7 stars of Scorpio

This is one of many Mesopotamian seals kept in Morgan library 

The official description of the seal is: "Man prodding ox with which he is plowing; before ox, plant--In sky, crescent, star, seven globes...The scene...may have a ritual significance; perhaps...it depicts a rural ritual, in this case connected with agriculture" 

O my god! 

That's it???

Let me see if I can decipher this image:

In two of my recent posts "Queen Puabi’s cylinder seal" and "Ploughing" I explained that before irrigation was invented, in Mesopotamia the sowing was all done after the first rains. Which fell at the end of October, beginning of November. In Scorpio (the time when scorpions disappear, hide to escape the cold and wet of winter). Which is why on this seal we find scorpion positioned above the sowing plough...  

This seal dates from Neo-Assyrian period. Apparently: "The deep cutting conforms with that of such ninth or eighth century stones...and the seal may be of similar date".

Neo-Assyrians also did ploughing and sowing after the first rains, at the end of October beginning of November...In Scorpio...

Except now, scorpions were not cool any more. The stars were all the rage. Which is why around the same time when this seal was made, Hesiod declares: "When the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas, are rising, begin the harvest, and your ploughing when they are going to set"...

So the "seven globes" can only be Pleiades...They were rising in the evening, were visible in the night sky, and were setting in the morning around 800 BC at the end of October beginning of November...The time to plough and sow "the plant"... Grain...

This is the best bit...Did you notice what the seven orbs look like? Still ploughing in Scorpio, "When scorpions disappear, but seven stars in a shape of scorpion appear..."

Now what about the star? And the moon? 

The star is Sirius...

The same star that is placed above the plough on this seal

Do you see that it's always next to a crescent moon paining upward. I am beginning to believe, that this type of moon means night and winter...

Why?

During Neo-Assyrian period, Sirius was visible at night during Scorpio, t the end of October, beginning of November, at the beginning of winter... 

So the scene on the seal means: Plough when Sirius and Pleiades are visible at night. When the first rains fall. At the end of October, beginning of November. In Scorpio. When the crescent moon points upward and looks like a dish gathering rain water...

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...

Day star

In Serbian mythology Venus is known as Danica (Day star). She is the daughter of the sun god, known as Vid, Svetovid but also as Dabog. I wrote about Svetovid in my post "The Horseman". Every morning under the name of Zornjača (Morning star) she opens the eastern gate of Sun's palace to let his chariots out. And every evening under the name of Večernjača (Evening star) she opens the western gate of Sun's palace to let his chariots in.

Where is this Sun's palace?

Interestingly Dabog is also the god of the Dead to whom all the Ancestor cult ceremonies are dedicated. Why?

Yin and Yang

In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang, literally dark and bright, describe how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.

Yin is characterized as slow, soft, yielding, diffuse, cold, wet, dark, and passive; and is associated with water, winter, north, earth, the moon, femininity, and nighttime.

Yang, by contrast, is fast, hard, solid, focused, hot, dry, bright, and active; and is associated with fire, sky, summer, the sun, masculinity and daytime.

Duality is found in many belief systems, but yin and yang are parts of a Oneness that is also equated with the Tao. The term "dualistic-monism" or dialectical monism has been coined in an attempt to express this fruitful paradox of simultaneous unity/duality. Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary (rather than opposing) forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts. Everything has both yin and yang aspects. Either of the two major aspects may manifest more strongly in a particular object, depending on the criterion of the observation. This constant balanced interplay of yin and yang is known as "Taiji". The concept of Taiji is first found in written sources in works of Zou Yan (305 – 240 BC) who was an ancient Chinese philosopher best known as the representative thinker of the Yin and Yang School (or School of Naturalists) during the Hundred Schools of Thought era in Chinese philosophy..

Taiji is graphically represented by the symbol known as "Taijitu" or "Taiji tu" meaning Taiji symbol, which is more commonly known simply as Yin - Yang symbol:

Yin is the black side with the white dot in it, and yang is the white side with the black dot in it.

The oldest preserved drawing of this symbol in China appears in the works of the Song era philosopher Zhou Dunyi (1017–1073 AD), author of the "Taijitu shuo" (Explanation of the Diagram of the Taiji), which became the cornerstone of Neo-Confucianist cosmology. His brief text synthesized aspects of Chinese Buddhism and Taoism with metaphysical discussions in the Yijing. 

What is the origin of this symbol?

In a work entitled "A Geomedical Approach to Chinese Medicine: The Origin of the Yin-Yang Symbol" which was published in 2012 by Stefan Jaeger, we can read that:

The Yin-Yang symbol is tightly connected with the annual cycle of the earth around the sun,and the four seasons resulting from it. Using the gnomon , a pole stuck in the ground the ancient Chinese were able to record precisely the position and the length of the sun’s shadow throughout the solar year.

This enabled them to precisely determine the length of the year, which they found to be about 365.25 days. Furthermore, they divided the circle of the year into segments, including the vernal equinox,autumnal equinox, summer solstice, and winter solstice. In addition, they used concentric circles around the pole, helping them to record the length of the sun’s shadow every day. As a result, they measured the shortest shadow during the summer solstice, and measured the longest shadow during the winter solstice. After connecting the measured points and dimming the part that reaches from summer solstice to winter solstice (Yin), they arrived at a chart like this one:

The resemblance between this chart and the modern Taichi-tu or Yin-Yang symbol is striking. This diagram provides visual evidence that the original Yin-Yang symbol describes the change of a pole’s shadow length during a year. This corresponds well with the meaning of "Taiji" in Chinese which is "Great pole"...

Now this is an amazing explanation for the origin of Taiji. Except that there is one problem with it. The above Taiji like shadow diagram shows the shadow change at the 70° latitude north. Latitude represents the angle from the equator. Now this is the globe with some of the latitudes marked on it.

The Arctic Circle lies at the latitude 66° 33´.

So the only way Ancient Chinese astronomers could have gotten the Taiji like shadow diagram would have been if they had their gnomon stuck into the ground somewhere in northern Siberia. Which is highly unlikely to have happened. If they had their gnomon stuck into the ground anywhere in China, the resulting shadow diagram would have looked something like this:

I mean you can see the resemblance to the Taiji symbol but it is definitely far away from this, shadow diagram at the 70° latitude:

Anyway the thing is, the article is right in one thing:  

The Yin-Yang symbol is tightly connected with the annual cycle of the earth around the sun, and constantly changing daily amount of light and darkness and the effect this change has on Earth's temperature.

In astronomy, axial tilt, also known as obliquity, is the angle between an object's rotational axis and its orbital axis, or, equivalently, the angle between its equatorial plane and orbital plane. Earth currently has an axial tilt of about 23.4°.

Earth's axis remains tilted in the same direction with reference to the background stars throughout a year (regardless of where it is in its orbit). This means that one pole (and the associated hemisphere of Earth) will be directed away from the Sun at one side of the orbit, and half an orbit later (half a year later) this pole will be directed towards the Sun. This is the cause of the lengthening of the day from winter solstice to summer solstice and the shortening of the day from summer solstice to winter solstice. 

Now you would think that the earth's temperature would also increase from winter solstice to summer solstice and decrease from summer solstice to winter solstice. But this is not the case. 

This is Sun's sunlight cross. It marks the transitional points on the sunlight cycle in the northern hemisphere:

1. Winter solstice - the shortest day and the longest night

2. Spring equinox - the equal day and night

3. Summer solstice - the longest day and shortest night

4. Autumn equinox - the equal day and night

This is Earth's, climate, vegetation cross as recorded in Celtic and Serbian calendar. It marks the transitional points of the climatic, vegetative cycle in the northern hemisphere:

Celtic calendar:

1. Imbolc- the beginning of the spring
2. Bealtaine - the beginning of the summer
3. Lughnasa - the beginning of the autumn
4. Samhain - the beginning of the winter

Serbian calendar:

1. St Sava - the beginning of the spring
2. St George - the beginning of the summer
3. St Ilija - the beginning of the autumn
4. St Mitar - the beginning of the winter

As you can see the sun cross and earth cross are out of sync. The earth cross is rotated forward by 45 degrees and the earth circle cardinal points fall right in between the sun circle cardinal points. This is because the earth climatic, vegetative cycle lags behind the solar cycle. 

I talked about this in detail in my post "Two crosses". At the end of that post I drew this diagram showing transformation of Sun's light cycle into Earth's temperature, climatic, vegetative cycle. 

The Sun cross transitions into the Earth cross. This transition is governed by the slow accumulation and release of the heat which is transferred from the Sun to the Earth through sunlight...

This is the never ending wheel of life...

And then two days ago while I was having a discussion about Celtic calendar, I had people say to me:

"How can 1st of February, Imbolc, be the first day of spring? I have foot and a half of snow on the ground all around me and its freezing. This makes no sense..."

I replied that the first day of spring is the first day of spring, not because it is warm, but because it can't get any colder. The 1st of February, actually the 4th of February, the real Imbolc, the mid point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, is the coldest part of the year on the northern hemisphere.  This is due to the way the Sun - Earth system works. So even though on the day of the Winter Solstice the days start getting longer, they continue to get colder. Until the 4th of February, the mid point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. From that day on, the Earth starts getting warmer.

It is exactly the same on the opposite side of the year. The first day of autumn is the first day of autumn, not because it is cool, but because it can't get any hotter. The 1st of August, actually the 2nd of August, the real Lughnasadh, the mid point between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox, is the hottest part of the year on the northern hemisphere. This is again due to the way the Sun - Earth system works. So even though on the day of the Sumer Solstice the days start getting shorter, they continue to get wormer. Until the 2nd of August, the mid point between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox. From that day on, the Earth starts getting cooler.

As I was writing this, something clicked. What I just wrote sounded very familiar. Very very familiar.     

And then something clicked. 

The Yin - Yang diagram.

The winter solstice, the beginning of the lengthening of the day, is the white dot in the middle of the black part of the diagram. It is the seed of light in the middle of the darkest part of the year. But even though the days start lengthening, the weather gets colder until the mid point between the winter solstice and spring equinox. Imbolc, the beginning of the spring and the time of maximum cold...

The summer solstice, the beginning of the shortening of the day, is the black dot in the middle of the white part of the diagram. It is the seed of darkness in the middle of the whitest (lightest, brightest) part of the year. But even though the days start shortening, the weather gets wormer until the mid point between the summer solstice and autumn equinox. Lughnasadh, the beginning of the autumn and the time of maximum heat...

This endless cyclical change of the duration of the day and night is what is seen as the endless cyclical interplay between the light (Yang) and darkness (Yin) which heats (Yang) and cools (Yin) the Earth and creates seasons and makes life possible.

This endless cyclical change is possible because of endless cyclical interplay between Father Sky (Sun) and Mother Earth which is at the core of the old European belief system.

In Serbian tradition the Father Sky and Mother Earth are known as:

Father Sky:

Dajbog - giving god
Djed - grandfather, male ancestor
Triglav - three headed male god. He consisted of Jarilo (sun as a young man), Vid (sun as an adult, husband), Perun (sun as an old man, grandfather).

His characteristics were light, heat, dryness. He dominated the white (light, bright) part of the year and was most powerful in the middle of this period, at the end of the summer and the beginning of autumn which is the hottest and driest period of the year.

Mother Earth:

Dajbaba - giving goddess
Baba - grandmother, female ancestor
Troglava - three headed female goddess. She consisted of Vesna (earth as young girl), Mokoš (earth as an adult woman, wife), Morana (earth as an old woman, witch).

Her characteristics were darkness, cold, wetness. She dominated the dark part of the year and was most powerful in the middle of this period, at the end of the winter and the beginning of spring which is the coldest and wettest part of the year.

At their maximum power, both Father Sky (Sun) and Mother Earth are destructive. The Father Sky (Sun) on his own would turn the world int a dead hot dry desert (pure Yang). The Mother Earth on her own would turn the world into a dead cold wet desert (pure Yin). 

It is the eternal dynamic interplay (Taiji) between the Sky (Sun) - (light, heat, dryness) Yang and the Earth - (darkness, cold, wetness) Yin, the intercourse between the Father Sky (Sun) and Mother Earth, which makes life possible. And this interplay is perfectly depicted by the Taijitu or Yin - Yang diagram.

But is this all just a coincidence? I don't know, but I know that the Yin - Yang (darkness - light) symbol perfectly depicts only one process that I know of: This endless cyclical change of the duration of the day and night which causes endless cyclical change of the heating (Yang) and cooling (Yin) of the Earth. I don't really know any other system which behaves in the way described by the Yin - Yang symbol. Do you? If you do please let me know what that process is.

Very interesting right? 

Well here is something even more interesting. These are two granary "shrines" from Old European Cucuteni–Trypillia culture which thrived between 5200 BC and 3500 BC in Eastern Europe covering the region from the Carpathian Mountains to the Dniester and Dnieper regions, centred on modern-day Moldova and covering substantial parts of western Ukraine and northeastern Romania.

And this is the decoration engraved on the wall of one of these granary "shrines":

Is this the Yin - Yang symbol? And if it is, do you think the ancient Tripillian's tried to depict the same process that I just described? After all, granaries are only full because of the intercourse of the  Mother Earth and Father Sky (Sun), Yin and Yang...And if the Tripillians already invented the Yin - Yang symbol during European Neolithic, is it possible that it was somehow transferred to the East over the following millenniums?

Or maybe this is just a similar looking symbol which has nothing really to do with Yin - Yang symbol?

Infinity

48 superimposed photos of the sun, taken during a year, one per week, in the same place and time, in the Cathedral of Burgos. The highest point is the summer solstice and the lowest is the winter solstice.

Understanding this phenomenon is the key to designing accurate sun dials.

Interestingly, the pattern, called analemma, which the sun traces in the sky is in mathematics known as the symbol of infinity. How very fitting that it is this pattern that emerges as a result of the never ending spinning of the solar wheel...

Two crosses

This is Sun's sunlight cross. It marks the transitional points on the sunlight cycle in the northern hemisphere:

1. Winter solstice - the shortest day and the longest night

2. Spring equinox - the equal day and night

3. Summer solstice - the longest day and shortest night

4. Autumn equinox - the equal day and night

This is Earth's, climate, vegetation cross. It marks the transitional points of the climatic, vegetative cycle in the northern hemisphere:

Celtic calendar:

1. Imbolc- the beginning of the spring
2. Bealtaine - the beginning of the summer
3. Lughnasa - the beginning of the autumn
4. Samhain - the beginning of the winter

Serbian calendar:

1. St Sava - the beginning of the spring
2. St George - the beginning of the summer
3. St Ilija - the beginning of the autumn
4. St Mitar - the beginning of the winter

As you can see the sun cross and earth cross are out of sync. The earth cross is rotated forward by 45 degrees and the earth circle cardinal points fall right in between the sun circle cardinal points. This is because the earth climatic, vegetative cycle lags behind the solar cycle. 

Winter solstice (21st of December) is the the shortest day. So we would expect that this is also the coldest day. We would also expect that from that day on, as the days start getting longer, the days also start getting warmer. But as we all know, this is not the case. The days do get longer, but the earth continues to cool. It is only at the beginning of February that we start seeing the first signs of the earth warming up. This is why the beginning of spring is at the beginning of February (Imbolc, St Sava (14th of January, but probably a replacement for the old Imbolc which is celebrated on the 1st of February)). The actual mid point is 4th of February. Which falls right in the middle of Aquarius (21 January – 19 February).

Spring equinox (21st of March) is the moment when the day is as long as night. From that day the days are longer than nights. We would expect that this would mark the beginning of the summer. But the real heat does not start until the beginning of May. This is why the beginning of summer is at the beginning of May (Bealtaine, which is today celebrated on the 1st of May, but there are indications that it was once celebrated on the 6th of May. Here we find St George's day celebrated on the 23 of April, probably replacement for old Bealtaine). The actual mid point is 6th of May. Which falls right in the middle of Taurus (21 April – 21 May).

Summer solstice (21st of June) is the longest day of the year. We would expect that this would also be the hottest day of the year. We would also expect that from that day on, as the days get shorter, the days also get colder. But again as we all know, that is not the case. The days do get shorter, but earth continues to warm. It is only at the beginning of August that we start seeing first sings of earth cooling down. This is why the beginning of autumn is at the beginning of August (Lughnasa which is today celebrated on the 1st of August but was once probably celebrated on the, 2nd of August. Here we find St Ilija's day celebrated on the 20th of July, probably replacement for old Lughnasa). The actual mid point is 2nd of August. Which falls right in the middle of Leo (23 July – 22 August).

Autumn equinox (21st of September) is the moment when the day is as long as night. From that day the days are shorter than nights. We would expect that this would mark the beginning of the winter. But the real cold does not start until the beginning of Novermber. This is why the beginning of winter is at the beginning of November (Samhain, St Mitar (26th of October, but probably the replacement for the old Samhain which is celebrated on the 31st of October)). The actual mid point is 5th of November. Which falls right in the middle of Eagle (Scorpio) (24 October – 22 November).

This last drawing is the diagram of transformation of Sun's sunlight cycle into Earth's climatic, vegetative cycle. 

The Sun cross transitions into the Earth cross. This transition is governed by the slow accumulation and release of the heat which is transferred from the Sun to the Earth through sunlight...

Does this golden cross which symbolizes this transition of light into heat into life energy remind you of anything?

This is the never ending wheel of life...

PS: It seems that AngloSaxons had the same rotated vegetative calendar...

Dún Ailinne

In my post about the etymology of the word Alps I talked about the Gaelic word "ail" meaning stone, rock, cliff. This post is about a place whose name is derived from the word "ail": Dun Ailinne.

Dún Ailinne is an ancient ceremonial site on the hill of Cnoc Ailinne in County Kildare, Ireland. It is southwest of Kilcullen, near the N78 road to Athy. 

The site is circular, about 13 ha (32 ac) in area, ringed by an earth bank and ditch (or "henge"). As with most henges, the ditch is on the inside, meaning that it was likely to have been symbolic rather than defensive. It is believed that Dún Ailinne was a royal centre and inaugural or ceremonial site for the Kings of Leinster. In terms of its ritual use, the internal structures and layout, and its location and association, is similar to the other royal sites of Tara, Navan Fort and Rathcroghan. Indications of earliest use are from the Neolithic period, but the main activity there was during the Iron Age. It does not seem to have been dwelt in year-round, but was instead mostly used for short-term activity, including ritual. It seems to have been occupied during the Spring/Summer months and there is evidence of cooking, which include a great deal of bone from cows, sheep, pigs, deer and horses. In 1968 a caesium magnetometer survey and a resistivity survey was undertaken that highlighted an area in the low mound, later revealed as areas of intense burning. A La Tène style sword and Roman bronze fibulae have also been found at the site. The artefacts suggested intense activity in the Iron Age and/or Early Medieval period that disturbed a Neolithic occupation phase. While it figures in some early historical references, Dún Ailinne was mostly abandoned about the time the nearby early Christian settlement at Old Kilcullen was established in the 6th century.

This is a drawing showing the results of the geophisical survey of the site. You can see various overlapping features dating to different time periods. 

The images below show a time-lapse sequence of the summer solstice sunset as observed from Dún Ailinne. You can see that the sun touches the top of the Dunmurry hill, and it then proceeds to slide down the side of it, until it finally disappears behind the hill.

What is interesting is that right in front of the Dunmurry hill lies the Long hill, an elongated hill aligned roughly East-West and orientated on a slight E-SE to W-NW axis. On top of that hill lies the Long hill cursus.

Cursus was a name given by early British archaeologists such as William Stukeley to the large parallel lengths of banks with external ditches which they thought were early Roman athletic courses, hence the Latin name cursus, meaning "course". Cursus monuments are now understood to be Neolithic structures and represent some of the oldest prehistoric monumental structures of the British Isles. Long hill Cursos is by some believed to be approximately 1.5km. long and almost 100m. wide, but it is more likely for it to have been just over a kilometre long and approximately 50 metres wide. The OSI map also records clusters of barrows at each end of the Cursus - Cluster 'E' at the W-NW end and Cluster 'F' at the E-SE end (Ref. Pádraig Clancy's study of the ancient monuments of the Curragh).

If we extend the side of the Dunmurry hill along which the sun slides on the eve of the Summer solstice, it touches the east - south east end of the Long hill cursus, while the vertical going through the top of the Dunmurry hill touches the west - north west end of the Long hill cursus.

It seems that the Long hill cursus was deliberately built to create the sacred triangle visible from the Dún Ailinne. In which case Dún Ailinne was not just any ceremonial site but a solar observatory and solar temple. I already wrote about ancient henge solar observatories and solar temples in my post about Henges - Rondel enclosures. The henge was dug to mark the solar observation circle and there was probably a tall stake or a tall standing stone standing somewhere inside the henge circle working as a gnomon. The shaddow cast by the gnomon stone at sunrise was used to determine the exact date. The fact the sun also performed the gliding, or rolling down the Dunmurry hill on the eve of the summer solstice, just made the Dún Ailinne more special. Is there a proof that there was once such a standing stone in Dún Ailinne? There is.

A verse in the Dindsenchas mentions how Dún Ailinne/Alend acquired its name:

Three mighty men made essays of trenchings,
Burech, Fiach, and Aururas:
it is they who without flagging (clear fact!)
dug the rampart of Alend.

Buirech cast from him straightway
across the rampart(no weakling he!) -
a stone he cast from his spear-arm;
and that is the ail in Alend.

This seems to suggest that Buirech placed the Ail (Stone) standing upright on a mound, inside the henge (trenching) that sat at the summit of the Cnoc Ailinne.

Today you will see three very large boulders on the summit, two look like limestone boulders (although it's possible they're both very weathered granite) and an elongated white granite boulder. John O'Donovan's survey of Dún Ailinne in 1837 records only "two rough mountain boulders of considerable size. One of these might be the Ail mentioned in the Dindseanchus as placed in the mound by the hero Buirech......". O'Donovan also records a scattering of stone debris on the summit which he interpreted as a "fort.......much effaced", but Estyn Evans suggests this scatter of stone and the large boulders may have been the remnants of a Neolithic/Early Bronze Age cairn. I would say that the scattering of stones and the remaining boulders are all parts of the original gigantic standing stone after which the Dún Ailinne got its name, and which was deliberately destroyed, possibly during the early Christianization of Ireland and maybe even later.

The images below show the large boulders that now sit on the summit of Dún Ailinne.There'sisible line of drill holes in the large elongated white granite boulder. You can clearly see weathering on one side,but the opposite side shows areas which look significantly fresher,which could suggest it was deliberately broken in recent times. Was this boulder part of a much larger monolith?

Is this what Dún Ailinne might have looked like once?

In Gaelic the word "dún" doesn't only mean military fortification. It means to shut, to close, to enclose, enclosure, fort, fortress, place of refuge, haven, haven for ships, residence, house, promontory fort, bluff...So any enclosed place probably including henge.

In Gaelic the word "ail" means stone, rock.

And in Gaelic the word "linn" means time, period, generation, course.

If there is a possibility that Dún Ailinne was once used as a solar observatory, solar calendar, with the central rock pillar (ail) inside of a henge (dún) and which was used to determine the day of the Summer solstice, the beginning of the solar year, the beginning of a new solar cycle, the new "time period" (linn) is it possible that the name Dún Ailinne actually means "The enclosure of the time stone", the solar calendar?

I would like to thank "bonedigger" for all his great work in exploring Irish megalithic sites and drawing public attention to their possible astronomical features. 

1. Dún Ailinne's Role in Folklore, Myth, and the Sacred Landscape
2. Dún Ailinne, Knockaulin Td and 2. Glebe North Td, Co. Kildare E79 - Unpublished excavations

3. Ritual feasting in Iron Age Ireland

4. Archaeoastronomy at megalithic sites
5. A geophysical survey at Dún Ailinne, Co. Kildare, Ireland 

Blagotin

In the 6th millennium bc, in Serbia we find Vinča culture. I believe that everyone reading this post have heard of the Vinča culture, the culture that invented metallurgy, alphabet. Slightly earlier, at the end of the 7th millennium bc we find on the same territory of Central Serbia, the Blagotin culture. I can bet that most people reading this post have never heard of the Blagotin culture. 

Let me tell you a story about Blagotin culture.

Archaeological locality Blagotin got its name after the hill called "Mali Blagotin" under which it is located. Mali Blagotin is located in the heart of Serbia, in an area known as Šumadija. The region is characterized by a southern variant of the Central European temperate climatic regime. The site is located on the northern outskirts of the village of Poljna, 12 km north of the slightly larger village of Velika Drenova, and about 50 km northeast of the town of Trstenik (in the county or opština of Trstenik). It is on a gently sloping terrace, above an incised stream valley at the base of a mountain. The surface of the site was entirely cultivated during the period of field research. Blagotin is a multi-period and strati-graphically complex site. It was initially inhabited during the Early Neolithic (Starčevo culture, ca. 6100–5100 B.C.). Recent radiocarbon dates place it among the earliest sites in the Starčevo culture – ca. 6100 B.C.

The Starčevo culture, sometimes included within a larger grouping known as the Starčevo–Kőrös–Criş culture, is an archaeological culture of Southeastern Europe.The Starčevo culture covered sizable area that included most of present-day Serbia and Montenegro, as well as parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, and the Republic of Macedonia.

Blagogin site was then reoccupied during the Eneolithic (Baden-Kostolac culture, ca. 3300–2500 B.C.), and then occupied again during the Early Iron Age (Halstatt culture, ca. 1000–700 B.C.). It was not occupied again until modern times. Here is where the Blagotin site is on the map of the Balkans.

The reason why people kept coming back to Blagotin and settling there for thousands of years is that Blagotin area as well as central Serbia as a whole is an ideal place for subsistence farming combined with hunting and gathering. Central Serbia consists of a series of small to medium alluvial river valley planes formed by river Morava and its tributaries, surrounded by rolling hills and medium size mountains. These alluvial valley plains were created by the deposition of sediment over a long period of time by one or more rivers and streams coming from highland regions, from which alluvial soil forms. These rivers still flow through these valleys and form floodplains. The floodplains are the smaller area over which the rivers flood at a particular period of time, like in the spring during the snow melt, whereas the alluvial plain is the larger area representing the region over which the floodplains have shifted over geological time. Alluvial plains and flood plains are very very fertile and very easy to work with primitive agricultural tools such as hand plows and adzes made out of antler like this one:

Or wood and stone ones like these ones:

It is in the alluvial and flood plains that grain agriculture developed and flourished in the early Neolithic times. This is the list of main alluvial and flood plains in Asia and North Africa.


Po valley plain
Punjab alluvial plain
Indo-Gangetic plain
Tigris–Euphrates plain
Nile valley
Yangtze valley

You can see that these alluvial flood plains are the exact places where the early farmers settled and formed the first agricultural civilizations. The soil is sandy and therefore easy to work, it is rich and gives high yields, and it is regularly enriched with new flood deposits preventing soil depletion, which was the main problem for early farmers.

In Central Europe we find the Lower Danube-Sava-Morava-Tisa Central European alluvial flood plains. And this is exactly the place where we find the most advanced Early European Neolithic agricultural civilizations.

This is the map showing Blagotin hill, an Island in the middle of an area of rolling hills and small river valleys.

16 kilometers to the south from the Blagotin hill is Zapadna Morava river valley. This is what this river valley looked like during last year's floods. 

The valley was flooded after a sudden snow melt combined with heavy rain and saturated ground from previous rains. These types of floods are today very rare because the river now has flood defenses built along its banks. In the distant past this kind of flooding of the river valley was much more frequent and kept the valley floor extremely fertile.

This is what this river valley looks like on a nice dry sunny day.

If you look at the above picture of the river valley, you can see that the bottom of the valley is completely flat, a sign of an alluvial deposits, the prime agricultural land. From the Zapadna Morava river, the therein towards Blagotin hill is a slightly raised plateau consisting of rolling hills and small flat old alluvial river valleys. It is called Poljna plain. Poljna literally means a plain. 

This is what I am talking about. This is Poljna plain which lies between Blagotin hill and Zapadna Morava river.

This is the exact location of Blagotin site just beneath the Blagotin hill at the edge of Poljna plain:

The hills surrounding these river valleys used to be covered with mixed oak forests. The name of the region "Šumadija" means the land of forests. These forests were full of oaks, hazels, beaches and therefore full of edible nuts, acorns and beach nuts as well as mushrooms and berries and other wild fruit like wild apples, pears and cherries. All these wild foods were found in deposits belonging to the early neolithic cultures in the Balkans. The river itself is full of fish even today and it must have been teaming with fish in Neolithic times. The whole area is also full of wild birds and animals even today, and in the Neolithic times it must have been an ideal hunting ground.

At the end of the 7th millennium, the Neolithic farmers arriving from the Levant crossed the mountains dividing the Mediterranean climatic zone and the Semi Continental Balkan climatic zone and found themselves in these river valleys. There they had to learn how to adapt their agricultural techniques to this new climate. I would say that that was a quite a big challenge which took a good while. The neolithic farmers which arrived from Levant stayed in Serbia for almost 1000 years before moving further north. But once they started this move north it was very quick and only 500 years later we find them on the shores of Holland. During the time when agriculture was still developing and adapting to the European climate, and when people still heavily depended on hunting and gathering, the area around Blagotin, with its abundance of wild food would have been and ideal place to settle.

How good Blagotin is for living is actually reflected in its name. The Serbian word "blag" means gentle, sweet, but also domesticated, cattle and treasure. The ending "tin, ten, tan, din, den, dan" are quite common endings found in village and town names in Serbia and correspond to the Irish "dun" meaning enclosure, village, town, place....The name Blagotin literally means gentle, cultivated, rich place good for living...

So the Neolithic farmers arrived to Blagotin and built a settlement. But not just any settlement. The settlement covers the area between one and two hectares which would classify it as a medium size settlement. But it is the structure of the settlement, its layout, which sets it apart from all the other settlements of its time. Blagotin settlement type was completely different from both Levantine and Southern Balkan and Central and Northern European settlement types.

In the work on spatial organization of the site entitled: "The spatial organization of Early Neolithic settlements in temperate southeastern Europe: a view from Blagotin, Serbia." published by Haskel J. Greenfeld and Tina Jongsma, from the University of Manitoba point to a very important difference between the spatial organisation of Blagotin settlement compared to all the other contemporary early neolithic settlements:

In Levant and the southern or Mediterranean half of the Balkan Peninsula (Greece, Macedonia, and southern Bulgaria), most early neolithic settlements are represented by tell-like deposits, with rectilinear above-ground and free-standing architecture.

Very different kinds of archaeological deposits are found in the major Early Neolithic archaeological cultures of central Europe. Most sites are very shallow, with little if any vertical superposition of deposits. They are largely characterized by laterally displaced deposits. The architectural forms in LBK sites tend to be very rectangular surface structures. Characteristically, they are extremely long and easily identifiable by the distribution of post molds in the soil. In LBK sites where settlement has been short term and the distribution of features is visible, long houses are placed parallel to each other, although it is difficult to perceive the presence of any clear rows.

In the northern or temperate half of the Balkan peninsula and extending across the rest of southeastern Europe, early neolithic tell-like settlements and long house settlements are almost non-existent. Instead, most sites appear to be composed of laterally displaced horizontal deposits associated with pit house deposits. The early neolithic Starčevo culture site of Blagotin is one such pit house site. Two types of pit houses are distinguishable.

A smaller and shallower set of pit houses, 3 m wide and 6 m long, is distributed in a circle around a large open space. These smaller houses are arranged along radial streets which all lead to the central square. According to the professor Stanković there were 100 of these houses which means that the estimated population of Blagotin was around 500 people.

The second larger and deeper pit, approximately 10 m wide and 8 m long, is found at the center of the large open space, central square. The central house is clearly very different from those surrounding it and based on its design and the deposits found in it, it is undoubtedly a sacred place, a temple. This make Blagotin temple the oldest purposely built temple in Europe and the Second (or third) oldest temple in the world, after Gobelki Tepe (and possibly some Çatalhöyük dwellings if they can be classified as temples).

The oldest known temple in the world is that at Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey which is 11,500 years old and is decorated with reliefs and pictograms of various plants and animals thought to represent the gods of that place. The temple is an extraordinary building of the Neolithic era with T-shaped pillars and engravings which have yet to be completely understood. The design of the temple, however, with a large room toward the front (possibly for public functions) is recognized in later temples from other cultures.

Çatalhöyük, the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date, was composed entirely of domestic buildings, with no obvious public buildings. However some of the larger ones have rather ornate murals, the purpose of some rooms remain unclear. Vivid murals and figurines are found throughout the settlement, on interior and exterior walls. Distinctive clay figurines of women, notably the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük have been found in the upper levels of the site. Although no identifiable temples have been found, the graves, murals, and figurines suggest that the people of Çatalhöyük had a religion rich in symbols. Rooms with concentrations of these items may have been shrines or public meeting areas. 

The pits are all shaped in the form of an ellipse or rough trapezoid. The settlement structure looks something like this:

There is little detailed information on the spatial distribution of features within Starčevo-Körös-Criş sites. Only a few sites have been spatially excavated. These enable us to better understand the internal structure of these sites and to interpret areas of activities. At each of these sites, almost all of the structures excavated were semi subterranean. And it seems that they all follow the same radial spatial organization of the settlement found in Blagotin. In the Foeni-Salaş site five small structures were found distributed in  semicircle around a larger structure. The  distance between each of the small structures was more or less the same (about 20 m), and the distance between the central and peripheral structures was about 10 m. Such a distribution of Early Neolithic features was found long before this, albeit it was not recognized as such. Vasić in his early excavations in the basal levels at Vinča found a similar distribution of Starčevo pit features – a large central pit house surrounded by an open space of about 10 m and a ring of peripheral smaller pit houses. This shows that at Blagotin we see emergence of a new culture previously not seen in Evroasia, the Starčevo culture which should really be called Blagotin culture, and the Culture which will later become the seed from which the famous metallurgical Vinča culture will develop.

Interestingly this type of settlements continue to be built in Central Europe until the medieval times by Slavic people.

Early Slavic settlements were no larger than 0.5 to 2 hectares. Settlements were often temporary, perhaps a reflection of the itinerant form agriculture they practiced. Settlements were often located on river terraces. The largest proportion of settlement features were the sunken buildings, called Grubenhäuser in German, or poluzemlianki in Russian, zemunice in Serbian. They were erected over a rectangular pit and varied from four to twenty square meters of floor area, which could accommodate a typical nuclear family. Each house contained a stone or clay oven in one of the corners, a defining feature of the dwellings throughout Eastern Europe. On average, each settlement consisted of fifty to seventy individuals. Settlements were structured in specific manner; there was a central, open area which served as a "communal front" where communal activities and ceremonies were conducted. The settlement was polarized, divided into a production zone and settlement zone.

In Blagotin we find several overlapping phases of the settlement development. The earliest feature of the site is a 2,5 meter deep sacrificial pit, around which the temple was later built. At the bottom of the pit archaeologists have found a ritually broken deer scull with separated mandibles positioned at a certain angle. 

Official theory is that this seems to connect the Starčevo culture to the much older Paleolithic deer cultures of Europe from the time before the last Ice Age. This makes Starčevo culture a link between the Paleolithic Mesolithic Hunter gatherer cultures and Neolithic agrarian cultures. This could also be an indicator of the mixing between the local European hunter gatherers and the incoming Levantine farmers. It is possible that the Blagotin culture is a product of this mix. 

Deer is also a very important symbol found in in many agrarian cultures which come after Starčevo cultures. 

Why deer? The Deer is a symbol of the sun, summer, repeating seasons, growth an waning and eternal life. In the Balkans it is still believed that the deer is an animal which guides the dead to the underworld, that it is an animal which can cross the boundary between the worlds. Like the sun which spends the day in our world and the night in the underworld.

But it was probably deer which lead hunter gatherers to the wild grain in the first place. It was hunters observing deer eating wild grain who first got the idea to try to eat it themselves. And believe or not, it was deer mandibles which were used as the first sickles for harvesting first wild and later domesticated grain. So placing sickles at the bottom of the sacrificial pit at the centre of the grain farmer's temple suddenly makes a lot of sense. And this also explains why deer is found as a symbol in many agrarian cultures. 

I talked about the development of sickles from deer mandibles in my post "Ri - to cut with something toothed".

A thick ash deposits were found in the pit showing that the offerings were burned, that the cult was in a way related to fire. This is another indicator that the cult practiced in Blagotin was a sky cult, and that the deity worshiped was the sun, in his fiery form. In the ash, the remains of a human infant were interred. The remains from the pit also included extremely large numbers of the bones of young female animals. This points to the cult being not just solar cult but also a fertility cult, which is what you would expect an agricultural cult to be.

The sacrificial pit was surrounded with a zigzag line. There is no exact drawing of the pit but it probably looked like this:

Looks familiar? Looks like the sun? This shows that the zigzag line later found in  Vinča  deposits is closely connected with the cult and has a religious significance. And we know exactly what this zigzag line means. The zigzag line is a symbol of the solar ecliptic. The solar ecliptic is the apparent path of the Sun on the celestial sphere. The solar ecliptic is the line that defines the seasons, that defines the climate, that governs agriculture. 

For people who arrive from the Levant, European winters must have been quite a shock. The dying of the sun's fire must have been a major cause for concern and all necessary steps had to be taken to ensure that it gets rekindled every spring. Including sacrifices....Were the sacrifices which were made in the Blagotin temple made to ensure that the Sun's fire gets rekindled again? Were they performed at maybe a winter solstice?

If you are a farmer, the further north you go from the equator the more important it becomes to understand the behavior of the sun. Which eventually lead to the development of the solar astronomy and solar agricultural cults. Is it possible that in Blagotin we see the emergence of the solar astronomy and the emergence of the Solar cults? Is Blagotin temple not just the first temple but also the first solar temple? I believe so and I believe that the the proof for this lies in the temple itself, or more precisely its orientation.

The temple went through 7 phases of development. Through all of these phases the temple retained the same sacred altar space which was built around the sacrificial pit. The profane part of the temple undertook several structural changes BUT THE TEMPLE AS A WHOLE WAS ALWAYS ORIENTED EXACTLY NORTH - SOUTH. 

There are three ways to orient a building exactly north south. One way is to use a compass to determine the exact north. In the 7th millennium bc, this was highly unlikely to have happened. The other two ways are:

1. Find the north star and orient your building to it. For this you need to know what the north star is and that it is a static star pointing north, which means that you need to be versed in star astronomy.

2. Determine the exact points where the sun rises on the days of the winter and summer solstice. Bisect the arch between these two points into half. This will determine the point where the sun will rise on the equinoxes, the true east. Draw a line pointing east - west 
Draw an orthogonal line which will point north - south Align your temple with this line...To be able the align their temple north - south, you need to know a lot about the sun's apparent movement in the sky which means that you need to be versed in solar astronomy. 

In order to be able to orient their temple north - south, he people from Blagotin needed to be be able to do one of the above, which would mean that the people from Blagotin were not just farmers but accomplished astronomers and mathematicians. Probably the first people in the world to create a temple aligned with solar cardinal points.

Originally it was shaped as a mushroom (penis) where the semicircular part had a bench build along its its edge where people worshiping in the temple, could sit. Later on the bench disappears and instead of it we find two high thrones. People sitting on these thrones would have looked directly towards the altar and the south. Then the mushroom (penis) shaped area was remodeled in such a way that the whole temple including both the sacred and the profane area together resembles a Greek letter theta. Eventually the whole temple was completely changed. The profane part was covered with a thick layer of daub and a new a long narrow building oriented north - south was constructed in place of the old temple. The altar was in the center of the new building and flanking the south entrance were two unusual large (30 cm high) figurines which looked like this.

 

 
They had over emphasized gluts stylized short legs and according to the early interpretation offered by the archaeologists, stylized deer head. This means that the sculpture consisted of the female principle (lower part of female body) extending into the male principle (deer head the top part of the body). The "goddesses" were found "lying on their faces" and I believe that this gives us an important clue for deciphering their meaning. Recently archaeologists made copies of these goddess figurines using the same clay from which the original figurines were made. Then they fired the figurines using the reconstructed early neolithic oven.

On the last picture, the goddesses were "laid on their faces". And here the meaning of these goddesses becomes clear. They are half women in the "kneeling, on all four" position, ready to be mounted, penetrated and fertilized, like any other female animal, from behind. So the bottom part is not just a woman but a female of any domestic kind which we want to fertilize in order to produce offspring. In this position the upper part of the body, the male part, penetrates the earth, like a plow. If anyone wanted to make a symbol that links fertility and farming (grain growing and cattle razing), they couldn't have made a better one. These figurines are probably the first fertility idols directly linked to agriculture. They create symbolic equalization between a plow and a penis and between plowing and copulating, between sex and working the land.

These figurines are not the only important objects found on Blagotin site.

All of the excavated pit houses contained extraordinarily large amount of ceramic fragments and whole ceramic vessels and figurines. The biggest number of ceramic fragments was found in the temple which shows that the ceramic artifacts were brought to the temple as offerings and were possibly ceremonially broken inside the temple. On only 30 square meters which have been excavated so far, archaeologists have found 16,000 ceramic fragments. Ceramic vessels found in the pit houses range from ordinary domestic utensils to exquisitely ornate ceremonial vessels.

  

One of the ceramic vessels found on the site is an unusual cross shaped bowl shown here with a ceramic altar and  ceramic votive grains of wheat also found on the site.

There are two articles published about the pottery from Blagotin. A use analysis for the pottery from one of the houses from the site can be found in the article entitled: "Beginnings - New Research in the Appearanceof the Neolithic between Northwest Anatoliaand the Carpathian Basin". A possibility of early beer production was explored in the article entitled "Non-abrasive Pottery Surface Attrition: Blagotin Evidence". Both were published by Jasna Vuković from Belgrade university. 

Apart from the ceramic vessels  archaeologist have found many ceramic altars like the one on the above picture or this one:

A very important  find is a very large number of clay models of grains of wheat,  which you can see on the above picture with the cross shaped vessel and the altar. These clay seeds were left in the temple as votive offerings. This confirms that the people who lived in Blagotin were grain farmers and that their cult was grain fertility cult. These clay grain sees are found on other Starčevo culture sites but never in this number.

One of the clay seed models has engraved the plan of the village with the temple as the central object. The plan closely corresponds to the actual layout of the part of the Blagotin village.

This is the earliest known town map in Europe and possibly the oldest map in the world.  Until very recently this was undobtedly true. The two next oldest maps were the "Ga-Sur at Nuzi" map and "Nippur" map.
 
The Ga-Sur at Nuzi map is a Babylonian clay tablet that was unearthed in 1930 at the excavated ruined city of Ga-Sur at Nuzi [Yorghan Tepe], near the towns of Harran and Kirkuk, 200 miles north of the site of Babylon [present-day Iraq]. Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand (7.6 x 6.8 cm), most authorities place the the date of this map-tablet from the dynasty of Sargon of Akkad (2,300-2,500 B.C.); although, again, there is the conflicting date offered by the distinguished Leo Bagrow of the Agade Period (3,800 B.C.). The surface of the tablet is inscribed with a map of a district bounded by two ranges of hills and bisected by a water-course. This particular tablet is drawn with cuneiform characters and stylized symbols impressed, or scratched, on the clay. Inscriptions identify some features and places. In the center the area of a plot of land is specified as 354 iku [about 12 hectares], and its owner is named Azala. None of the names of other places can be understood except the one in the bottom left comer. This is Mashkan-dur-ibla, a place mentioned in the texts from Nuzi as Durubla. By the name, the map is identified as of a region near present-day Yorghan Tepe (Ga-Sur at the time, the name Nuzia 1,000 years later), although the exact location is still unknown.

The Nippur map is a fragment of a clay tablet which contains a city map, which was dated to 1500 BC. The clay tablet depicts the temple of Enlil, a city park, the city wall including its gates, along with a canal and the river Euphrates. The individual objects on this map were already labelled, in a Sumerian cuneiform.

Both of these maps are much younger than the Blagotin grain map. However we now have a close competition for the oldest map in the world between the Blagotin grain map and the Çatalhöyük wall map. During the excavation of Çatalhöyük in Anatolia a wall painting was uncovered that is approximately nine feet long and has an in situ radiocarbon date of 6,200 + 97 B.C. It is believed that the map depicts a town plan, matching Çatalhöyük itself, showing the congested "beehive" design of the settlement and displaying a total of some 80 buildings. In the foreground is a town arising in graded terraces closely packed with rectangular houses. Behind the town an erupting volcano is illustrated, its sides covered with incandescent volcanic bombs rolling down the slopes of the mountain. Others are thrown from the erupting cone above which hovers a cloud of smoke and ashes.

However 🙂 the winner of the is this: a line incision on a mammoth tusk found in Mezhirichi in the Ukraine, and dated to 12,000-11,000 BC. This is interpreted as being a river with dwellings on the banks, and fishing nets in the river.

Another important type of artifacts found in Blagotin are amulets.

In her work "The Blagotin amulets and their place in the early Neolithic of the central Balkans" Jasna Vukovic says:

On this graph you can see the distribution of these amulets. Divostin the site with the second highest number of amulets is the site closest to Blagotin. The further away you go from Blagotin, the fewer amulets you find. 

Do these amulets remind anyone of the Gobelki Tepe columns? Did part of the Gobelki Tepe people and religion find its way to Blagotin?

Another large group of objects found in Blagotin are votive models of domestic animals, which were deposited in the temple as offerings. This means that the people living in Blagotin were both grain farmers and herders.

What is very interesting is that we find the same types of domesticated animals figurines in Catalhoyuk at the roughtly the same time. Nearly 2,000 figures have been unearthed at Catalhoyuk. They were dated to about 7000 BC. The majority are representations of cattle or sheep and goats.Like these ones:

Does this suggest that the people who settled in Blagotin came from Catalhoyuk? Or that they were culturally connected with the people from Catalhoyuk?

In Blagotin, archaeologists also found grinding stones. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of these grinding stones but they probably looked like this one.

Flotation technique also yielded a lot of grain seeds which were extremely big for that period and were in size comparable to the modern sorts of wheat. Antler plows and other neolithic agricultural tools were also found on the site. After taking into the account all the evidence from the site archaeologists working on the site concluded that the people living in Blagotin probably grew enough good quality grains to make wheat bread. 

Archaeologists have also found other bone and stone tools and blades:

Archaeologists also found a lot of jewelry on the site like these necklaces and bracelets:

Some jewelry found in the temple resembles ones found in the Transilvania. Some other material came from Kosovo and Black Sea coast. This suggests that Blagotin was an important regional (Balkan) and maybe even Central European religious center where people came at certain part of the year to celebrate and pray. Maybe at winter solstice. Or at harvest time.

And so this is Blagotin, probably the most important archaeological site you have never heard of. The site where European Neolithic agricultural society was born. The site where we find the oldest temple in Europe and the second (or the third depending how you count) oldest temple in the world. The site where we find the oldest evidence of the complex astronomical and mathematical knowledge required to determine solstices and equinoxes and align the temple to cardinal points. The site where we find first definite evidence of the development of the solar agricultural fertility cult. The site where we find the oldest town map in Europe and the oldest (or the second depending how you count) town map in the world. 

The Blagotin site was discovered by  Dr Svetozar „Nani“ Stanković just before the start of the Yugoslav civil war in 1991. This is the man himself.

The excavations were then continued until 1995 as a joint venture between the University of Belgrade (Serbia) and the University of Manitoba (Canada). Dr Svetozar „Nani“ Stanković (1948 - 1996) who lead the excavation, died in 1996 and the whole archaeological site was closed and forgotten??? Only 2.5% of the locality has been excavated so far. The site is not protected by Serbian government or by UNESCO. The goddess figurines are locked in the depot of the Belgrade University...

The only two papers written about the site which are written in Serbian and are which are available on the internet are "1992b Arheološka istraživanja višeslojnog praistorijskog lokaliteta Blagotin u selu Poljna istraživanja 1991 godine". "Systematic surface collection from Blagotin". 

Believe or not the best information about the Blagotin site is contained in this three part documentary made in 1993, which features interview with the late Dr Svetozar „Nani“ Stanković.

Blagotin Documentary Part 1
Blagotin Documentary Part2
Blagotin Documentary Part 3

I extracted all the relevant information in this article. There is no point looking on the net for more info. This is it. This is all there is...Sad. 

There are talks about reopening of the excavation on the site this year, 20 years after the site was forgotten.