Here's a great revelation I had while sipping some powerful coffee at my
favourite cafe. I've already mentioned that I feel that IE mythology derives
from three mythologies blended together: Old European, Semitish and Steppe.
Now, the only problem I was having was trying to seperate, within this
irish stew of IE mythos, all the elements of the three core mythologies away
from each other. I think I started to come around to a solution once I
imposed a strategy of "cosmological structure" on each of these three core
myths.
Every mythology/theology has a structure in some sense otherwise it would be
hard to remember and people wouldn't follow these religions (duh!).
IE myth appears to have had a "tripartitive" nature, seperating the cosmos
into three parts: Underworld, Middleworld and Overworld. This is the very
basis of IE myth and a perfect example of a mythological structure. So now
that my explanation is done, let me list off the structures of the three
mythologies and then explain how they eventually would merge together...
Semitoid myth
-------------
Let's suppose that Semitoid myth, that is, the myth of the Semitish and
Semitic peoples stemming from a date of around 8000 BCE, was based on two
contrastive equations based on an "Overworld" and "Underworld" as follows:
Realm Function Element Colour
--------------------------------------------
Overworld = Order = Air = White
Underworld = Chaos = Fire = Red
The Underworld represented Chaos (not necessarily Evil!) and the Overworld
represented Order (not necessarily Good!). One important reason why we can't
view this simple contrast as Good vs Evil (as in later biblical mythology)
is because the dead were thought to have lived in the Underworld (aka
Sheol). Red is the colour of fire and blood and therefore associated with
the chaotic Underworld; white or any bright colour is associated with the
brightness of the ordered Overworld whether during day or night.
I haven't completely let go of my view that Semitoid mythology derived from
an ancestor-worship mythology. In fact, it makes sense that if around 8000
BCE when the Palestine-based Semitoid language fractured into Semitic
(Palestine) & Semitish (Cilicia/W Anatolia), and as the Semitoid-speaking
peoples were gaining agricultural knowledge from the Caucasic-speaking east,
any previous ancestral worship which focused primarily on the Underworld,
the realm of the dead, would be completely overshadowed by the new
importance of the heavens in relation to agriculture. Thus, the sky would
certainly represent a very regular Order where stars had fixed positions and
could be predicted, in contrast to the chaotic Underworld where your dead
ancestors could cause harm to you if you didn't properly take care of them
in their afterlife. The heavens in other words became more influential on
the lives of budding agriculturalists than the underworld could ever be.
In fact, the notion of seven planetary objects may have started here, along
with the association of the red planet Mars with the firey Underworld of
Chaos. Thus would start a seed for a new IE association of social functions
like "warrior" with gods such as these. The planet Jupiter could have
already been associated with a storm god (aka. Ea/Enlil/Anu?). And surely
the planet Venus was *`ATtaru, originally a male god perhaps, which would
eventually become IE's *Xste:r.
The Semitoid mythology may even have brought the idea of Apocalypse by fire
(Underworld!!!) and the whole story has a connection with agriculture as
well, which coincidentally the Semitish surely would have known about based
also on the Mars=fire=underworld association that cannot be European nor
Steppe in origin.
European myth
-------------
As I've mentioned before, the European myth was dominated by a great Goddess
figure who lived in everyone and everything. In a way she might be viewed as
the Cosmos itself. The associations of the Old European myth as described in
part by Gimbutas were as follows:
Realm Function Colour Symbol
-------------------------------------------------------------
Overworld (air) = Creation = Red (blood) = Bird
Middleworld (earth) = Preservation = Black (earth) = Animal
Underworld (water) = Destruction = White (bone) = Serpent
This would be the immediate source of the tripartition seen in later IE myth
but not of the colour associations whose differences to IE colour symbolism
have already been remarked upon by Gimbutas. The European mythology
contributed the story of the Bird Creatrix and central World Tree (later a
great mountain, nail, post, etc).
Steppe myth
-----------
Now for the dessert, I'm starting to realise that there is a simple bipolar
contrast between the Heavens and the Earth in Steppe mythology as follows.
Realm Colour
-----------------------------------------------
Heavens = Light (white, yellow, cyan, etc)
Earth = Darkness (green, blue, etc)
Note, there is no underworld, nor again, a concept of Good vs Evil.
According to these sets of myths, there was no great Creation or Apocalypse
either. The earth was thought to have always existed and would always exist
in the future. Humans were born from the sun and the moon and
*T:eien/T:eieu, the Heaven God, "The Bright One", had little interest in
what went on down below. The mythology was certainly polytheistic and it may
have contributed the notion of a female sun and male moon who represented
rival siblings. I can't agree, therefore, with John that the Steppe
mythology was "sexless" even though its language probably was.
The Mythological Mix
--------------------
The first epicenter of a new mythology would have lied in West Anatolia
between the Northern Semitoids and Old Europeans at around 7500 BCE or so.
Overall the Semitoid agricultural-based mythology would win over but they
would eventually adopt the tripartitive cosmos concept and the story of
Creation. The myth spread from its epicenter, easily throughout the
MiddleEast and Egypt, even the Semitic peoples were touched. An important
thing to note is the change of a firey underworld to a watery one. This
created some paradoxes that still linger like
Fire-Born being a _watery_ Underworld deity and the fact that the entire
Underworld is associated with war (aka Chaos) and the colour red, which
isn't the colour of normal tap water, need I remind.
The second epicenter of mythological exchange lied in the Balkans and NW
Pontic, starting at around 6000-5500 BCE after the IEs arrived to the area
off the steppes. Most of this new hodgepodge SemitoEuropoid mythology would
be adopted but new concepts such as a female sun would be infused into the
new religion as well as the association of *T:eieu with the Overworld god of
the SemitoEuropoid myth. Either the associations of social caste to the
structure started at this time, or were already worked out, at least in part
by the European-influenced Semitish a millenium before.
I hope I mentioned everything... Comments? Death threats? I'm here waiting
:)
- gLeN
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