Winged camel

I want to thank Gabriella Brusa-Zappellini for alerting me to this amazing book, "National museum of Afghanistan: illustrated guide" by Dupree, Nancy Hatch. In it, on page 37 is this Bactrian bone seal dated to the 2nd millennium BC. WOW!!!

The official description says that the seal depicts a winged camel on the front and a bird on the back...Gabriella Brusa-Zappellini thinks the bird is an eagle and the camel's wings are also eagle wings...I would say the bird is a vulture...

Hmmmm...Winged camel...If it was just a winged camel, I would say "Eh, Afghanistan is a weird place, maybe camels there really have wings" and would move on, just like the authors of this book...

But the "winged camel" also has a very, very long stripy tail, like a tiger tail...Or are my eyes deceiving me???

And when I see something like this, I put my super suit, assume a super pose and shout out my super slogan: "Animal calendar markers!!!" 🙂

All of these animals (Bactrian camel, eagle/vulture, Caspian tiger) mate during winter, starting in Oct/Nov...This is a complex animal calendar marker for winter...

I actually wrote about all of these animals separately as animal calendar markers for winter.

I wrote about Bactrian camel as animal calendar marker for winter in my posts "Bactrian camel", "Volga mirror", "Camel and buffalo"...The reason why they are an animal calendar marker for winter is because they start breeding in (Oct/Nov), the beginning of winter...

I wrote about Griffon Vultures as animal calendar marker for winter in my posts "Double headed eagle", "Summer and winter BMAC seals" and many others...The reason why they are an animal calendar marker for winter is because they start breeding in (Oct/Nov), the beginning of winter...

I wrote about Tingers as animal calendar marker for winter in my posts "Spots and stripes", "Tigers tigers everywhere", "Tiger and dragon" and many others...The reason why they are an animal calendar marker for winter is because they start breeding in (Oct/Nov), the beginning of winter...

So:

Bactrian camel - mating season winter

Caspian tiger -  mating season winter

Old world vultures - mating season winter

You put them all together and you get complex animal calendar marker for the beginning of the rain and snow season in Afghanistan.

And it is this rain and especially snow, that feeds all the local rivers and supports life in the land of flying camels with vulture wings...Source of water in local rivers. I talked about this in my posts "Tulip goddess"...

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...