Seefin passage tomb

This is Seefin passage tomb located atop Seefin Hill, County Wicklow, Ireland. The tomb was built circa 3,300 BC. It was excavated by R. A. Stewart Macalister in 1931, but no artefacts or human remains were found inside...

Several theories have been put forward to explain the empty tomb:

Maybe the remains were removed by the decedents of the people who were originally buried in the tomb, when they moved away...

Maybe the grave was, at some unknown time in the past, desecrated, looted, with all traces of the those interred removed and destroyed...

Or maybe, no-one was actually ever buried in the Seefin passage tomb, because this is not actually a tomb...So what was this structure then?

Here is the last theory I heard that tries to explain what the Seefin tumulus was actually built and used for:

Well, you know how all these passage tombs look like bellies of pregnant women? And how entrances of the passage tombs look like vaginas? 

Well whoever built Seefin passage tomb made sure that nothing was left to the imagination...

A very narrow entrance with labia like door pillars and clitoral lintel...Behind this vulva like entrance, just like in all the other passage tombs, is a long narrow passage (a birth canal), ending in a large chamber (womb)...

Anyone entering this "passage tomb" would have been, symbolically, entering the womb of the mother earth...

In there in complete darkness, in complete sensory isolation, they would (symbolically) die...

To be (symbolically) reborn after leaving the inner chamber (womb), crawling through the narrow passage (birth canal) and squeezing through the narrow entrance (vulva) into the sunshine...

Well this is just a theory that no one can prove (or disprove)...It's a good one though...

Childe was right

 

This is Dolmen of Pierre-Alot, France...I would here like to talk about three interesting articles I read this week, which together, might shed some new light on the origin, spread and reason for megalithic culture...Or not...

There are over 35,000 currently accounted megaliths in Europe, including megalithic tombs, standing stones, stone circles, alignments, and megalithic buildings or temples...

Most of these were constructed during the Neolithic and the Copper Ages (5th - 3rd millennium BC) and are located in coastal areas...

Their distribution is along the so-called Atlantic façade, including Sweden, Denmark, North Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, northwest France, northern Spain, and Portugal...

And in the Mediterranean region, including southern and southeastern Spain, southern France, the Islands of Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta and the Balearics, Apulia, northern Italy. And Montenegro, which is not widely known. Like this one. 

You can read more about Montenegrin Tumuli and how they fit into the wider European Megalithic - Metal working culture in these articles...

Interestingly, all these megaliths share similar or even identical architectonic features. Which is why in the later 19th and the first two-thirds of the 20th centuries, archaeologists, like Childe, supported a single origin of megaliths and their spread by a process of diffusion

Childe also, supported the idea of a diffusion by maritime exchange. According to him, the expansion was supported by a megalithic religion of migrant priestly elites who settled down long enough among local societies for the new ideas to take root...

Later, Childe expanded his theory about the spreading of a megalithic religion along the coastlines of western Europe by way of missionaries or prospectors...

With the introduction of radiocarbon dates and processual approaches, the idea of an independent emergence of the same kind of stone architecture in several regions arose in the late 20th century, because early C14 results did not support the diffusion model...

Renfrew was the first to exploit the new chronological results and proposed five independent nucleus centers, including Portugal, Andalusia, Brittany, southwest England, Denmark, and possibly Ireland for the emergence of megaliths in Europe...

The model of an independent emergence of megaliths in several regions and sedentary, immobile farming communities has remained dominant in the research literature since then...

However, since the 1970s, the number of C14 dates of megaliths has expanded enormously. And it turned out Childe was right...

The radiocarbon results suggest that megalithic graves emerged within a time interval of 200 to 300 years in the second half of the fifth millennium cal BC in northwest France, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula...

Northwest France is, so far, the only megalithic region in Europe which exhibits a pre-megalithic monumental sequence and transitional structures to the megaliths, suggesting northern France as the region of origin for the megalithic phenomenon...

For the remaining regions with an early megalithic proliferation in the fifth millennium cal BC (Catalonia, southern France, Corsica, Sardinia, Portugal and Italy), megaliths are found in small clusters as exceptional grave forms for this period in their respective regions...

A fresh expansion occurred during the first half of the fourth millennium cal BC when thousands of passage graves were built along the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula, Ireland, England, Scotland, and France...

In the second half of the fourth millennium cal BC, the passage grave tradition finally reaches Scandinavia and the Funnel Beaker areas. Again, there is evidence for the spread of megalithic architecture along the seaway...

In the second half of the fourth millennium cal BC, the passage grave tradition finally reaches Scandinavia and the Funnel Beaker areas. Again, there is evidence for the spread of megalithic architecture along the seaway...

Here is what this looks like visually

The fast coastal distribution emphasizes the maritime linkage of these societies and a diffusion of the passage grave tradition along the seaway...

So, the older generation of archaeologists (like Childe) were correct concerning a single origin and maritime diffusion of the megalithic concept and accompanying radical economic and social changes. Ha!

This is the gist from the paper: "Radiocarbon dates and Bayesian modeling support maritime diffusion model for megaliths in Europe"

Now at the end of the paper the author says: 

"The megalithic movements must have been powerful to spread with such rapidity...and the maritime skills, knowledge, and technology of these societies must have been much more developed than hitherto presumed"

In my article "Neolithic seafarers" I talked about the neolithic mining and seafaring societies whose trading routes seem to have spanned the whole of Mediterranean  sea. 

In my article "Giant's ring" I talked about the possibility that these seafarers probably reached Ireland in the early 4th millennium BC and brought with them Megalithic culture and genes...

So we know that there was a mining/seafaring culture, caste, elite...in Neolithic Mediterranean...

And guess what: In the article entitled "Megalithic tombs in western and northern Neolithic Europe were linked to a kindred society" we can read that "males from megalith burials belong almost exclusively to YDNA haplogroup I2a"...

Interesting...Kind of like a mining/seafaring culture, caste, elite...

According to the author of the article I am talking about here Childe was wrong in one thing: he believed that the source of the Megalithic culture was in Mediterranean...

But was he? I am not contradicting the data that points at Northern France as the first place where we find Megaliths...But were the people who built these first megaliths originally from Northern France? Or from Mediterranean? The seafarers/miners/prospectors/missionaries...

And even if the Megalithic idea originated in the Northeastern France, were the people who spread it the same Mediterranean seafarers/miners/prospectors/missionaries who scoured European coast looking for best obsidian, flint, amber and later copper, zinc...

Mining, metalworking, ship building and seafaring are all extremely specialised activities, which require long training which can be only obtained from people who already know how to do it. Which in Neolithic was your own kin...

So it is very likely that these Neolithic seafarers/miners...and megalithic builders, were all related...Which is what the genetic data obtained from the early megalithic graves is confirming...

This is very interesting, right?

The last megalithic ritual in Europe

There are many large isolated stones littering the Belorussian countryside. Many of these stones have been, or still are, venerated as cult, or sacred stones. Over 500 of these cult stones have been worked by people.

The map of the locations of the cult boulders with man-made holes on the territory of Belarus, taken from this page of the "Культовые валуны с рукотворными углублениями".

Legend:

1 - flat stones with cup-shaped depressions;

2 - cylindrical stones with cup-shaped depressions;

3 - stones with holes (round holes, cup marks) with a depth of 0.5 to 7 cm and a diameter of 3 to 7.5 cm;

4 - stones with pits of irregular shape from 5 to 15 cm and dia. from 7.5 to 15 cm.

Some of theses stones were dated to Neolithic and Bronze age.

The above pictures were taken from this page of the "Культовые валуны с рукотворными углублениями" (Cultic stones with man made depressions).

According to a Belorussian legend one of these holy stones, which contained "footsteps of god" (was hollowed), was taken by a wealthy farmer who was building a house and was put in the house foundation. But the stone has become wet, "it starded crying", the wall went moldy and began to cause the people in the house to get sick. The farmer then  had a dream, in which he was told to take the stone to its original location. The next morning, the farmer took the stone from the foundation, loaded it on a cart and drove it to the place from which it was taken. The legend says that it was strange that although four horses barely managed to bring the stone from its original location to the house, it only took one horse to bring it back from the house to its original location. 

The most interesting among these hollowed stones is this stone from near the village of Kremenets in Lugoisk region in Belorusia, which has been dated to bronze age. It is known localy as Dabog's (Daždbog's) stone.

In Belorusia it was once believed that Dabog (Daždbog) lived in a castle somewhere far away in the east. Every morning he would drive out through the gates of his castle in his chariot and would drive accross the sky towards the west. His servants washed his face with rain. This is why his name is Daždbog, god of rain, dažd. This Belorussian belief explicitly identifies Dabog as the sun god as well as the rain god.

The same link between Thunder god (Perun) and Sun god (Svetovid), is also represented by the character of Ilija the Thunderer, the Thundering Sun god...Which shows that Dabog and Ilija the Thunderer are one and the same god. 

According to the local old people, the stone has been there since the time immemorial and it has always been considered sacred. The stone lies on a stone platform which was in the past surrounded with a stone fence. In the corner of the sacred area there was a "well without bottom" which was always full of water and the water from this well was considered holy and medicinal. People visited the stone regularly but special masses were held at the stone on Ivan Kupala day, Easter and Pentecost. People used to come to the stone at the sunrise. They would bring with them offerings (flowers, money, bread, apples...) and would place them at the stone. They would then draw a bucketful of water from the well. A handful of water would be poured into the hollow marks on the stone which are called "God's footprints". The rest of the water would be used to wash the sore spot on the body because it was believed that the water has magical medicinal properties and could cure illnesses.

Now here is something very very very (I don't think there are enough verys I could put here) interesting about this Dabog stone which makes it probably one of the most important stones in the world. 

According to the same local old people, the villagers also turned to the stone for help during the periods of droughts when it did not rain for a long time. A special ceremony involving Dabog stone would then be performed. The ceremony was led by one of the oldest grandmothers in the willage. She would walk through the village and gather nine widows. They would take wooden stakes cut to a man's height. They would go to the stone, lift it using the stakes as leavers, and would perform a special prayer to the stone asking it to send down the rain.

The last such rain ritual at the stone was performed during the dry summer of 1985 and the locals say that the rain came after three days. You can see the video of the whole ceremony here.

Now this is absolutely incredible in so many ways. 

First the stone is clearly identified as the seat of Dabog, as Dabog personified. This can be seen from the fact that people prayed to the stone as if it was Dabog himself. 

Second, the raising of the stone was part of the prayer ceremony. Is it possible that this is a remnant of the ancient megalithic raising of the stone ceremonies which left us all these thousands of standing stones all over Europe? Did ancient Europeans raise all the standing stones as part of the praying ceremony dedicated to the the Sky god? I already suggested that this was a possibility in my post entitled "Grandmother's cudgels (clubs)" which talked about Orion, "The father of gods" and the original "Thundering giant" who during the Bronze Age caused climatic chaos with his stone clubs (meteorites) which he hurled from the sky. In Serbian "Thunder giant" is "Grom div". I already wrote in several posts that I believe that "Grom div" was the original name of the Bronze Age sky god whose name came to us as "Hromi daba" the main epithet of Dabog, Serbian and Slavic sky god and as "Crom dubh", the name of the Irish sky god...Now during Bronze Age the prayer ritual dedicated to the Sky god, Grom div, was probably performed during the extreme climatic events which threatened the survival of the people. During the praying ritual a new stone was hewn in the likeness of the Orion's stone club (meteorite) and was raised and left standing pointing at the sky. This was eventually replaced with the pretend raising of the single stone which represented the Sky god Dabog, Hromi daba...So this stone raising ceremony preserved in Belorussia could be the last remnant of the Bronze Age megalithic sky worshiping religion...

Third, considering that the stone is equated with Dabog, the raising of the stone was in effect the raising of Dabog. Do you know of of any other raising of the god ceremony? (This is a trick question :)). Dabog  is in Serbia also known as Djed, meaning Grandfather, The ancestor. He is seen as the ancestor of all the Serbs. This is why Dabog is in Serbian mythology seen as the sun god, Giving god (rain and grain god) and the good of the dead. So raising of the Dabog stone is effectively raising of the Djed...

And in Egyptian religion "djed" was a pillar associated with Osiris. Interestingly the word "djed" is also used in Egypt today to address grandparents...The djed pillar was an important part of the ceremony called 'raising the djed'. The act of raising the djed has been explained as representing Osiris's triumph over Set. The djed hieroglyph was a pillar-like symbol that represented stability. It was also sometimes used to represent Osiris himself. Osiris the sun god, the god of grain and the god of the dead. Osiris whose soul was Sahu, constellation Orion, the Thundering Giant of the Bronze Age...

So, very interesting isn't it?

References:

"Кременецкий камень благополучия" from Виртуальный музей города Логойска

"КУЛЬТОВЫЕ ВАЛУНЫ С РУКОТВОРНЫМИ УГЛУБЛЕНИЯМИ" - Винокуров В.Ф, Дучиц Л.В. (кандидат исторических наук), Зайковский Э.М.( кандидат исторических наук), Карабанов А.К.(доктор геолого-минералогических наук)