Chalcolithic Prehistory...

[daybrown]

No, I didnt know about the Bosnian pyramid; it sound interesting. Gimbutas shows lots of artifacts from the Balkans, mostly the Hvar, of this region; it was really hot 7000 years ago. I wouldnt be surprised.

Its pleasant to see so much civil discourse, and how those who disagree are not disagreeable. Granted as well, that on the issue of the Golden Age of Peace, its a moot point as to when the trees add up to a forest. A few relevant points....

surf for the graveyard at Varna. It stands, or lies, in stark contrast to graveyards of later cultures. The 'chieftan' grave is quite well known, you may see a photo of it. One author suggested that the *reason* for the notorious gold 'penis sheath', is that the skeleton is of a dyke. It seems that the Balkans often had transvestites as chiefs. Nobody would assassinate a woman in one of the chronic blood feuds hill tribes have. I've seen the video of one such, who married and raised a family. There were no questions about sperm donation.

At first glance, the grave appears to have weapons; which would certainly challenge the assumptions of peacefulness. But a closer look reveals that the spear points are too long and narrow for military use, and are so because they are for fish. And the double bladed axes... are of gold, and with handles thinner than my pinky. They are, as Gimbutas describes similar items, not warlike axes, but magic wands. Obviously symbolic.

the rest of the graveyard is also remarkable. At last count I saw, 150 graves, 75 women, 75 men. The problem with this is, that everywhere else you look, the graveyards are full of widows because the men were buried on the field of battle. It was noted as well that the men averaged in their late 30's, a decade longer than contemporaries, and the women in their early 40's. Such longevity for women was not seen again until the beginning of the 20th century.

On the flyleaf of Goodison & Morris' 'Ancient Goddesses', it makes reference to the controversy about the lack of war. So- it says they set about to open a virgin tel to look for evidence of violence. And in the book, we see where they did indeed find a layer of burnt rubble, but- on trenching out, they find it was the ritual burning of a single house.

In true professional fashion, they simply report what they found, but make no comment on the *lack* of signs of violence. Likewise, you find the same lack in dig after dig among the Hvar, Petresti, Vinca, Cucuteni, Dimini, etc. a number of different pottery styles, none of which has violence or weaponry on it, or any of the other artifacts.

Naturally, this seems against human nature. But the diff can be seen even in Roman reports of Dacia, (as they called the region) and the notorious 'fertility rites', which 'transylvania' as it was later known, regularly had. It seems that fertility had very little to do with it. Transylvanian witches had birth control, for which Christian bishops began burning them in the 5th century.

Every village, on a full or new moon, would host an orgy at which the men of the surrounding villages were invited. So- when it comes to peacefulness, imagine the problems a warlord would have proposing a raid. The men would regard it with all the enthusiasm of going to burn down a whorehouse. Likewise, the Romans had a devil of a time. The witches sent women into the Roman camps to have sex with the officers, and somehow, the Dacians always knew when the Romans were coming.

Seems that the Transylvanians were spooky to warriors long before count Dracula. And long after. Some of the very first color film, made by German anthropologists in the 1930s, shows a Transylvanian village ritual, *pagan* dance where the people all wear the same kind of brightly colored sacred animal masks shamen are often shown wearing. Its disconcerting to then, after the ritual, to see them remove the masks and see the same kind of white faces seen in anthropology classes.

Modern people forget how superstitious ancients were. The Roman word for 'witch' meant 'poisoner'. So- there are other ways besides warfare to protect a culture from invasion. Defication in the wells and springs on an invasion route results in dysentery for the whole army. They will think they have been cursed. Rome tried to conquer Dacia for hundreds of years, but only had marginal control over it for 50.

Then too, there is the evidence of rule by witches in the fact that of the scores of human figures, none of the men are depicted in postures of authority. ONly women.

This is also the culture of the 'Proto-Indo-Europeans'. JP Mallory, in his 'In Search of the Indo-Europeans', pg 123, notes that the *only* word in PIE that they can find for 'authority', is "raj". As in Raja, Regina, Region... and he goes on to say that it originally meant a *female* tribal leader of great wisdom and mana. ie, a 'raj' is a 'witch'. Which you can hear if you speak the words.

Natuarlly, I can see that is discomfiting to academic archaeology, which is still run by male chairs that were orginally funded to prove the truth of history as recorded in the Bible.

Furthermore, this is the 'Chalcolithic' era because of chalcocite found in the Transylvanian mountains. The copper ore in this area is laced with arsenic, (which resulted in a well reported fish kill in the rivers there). But copper that is smelted with arsenic results in arsenic bronze, the toughest of all the bronzes. And as a result, the Vinca, Cucuteni and Petresti have left us with lots of bronze artifacts- belt buckles, broaches, jewelry, wood working and farming tools. But *no* weapons. In stark contrast to what every other culture since has done when it first got bronxe.

A major cause of warfare is also missing. They can tell from the tels that the population was remarkably stable. Which is what you'd expect if witches offer birth control. And Mallory notes that there is *no* word for "marriage", and that the word for 'grandfather' actually turns out to refer to the brother of the mother. Women who are not owned by men dont give birth more often than they have the resources to support the children resulting.

No marriage also means no harems. Men who dont own women dont go to war to get more of them. Of course, women still have the instinct for bonding, but in this case, what we see are couples in which both figures are *female*. In many ways, this resembles much of what we see going on today in the Lesbian community with an aversion to war and a preference for limiting the number of kids.

Lastly, I can see how the men who killed the last mammoth, dodo, or whatever did so because they had families to feed. Conversely, if the men dont have that responsibility, they dont have the justification. Thus, we would not expect the Chalcolithic cultures to drive any species to extinction. This has been noted. They've done inventories of all the species which were there when these agrarian cultures began, and find all the species diversity is still there 4000 years later.

They've also done soil cores, and can see that they farmed the same land without ever destroying the fertility or clear cutting the forests, despite having the world's first bronze axes. But- since they didnt have marriage, they lived in large communal houses. As a result, the one hearth kept them all warm, and they didnt need nearly the firewood of a group of hovels.

Gimbutas discusses the end, noting that it was gradual. Not the result of some kind of invading army. The settlements were simply abandoned. I note that it comes shortly after the first domesticated horse was introduced from Ukraine, and what it looks like to me was anthrax. Thus Varna was able to last much longer because it was a *fishing* culture.

But by then, they'd already invented the plank hulled sail boat, and if you compare the Cycladic island pottery, you can see where they came from, and why their descendants, the Minoans, were also clearly peaceful.

Of course, all this challenges religious sensibilites, and thus receives lots of criticism. Whereas later religions were based on sacred texts, the witches offered mystical experience from psychedelic potions. The polkadotted toadstools are still ubiquitous in Native European art. As well they should be. You can make a dynamite potion from Amanita muscaria and animal fat.

So- adding it all up, the witches ruled with sex, drugs, and rock & roll.

[stan]

http://www.bosnianpyramid.com/index.html

Day,

Above is the link to the official site of the Bosnian Pyramid.
Major excavation is scheduled to begin in April.

I don't have the background to comment on everything you said
in your above post on Chalcolithic culture. But I have a feeling you
will encounter some argument, so hang in there.
Some of it seems very speculative, but then you seem to have a lot of
evidence, too.

[Rokcet Scientist]

I'd say there is more than enough material there to keep National Geographic magazine and TV going for years and years! Write a 'treatment' (descriptive paper of 2/4 pages max), find a producer, then a screenwriter, and you've got your career cut out for you!

[/quote]"The witches sent women into the Roman camps to have sex with the officers, and somehow, the Dacians always knew when the Romans were coming."[/unquote]
Sure: shortly after they started heavy breathing....
(Sorry, couldn't resist )

[Guest]

It still sounds like so much feminist propaganda; I counted at least two references to men owning women in DB's post, and we seem to be going a little over the top with the references to 'male violence'. I thought I was watching a Scottish Executive propaganda film..err...I mean advert for domestic violence; much of that 'information' was on the same level.
There are Iron Age graves in Britain which seems curiously anomalous, ie everyone is buried on their left sides, so is that the normal method or something special etc? Could the experts just be wrong? www.freewebs.com/thehistoryvault/celticbritain.htm
Remember that Gimbutas survived a world war involving Nazi occupation, and then endured a Soviet one; that would explain her obsession with trying to find proof of a 'Golden Age' of peace.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Day, while your submissions are very wordy, to date they're certainly not 'linky' or illustrative.
Feel free to sprinkle your discourse at strategic points with relevant internet links from unsuspicious third parties, or photos and other imagery, to underscore a point or two.

[Leona Conner]

It would have been helpful if DB had mentioned where she got her information. Didn't know MS magazine printed articles on archaeology/anthropology. To me it looks like an example of pure eisegesis, or maybe femminist propaganda.

"So- adding it all up, the witches ruled with sex, drugs, and rock & roll."
When did we stop?

[Rokcet Scientist]

[quote="Leona Conner"][...]
"So- adding it all up, the witches ruled with sex, drugs, and rock & roll."
When did we stop? [/quote]

Hadn't noticed either, Leona!

[Leona Conner]

Cute. I faintly remember hearing of Marija Gimbutas when I was studying anthropoloby back in the late fifties (no remarks, please guys). She was a feminist ahead of her time, mainly at the time we didn't hear much about feminism it was still kinda new. But her theories, although controversial, about a prehistoric age of the Mother Goddess, did make a lot of sense. When you think about it, people knew absolutely nothing about reproduction except that a woman spewed forth babies, as the earth put out plants it was what they could see and relate too. Men had no idea that they played any part in the process. It wasn't until they figured it out that things changed and in a big way. She tried to change the accepted idea that primitive man was brutish, violent and incapable of living in a society accept under a tyrant. Of course, she based her opinions soley on the beautiful Venus figurines found throughout that part of the world. If early man made a figure of a woman it could be only because he worshipped her as a Goddess, so we now have the Earth Mother.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Very romantic.

[stan]

Leona, I'm sorry, but it seems counter-intuitive to me that early homo sapiens didn't know
how babies were made.
They saw animals mating and animal babies being born, and they certainly knew how to do it themselves.
You think they saw no connection between sex and procreation?

At what time do you think
humans realized the link between the old in-and-out and the production of children?

[daybrown]

I've read reports that two more Native European lines have been found in Finland. but even if 9 not 7, even if Sykes can only account for 95%, that still leaves a dramatic diff between Native European and other mtDNA lines.

Hybridization with Neanderthals explains why, and would also explain why Native European females have so many more birthing problems. Of course, I'd be happy to consider any alternative theory. Sorry to be so verbose, but its the only way to minimize unwarrented dismissibility of info that disturbs sensibilities.

[Leona Conner]

"Hybridization with Neanderthals explains why, and would also explain why Native European females have so many more birthing problems."

Sorry, Day but women have the same birthing problems everywhere. This is not because of hybridization with the Neandertals, having an easy birth is one of the sacrifices HM females made to walk upright. In order to do this our pelvic bones had to move into a position that makes it harder.

[Frank Harrist]

http://www.nokalakevi.org/home.html

[Rokcet Scientist]

Exciting! Maybe they'll finally find unicorns, amazons, cyclops and leprechauns there...

[Frank Harrist]

Exciting! Maybe they'll finally find unicorns, amazons, cyclops and leprechauns there...

Maybe Amazons, but probably not the rest.