Siberian smith god

Two of many similar figures made by the people of the Kulai culture, which thrived along the Ob River and its tributaries in western Siberia between the 5th century BC and the 5th century CE. From "Frozen magic, the ancient art of Siberia"...

According to the authors of the "Frozen magic, the ancient art of Siberia": The most distinctive feature of these figures is the disproportionate human form. It is unlikely that this effect was unintentional and was probably done to emphasise that we are dealing with a deity... 

The figure have a limping stance, a consistent trait among all known figures in this style. Ancient artisans intentionally crafted one leg shorter than the other, creating a deliberate asymmetry that contrasts with the figure’s symmetrical facial features... 

The authors of the "Frozen magic, the ancient art of Siberia" then propose that these figures might depict a limping blacksmith deity, that fits the common archetype found in other mythologies...  

Mythological figures such as the Greek Hephaestus, Scandinavian Völund, Scythian Targitaus, and the celestial blacksmith Kurdalagon of the Ossetian-Nart people all share a limp. BTW, if you want to know why they are all limping, check my post "Vučedol dove" out...

The gist is that the first, most primitive form of bronze made was arsenic bronse. Arsenic is extremely poisonous, and it gets released into the air from the molten metal in a form of toxic fumes... 

The first sigh of arsenic poisoning is the loss of the sensation in the legs, which then expands throughout the body and finally leads to death...Therefore forging this metal was a dangerous job... 

But if you got out of your workshop on time, then the danger passed, although limping due to loss of sensation in the legs remained for some time...Sounds familiar so far? A lame, limping smith...

Anyway, the authors of the "Frozen magic, the ancient art of Siberia" then go to say that this deity is obviously connected to the underworld...Because both fish and lizard are chthonic animals...

Eeeee what? 

I would first like to agree that this figure is most likely a blacksmith deity. I would then like to propose that this is also a solar deity. Why? Cause of Svarog (Сваро́гъ) is a Slavic god of celestial fire and the father of Dažbog, Slavic sun god... 

Svarog was in the 15th c. Hypatian Codex, a Slavic translation of the Chronicle of John Malalas, equated with Hephaestus, which means that he was not only the god of sun's fire but also of the smith (crucibel) fire...His name comes from the root "svar" which means fire...

Interestingly, Dažbog, who is among Serbs known as Dabog, was imagined as a lame, limping god...He was also the god of the underworld...Strange for a sun god to be the god of the underworld, I hear you say...

No, not really...Where does the sun spend every night? Where is the sun's palace, whose gate the morning star opens up every morning so the sun can drive his chariots into our world? It's in the underworld, the land of the dead, of course... 

So I also agree that the strange objects made by the people of the Kulai culture depict a deity which is connected to the underworld. But not because "fish and lizard are chthonic animals"...They are not. They are animal calendar markers for the hot half of the year...

Lizards are obvious animal calendar markers for summer. They are cold blooded creatures, which are only outside when the outside temperature gets high enough to warm their blood. Siberian lizards emerge from hibernation in Apr and mate in May/Jun... 

I talked about lizard as an animal calendar marker for summer in my post "Bes" about Onega Lage petroglyphs...

This is also a great example of lizard being used as an animal calendar marker for the hot half of the year. 

A (strange) griffin killing a lizard. 6th century mosaic, Great Palace Museum, Istanbul. Another complex animal calendar marker, this one depicting cold half of the year killing (ending) hot half of the year. Full analysis of the symbolism in my post "Griffin killing lizard"...

So that's lizard. What about fish? 

The people of the Kulai culture who made these strange figurines lived along the Kazym river, the right tributary of Ob river. The Kazym river is fed mainly by snow. It freezes in early November and begins to thaw in late May.

Which is when Taimen, the biggest salmonoid in the world, starts its upstream spawning migration towards the upper reaches of the small tributaries where they spawn in the shallows in May/Jun. 

I talked about migratory fish used as animal calendar marker in my post "Pisces". 

25000 years ago a Palaeolithic man carved salmon into the ceiling of a cave near the Vézère River in France. Why? Because in the past, salmon fishing season, which starts in Pisces (fish) 🙂 was one of the main food gathering seasons in Continental Europe

I also talked about migratory fish used as animal calendar marker in my post "The dragon gate" about jumping carp from China. Porcelain Dish c.1700, depicting the Chinese legend about The Dragon Gate. If a carp manages to swim up Yellow River and climb up the waterfall to the gate and jump through it, it will turn into a thunder and lightning dragon.

And in my post "Apkallu" about the giant Mesopotamian carps which migrate upstream for spawing every year during the annual flood season . 

Gold and lapis lazuli carps found in the grave of the Sumerian Queen Puabi who was buried in Ur around 2500BC...Gold for sun and blue for water...About Mesopotamian carp, carp flood, Enki and his Apkallu...

So both of the animals depicted on the strange oval heads of the Kulai culture figures are animal calendar markers for the beginning of summer in Siberia. So I would suggest that the reason why these figures have such huge heads is because they are supposed to symbolise summer sun...

Ok...But what does any of this have to do with metallurgy and smith gods? Well, as it turns out, in the past, in areas with continental climate with a lot of snow, metallurgy was a seasonal activity performed during the summer. I talked about it in my post "Mishipeshu" about the Ancient Native Americans coppersmiths from the great lakes. 

It's kind of obvious, when you think about it. In the past ore was mostly extracted either from shallow shafts, or from river sediments. Both of which are during the winter covered with pile of snow and ice and inacessible. Also it is impossible to work outside on -50 C...

Hence Siberian lame sun smith god figurines decorated with fish and lizard, the two animal calendar markers for the beginning of the metallurgical season in Siberia...What do you think? Makes sense?

BTW, it just occurred to me why Bronze Age Vučedol culture smith could have had this partridge/dove figurine in his forge: both birds are symbol of spring, animal calendar markers for the beginning of the metallurgical season in the Balkans...

The reason we don't know exactly what bird it is:

Native Balkan dove

Native Balkan partridge

See what I mean?

But what we know is that Partridge is in Greek myths directly linked to lame smiths, like Hephaestus...Dove is linked to Aphrodite...

Hmmmm...

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

Bes

The most famous of the Lake Onega petroglyphs, Russia, made c. 4000BC, is a large anthropomorph known locally as "The Devil" (Rus. Bes), which was intentionally positioned around a large crevice so that it divides the figure in two...

Now ethnographers think that this was done to explicitly associate "The Devil" with the underworld, the gap in the rock being "the opening" to this other world...

BTW, as you can see, "The Devil" was later Christianised by the addition of a large cross carved next to it...

The local legend says that "...long time ago the Devil and his Wife lived on Lake Onega, and made their presence known through the strange pictures on the rock. But then came the Incarnate Christ and the True Faith, and crosses were carved over the evil pictures..."

"...The evil spirits tried to escape, but they wanted to take with them a memory of their home, a boulder. However, as they took off from the rock with petroglyphs, they fell in the lake together with the boulder, and drowned in a place where today stands Porshen Islet..."

The cross carved next to the "Devil" can be typologically dated to the 14th or 15th century AD, and it is believed that the crosses were made by the monks of the nearby Greek Orthodox monastery of Muromsk, located c. 20km south-east of the carvings...

In the paper "Some Statistics About Rock-Carvings Of Lake Onega" we find this chart showing distribution of rock-art sites and motifs at Lake Onega. And it turns out that these petroglyphs most commonly depict swans and other water birds...Why?

"Northern Archaeology and Cosmology" suggests that:

 "...Lake Onega swans appear to emerge from [the Underworld through] the cracks in the rock...or, alternatively, to disappear [into the Underworld] through "openings" formed by cracks in the bedrock..."

Interestingly, the only two images carved on the bedrock of the Lake Onega which were Christianised are "The Devil" and a swan...Why would Christian missionaries think that it was necessary to try to Christianise a depiction of a swan?

Well...To understand this we need to turn to local legends...According to Antti Lahelma, the author of this paper: "Strange swans and odd ducks: interpreting the ambiguous waterfowl imagery of Lake Onega, 

"...they contain key for understanding the meaning of these petroglyphs.

Although today the language spoken at the Lake Onega region is mostly Russian, its traditional inhabitants were Finno-Ugric speaking Karelians, Vepsians and (possibly) Saami...

These peoples have been in contact with and influenced by Christianity since the Viking Age (9th–11th centuries AD) at least, when they fell within the sphere of influence of the Kievan Rus...

Nominal conversion to Orthodox Christianity occurred in the course of the 11th and 14th centuries, when the Karelians and Vepsians were subject to the city-state of Novgorod...

But it took a very long time for Christianity to take deeper root in Karelia and many aspects pre-Christian ritual and belief survived in the region until recent times...

Antti Lahelma argues, and I agree with him, that the people who carved these images into the rock shores of the Lake Onega 6000 years ago, were direct ancestors of the today's Carelians...

And he argues that the local population has managed to preserve the meaning of these images in their folklore...And interestingly, the central role in this folklore is played by migratory water-birds...Including swans...

In the traditional religions of Uralic peoples, water-birds were believed to be able to travel between the worlds, our world and the Otherworld...

A belief manifested in the common Finno-Ugric cosmological concept of a "Land of Birds", an island located beyond the horizon at the south-western end of the Milky Way, which is in most Finno-Ugric languages called "Pathway of the Birds"...

Many ethnographers believe that this is an essential element of Proto-Uralic cosmology and thus may date as far back as 5000 BC – or the time when the earliest rock carvings at Lake Onega were made...

The notion of swans and ducks as "soul-birds" is found among the Vepsians of the southern Lake Onega region. In traditional Vepsian burial laments, for example, the human soul is often described as a bird...

And at some old Vepsian and Karelian cemeteries, wooden bird-sculptures representing the soul of the deceased can still be found on top of the Christian cross."

End of what Antti Lahelma had to say about that...

Cool right?

What's even cooler is that this is not a special Fino-Ugric belief...The same belief that migratory birds go from our world to the Otherworld in the autumn, and come back from the Otherworld to our world in the spring is also found in Slavic folklore...

Slavs believed in Iriy, a mythical place, a paradise, where "birds fly for the winter and souls go after death". Spring sun was believed to come from Iriy...I wrote about it in these posts: "Irij", "Leto", "Nav", "Bird wedding", "Julenek"...

Also this

Serbs have an interesting name for Milky Way: "Jovanova struga", meaning "Jov's river, river in the sky". And in Serbian tradition, it is this river that a soul needs to cross to reach "The other world"...You can read more about it in my post "Jovanova struga"...

I think that this belief was once most likely found in the belief systems of all the people living in the continental areas of the Northern Hemisphere, where the arrival of the birds from the south signalled spring and life, and their departure was a sign of autumn and death...

For this reason several Uralic peoples, including the Nganasan, Enets and Dolgans, have special rites for welcoming migratory ducks and swans in the spring...

But so do the Slavs...

I talked about Macedonian ritual welcoming of the returning migratory birds in the spring called "Letnik" in my article "Leto"...

I talked about Eastern Slavic custom of welcoming the returning migratory birds in the spring in my article "Inviting spring"... 

Kurds celebrate the same thing...Every year in February, in Merîwan, they welcome the return of the storks to Kurdistan. Storks fly south each late summer and return to their breeding grounds in February, towards the end of winter. It‘s common in Kurdistan that the people greet the storks with songs and dance.

Ancient Greeks celebrated the return of swallows. I talked about it in my post "Heralds of spring"...

Anyway, how can all this help us understand the meaning of the Karelian swans appearing from and disappearing into the cracks in the rock? Back to  Antti Lahelma...

According to him, in Finnish-Karelian shamanistic folklore, cracks in the rock would appear to be the archetypal entrances to the Lower World. The expression used for "falling in trance" in Finnish folk poetry can be literally translated as "falling into a crack" in the ground...

Given the above discussion on Finno-Ugric bird-mythology, it seems probable that many of the images of swans at Onega are to be understood as symbols of the soul, or as messengers between the worlds of humans and spirits...

Swans entering a crack or emerging from one appear to symbolise the passage of the soul – of a deceased person or a shaman – between This World and the Otherworld...

Interestingly, in the paper "Birds and burials at Ajvide (Gotland, Sweden) and Zvejnieki (Latvia) about 8000–3900BP" by Kristiina Mannermaa we can read that we actually have archaeological evidence that Neolithic people of the far north most likely connected waterbird (migratory birds) with the soul...

"The location of waterbirds’ wings or parts of them near the hands of the deceased, and the deposition of bird depictions in burials indicate that waterbirds might have been perceived as some kind of guiding spirits for the journey to the afterlife"...

Soooo...Another example of how ancient our folklore could actually be...

But this is not the only example...It was Slavic animal folklore that helped me discover animal calendar markers which seem to be behind all animal mythological symbols starting from Early Neolithic...

I proposed that this calendar system was developed during the transition from hunting and gathering to farming. And people then used these animal calendar symbols to mark important agricultural events in their area...

Like "The rains arrive when when wild goats begin to mate". "We should sow grain when wild goats begin to mate". "The flood arrives when wild cattle starts to calve". "We should harvest grain when wild cattle starts to calve"...

But this animal calendar was developed not by farmers but by hunters-gatherers, who knew the lifecycles of the animals and plants around them in depth...

Question: do we have any proof that hunter-gatherers used this hypothetical animal calendar?

Answer: I think that the petroglyphs at "Besov nos" are an example of the use of such calendar by Neolithic hunter-gatherers in Karelia...6000 years ago...

And I will here explain why I think so...

The people who lived in Neolithic Karelia lived mostly off hunting (elks, waterbirds) and fishing (wales, sturgeons, salmons, eels, catfish)...I believe that the composition with the "Devil" at its centre actually depicts the local hunting and fishing calendar...

More specifically, I believe that this is symbolic depiction of the period between snow melt (Mar/Apr) in the spring and the snow fall (Oct/Nov) in the autumn...This is the climatic chart for the Republic of Karelia...

This is symbolically depicted as the time between the arrival (Mar/Apr) of the swans (pointing up) and the departure (Oct/Nov) of the swans (pointing down)...

This is also what is what is depicted using this symbol found in local Karelian cultures from Neolithic until today: two swans looking in the opposite directions...

The swans depicted on these petroglyphs are whooper swans...

The whooper swans later became known as The Singing swans of the sun god Apollo...

I talked about it in my post "Singers of Apollo"...

That swans were seen by ancient Karelians as solar animals, can be seen from the fact that they were depicted together with snakes, also solar animals...

Snakes are probably one of the only truly solar animals.

They are in our world when sun is in our world, during the day and during the warm half of the year. And they are in the underworld when sun is there too, during the night and during the cold part of the year...I talked about it in my posts "Enemy of the sun", "The chthonic animal", "Bactrian snakes and dragons", "Dragon who stole rain", "Letnitsa treasure"...

But just like both swans and snakes are solar animals, they are also chthonic animals...Because they both follow sun to the Underworld during the winter...

That ancient Karelians saw swans as solar birds, can also be seen from the depiction of a swan with the sun around its neck. Was swan seen by the ancient Karelians as the bringer of the sun?

BTW, Bes, The Devil, is most likely the old Sun God. See the solar year symbol next to its head? 

Also his head is right where summer solstice is supposed to be...This would explain why swan image was the only animal image that was Christianised together with Bes...

If indeed this is a calendar...Here is the full pic with annotations...

I will then go and explain where each depicted animal fits between the arrival and the departures of the swans and the sun...

Swans to the left of the "Devil" (spring) are all mostly pointing up (arriving from the land of the dead, winter) and the swans to the right of the "Devil" (autumn) are all mostly pointing down (going back to the land of the dead, winter)...

The most prominent animal depicted in the spring half of the composition is a common lizard, also pointing up, symbolising emerging of lizards from hibernation in the ground in the spring...And their mating season in Apr/May...

The second most prominent animal depicted in the spring half of the composition is an Atlantic sturgeon...These are huge migratory fish, which live in the sea and spawn in rivers. In the northern populations spawning starts in May and early Jun with a peak in Jul...

Here's spring part with dates...

But what about the other, autumn side of the composition? Do we find the same thing there? Well on the other side we see wales, salmon, catfish (or eel), elk and swans...And a birch leaf...

The Elk rut (mating season) takes place in Sep/Oct when the males, with full set of antlers, put on elaborate displays and sometimes fight to gain access to females. 

After the mating season ,males drop their antlers to conserve energy for the winter. A new set of antlers will then regrow in the spring...

This makes Elks without horns symbols of the end of summer and beginning of winter...And winter itself...As can be seen from elk hunting scenes from the area depicting hunters on skis leaving long line like tracks behind them pursuing elks leaving hoof prints behind...

BTW, this also explains the strange moose without horns-swan petroglyphs found in the area, which Antti Lahelma gave as an example of one of the petroglyphs that local folklore has no explanation for...

Swan symbolises sunny, warm part of the year in Karelia (Mar/Apr-Oct/Nov) and moose without horns symbolised dark, cold part of the year (Oct/Nov-Mar/Apr)...

So together they are a symbol of the solar year...See the solar year circle in one of the swan-moose depictions?

Atlantic salmon run in the White Sea area is May-Oct with spawning happening in Oct...However, the kind of Salmon that was depicted on Lake Onega petroglyphs was now (almost?) extinct lake salmon, the landlocked subspecies of the Atlantic salmon...

And according to the "Salmon of Lake Onega" by YU. A. Smirnov, salmon run of the lake salmon of the Karelian lakes is also May-Oct, with spawning taking place Jun/Jul/Aug/Sep/Oct depending on the river...

What about whales? Beluga whales gather every summer in the White Sea, not far from the Karelian coast. But only from mid-June to mid-August, and only in the absence of rough sea...

Bowhead whales were also once abundant in areas adjacent to the White Sea. And according to this article "Commercial Whaling in the Arctic Ocean" the whaling season in the Arctic was Aug-Oct...

So beluga whales were possibly the smaller whales depicted being hunted from a single boat. And the bowhead whales were possibly the large whales depicted on the petroglyphs being hunted from multiple boats...

Interestingly, the whaling season is also the season when elks have antlers...Which explains images like these: elk with boat like antlers...

And boats with elk like heads on their prows...Cause the sailing season in the White Sea started when elk started growing their antlers (Apr/May)...And peaked when their antlers were fully grown (Aug/Sep/Oct)...

Remember Phoenician ships with horses heads on their prows? Cause the sailing season in The Eastern Mediterranean started when wild horses started to mate...And ended after the horse mating season was over...I talked about this in my post "Trojan horse"...

This is an amazing pic by Sergey Semenov of Lake Onega islands. The forests of Karelia are a mix of evergreen firs, pines and deciduous aspens, alders and birches...

Birches are the most common deciduous tree in the area. Their leaves start to grow in Apr and fall off in Nov...

Finally what is this elongated big black thing in the middle of all this? It looks like a fish, and to me it looks most like a Wels Catfish...But it could (with a stretch 🙂) also be a European Eel...Why would either of them be depicted in the autumn half of the calendar?

In "Empirical observations of the spawning migration of European eels: The long and dangerous road to the Sargasso Sea" we can read that adult European eels begin their spawning migration from European rivers and coasts during the autumn of each year, predominantly Oct-Dec... So if you wanted to set up eel traps in your rivers, this was the time to do it...

Wels Catfish are true giants, who spends most of the year in deep water. Except during spawning which takes place in the shallows. According to "Silurus glanis (wels catfish)", Spawning commences when temperature reaches 18-22ºC. Which in Karelia is in Jul/Aug...

Males make nests out of the plant material found around, at a depth of 30 – 70cm. Females then deposit the eggs into the nest "and the male then guards the eggs for the next 2-10 days"...Which means that Jul/Aug is ideal time to catch these huge fishes...

So, autumn: Salmon spawning (Jul-Oct), Catfish spawning (Jul/Aug), Beluga Whales hunting season (Jun-Aug), Elk mate (Sep/Oct) drop their antlers (Oct/Nov), Bowhead Whales hunting season (Aug-Oct), Swans departing (Oct/Nov), Eels migrate (Nov), Birches leaves fall (Nov)...

It looks like it all fits...Right? 

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, check the posts related to animal calendar markers, and then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 12 months behind now...