-ecological stress during the 8.2 ka cooling event

Elk-head staffs in prehistoric north-easterneurope and north-western russia –signs of powerand prestige?

Monkey from the Erin forest

Babylonian baked clay tablet found in Iraq and dated to 2000-1600 BC. It depicts a man, with an assistant kneeling behind him, shooting with a composite bow at a monkey sitting in a tree. On the right, is a wild boar facing the base of the tree. Interesting. Here is why:

Monkeys are often depicted on Sumerian clay plaques. Like this one from Ur III (2200-2100BC), depicting a monkey wallah, a performer who trains monkeys to dance or perform tricks for an audience...

One of the most interesting things about this plaque is that on all of them a monkey is playing the flute, something it would not be likely to do in real life...

According to this paper "More Monkey Business" by Carole Mendleson, this may illustrate a fable, now lost, perhaps Elamite, perhaps Indian or perhaps even Sumerian...

Further on, the paper also says that monkeys and a word for monkeys came to Mesopotamia from Indian via Elam (Iran) during the Ur III period...

And that originally "monkey" was used as a derogatory term for Elamites. When describing an Elamite incursion, a Sumerian text states that "monkeys descended from their mountain", meaning they came from the east, from Elam, Iran...

So monkeys and a word for monkeys came to Mesopotamia from Elam (Iran) during the Ur III period...

And originally "monkey" was used as a derogatory term for Elamites. When describing an Elamite incursion, a Sumerian text states that "monkeys descended from their mountain", meaning they came from the east, from Elam, Iran...

Is it because Elam was "The land of the monkeys" figuratively but also literally? Did monkeys live in the forests of Elam during the 3rd millennium BC?

I think so. 

Ever heard of a mythical Erin forest?

My friend!  We have reduced the forest to a wasteland...How shall we answer God Enlil in Nippur?

Enkidu talking to Gilgamesh, after they have killed Humbaba, the guardian of the Erin forest, and have cut all the trees down...

I while ago I wrote this article "Humbaba" about the identity of Humbaba, the guardian of the Erin forest. I postulated that Humbaba (left) was a deified tiger who once lived in this forest...

Based on the known tiger habitats and where they intersect with Euphrates river, I proposed that the original location of the Erin forest was in Armenian highlands...

After they have cut the Erin trees down, Gilgamesh and Enkidu and their men lashed the trees together into rafts to transport them down the Euphrates river back to Nipur...

Rafts? Like this? Cool...

Then later, new data I found, suggested I might have been wrong about the Erin forest location. It looks like tigers once lived in Elam, Iran, and it is therefore possible that the mythical forest might have been located there:

How far south in Iran did tigers live during Neolithic...This article, "Tigers tigers everywhere", asks his question...And few others...

A Neo Assyrian tablet currently in the Museum of Suleimaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan, contains a passage from the Gilgamesh Epic with the description of the Erin Forest, which is the most detailed description of nature and its soundscape in the literature of Mesopotamia...

And guess what, the description, published in this paper, contains the following lines:

The Erin Forest had monkeys living in its trees. And Elam was the monkey land...

Sooo...

The monkey hunt tablet could actually be describing an actual monkey hunt in the Erin forest...

And so the two men could be Enkidu and Gilgamesh...

Cool, right?

But this tablet is also interesting from the animal calendar markers point of view.

"Now seriously, why do you always think about animal calendar markers when you see depictions of animals?" I can hear you say. "Couldn't this be just a depiction of a hunting scene?"

Of course it could. But hear me out.

If the forest was indeed located in Elam, then the monkey has to be macaque, the only species that once lived in "areas with cold winters"...

And in the areas with cold winters macaque mating season starts in Oct/Nov...

Ok, so? Question: why did the maker of this tabled decide to depict a wild boar, just casually standing under the monkey tree? Considering that wild boar mating season is also starts in Oct/Nov?

This could of course be just a random choice of animals.  But look at this: This is the climatic year in Iraq/Iran.

The rains arrive in Oct/Nov, when macaques and wild boar start to mate, making both of them animal calendar markers for the rain season...

I talked about wild boar, archer and rain in my post "Achaemenid lion boar seal", where I give symbolic analysis of this Achaemenid cylinder seal, found in Iran and dated to the 6th–4th century BC is currently kept in the Met Museum...

BTW, in Iraq/Iran, the beginning of the rain (cool, wet) season that ends (kills) sun (hot, dry) season, coincides with the Orionid meteor shower...

Just before the rains arrive to Mesopotamia, the rains that end the drought, the arrows start shooting from the sky announcing the arrival of the Sky/Rain god, the great archer...I talked about this in my post "The invisible archer"...

Hence archer? And monkey and boar? But who knows. I am just putting it all out there, and you can decide for yourself. We'll never know.

I want to thank @NkayaMuhittin for posting the picture and the info about this tablet. Great account worth following if you like archaeology...

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

PPN Snake calendar marker

About (one of two) earliest animal calendar markers for the grain harvest season: snake, depicted here on the pillar 22 from enclosure D, found in PPN site Göbekli Tepe, Turkey, and dated to 11th - 10th c. BC...

So where do I start? With a snake of course...

Snake is a pure solar animal. It is in our world when sun is here (day, hot half of the year) and it is in the underworld when sun is there (night, cold half of the year)...

I talked about snake as the solar symbol in many of my posts...

This is why on this 3rd - 2nd mill BC decorated standing stone we see Sun god and his favourite pet animals, snakes...

Early Bronze Age Okunev culture which flourished in the Minusinsk Basin on the middle and upper Yenisei, Siberia, Russia. More details can be found in this article...

And why on this 3rd mill BC, Bactrian seal, we see the sun god (see heat rays found on Utu/Shamash depictions emanating from his shoulders) holding snakes, symbols of sun's heat...I talked about this in my post "Nude winged hero dominating snakes"...

The fact that snakes need sun's heat to function and are only out when it's hot, made snakes ideal symbol of sun's heat...Which causes drought...

The Luwian Storm-God kills a Dragon. Or is it a Snake. Knowing that dragon (symbol of extreme sun's heat) is just an old snake (symbol of sun't heat), it really makes no difference. Analysis of the scene depicted on this image can be found in my post "Malatya relief"...

I also talk about snakes and dragons and sun's heat and drought in my post "Letnitsa treasure" about the metal plaques the famous Thracian Letnitsa treasure, dated to the first half of the 4th c. BC, which depict a lot of common motifs from Balkan (and not just Balkan) Slavic fairy tales...Like this one depicting a princess being abducted by a three headed dragon with snake heads...

This is also why 3rd mill BC Mesopotamian dragon has lion body (Jul/Aug, Leo is the hottest time of the year) and seven snake heads (one for each hot month of Mesopotamian summer)...Analysis of this seal dated to 2200 BC can be found in my post "Seven headed dragon"

BTW, the same scene depicted on this Mesopotamian seal is also depicted here: the Woman of the Apocalypse, described in Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation. I give full symbolic analysis of this text in my post "Apocalypse"...

Anyway, back to the PPN Anatolia and its obsession with snakes. I already talked about snake as an animal calendar marker in PPN Anatolia in my post "Goat and snake from Kortik Tepe" from 2022 about these two objects from the 10,000BC  Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site Körtik Tepe, Turkey... 

Interestingly, the mating season of Goats marks the start of the wet season and the mating season of Snakes marks the start of dry season in the Körtik Tepe area...

What I proposed was that these two plaques depict: 

The start of the mating season of ibex goats (Oct/Nov)

the start of the mating season of viper snakes (Apr/May) 

in Western Asia...

These two events divide the solar year in this part of the world into hot, dry season (Apr/May - Oct/Nov) and cool, wet season (Oct/Nov - Apr/May)...

Symbolically, this wet/dry division of the solar year is depicted as "Eternal struggle between goat and snake"...on this stamp seal from Tepe Giyan, Iran, dated to 5000-4000 BC...I talked about this in my post "Master of animals from Tepe Giyan"...

The wet season could have actually been depicted by this "Mythical animal" found depicted on many tablets found in Körtik Tepe. I talked about this in my post  "Mythical animal from Kortik Tepe"... 

Now, check the Enclosure D, pillar 22 again. See the snake heads triangular shape? That's the shape of viper head...

So we know that PPN people specifically depicted vipers and that these stylised depictions of snakes with "arrow heads" from Tell Qaramel are also vipers...

Also, see how vipers get entangled during their mating "dance"? 

Is this what all the "X crossed snakes" depictions, like this one from a Körtik Tepe stone vessel, mean? Viper mating season? I think so...

So...What does this have to do with grain?

The other day I came across this image: a plaquette "bearing iconographic symbolism from Göbekli Tepe"...With no explanation what this symbolism is...

But I knew straight away what I was looking at: ear of grain between two snakes (meaning during the mating of the snakes)...

Look at this: Left is the Göbekli Tepe symbol, middle is Sumerian symbol for grain and the symbol used with the meaning "grain" since neolithic in the Balkans, Levant, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Iran...

I talked about this symbol in my post "The oldest Demeter depiction" about the oldest depiction of Demeter, the Greek Mother of Grain? Which I believe to be this symbol which is 4500-4200 years old.

And which is depicted on one the Early Cycladic "Frying Pans" found on Cycladic islands in Greece and dated to the second half of the 3rd mill BC...

I also talked about the symbol for grain in my post "Mother of grain from Mari" about this alabaster stele [my comment: depicting the Mother of Grain], which was presented in 2012 catalog of the Phoenix Ancient Art, as a cult plaque originating from the Near East and dating from the beginning of the third millennium BC...Which depicts the same vulva surrounded by grain symbol...

I then I came across this paper and in it I saw this: Tell Qaramel shaft-straightener with the depiction of two snakes between two grain symbols. 

Please note that snakes here have X shaped heads. Symbol for "when snakes mate"? I think so...

So my hunch was right. The chevrons symbol was indeed stylised grain symbol.

Ok, but what is the link between viper snakes mating season and the grain harvest season?

Well, In fertile crescent, they both start in Apr/May...

The PPN people were hunter gatherers who by pure fluke were living in the area where wild barley, emmer and einkorn wheat and rye grew in huge quantities, covering sides of hills around their settlements...You can find more info in this paper...

Wild barley

Wild emer

Wild einkorn

Wild rye

These wild grains were all annual winter grains, meaning they all sprouted in Oct/Nov after the first rains, grew over the winter and spring, and ripened during the summer after which they could be harvested...

Harvesting was done by pulling, breaking, cutting the ripe ears with stone blade sickles off the stalks. You can read about it in this paper.

Based on the experimental results, all the above techniques will cause the ears to shatter and a lot of seeds to fall on the ground...

So the authors of this paper suggest that much more efficient way of harvesting wild cereals, and the one most likely used by the PPN people was to wait for the ripe seeds to fall on ground, and then to collect them from the ground...

Both sets of authors say that the wild cereal harvest in the fertile crescent started in Apr/May.

The first to ripen was barley (starting Apr/May) and then wheat and rye (starting Jul/Aug).

So basically grain harvest started "from the time when viper snakes start mating"...

Here is one more interesting thing. In Turkish part of fertile crescent snakes come out of brumation and into our world in Mar/Apr, just before the start of grain harvest and go back to brumation and out of our world in Oct/Nov, just after the end of grain harvest...

So grain seeds were continuously collected "from the time when snakes started mating and all the while snakes were in the grain grass"...Symbolically, you could depict this like this...

This is another Tell Qaramel shaft-straightener depicting on the left two pair of snakes meeting (usual symbolic depiction of mating), while on the right we see ear of grain growing out of the snake mouth...

Remember what I said "Mythology is a result of people being very good at noticing patterns in nature and very bad at distinguishing between correlation and causation"...

Did the PPN people somehow start believing that snakes, which they came across in the wild grain fields during the harvest time, somehow influenced ripening of the wild grains? I could bet they did...

This image is from this paper and depicts grain growing out of snakes. This article also fails to put forward any explanation for this, and fails to even identify the symbol for grain...

This probably lead to some kind of deification of a snake into a snake god of sort, to whom they prayed for good harvest...And for not being bitten and killed by the "guardians of the grain"...

Something like this:

You've got something crawling on the back of your head...Nevalı Çori, south-eastern Turkey, head with snake; limestone. Şanlıurfa Müzesi. Early to Middle PPNB. Photo courtesy of Euphrat-Archiv, Berlin-Heidelberg...

BTW, remember the stacked chevrons symbol meaning grain. The chevron could just be stylised depiction of V shaped einkorn wheat spikes which is what they look like when the ears shatter and the seed spikes fall to the ground...Einkorn was the first grain to be domesticated...

Oh, and remember that the wild grain seeds which fell to the ground after Apr/May after the last rains, or as the PPN dudes would say "after viper snakes start to mate" sprouted in Oct/Nov after the first rains, or as the PPN dudes would say "after ibex goats start to mate"...

So if you were a PPN hunter gatherer who has just figured this out and is starting to plant some of the seeds that he has gathered, the best time for planting these seeds was "when ibex goats start to mate"...

Suddenly you have this...Agricultural animal calendar...

So the PPN first farmers were planting their grain and hoping that "The Goat of Rain" would bring rain and make it germinate...You can read about "The goat of rain" in these posts...

Soooo...Almost done...Remember that Mesopotamian seven headed dragon that represented 7 hot/dry months of summer (Apr/May-Oct/Nov)...

On this depiction, God with grain growing out of his head, had just cut the first of the 7 dragon heads with a sickle. That's Apr/May, the month when grain harvest starts in Fertile Crescent...

Demeter, Greek Goddess of Grain Harvest was also, inexplicably 🙂 linked with snakes. 

Plaque Campana - Initiation to Eleusinian Mysteries. 1st half of the 1st century BC. Terracotta. Campana collection purchase 1861. Louvre museum (Paris, France). 

Well, Orphic dudes knew why. According to them: 

Rhea give birth to Zeus (thunderstorm season in Greece starts in Apr/May).

Rhea then turns to Demeter (grain harvest season in Ancient Greece started in Apr/May).

Zeus and Demeter mate as snakes and make Persephone (Snake mating season starts in Apr/May).

I talked about this in my post "Why are Persephone's parents"...

So Orphic dudes knew, and now we also know why, right?

This is also why Demeter/Ceres, arrives in chariots pulled by two snakes or two dragons...And brings ripe grain and a sickle...Like on this drawing by Pietro de Angelis...

I talked about this in my post "Demeter riding panther"...

PS: If these snakes remind you of something else, where do human seeds come from?

PPS: I would really like the people working on PPN sites who follow me to let me know what they think, apart from "we will never know for sure" 🙂

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which are at the root of all our mythologies, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...