Zawi Chemi Shanidar

AI prompt: A prehistoric Iranian man, wearing griffin vulture wings on his back and a headdress with ibex horns, standing in a mountain landscape, under dark clouds, holding a long wooden staff.

You are probably all going WTF? 

Ever heard of Zawi Chemi Shanidar?

Zawi Chemi Shanidar was a small settlement located in the Northern Mesopotamia, dating to the late 10th or early 9th mill BC...

It was built and used by the people of the so called Karim Shahir Culture, named after the Karim Shahir archaeological site...

The people of this culture shared many cultural traits with the people of the Natufian culture...

The excavations of the site took place in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Sickles, grinding stones, and querns were found during the excavation testify to the wide use of wild cereals and possible early cereal domestication, basically agriculture...

There is also evidence that by the end of the Zawi Chemi Shanidar's occupation, the residents had domesticated sheep...Basically we are talking about the evidence of Hunter Gatherers evolving into Farmers...You can read more about Zawi Chemi Shanidar in "The Proto-Neolithic People of Zawi Chemi Village and Shanidar Cave in the Western Zagros Highlands"...

This is the area from where "Gods brought grain to Sumer". I talked about this in my post about the Sumerian legend "How grain came to Sumer", which turns out to describe exactly how grain came to Sumer from the north, and which have been over 6000 years old when it was first written down...

Anyway, this is not the most interesting thing about Zawi Chemi Shanidar. There is one discovery that makes this site stand out among other Fertile Crescent sites. During the excavations, a structure was found that appears to have been for religious purposes...

And we believe that this is indeed some kind of a temple, because next to it, archaeologists found a ritual deposit composed of at least 15 skulls of goats and the articulated wing bones of at least 17 huge predator birds, vultures, eagles and a bustard. You can read more about it in "Birds of prey in prehistory and early history"...

Knife marks on the bird bones indicate that they had been carefully cut from the birds. The archaeologists interpreted these wings as part of ritual costumes. The goat skulls were thought to be part of the paraphernalia of the ritual...

But what kind of ritual, no one knows...And so "A prehistoric Iranian man..." This is not just me dreaming up shit. 6000 years later, in the same part of the world, we find this: Proto-Elamite dude with Ibex goat horns cap, Vulture wings cape, and very schmancy shoes...

As I said in my article "Strider", to understand the real meaning of this Proto Elamite figurine, we need to look at the climate in Iran, and at the lifecycles of Ibex goats and Vultures...

The same thing will help us understand the strange find from Zawi Chemi Shanidar. So let's start with climate, which is pretty much the same in Iraq and Iran.

We can see that the climatic year is divided into two halves:

Hot, dry half, Apr/May - Oct/Nov

Cold, wet half, Oct/Nov - Apr/May

Now if you are a farmer in the part of Iraq and Iran which don't lie in the flood plains, then you are totally dependant on rain to water your fields, and the arrival of the rain in Oct/Nov is probably the most important event in your agricultural year.

This is because it is after the first rains that you can start sowing your grain...

And right at that time, in Oct/Nov, Ibex goats start mating...The mating is marked by vicious male goat fights for females...

Coincidence that a good hunter gatherer could't miss...

And as I said before: Mythology is a result of people being very good at noticing patterns in nature and very bad at distinguishing between correlation and causation.

How long do you think it took the first farmers to start believing that it was mating ibex that brought rain?

I first talked about this in my post "A vessel from Tepe Hissar", about this amazing Neolithic vessel from Tepe Hisar. Great example of related animal calendar markers used together. Mating Ibex (start of winter) followed by Mating Leopard (start of spring). Both winter and spring are rainy seasons...Semen turns to flowing water...

The rain (brought by the goat of rain) is what supports (the tree of) life in Iran, Iraq, Levant, Eastern Mediterranean, Central Asia...All the areas with the same climate...And the same ibex goat behaviour...

Which is why in all these places we find ibexes flanking the tree of life. I talked about this in my post "Bactrian Bronze Age menorah"...

Hence, I believe, all the goat heads found next to the Zawi Chemi Shanidar temple. And the goat horns headdress I proposed...

BTW the goat dude seems to have been a thing in the border area between Iraq and Iran for thousands of years.

2000 years before the Proto Elamite goat dude

"Master of Animals" stamp seals, Tepe Giyan, Iran, 5000-4000 BC...From my post "Master of Animals from Tepe Giyan"

Which depicts the eternal struggle between the rain goat (mating of goats marks the beginning of the rain season) and the sun serpent/dragon (mating of snakes marks the beginning of the drought season)...

2000 years after the Proto Elamite goat dude

Dancing goat men, 8th–7th century BC. Luristan, Iran...From my post "Dancing goat men from Luristan"...

Just for completeness, the Zawi Chemi Shanidar goat dudes could have held the goat head mounted on a staff, instead of wearing ibex horns on their headdress...

Or they could have both worn the ibex horns headdress and held ibex goat head mounted on a staff...

If you are interested, you can find pile of articles about ibex, the goat of rain, goat of winter, animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov-Jan/Feb in these articles from my blog...

Now what about the raptors?

All the raptors whose wings were found next to the Zawi Chemi Shanidar temple, are either resident species which mate during the winter/spring rain season or are migratory species which spend winter/spring rain season in the Zawi Chemi Shanidar area...

Bearded vulture, resident, mating during the winter

Griffon vulture, resident, mating during the winter

White tailed sea eagle, winter visitor

Great bustard, winter visitor

Unidentified small eagles??? Could be winter visitors as well...Like steppe eagle

How long do you think it took people from this part of the world to arrive to this: Sumerian god Ningirsu, the oldest thunder god we know by name (?), was in the earliest times imagined as a huge black bird, with outstretched wings...

I talked about this in my post "Eagle dance"...

Eagle dance:

Montenegro 1963AD

Syria, 1800BC

Eagle (vulture) couples dance above the mountains at the beginning of their mating season, which coincides with the beginning of the rain season in Fertile Crescent...

Did they already have this religious idea formed at the time when all those raptor wings were deposited with the goat heads next to the Zawi Chemi Shanidar temple?

I believe so...

BTW, just so we know that the eagle dude and the goat dude are one and the same dude...Thunder, Rain God...The Feathered one...The Winged one...The rain cloud...Bactrians actually spelled it for us in the 3rd millennium bc. Clouds...In a shape of a two headed eagle dude and his goat...

I talked about this in my post "Fluffy"...

Again, for completeness, maybe the the Zawi Chemi Shanidar goat dudes weren't actually goat dudes. Maybe they were eagle dudes, who held the ibex goats (heads or maybe whole goats) in their hands?

Like depicted on this end of 3rd beginning of 2nd millennium BC Bactrian seal showing an eagle dude holding "winged" ibex goats...

Or on this Kassite period (1595-1155 BC) seal depicting a "bird-demon" 🙂, holding two ibexes, by their hind legs. 

Found in Iraq, UChicago, A29439. The description reads: "Marduk, great lord, on the servant who reverences you show mercy."

What is really depicted here?

I talked about this seal in my post "Kassite bird demon"...

You can read more about vultures and eagles as animal calendar markers linked to rain and thunder in these posts from my blog...

Sooo....What do you think?

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...

Baden culture grain maiden

This is a very, very interesting ceramic vessel made by people of the Copper Metalworking and Grain Farming "Baden culture" which flourished in Central and Southeast Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Serbia, Romania, Austria), c 3600–2800 BC...

The vessel body is shaped like a young female body with bare breasts. And the vessel handles are shaped like growing sheaves of grain...The first time I saw this vessel, I stared at it for good 10 mins trying to figure out what it reminded me of...

I eventually gave up and dismissed it as a case of deja vu. That was few years ago, and I almost forgot about this artefact. And then, the other day, I was finishing my post about the Abduction of Persephone. I was looking at this, the last image in the article and suddenly...

This is the Roman, Augustan period "bas relief of Ceres (Demeter) or Proserpine (Persephone) rising from the ground with sheaves of wheat and poppies"...Persephone has come back from "The Underworld". She is Demeter now, goddess of grain, bringer of wealth...

So is the neolithic Baden culture pot depicting the same mythological scene?

Now remember the European tradition about the "Sprit of grain"? Which is preserved every year in "The last sheaf" from which a "Corn dolly" is made, in order to preserve this spirit from harvest to sowing?

I talked about this in my post "Corn dolly"...Who is this "Spirit of grain"? Is this Persephone again? Well the corn dolly is made in a shape of a woman. Her skirt is made from ears of wheat, which contain seeds...The seeds from the corn dolly's skirt are the first seeds sown during next sowing...The corn dolly is killed and buried only to be reborn, sprout and grow into new wheat...

What is interesting is that according to archaeologist, the agriculture practiced by the first European farmers was based around spring sown grains...I talked about this in my post "To kill a witch"...

In which case Persephone, the spirit of grain, would have gone to "The Underworld" (grain sown) beginning of February (beginning of spring), and would have came out of "The Underworld" (grain sprouting) end of February, beginning of March...

This also means that the seeds are sown at the exact moment when the Old Hag, Winter Earth dies and the Young Maiden, Spring Earth is born...

In which case, originally, during the time of the first farmers in Continental Europe, Spirit of Grain and Spirit of Spring were one and the same...Which is exactly what the Greeks claimed...

Is this how old the legend of Persephone is? 

Possibly...

But wait, wait....What about all the references to autumn in the depiction of the Persephone's abduction from the Homeric hymn to Demeter? I mean you wrote the whole article about it "Abduction of Persephone". Was that all rubbish? (I can hear you say)

Well...As I said in that article, I believe that that version of the story with the end of autumn beginning of winter references originated in Crete...And in Crete, the climate is very similar to the climate in the Fertile Crescent, where the agriculture was invented...There the sowing was done after the first rains, at the end of autumn beginning of winter...So it is possible that the original version of the story is the one where Persephone goes to the underworld at the end of autumn beginning of winter...And then that story was brought to Crete, where because the climate was very similar to the one in Fertile Crescent  the story was preserved unchanged. The story was also brought to the Balkans, where the first farmers had to learn how to grow grain in continental European climate...And there, because of that, the story was changed to fit the new climate...

But also, as I said in my post "Abduction of Persephone", maybe her time spent underground represents winter in Europe, the infertile, dead time of the year, and not the time it takes grain to sprout after sowing...

Anyway, it is an interesting thing to think about...