Janeen:
>Looks we're both confusing each other. :) Let's see if we can clear >this
>up. What I find incredible in the first statement is the idea >that the
>Sumerians never invented *anything* at all. However, that >does *not*
>automatically imply that I think they invented >*everything.* John is the
>one who listed an impressive set of >accomplishments for the Sumerians, not
>I.
Whoa. We need more clarification. When I said that the Sumerians are "not
the inventors of anything", I didn't mean ANYTHING. I was trying to downplay
the usual things that most people often would give Sumerians credit for like
agriculture, writing, etc. It is _these_ things that Sumerians did not
invent. I also don't think that Sumerian mythology should be considered a
Sumerian invention either, although this sometimes borders on pin-and-angel
discussions.
Of course, I agree that the Sumerians had their share of inventions but we
can't give credit where credit is not due and my understanding is that
Sumerian civilisation on a whole is just a by-product of a larger
life-style, economic and mythological change centered in the MiddleEast,
starting 9000 BCE with the invention of agriculture and running all the way
up to about 5000 BCE when a kind of "mega-cultural complex" had formed
stretching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf... the kind of
mega-cultural complex that would mould the IndoEuropean language, society
and mythos into the form that we now are reconstructing as well as the one
that would flow down into Mesopotamia from the north.
Janeen:
>Glen asked: "Why Sumer and not some place else?" and he went on to >give
>some humorous and interesting comparisons between Vancouver and >Winnipeg.
Hey, you should be so lucky! :) It wouldn't be so humourous for you if YOU
had to live in Winnipeg! The sheer pain I feel just opening the curtains
some days, oy veh. Sufficed to say, this city makes me feel tr�s verklempt,
pardon my French.
>People move to Los Angeles and Paris for no other reason than the >music
>and art they can find there. I'm sure people went to Sumer >because they
>heard it was a happening kind of place to be.
As funny as it sounds, I don't see why not.
>When Glen says that we cannot make a "convincing argument that the
> >Sumerians indeed affected the IEs or vice-versa," again, I'd like to
> >put in a request for some kind of timeline. Once the Proto-IEs >split,
>do we stop calling them IEs at all? Do we start referring to >them as
>Anatolians, Aryans, Celtic-Italians and what not? Obviously, >the Sumerian
>culture did influence the descendants of the IE.
Yes, the IE descendants, that is, those speaking divergeant dialects of IE
_after_ 4000 BCE, were indeed affected by Sumerian culture like the Greeks
and Hittites. That is undeniable. However, _before_ this magic date, we can
barely talk of a Sumerian civilisation let alone influence from this
civilisation.
At this date of 4000 BCE where the reconstructed protoIE level most likely
resides, there is no evidence of any Sumerian affectation on the IE
vocabulary. Some had put forth long ago the idea that Sumerian /girgir/ was
related to IE *kWekWlos, both meaning "wheel" but this is the extent of any
SumeroIndoEuropean connections and even here, both languages offer
completely satisfying native etymologies for their wheel word (IE *kWel- "to
turn" and Sumerian /gir/ "foot"). In the end, there is more persuasive
evidence of Semitoid influence.
>I said that once the cities in Sumer started (whenever we date that), >the
>Sumerians would have had more influence than the other tribes.
... And this appears to be much later than ProtoIE itself.
>While the Vinca-writing connection in 4700 BCE is interesting, it >does not
>negate the premise that a culture which develops and >maintains cities has
>more influence than tribes who do not.
It does negate things when there is no influential Sumerian culture existant
at the timeframe you speak of. Even by 3000 BCE, it's hard to conceive how
Sumerian civilisation could have affected all of the spreading IE-speaking
populations and wipe out any trace of an earlier mythos so quickly and
efficently.
Even so, if I'm not mistaken, archaelogy would suggest that it was more the
European mythos spreading into the Middle-East, against the tide of the
neolithic. John, of course, doesn't like to fathom varying directions of
cultural characteristics and would prefer to see demic, mythological and
cultural movements all moving in solidarity towards a united goal. In this
case however, I do not see the Goddess figurines travelling out of Anatolia
INTO Europe and therefore, neither I don't think we should expect matrifocal
religious views to have done so.
Sumerian deities Inanna and Ereshkigal, who are sisters BTW, are nothing
more than the maiden girl of creation and the old crone of destruction,
often associated respectively with the bird and serpent. These two animals
are seen together elsewhere in Sumerian lore. These animal representations,
or for that matter any Goddess paraphrenalia, are seen abundantly in
pre-neolithic Europe. Middle-Eastern Goddess nicknacks always seem to pop up
later than the European ones, nej?
It makes all the more sense that these Goddess deities were firmly centred
in Europe when we consider the adoption of new female deities in Greek
Mythology (Athena, Artemis, Diana, etc) weaved into the original IE mythos
where male gods are supposed to have played a more prominent role. The
dominance of female deities in this area is fully seen in Crete long before
the Greeks existed. So, all in all, it appears that Sumerian myth is a
European invention. :)
Your Sumerian influence on IE peoples is a late event which can't be spoken
of as involving IndoEuropean proper. It would appear to me that before the
Sumerian civilisation, before 3000 BCE, the Balkans and West Anatolia had
been busting out all over with economic activity from 7000 BCE onward (6000
BCE being the real prosperous time). Crete was in the middle of all this.
Credit for the invention of writing, the gift of agriculture to Europe and
the dispersal of a common mythological prototype throughout the MiddleEast
might best be awarded to the peoples who lived in West Anatolia and the
Balkans at this time.
>Inventions need to be used on a regular basis to have much impact. >(With
>the exception of atomic bombs.)
May Goddess have mercy. I don't want to be a TV dinner!
>I don't know how long it would take that influence to spread. I >don't
>know in what areas that influence would be in. Irrigation? >Trade?
>Fighting techniques? Weaving patterns in cloth and baskets? >Myths?
I don't know either. I haven't heard of anything popping up in the
archaeology. It's the Balkans and South Caspian that appear to have any sort
of influence on the areas north of the Black Sea prior to 4000 BCE and even
if we base the IE homeland further west towards Europe as Piotr does, there
is still a lot of people between the IE and Sumerians, so no direct ties can
be confidently claimed.
>Ah, the importance of timelines! It seems that the Sumerians did not
>inundate the ProtoIE with their stories. So, did the Sumerian >influence
>come in succeeding waves, rippling out again and again over >the millennia
>from Sumer, from Greece to Rome to north-west Europe, >then again from
>India to Arabia to Italy and to north-west Europe >again, slowly eroding
>any native IE myths?
Basically that sums up my view, however I wouldn't say that all traces of IE
myth have been wiped out and, confusingly, some of the myths are _shared_
between Sumerian and ProtoIE mythology.
Concerning piecing together IE myth despite MiddleEastern influence:
>I'm not so sure at this point. Like salt in soup, just a dash can >affect
>the entire pot. Pity.
And earlier Janeen sighs about the IEs:
>All their myths which we know about--star and otherwise--seem to show
>Sumerian influence.
Not at all. Perhaps if we talk about the aspects of IE mythos that can never
be viewed as MiddleEastern in origin, you might feel a sigh of relief.
First off, what about "Horse Twins"? I know of no other surrounding mythos
aside from IE that associates a pair of brothers with horses. I don't know
what the prevaling view is but I feel that the horse-twin association is due
to the fact the mother of these twins was the Sun Maiden, herself symbolized
as a galloping mare (later a charioteer after the invention of chariots).
Now it's true that the Sun Maiden might be viewed as a rehashing of the
European Goddess. Afterall, the Goddess appears to be often associated with
animals of many kinds. However, it's very clear that the horse is an animal
originating from northern areas far, far away from Sumer. So the Sun Maiden
Mare and her "Asvins" while potentially European in flavour are something
firmly non-MiddleEastern. Prehistoric Sumerian lore (or Semitic myth for
that matter) didn't have mares or sun goddesses. The Sumerian sun deity was
named Utu, a _male_ entity. The Semitic Shamash is male too.
The Kurgan horse figurines indicate the existence of the Horse Twins and the
sun maiden pops up in later IE myths (German /Frau Sonne/, Lithuanian
/Saule/).
The following sites mention the Sun Maiden and the Horse Twins:
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/printable/8/0,5722,119368,00.html
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~chilton/Kurgans.htm
http://www.crosswinds.net/~wolfbane/seasons.html
Essentially, my view is that a hybrid mythology coagulated between the
Balkans and West Anatolia by about 6000 BCE, a blend of European and
Semitoid views. The deities of this new mythology were given Semitoid names.
The main characteristic of this proto-myth is the "marriage" of the Goddess
to a pair of male Semitoid deities that would later be known as El and Baal.
I presume that the original names were *Alu- and *Ba`lu-. The Creatrix was
married to the storm god *Ba`lu- while the Destructrix took on the clear sky
*Alu-. In other words, the pairing of opposite forces by marriage.
The Sumerians and Semitic peoples in the MiddleEast therefore were entirely
influenced early on by these mixed religious views. The Early IE however
took some ideas from this EuroAnatolian proto-myth and blended it with their
pre-existant Steppe religion to produce their own characteristic mythos.
*Dye:us had already existed as the old Central Asian sky god and so his name
would be used for the function of *Alu-. *PerkWnos was the name given to the
storm god *Ba`lu- and whether IE *pexwr "fire" has anything to do with
*Ba`lu- is left for you to decide. *Xste:r, the Creatrix, was adopted by the
IEs from the Semitoid name *`ATtaritu and the IEs certainly had no goddess
like her before. *Gwo:us Xanos, the cow crone, is derived from the symbolic
female counterpart of the bull representation of her husband *Dye:us
(*Alu-).
The bull-sky equation itself was taken from a long pre-existing Creatrix
symbolism seen from Catal Huyuk to Crete. The full length goddess with arms
raised seemingly in praise was a Creatrix symbol, later abstractified into a
new icon: the double-axe and bull head. This new symbol has an uncanny
resemblance to the woman with outstretched arms from waist up. It's no
wonder then that the European "axe and bull" symbol was taken by the IEs as
a creation symbol of the rivalry of *Manus and *Yemos, in reference to the
creation of humankind, or the rivalry of *Dye:us and *PerkWnos in reference
to the creation of the cosmos. With the latter symbolism, *Dye:us is the
bull (priest) and *PerkWnos is the double-axe (warrior). With the former,
*Yemos is the bull (slaughtered) and *Manus is the double-axe (slaughterer).
So you see, IE myth CAN be untangled. It just requires a little imaginative
thought and some psychological problems.
- gLeN
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