Re: [tied] Ancient female figurines (was Medieval Dragons, dog/snak

David:

>But *Yemos isn't the earth. His skull becomes the sky, his brain the
>clouds, his eyes the sun and moon. He is rather the cosmos.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is waaay too Norse-sounding to me. Of course,
you're talking about Ymir. Aside from Norse mythology, how might you
justify this view?

>Personal theory: as PIE society developed into a a complex one,

Problem number one: Define "complex". This sentence irks the budding
ethnologist in me.

>[...] and as it developed from an ergative language into one with three
>genders, triplicity became at least as important as duality.

I severely doubt that morphology has anything to do with mythology but
you can believe whatever you wish.

>This gave rise to the Dumezilian functions. *Dyeus Pater got bumped to
>the first function, and *Perkwunos took the second.

No, I don't think so. I think *Dye:us, the clear sky, and *PerkWnos,
the storm, both were sky deities. They are borrowed from the Near
East where we have El and Baal, for example. However, *PerkWnos-Baal,
being storm, was related to rain (or rather "water from the sky") and as
such was probably originally a water god. In other words, they stem
from the original dual opposition between skies above and waters below
(bird and serpent), only later reduplicating the water deity in a sky
position. Added duplicity ensued, thus *Nepo:ts.

>This helps explain how such deities as Thor, Indra, and Mars all have
>agricultural sides to them; it is left over from when they were simply
>storm deities, that is, rain deities.

Yes, so we both see a storm-rain link. Good. The agricultural connection
involves rain.


- gLeN



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