Old European culture: MAMA

It is funny how lately things end up finding me instead of me finding them...Today I was trying to find the dating for the Želiezovce group which I never heard of before. When I came across this: A pot with a face placed over what looks like capital letter M...

Želiezovce group is BTW an offshoot of the Linear Pottery Culture (5500–4500 BC) which is found in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Polan...Central Europe...And they seem to have loved pots with faces placed over capital Ms...

Some of these pots have two of these faces facing the opposite directions. Again over capital Ms...

There are many shards of these so called face pots found in Želiezovce group settlements, always inside of graves and always in the most prominent place in the grave...

According to the author of "The Missing Faces" paper, this is a unique feature of the pottery from this area which is not found anywhere else...

According to the author of "Faces from the past. Some thoughts about anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines and images in the neolithic period", this all somehow linked to fertility...

Which it is...But how...Like this: A stone slab from Gobekli Tepe (10,000 - 8,000 BC), with a carving depicting a woman in a birth giving position...

I talked about this image in my post "Birth giver"...

The shape of the woman's legs in the natural birthing position forms capital letter M

In the Balkans, we already find this stylised in the talismans (?) in a shape of a woman giving birth, made by the Early Neolithic farmers from Cerje - Govrlevo, Makedonija, dated to the 7th millennium BC...

Ohoden, Bulgaria, 7th mill BC.

Istria, Croatia, 6th mill BC.

I talked about this in my post "Mistress of the house"

Now look again at the face over the M symbol from Želiezovce pots...What do you think? The same thing?

Not convinced? The thing is face over M seem to have been optional on Želiezovce pots...Here is one where over the M symbol we see what looks like a bellybutton...Still not convinced?

Still not convinced? What about this pot, which over the M sign has a glyph which looks very much like a woman giving birth...

Anyway, my kung fu teacher told me years ago that this is what being aligned with Tao (the way, your way) will look like...Things will happen instead of you having to make them happen...Good things...Why am I saying this? Because of this:

A while back I came across this picture. It shows the so called Myres pithos, a large vessel found in the early layers of the Neolithic Vinča culture Belo Brdo tell site near Belgrade, Serbia...

I wrote about it in my post "Myres pathos"

These large vessels are found in many Vinča settlements. But this one is a unique find in Vinča territory because of the way it is decorated: with a face over a capital M sign...

Again this was interpreted, at the time when the papers I read were written, as one of a kind thing not found anywhere else...I forgot about it until today...When surprise surprise, I stumbled across the face vessels from the Želiezovce group...

Same thing, same period, just not in Serbia. Across the river in Hungary....

By the way, does this remind you of Baubo?