How old is Crom Dubh

The worship of Crom Dubh or Crom Cruiach, the old Irish god of agriculture, is most closely associated with Tigernmas, sometimes called Tiernmas, the Irish high king who is said to have perished while worshiping this god. But where and when did the worship of Crom Cruach, Crom Dubh originate? 

The old Irish annals tell us that the first race that lived in Ireland were Fomorians. Then, after the flood, came the people of Partholón who are credited with introducing cattle husbandry, ploughing, cooking, dwellings, trade, and dividing the island in four. But then Partholon and all his people later died of plague leaving Fomorians as the single inhabitants of Ireland. Then The people of Nemed came, the descendants of the brother of Partholon, and they found Fomorians living in Ireland. They fought the Fomorians under Nemed and won. But after Nemed's death, Fomorians enslaved Nemed's people and demanded a heavy tribute: two thirds of their children, grain and cattle. The tribute that Nemedians had to give to Fomorians was exactly the same as the tribute Tigernmas had to give to Crom Dubh. Nemed's son gathered an army of sixty thousand, rose up against them. After a great slaughter on both sides, only thirty of Nemed's people escaped in a single ship, scattering to the other parts of the world, leaving again only Fomorians in Ireland. Well actually the Lebor Gabála Érenn says that when the next invaders, the Fir bolg, came then found Ireland empty. But Lebor Gabála Érenn also seems to suggest that Fir bolg and Fomorians were one and the same people. At least Macalister, the translator and editor of the Lebor Gabála Érenn thought that this could be so when he says that:

"The line between the Fir Bolg and the Fomorians is not clearly drawn…"

What is also very interesting is that Fir Bolg are also said to have been the descendants of Nemed who was the descendant of Partholon's brother. This makes Fomorians and the people of Partholon one and the same people. 

We have to ask ourselves why are the Fomori most directly linked to Fir Bolg. The Lebor Gabála Érenn states:

"Partholon took Ireland: he dwelt there five hundred and fifty years, till the  Cynocephali (dog headed, wolf headed) drave him out, and there escaped [survived] not one of his children alive."

Who were these wolf people?  Macalister suggests that “the Cynocephali introduced into the subsequent Partholon story have no place in the orthodox narrative, unless we are to equate them to the Fomoraig. What is the old Irish word for wolf? It is "faolchú". In Slavic it is Vuk, Volk, Vlk. Slavs have long tradition of ware wolfs. Slavic warriors wore wolf skins. These are the berserkers from the Norse legends, people wearing wolf skins as part of their war attire. 

The Úlfhéðnar (singular Úlfheðinn), another term associated with berserkers, mentioned in the Vatnsdœla saga, Haraldskvæði and the Völsunga saga, were said to wear the pelt of a wolf when they entered battle. Úlfhéðnar are sometimes described as Odin's special warriors: "[Odin’s] men went without their mailcoats and were mad as hounds or wolves, bit their shields...they slew men, but neither fire nor iron had effect upon them. This is called 'going berserk.'" In addition, the helm-plate press from Torslunda depicts (below) a scene of Odin with a berserker—"a wolf skinned warrior with the apparently one-eyed dancer in the bird-horned helm, which is generally interpreted as showing a scene indicative of a relationship between berserkgang... and the god Odin"—with a wolf pelt and a spear as distinguishing features.

This is Vendel era bronze plate found on Öland, Sweden, thought to represent Odin, Vodan with wolf warriors. 

In my post about Odin I wrote about the the fact that the etymology of the name Odin, Vodan comes from Slavic languages. Are these the same wolf people, Fir Volk from Irish legends?


Serbs in particular believe that they descend from Van, the man who could shift into a white wolf, who was the son of Dabog, Hromi Daba who I believe is the the same as Crom Dubh. Dabog was also known as a wolf shepherd. Appropriate god for Fomorians who according to The Lebor Gabála Érenn: 

"made a sheep-land of Ireland". 

And the Biggest Slavic tribe which is mentioned in relation to the Samhain human sacrifices are called Volci, Vilci, wolf people...Could it be that Fir Bolg are Fir faolchú actually Fir volk, Fir voulk, wolf people, wolf head people? We have seen already that when words cross from irish into serbian the b turns into v and g turns into k. We have a general hardening of sounds from Slavic to Celtic. That this is the case suggests the fact that the Fir Bolg are first mentioned in the 9th century Historia Brittonum, where they are referred to as the Builc...

Then came the Tuatha Dé Danann, another group of descendants of Nemed who was descendant of Partholon's Brother. They defeated the Fir Bolg in the first Battle of Magh Tuiredh and took possession of Ireland. But then they had to defeat the Fir Bolg again, this time under the name of Fomorians at the Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh. Interestingly the Annals of Loch Cé call Magh Tuiredh "Magh-Tuiredh-na-Fomorach" and explain that Magh-Tuiredh what the place "where the Fomorians were imposing their tributes on the men of Erinn..." The name Mag Tuired (modern spelling: Magh Tuireadh) means "plain of pillars" or "plain of towers". Crom Cruach was represented by a large idol, made completely of gold, which stood on the plain of Mag Sleact, which is in Cavan County in Ulster , Ireland . Twelve smaller idols, these of stone, formed a ring around the Crom Cruach. Were pillars which were standing on this plain the same pillars representing Crom Dubh, Crom Cruach???

At the end of the Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh, Bres, the leader of the Fomorians was found unprotected on the battlefield by Lugh, the leader of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Bres pleaded for his life with him. Lugh spared Bres because he promised to teach the Tuatha Dé Danann agriculture. Bres is said to have possessed the the secret knowledge of "How shall the men plough?  How shall they sow?  How shall they reap?". He gave that secret to Lugh, the leader of the Tuatha Dé Danann and his life was spared. 

What is interesting about this story is that both Bres, the leader of the Fomorians and Lugh the leader of Tuatha Dé Danann at the Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh were half Fomorian and half Tuatha Dé Danann.

Lugh's father was Cian of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and his mother was Ethniu, daughter of Balor, of the Fomorians.
Bres's father was Elatha of the Fomorians and Eri, daughter of Delbaith of the Tuatha Dé Danann.

This means that the Tuatha Dé Danann, who are said to have replaced Fomorians as the rulers of Ireland actually claim descent from or at least close kinship with the Fomorians. Actually the line between the Fomorians and the Tuatha Dé Danann is so blurred, that in the "lebor gabála Érenn" we read:  

“At the end of three days and three nights thereafter the Sons of Míl broke the battle of Sliab Mis against demons and Fomoraig, that is, against the Túatha Dé Danann"...

This line literally equates the Fomorians and the Tuatha Dé Danann.

From the above story we see that if Fomorians were indeed related to Partholon, then it was the Fomorians who brought the secret of the grain agriculture to Ireland and preserved it until the time of Tuatha Dé Danann. We also see that when the Milesians came to Irleand, the Fomorians were still there. Lebor Gabála Érenn tells us that the Irial Fáid father of Ethriel and grandfather of Tigernmas:

"...cleared twelve plains, dug seven royal forts, and fought four battles against the Fomorians..."

The Fomorians were apparently still in Ireland at the time of  Cú Chulainn. In the medieval Irish tale entitled "The Training of Cú Chulainn", preserved as a copy by Richard Tipper in British Library, we read:

"Cúchulainn came to the place and saluted them. 'What is this sorrow or the misery upon you?' says Cúchulainn. The damsel answered and this she said: ‘A royal tribute which the tribe of Fomorians carry out of this country every seventh year, namely, the first-born of the king's children. And at this time it has come to me to go as that tribute, for to the king I am the dearest of his children.’‘What number comes to lift that tribute?’ asks Cúchulainn. ‘Three sons of Alatrom of the Fomorians,’ she answers, ‘and Dub, Mell and Dubros are their names.’"

Did Fomorians brought with them their god of grain agriculture, Crom Cruach, Crom Dubh and is this why the both Crom Dubh and Fomorians demanded the first born sacrifices? And if Tigernmas was worshiping Crom Dubh, was he worshiping Fomorian god? And if so, was Tigernmas a Fomorian king? I believe so. 

If the Fomorians were the people who possessed the secret of the grain agriculture and Tigernmas was the king who introduced the agricultural cult to Ireland which included the same types of sacrifices which were also demanded by Fomorians, that would certainly suggest that Tigernmas was a Fomorian king. James Bonwick thought so too. In the book "Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions" he identified Tigernmas, the king who perished while worhiping Crom Cruach, Crom Dubh, the god of agriculture, with Balor, the King of Fomorians. This is based on the fact that the ancestry of the god Lugh is usually given as Lugh son of Eithliu daughter of Balor but in the text Baile in Scáil it is given as Lugh son of Eithliu son of Tigernmas, thus equating Tigernmas and Balor, the king of Fomorians.

In the comments in the translation of the annals of the four masters by Owen Connellan we reed that in Ireland the sun was worshiped under the names of Bel, Beal, and Baal. Belenus (also Belenos) was a deity worshiped in Gaul, Britain, and Celtic areas of Austria and Spain. He was the god who brought light, who brought whiteness. The name comes from bel + nos = white, light + brings. Beltane was the Irish beginning of Summer festival, celebrating the beginning of the white, bel, part of the year. According to 17th century historian Geoffrey Keating, there was a great gathering at the hill of Uisneach each Beltane in medieval Ireland, where a sacrifice was made to a god named Beil which was again the same sun god Bel, Beal, Baal.

At the time of the writing of the Irish medieval manuscripts, the word Baal was commonly accepted to mean lord. This word is said to come from the Hebrew בעל (ba‘al, “lord, master, owner”), from Proto-Semitic *baʿl- (“lord, master, owner”). Baal was also the enemy of Yahweh, the Christian god, so the term was well known to the christian monks, and would have been used to describe the old gods, the enemies of the Christian god. 

So if a Christian monk wanted to write "a lord who brough gold into Ireland" he could have written this as baal + or = lord + gold. So we have the manuscript "Baile in Scáil" equating Tigernmas who is "the beautiful lord who brought gold to Ireland" with Balor whose name means "the lord of gold, or golden lord". Coincidence? If we know that Bel, Beal, Beil, Beli, Baal were all the names of the Sun god, the name Balor could also mean a "golden sun"...A fitting name for a sun god with a "blazing" eye... One last thing. Both Tigernmas and Bres mean beautiful. 

Tigernmas is sometimes referred to as the “culture king”, because it is said that he was the one who brought aspects of civilisation to Ireland including the smithing of gold and silver, the dyeing of fabrics, and the making of music and art. It seems that he could have brought the agriculture too. This would mean that it was the Fomorians who brought both agriculture and the metalwork to Ireland. 

According to the archaeological records, the grain farming arrived in Ireland in the fourth or third millennium bc. As for metallurgy, according to the archaeological records the copper metallurgy was brought to Ireland in the third millennium bc.

At the end of the 7th millennium bc, we find in the Balkans, in Serbia, a highly developed grain farming Blagotin culture, which was part of the early Starčevo culture.There are strong indications that this culture was a direct precursor of one of the direct precursors of the Vinča culture. Vinča houses had grinding stones and bread baking ovens indicating that the Vinča culture was both an advanced metallurgical and an advanced grain farming culture. It is quite possible that from the 6th millennium bc, metallurgy and grain farming spread together into Europe from Serbia? And if so then the metallurgy and grain farming really could have reached Ireland together, brought by the same people, the first inhabitants of Ireland, the Fomorians. 

So who were these Fomorians then and where did they come from? Irish historians agree that the name Fomorians means probably people of the sea, or people who came from across the sea, or sea pirates. Where could have been that land across the sea famous for its sea pirates whose name sounds like Fomori?

There is a country like that. It is south Baltic part of Germany, called Pomerania or Pomorje.
Pomerania, Pomorje is a Slavic word meaning the land by the sea. The word comes from po + more = by, along + sea. The people living by, along the sea are in Slavic languages called pomori, pomorci, pomorjani, meaning the sea people, coast people. 

This is the territory of Pomerania, Pomorje:

Pomerania (German: Pommern, Latin: Pomerania, Polish: Pomorze) is a historical region on the south shore of the Baltic Sea. The name Pomerania comes from Slavic po more, which means Land at the Sea. The adjective for the region is Pomeranian (Polish: pomorski, German: pommersch), inhabitants are called Pomeranians (Polish: Pomorzanie, German: Pommern).

This land was indeed famous for its sea pirates and traders. Pomerania is where we find Sorbs, northern Serbs who also worship Dabog (Dazdbog). These Baltic Slavs, Sorbs made human sacrifices in medieval time to their gods at the end of harvest at the beginning of November, at Samhain. Lebor Gabála Érenn says that "Tigernmas died in Mag Slecht, with three fourths of the men of Ireland in his company, on Samhain night to be particular, while worshiping of Crom Cruaich; for he was the king-idol of Ireland." During these Samhain ceremonies, human sacrifices were offered to Crom Cruaich, Crom Dubh.  Tigernmas is said to have been the first king to give drinking-horns to his follower. The god to whom Pomeranian Slavs sacrificed people on Samhain was Svetovid. He is sometimes referred to as Beli (or Byali) Vid (Beli = white, bright, shining), and is often depicted with a sword or bow in one hand and a drinking horn in the other. Drinking horn was used for divination during the Slavic ceremonies. In Slavic mythology, the "horn of plenty" is the equivalent of Dagda's "cauldron of plenty". Dagda is then in turn believed to be another name of Crom Dubh, Crom Cruach. 

There is a well established cultural distribution path Balkans - South Baltic (Pomorje, Pomerania) - Ireland which has been in operation since at least fifth millennium bc. I wrote about this in my posts about henges, in my post about wooden trackways, tochars and in my post about baba stone statues. I believe that the agriculture and metalwork probably followed the same distribution route, which means that the people who brought agriculture and metalwork could have been referred to as Fomori, Pomori.

It seems that the old Irish legends about Tigernmas the king of Fomorians bringing agriculture and metal work to Ireland could be true. Except that if they are true, then Tigernmas lived in the 3rd or 4th millennium bc. Is it possible that the Irish oral tradition has preserved records of events that happened 5000, 6000 years ago? Is it possible that metallurgy arrived in Ireland earlier than we think, at the same time when grain farming arrived? Or did grain farming arrive in Ireland later than we think, at the same time with metallurgy? 

Crom Cruach also known as Crom Dubh who was the Sun God,Thunder god but also the god of agriculture. One of the most important early Bronze Age monuments in Ireland, The Grange circle, was built as a temple dedicated to Crom Cruach, Crom Dubh.

When was the Grange circle built? If we knew when the Grange circle, the temple of Crom Cruach, Crom Dubh was built, that could help us determine how old Crom Dubh as a deity was. In my post about the Grange circle you can read that professor Ó Ríordáin postulated that the circle dated from the Late Neolithic and that it was built c. 2,200 B.C. Archaeologist Helen Roche, however, has suggested that the Grange stone circle was constructed in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1000 BCE) on a site that may have been sacred for thousands of years.

I believe that the building date proposed by Seán P. Ó Ríordáin (2200 bc) is much closer to the actual building date. I believe that the Grange circle was contemporary with the Newgrange and that was certainly built between 3200 bc and 2200 bc. However, additions and changes were probably made in the following millenniums as the worship of Crom Dubh persisted in Ireland up until the arrival of Christianity.

If the Grange circle was built in the 3rd millennium bc, then it would fall into the "pre flood" period which would make Crom Dubh a deity of Fomorians.

Grange circle was built as a giant threshing floor. Threshing floors were in the past used not only for threshing wheat but also as solar observatories and as ceremonial grounds used for agricultural cult practices. I wrote about this in my post about threshing floors. So it is only to be expected that the temple dedicated to Crom Cruach, Crom Dubh, the Sun God and Harvest god of Fomorians, the people who brought agriculture to Ireland, was built to resemble a giant threshing floor.

So is it possible that Crom Dubh is really 5000 years old deity? I believe so. We find aditional proof of the antiquity and the importance of Crom Dubh in the Serbian tradition where Crom Dubh is known as Hromi Daba. This is what Serbian tradition tells us about Hromi Daba:

According to the Serbian folk tradition, Hromi Daba was another name for the old god Dabog, Dajbog, Dažbog, Daždbog, the Giving God, the ancestral deity of the Serbs. Serbs believe that they descend from Dabog. 

Hromi Daba, Dabog was also said to be "the oldest devil and this is why he is also called "djed" meaning the elder, the ancestor". This means that the Serbian tradition claims that Hromi Daba is the the oldest god. With the arrival of Christianity the main old God of the pagan Serbs became the main Devil of the Christians. 

Hromi Daba is also "the devil from which all the other devils come from". This identifies Hromi Daba as the origin of all the other pagan gods. If Hromi Daba, Crom Dubh, Grom Div is really 5000 or 6000 thousand years old, that would make him at least a contemporary with the oldest deities in Evroasia and north Africa if not their origin. The fact that Crom Dubh is directly linked with the Bull cult makes it possible that Crom Dubh descends from much earlier bull cults which originated in Catalhuyuk and which were later found in Vinča. I will dedicate a whole post to this link bewteen the Crom Dubh and the Bull worship.

Hromi Daba was "the main enemy of god", "as powerful as the god in heaven" but aslo that he was "the king of earth". This identifies Hromi Daba as the main god of the pagan Serbs. Hromi Daba is said to "carry the sun on top of his spear" which identifies Hromi Daba as a sky god. Crom Dubh is in Ireland associated with solar circles and with the Croagh Patrick, the holy sun mountain. We know from the archaeological records that Croagh Patrick and the area around it was regarded as a holy place in the 4th millennium bc.

Hromi Daba, Dabog is also identified as Triglav, Trimurti, the three headed Sun, Thunder and Fire deity. Triglav is also identified as the main god of the Serbs. The three headed idols found in Ireland are identified as representations of Crom Dubh. This confirms that Triglav and Dabog, Hromi Daba are one and the same deity. According to the Serbian folk tradition, "god gave thunder and ligthning to St Ilija, to kill all the devils and he did so. Only Hromi Daba managed to escape". St Ilija is the Christian replacement of Perun, the thunder god of the pagan Slavs. As I already wrote in my post about Triglav, Perun is the third head of Triglav, the sun at its most powerful and dangerous, at the end of the summer. You can read more about this in my posts about Ognjena Marija and Threshing Floors. The day of Perun and St Ilija is the 2nd of August, which is in Ireland the day of Crom Dubh. In Indian tradition both Trimurti, Shiva and Agni are represented as three headed deities. In Europe Lugh, the thunder god was also represented as three headed. I believe that cruciform tumuluses which were built in Ireland in the 4th millennium bc were built as temples of the three headed god Triglav, Crom Dubh, Hromi Daba, Grom Div. But I will talk about this in a separate post in detail. 

 Another Serbian folk tale identifies the hill in eastern Serbia which was the home of the "Silver king", the demon of the mines, as Dajbog hill. This means that Dajbog, Hromi Daba was also a god of metalurgy. Serbian word "hrom" means lame and lameness was a common mallady aflicting the first metalurgists working with arsenic copper. This is why Serbian historian Veselin Čajkanović thought that Dabog was among other things the Smith god. Croagh Patrick, the holy mountain of Crom Dubh is also a gold mountain, as its top is very rich in gold. The 12th century "Book of Leinster", talks about the god called Crom Cruach, whose cult image, consisted of a gold figure surrounded by twelve stone figures. This deity was "propitiated with first-born sacrifice in exchange for good yields of milk and grain" and it is said that "High King, Tigernmas, along with three quarters of his army, have died while worshipping Crom on Samhain eve". The 9th century "Tripartite Life of Saint Patrick" talks about the deity called Cenn Cruach, which is another name of the Crom Cruach, Crom Dubh. The book says that Crom had a cult image which consisted of a central figure covered with gold and silver, surrounded by twelve bronze figures. This i believe identifies Crom Dubh as a deity linked with metalurgy as well as with agriculture, but also as a solar deity. 

In the biographies of the Bishop Otto fon Bramburg, who converted Western Slavs (Sorbs) in the South Baltic, in Pomerania we can find more information about the god Triglav (Dabog, Hromi Daba). All three biographers ( Ebo , Herbord and an unnamed monk from the monastery of Priflinger ) have witnessed the existence of a three-headed idol in Wolin and Szczecin. Ebo said that the city of Wolin is situated on the slopes of three hills, and that it has a temple dedicated to a deity with three heads, which was called God Triglav („...deo Triglavo dicitus, tricapitum habebat...“). The same author says that Otto von Bamberg destroyed the idols, by chopping the heads off with an axe. He then sent the three silver coated heads to the pope Calixto II in Rome, as evidence that his mission of converting Polabian Slavs (Sorbs) was successful. According to Ebo, Triglav is the highest Slavic God ( " summus Deus " ), the ruler of the three worlds (heaven , earth and the underworld). The statue was made of wood, that it's three heads were encrusted in silver, and that it's heads were covered with the "tiara" or some kind of a hat made of gold, which covered the idol's eyes.

In the town of Stettin were three hills, the central one being dedicated to Triglav, the chief local deity. This idol was of gold and had three heads, while its eyes and lips were covered with a golden veil. The pagan priests declared that Triglav ("Three-Heads") was tricephalous because he wished to make it known that he ruled over three realms, i. e., heaven, earth, and the underworld; and he covered his face because he would not see the sins of men. The temple of Triglav was built with wonderful skill. On the inner and outer sides of the walls were various embossed figures of men, birds, and animals, so well made that they seemed to live and breathe. Their colour was always fresh and durable, and could be damaged neither by rain nor by snow. According to the custom of the ancestors one tenth of all booty was stored in the treasury of the temple, and there was, moreover, an abundance of gold and silver vessels used by the chieftains on festive occasions, as well as daggers, knives, and other rare, costly, and beautiful objects. In honour of and in homage to the gods colossal horns of wild bulls, gilded and adorned with precious stones, were kept there, some serving for drinking vessels, and some for musical instruments.

The fact that Crom Dubh, Hromi Daba is both the Solar Agricultural god and Smith god is understandable if we remember that Farming and Agriculture spread together from the Balkans.

In Serbia Hromi Daba, Dabog was finally "killed" by St Sava, who became the patron saint of Serbia. In Ireland Crom Dubh was finally "killed" by St Patrick, who became the patron saint of Ireland.

So how old is Crom Dubh? Is Crom Dubh, Hromi Daba, Grom Div realy a 5000 or even 6000 thousand years old Deity? Did Crom Dubh, Hromi Daba, Grom Div arrive to Ireland from the Balkans with the  the first farmers and metallurgists to reach Ireland in the 4th or 3rd millennium bc?  What do you think?

And if Crom Dubh really is 5000 or even 6000 thousand years old, isn't it amazing that his cult managed to survive in Ireland and Serbia and only in Ireland and Serbia, until medieval time?

The Irish word "dar" means by, in a sense "i swear by". This word is used in swears and oaths and invokes the god as a witness. There are several versions of this swear all with the same meaning "by God": "Dar Dia", "Dar Duach" and "Dar Crom".

"Dar Dia". Dia is the Irish word for God which comes from Old Irish día (“god”), from Proto-Celtic *dēwos (compare Welsh duw), from Proto-Indo-European *deywós. So no surprises here. 

"Dar Duach". Duach is the Irish word with an interesting etymology. In Irish it is said that it comes from du- , do- prefix which denoting badness of quality, Irish, Old Irish du-. In Welsh we find the word duach as comparative form of du which comes from Proto-Celtic *dubus (“black”) (compare Old Irish dub, Irish/Scottish Gaelic dubh), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewbʰ meaning black. So this would make "Dar Duach" mean By Dark Lord, By Evil Lord...Interesting don't you think? Were people really swearing by the Dark Lord? I don't think so. I don't think that this is the true meaning of the word Duach in this phrase. In Slavic languages the word Duh means spirit, ghost and it comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *dʰeus meaning breath or the root *deywós meaning god. So no surprises here about the meaning. 

In the end we have "Dar Crom". That Crom is still used in Irish to mean God is a big surprise. After all the attempts to eradicate the belief in Crom Dubh from Ireland and to turn the oldest sky god of Evroasia into the Dark Lord, the Devil, the Evil king of the Earth, the Irish languages still managed to preserve the true meaning of Crom Dubh in this one little phrase: Dar Crom = By Jove...Crom is not the Devil, he is the God, and not just any God, but Jove, the Sky god, the god in Heaven, the Thundering Sun Giant.

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.