The birth of Romulus and Remus

Roman Republic, Didrachm, 269BC Apparently, today (April 21) is Rome's birthday...Roman historians dated the city's foundation by Romulus (plus/minus Remus) to c. 750BC, and Plutarch reckoned that Romulus and Remus were born c. 771 BC. But in what month? Let's find out...

The legend:

Romulus and Remus were born in Alba Longa. Their mother, Rhea Silvia, a vestal virgin, was impregnated by the God Mars, when he visited her in a sacred grove dedicated to him...

Rhea Silvia was the daughter of the former king of Alba Longa, Numitor, who was overthrown by his brother Amulius. Seeing Romulus and Remus as a threat to his rule, Amulius, took the kids from Rhea Silvia and ordered a servant to kill them by throwing them into the Tiber River...

But the servant took pity on the twins and instead of throwing them into the river, he placed the twins into a basket and put the basket into the River Tiber, and the river carried the boys to safety...

The river god Tibernus ensured the safety of the twins by calming the river, and causing their basket to catch in the roots of a fig tree which grew at the base of the Palatine Hill in the Velabrum swamp...

The twins were then discovered by a she-wolf (Lupa), who had just lost her cubs. She lived in a cave near the fig, which is today known as the Lupercal. She suckled the twins and they were also fed by a woodpecker...

Eventually, Romulus and Remus were discovered and adopted by a shepherd called Faustulus...

The rest is boring stuff, murders, rapes, wars and other "glorious" stuff...I will leave that to historians and Rome "enthusiasts"...

So...Where do we start? I think with the she-wolf (Lupa). She just lost her cubs...and was still lactating...which means that Romulus and Remus were born during the Italian wolf birthing season...Or just before it...Which is when?

Well, it turns out that the Italian wolf, a special subspecies of the wolf family, begins to mate in the middle of Feb...Right around the time of the very important Roman fertility festival Lupercalia (wolf festival)...

The sacred rites performed during Lupercalia were centred around the Lupercal cave...Yup, the one where she-wolf Lupa lived...And the wild fig-tree to which Romulus and Remus were brought by the divine intervention of the river-god Tiberinus...

Interestingly, some Roman sources name the wild fig tree caprificus, literally "goat fig". 

Why is this interesting? 

Cause the main sacrificial right performed during Lupercalia was a sacrifice of goats at the Lupercal altar by Luperci, Wolf Priests...

After the blood sacrifice, two Luperci had their foreheads anointed with blood from the sacrificial knife, which was then wiped clean with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to laugh...

The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs (known as februa, hence February) from the flayed goat skin, and ran with these, naked, along the old Palatine boundary, laughing and striking those they met with goat skin thongs...

Plutarch writes that "Many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy"...

Luperci then returned to the Lupercal cave...

So...What's all this about? Remember that Ibex (wild) goats were in Europe used as animal calendar markers for winter (Nov,Dec,Jan)...Because their mating season starts in Oct/Nov...

Article "Goat in European culture", about Ibex goat as an animal calendar marker imbedded in in European cultures and mythologies...

Winter finishes in Jan, and spring starts in Jan/Feb...Right when Italian wolves start mating in Feb/Mar...And when Luperci, wolf priests (spring) kill goats (winter) and use goat skin thongs as magic fertility instruments...

Because in continental Europe nature dies at the beginning of winter, and gets resurrected at the end of winter, and because winter is the season of the goat, the goat has to die, so nature can get resurrected...

Article "Krampus", explaining the link between Mountain Ibex Goats, #Capricorn zodiac sign, #Yule Goat, #Krampus and all the other Christmas related goat characters and masks:

You might like this too: Describe winter zodiac poetically 🙂

A hunter chases an ibex with gold horns up the mountain. At the summit he shoots the goat. The goat is bleeding and dying. But a magic flower grows out of its blood. Goat eats the flower, gets revived and runs away. I talked about this in my articles "Zlatorog-Goldhorn" and "Trentar"...

After the goat was killed by Wolf priests, the sacrificial knife  was cleaned by milk and wool...Feb is the the time when sheep start lambing and lactating...

The sheep stop lambing and the milking season starts in Mar/Apr, in Aries...

When a lamb is decorated like this in Serbia, it means that it's destined to be sacrificed to St George...Aries must die so Taurus can begin...Spring is sacrificed to summer... 

Also the lambing season is over and the milking season begins. From my article "Aries must die"...

The killing of a dog, together with goats, was a sacrifice to wolves, so that they spare the flocks...

BTW, dog mating season is opposite to wolf mating season...They are opposite calendar markers...Natural antagonists...

When our mythologies were made out of animal calendar markers, Sirius, the Dog Star rose with the sun in Jul/Aug, when mating season of the old dog breeds began...

Egypt: Article about "Dog days"...

Mesopotamia: Article about "Tishtrya"...

India: Article about "The bitch of the gods"...

Anyway, back to Romulus and Remus...The Italian wolf mating season spans Feb/Mar. The gestation lasts 2 months...Which means that the Italian wolf cubs are born in in Arp/May...

And so, Romulus and Remus could have been born in Mar/Apr (Aries) possibly in Mar, the month of their father Mars...But then they would have been a month old before they were thrown into Tiber...

Could that be the case?

I think that Amulius decided to kill Romulus and Remus as soon as he found out they were born...Which means that they were probably born in Apr/May...

Look at this. This is flood chart of the river Tiber. You can see that the floods almost completely subside by Apr/May...Remember that Tibernus "calmed the waters of Tiber down to ensure safety of the twins"...

And then he delivered the basket with the boys to the roots of a wild fig...Where they were "cradled in the shade of the fig branches". Fig trees are deciduous, dropping their leaves in late fall and leafing out again in early spring...

So when are fig leaves fully grown in the area around Rome? Finally, while Lupa was breastfeeding the twins, "woodpeckers were bringing them food too"...Woodpecker was the sacred bird of Mars, the father of Romulus and Remus...

And 4 main woodpecker species in Italy (The great and lesser spotted woodpeckers, Green and Black woodpecker) are nesting in Apr/May...Right on time to feed Romulus and Remus...

The two wolf boys were then found and adopted by Faustulus, the shepherd, and were brought up as shepherds...Interesting...Apr/May is when shepherds take their sheep to the highland pastures...I talked about this in my article "Aries must die"...

Sooooo....Apr/May? Guess what happens in Apr/May? More precisely on the 21st of Apr? The Rome was founded...By Romulus (plus/minus Remus)...

Oh and this is when the flocks are purified during Palilia (Parilia) ceremony...

Palilia (Parilia), the Roman festival, held on 21st April, cleansed shepherds & sheep, honouring the god of shepherds & sheep, Pales. Interestingly, Romans didn't really know who Pales was...So in this article I tried to uncover Pales's the secret identity 🙂 I talked about this in my article "Parilia"...

That's that. Interesting? I think so. 

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... 

Wolf moon

The January full moon is referred to as the "Wolf Moon," because traditionally, "wolves can be heard howling at the moon more this time of year". Why?

Cause wolves mating season starts in mid January.

MacBain's Gaelic dictionary says that period from mid January to mid February was once called "faoilleach", "faoillteach", Irish "faoillidh", "faoilleach"...From "faol", wolf, meaning "wolf-month". The month when wolves mate...

Anglo-saxons also called January "Wulf-monath" (meaning "wolf month"). For the same reason: wolves are much louder and more noticeable in January, which is when breeding season begins...

Interestingly, in Serbian tradition, 14th of January (Julian) or 27th of January (Gregorian) calendar, is the day of the Serbian patron saint, St Sava...

Who was known as "The wolf shepherd"...

St Sava's cult replaced the cult of the Serbian supreme god Dabog who was also known among other things as "Wolf Shepherd". Both originally Dabog and later St Sava were believed to be able to command the wolves who and when to attack, and whom not to attack...

So remember how animal calendar markers are made? The fact that wolves mate during Jan/Feb, something that is hard to miss if you live in a wolf country, makes wolf a great animal calendar marker for Jan/Feb, the end of winter. Like in this Sumerian story: 

"When Enki set sail...against the lord a storm...arose...The waves at the bow of the boat rose to devour the lord like wolves and the waves at the stern of the boat were attacking Enki like a lion..."

All the animals in these scene are animal calendar markers for the beginning of the flood season in Mesopotamia, which starts when wolves mate (Jan/Feb) and ends when lions mate (Jul/Aug)...I talked about this in my post "Enki's little boat"...

Because of their mating season at the end of winter, wolves are used for creating composite "mythical animals", that represent winter...Like on this "Scythian" gold belt buckle depicting a "fight between a wolf and a snake"...Wolf is here depicted with boar tusks...Wild boar mate in Oct/Nov, beginning of winter, while wolves mate in Jan/Feb, the end of winter...In the world of animal calendar markers, this would mean "division of the year into winter (boar, wolf) and summer (serpent)"...I talked about this object in my post "Volf vs snake"...

When I originally posted the belt buckle article as a twitter thread, @Peter_Nimitz sent this reply:

Fascinating thread on animal calendars. Wonder if the wolf Fenrir & serpent Jormungandr are distant descendants of this mythology - compare the belt buckle to this Norse stave church with the serpent & the wolf...

Jörmungandr, the Great Serpent and Fenrir, the Great Wolf, are brothers...Brothers are usually used to specify that we are talking about two aspects of the same thing, in this case solar year: serpent (summer, heat) and wolf (winter, cold)...

Anyway, we started with "wolf moon is called wolf moon cause wolves like howling at it"...So let's finish with this...

The howling wolf. Wood with shell inlay, Southern Siberia, 3rd c. BC. Nomadic steppe art. Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, USA. 

I wonder if people, when they invented "old style" polyphonic singing, actually imitated wolf pack howling? I talked about this in my post "Ojkanje, the wolf singing"...

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...

Wolf vs snake

Few days ago I came across this amazing artefact: A "Scythian" gold belt buckle depicting a "fight between a wolf and a snake"...

This is one of 250 decorative gold objects made by the Eurasian nomads between the 7th c. BC and 2nd c. AD, in the so called "Scythian-Siberian animal style"...which are part of the "Siberian collection" of Peter I which was assembled in the early 18th c...

Now there is something very strange about this object...The wolf is not really a wolf...You can see more clearly what I mean on this drawing made one century before the Siberian collection was assembled...

This is not the drawing of the belt buckle from the collection of the Peter I. It is a drawing of another belt buckle, most likely a part of a pair, from the Nikolaas Witsen collection...Depicting a mirror image of the scene from the belt buckle from the Peter I collection...

Nikolaas Witsen was a Dutch scientist and cartographer, who visited Russia in 1664-1665. He wrote about his trip in a book "Northern and Eastern Tartaria" where this drawing appear...

In this first detailed depiction of Siberia (Tartaria) in Europe, Witsen also wrote about the gold objects which were at that time dug out of the ancient Siberian burial mounds...

Apparently, looting ancient Siberian burials for gold was a big business at the time...No one knows what was found and lost...The belt buckle from the drawing was one of the objects Witsen "collected" or bought from the "collectors" for himself...

Here are the drawings of both buckles:

L: Nikolaas Witsen collection R: Peter I collection. 

Drawing from this page which compares these two collections...

You can see that the "wolf" is actually a composite animal, with the body and the head of a wolf and the snout (and a tusk) of a wild boar...

So...Composite animal...Mythical beast? Or a complex animal calendar marker? 🙂

So what are animal calendar markers? Well these are ancient animal symbols used as calendar markers to mark the time when the depicted animal mates, gives birth, migrates, hibernates...

They were most likely devised by the first farmers in the Fertile Crescent, maybe 15,000 years ago, although there are some indications that they could be even older, developed in Palaeolithic Europe, and then brought to Fertile Crescent during last Ice Age...

Anyway, these animal markers were in the Fertile Crescent used to create first agricultural calendar...The reoccurring annual events important for agriculture were marked by the animals that mated, or gave birth, or migrated, or hibernated...at that same time...

For instance: 

Rains arrive when ibex goats are mating.

Flood arrives when auroch cattle are calving.

Snow starts melting when leopards start mating.

The hottest and driest part of the year is when lions start mating.

And so on and so forth...

The first farmers brought this agricultural calendar with them, as they were spreading through Eurasia and North Africa. Amazingly, over time these animal calendar markers became deified...And became base on top of which all Eurasian and North African mythologies are built...

More about ancient animal calendar markers, start here then check the rest of the blog posts I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter @serbiaireland threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 7 months behind now...

Back to the belt buckle...

So what about our belt buckle then? What do the animal calendar markers (snake, wild boar, wolf) depict? Well to understand this we need to look at the climatic year in Central Siberia, and particularly the temperature...See, two halves: hot (+30) and cold (-30)...

So, snake...

Snake is a solar animal, which is in our world when sun is in our world: during the day and during the hot part of the year...Which is why it was in this ancient calendar, used as a solar symbol and the symbol of the hot half of the year...I talked about this in many of my posts, for instance "Enemy of the sun", "The chthonic animal", "Bactrian snakes and dragons"...

Dragon of a fire breathing variety, is just "an old snake", just a "snake that has looked at the sun for a long time"...Dragon is basically just a symbol of the late summer, the hottest and (usually) driest part of the year, the time of droughts...I talked about this in many of my posts, for instance "Dragon who stole rain", "Seven headed dragon", "Winged superhuman hero", "Is that you Gilgamesh"...

If you are interested in mythology where dragon is a water animal, because the hottest part of the year is also the wettest, check these articles out about Chinese dragons: "Chinese dragon", "Tiger and dragon"...

So we have a snake/dragon as a symbol of the hot part of the year...Fighting with a composite creature, part wild boar (mating season Nov-Jan), part wolf (mating season Jan-Mar)...

As you can see the animals forming "The enemy of the snake/dragon" mate during the winter, and are used widely as symbols for winter, the cold part of the year, when snakes are nowhere to be seen...They are killed (forced underground into hibernation) by their "mythical enemy"...Cold winter...

And if we look at the "mythical animal", we can see that the wild boar (snout, tusk) actually marks the beginning of winter and the wolf (head, body) marks the end of winter...

So...I believe that here we have a symbols of two opposing halves of the Central Siberian climatic year, hot summer and cold winter...Depicted through animal calendar markers...

PS: Here is another article about an artefact done in "Siberian animal style" with every single animal depicted having its mating season during the winter, which why it is being used as an animal calendar marker for winter...I talked about it in my post "Tasmola talisman"...

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...

Tasmola talisman

Another fascinating object. This one was found in Tasmola V burial ground in Kazakhstan, also dated to 5th-4th century. BC. From this amazing resource (in Russian) "Язык звериных образов"

Why is this "fascinating" exactly? I hear you ask...Well, according to the archaeologists who discovered it the object itself is made in the form of the head of a bird of prey.  Inside this shape there is a complex composition of many different animals....

The central, largest figure, is a wild boar. Under it, three heads of ibex goats and, possibly, a wolf are inscribed in the curves of the beak...

So we have: 

Bird of pray (Vulture)

Wild boar

Ibex goat

Wolf

These animals were not picked randomly. All four animals have their mating season during the winter. Making this object a complex animal calendar marker representing winter (Nov, Dec, Jan)...

I already talked about the Ibex goats as animal calendar markers in my post "Combs from Tuva" about these two other very interesting combs from the same region and period.

I talked about Vultures and their mating season which made them one of the main animal calendar markers for winter and rain season in my posts "Pillar 43" about this pillar from Gobekli Tepe

And my post "Eagle dude from Aleppo", about these, well Eagle dudes from Aleppo and Nimrud

And I talked about the link between vulture and goat animal calendar markers in my post "Strider" about this amazing Proto-Elamite figurine

And I talked about wild  boar and their mating season which makes them a symbol of winter in my post "Calydonian boar" about this Illyrian coin

And in my post "Roast pig for Christmas" about this Roman gem

And I talked about the link between the vulture and the wild boar calendar marker symbols in my post "Double headed eagle" in which I talked about this amazing axe head from Bactria

And in my post "Summer and winter BMAC seals" about this amazing Bactrian seal

But I never talked about wolves as animal calendar markers.  Wolves typically mate between January and March...

MacBain's Gaelic dictionary says that period from mid January to mid February was once called "faoilleach", "faoillteach", Irish "faoillidh", "faoilleach"...From "faol", wolf, meaning "wolf-month"...The month when wolves mate...

Anglo-saxons also called January (probably again month from mid January to mid February) Wulf-monath (meaning "wolf month"). For the same reason: wolves are much louder and more noticeable in January, which is when breeding season begins...

Interestingly, in Serbian tradition, 14th of January (Julian) or 27th of January (Gregorian) calendar, is the day of the Serbian patron saint, St Sava...

St Sava's cult replaced the cult of the Serbian supreme god Dabog who was known among other things as "Wolf Shepherd". Both originally Dabog and later St Sava were believed to be able to command the wolves who and when to attack, and whom not to attack...

St Sava is just one, the main, of several Serbian "Wolf Saints" which are all celebrated during the winter...And St Sava, the Wold Shepherd, is celebrated right at the beginning of the wolf mating season...

So, the very strange and interesting object found in Tasmola V burial ground in Kazakhstan, deliberately combined all the animals which mate during winter and were because of that used as symbols for winter throughout Eurasia for thousands of years...

So another culture to add to the ever growing list of cultures which used the same simple way of marking parts of the solar year: using animals which mate or give birth during that time, every year...

When does winter begin father? When wild boar and Ibex start mating...And when does it end father? When wolves finish their mating...And during all that time, vultures mate too...Simple...

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...