| Myths Our knowledge of those sixty centuries of historical prehistory comes from two sources, archeology and myths. None of these two give us the sort of precise answers that can be expected from written documents. Archeology can give quite accurate information about the material side of prehistoric life, and also something about social relations. One can look upon the remains of slave barracks in Egypt or in the cities of the Indus Valley, and have an accurate picture of the social hierarchies in those places. The mixed buildings in early Aegean towns, with big houses of rich people next to simple hovels of the poor, can teach us about the sort of early democracy they might have had. Mythology, if its testimony is accepted, can give evidence, first of all, about spiritual matters, like cosmology and religion, about early migrations, and generally about past events, if they were important enough to remain in the collective memory of a people. Not everybody accepts that there is a collective memory, e.g. that there can be transmission of memories from fathers to sons, so that one could call up details of past histories, even if in garbled form. There are scholars who accept the possibility of such a transmission, but they claim that it can happen only amongst peasants in remote districts.1 According to Ignatius Donelly, myths and legends are distorted by civilization, " Skepticism becomes the synonym for intelligence, men no longer repeat - they doubt, they dissect, they sneer, they invent. If the myths survive the treatment, the poets take it up and make it their stock-in-trade - they decode it in a masquerade of frippery and finery ... and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if it survives at all, like the conflagration of Ovid, or King Arthur in Tennyson". Probably the fear of distortion brought many historians to regard each myth as a children's tale, or an ingenious fabrication, or expression of symbolism, or anything else, except memories from a distant past. 2 There is another important opinion that doubts the validity of myths as historical source. Stephen of Byzantium, a VIth century AD Greek philosopher wrote the following: "Mythology is what never was but always is." 3 This statement has profound wisdom. It is obvious to anyone who ever witnessed inflated national demands based upon spurious mythological grounds. The modern world is full of ethnic and religious conflict based upon mythology, and this is exactly the reason why Robert D. Kaplan has quoted this in his book "Balkan Ghosts". However, the truth and depth of this statement does not seem to affect much the possible contribution of the myths from the period of historical prehistory to our knowledge and understanding. The major expert on mythology in modern times, Robert Graves, has unquestionably accepted some mythology as a historical source. He listed twelve categories of myths, amongst which there are only a few which can be considered direct historical sources,4 the rest being entertainment or philosophy. Despite that, he was sufficiently convinced to write that:"... a large part of Greek myth is politico-religious history."5 Robert Graves used mythology to understand history. He also reversed the process and used history to decipher and understand mythology.6 According to him, Greek mythology was no more mysterious in content than are modern election campaigns. Graves did not explain in his book the meaning of this statement, but it should be quite obvious. If one sees on an ancient icon the picture of Chimera or that of Pegasus, they might baffle one. One can imagine the reaction of an archeologist in some period far in the future who, having found an election poster from some prehistoric American election, attempts to decipher the meaning of a picture showing a footrace between an elephant and a donkey, both fully dressed and each holding an American flag in their paws. If he knows that the animals are really totems, called mascots today, of contemporary American political parties, then he can decipher the meaning. Similarly, if he knows that Chimera was a composite beast, with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail, originally a calendar symbol, each part representing a season of the sacred year of the Hittites7, then the pre-historic ikon will have no secrets. The story of Bellerophon killing the Chimera probably refers to the Indo-European invaders replacing the Carian calendar with their own calendar system. There are myths that can certainly be related to specific areas and periods. Coming across the myths in which Zeus and other Olympian gods cavorted in the Greek world, seducing or raping nymphs, goddesses and dryads one learns from Graves that these naughty stories are indeed recollections from the time of the Hellenic invasions in early Second Millenium BC. The early Indo-European invaders, if there was an invasion, the Aeolians and Ionians, were small armed bands of herdsmen, worshipping the Aryan trinity of gods - Indra, Mitra and Varunna under different names - crossed the natural barrier of Mount Othrys, and attached themselves to pre-Hellenic settlements in Thessaly and Central Greece. The pre-Hellenic settlements were maternalistic, so the myths show the reconciliation of male military aristocracy to female theocracy. It happened in Greece as well as in Crete.8 Whether the reconciliation was peaceful or not is demonstrated by whether it was seduction or rape. The composition of the Olympian concert of gods, six gods and six goddesses, represents the final status of the reconciliation. Zeus's many peccadilloes, behind Hera's back, show that the relations were not always equitable or peaceful. The example shown above illustrates the development of historical and prehistorical societies at the same time. In the Second Millenium BC the Middle East was already civilized for a very long time, with organized and predatory armies, religions and central administrations. Greece and the Ionian islands were still in the prehistorical stage. Whatever happened there, came down to us in the form of mythology, written down by poets when urban civilization and with it writing reached Greece in the First Millenium BC. The same urban civilization reached the southern shores of Europe at about the same time. The colonization of Magna Graecia, Massilia, Carthage, Saguntum, the foundation of Rome were all in the first half of the First Millenium BC. Civilization reached northern continental Europe only with the Romans in the first century AD and northern and eastern Europe not earlier than the end of the First Millenium AD. It seems that nearly the same time lag of 5,000 years in the advance of agriculture from the Middle East to Europe repeated itself in the advance of urban civilization from the Middle East to Europe. If the advance of urban civilization was somewhat faster than the advance of agriculture, it was because of pressure by the already civilized Middle East. The pressures of the Persians from the Middle East, and Carthage from Africa were potent catalysts. There are three main types of myths that originate in this period of historical prehistory. One of those types, which was connected to the prevailing religions of the later civilizations can be discarded here. It will be dealt with in the chapter about the role of religions in civilizations. The two other main types are the myths of cosmology and the myths of migration. Cosmology shows the place of men in relation to the cosmos, and indirectly to each other. Properly speaking, such myths have religious connotations, but since they are so universal, and so similar throughout different regions and religions, they deserve special attention. The second main subject of mythological testimonies is that of migrations. It is found that, in the mythology of most of the peoples of the Middle East and Europe, there are myths covering their migrations just before they reach the historical stage. For some reason, in the myths of the migration there is the same time lag, as between the introduction of agriculture and the start of urban civilization. So the peoples of the Middle East, had their Voelkerwanderung in the 4th Millenium BC and the Germanic peoples in Europe in the 1st Millennium AD. Myths of Cosmology Cosmology is a field of study that brings together the natural sciences, particularly astronomy and physics, in a joint effort to understand the physical universe as a unified whole. In ancient societies, cosmology and religion were inseparable, and constituted the main body of mythology. It must have been even more so in precivilizational societies. One has to look at their world. They saw many things, the sun and the moon, stars, winds and storms. All were possible dangers to them, even impending catastrophes; they certainly could affect them and their tribe's existence. Something or somebody must have been in charge of those dangers, and they could only have been divine forces. There were many cosmological myths, in every codex of mythology, but as far as this study is concerned, there is one myth that is important and that is the Myth of the Flood. When the reasons for the climatic changes and the advent of agriculture were discussed a point was raised that the change might have been caused by gradual development, or alternatively by some catastrophic event. The analysis of the possible alternatives showed that as far as human perception goes, any change is a slow change, except if the change is very fast indeed, a number of hours or days at most. There are, indeed, a number of modern writers who claim that the climatic change was indeed the result of a catastrophe, or a number of catastrophes. These writers base their thinking in a large measure on the Bible or other ancient sources, which are indeed mythologies in the purest sense of the word. In addition, it is also assumed that the Bible and other written sources are based on even older sources, which are lost by now. One article that deals with the myth of the Deluge says: "The biblical flood story is copied from the Babylonian Gilgamesh epos, of its eleven tablets. This is in turn a copy of a similar Sumerian myth, which itself is a copy of the Atrahasis legend. So the least we can say about is, that it's really an old story."9 We can see how old this legend is if we compare the Bible, which is probably the last of the books into which this legend was incorporated, to the Gilgamesh Epos. In the Gilgamesh Epos there are a number of lines addressed to Utnapishtim, the Babylonian Noah, after surviving the Flood: "Hitherto Utnapishtim has been but human, Henceforth Utnapishtim and his wife shall be like us gods."10 This quotation can be compared to the Bible, where it is written: "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil".11 Now we should examine whether the myth of the Flood can affect the basic principles of the thesis of this book. According to the conclusions of the chapter, "Geography, Climate and Environment, there must have been some worldwide catastrophe which wrought the climatic changes, with the advent of agriculture and urban civilizations,in their wake. It was explained in that chapter that there are two schools of thought as far as the end of the last Ice Age is concerned. One of the theories is that there was a catastrophic occurrence, like a shift in the earth's outer covering, or a direct hit by a large meteorite or a near miss by a huge comet, which caused worldwide flooding and destruction. If it was really so, then it could have been the source of the many flood myths. However, if it was a gradual change, followed by the melting of glaciers in the northern, and possibly in the Southern Hemisphere and the subsequent rise in sea level, it could have brought on the same result, so far as mythological stories go. The rise of the sea level could have been gradual in some places and sudden and catastrophic in others. If on seashore there is a sand cliff a few feet high, baring the entrance to a level plain behind it, the sea can rise unnoticed until it reaches the top of the barrier, becoming a catastrophic flood when it goes over the top. In both cases, we would anticipate the generation of myths with nearly identical contents. And this is so, for after all, there are more than 500 myths about the flood12 . If we analyze these myths, we can arrive at a common denominator, which would fit one huge catastrophe or many regional ones. These myths come from an era when the world of each hunter-gatherer band was limited by the horizon. Catastrophe in their area was a worldwide catastrophe, as far as that tribe was concerned. The myths of the flood can be summarized, as: 1. Man is guilty of transgressions against God (or gods). 2. God (or one of many gods) sends a flood to punish man. 3. Before the flood, instructions are sent to a man to build an ark. 4. The instructions cater for the survival of all species as well as man. 5. The flood destroys the old race. 6. After the flood, a new God-fearing race re-emerges to populate the earth. This summary of most myths would fit both possibilities, one of a huge worldwide catastrophe and the second of a large number of local catastrophes, which for the survivors would have been no less menacing than the first possibility. There are developments in the Bronze Age settlements in the earliest urban civilization, which add to the probability that they indeed developed as a result of some catastrophic antecedents. The additional testimony is that of numerous textual and archeological sources, which point to sacrificial practices in early Mesopotamian civilizations. There are many Mesopotamian myths, which claim that the first cult places and their priestly personnel emerged as an institution for 'beclouded people' in need of 'counseling' after natural disasters have inflicted 'destruction' on their habitat.13 The temples received tributes from the peasants in exchange for a source of healing (or salvation) by the elimination of panic and anger through sacrificial release of catastrophe-inflicted aggression. Typically, the ritual was arranged as a combat with living impersonators of colliding celestial bodies. Between the catastrophes, the priests also functioned as prognosticators of the next disaster.14 This preoccupation with celestial bodies can explain the early expertise of the Chaldean priesthood in astronomy According to modern psychology, adverse reactions in adults after some traumatic experience can be so severe that disaster victims pass their fear and insecurity to their children. Even to children yet to be born. Their past experience replaces the child's sense of a secure world with a fearful worldview. This syndrome is well known in the second generation of Holocaust survivors. The anthropologists Carol and Melvin Ember in research on 186 mostly non-industrial societies demonstrated that there is a strong correlation between disasters and armed conflict. The conflicts were not caused by the disaster, but by the fear of scarcity as a result of an unpredictable return of the catastrophe.15 So, in a sense, the priests in early Mesopotamian societies filled the place of modern psychiatric treatment. It is doubtful that we shall ever know what exactly happened. The Flood, Tower of Babel, Atlantis, Phaeton, the age of the Sphinx, the Pyramids and other unsolved mysteries, will be with us as long as there are clever writers and interested readers. They cannot be proven; or disproved either. Luckily, for the subject of this book, both possibilities fit the reasoning. The basic hypothesis of this book is that the Neolithic Revolution was caused by the scarcity of food for the hunter-gatherer bands. Whether the scarcity of food was caused by one or more natural catastrophes, or by a gradual worsening of the climate, has no relevance here. Myths of Migrations Probably every people on earth has some mythological tale about a flood, or some catastrophe. The same applies to myths of migration too. It is doubtful whether there are many peoples without memories of migrations in their past. It is especially true of the Middle East. The Middle East is regarded as the Cradle of Civilization. When we look at the peoples of the historical Middle East, the Egyptians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Persians, Hebrews, Hittites and Mitannis, they all have myths of migrations, either their own or others whose intrusion brought them to civilization or brought civilization to them.16 Indeed, one cannot find any mythological tale showing that the people were savages and they developed independently into civilized beings. The tales always show some outside intervention, mostly from divine beings, and interconnected with migrations. We have to look at those myths of migration and judge whether they fit the main thesis of this study, just as was done with the myths of the Flood. There, it was found that it is entirely acceptable that at the beginning of our historical era, there was either a huge catastrophe, caused by some major interference, or a number of local catastrophes. Both possibilities could have been responsible for the large number of myths about the Flood. This study accepts that just as climatic changes could cause mythological tales, which tell us about those early catastrophes, the myths of migration also fit within the natural framework of our study. The basic proposition of this study is that some prehistoric occurrence, cataclysmic or not, changed the climate of the Middle East and Europe. The change of climate caused the advent of agriculture - the Neolithic Revolution - the first permanent settlements and eventually urban civilization. This process got under way in the Middle East, the area that suffered most from the change, and crept north at a very slow pace. From south to north it must have taken four to five millennia. The time lag was longer in the northward movement of agriculture and less with that of urban civilization. The reason for this difference in pace was that the Middle East, which already had urban civilization since the second half of the Fourth Millenium BC, influenced the development of Europe, either as a potential adversary or as a trading partner. There are testimonies showing that the period of transition to agriculture was a tiring one for humanity. Agriculture is a complex operation. There must have been a long period between the point when the Neolithic hunter-gatherer discovered that he can spread seeds on some plot and after a few months could reap the crop, until he could be certain that it will indeed happen that way. If not, the result was starvation. How long was the period, and how many times it came to starvation, we can view in Neolithic graves with small and diseased skeletons. The elapsed time from the beginning of agriculture to the start of settled urban civilization was about 5 - 6,000 years in the Middle East. Urban civilization meant that there was a food surplus to feed the non-productive elements in the population. Agriculture had reached an advanced stage. Together with agriculture came the domestication of animals. Domestication of animals provided alternatives to breastfeeding, shorter weaning periods, more pregnancies and increased population. Increasing population density in a period of slowly improving agricultural techniques meant a proper Malthusian trap, which is more than evident from the Neolithic graves. 17 It is evident also from the myths of migrations. Increased population density means competition for resources, where the stronger wins and the weaker moves on, or is destroyed or enslaved. The migration does not have to be of a whole people. It is entirely possible, that young people left the existing settlements looking for new territory. When Ostrogoths and Visigoths left Sweden, most of them were left behind; they are still there. When the possible common source of the origin of migrations are examined, then all the sources point to Asia. According to one article written by a Russian scientist, I. Vavilov: "Asia: Source of Species", which appeared in Asia, February 1937, p.113, he demonstrated that the great majority of cultivated plants were found in a wild state in Asia, and this also held true for most domesticated animals.18 It seems to be absolutely certain that the origins of modern agriculture-based civilizations are indeed in Western Asia.19 When we attempt to use the myths to focus this area to even narrower territory, then we might assume that the cradle of the oldest agricultural settlements was in the area of Armenia-Kurdistan-Media, e.g. south of the Caucasian range. Already in 8,500 BC there were agricultural settlements in that area, with traces of domestication of animals, baked and painted pottery and worked obsidian tools. Indeed, the prehistoric trades of raw and worked obsidian tools centered round the southeastern shores of Lake Van in eastern Turkey in the area of the extinct volcano Nemrut Dag.20 There are numerous references pointing to this region as a possible originating area of the migrations, e.g. the starting point of the Neolithic Revolution. Unfortunately, the most important evidence was discovered only recently and is still awaiting scientific evaluation. Near the area of Lake Van, in historic Cappadocia in eastern Turkey, a huge underground complex was discovered in 1968. The underground complex contains at least 30 underground cities, connected by underground tunnels. The size of the cities and that of the whole compound is enormous. The only underground city, which was partially excavated, is at Derinkuyu, reaches 8 floors underground in an area of four square kilometers. There is a vast network of airshafts, water wells, and water tanks at the bottom and various access tunnels. There is also a vast number of kitchens, living rooms, and storehouses, meeting rooms, churches and cemeteries, and connecting corridors. Neither the depth, nor the size has been finally established, as the excavations are still going on. The other, possibly 30 underground cities, are untouched so far.21 It is estimated that the underground city of Derinkuyu could house at least 30,000 people. No one knows who built these underground domains, and to what purpose. They are at least 4-5,000 years old , while other tentative evidence suggests that they were constructed as early as 9,000 BC It was suggested that the complex was constructed by the Hittites as a refuge when they were attacked by the Phrygians in the 2nd Millenium BC Some of the cave cities were certainly used as refuges by the Christians when they hid from Roman persecutors, and again later when they had to hide from Arab or Turkish invaders. It seems that the assumption of Hittite origin was suggested by the later use. The extent of even one underground city is so great, dwarfing the Egyptian pyramids, that if the Hittites built them, they must have left some trace in Hittite libraries. There is no mention of these cities in them. Iranian myths tell a story that their ancestors escaped a long winter of snow and ice by building a 'var', an underground city,22 It seems that the final answer about these huge underground complexes will be given only after further and extensive excavations. The unsettled political conditions in that area are not really helpful. When one checks the migration myths of individual peoples in the Middle East, nearly all of them point to the North as the start or the end of the migration. The first urban civilization was that of Sumer or Mesopotamia. Sumerian myths, however, all point to the North, as the origin of their people. For the Sumerians, at least, there is concrete evidence. St. Chad Boscawen, one of the earliest scholars of the Sumerian cuneiform, pointed out in an article :"Historical evidence of the migration of Abram", which appeared in "Transactions of the Victorian Institute" , 920 (1886) that in the Sumerian language the same ideograph is used for Country and for Mountain, probably indicating that they originated in mountainous country. They also had individual ideographs for wolf and bear, which are not known in Mesopotamia, and not for lion, tiger and jackal, which do live there. Their composite ideograph for camel shows an animal with two humps, which is the species from mid-Asia and not from Arabia. According to this theory, the Sumerian temples of seven-tiered ziggurats represented for them the mountains of their previous homeland.23 Eventually the Sumerians were conquered by the Akkadians, a Semitic people, who put their homeland in exactly the same area as the Sumerians. They referred in their religious literature to the heavenly abode of their gods as Kharsagg Khurra, the heavenly mountain. Another people, who live in the territory of ancient Sumeria, the Mandaeans , a Marsh Arab tribe, are specific concerning their origin. They claim that they came from a mythical location named the Mountain of Madai, in Iranian Kurdistan, not far from the Cappadocian cave cities. They also claim that before living in Kurdistan, they originated in Egypt. Indeed , they have some words in their vocabulary, which are undoubtedly of ancient Egyptian origin.24 Iranian tradition points to the same area as the Sumerians, the Akkadians and the Mandaeans, or even further north. According to their traditions and myths, the realm of the immortals and the seat of the immortal god kings of Iran (who like the apocryphal Judaic tradition , written in the Book of Enoch, not included in the Biblical canon, were said to have been tall in stature with ivory white skin and shining countenance), was known as the Ariyana Vaejah, the Iranian Expanse. This tradition puts that expanse among the mountains of Media, near Armenia. There is even one ancient Iranian myth that places the homeland at the North Pole. Probably the earliest Iranians arrived from some area north of the Aral Sea, with one wave moving east toward India and the second moving south to Iran. It is also known that one of the earliest known agricultural settlements, Sialk, was in the Iranian highlands. Their migration myths include also the territory of north-eastern Anatolia, the area of the cave towns, where the excavators even found the remains of a Zoroastrian fire temple.25 Curiously, some of the Iranian myths claim that part of the people who came and settled in Sialk moved on to Mesopotamia and Northern Syria, and eventually to Egypt. Interestingly enough, the myth of the original settlers in Mesopotamia eventually reaching Egypt and influencing the development of Egyptian civilization, finds some of supporting archeological evidence. There are a great number of common features between Egyptian and early Mesopotamian civilizations. W. B. Emery did not claim that the Egyptian civilizations was created by Mesopotamian invaders. After all, there are many vital differences, like hieroglyphic writing in Egypt and cuneiform in Mesopotamia, but he only claimed that there might have been people who left their mark on Egypt and on Mesopotamia as well. 26 There are many more migration myths, but only those myths were brought forward which have some connection with the main thesis of the book. There were migrations in the East, like the Mitannis, the Hittites, the Peoples of the Sea, the Hebrews, etc, but they occurred in times, which in their part of the world were historical times. Similarly, there were migrations in Europe too, but they all happened in historical times. Those migration myths that were analyzed here do not teach us much. They show the end-stations. They might even tell the road they were taking, the divine help they were receiving, but no migration myth shows the real reason for moving and searching for a better life. It is doubtful that there are migration myths that tell that they were hungry and were looking for more food, or that some stronger enemy drove them out of their previous home. It is possible that only the ancient Hebrews were honest enough to admit that Abraham went down to Egypt because there was a famine in Canaan, and so did Jacob and his sons. As far as this study is concerned, the analysis of the two types of myths confirmed that: - there are very many cosmological myths which show that there was one or more catastrophes, which might have triggered the Neolithic Revolution. - the Neolithic Revolution caused a Malthusian trap, with increasing population density and insufficient food to feed the people, and a serious game of wandering around until agriculture caught up with demand, or alternatively until the central authorities of the Urban Civilizations were strong enough to withstand the pressure of the have-nots Notes: |
