The New History of Mankind: Who Are we? What are we? How did we get here?

[lainey]

I'm only about 60 pages into the first book, but I had to post and say how engrossing this book is! For someone with no real prior knowledge about this and who is terrible with picturing time frames and dates I found this book so interesting and generally a really cool read.

I sat down with Google open to look up who is who and where they sat in the timeline of history which was educational in itself. It's amazing how complex what Witzel has done is, and even though the start of chapter 2 about comparison and theory was a bit of a task to get my head round in places the knowledge was important in understanding how they have pieced together the story lines of the myths.

What I'm getting at is that anyone who hasn't picked up this book yet or is unsure if it is for them, give it a try. It's really well explained and you can understand it without any prior background knowledge. Though if you are considering reading it on the commute to work, think about getting the kindle edition, the book is huge I can't wait to read more of it and get stuck into the creation myths.

 

[Chad]

Another discovery in Denisova Cave has come to light. Apparently the pieces found make up the statuette of a cave lion. It's 45,000 years old - pending confirmation on the dating - and, if so, that would make it the oldest of its kind in the world. They think it's too simplistic to be a toy and, sadly, at the moment, it's incomplete.

Considering the above find in Russia, a 2017 discovery of some cave art in Indonesia, in South Sulawesi, has just been dated to 44,000 years ago ("gave dates ranging from 35,100 to 43,900 years") - they think it's the oldest ever found, predating others by some 24,000 years? But that's not all. It's particularly notable because the oldest cave paintings are much simpler, featuring things like handprints, whereas this scene is much more complex, it appears to be a 'hunt' with:

human-like figures with some animal features (academics call these therianthropes), who seem to be wielding long swords or ropes. Their bodies are human-shaped but one appears to have the head of a bird and another has a tail.

The animals featured:

hunting warty pigs and dwarf buffaloes

The article states the dwarf buffaloes still inhabit the island.

The authors state that rather than seeing some progression in complexity, you have these "basic" handprints but, "Everything is there by 44,000 years ago." The Lascaux scene, as a comparison, is dated at ~ 17,000 years ago.

Moreover, the similarities with the Lascaux shaft scene are interesting, wiki details it as: "a man with a bird head and a bison", Settegast notes a spear. In this Indonesian image the human figures are "human-shaped but one appears to have the head of a bird", there's a "dwarf buffalo", and these human-like figures [...] "seem to be wielding long swords or ropes".

Similarities aside, it's a pretty fascinating find on its own.

South Sulawesi on a map:

Full article below:

Earliest known cave art by modern humans found in Indonesia


Hannah Devlin
The Guardian

Wed, 11 Dec 2019 18:00 UTC





© Ratno Sardi/Griffith University
The drawings are nearly twice as old as any previously known narrative scenes.
Cave art depicting human-animal hybrid figures hunting warty pigs and dwarf buffaloes has been dated to nearly 44,000 years old, making it the earliest known cave art by our species.

The artwork in Indonesia is nearly twice as old as any previous hunting scene and provides unprecedented insights into the earliest storytelling and the emergence of modern human cognition.

Previously, images of this level of sophistication dated to about 20,000 years ago, with the oldest cave paintings believed to be more basic creations such as handprints.


© Ratno Sardi/Griffith University
The art was found after an expedition member noticed what appeared to be an entrance to a high-level chamber above.
"We were stunned by the implications of this image," said Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith University. "This was just mind-boggling because this showed us that this was possibly the oldest rock art anywhere on the face of this planet."

The painting, discovered in 2017, is one of hundreds in South Sulawesi, including a red hand stencil, which was dated to at least 40,000 years ago. But the latest finding is exceptional as it is more than twice as old as any previously known narrative scenes and hints at ancient myths and an early capacity for imagination.

"It suggested to us that this extraordinary scene suggests a story or some kind of myth," said Brumm.

The 4.5-metre-wide panel shows six fleeing mammals - two Sulawesi warty pigs and four dwarf buffaloes, known as anoas, small but fierce animals that still inhabit the island's dwindling forests. The animals are being pursued by human-like figures with some animal features (academics call these therianthropes), who seem to be wielding long swords or ropes. Their bodies are human-shaped but one appears to have the head of a bird and another has a tail.

© Maxime Aubert/PA
The dwarf buffalo species pictured still inhabits forests on the island.
Save
Human-animal hybrids occur in the folklore of almost every modern society and are frequently cast as gods, spirits or ancestral beings in religions across the world.

"The most fascinating aspect is it has all the key elements of modern human cognition," said Prof Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist at Australia's Griffith University. "Hand stencils, a narrative scene, human-like figures that were conceived of something that doesn't really exist in the real world. Everything is there by 44,000 years ago."

The cave is in a well-explored system, which researchers had visited frequently over the past decade. The discovery was made after an expedition member noticed what appeared to be an entrance to a high level chamber above and climbed up a fig tree to investigate. "And then, bang, there's this incredible new rock art site in there that's essentially like nothing we've ever seen before in this entire region," said Brumm.

Rock art is difficult to date, and the scientists relied on analysing mineral growths known as cave popcorn, that had formed over the painting. Measuring the radioactive decay of uranium and other elements in the deposits gave dates ranging from 35,100 to 43,900 years as a minimum age for the Sulawesi discovery. The findings are described in the journal Nature.

"It's just amazing and to me it just shows how much more rock art that is out there waiting to be discovered that completely changes our understanding of the human story," said Brumm.

Before this latest discovery, the oldest undisputed examples of figurative cave art date to about 35,000 years old. The oldest cave art on record is abstract forms attributed to Neanderthals, which have been dated to 64,000 years old. The art features lines, dots and animal-like shapes.

 

[Chad]

During the recent discovery of a mithraeum in Italy, dubbed the mithraeum of the coloured marbles by researchers, an inscription was recorded that caught my eye considering some of the recent reading, and, in particular, Laura's fascinating PDF about the cult of Mithras.

In short, it seems to me to further support a connection between Mithraism and Zoroastrianism/Zurvanism, and the beliefs in prehistory. Although this is just what came to mind, so FWIW.

From the article:

The people who visited the mithraeum in ancient Rome may have also worshipped Kronos, a Greek god associated with the harvest and time itself. For instance, one inscription found in the mithraeum says, "to the unconquered god Mithras and to the great god Kronos."

Chronos (Cronus/Kronos) is associated with harvest and time, and is mentioned alongside Mithras, moreover, Kronos is considered the "great god", whereas Mithras is "the unconquered god".

This relationship reminded me Zaehners descriptions of Zurvan as the god of infinite time, with Ahura Mazda being the god, or at least god's representative, of finite time, who was to be battling, unconquered?, against the representative of the lie, Ahriman.

Wiki says "the naked lion-headed figure often found in Mithraic temples [...] Some scholars identify the lion-man as Aion, or Zurvan, or Cronus, or Chronos", it goes on to say that some "assert that it is a version of the Zoroastrian Ahriman or Vedic Aryaman.[52] [...]

From the Laura's PDF:

The zodiac is usually presented in association with the tauroctony, often as an arch or a surround. Additionally, there are representations of the extremely ancient lion-headed god known as “Aion”, and sun and moon figures.

It would seem that in this mithraeum, Chronos could be the lion which is also the Zurvan of infinite time.

Notably, in Denisova cave a 44,000 year old lion statuette was found recently.


On Zurvan as infinite time, just to give an idea of what Zaehner has to say about it - From his book The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism:

. The
Zurvanites, then, would seem to have invented a myth out of '.Yasna
30.3-4 (in which the two Spirits are spoken of as twins) according to
which the parent of the finite Spirits was the Infinite-infinite space
as well as infinite time. This would appear to be the origin of the
Zurvanite myth which makes Zurvan or Infinite Time the original
principle from which light and darkness, good and evil, Ohrmazd
and Ahriman, proceed. This is borne out by the earliest reference we
have to this myth in a Greek source ; for according to Eudemus of
Rhodes, a disciple of Aristotle, the Magi and all the Aryan race :
[...]
1 1

Other noteworthy details in the article were:

The mithraeum's "spelaeum," its most important room, has a stone marble floor decorated with a dazzling array of colors. Also in this room, archaeologists found a bench, a ritual well and a flower bed for some sort of sacred plant [i'm guessing this reference to it being sacred is speculation, although the plant reference reminds me of the sacred haoma plant in zoroastrianism], wrote the research team leader Max Victor David, a professor of history and cultures at the University of Bologna in Italy, in a paper published in the journal Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae.
[...]

Art found in one of the mithraeum's rooms alludes to this, with paintings depicting tridents and arrows. These images probably have "a particular meaning in the Mithraic theology," wrote David, noting that the trident (with three prongs) could be a reference to Mithras and his two torchbearers, while the arrows may represent Mithras' skill with archery.

The Egyptian goddess Isis may also have been venerated in this mithraeum, as researchers found an Egyptian ivory handle, likely used as a ritual instrument, that "seems to serve as a bridge between the followers of Mithras and those of Isis," David wrote in the journal article.

Changing times

Archaeologists found that much of the structure used to be a "caupona," a tavern or restaurant, before it was fully converted to a mithraeum.

Just regarding the trident, i wonder if it could in some way relate to what Settegast talked about with Poseidon, or perhaps it relates to the 3 fingered hand gesture? Neither, or both? Could the trident be a representative of the negative aspect of Ahriman?

Poseidon, Ancestral God of the Atlantics

A suggested etymology of the name Poseidon, "husband of
earth" or "lord of earth" (Posis Das), has led scholars to conclude
that the god may originally have possessed a universal sover-
eignty.119

If so, his omnipotence had been lost by the time Greek
myth, as we know it, was formulated. When Poseidon is men-
tioned at all, he is usually portrayed as violent or quarrelsome,
with only the sea as his unchallenged domain. 164 As might be
expected from the reports of Poseidon's flooding various parts
of Greece, his epithets included Prokystios, the Flooder. He was
also Enosichthon, the Earth-shaker, and all earthquakes were said
to be his work. 167 Poseidon's intimate association with the horse
was mentioned earlier (his main epithet was Hippios, He of the
Horses), and the god was seldom depicted without the trident,
his three-pronged fish spear (fig. 51).
Just when and how Poseidon, an Indo-European deity whose
worshippers are believed by many prehistorians to have come

8951 Sixth century clay
pinake from Corinth,
showing Poseidon with
emblematic trident or fish
spear seated atop a pair
of horses (after Farnell,
1909)
see figure 8
map at figure 85

Added: When posting this picture, i noticed Poseidon is on a black horse, and a white horse. I wonder if that's supposed to symbolise something?

90from landlocked northern steppes, acquired his statu s as sea god
is unknown, but the possible derivation of his characteristic fish
spear from the Late Paleolithic harpoons might be a rewarding
line of research. From an apparent origin in Magdalenian France
and Spain, these barbed bone or antler implements continued
to be present across north central Europe as late as the fifth or
fourth millennium B. C . At this time the harpoons are known to
have been used in the Kurgan culture of the north Caucasian
steppes, which some investigators see as the ancestor of the
Indo-Europeans. 158 As with the Magdalenians (and later Inda-
European nations) , horses were of great importance to the
Kurgan people, who also carved heads of horses in stone and
mounted them on rods for use as scepters . If Kurgan culture was
in fact Indo-European, its parallels to Magdalenian traditions
of horse reverence and harpoons would suggest that an earlier
theory, which saw Upper Paleolithic western Europe as the
proto-Indo-European homeland, may need to be retrieved . 225
Barbed bone harpoons were also known across Middle Africa,
from the far west of the continent to the East African rifts, and
while some are clearly more recent, the main extension of the
African harpoons is said to have taken place no later than the
seventh millennium B . C . 384 Those at Khartoum (fig. 52) remind-
ed the excavator of Magdalenian models . 5 They now appear
certain to have been fishermen's tools; we are advised by one
specialist to imagine the Middle African spread of harpoons as
originating in a "small but successful and hence assimilating
group, wedded psychologically as well as economically to the
waters ." 384 Atlantic survivors? The relationship between the two
streams north and south of the Mediterranean lands
has not, to my knowledge, been explored; but the apparently
Magdalenian ancestry of these implements, and their possible
connection to the fish spear of Poseidon (whom we shall later
find worshipped in Libya as well as Europe) allow at least the
suspicion that the European and the African harpoons represent
two lines of Atlantic inheritance.

Poseidon is also known in Greek myth for the gigantic or
monstrous forms of his children and grandchildren, many of
whom had homes at the "western edge of the world." The
Cyclops Polyphemos, living on an island off the coast of Libya,
was the son of Poseidon. Geryon, in whom the bodies of three
men were joined, was Poseidon's grandson; his island, Erytheia,
was placed by some authors off Gadira (Spanish Gades or Cadiz),
by others off the Libyan coast. (Herodotus IV.8 put Geryon near
Gades on an island "which lies on the Ocean beyond the Pillars
of Herakles.") The career of the outsized Aloadai, twin sons of
Poseidon, has already been summarized. Poseidon's offspring
were also the frequent enemies of Greek heroes, particularly
Herakles. After slaying the monstrous Geryon, Herakles felled
Ialebion and Dereynus, sons of Poseidon, in Liguria (Apollo-
dorus ll.5.x). At Pylos he overcame the sons of Neleus, himself
a son of Poseidon; in Libya he killed Antaeus, also a son of
Poseidon. To another Greek hero, Perseus, fell the task of be-
heading Medusa, Poseidon's mistress. (Medusa and her sister
Gorgons were usually situated in Libya, either beside the lake
Tritonis or near the Atlas mountains, whence they would make
destructive attacks on their African neighbors. ) 132 And in the
Odyssey it is Poseidon himself who consistently plays the part
of antagonist to the heroic Odysseus.

In short, Poseidon was a rather unsympathetic figure in Greek
mythology, his offspring and associates even more so. Plato
could not, it seems, have chosen a more likely ancestral god for
his obstreperous Atlantics.

So that's just something that came to mind. Maybe there's a link there, maybe not.

As for the other items mentioned in the article that were found - the knife, the arrows, the bench, the "ritual" well - Laura goes into great detail explaining the meaning behind them in Mithraism in the PDF, some of which is posted below. Whether those items found in the article above are the same, i can't say for sure. It would be advisable for anyone interested to read the whole PDF (linked again here):

[...]

Another item is the fact that a
particular type of knife is often depicted in the hand of Perseus, called a harpe, and
having an extra curved blade. Mithras is shown with a straight dagger, but the harpe
appears to be an important symbol of the fifth grade of the cult and a curved knife, of
the seventh.

[...]

What caught my attention was that one of the scenes is supposedly an initiation where the person in
the rank of the Father, wearing the Phrygican cap, is in the act of drawing a bow and
aiming the arrow straight at the naked figure in front of him, the person being
initiated. A third figure is present making a hand gesture with thumb and two fingers
(index and middle) extended and the other two fingers folded over the palm. [ See here for some images of the hand gestures described] Beck proposes that the activity is designed to convey information on more than one level.
In the first place, it is a reenactment of a cult myth that is found in many side scenes
in mithraea, something called the “water miracle” where Mithras shoots an arrow at a
rock to draw water from it. On another level, it is designed to induce in the initiate a
certain state or, at least, represent his passage from one state to another by means of
having received certain teachings. The third level was that the performance of the
ritual would act as a form of sympathetic magic and change the conditions of the
present environment as the conditions of the environment had been changed in the
past by the actions of the god.

...the mythic event of the water miracle is replicated in ritual, as a rite of
initation, by the feigned archery of the Father, just as the banquet of Mithras
and Sol is replicated by the banquet of the initiates presided over by the
Father and the Sun-Runner. ... why should the water miracle be chosen as the
archetype for an initiation ritual: With the banquet the question scarcely
arises; that the celebration of man should replicate the celebration of gods is
self-evidently appropriate. The relevance of Mithras’ archery to initiation,
however, is not so obvious. ...

Scholars, however, are unanimous in the following reading: Mithras shoots
at a rock and elicits water from it; the other figures in the scene (sometimes
one, sometimes two) serve either to petition Mithras or to receive gratefully
(sometimes in cupped hands) the gushing water. The archery is thus
interpreted as a victory over drought, an action once performed by the god in
mythic time to relieve world-wide aridity and thus performable again in
actual time at the behest of his devotees.

...a ritual of initiation that replicates the water miracle is admission into
that more abundant life symbolized by the waters elicited by Mithras the
bowman. ...archery thus becomes a mode of baptism. 16

That no questions are raised about the banquet is surprising considering the extract
from Revelation, above, and what a gods’ banquet might actually be. As for the
interesting hand gesture, it has been studied extensively by various scholars and
apparently indicates “the presentation of reason through language,” i.e. that something
is being spoken during the initiation that carries some weight or that teachings have
been given that have led to this initiatory moment. But, what strikes me the most
about this event attributed to Mithras is that, once again, we have a correspondence to
Moses in the desert striking the rock for water during the protracted, 40 year, Exodus.
There were actually two water miracles of Moses: in the first case, 17 he was instructed
to strike the rock with his staff; he did and water flowed. In the the second instance,
40 years later, he was told to just speak to the rock. 18 But he didn’t, he struck it
instead and nothing happened. Then he hit the rock a second time, and finally the
water came. It is said that it was for this lack of following instructions exactly or lack
of faith, that Moses was denied entry to the Promised Land which seems pretty harsh
to me as I’ve already mentioned. Naturally, there’s a whole lot of mental gymnastics
that gets performed explaining that nonsense, but what is important is that we are
seeing here, instances where striking a rock (or initiate) for water and speaking to a
rock (or initiate) are related to each other in a peculiar way. It is as though there is a
dual emphasis on action and word that can be done and spoken to re-invigorate or
replicate the miracle of getting water from a rock or achieving abundant life; the right
ritual, the correct behavior, can align one with the powers of the god. Perhaps the
ritual was as simple as reciting the story of the event while it was being re-enacted, or
saying the correct words that were alleged to have been spoken by the god at the time;
it could have been as complex as a long period of instruction and efforts to achieve
self-knowledge before initiation was performed.

Well, that’s the astral religion angle. What about the cometary angle? Could the
arrow represent a thunderbolt, as in an electrical discharge that split a rock and water
burst forth? A thunderbolt is accompanied by a tremendous crashing sound, i.e. “the
voice of god”, so perhaps the comet Moses had lost his vigor after 40 years?

There is another series of interesting connections to this idea of stones releasing
water though it is combined with stones that also stop water, and stones with symbols
of gods graven on them thus giving them power, possibly the power of “the word”.
So, let us make a somewhat deeper digression that will bring a number of elements to
light.

Ulansey conjectures that the influence of Aratus in Tarsus may have led to the
emphasis on astrology within the Stoic movement. It could very well be that it was
from Eudoxus 3000 year old astronomical knowledge,combined with the works of
Pherecydes and Pythagorus, that the tauroctony of the Mithraic Mysteries derived.
But there is more to it than that: in case you didn’t notice, the figures in the taruoctony
are reversed from the way they actually appear in the sky. Ulansey proposes:
...on ancient (and modern) star-globes (like the famous ancient “Atlas
Farnese” globe) Taurus is always depiected facing to the right exactly like the
bull in the tauroctony. This shows that the Mithraic bull is meant to represent
the constellation Taurus as seen from outside the cosmos, i.e. from the
“hypercosmic” perspective... 19 Yet we know, for a certainty, that the particular
time is important, as I said, from my own arrival at that date via a different
path, as well as Ulansey’s interpretation of the equinoxes being delimited via
the figures Cautes and Cautopates. It appears to me that someone was doing
some searching and putting clues together back then, and doing a bang-up
job of it too! So, let us continue to see if we, too, find more clues.
that probably led to the movement of Stoicism underground to be reincarnated as
the Mysteries of Mithras. Hipparchus is central to Ulansey’s theory that precession of
the equinoxes was the great secret of the Mystery cult and that may very well be true,
but I think there was a lot more to it than that. There is no known connection between
Hipparchus and the Stoics except for the fact that he lived at Rhodes and so did
Panaetius and Posidonius; but we’ll come to that.

The same is true of the lion-headed god who holds just such a lightning bolt on his
chest and, as we will see, just such a lightning bolt is one of the initiatic symbols of
the Mithraic Mysteries.

Perhaps the “weighty words” being indicated in the ritual enactment on the Mainz
vessel, as well as the word that Moses should have spoken to the rock to produce
water, was the “name of the god”? That does seem to be what is indicated by the
“Seal of Solomon”, i.e. the Mâgên Dâwîd, being inscribed on the stone that was
throne into the well by David

Below is the full article:

"The great god Kronos": Dazzling 1,600 year old "Mithraeum of colored marbles" dicovered in Italy


Owen Jarus
Live Science
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 12:00 UTC







© G. Albertini

In this reconstruction of the "Mithraeum of Colored Marbles" the spelaeum, the most important room in the mithraeum, is shown on the bottom level.

Some 1,600 years ago, ancient Romans would have worshipped the god Mithras, possibly in an altered state of consciousness, within the "Mithraeum of Colored Marbles," said archaeologists who found the remains of this temple in Ostia, Italy.

Artifacts and inscriptions found in the mithraeum suggest that the worshippers venerated both Mithras, a popular god in the Roman Empire, and other gods.

The mithraeum's "spelaeum," its most important room, has a stone marble floor decorated with a dazzling array of colors. Also in this room, archaeologists found a bench, a ritual well and a flower bed for some sort of sacred plant, wrote the research team leader Max Victor David, a professor of history and cultures at the University of Bologna in Italy, in a paper published in the journal Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae.

The mithraeum would have seen plenty of rituals in its heyday, including banquets, initiation ceremonies and animal sacrifices, David told Live Science. People who took part in the rituals "were perhaps in a state of altered consciousness," David said. In the ancient world altered consciousness was often achieved through the use of psychotropic plants.


© D. Abate
This laser scanning shows the "spelaeum,"the most important room in the Mithraeum of Colored Marbles has a marble floor decorated in a variety of colors. A ritual well can also be seen in the room.
A place for the gods

Persians were the first to worship Mithras, also known as Mithra, who is associated with the light and sun. His cult spread to the Roman Empire and became widely popular.

According to legend, Mithras was an excellent archer who often traveled with his torchbearers, Cautes and Cautopates. Art found in one of the mithraeum's rooms alludes to this, with paintings depicting tridents and arrows. These images probably have "a particular meaning in the Mithraic theology," wrote David, noting that the trident (with three prongs) could be a reference to Mithras and his two torchbearers, while the arrows may represent Mithras' skill with archery.

The people who visited the mithraeum in ancient Rome may have also worshipped Kronos, a Greek god associated with the harvest and time itself. For instance, one inscription found in the mithraeum says, "to the unconquered god Mithras and to the great god Kronos."




The Egyptian goddess Isis may also have been venerated in this mithraeum, as researchers found an Egyptian ivory handle, likely used as a ritual instrument, that "seems to serve as a bridge between the followers of Mithras and those of Isis," David wrote in the journal article.

Changing times

Archaeologists found that much of the structure used to be a "caupona," a tavern or restaurant, before it was fully converted to a mithraeum.

The building's time as a mithraeum appears to have been short. By the early fifth century, Christianity had spread widely in Ostia, and Roman authorities were becoming less tolerant of the worship of Mithras and other gods. At some point in the fifth century, the mithraeum's ritual well was shut down and the mithraeum closed its doors.

The name "Mithraeum of Colored Marbles" is a name that modern day archaeologists gave to the structure.

 

[goyacobol]

@itellsya ,

Thanks for that detailed post. One thing that stood out to me may or may not be important but I have had this question about something the Cs said about "the holder of the trent" and this connection is one that I did not see before you posted that one picture:



I had been thinking the trent could be connected to Posidon but now maybe also Mithras?

Session 26 July 1997

Q: Okay. I have several books on the subject. I will start tomorrow. Now, when the Templars were arrested, they were accused of worshipping a head, or skull, and also the god Baphomet. Were these spurious accusations designed to defame them?

A: Skull was of pure crystal.

Q: What is the definition of the god 'Baphomet,' if they did, indeed, worship such?

A: The holder of the Trent.

Q: What is THAT?

A: Seek.

Gee, the Templars, Baphomet, Posidon and "holder of the Trent".

I see that Posidon is also associated with not only the sea but earthquakes, storms and horses in Wikipedia:

Poseidon (/pəˈsaɪdən, pɒ-, poʊ-/;[1] Greek: Ποσειδῶν, pronounced [poseːdɔ́ːn]) was one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and myth, god of the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses.

Considering storms, earthquakes and lightning bolts it seems like these gods may be connected with natural catastrophes.

The black and white horse makes me think of duality and reflection as in a mirror or "Alice through the looking glass".

 

[Mike]

Hmm, it makes me guess if the story of the flood and ark and landing on the mountain was the story of the Kantekkians traveling to Earth, since those are the northern stories and Kantekkians took over the north. Talk about catacyclism and trauma, a planet destroyed and travel to a new planet must've been remembered as a big deal.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that had a similar thought along these lines, because I was telling myself that it was just too much of a speculation. Keeping the two quotes below from Laura in mind, I first had a thought from reading Witzel’s book and re-reading the beginning of ‘Comets and Horns of Moses’ that the story of Moses might have some connection to Kantek (see below) and then I was like the story of Noah, the ark and the flood seemed like a better fit. I even mentioned this to another forum member some time ago.

Briefly, it seems to me that this book comes the closest to backing up what the Cs have said about the origins of white people on this planet as being from "Kantek" of anything I've ever read. They created a myth about the destruction of the world because they experienced it.

Oh, sure. There are multiple subsequent cataclysms mixed all in there, but the "end of the world" scenario that was probably the original story - history, not myth - brought by the Kantekkians to Earth, has now been projected to the future.
There are a couple of things that really made me stop and think. The two myth systems are strikingly different and the "why" of that is best explained, I think, by the Kantek scenario: an advanced civilization that brought on its own destruction (human-cosmic connection), and brought that story with them.

In terms of Moses, from reading Witzel's book and also re-reading the beginning of 'Comets and Horns of Moses' I was thinking that the story of Moses and the Exodus, the general story outline, might somehow be a description in part of the interactions and events that happened on Kantek.

What occurred to me, after thinking about it in terms of Eliade’s mythicization of history principle was that the documentary hypothesis was probably somewhere close to the truth: the same story was retold by different groups or people with variations of characters and location which suggests strongly that there is a seed event. Whatever this event was, it was obviously a very popular story because there were several versions of it in the Bible alone!

I couldn’t get over this nagging thought about Moses, the Exodus and Kantek after reading the tables in ‘Comets and the Horns of Moses’ giving the different accounts in the bible by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses on the subjects of ‘The Promised Land by the Exclusion of God’ and ‘The Covenant’ pg 36-38, especially ‘The Promised Land’ table. It just sounded like something that whoever was in alignment with the Lizzies, such as Bramley’s brotherhood of the serpent, might be told and also try to promulgate. And maybe this originated on Kantek.

Here is what was said in early sessions with the C’s about Moses:

Q: (L) True meaning of the word "Shem"?

A: Purity.

Q: (L) What language is the root of this word found in?

A: Atlantean. Hebrew.

Q: (L) Where did the Jews come from?

A: Atlantis.

Q: (L) Who was Yahweh.

A: Fictional being.

Q: (L) Who was the god that spoke to Moses on the mount?

A: Audible projection of Lizards.

Q: (L) Did Moses at any time realize that he had been duped by the Lizzies?

A: No.

Q: (L) Yet, the other night you said that Moses is also doing work with Christ on another plane, is that correct?

A: Yes.

Q: (L) Well, if he was misled by the Lizzies, how did he get to be a good guy?

A: Taught afterward.

Q: (L) After what?

A: Plane transfer.

Q: (L) Did Moses die?

A: No.

Q: (L) Who took him?

A: Us.

Q: (L) In what way was Hermes a traitor?

A: Broke covenant of spiritual unity of all peoples in area now known as Middle East.

Q: (L) Who did Hermes betray?

A: Himself; was power hungry.

Q: (L) What acts did he do?

A: Broke covenant; he inspired divisions within ranks of Egyptians, Essenes, Aryans, and Persians et cetera.

Q: (L) What was his purpose in doing this?

A: Divide and conquer as inspired by those referred to as Brotherhood in Bramley book you have read.

Q: (L) Is this the Brotherhood of the snake Hermes formed in rejection of unity?

A: Hermes did not form it; it was long since in existence.

Q: (L) Who was the originator of the Brotherhood of the Serpent as described in the Bramley book?

A: Lizard Beings.

Q: (L) Where did Moses get his knowledge?

A: Us.

Q: (L) Okay, you told us before that he saw or interacted with a holographic projection created by the Lizard Beings. Was that the experience on Mount Sinai?

A: Yes.

Q: (L) Okay, well, if he got knowledge from you, did he get this prior to the interactions with the Lizard beings?

A: Yes. He was corrupted by imagery. He was deceived by the imagery a la Joseph Smith, for example.

Q: (L) Are you saying that Joseph Smith, the recipient of the Mormon texts, was deceived by the Lizards also?

A: Yes. They do that a lot.

Q: (L) Why was Moses not allowed into the promised land?

A: Because he became tyrannical.

Q: (L) Were the Lizards the ones who led the Jews to the "Promised Land?"

A: No. Were not led; followed their own paths in effort to escape the effects of cataclysms.

Q: (L) Why have they got this big legend about being chosen and led to the promised land?

A: More brotherhood influence and nonsense.

Maybe the Jewish “Promised Land” had something to do with the earth being the “Promised Land” from the perspective of beings on Kantek some of which entered a covenant with the Lizzies while there. Maybe this is part of the brotherhood of the serpent that then influenced the Jews from Atlantis?

These quotes are taken from the first post in the Kantek thread that gives information about the transport of people from Kantek via both the Lizzies and also via ‘The Mother Stone.’ Maybe this could be seen as a seed event for the story of the Exodus? Kantek

Q: (L) Is the cluster of fragments in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter the remains of a planet?
A: Yes.

Q: (L) What was that planet known as?
A: Kantek.

Q: (L) When did that planet break apart into the asteroid belt?
A: 79 thousand years ago approximately.

Q: (L) The planet that was destroyed between Jupiter and Mars, you said was destroyed by psychic energy?
A: Yes.

Q: (L) What was the source of this psychic energy?
A: Beings inhabiting the planet.

Q: (L) Do beings in this area of the galaxy just sort of destroy their planets from time to time? Is this getting to be a habit?
A: Close. Has been.

Q: (L) Did any of those beings leave that planet and come to earth?
A: Yes.

Q: (L) Who were they? Were they humans like us?
A: Blond and blue eyed descendants.

Q: (L) Was that a colder planet?
A: No.

Q: (L) Was that planet much like earth?
A: Yes. Blue eyes. Eye pigment was because planet was farther from Sol.

Q: (L) How did the people of that planet come to earth? Did they know it was going to be destroyed?
A: Some knew and were taken by Lizzies and they are the Anunnaki.

[…]

Q: (L) Why is it that our scientists have not been able to uncover evidence of such ancient existence?
A: They have. Do not want to acknowledge it.

Q: (L) Where do the Celts come from?
A: Same. Ferocious people. Came from fifth planet.

Q: (L) When was that planet destroyed?
A: 80 thousand years ago.

Q: (L) So, there is some interesting connection! (RC) Does it mean “warrior race?”

A: If you prefer! We have close affiliation with the “Northern Peoples.” Why? Because we were in regular, direct contact with them on Kantek, before they were “lifted” to Earth by Orion STS.

Q: (L) If you were in direct contact with them, how come they were in cahoots with the Orion STS bunch?
A: Who says they are in “kahoots?”

Q: (L) Weren’t they rescued by the Orion STS?
A: Yes. But one need not be in “kahoots” to be rescued!!!

Q: (R) I was wondering about the possible positive uses of the device?
A: Multiple. In ancient times this object was called the Gift of God. It was used to aid in the manifestation of all things needful for existence.

Q: (A) Manifestation? (R) That sounds like Merkabah. The Matriarch Stone. The Mother Stone. (A) So it can do all kinds of things... (R ) Is this the Merkabah?
A: Mother Stone, yes.

Q: (R) So that's it! This is the real meaning of the Merkabah. Pretty neat. And there is only one of these available. This puts a very strange aspect on all this. (L) Where was it created?
A: Kantek.

Q: Was this what was used to help transport the Kantekkians to Earth at the time of the destruction of their planet?
A: Some of them. Others transported by Lizards.

This part of a session seems to fit into all this somehow:

Q: (L) Can you tell us when the original Freemasons formed as a society?

A: 5633 B.C.

Q: (L) Is Freemasonry as it is practiced today the same?

A: 33rd degree, yes.

Q: (L) So, there is a continuing tradition for over 7 thousand years?

A: Yes.

Q: (L) Is this organization with a plan to take over and rule the world?

A: Not exactly.

Q: (L) What is their focus?

A: Overseers.

Q: (L) Of what?

A: The status of quorum.

Q: (L) What is the quorum?

A: Deeper knowledge organization. Totally secret to your kind as of yet. Very important with regard to your future.

Q: (L) In what way?

A: Changes.

Q: (L) Can you get more specific? Is that changes to us personally?

A: Partly.

Q: (L) Earth changes?

A: Also.

Q: (L) What is the relationship between this quorum and the Cassiopaeans?

A: They communicate with us regularly.

Q: (L) Do they do this knowing you are Cassiopaeans or do they do it thinking...

A: Yes.

Q: (L) Has there been an ongoing relationship between the Cassiopaeans and this quorum for these thousands of years?

A: For some time as you measure it.

Q: (L) What is the origin of the Kaballah?

A: Channeled truths given to early pre-Mosaic Jews to use your terminology.

Q: (L) When the Jewish commentators began setting down the teachings, was this the first time this had been put into writing?

A: No. Not even close.

Q: (L) Is the form that it is in today very close to the original form and can it be relied upon?

A: No. Corrupted.

 

[Laura]

Yes, I don't know if we will ever be able to work it all out exactly, but just having a general idea of how things came down at that distance in time is already remarkable.

 

[hlat]

I had this thought a few days ago, and censored myself since it is pure speculation. Now I post it in case anyone else had the same thought.

I wonder if Superman was inspired by the Kantekkians? They both have a home planet with two syllables beginning with the letter K. They have inhabitants who fled to Earth when their planet exploded. They look like Earth people. They have superpowers and advanced civilizations compared to Earth people.

I wonder if lost knowledge resurfaces as inspired stories. Superman seems to be a widely known story.

 

[Mike]

I had the same thought recently, but I think another forum, Atreides, a look time ago may have mentioned the idea.

 

[sid]

I had this thought a few days ago, and censored myself since it is pure speculation. Now I post it in case anyone else had the same thought.

I wonder if Superman was inspired by the Kantekkians? They both have a home planet with two syllables beginning with the letter K. They have inhabitants who fled to Earth when their planet exploded. They look like Earth people. They have superpowers and advanced civilizations compared to Earth people.

I wonder if lost knowledge resurfaces as inspired stories. Superman seems to be a widely known story.

And I think there was either an article on Sott or mentioned on a thread here on the forum that the Superman is a Jewish invention meant as a hero for holocaust prisoners. Something else to observe is that the Superman doesn't follow the archetypal Hero journey i.e. he is born with all the power he possesses and there are hardly any obstacles to overcome. Mostly he is trying to hide his power blending in the society as a Clarke Kent and that's portrayed as a challenge for him to overcome i.e how to successfully deceive people of your secretive power. Sounds a lot like Yahweh's chosen people hiding behind the mask of Christianity controlling the world at key nerve centers until the time is right to reveal themselves. Sounds like a STS control template perfected on Kantek!!

 

[Chad]

An article which i'll post below caught my eye. Researchers believe they've found some of the world's oldest cooking pots in Siberia. They're dated to between 12-16,000 years old, they're heat-resistant and have traces of fats and lipids.

Researchers think that they arose at the same time, independently, to the other oldest cooking pots found in Japan.

For an idea of the distance, here's Google maps show the Amur river (the area where the Siberian cookware was found) and Japan:



The Siberian location puzzles researchers: "It is interesting that pottery emerges during these very cold periods, and not during the comparatively warmer interstadials when forest resources, such as game and nuts, were more available." (my emphasis)

What took me by surprise was the fact that cooking pots weren't in use before this period. So i did a very quick search and came across another article which is from 2016 that says that the earliest cooking pots found in the area of Libya were 10,000 years old, and on those they found traces of "a broad range of flora: grains, leaves, and aquatic plants from lakes".

In that article they refer back to the oldest evidence of cookware being found in Japan in the, yet again, "freezing clime" of Kubodera-minami, which is apparently in Nigata.

Evidence for the use of clay apparently goes back to at least 26,000 years ago but up until the discoveries mentioned above, clay was primarily used for figurines and bowls. More recent finds may have pushed this even further back, there's a mentioned of a find in 2012, in Hunan, China, that's 20,000 years old, but that wasn't tested at the time of the article and was only speculated to be used for food preparation, not cooking.

Anyway, forgive my ignorance, but the fact that that kind of cookware is so recent was pretty surprising to me. And as the researchers comment in the Siberian cookware article: "This appears to be a process of "parallel innovation" during a period of major climatic uncertainty, with separate communities facing common threats and reaching similar technological solutions."

So evidence of cookware appears to be relatively recent, but they recently found evidence of butchered mammoth bones in Siberia dating back to 21,000 years ago.

Full article:

World's oldest cooking pots found in Siberia, created 16,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age

A new study shows that ancient Siberian hunters created heat resistant pots so that they could cook hot meals - surviving the harshest seasons of the ice age by extracting nutritious bone grease and marrow from meat. The research - which was...

www.sott.net

World's oldest cooking pots found in Siberia, created 16,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age



University of York
Sat, 01 Feb 2020 20:47 UTC







© Yanshina Oksana

Shards of pottery from a cooking pot used by Siberian hunters.
A new study shows that ancient Siberian hunters created heat resistant pots so that they could cook hot meals - surviving the harshest seasons of the ice age by extracting nutritious bone grease and marrow from meat.

The research - which was undertaken at the University of York - also suggests there was no single point of origin for the world's oldest pottery.

Academics extracted and analysed ancient fats and lipids that had been preserved in pieces of ancient pottery - found at a number of sites on the Amur River in Russia - whose dates ranged between 16,000 and 12,000 years ago.

Potential

Professor Oliver Craig, Director of the BioArch Lab at the University of York, where the analysis was conducted, said: "This study illustrates the exciting potential of new methods in archaeological science: we can extract and interpret the remains of meals that were cooked in pots over 16,000 years ago.

"It is interesting that pottery emerges during these very cold periods, and not during the comparatively warmer interstadials when forest resources, such as game and nuts, were more available."



Why these pots were first invented in the final stages of the last Ice Age has long been a mystery, as well as the kinds of food that were being prepared in them.

Climatic fluctuation

Researchers also examined pottery found from the Osipovka culture also on the Amur River. Analysis proved that pottery from there had been used to process fish, most likely migratory salmon, which offered local hunters an alternative food source during periods of major climatic fluctuation. An identical scenario was identified by the same research group in neighbouring islands of Japan.

The new study demonstrates that the world's oldest clay cooking pots were being made in very different ways in different parts of Northeast Asia, indicating a "parallel" process of innovation, where separate groups that had no contact with each other started to move towards similar kinds of technological solutions in order to survive.

Lead author, Dr Shinya Shoda, of the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Nara, Japan said: "We are very pleased with these latest results because they close a major gap in our understanding of why the world's oldest pottery was invented in different parts of Northeast Asia in the Late Glacial Period, and also the contrasting ways in which it was being used by these ancient hunter-gatherers.

"There are some striking parallels with the way in which early pottery was used in Japan, but also some important differences that we had not expected. This leaves many new questions that we will follow up with future research."

Origin point

Professor Peter Jordan, senior author of the study at the Arctic Centre and Groningen Institute of Archaeology, University of Groningen, the Netherlands said: "The insights are particularly interesting because they suggest that there was no single "origin point" for the world's oldest pottery. We are starting to understand that very different pottery traditions were emerging around the same time but in different places, and that the pots were being used to process very different sets of resources.

"This appears to be a process of "parallel innovation" during a period of major climatic uncertainty, with separate communities facing common threats and reaching similar technological solutions."

The last Ice Age reached its deepest point between 26,000 to 20,000 years ago, forcing humans to abandon northern regions, including large parts of Siberia. From around 19,000 years ago, temperatures slowly started to warm again, encouraging small bands of hunters to move back into these vast empty landscapes.

 

[Chad]

Another stunning find in Russia: The recent discovery of a 25,000 year old circular structure built from the bones of at least 60 mammoths in Russia's forest steppe.

It's a pretty short article so i won't summarise the points, article can be found below.

What's notable is that it may further support the notion that the area had a temperate climate, because there's evidence of trees and year round fresh spring water available.

Why the site was built is seriously called into question considering the sheer scale, difficulty in its construction (particularly for researchers who erroneously believe the area was "frigid") , and the lack of evidence for its practical usage - there are no clear signs yet of its true purpose, such as for shelter, cooking, tool working, and so on, as has been found on similar but "much, much" smaller sites elsewhere.

They claim to have found evidence of 'vegetable scraps' although, as of right now, they are unidentifiable and the best they can say is that the fibres look similar to root vegetables.

Mysterious 25,000-year-old circular structure built from bones of 60 mammoths discovered in Russia's forest steppe

A jaw-dropping example of Ice Age architecture has been unearthed on Russia's forest steppe: a huge, circular structure built with the bones of at least 60 woolly mammoths. But exactly why hunter-gatherers enduring the frigid realities of life...

www.sott.net

Mysterious 25,000-year-old circular structure built from bones of 60 mammoths discovered in Russia's forest steppe


Brian Handwerk
Smithsonian
Tue, 17 Mar 2020 20:01 UTC







© A. E. Dudin
The purpose of such an elaborate structure remains a big open question. The remains of the newly discovered structure.
A jaw-dropping example of Ice Age architecture has been unearthed on Russia's forest steppe: a huge, circular structure built with the bones of at least 60 woolly mammoths. But exactly why hunter-gatherers enduring the frigid realities of life 25,000 years ago would construct the 40-foot diameter building is a fascinating question.


Comment: It is perhaps less perplexing when you realise that back then the area wasn't "frigid" at all and in fact its climate was temperate, see Pierre Lescaudron's Of Flash Frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes for more.


"Clearly a lot of time and effort went into building this structure so it was obviously important to the people that made it for some reason," says Alexander Pryor, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter (U.K.). He is the lead author of a new study published this week in the journal Antiquity describing the find at Kostenki, a place where many important Paleolithic sites lie clustered around the Don River.

The ancient builders did leave some clues. Fires once burned within the structure and food scraps, including vegetables, remain. Several pits containing mammoth bones lie just outside of the bone circle and may suggest food storage. "You obviously get a lot of meat from a mammoth," Pryor said, "so the idea that there were food processing and food storage activities going on at the site is something that we want to investigate more."

To some, though, the grandeur of the structure suggests more than practical significance. "People have also speculated a lot about a likely ritual element to this and it's really hard to say what that might have been," Pryor adds. "Ritual is embedded in human lives in all sorts of ways. The fact they might have designed a structure of this type as part of both their ritual and their sustenance activities is very reasonable."


© Courtesy of Pryor et. al.
Location of the mammoth bone structure found in modern-day Russia

Mammoth-bone buildings are well-known to archaeologists. Similar structures have been found across Eastern Europe, albeit on a much smaller scale, a few meters in diameter. These sites, including others found at Kostenki during the 1950s and '60s, date back as far as 22,000 years. Researchers have generally considered them to be dwellings or "mammoth houses" that helped their builders cope with frigid temperatures near the nadir of the last Ice Age. The new structure (first discovered at Kostenki in 2014) is 3,000 years older.

"What a site!" says Penn State University anthropologist Pat Shipman, who wasn't involved in the research. "I am completely intrigued as these remarkable finds differ meaningfully from previously discovered ones and can be more carefully and fully studied with modern techniques."

The site stands out most obviously for its scale. "The size of the structure makes it exceptional among its kind, and building it would have been time-consuming," says Marjolein Bosch, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Cambridge. "This implies that it was meant to last, perhaps as a landmark, a meeting place, a place of ceremonial importance, or a place to return to when the conditions grew so harsh that shelter was needed," Bosch was not involved with the new research on this " truly exceptional find" but has personally visited the site. Indeed, the structure's sheer size makes it an unlikely everyday home. "I cannot possibly imagine how they would have roofed over this structure," Pryor said.


Comment: Maybe it didn't have a roof?


The smaller mammoth houses feature more definite cooking hearths, and they contain the remains of reindeer, horse and fox, which suggests the people in them were living on whatever they could find in the area. The new mammoth bone structure lacks evidence of other animal remains. "It's almost exclusively woolly mammoth remains and that is one of the interesting things about it," Pryor said.

"With no other animal bones, this doesn't look much like a dwelling where people lived for a while," Shipman added.




© AJE Pryor
Close up of the structure, featuring long bones, a lower jaw (top middle) and articulated vertebrae (pointed out by excavator)
Intriguingly, the new structure is the first of its kind to yield evidence that its occupants burnt wood inside and not just bone. "It's the first time anyone's found large pieces of charcoal inside one of these structures. So it does show that trees were in the environment," Pryor said.

Tree ring widths in the charcoal are narrow, suggesting the trees probably struggled to survive in that landscape. Previous studies suggested that even on the Ice Age's arid steppes, coniferous trees would have endured in forests stretching along riversides like those close to Kostenki — a draw for people looking to survive.

Still, if people weren't living in the structure, then why did they make fires?

"Fire in the past can be seen as a tool much the same as chipped stone implements and worked bones are," Bosch says. Fires provided heat and light, barbecued and roasted food, dried meat for storage and processed glues for stone-tipped tools. "Here, the fires were lit inside a structure and its use as a light source seems intuitive," she says. "If the authors are correct in their assumption of its use as a place for food storage, it may also have been used to dry meat." There may be ways to test these ideas. Finding drops of fat on the floor, for example, could show that meat was dried over the flames.


Comment: Until they find evidence of tool making or drops of fat, the above is just speculation.


The local diet also appears to have featured a smorgasbord of vegetables. By using water and sieve flotation techniques, the team discovered pieces of plant tissue among the charcoal. "This is the first time we have a plant food component discovered in any of these structures," Pryor says. His team hasn't identified specific species yet but notes that the tissues are like those found in modern roots and tubers such as carrots, potatoes or parsnips.


© A. E. Dudin
The new structure seen from above

The astounding assemblage of bones from more than 60 mammoths raises the question: Where did they all come from? Scientists aren't sure if the animals were hunted, scavenged from sites of mass deaths or some combination of the two.

"There must be something about the topography of the site that makes it a place where, over and over, herds of mammoths are coming through and can be killed or will be killed naturally, like at a river crossing," says Penn State's Pat Shipman. "I can imagine no way [these] people could possibly kill 60 mammoths at a time, because proboscideans (the order of mammals to which both mammoths and living elephants belong) are smart and catch on if members of their herd are being killed, even with modern automatic weapons."

Further studies of the mammoth bones will yield more clues about their source. Some were arranged in the same order and position as they were in the skeleton. "This means that the bones were brought to the site as body part which some soft tissue (skin, muscle, and tendons) still attached," Bosch said. "Therefore, they must have been transported before carnivores had the chance to eat and clean the bones. This implies that the builders had early access to the mammoth remains."

Shipman adds: "I want to know if the bones have been processed or transported or if we are looking at whole skeletons or carcasses piled up for future use. Moving a dead mammoth cannot have been easy even if it was largely de-fleshed."


© A. E. Dudin
Researchers excavating the mammoth site.

However the mammoths got here, their presence was crucial to the humans living in the area. Lioudmila Lakovleva of the French National Centre for Scientific Research notes that "the complete settlement shows several mammoth bone dwellings, walls, enclosure, pits, working areas, hearths, dumping areas and butchering areas," she says.

Kostenki was a focus for human settlement throughout the last ice age, Pryor said: "It's a huge investment in this particular place in the landscape." His team has some theories as to why. "There's evidence that there were natural freshwater springs in the area which would have remained liquid throughout the year," he says. "That warmed water would have drawn animals, including mammoth, and in turn attracted humans to the same spot."

While the site raises many intriguing questions, Pryor said that it already tells us something certain about the people who built it.

"This project is giving us a real insight into how our human ancestors adapted to climate change, to the harshest parts of the last glacial cycle, and adapted to use the materials that they had around them," he said. "It's really a story of survival in the face of adversity."

 

[Laura]

It's starting to look like civilization actually came from Russia.

 

[Mikkael]

Yesterday after reading research paper on Pigment decoration of Paleolithic Antropomorphic figurines in Siberia, I was quite surprised of how many female figurines actually they've found there. The name of the site is Upper Paleolithic Mal'ta, which dates back to more then 40ky BP, with the 'venuses' and other zoomorphic representations which depicts birds and fish; and they all belong to the later culture or so called classical stage, with dates between
19-23 ky BP. Just to recap quickly, in 2013 there was published data of dna testing of the bones of a boy from Mal'ta, dated to around 24 thousand years BP and recalling from book, Who we are and how we got here, David Reich he writes "the Mal'ta genome had its strongest genetic affinity to Europeans and Native Americans, and far less affinity to the Siberians who live in the region today[..] Present-day Europeans and Near Easterners are mixed: they carry within them ancestry from divergent Eurasian lineage that branched from Mal'ta, European hunter-gatherers, and East Asians before those three lineages separated from one another."

I appreciate the depth which comes from reading recommended books like Setegast and Witzel which, it gives me new perspective when looking into past now. When looking at those figurines, imagining the colors they once had, those scarlets, greens, dark-blues, pink and red; and seeing they've been part of our ancestor's daily religious life and mythology. I mean, wow I am starting to see those objects differently, trying to see them through those people, who made them.

This study analyses the results of the microscopic research into the objects of mobile ‘art’ discovered at the Mal’ta site.[...] Mal’ta is a multi-layer archaeological site in Siberia with cultural deposits belonging to the chronological range from 43–41 ka to 12 ka bp (Medvedev et al. 1996). [...]

With dates ranging from 19 to 23ky BP, "the Mal’ta collection numbers over eight hundred and fifty ivory and bone artefacts, including more than 30 anthropomorphous and 25 zoomorphic sculptures and a lot of pendants, objects with ornamental decoration, ivory and stone bracelets, perforated disks, beads, an ivory plaque engraved with the representation of a mammoth, and nail-like pins."

The best known collection of pre-Historic art from Siberia consists of forty anthropomorphous figurines from various Upper Palaeolithic sites, such as Mal’ta (31 objects), Buret’ (5 objects), Listvenka, Krasnyi Yar, Shestakovo and Maiyna (one object from each site), which are traditionally described as female figurines.

Nearly 30% of them have large-sized heads with the head-to-body ratio of nearly 1:4, which led some scholars to believe that the figurines might have represented children or the souls of children. Five figurines clearly represent males[..].

Some scholars noted considerable diversity among the Palaeolithic anthropomorphous figurines from Siberia. Collectively, these objects differ substantially from the supposedly female figurines found in Europe and the European part of Russia[...].

No other period of the Palaeolithic in northeast Asia is comparable to the Ice Age in Siberia in terms of richness of artefacts — superb objects of mobiliary ‘art’ and personal adornments that reflect more than utilitarian use in the life of the humans. The Upper Palaeolithic sites show the evidence of intensive procurement of reindeer, mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, and such sites as Mal’ta and Buret’ show the evidence of specialised reindeer hunting. During the classical stage of the Upper Palaeolithic, we see the evidence for a flourishing culture of ‘reindeer and mammoth hunters’, which is represented by diverse blade lithic industries, rich series of bone and antler implements, personal adornments and objects of mobile ‘art’. Along with lithic industries based on removing blades from prismatic cores, this classic period also witnessed the growth of bone tools and small forms of expressive ‘art’.

The most interesting discovery in the study of Malta’s collection (in the State Historical Museum) was identification of the pigments of scarlet colour (vermillion), as well as green and blue (dark-blue) colours on the surface of some sculptures.

The Mal’ta collection contains a large number of haematite pieces with traces of processing. Haematite was the basis for producing different shades of ochre colour. The discovery of blue and green pigments in the context of the Palaeolithic was unexpected in Siberia. Such a variety of pigments is also known in the cultural complex of earlier objects dated to 60000 years ago, for example in Diepkloof Cave, South Africa (Tixier et al. 2010). In both cases, copper (Сu) would give colour to blue and green pigment, and the Mal’ta collection includes pieces of native copper, which makes it possible to explain the presence of blue and green pigment in the composition of the Mal’ta pigments even more confidently.

 

[Gaby]

A joint Russian-French scientific team have closely examined and compared intriguing rock drawings on the Ukok plateau in Russia’s Altai Republic and Baga-Oygur, and Tsagaan-Salaa in northwestern Mongolia.

The petroglyphs are now in different countries but in fact are only about 20 kilometres part, and ‘shows woolly mammoths and rhinos depicted by our ancestors 15,000 years ago’

Alfresco art gallery ‘shows woolly mammoths and rhinos depicted by our ancestors 15,000 years ago’

Petroglyphs some 7,000 years older than earlier thought with ancients artists using same style in Siberia and Mongolia.

siberiantimes.com

The experts concluded: ‘We attribute the petroglyphs to the Final Upper Palaeolithic because the examples with typical features of this style depict the Pleistocene fauna (mammoths, rhinoceros).

‘These stylistic features find their parallels among the typical examples of the Upper Palaeolithic rock art of Europe.’

 

[Eulenspiegel]

During the lockdown, I've been able to order Witzel's and Guyenot's book and after these two, I am now working through Plato Prehistorian, which I managed to snag for 80€. They are mindblowing reads!
However, I cannot find any shop that sells Settegast's "When Zarathustra Spoke" for any reasonable price and the one University library I found within 200km doesn't loan it. Has anyone managed to scan it? I would really appreciate it!

During my search, I unfortunately discovered that Mary Settegast has passed on last year