Scullball

Of the 52 skeletons discovered in the fourth-century A.D. Roman cemetery discovered in the village of Great Whelnetham in Suffolk, England, 17 had been decapitated and the heads were placed between their owner's legs or feet. Why? Well... 

When archaeologists opened medieval graves at a highway construction site near Gliwice, Poland, they came across skeletal remains of humans whose severed heads rested upon their legs...

Apparently this is an ancient Slavic burial practice for disposing of suspected vampires, in hopes that decapitated individuals wouldn't be able to rise from their tombs...Practiced by the Western Slavs mainly...

Now the article about the English Vampire burials says that: "The decapitations might be related to pagan belief systems that held that spirits need to be released for the afterlife or even that the head was a container of the soul."

Which is why the head was cut off...The vampire was "the undead", the body which soul never left...So kind of linked...Otherwise all the dead would have been decapitated, right?

So the question is who were the people buried following Western Slavic vampire burial rituals in the late Roman cemetery in England? Or how did Medieval Western Slavs got to practice Roman Vampire burial rituals???

By the way you do know that Vampire is a Serbian word? 

Few articles related to the Serbian (Slavic) vampire lore: Vampires, Tombstones, Stake, Enemy of demons

Leda and the swan

 (Probably) Leda and the Swan (Gold signet ring from Thessaly, 2nd c. BC. Benaki Museum, Athens)

Hmmm...Most definitely "Leda and the swan" scene...Which raises a lot of questions...

Seriously sexy Leda...Sitting on a bed being raped by Zeus in a shape of a swan...So far so good :)

Now strange stuff (for me at least):

1. While a satyr is...Watching, wanking, giving running commentary, instructions???...

2. With a hand on a helmet...Whose helmet? 

3. Which is located in front of a temple, tomb...If temple, whose temple? If tomb, whose tomb? Why?

4. What's with the shields and spears under the bed? 

5. What's with the column with a lion on it?

6. What's with the tree? What tree is it?

I can, I think, answer few of these questions. 

Some people thought the tree was a Holly. I believe that the tree is an oak. Oak was the holy tree of Zeus...And Some Mediterranean oaks have leaves which look like Holly leaves. 

Have a look this: Holly

"Holy Oak" (Kermes oak)

I talked about this in my post "Christmas trees from garden of Eden"... 

Most oaks flower between March and May and acorns mature in Summer and Early Autumn. Including most common Mediterranean oaks. You can read about this in "Acorn production and growth in Mediterranean oaks: Trade-offs and the role of climate, modular organization and phenology".  

Now the end of summer beginning of autumn is marked by Leo (end of Jul, early Aug)...Because this is when the main mating season of Eurasian lions starts...

And the 2nd of August, Middle of Leo, the day that marks the end of summer beginning of autumn, is the day when in the Balkans, Serbs celebrate the day of Perun (Slavic thunder god). Today he is known as St Elijah The Thunderer...The thundering sun...And the end of burning summer heat...Symbolised by a Triumph of Perun (Thunder god, Thunderstorm) over Veles (Fire breathing dragon, Drought caused by the burning summer sun)...I talked about thy Dragon symbolism in my post "Dragon who stole rain"...

Oh by the way, did you know that the latest scientific data shows direct correlation between sun and thunder and lightning? Basically it is the sun which powers the lightning...

Which is why Thunder god and Sun god are fused in Sky god, Elijah the thundering sun...Kind of obvious really if you look at these pictures depicting the number of thunderstorms per month in Europe. May - September with peak in June/July...

Swans mate and lay eggs at the beginning of summer, between late April and early May...So in a way their mating season signals the beginning of summer and the beginning of the thunderstorm season in the Balkans...

Thunderstorm season which ends when Lions start to mate, in August...By the way, you know that lions still lived in the Balkans at the time when Greek mythology was created...

So we have Zeus the thunder god, in a shape of a swan (beginning of summer) raping Leda under a lion (the end of summer). During the main thunderstorm season...At the end of summer...When oak, tree of thunder gods, is full of acorns...

Oh yeah, what's with the horse tailed voyeur? Did you know that wild horse mating season starts in Apr and lasts until September? And that it is governed by the sunlight...Which is why it peaks in midsummer...

Which is also the peak of the thunderstorm season...I talked about this in my post "Trojan horse"...

By the way, did I mention that Leda sounds very much like the name of the Slavic goddess of Beauty and Fertility, Lada...And like Slavic word for summer "Leto"...Which is by the way, the name of the goddess, Leto, also impregnated by Zeus, who gave birth to Apollo, the sun god...Who is associated with swans...

And did you know that: 

"In 20th-century sources Leto is traditionally derived from Lycian lada, "wife", as her earliest cult was centered in Lycia. Lycian lada may also be the origin of the Greek name Λήδα Leda. Other scholars (Paul Kretschmer, Erich Bethe, Pierre Chantraine and R. S. P. Beekes) have suggested a Pre-Greek origin"

All very strange...

Anyone has any ideas about any of the other details?

Monastirište

Are local legends true? And is Monastirište, a plateau in Crna Trava area of Eastern Serbia, which has always been treated by the local villagers as a sacred place, rally the location of an Early Christian monastery?

Well yes 🙂 The geophysical data showed the church walls at the depth of 2,8 meters and many other walled structures located even deeper... 

Short documentary in Serbian:

I just love the fact that archaeologists get "surprised" every time they find an ancient fortress at the place local villagers call "gradina" or "gradište" or "grad" (all meaning city, fort, place where city, fort once stood)...

Or when they find an ancient church or monastery at the place which local villagers call "crkvina", "crkvište" (both mean church, place where church once stood) or "manastir", "manastirište" (both mean monastery, place where monastery once stood)...

Pop = Djed?

The main column (stake) which supported the roof in old Slavic houses was once called "djed" (grandfather). I talked about this in my post "Baba the main beam that supports the house"...

What is interesting is that in some parts of Serbia (for instance Levče area) this column was also called "pop" (priest).

The word "pop" comes from Old Church Slavonic попъ (popŭ), which from Ancient Greek παπάς (papás) meaning father...Today this means "father of the congregation" but originally this literally meant "the father of the family"...

In Serbia even today it is the oldest man in the family that officiates all the family rituals, which are many. Basically he is playing the role of the family priest...

Now in Serbian the word "baba" (grandmother) also means mother, birth giver, any female ancestor... I talked about this in my post "Baba's day"...

I wonder if the word "djed" (grandfather), once also meant father, any male ancestor...Why? Well, because of an interesting fertility ritual recorded in the Levče area of Serbia.

There is a belief there that a woman which wants to give birth to a male child has to put a placenta from the last birth on the "pop" column, pillar and say "I put you on the priest (pop) so that the priest (pop) can ask god to give me a male child".

Serbian ethnographers and anthropologists believe that this (djed/pop) column once played the role of a house idol, the representation of Dabog, the ancestral deity of all the Serbs, the tribal "djed" (Great, Great, Great...grandfather) of all.

So after Christianisation, this "djed" (male ancestor) column became "pop" (father, male ancestor) column?

Possibly...

Or maybe this comes from the fact that in the Medieval time the local "heretical" Slavic priests from the Balkans were known as "djed" and "starac" (both meaning elder), and "pop" is the literal translation of this term?

The description of the ritual from "Srpski Mitoloski Recnik - Grupa Autora"

Double spiral

Here is something interesting. Bronze double-spiral pendant, found on Timpone della Motta, 8th c. BC.  Oenotrian settlement, Calabria, Italy...

Where does this type of pendant originate?

Well, you can find this kind of jewelry in Proto Villanovan Italy of late bronze (1300-750BC)...

I know that we find these pendants in Serbia around 1500BC. 

I wrote about them in my post about Kličevac idol. Does anyone know of any earlier examples from Europe? Here is why I'm asking:

Today I came across something very surprising...This:

These are the same double spiral pendants made by the people of the Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture, which was a Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age culture which flourished in the forests of Russia from c. 2900 to 2050 BC...

Who were these guys? Study from July 2020, examined 24 individuals of the Fatyanovo culture. All 14 samples belonged to Y-haplogroup R1a-M417. 

Six samples could be further specified to haplogroup R1a2-Z93, today prevalent in Central Asia and South Asia rather than in Europe...

But they originally came from Europe. From Central Europe to be more precise. As r1b Yamna people slowly migrated westward through the southern steppe and along Danube river, R1a Corded Ware people migrated eastward through northern forests...

Now double spiral pendant wearing Fatyanovo culture ended 500 years before we find the first double spiral pendant in the Balkans...What is the link? This is a very peculiar design...

Was there a back migration westward of the spiral making R1a people? Anyone knows anything about this? Any info would be greatly appreciated...I am working on something else, and don't have time to investigate this further myself...There are only so many hours in a day...

The invention of writing

The best retelling of any myth EVER, by @sigfig: "The Sumerian myth for the invention of writing is great. A king is trying to get a messenger to relay a long poetic insult, the messenger can't remember it, so the king invents writing, and when the other king receives the message, he just stares at the tablet like wtf is this?"

The original:  "Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta"

By the way, you might find this article about the etymology of the Sumerian words for tablet, writing and scribe interesting...

Baal from Cornwall

Bronze figure of god Baal dated to 14th-12th c. BC,  found in Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit), located in today's Syria. 

In simple terms, bronze is the mixture of two metals: 

copper

and tin

When the Bronze Age arrived to the Eastern Mediterranean, the copper-rich region was able to quickly source copper at mines like Timna...

But where tin came from has been a lingering mystery for scholars. A new paper from an international team of researchers proposes a surprisingly faraway source,  Cornwall and Devon...

In a paper "Isotope systematics and chemical composition of tin ingots from Mochlos (Crete) and other Late Bronze Age sites in the eastern Mediterranean Sea: An ultimate key to tin provenance?" published in June , the authors analyze 27 tin ingots, or blocks, from five sites bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea. 

Now this is very interesting indeed. The strong connection between Eastern Mediterranean and British Isles during the 2nd millennium BC could bring back the cultural diffusion theory as the explanation for all the similarities between far flung Bronze Age cultures...

Like for instance why the "Celtic" (actually specifically Insular Celtic) year has two seasons: winter (Nov-Apr) and summer (May-Oct). Climatically this makes no sense in Ireland and Britain. But it makes a lot of sense in Levant, where the climatic year is divided into two seasons: winter, wet and cool season (Nov - Apr) and summer, dry and hot season (May - Oct)...

We shouldn't really be surprised that there was a maritime link between Britain and Eastern Mediterranean during the late early 2nd millennium BC....The Irish Annals, oral histories written down in early medieval time, talk about the first metalworkers arrived to Ireland during mid 3rd millennium BC, from Black Sea, via Mediterranean, by boat...

And opened the oldest copper mine in Ireland, Ross Island copper mine, the remains of which are still visible very near to the place where the Irish Annals say these foreign metalworkers landed...

I talked about this in my post "Ór - Ireland's Gold"...More about Eastern Mediterranean - Irish links during the early Copper Age can be found in these articles about "Montenegrian tumuluses"...

And we have even earlier evidence that Mediterranean seafaring mining prospectors, which mined, sailed and traded all over Mediterranean seas during Neolithic, also landed in Ireland, during the late 4th millennium BC...

So the maritime link between the British Isles and Mediterranean was in existence for thousands of years before the first tin mine was opened in Cornwall...The cultural exchange that happened along this trading route is very difficult to measure as yet...But it could account for a lot of "coincidental cultural similarities", "parallel independent cultural developments"...