Posted on 12/21/2008 2:49:32 PM PST by Alex Murphy
Why is it that when I type Sumerian and Santa into Google, the first hit is a Free Republic article about Fred Phelps?
Oh, and Sumer existed wasn’t around in the Paleolithic age. You’re off by only several thousand years.
Two characters regularly found in the mud of Mesopotamia, particularly in the upland areas to the North, are minatures of both reindeer and an elderly, jolly gentleman with a white beard.
Some of these things have been dated to as early as 7,000 BC. There are many other similar items found in strata where data was not possible. There is no reason to believe the Sumerians or their ancestors in Eurasia waited until the 8th millenium BCE to begin making miniatures.
The last of the great Eurasian ice sheets extended from Fenno-Scandia to beyond the Urals. Took a long time to melt. In the interim it was a great place to hunt.
Again, posted on FR.
On the other hand they had their own "ancient stories" handed down orally over thousands of years ~ and they wrote them down once they'd gotten full command of their new technique.
BTW, we are talking about the pre-semitic people in Sumer ~ which no longer exists. At the time, they seem to have been the first literate, though itinerate, civilization.
Now, what did their ancestors call the Land Between The Rivers?
And you know what the Sumerians were passing down through the ages how?
Here’s an interesting exerpt:
One of the oddest falsehoods is that Christmas colors come from red and white mushrooms. For starters, the Christmas colors are red and green. Santa Claus wears red and white, because those are the colors worn by archbishops, like Saint Nicolas.
What’s odd about this suggestion is that mushrooms are several steps removed from anything to do with Christmas. Apparently, reindeer eat mushrooms, and one mushroom, which is red and white, happens to be psychedelic. And the mushrooms and reindeer both exist in Scandinavia. So, if reindeer were to think they could fly, psychedelic mushrooms would be helpful. Of course, it’s unexplained how anyone got inside the head of a reindeer to find out it thought it could fly. Now, maybe people eating the mushroom might think anything could fly, but why would they single out reindeer? And if the mushroom is so central to Christmas, how come there’s no trace of it besides the color?
It’s not the Scandinavian reindeer-herders who take special note of these mushrooms; it’s the Koryak. And that’s why we don’t hear much of them today: The Koryak live seven thousand miles away from the Sami, across from Alaska, as far away as the bushmen of the Kalahari or the Aztecs.
It turns out that the Scandinavian legends of Santa Claus’ reindeer don’t involve flying at all. The people in the Southern Mediterranean are the ones who thought Father Christmas flew… but they depict him as riding a white horse, not a reindeer. It’s only in America, when these legends of Santa combined, that we first find the notion of Santa’s reindeer flying.
Another misunderstanding regards the labeling of Santa’s helpers as elves. It’s supposed that they are said to be elves because the Sami reindeer herders have a tendency to dwarfism. Well, the problem is that the Sami aren’t particularly short. But then, neither are elves. In Nordic lands, elves were always held to be as tall, or taller, as humans. Think J.R.R. Tolkein’s elves from “Lord of the Rings.” Only in Elizabethan England, where they were falsely supposed to be related to nymphs, sprites or faeries did the notion that they were small emerge. Santa is said to be an elf because elves have achieved immortality through their virtue. The notion of Santa’s helpers being short only emerged in North America, although even this is possibly the result of merging traditions: Saint Nicolas was said to have rescued three children who now accompany him around the world.
Uh, no the article was about Fred Phelps.
>> Two characters regularly found in the mud of Mesopotamia, particularly in the upland areas to the North, are minatures of both reindeer and an elderly, jolly gentleman with a white beard. <<
The use of the word “jolly” is used to invoke Santa Claus. Guess what? Elderly men have white beards. Please tell me your evidence is not that a reindeer-herding people had depictions of both old men and reindeer.
Although mankind has been following reindeer herds around for far longer than just about any other similar animal, the first domestication attempts came quite recently. They were forced by political reality ~ the arrival of "civilization" to any region means you can't just follow the animals around ~ you must begin to control their movements if you wish to assert continued ownership.
The Sumerians built permanent cities yet they continued to follow the herds. Guess there were no "outsiders" trying to take their lands.
Things were different in the beginning.
True, but completely irrelevant.
It's the drug that keeps on drugging!.
For a variety of reasons this particular mushroom doesn't produce much of an effect if raised in America. At the same time it seems to do pretty well in modern day Fenno Scandia and in mountainous areas.
Red and Green are the colors for the Japanese Good Luck Cat ~ that's the ancient god of Good Luck ~ Ho Tai manifest as a cat. dressed up like a Shinto priest. Red and White are the colors selected for the head-dress on the head of the Sphinx. It looks like a mushroom from the rear.
Regarding the precise beliefs of the Lapplanders, they were essentially eradicated during the period of Christianization, but fortunately many Sa'ami escaped to America before all the old knowledge was gone.
At the same time ethnologists presume the Sa'ami beliefs pretty well reflect those of the other Polar Peoples with whom they had contact to the East ~ what you dug up regarding traditionalists in East Asia is simply an example of a fairly intact culture where the old ways are remembered. That does not mean those ideas originate in that are, or that they were isolated to that area. You find fairly similar beliefs among the Yakuts and the Ainu (two genetically distinct ethnic groups in East Asia), and the Yakuts (also known as the Sakha) are ancestral to the Eskimo as well as the group that conquered Korea and Japan in the 6th century AD. The Ainu, although closely related to the earlier Jomon population in Japan (known in the Middle Ages as the Emishi), follow a bear cult, but the Emishi followed a badger cult. Most other Siberian and North Asian people had their own animal cults, with some focused on Polar bears, Brown bears, Black Bears, Reindeer, Muskox and so on. Just depends on where you were what kind of cult they had ~ which is entirely similar to American Indian tribes living in the Northern regions of North America.
It must also be noted that ALL the Polar Peoples, irrespective of their "race", whether white, ainu, yakuts, eskimo or indian, had at their disposal draft animals (reindeer, , sleds/sleighs, mucklucks, snowshoes, and in the FAR WEST the Sa'ami also had SKIs available. Archaeologists inform us that they invented the things. Plus, all of 'em had boats, there are rivers, lakes and all sorts of things. Cultural contact from East to West was not only possible in the Far North, it happened.
Once the Sa'ami areas were opened up to permanent contact with Indo-Eyuropean cultures (circa 900 AD), the dwarf court jester became highly popular. Was there a connection? Who knows. Supposedly a few centuries later Ghengis Khan, a dwarf himself, visited Scandinavia personally to visit a nation of dwarves ~ as I said, "supposedly" ~ most likely he only made it to Finland.
No, it’s of the utmost importance that we recognize that “following herds” and “herding domesticated animals” are totally different occupations with different requirements and that they foster very different sorts of livelihoods on the participants.
That raises a very good question about when it was first painted ~ had to be Ice Age ~ the climate has been too dry and hot subsequently.
There's a book out there by a doper where the guy claims Bishops got their colors from the mushroom too.
However, I don't recall Christianity having a divinity called "Little Red Man".
There's a book out there by a doper where the guy claims Bishops got their colors from the mushroom too.
However, I don't recall Christianity having a divinity called "Little Red Man".
Oh, brother... You’re off by EIGHT THOUSAND years on the age; amanita muscaria doesn’t have red bands; Since the Sphinz nor Egypt existed in the last ice age, amanita muscaria doesn’t grow anywhere near Egypt; and you’re the number one hit on the internet for suggesting that the Sphinx ever had red paint.
The "bottom" or base is the remains of quarrying operations. The stone masons left the substrata in place under the windblown rock. At some point the material was pointed up and finished to look like a crouched lion.
The head has pretty much the same shape that it had before the quarry was started. It may have initially had the face of a lion, and maybe not. Whatever it had a face was carved into it, and that's kind of what you see today ~ except that French or Turkish soldiers fired a cannon into it.
It's a very complex pile of stone. Samples taken at different points yield different ages of first exposure.
The head was originally banded with red stripes. The artists painted white dots on the stripes.
From the rear the head looks like a mushroom.
I did not say the Sphinx head was painted red ~ but that it had red stripes. There is a report on the net to that effect. It's based on a study done by an archaeologist. The stripes also have white dots.
Amanita has most of its red dots in a band anyway. Regarding dating, the Sahara was in a pluvial right up to the beginning of Egyptian civilization in upper Egypt. The pluvial ended. Everybody moved out of the desert to the river or South to wetter areas in Africa.
Did amanita grow in Egypt or nearby in those times? Frankly, I don't know, and haven't encountered any studies that say that it did. On the other hand, it was a source of dope and all it took was one guy who'd been to the Alps or other mountains in Europe, and he'd know what it looked like. Did people visit those mountains? See Oetzi
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