#greek prehistory

[nymph-of-water]

Apparently, now we question the existence of Homer.

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Poll: Winner Match Up 15

These Questions are the winners from the previous iteration.

Please add new suggestions below, if you have them, for future consideration.

[scentofpines]

in class today i felt so incredibly out of place again, why does it have to be so hard for me? and, i like this girl, but every single time we have class she mentions her "autism" while happily chatting with 3+ ppl at a time, completely effortless, while im sitting there, staring and trying to focus enough to even understand the conversation bc there is so much noise around me that i feel like i'm about to either explode or shut down completely and i feel like an alien trying my best to somehow socialize and understand what is going on and really to just get through this.

[a-modernmajorgeneral]

Cave art had a profound effect on its 20th-century viewers, including the young discoverers of Lascaux, at least one of whom camped at the hole leading to the cave over the winter of 1940-41 to protect it from vandals, and perhaps Germans. More illustrious visitors had similar reactions. In 1928, the artist and critic Amédée Ozenfant wrote of the art in the Les Eyzies caves, “Ah, those hands! Those silhouettes of hands, spread out and stencilled on an ochre ground! Go and see them. I promise you the most intense emotion you have ever experienced.” He credited the Paleolithic artists with inspiring modern art, and to a certain degree, they did. Jackson Pollock honoured them by leaving handprints along the top edge of at least two of his paintings. Pablo Picasso reportedly visited the famous Altamira cave before fleeing Spain in 1934, and emerged saying: “Beyond Altamira, all is decadence.”

Of course, cave art also inspired the question raised by all truly arresting art: “What does it mean?” Who was its intended audience, and what were they supposed to derive from it? The boy discoverers of Lascaux took their questions to one of their schoolmasters, who roped in Henri Breuil, a priest familiar enough with all things prehistoric to be known as “the pope of prehistory”. Unsurprisingly, he offered a “magico-religious” interpretation, with the prefix “magico” serving as a slur to distinguish Paleolithic beliefs, whatever they may have been, from the reigning monotheism of the modern world. More practically, he proposed that the painted animals were meant to magically attract the actual animals they represented, the better for humans to hunt and eat them.

Unfortunately for this theory, it turns out that the animals on cave walls were not the kinds that the artists usually dined on. The creators of the Lascaux art, for example, ate reindeer, not the much more formidable herbivores pictured in the cave, which would have been difficult for humans armed with flint-tipped spears to bring down without being trampled. Today, many scholars answer the question of meaning with what amounts to a shrug: “We may never know.”

If sheer curiosity, of the kind that drove the Lascaux discoverers, isn’t enough to motivate a search for better answers, there is a moral parable reaching out to us from the cave at Lascaux. Shortly after its discovery, the one Jewish boy in the group was apprehended and sent, along with his parents, to a detention centre that served as a stop on the way to Buchenwald. Miraculously, he was rescued by the French Red Cross, emerging from captivity as perhaps the only person on earth who had witnessed both the hellscape of 20-century fascism and the artistic remnants of the Paleolithic age. As we know from the archeological record, the latter was a time of relative peace among humans. No doubt there were homicides and tensions between and within human bands, but it would be at least another 10,000 years before the invention of war as an organised collective activity. The cave art suggests that humans once had better ways to spend their time.

If they were humans; and the worldwide gallery of known cave art offers so few stick figures or bipeds of any kind that we cannot be entirely sure. If the Paleolithic cave painters could create such perfectly naturalistic animals, why not give us a glimpse of the painters themselves? Almost as strange as the absence of human images in caves is the low level of scientific interest in their absence. In his book What Is Paleolithic Art?, the world-class paleoarcheologist Jean Clottes devotes only a couple of pages to the issue, concluding that: “The essential role played by animals evidently explains the small number of representations of human beings. In the Paleolithic world, humans were not at the centre of the stage.” A paper published, oddly enough, by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, expresses puzzlement over the omission of naturalistic depictions of humans, attributing it to Paleolithic people’s “inexplicable fascination with wildlife” (not that there were any non-wild animals around at the time).

The marginality of human figures in cave paintings suggests that, at least from a human point of view, the central drama of the Paleolithic went on between the various megafauna – carnivores and large herbivores. So depleted of megafauna is our own world that it is hard to imagine how thick on the ground large mammals once were. Even the herbivores could be dangerous for humans, if mythology offers any clues: think of the buffalo demon killed by the Hindu goddess Durga, or of the Cretan half-man, half-bull Minotaur, who could only be subdued by confining him to a labyrinth, which was, incidentally, a kind of cave. Just as potentially edible herbivores such as aurochs (giant, now-extinct cattle) could be dangerous, death-dealing carnivores could be inadvertently helpful to humans and their human-like kin, for example, by leaving their half-devoured prey behind for humans to finish off. The Paleolithic landscape offered a lot of large animals to watch, and plenty of reasons to keep a close eye on them. Some could be eaten – after, for example, being corralled into a trap by a band of humans; many others would readily eat humans.

Yet despite the tricky and life-threatening relationship between Paleolithic humans and the megafauna that comprised so much of their environment, 20th-century scholars tended to claim cave art as evidence of an unalloyed triumph for our species. It was a “great spiritual symbol”, one famed art historian, himself an escapee from Nazism, proclaimed, of a time when “man had just emerged from a purely zoological existence, when instead of being dominated by animals, he began to dominate them”. But the stick figures found in caves such as Lascaux and Chauvet do not radiate triumph. By the standards of our own time, they are excessively self-effacing and, compared to the animals portrayed around them, pathetically weak. If these faceless creatures were actually grinning in triumph, we would, of course, have no way of knowing it.

[indo-europeans]

from perkunos to indra & zeus

Anatolian languages:

tarhuan, tarhunna, tarhunnaradu - hittite (linked w bull in anatolia)

tarhu, tarhunz, tarhunta, tarhuwant - luwian

tarhuwanta - palaic

trqqas - lycian

taru - hattian

teshub - hurrian

turvant - sanskrit cognate for indra?

aleppo - 

hadad - mesopotamia?

iskur - sumeria?

zeus - greek

indra - vedic

trokondas - rome

jupiter dolichenus  - armenian/roman

- associated with sky, weather, lightning, thunder, battlefield, commander, mountains, helpful, slaying enemies with an axe, vanquishing, decided whether would be drought and famine or fertile fields and good harvests, thunderbolt becomes axe

religious treatment

- "Weather god of the thunderbolt, glow on me like the moonlight, shine over me like the son god of heaven!" - KUB 6.45 iii 68-70, Hittite king Muwatalli II’s personal god who he referred to as “my lord, king of heaven” (associated with Anatolia’s bulls instead of horses)

- Hittite king Warpalawas II made rock relief and animals were sacrificed to him 

- Luwian magic rituals intended to bring rain or heal the sick

- chief god of the luwians, whose chariot was pulled by horses. later depicted standing on a bull.

- cows + sheep were sacrificed to him for grain + wine to grow 

- in curses, he was called upon to “smash enemies with his axe” and gave the king royal power, courage and marched him in battle - in late Luwian texts

- Pegasus, Greek winged horse which carries Zeus’ thunderbolt name comes from one of his epithets piḫaššašši meaning “of the thunderblot”

cult sites

- Aleppo, Syria, major city of the weather god - conquered by Hittite king Suppiluluima I who installed his son Telipinu as priest-king. Temple for weather god was modified to conform to Hittite cult

snake/dragon slayer myth near Mount Kasios in Syria & Corycus in Turkey

- Illuyanka in Hittite

- Hedammu in Hurrian

- Typhon in Greek (taken from Cilicia)

- Naga in Sanskrit

[gemsofgreece]

It’s true that Palaeolithic and other era finds in Greece usually stay in the shadow of Classical Age.

New Paleolithic finds in Greece!

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some Magic-Related Vocabulary

for your next poem/story

Amulet: An object worn, carried or placed to guard against negativity or other vibrations. A protective object.

Astral Projection: The practice of separating the consciousness from the physical body so that the former may move about unhindered by time, space or gravity.

Bane: A poison; that which destroys life. "Henbane" is poisonous to hens.

Banish: To drive away evil, negativity or spirits.

Beltane: An ancient folk-festival day observed by Witches that celebrates the fully blossomed spring. April 30 or May 1.

Censer: A vessel of metal or earthenware in which incense is burned. An incense burner.

Chaplet: A garland or wreath of flowers or leaves worn on the head, as in the chaplets given to classical Greek heroes as symbols of honor.

Clairvoyance: Literally "clear seeing." The ability to perceive facts, events and other data by other than the five "normal" senses, unaided by tools.

Curse: A concentration of negative and destructive energy, deliberately formed and directed toward a person, place or thing.

Divination: The art of finding things out through means other than the five senses, using tools such as tarot cards, crystal balls, and so on.

Enchant: "Sing to." Magically speaking, a procedure whereby herbs are aligned with your magical need prior to their use.

Evil Eye, The: Supposed glance capable of causing great harm or fear, once almost universally feared.

Fascination: The art of placing other people under one's power through sounds, gazes, colors, etc.

Hex: An evil spell; a curse.

Incubus: A male demon or spirit which was believed to sexually tempt and abuse women; the succubus was the corresponding female demon.

Infusion: An herbal tea.

Lughnasadh: An old harvest festival celebrated on August 1st or 2nd in Europe, reverencing the abundant (harvested) fruits of the Earth. It is still observed by Wicca.

Magic: The practice of causing needed change through the use of powers as yet undefined and unaccepted by science.

Magic Circle: A ritually-created circle (or sphere) that offers protection to the magician during magical rites.

Magician: A person of either sex who practices magic.

Magus: A magician.

Midsummer: The Summer Solstice, usually on or near June 21st, one of the Wiccan festival days and an excellent time to practice magic.

Pendulum: A tool of divination which consists of a heavy object suspended from a string or cord. The end of the cord is held between the thumb and forefinger; questions are asked and their answers divided by the movements of the pendulum.

Pentagram: A five-pointed star which has been used in magic for centuries. Highly symbolic, it is also a protective device.

Poppet: A small doll made of various substances to influence a person's fife. In herb magic, either a carved root or a cloth image stuffed with herbs. The use of poppets is known as "image magic."

Power Hand, The: The hand you write with; the dominant hand. This is a magically potent hand.

Samhain: An ancient festival day marking the beginning of winter. Also known as "Halloween" and All Hallows Eve. It is observed by Wicca with religious ceremonies.

Scry: To gaze into a pool of ink, fire, crystal ball, etc. to awaken and summon psychic powers.

Spell: A magical rite.

Talisman: An object worn or carried to attract a specific influence, such as love, luck, money, health; as opposed to an amulet which keeps forces from its bearer.

Wicca: A contemporary religion with spiritual roots in prehistory that worships the life-force of the universe as personified as a God and Goddess. It is sometimes erroneously referred to as "witchcraft."

Witch Bottle: A bottle or jar containing herbs, pins, shards of glass and other objects, designed to protect a person or area from evil and curses. Usually buried or placed in a window.

Witchcraft: The practice of natural magic, as that of herbs, stones, and candles. Spell-casting. Still used by some to refer to the religion of Wicca.

Wort: An old word meaning "herb." Mugwort preserves the term.

Excerpt from Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs More: Word Lists ⚜ Esoteric Vocabulary ⚜ On Magic

[max1461]

How is the statement that "English is kind of a Frankenstein language, it's a mix between German, French, and Latin!" wrong? I get it’s phrased in a misguided way: English and German supposedly both came from Proto-Germanic rather than German being in the “mix ”, the French influence being more lexical items and orthographic conventions than grammatical patterns etc. Is it that the statement ignores the way other languages have been influenced by surrounding languages?

sorry if this comes off as rude, I don’t know much about language

It's not just phrased in a misguided way, it's totally incorrect! You're right that the real truth is that English and German share a common ancestor, Proto-Germanic. This is very different than English being a "mix of German and [anything]". Indeed, there are many languages descended from Proto-Germanic, including Swedish and Icelandic and Dutch. Descent from Proto-Germanic is what defines the Germanic language family. You could just as well say "English is a mix of Swedish and [whatever]", but that would also be false.

Beyond that, all (or most) languages probably share a common ancestor somewhere deep in prehistory, it's just that we can't confidently trace things that far. English probably shares a common ancestor with Chinese at some time depth; this does not make English a "mix of Chinese and [whatever]".

The other reason this is inaccurate it that, yes, it's true that English has borrowed a lot of words from French, and a lesser but still substantial number from Greek and Latin. But calling English a "Frankenstein language" obscures the fact that significant areal influence (influence from other languages) like this is a part of most languages' histories, it's perfectly ordinary. There's nothing to be remarked upon regarding English specifically.

[barbucomedie]

Altar to Astarte from Corbridge, England dated to the 3rd Century CE on display at the Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle, England

This altar was set up by a man called Pulcher who had his inscription writted in Greek. It is dedicate to an ancient Near Eastern goddess called Astarte, who has been worshipped since prehistory. A patera, or pan, is depicted on one side of the altar and a jog on the other. Both these items would have been used during religious ceremonies.

Photographs taken by myself 2023

[olympianbutch]

Did ancient Greeks ever consider a particular deity their parent? I wouldn't even know how to start research this. And I mean like a regular person not Kings or Heros.

There is no evidence that I know of to suggest that common individuals in ancient Greece believed a particular god was their literal parent!

Because it's ancient Greece and mythology doubled as history, there was (presumably) an underlying sentiment held by all people that they were in some way descendants of the gods through ancestral heroes and kings (e.g., the Athenians descending from Athena through Erekhtheus even though that's not her biological son).

Alexander III of Macedonia, as I'm sure you know, was proclaimed the son of Zeus,¹ but whether he genuinely believed that he was boils down to mere speculation. Regardless, being named the son of Zeus was an obvious power play, not at all different from when the tyrant Pisistratus (💋💋💋😩) was carted into Athens on a chariot manned by the one and only 'Athena'.²

IMHO, believing or saying that you're the literal child of some god is only something a royal could get away with in ancient Greece.

¹ A. B. Bosworth, "Alexander and Ammon," Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean in Ancient History and Prehistory. Studies Presented to Fritz Schachermeyer on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday, edited by K. H. Kinzl, (Walter de Gruyter; Berlin, New York, 1977), pp. 51 - 75

² Hdt. 1.60

[talonabraxas]

The Green Man by Talon Abraxas

Symbol of life and nature:

The most common and perhaps obvious interpretation of the Green Man is that of a pagan nature spirit, a symbol of man’s reliance on and union with nature, a symbol of the underlying life-force, and of the renewed cycle of growth each spring. In this respect, it seems likely that he has evolved from older nature deities such as the Celtic Cernunnos and the Greek Pan and Dionysus.

Some have gone so far as to make the argument that the Green Man represents a male counterpart - or son or lover or guardian - to Gaia (or the Earth Mother, or Great Goddess), a figure which has appeared throughout history in almost all cultures. In the 16th Century Cathedral at St-Bertrand de Comminges in southern France, there is even an example of a representation of a winged Earth Mother apparently giving birth to a smiling Green Man.

Because by far the most common occurrences of the Green Man are stone and wood carvings in churches, chapels, abbeys and cathedrals in Europe (particularly in Britain and France), some have seen this as evidence of the vitality of pre-Christian traditions surviving alongside, and even within, the dominant Christian mainstream. Much has been made of the boldness with which the Green Man was exhibited in early Christian churches, often appearing over main doorways, and surprisingly often in close proximity to representations of the Christ figure.

Incorporating a Green Man into the design of a medieval church or cathedral may therefore be seen as a kind of small act of faith on the part of the carver that life and fresh crops will return to the soil each spring and that the harvest will be plentiful. Pre-Christian pagan traditions and superstitions, particularly those related to nature and trees, were still a significant influence in early medieval times, as exemplified by the planting of yew trees (a prominent pagan symbol) in churchyards, and the maintenance of ancient “sacred groves” of trees.

Tree worship goes back into the prehistory of many of the cultures that directly influenced the people of Western Europe, not least the Greco-Roman and the Celtic, which is no great surprise when one considers that much of the continent of Europe was covered with vast forests in antiquity. It is perhaps also understandable that there are concentrations of Green Men in the churches of regions where there were large stretches of relict forests in ancient times, such as in Devon and Somerset, Yorkshire and the Midlands in England. The human-like attributes of trees (trunk-body, branches-arms, twigs-fingers, sap-blood), as well as their strength, beauty and longevity, make them an obvious subject for ancient worship. The Green Man can be seen as a continuing symbol of such beliefs, in much the same way as the later May Day pageants of the Early Modern period, many of which were led by the related figure of Jack-in-the-Green.

Symbol of fertility:

Although the Green Man is most often associated with spring, May Day, etc, there are also several examples which exhibit a more autumnal cast to the figure. For example, some Green Men prominently incorporate pairs of acorns into their designs (there is a good example in King's College Chapel, Cambridge), a motif which clearly has no springtime associations. In the same way, hawthorn leaves frequently appear on English Green Men (such as the famous one at Sutton Benger), and they are often accompanied by autumn berries rather than spring flowers. The Green Man in the Chapelle de Bauffremont in Dijon (one of the few to retain its original paint coloration) shows quite clearly its leaves in their autumn colours.

This may have been simple artistic license. However, acorns, partly due to their shape, were also a common medieval fertility symbol, and hawthorn is another tree which was explicitly associated with sexuality, all of which perhaps suggests a stronger link with fertility, as well as with harvest-time.

Symbol of death and rebirth:

The disgorging Green Man, sprouting vegetation from his orifices, may also be seen as a memento mori, or a reminder of the death that await all men, as well as a Pagan representation of resurrection and rebirth, as new life naturally springs out of our human remains. The Greek and Roman god Dionysus/Bacchus, often suggested as an early precursor of the Green Man, was also associated with death and rebirth in his parallel guise as Okeanus.

Several of the ancient Celtic demigods, Bran the Blessed being one of the best known, become prophetic oracles once their heads had been cut off (another variant on the theme of death and resurrection) and, although these figures were not traditionally represented as decorated with leaves, there may be a link between them and the later stand-alone Green Man heads.

There are several examples of self-consciously skull-like Green Men, with vegetation sprouting from eye-sockets, although these are more likely to be found on tombstones than as decoration in churches (good examples can be seen at Shebbear and Black Torrington in Devon, England). Such images might be interpreted as either representing rebirth and resurrection (in that the new life is growing out of death), or they might represent death and corruption (with the leaves growing parasitically through the decaying body).

The Green Man as archetype:

The very fact that images of the Green Man have appeared historically in such disparate and apparently unconnected locations have led some commentators, notably Roweena Pattee Kryder and William Anderson, to suggest that the figure is part of our collective unconscious, and represents a primeval archetype (in Jungian parlance) which is central to our relationship with Nature.

Phyllis Araneo has suggested that the appearance of the Green Man in European and worldwide art is a cyclical phenomenon triggered by times of crisis or significant change. For example, she suggests the proliferation of Green Man imagery after the 11th Century can perhaps be associated with feelings of relief and celebration after the widely predicted apocalypse of the millennium failed to materialize.

In the same way, the modern resurgence may have been triggered by the environmental crisis we are currently living through. In its modern revival, in the wake of James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis and the birth of the modern Green movement, the Green Man can be seen as the archetype of the “conservator”, whose brief is to counsel us to take from the environment only what we need to survive and to conserve the rest, and to remind us of our responsibilities for the stewardship of the natural world. A quote from Mike Harding succinctly summarizes this position: “If anything on this poisoned planet gives us hope of renewal it is this simple foliate head that has been there in one form or another since the beginning.”

-The Enigma of the Green Man - Theories and Interpretations

[whencyclopedia]

Ancient Greek Comedy

Ancient Greek Comedy was a popular and influential form of theatre performed across ancient Greece from the 6th century BCE. The most famous playwrights of the genre were Aristophanes and Menander and their works and those of their contemporaries poked fun at politicians, philosophers, and fellow artists. In addition to maintaining their comic touch, the plays also give an indirect but invaluable insight into Greek society in general and provide details on the workings of Greek government, political institutions, legal systems, religious practices, education, and warfare in the Hellenic world. Uniquely, the plays also reveal to us something of the identity of the audience and show just what tickled the Greeks' sense of humour. Finally, Greek comedy and its immediate predecessor Greek tragedy would together form the foundation upon which all modern theatre is based.

The Origins of Comedy Plays

The precise origins of Greek comedy plays are lost in the mists of prehistory, but the activity of men dressing as and mimicking others must surely go back a long way before written records. The first indications of such activity in the Greek world come from pottery where decoration in the 6th century BCE frequently represented actors dressed as horses, satyrs, and dancers in exaggerated costumes. Another early source of comedy is the poems of Archilochus (7th century BCE) and Hipponax (6th century BCE) which contain crude and explicit sexual humour. A third origin, and cited as such by Aristotle, lies in the phallic songs which were sung during Dionysiac festivals.

Continue reading...

[willtheweaver]

A writer’s guide to forests: from the poles to the tropics, part 6

Welcome back. We’re getting closer to the equator. Things are really heating up now.(…I’ll see myself out now)

Mediterranean forest

Here is where the line between myth and reality begin to blur, and history reveals itself.

Location- The region around the Mediterranean Sea, bordered by the Alps and the deserts of the Middle East and Northern Africa. Much of the forest area has been altered by human activity, with the largest expanse remaining located in the Iberian peninsula.

Climate- Warm and dry. Mountains are more reliably wet, with higher elevations being seasonal.

Plant life- Trees are evergreen at or near sea level, with cork oak and olive common. Atlas cedar grow in Morocco, and the Levant is home to Cedar of Lebanon. In Alpine regions, deciduous species such as Hornbeam, lime, and elm eventually give way to pines as one goes higher. Dry areas produce many hardy species of ground cover, including the unusual dewy pine (Drosophyllum lusitanicum)- this is the only perennial carnivorous plant that does not grow in a wetland or humid environment.

Animal life- Due to millennia of human activity, predators, such as lions, wolves, bears, and lions have mostly or totally vanished. The largest hunter one may stumble across is the Iberian Lynx, though this is unlikely. Extinction has also affected prey species, with the Pyrenees ibex going extinct twice (the second time occurred after a clone ibex died shortly after birth). Conservation efforts have meant that species from eagles to dormice have a chance to recover. North Africa and Gibraltar are home to Barbary Macaques. Where humans manage forestland, herds of goats and pigs forage.

How the forest affects the story- Unless you want your characters high in the mountains, you don’t have to worry too much about the seasons( granted, winters can still be cold, but trees are evergreen and the summer heat will be the biggest worry) As these forests have been cleared and managed since the Neolithic, it is your choice as to where your characters fit into the grand picture. Do your characters and their society harvest the forest or graze their livestock there? Or maybe your characters have decided to restore the forest. What would restoration efforts look like? And of course, history and prehistory can provide a backdrop and various peoples to interact with. Could your characters have crossed paths with Otzi the iceman? What about the Romans, pilgrims, crusaders, Phoneticians, or Celtic-Iberians? And you don’t have to limit yourself to history. This is the land of the Greek Myths, and countless others as well. Gods, heros, and monsters may lurk behind the trees and in the caves.

[dutch-and-flemish-painters]

Jacques-Albert Senave - Copyist in a gallery of the Louvre -

oil on panel, height: 28.5 cm (11.2 in); width: 36.2 cm (14.2 in)

Louvre Museum

The Louvre or the Louvre Museum is a national art museum in Paris, France. It is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement (district or ward) and home to some of the most canonical works of Western art, including the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II. Remnants of the Medieval Louvre fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to urban expansion, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function, and in 1546 Francis I converted it into the primary residence of the French kings.

The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection, including, from 1692, a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. In 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation's masterpieces.

The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, the majority of the works being royal and confiscated church property. Because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed from 1796 until 1801. The collection was increased under Napoleon and the museum was renamed Musée Napoléon, but after Napoleon's abdication, many works seized by his armies were returned to their original owners. The collection was further increased during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, and during the Second French Empire the museum gained 20,000 pieces. Holdings have grown steadily through donations and bequests since the Third Republic. The collection is divided among eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities; Near Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; Islamic Art; Sculpture; Decorative Arts; Paintings; Prints and Drawings.

The Musée du Louvre contains approximately 500,000 objects and displays 35,000 works of art in eight curatorial departments with more than 60,600 m2 (652,000 sq ft) dedicated to the permanent collection. The Louvre exhibits sculptures, objets d'art, paintings, drawings, and archaeological finds. At any given point in time, approximately 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are being exhibited over an area of 72,735 m2 (782,910 sq ft), making it the largest museum in the world. It received 8.9 million visitors in 2023, 14 percent more than in 2022, but still below the 10.1 million visitors in 2018, making it the most-visited museum in the world.

Jacques-Albert Senave (1758–1823) was a Flemish painter mainly active in Paris during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He is known for his genre scenes, history paintings, landscapes, city views, market scenes and portraits.

[sorceresssiren]

Was listening to this...

And then I noticed the description. I really love what he writes:

"A nightclub is more religious than a church, as it is the place where the original religious rituals of our prehistory still take place today. The act of dancing to music, forgetting ones problems, losing ones sense of individual self and becoming part of a larger whole or feeling at one with others have always been natural human needs. Whether they take place in a shamanic circle, Dionysian procession, dance hall or rock concert, the psychological benefits which this behaviour brings are not lost on us.

What is a religious communion and where do these rituals come from? Eating & drinking are religious rituals. When we eat we assimilate the properties or nutrients of the food. If we ourselves were to be eaten our own powers would be taken on by our devourer. This is clear in early religions that were agricultural, the God was in the food which was grown and then consumed. This idea has survived even into the monotheisms with bread representing the God whose powers are taken on through being eaten. The meaning of communion is precisely this, to take on the powers of the God by eating him or her. This sort of communion is common and is apparent from the Bacchaic rituals of Dionysos to Jesus' last supper. The baccants eat the raw flesh of animals and drink wine to become intoxicated with the power of the God just as a Christian comes to be one with Christ by eating the bread & wine of communion. We should speak less of the food of the gods, like Terrence McKenna does, and see rather that the food is the God itself. When we eat we assimilate the powers, which is still apparent in the Christian tradition of thanking God before commencing a meal. We take our powers from whatever we choose to eat and assimilate into our bodies. As it is commonly said that character can be determined by diet. This is more specifically the case with those who choose to consume what our society calls "drugs". Narcotics have always been considered to be powerfully spiritual and hence their demonisation as "drugs" in modern societies. Both Catholicism and the secular state have felt threatened by the individuals direct contact to the divine through these mediums, not needing an intermediary. There are many examples similar to the better known Dionysiac cult of intoxication through wine, such as Corn Dolly deities sacrificed in various rural communities even to this day and age. The God is drunk as ale, or eaten as mushrooms and other psychedelics, which are now considered "drugs" were once called entheogens, quite literally to "put the God within you". This is also clear with the idea of the state of ecstasy. Literally from the greek for ex- stasis, out of the body.

Nightclubbers are thus engaging in the same Dionysian or shamanistic rituals today when they let a combination of music, alcohol & drugs, get them out of their everyday experience. A night club is then far more religious than a church, as it is only here where people, quite unknowingly for the most part, engage in the original religious rituals of dance and intoxication to become one with the world around them, while partaking of the same cathartic benefits that this ritualistic behaviour has always had and still brings us."

[indo-europeans]

Bronze Age End’s Likely Cause

“Indo-European tribes such as the Phrygians, Thralians, Proto-Armenians, Macedonians and Dorian Greeks seem to have arrived at this time—possibly from the north.” + Vedic Aryans, etc. ofc.

Some suggest diseases, but diseases don’t just randomly appear. Noteworthy is the fact that the first instance of biological warfare was the Hittites’ plague. 

Further, Indo European groups (Mycenaeans, Hittites, Sanskrit Mitanni, Vedic Aryans, etc) were known for weapons and war, more than anything else.

Indus Valley example:  “Robbins Schug's research shows that leprosy appeared at Harappa during the urban phase of the Indus Civilization, and its prevalence significantly increased through time. New diseases, such as tuberculosis, also appear in the Late Harappan or post-urban phase burials. Violent injury such as cranial trauma also increases through time, a finding that is remarkable, she said, given that evidence for violence is very rare in prehistoric South Asian sites generally.”

160 individuals (67% of the total number excavated) from three main burial areas at Harappa: an urban period cemetery (R-37), a post-urban cemetery (H), and an ossuary (Area G)

Figure 4. Lesions on the cranial vault of a male skull, I.S.11.

This individual also has an injury (sharp blunt force trauma) on the frontal bone. The cranium is isolated and thus the etiology of these lesions is unclear (a: left lateral view). A close-up image demonstrates the destructive and proliferative character of these lesions (b: right frontal bone).

source: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0084814#s2