Archaeology of Eurasian Hunter/Gatherer Spirituality

(Feb, 7 2023) Ancient people believed that every change on earth was caused by some divine power. They further observed that such changes eventually affected the cycle of life in some way and that all life required a masculine trigger and a feminine time of maturation and growth. Yet the natural division of the life powers would have been between the plant and animal kingdoms  

Caves generated a spooky feeling. It was dark and in the torchlight images of animals seemed to flicker in and out of existence on the walls. The earliest cave paintings in France and Spain were painted on these naturally formed wall patterns to bring out the animal spirits those patterns represented. 

Because of these visions and because caves breathed caves became the place of dead spirits awaiting to be reborn. These dead spirits were still alive but they had no form, no invisible "platonic" image. They were pure sparks of life and represented a motion source of the goddess Selu (Selene). Cave-like dark spaces such including space under the earth plane (the underdome) represent the dark place powers of the life goddess Kate (Hekate). The Hebrew word sheol translated as "the place of the dead" seems to derive from the Akkadian selu (šelû).  

Paleolithic cave art is found worldwide with the paintings in Europe being the most numerous and skilled. (See Don’s maps). These European cave paintings peaked around 30,000-28,000 BCE and around 25,000-24,000 BCE.  

Cave paintings were likely used in rituals to atone for the animal lives the tribe took during the hunt and to encourage the animals to return next year. Eventually the cave artists would paint animals on any cave surface as they ran out of room, even over older paintings so important was the ritual. Human spirits were represented more abstractly as hand prints probably because humans were not prey.

Evidence for ancestral human spirits is also found in caves in the form of painted hand and abstract figurines. They seem to have appeared later but lasted longer than the animal paintings having a date range of 30,000 to 12,000 BCE. 

(July 4, 2022) The White Venus figurines emphasize the womb because they show women who have had children. Hence these women are presented with exaggerated post-children features such as an extended womb, obesity, sagging breasts, and vulva. Those found outside of the first agricultural cities date to between 30,000 and 20,000 BCE which was also the peak time of the cave paintings.

The Willendorf Venus is unique in that it has an acorn crown “hat” which seems to be taken from the acorn of the Sessile Oak. This Venus figurine was carved from oolitic limestone and was covered with a thick layer of red ochre which represents blood. The figurine was unearthed during the Wachau railway construction in 1908. It dates to between 28,000 - 25,000 BCE based on radiocarbon dating of items found in the same assemblage.

Many lines of later evidence indicate that the oak tree was sacred to the ancient people of Europe. The Alphabetic Akkadian texts mention that an irrigation network was thought to distribute the fertility fluids from the divine realm to the earth. Pictures of such a network are also found at Göbekli Tepe and at Catalhoyuk. Because oak trees have the broadest crown of any tree that crown would have corresponded to this network. The Willendorf Venus then is the earliest evidence for this network concept. 

(Feb 7, 2023) Ancestor/Penis figurines tend to be rather simplistic in shape. This made them easy to make but most have probably been misidentified. Those like the one found in figure 7 found at Pope’s cave were just called “caped figurines.” Yet the discovery of large sized figurines of this type surrounding the dark, cave-like, ritual circles at Göbekli Tepe indicate that these same shapes were adapted at the dawn of agriculture to represent ancestral powers. These figurines have no face or human form so they are not a persona.

These do not seem to represent a deity because several of them always surround a circular ritual area where some even have arms. If these represented a deity only one would be expected. Being phallic shaped they belong to the life power class and not the motion power class. These are not a connective life power represented by the sun or storm bull. Therefore they must represent the manifestations of the masculine life manifestation power Yahu. Interestingly, the epithet for "penis" is Akkadian is straight thing" or IŠR [Akkadian išaru, išeru] which also means "righteous"). This is the root of Israel as IŠR.AL meaning the "righteous of Alu" and probably the source of the rite of circumcision.

This was found in 1965 near Adıyaman in southeastern Turkey by a local farmer. It was purchased from him by two archaeology students working at the excavations in Arsameia “about an hour by horse north-west of the Roman bridge in the village of Kilisik” and later transferred to the Archaeological Museum in Adıyaman (Hauptmann 2012, 18-20). The stele  measures about 80 cm in height and is carved from limestone. So its date cannot be determined but it looks Mesolithic.

Reference

Tepe Telegram: Reports from the Göbekli Tepe Research program: https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/2019/03/20/a-rather-odd-figure-the-so-called-kilisik-sculpture-from-adiyaman-turkey/

(July 4, 2022) This image shown in figure 14 date to 11,700 BCE. It is quite mysterious to those not familiar with the Pagan Paradigms because it shows a bull head radiating sunlight.  

This image was discovered in 2017 and shows that the chaotic bull concept for the connective masculine power dates back to the proto-agriculture Azilian culture. This culture emerged after the cold spell of the Younger Dryas Period which ended around 11,700 BCE. This warming climate allowed the cultural shift from pure hunter/gatherer to proto-agriculture. 

In the Mesolithic Pagan Paradigm, the sky powers connected the earth to the divine space. This connection was accomplished by its connective fluids which were sun light and rain. These fluids were essentially two sides to the same coin and the ancients considered them as one power with two forms. The visible sun represented order and healing while the hidden sun represented the chaos of the thunder storm because storm clouds did the hiding. For whatever reason, the ancients saw the auroch or wild bull as the correspondence for the rain storm. We can only speculate as to why this was. Perhaps it was due to the auroch’s bellowing during a storm buts its exact reasons are lost to history. 

(July 4, 2022) The Venus of Laussel is a limestone bas-relief, 46 cm high, painted with red ochre and holding a horn apparently for drinking. It was carved into a large block of fallen limestone in a rock shelter (Abri de Laussel) in the commune of Marquay, in the Dordogne department of southwestern France. The carving is associated with the Gravettian Upper Paleolithic culture (approximately 25 000 years old). It is currently displayed in the Musée d'Aquitaine in Bordeaux, France.

Other red manifestation goddesses of this type with raised arms would be seen on Minoan Crete.

(from Don's Maps at: https://donsmaps.com/lacornevenus.html)

(July 4, 2022) In the Levant, a culture known as the Natufians was making the transition to agriculture by growing cereals. At the time the environment of the area was an open woodland with more rain than today. The pits came to be found throughout Neolithic Europe on both horizontal and vertical stones so their meaning and purpose remain unknown.

While some caves in the area were used as living spaces others were used for burials. The most famous burial cave is the Raqefet Cave on Mount Carmel in Israel. The limestone floor of this cave is covered with pits ranging from deep to shallow for holding offerings.   

Twenty-nine individuals were buried in this cave over time. Most are primary burials with many spaces being reused. In other cases, younger graves have been cut into older graves damaging them. Around these graves were placed the pits. Feasting intermittently occurred at the cave.

Among the wide variety of offering pits at Raqefet Cave there are only three that are deep and narrow, including pit C-XVIII which is the focus of this paper. They are all 40–60 cm deep, with a top diameter of 20–25 cm. However, they differ in their geometry and context.

Offering pit C-XVI is the only one with a funnel-like shape. Half way down, where the top wide part becomes a vertical narrow shaft, an isolated stone was found. It was set firmly, as if to serve as a cork. Below it, the shaft contained the typical Natufian red sediment with small animal bones, lunates (hallmark of Natufian flint industry), and phytoliths of large seed grasses. The walls of the shaft are badly eroded.

Offering pit C-XXI is the deepest of the three and has a narrow vertical shaft ca. 60 cm deep. The walls of the shaft are preserved only in several small patches. It is located near the largest man-made bedrock basin ever reported from a Natufian site (C-XXIII). Furthermore, there are several small cupules or holes near this pit, and one even carved on its rim.

Offering Pit C-XVIII which has the network drawing is located on the western edge of the floor of the first chamber in Raqefet Cave, just above a large depression in the bedrock. In contrast to the other two pits, there are no adjacent bedrock features with the nearest pit being about  0.8 m away. The pit is 53 cm deep, it is 25 cm wide at the rim, and about 8 cm wide near its base.

References