Fighting men in hairy trousers

Fighting men in hairy trousers from Guimiliau Church, Brittany. A short article about the evolution of my idea of how God Pan was created...

When I first saw this relief, I immediately thought that these guys were shepherds wearing trousers made from sheep or goat skin. Like the ones this shepherd is depicted  wearing on a medieval fresco from Serbia. 

"Racka" (pronounced "ratzka" meaning Serbian, from medieval name for Serbs: Raci) sheep depicted on the fresco called "The birth of Jesus" from the Serbian monastery Pećka patrijaršija c. 1346...I talked about this type of sheep in my post "Racka sheep"...

Shepherds from Eastern Serbia, 20th Century, still wearing the same trousers...

But then someone pointed to the fact that the two hairy legs dudes from Brittany actually seem to have hooves...So then I started wondering were these really just shepherds, or...

So I remembered how in my post "Pan" I asked: "Is this what the Greeks turned into Pan, the god of the mountain wilds, shepherds, flocks?"

In Greece the worship of Pan began in Arcadia which was always the principal seat of his worship. Arcadia was a district of mountain people, culturally separated from other Greeks.

Shepherd deity, the protector of flocks would be imagined by shepherds like a shepherd, dressed the way shepherds dress, which includes the fleece trousers.

If you didn't know what you were looking at, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were looking at a man with goat legs when you saw one of these highland shepherds for the first time in a distance...

And this is how myths are made...

But then I learned about Ibex goats and the ferocious, loud male fights for females which take place every winter on mountain tops.

And so I thought, maybe this is the origin of the Pan legend?

These wild goats are huge, and when standing on their hind legs they tower over any human. And if you didn't know what you were looking at, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were looking at a huge men (gods) with goat horns and goat legs...

Finally, I learned about Animal Calendar Markers, which were created from the mating or birthing seasons of animals to mark the time of the year when these reproductive events take place...

Like the Animal Calendar Marker "goat", which marks "Oct/Nov" because in Eastern Mediterranean/Western Asia, where this calendar marker first appeared, Ibex goats start mating in Oct/Nov...

Now in Eastern Mediterranean/Western Asia, Oct/Nov is the beginning of the rain season. And because every year the rains arrived when ibex goats started their mating season, to the local people ibex goat became an animal calendar marker for the beginning of the rain season...

And soon, ibex goats became mythical goats of rain which flanked the tree of life, like on this Bactrian bronze stamp, dated to 2400BC-1600BC...I talked about this stamp in my post "Bactrian bronze age menorah"...

And then these mythical goats of rain were turned to mythical gods of rain with human bodies and goat heads. Like this one from Tell Brak, dated to 3800-3600BC. I talked about this stamp seal in my post "Goat petroglyphs from Iran"...

I talked about symbolism of ibex goats in Iran, Mesopotamia and Levant in many of my posts, like: 

Iran: 

"Flamingos from Susa", "Goat carrier", "Iranian goat of rain", "Strider", "A vessel from Tepe Hissar"...

Mesopotamia:

"Feast plaque from Louvre", "Green pastures", "Problems with Abzu", "Relief from Dur Sharrukin", "Goatfish"...

Levant:

"The tree of life/light", "Lachish animal calendar"...

Eventually, this deified goat arrived to Greece, where it became known as Pan...The goat god of wild, green nature...I talked about this in my post "Pan goat of rain"... 

I also talked about symbolism of ibex goats in Europe in:

"Pitys", "Goat in European culture", "Patera of Rennes"... 

And then, we arrive to Zeus, the bringer of rain, who once "rode on a goat". What do you get if you clothe Zeus in a goat skin? Holy Ibex Goat, the bringer of rain, of course...

Figurine from Cyprus, depicting Ba’al/Zeus riding a Goat (600-400 BC).  From my post "Goat riding thunder god"...

For more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers (which were the key used for decoding all this stuff), check these blog posts https://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/search?q=%22animal+calendar+markers%22&max-results=20&by-date=true then check my X threads I still didn't convert to blog post. I am way behind...

Motanka

"Motanka", elaborately decorated but always faceless cloth doll was once a common feature in every Ukrainian peasant home. These dolls weren't just toys. They were magic talismans...

The name "motanka" comes from the word "motaty" (to wind) ie to make a knotted doll out of fabric, without using a needle and scissors. The winding of the doll was to be carried out only clockwise...

The fact that the doll had to be wound clockwise (sunwise) is very important as this direction was by our ancestors considered "positive, natural" and the opposite direction was considered "negative, unnatural"...

The Gaels in Ireland/Scotland were particularly obsessed with this. I talked about the importance of "sunwise" (clockwise) motion, movement in Gaelic rituals in my post "Sunwise". 

The reason why dolls had no faces, is because people believed that giving the doll a face could tie a person's soul to it. Which indicates that these dolls are symbolic depictions of the female ancestors, all the way down to the Mother Earth.

The common characteristic linking all these female ancestors is fertility, ability to give birth, without which there would be no one here today to make "Motanka" dolls...

Remember my post "Palaeolithic Venus figurines" in which I asked: Were European Palaeolithic "Venus" figurines made faceless and with super exaggerated sexual characteristics to depict an "idea" of fertility?

And remember my post "The faceless one", in which I talked about the faceless Persephone? 

Persephone, the anthropomorphised female ancestral fertility and grain fertility, was also sometimes depicted with vailed face or with no face at all...Two statues from Cyrene, Libya...   

And do you remember my post "Bescherkind", about a living "Motanka" from Sorbian tradition?

A girl dressed as a faceless "bride", who brings presents (and good luck) to Sorbian families on last Wednesday before Christmas (originally probably on Winter Solstice day). 

Another confirmation that the doll was a depiction of (the fertility) of the female ancestors is the fact that the process of making "Motanka" dolls is called "kutannya" or swaddling as it is very similar to swaddling a baby.

And because of "Motanka" dolls like this cute one 🙂

And because: There are three main types of the "Motanka" dolls: a bride, a baby and a married woman.

A bride "Motanka" was made to help the girls get married. This doll was richly dressed because it symbolised the dowry of the bride and was supposed to attract a wealthy husband.

At birth of the child, a baby "Motanka" was made which looked like a swaddle baby. It was put in the cradle in order to protect the baby. It was also left in the cradle after the baby overgrew the cradle to protect the cradle until the next baby was born.

A (married) woman "Motanka" was made to help the woman with her marital duties, especially things linked to her own and the land (crops and animal) fertility. Coins, grains, wool were put in the doll.

Also, before the wedding the mother made the doll for the daughter, symbolically passing the female ancestral support and expectation down to the next generation.

All the above dolls were "guardian" dolls and had to be made "while thinking good, positive thoughts"...

But there were also "Motanka" dolls made ritually to get rid of (troubles, diseases). They were made while thinking about the badness they were supposed to represent, and then the dolls were burnt or drowned in water...

Interesting...Remember this: Slavs equated The Goddess of Death, Morana (mor=death) with The Old Hag, The Winter Earth, Marzana (marz=frost). She is ceremonially burned (warmed) or drowned (thawed) or both (to de sure to be sure 🙂) during Slavic spring festivals...

I talked about this in my posts: "Bride", "Bannock", "Gryla", "Party", "To kill a witch", "Baba's day", "Living stone"...

Finally, as I already said, originally, all the the "Motanka" dolls had white empty faces. But today, they usually have a cross across their white empty faces, most likely as symbol of "Christianisation" of this ancient magical artefact...

Bride

Bride (the effigy of St Brigit, the "hag" turned "bride", winter turned spring), which is paraded around Ireland on Imbolc, 1st of Feb, the first day of Gaelic spring, was made from the stick or dash from butter churn, which was dressed as a bride...

In the past, at Imbolc, St Bride's "bannock" "pan cake", was baked and given to the young girls as a blessing...I talked about this in my post "Bannock"...

In Scotland they made bannock not on Imbolc, but on Pancake Tuesday....At the same time when Slavs celebrate their ancient beginning of spring festival Maslenitsa (butter day)...When they bake and eat pan cakes. Which symbolise the sun...

Oh, and on Maslenitsa, the festival that celebrates the death (end) of the witch (winter), people also parade the effigies of Marzana (goddess of death and winter) which are dressed in white, like brides...Because Imbolc/Maslenitsa is time of year when winter ends and spring begins and the hag of winter turns into a maiden of spring...I talked about this in my post "Snow-white"... 

The effigy is then burned (rising temperature) or drowned (snowmelt, flowing water), or both, to be sure to be sure 🙂, to symbolically end (kill) winter (hag) and give birth to spring (maiden). This can give us the clue who Brigid originally was...I talked about this in my post "Gryla"...

BTW, there are also some who believe that the word Imbolc, could be derived from im = butter...Would make a lot more sense than the official etymology...

St George of the Sprouting Crown

St George of the Sprouting Crown. Ethiopia, 19th c

What does this mean? Let me try to explain...

I'll start with the excerpt from my post "Letnitsa treasure":

Snakes are solar animals. They are in our world when sun is in our world (hot part of the year) and they are in the underworld when sun is in the underworld (cold part of the year)...I talked about this in my post "The chthonic animal"

Snakes are symbol of the sun and the sun's heat. They are also symbols of the beginning of summer, as vipers, the most common Eurasian snakes, start mating in Apr/May, beginning of summer...

And dragons, old snakes, are symbol of the old sun, destructive summer sun which burns the land and causes drought. Steals and guards water...Which is why in Slavic mythology, dragon, always breathes fire...

And which is why in the past, during spring droughts, Serbs used to go to mountain lakes, on St George's day, and pray for rain on lake shores "to the dragons living in the lake who swallowed the rain"...

I talked about this in my post "Dragon who stole rain"...

There is actually a Serbian belief that "a snake got wings when it lived over 100 years, after which it flew away to live in lakes and waters"...Just like a Dragon...

This is in addition to the belief from Ukraine and Poland that snakes once had wings and flew in the sky. But the sun burned their wings and they fell on the ground. I wrote about this in my article about Slavic belief in the link between snakes and sun...

Now, there is an interesting Slavic word "jar" which means young, green, spring...It is the root of the name of the Slavic sun god, Jarilo (pronounced Yahreeloh)...He is the life giving spring and early summer sun that brings back life to the frozen earth...Here is a depiction of Jarilo painted by Russian artist Andrey Shishkin...

Jarilo is the original Green Man...This is Zeleni Jura (Green Jarilo) walking the earth. Part of Jurjevanje, celebration of the spring return of Jarilo, Sun god, from the land of the dead...Bela Krajina, area inhabited by descendants of Serbians who migrated here during Turkish invasions of the Balkans. Today split between Croatia/Slovenia...

But the root "jar" can also mean "brightly burning" and "raging, furious"...

This means that Jarilo can also mean "The Scorcher", the life destroying burning sun of the late summer and early autumn...

Two suns, young and old, the life creator and life destroyer...In one...

Jurjevo, the celebration of the return of Jarilo, is today known as St George's day. St George is basically Christianised Jarilo...

Jurjevo is the celebration of the beginning of the summer, the domain of the sun...And dragons...Because as the summer goes on, and the sun gets hotter and hotter, snake, the symbol of sun's heat, grows older and older and eventually turns into dragon, the symbol of destructive sun's heat...

Jarilo, The Scorcher, The Dragon...To whom Serbs, sacrificed rams during droughts, on St George's day, with blood poured into the lake, for the dragon who stole rain...

Funny...

St George = Jarilo = Dragon...

By the way, Serbs believed that the Snake King, who is "An Old Male snake", The Dragon, also had a "green branch in his mouth"...

Interesting right? 

Snake King = Dragon = Jarilo = Green man...

By the way, the dragons who steal princesses in the Balkan fairytales usually live in palaces...They are kings...Snake kings...

I believe that Jurjevo, Jarilo's day, is at the same time the celebration of good spring sun and bad summer sun. The day of thanks for the spring and prayers for the summer...Anyway, on that day spring ends, summer begins...

And every year, on The Day of Jarilo, The Day of Dragon, the Young Spring Earth, Vesna, is "sacrificed" to the Young Sun, Jarilo (The Dragon). Spring (the princess) is "sacrificed" (it ends) so that Summer (The Dragon) can begin???

But wait, St George is a dragon killer!!! Well, what's the best way to Christianise Jarilo, The Sun, The Scorcher, The Dragon, than to turn it into it's opposite...The Dragon Killer...

In Serbian Orthodox church tradition, the beginning and the end of the "Time of Dragons", the hot sunny half of the year, is marked (guarded) by Two Georges, Summer and Winter St Georg (e's day)...I talked about this in my post "Two Georges"...

One very interesting thing. St George is mostly depicted riding a white horse when he is doing his dragon killing...

(White) Horse is one of the most widespread solar symbols. For instance, Slavic Sun god Svetovid, also rode on a white horse, and white horses were kept in his temples...I wrote about that in my post "Svetovid"...

Celtic solar horse coin. 

Articles about solar horse (equid)

Iran "Water carrier equid", "Dioscuri plate from Iran"

Mesopotamia "Shamash playing with the solar horse", "Sun god from Tell Brak"

India "Hayagriva"

China "Longma", "Three legged crow", "Mythical beast from Xian"

Levant "Alexamenos graffito", "Goddess on a horse", "Unicorn"

Europe "Archaic rider", "Beotian solar pyxis", "Pegasus and chimera", "King John", "The horseman"

We find white horse as a solar symbol even in Jarilo (pronounced Yareeloh) folklore (mythology) where Jarilo "arrives on a white horse"...

What is very interesting is that Radoslav Katičić and Vitomir Belaj, who attempted to reconstruct the mythology surrounding Jarilo, came to the conclusion that he had "equine characteristics", basically that he is both the (solar) rider and the (solar) horse...

From the Animal Calendar Markers point of view, this is pretty clear. The "solarness" 🙂 of equids and their link with Sun gods stems from the fact that horse fertility is governed by sunlight...It starts in Apr/May (start of summer, St George's day) and peaks on Summer Solstice. I talked about this in my post 

This is why...

Horse zodiac symbol is disguised as Dioskuri, divine twin horsemen. The guys who wanted to marry "the daughters of the white horse". They mark Summer Solstice, the peak of the horse mating season, characterised by wild stallion fights for mares...

I talked about this in my posts "Hayagriva", "Dioscuri plate from Iran"...

Anyway, this is also why in Slavic folklore, horse is a symbol for a "young groom"...Which is another disguise for Jarilo, in his "Young Spring Sun" phase, when he marries Vesna, Young Spring Earth....

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which were the key to deciphering all this, check my blog posts related to animal calendar markers, and then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way behind now...

Yeti revisited

Two recent archaeological discoveries have, I think, added more support for my crazy idea from 2018: That Yeti stories could be old ancestral memories of the mixing between Modern and Denisovans humans on Tibetan plateau. I talked about this crazy idea in my post "Yeti"...

Here's the jist:

In 2010 geneticists discovered that Tibetans have several genes that help them use smaller amounts of oxygen efficiently, allowing them to deliver enough of it to their limbs while exercising at high altitude...

Most notable is a version of a gene called EPAS1, which regulates the body’s production of hemoglobin. These genes are not found in any other human population outside of Tibetan plateau...

Since this gene was discovered the scientists wandered where it came from. And then in 2014, while looking through the genes found in Denisovans DNA, they spotted EPAS1...

The mystery was solved. The "superathlete" gene, which helps Sherpas and other Tibetans breathe easily at high altitudes was inherited from Denisovans, one of the archaic human species now extinct...

But there was a problem. It was commonly accepted (at the time when I wrote this post) that Denisovans went extinct soon after they mated with the ancestors of Europeans and Asians about 40,000 years ago...

So the only time when Tibetans could have acquired EPAS1 gene is at that time. But it was also commonly accepted at the time of the discovery of that gene that the Tibetan plateau has only been inhabited by humans for around 15,000 years...

Now considering that Tibetan plateau population is the only one in the world which possesses the EPAS1 gene, it is most likely that they acquired it on the Tibetan plateau...

Which means that either Denisovans survived on the Tibetan plateau until 14,000 years ago (35,000 years longer then anywhere else in the world), or that modern humans arrived to Tibetan plateau much much earlier than originally thought...

And then in 2018, the Nwya Devu Paleolithic site was discovered, and it confirmed that human ancestors arrived on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at elevations approaching 5,000 meters above sea level around 30,000-40,000 years ago...

Which is what prompted me to write my Yeti article...

And this year, a newly discovered Denisovan remains in the Baishiya Karst Cave confirm that Denisovans indeed were still present on the Tibetan plateau between 48,000 to 32,000 years ago. The findings were published in Nature article "Middle and Late Pleistocene Denisovan subsistence at Baishiya Karst Cave"

So it turns out that modern humans did actually arrive to Tibet right on time to first intermix with Denisovans, acquiring the high altitude gene and then exterminate them...

Which is what Tibetan ancestral myths and the legends about Yeti might actually be talking about, as they both talk about interbreeding between humans and "hairy mountain creatures". Which would mean that these legends could be between 30,000 and 40,000 years old...

That ancestral myths and legends in isolated populations can indeed survive for a very very long time, can be seen from the legends about the Indonesian island of Flores about Ebu Gogo...

These creatures were said to sneak into human camps to steal children to try to cook and eat them. They were described as very small with broad faces, flat noses, and wide mouths...

Exactly like the now extinct hominid species labeled Homo Floresiensis, which lived on the island of Flores until humans arrived there around 50,000 years ago, and most likely exterminated them after a period of coexistence...

The memory of the coexistence of these two human species on the island of Flores survived in the ancestral myths about Ebu Gogo...Again among the isolated (this time island) population...

I already talked about another isolated population which also preserved ancient memories as ancestral myths over similarly ridiculous time periods in my post "Dreamtime" about Aboriginal dreamtime stories...

Some Australian Aboriginal "dreamtime" stories, passed orally from generation to generation, could actually be over 40,000 years ago...

This post was from 2016. Again, most people just shook their heads and said that no story can survive that long...

But this year's discovery of a 12,000 years old ritual burial in Australia, which was performed in exactly the same way local Aboriginal people still buried their dead in the 19th century, confirms that rituals can survive unchanged for 12,000 years. 

Now rituals are practical manifestations of beliefs, myths, which means that this is a proof that the ancestral myths survived unchanged in this isolated population for at least 12,000 years...

I already wrote that belief systems, of which rituals are a practical manifestation, can survive for a very long time in my post "Third death" about the Cuvash "third death" ritual burials which have not changed for past 4000+ years, which are performed "when two people from the same family suddenly die one after another"...And why archaeologists should study folklore of their archaeological site area...

I know 4000 years is "not that long" (it's actually fu*king long) compared to 12,000 years, but it shows that this survival of a rituals over vast time span is not a freak isolated case...

Are there any other legends and rituals that are this old? Definitely...This is my favourite:

How old are legends about "the hunt for the firebird"? Well they could predate the time when people learned how to make fire...Which is an awful long time...Because before people knew how to make it, fire descended from the sky and had to be found and caught...

Lapis lazuli water seal

I would like to analyse the scene depicted on this Lapis lazuli seal, made between 2400BC and 2000BC in Eastern Iran. Currently in the British Museum. 

It is actually quite amazing...

So what is depicted on this seal? Well, I think that this is a calendar, which depicts the wet season in Eastern Iran, using animal calendar markers: Goat, animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov and Bull, animal calendar marker for Apr/May...Let me show you why...

This is the map of Iran. On it I circled Eastern Iran and I underlined the 4 main cities in the region: Mashhad, Birjand, Kerman and Zahedan...

These are precipitation charts for these 4 main cities in Eastern Iran...

You can see that the wet season in Eastern Iran starts in Oct/Nov and ends in Apr/May...

Mating season of Ibex Goats starts in Oct/Nov...Which is why Ibex became animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov. And cause this is when the rains arrive to Western Asia and Eastern Mediterranean, Ibex there became The Goat of Rain...

I talked about symbolism of ibex goats in many of my posts, like 

Europe:

"Pitys", "Goat in European culture", "Patera of Rennes"... 

Levant:

"The tree of life/light", "Lachish animal calendar"...

Mesopotamia:

"Feast plaque from Louvre", "Green pastures", "Problems with Abzu", "Relief from Dur Sharrukin", "Goatfish"...

Iran: 

"Flamingos from Susa", "Goat carrier", "Iranian goat of rain", "Strider", "A vessel from Tepe Hissar"...

In Iran in particular, Ibex Goat was the most depicted animal during Neolithic and Bronze Age...I talked about this in my post "Goat petroglyphs from Iran"...

So that's the Goat sorted...

What about the Bull? Normally, as the animal calendar marker for Apr/May, the end of the wet season in Western Asian and Eastern Mediterranean, we find an Auroch bull or a calf.

You know, Taurus...Taurus here is "the old Taurus", an animal calendar marker, which only later became mapped to whatever constellation was rising with the sun during Apr/May, when constellations were first defined...

Taurus originally had nothing to do with stars. Taurus marked Apr/May, the beginning of the calving of Eurasian wild cattle. I talked about that in my posts "Ram and bull", "Cow and calf ivory", "Lotus and papyrus", "Bull carrying grannary", "Foundation peg of the goddess nanshe", "Cypriot stamp seals with cow and calf"...and many others...

I talked about this in my post "Feast plaque from Louvre" about this amazing object I discovered during the 5 hour long stroll I took with my son through the Mesopotamian section of the Louvre museum few years ago. 

Perforated votive limestone plaque, Mesopotamia (where?), ca. 2700-2650BC...

Now interestingly, the bull depicted on our Lapis seal is not Auroch...It's a Zebu...That's interesting. Zebu originates in India...From where it spread westward...I talked about this in this post "Zebu migrations"...

Because of its mating habits (it mates during the wet season in India), in the Indus Valley civilisation the zebu cattle was used as an animal calendar marker for the Kharif (wet season) Apr/May - Oct/Nov. I talked about this in my post "Kharif and Rabi seasons" about this amazing vessel from the Indus Valley civilisation...

So it seems that on our Lapis seal, it was the beginning of the mating season of Zebu cattle and not the beginning of the calving season of Auroch cattle, that was used as an animal calendar marker for the end of the rain season (Apr/May)...

Now let's see how my interpretation fits with the official description of the seal: 

Two figures faced each other, one holding a cup...The pattern above the figures "may represent rain clouds and rain"...Ibex goat and Zebu bull depicted to the side...

See...

Rain is on ancient artefacts often depicted using dots. I talked about this already in my post "Goat of rain from Andros" about the Neolithic relief depicting the goat of rain surrounded by dots (rain drops) from the Cycladic island of Andros in Greece

Knowing what we know about the symbolism of the goat and the bull, I am 110% convinced that the pattern above the figures represent rain clouds and rain. 

The makers of this seal even positioned one of the dots (rain drops) above the cup, to make it clear what the dots mean...

What about the "drinking from a cup" scene...Have a look at this: Seated female figure (goddess? ) drinking out of a very similar cup (goblet) sitting next to a tulip, bronze seal, late 3rd - early 2nd millennium BC, (BMAC), Afghanistan...

Now check the map of Iran. Our Iranian lapis seal was found in Eastern Iran...Next door to BMAC land...

In my post "Tulip goddess" about the BMAC Goddess with tulips seal, I explained that the goddess is the young spring earth, who just had her first period (snowmelt) and is drinking water (runoff)...

...while around here wild tulips flower everywhere...

The two main rivers from Eastern Iran, Atrak and Helmand, are both fed by the rain and snowmelt. Their water discharge starts suddenly rising in Oct/Nov, it peaks in Apr/May, and it suddenly drops to nothing in Jun/Jul...

Also, the fact that our seal from Eastern Iran was made from Lapis Lazuli, The Water Stone, also points to the intended meaning of the seal scene: rain, filling our cups with fresh water between the mating of Ibex goats and mating of Zebu Cattle...

I talked about this lapis as the water stone in my post "Solar bull"....

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...