Ancient World Review

Mary, The Christian Demi-Goddess

"Mary, as the mother of Jesus, is documented in Roman catacombs: paintings from the first half of the 2nd century show her holding the Christ Child. Excavations in the crypt of St Peter's Basilica uncovered a very early fresco of Mary together with Saint Peter. The Roman Priscilla catacombs depict the oldest Marian paintings from the middle of the 2nd century: Mary is shown with Jesus on her lap; they are next to a man in a tunic, his left hand holding a book and his right hand pointing to a star over his head, the latter being an Old Testament symbol of messiahs and/or the Messiah." Source: Wikipedia.

The transformation of Mary into a Christian demi-goddess or minor deity seems to have started with the apocryphal Gospel of James, aka The Proto-Gospel or Protoevangelium of James. Thought to have been written sometime during the 2nd century AD, "It tells of the virginal conception of the Virgin Mary, her upbringing and marriage to Joseph, the journey of the holy couple to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus, and events immediately following. It is the earliest surviving assertion of the perpetual virginity of Mary, meaning her virginity not just prior to the birth of Jesus, but during and afterwards, while defending Jesus against pagan and Jewish accusations of illegitimacy." (Wikipedia)

Jesus' miraculous birth or Immaculate Conception was a common theme in ancient mythology, but the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity leads to various theological difficulties for the Christians who believe in it. According to the New Testament, Jesus had four brothers: James, Joseph (Joses), Judas (Jude), and Simon. (He apparently had sisters as well, but they're not named.) If Mary was indeed a perpetual virgin, this obviously means that all of Jesus' siblings were also sons and daughters of a virgin, so there wasn't anything special about Jesus in this regard. To get around this problem, believers in Mary's perpetual virginity end up having to argue that Jesus didn't have any biological sisters and brothers at all. They all just kind of grew up together or something.

Mary is venerated by Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches. According to Wikipedia, "this veneration especially takes the form of prayer for intercession with her Son, Jesus Christ." This makes Mary a kind of intermediate deity who along with the other saints and angels can intercede in God's divine council. Mary has considerable powers in her own right, however. She can perform miracles, heal the sick, etc., and when she died, God raised her body into heaven, according to Catholic and Eastern Christian teachings. In another version of this story, she never died at all but was assumed directly into heaven while still alive. The exact nature of her assumption is a matter of theological debate:

"Many Catholics believe that Mary first died before being assumed, but they believe that she was miraculously resurrected before being assumed. Others believe she was assumed bodily into Heaven without first dying. Either understanding may be legitimately held by Catholics, with Eastern Catholics observing the Feast as the Dormition." (Wikipedia)

Note: The Dormition is an Eastern festival which "commemorates the 'falling asleep' or death of Mary the Theotokos ('Mother of God', literally translated as God-bearer), and her bodily resurrection before being taken up into heaven."

There are a couple of problems here. For instance, if Mary is the "mother of God," then who got her pregnant in the first place? And if the Son and the Father are "one substance, essence or nature" did the Son in the form of the Father come down to Mary and give birth to himself? (The doctrine of the Trinity has never made any sense to me).

According to early sources, Mary was what we would now call a child bride:

"Some apocryphal accounts state that at the time of her betrothal to Joseph, Mary was 12–14 years old. According to ancient Jewish custom, Mary could have been betrothed at about 12. Hyppolitus of Thebes says that Mary lived for 11 years after the death of her son Jesus, dying in 41 AD." (Wikipedia)

^"The earliest extant biographical writing on Mary is Life of the Virgin attributed to the 7th-century saint, Maximus the Confessor, which portrays her as a key element of the early Christian Church after the death of Jesus."

The details of Mary's life are sketchy. So is the date of her death (if it actually occurred) and her resurrection. These are all details, however. The real question is whether she actually existed.

Ancient Germanic Lord Unearthed In 1,500-Yr-Old Tomb With "Harem" Of Six Women

"The complex grave of a Germanic lord or prince who lived 1,500 years ago during the Great Migration has been unearthed in Saxony-Anhalt, near Brücken-Hackpfüffel [Germany]." Source: Daily Mail.

"Experts say the site is the country's most important archaeological find for 40 years and have kept the exact location of the dig a secret to stave off thieves."

The remains of the lord or prince haven't been discovered. Archaeologists believe his ashes may be inside a cauldron found in the grave:

"The cauldron, the focal point of the mounded tomb, is surrounded by six women buried in a radial alignment from the pot, like the hands of a clock, The Times reports.

"Researchers say these may well have been concubines or widows belonging to the person being buried, but it remains a mystery as to whether they were slain for the burial or sacrificed themselves."

Unearthing A 2000-Yr-Old Saxon Burial Site At Salisbury Plain

Video from May, 2020.

Note: "Salisbury Plain is famous for its history and archaeology. In the Neolithic period, Stone Age people began to settle on the plain, most likely centred around the causewayed enclosure of Robin Hood's Ball. Large long barrows such as White Barrow and other earthworks were built across the plain. By 2500 BC areas around Durrington Walls and Stonehenge had become a focus for building, and the southern part of the plain continued to be settled into the Bronze Age." (Wikipedia)

Video from 2013.

Salisbury Plain has been used as a cemetery for a very long time. According to a 2008 NY Times story, "New radiocarbon dates from human cremation burials among and around the brooding stones on Salisbury Plain in England indicate that the site was used as a cemetery from 3000 B.C. until after the monuments [Stonehenge, etc] were erected around 2500 B.C. ..."

Wizard Battles & Demon Circles Described In Newly Translated Christian Texts

The Monastery of St. Macarius the Great in Egypt.

"Have you ever heard the story of a wizard battle that supposedly took place when an early church was constructed? Or how about the story of a border guard who defied King Herod's orders and spared Jesus' life? Scholars have now translated these and other 'apocryphal' Christian texts (stories not told in the canonical bible) into English for the first time." Source: Live Science.

"...One of the newly translated texts tells of a battle against 'diabolical' wizards who are trying to destroy an ancient church being built as a dedication to the Virgin Mary in the city of Philippi in Greece.

"The text is written in Coptic, an Egyptian language that uses the Greek alphabet, and may have originally been written around 1,500 years ago, Paul Dilley, a professor of religious studies at the University of Iowa, who translated the text, wrote ... The story is told in two texts that were both from the Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great in Egypt. At that time, much of the population around the Mediterranean had converted to Christianity, although some still followed polytheistic faiths."

Note: The monastery contains many relics of saints, including some supposed remains of John the Baptist. I'm not sure what those remains are exactly, since the body of John the Baptist is supposed to have been scattered all over the place. According to Wikipedia, "A crypt and relics said to be John's and mentioned in 11th- and 16th-century manuscripts, were discovered in 1969 during restoration [that took place at the monastery]."

Virtual-Reality Designer Uses Machine Learning To Reconstruct Faces Of 54 Roman Emperors

"Ancient Roman emperors' faces have been brought to life in digital reconstructions; the unnervingly realistic image project includes the Emperors Caligula, Nero and Hadrian, among others." Source: Live Science.

"The features of these long-dead rulers have been preserved in hundreds of sculptures, but even the most detailed carvings can't convey what these men truly looked like when they were alive. To explore that, Canadian cinematographer and virtual reality designer Daniel Voshart used machine learning — computer algorithms that learn through experience — in a neural network, a computing system processes information through hierarchies of nodes that communicate in a manner similar to neurons in a brain."

Comment: Interesting project, but who knows how accurate these images are? As usual with these reconstructions, details like hair, eye and skin color are mostly conjectural. In this case, Voshart used primary sources and artwork when available and based his reconstructions on busts believed to be the most skillfully done or thought to have been made when the emperor was still alive.  He used a program called Artbreeder and sometimes let it guess at things like skin color. All of the faces can be seen at his website.

Chromium Steel First Made In Medieval Persia

"Chromium steel - similar to what we know today as tool steel - was first made in Persia, nearly a millennium earlier than experts previously thought, according to a new study." Source: Science Daily.

"The discovery, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, was made with the aid of a number of medieval Persian manuscripts, which led the researchers to an archaeological site in Chahak, southern Iran."

Note: According to the Teheran Times, "The site of Chahak is located in the southwest of Iran, in the eastern part of the Fars province, close to the Zagros mountain range.

"'...'This research not only delivers the earliest known evidence for the production of chromium steel dating back as early as the 11th century CE, but also provides a chemical tracer that could aid the identification of crucible steel artifacts in museums or archaeological collections back to their origin in Chahak, or the Chahak tradition,'" according to one of the researchers.

Carpenters Demonstrate Medieval Techniques During Notre Dame Cathedral Reconstruction

"PARIS (AP) — With precision and boundless energy, a team of carpenters used medieval techniques to raise up — by hand — a three-ton oak truss Saturday in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, a replica of the wooden structures that were consumed in the landmark’s devastating April 2019 fire that also toppled its spire." Source: AP (9/19/20).

"The demonstration to mark European Heritage Days gave the hundreds of people a first-hand look at the rustic methods used 800 years ago to build the triangular frames in the nave of Notre Dame de Paris."

Comment: I'm glad to see that this demonstration of medieval techniques included the use of ye olde buzz-saw and authentic safety helmets, ear protectors and plandemic face masks from the period.

Nitpicking aside, the French do seem to have decided to restore the cathedral to its original state as much as possible. That's good news. For a while there it looked like they would turn the church into some postmodern monstrosity.

Video from July 2020.

Moving right along, I have to point out -- again -- that we still don't have any real explanation for what caused the fire. The Paris prosecutor announced on the day after the fire that there was no evidence of arson. How he could have known that is anybody's guess, but it's not hard to figure out why he would say it considering all the attacks on churches which were taking place in France at the time.

Arson was ruled out immediately, before any investigation could have been conducted. The official line now is that the fire was accidental.

There was some speculation at first that the fire might have been caused by a cigarette dropped by one of the construction workers doing restoration work on the cathedral, but it didn't seem very likely that a burning cigarette could have set off a conflagration like that:

"As of September, five months after the fire, investigators thought the cause of the fire was more likely an electrical fault than a cigarette. Determining the exact place in which the fire started was expected to take a great deal more time and work. By 15 April 2020 [1], investigators believed 'the fire to have been started by either a cigarette or a short circuit in the electrical system'." (Wikipedia)

And that's that. As far as I can tell, there hasn't been any more news about the fire investigation since April of this year. I haven't run across anything in English, anyway. Aside from occasional items about the restoration work the story seems to have vanished into a black hole.

[1] Note the date: April 15, 2020. Curiously enough, ArtNet posted an article about the fire on the same date which mentioned that "experts still haven’t been able to gain access to the area where the blaze is believed to have begun." Maybe I'm missing something, but if the cathedral was still so damaged and fragile that investigators couldn't access the area where the fire apparently started, then how could they say anything about what caused it?

Medieval England Twice As Well Off As Today's Poorest Nations

The common picture of the Middle Ages as being a time of  grinding poverty, illiteracy and subsistence living when the peasants spent their lives digging up filth in the fields is all wrong:

"Medieval England was not only far more prosperous than previously believed, it also actually boasted an average income that would be more than double the average per capita income of the world’s poorest nations today." Source: Science Daily (2010).

"... [This] research provides the first annual estimates of GDP for England between 1270 and 1700 and for Great Britain between 1700 and 1870. Far more data are available for the pre-1870 period than is widely realised. Britain after the Norman conquest (11th century) was a literate and numerate society that generated substantial written records, many of which have survived. As a result, the research was aided by a wide variety of records -- among them manorial records, tithes, farming records, and probate records."

Wars and outbreaks of disease disrupted the economy in certain places and times, just like they do today, but medieval Europe in general was much more prosperous than commonly believed:

 "Trade and commerce in the medieval world developed to such an extent that even relatively small communities had access to weekly markets and, perhaps a day’s travel away, larger but less frequent fairs, where the full range of consumer goods of the period was set out to tempt the shopper and small retailer. Markets and fairs were organised by large estate owners, town councils, and some churches and monasteries, who, granted a license to do so by their sovereign, hoped to gain revenue from stall holder fees and boost the local economy as shoppers used peripheral services. International trade had been present since Roman times but improvements in transportation and banking, as well as the economic development of northern Europe, caused a boom from the 9th century CE." (Ancient History Encyclopedia)

The market as an institution dates back to the 8th century BC in Greece, according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary.

Related: The Essence of Money - A Medieval Tale. (Short video on the "market money" used in medieval trade fairs.)

With an estimated per capita annual income of around $1000 (1990 dollars), medieval England was much better off than places like modern Zaire, Haiti, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe, just to name a few of the countries listed for comparison purposes in this study:

According to the researchers, "Our work sheds new light on England's economic past, revealing that per capita incomes in medieval England were substantially higher than the 'bare bones subsistence' levels experienced by people living in poor countries in our modern world. The majority of the British population in medieval times could afford to consume what we call a 'respectability basket' of consumer goods that allowed for occasional luxuries. By the late Middle Ages, the English people were in a position to afford a varied diet including meat, dairy produce and ale, as well as the less highly processed grain products that comprised the bulk of the 'bare bones subsistence' diet."

Note how the Medieval Warm Period led to an economic boom. According to modern climate alarmists, global warming would be a disaster. The truth, of course, is just the opposite.

The Roman Empire had extensive trade networks with countries as far away as India and China. When the western empire collapsed in the fifth century AD, the disruption of trade and central government plunged Europe into the so-called Dark Ages, but Europe with its relentless industry gradually recovered and the re-establishment of trade on both the local and global levels led to a rise in general prosperity which in turn led to the Industrial Revolution. According to the researchers who conducted this 2010 study, "the Industrial Revolution did not come out of the blue. Rather, it was the culmination of a long period of economic development stretching back as far as the late medieval period."

The Tattoo Theory Of Social Collapse

"Tattooing has been practiced across the globe since at least Neolithic times, as evidenced by mummified preserved skin, ancient art, and the archaeological record. Both ancient art and archaeological finds of possible tattoo tools suggest tattooing was practiced by the Upper Paleolithic period in Europe. However, direct evidence for tattooing on mummified human skin extends only to the 4th millennium BC." Source: Wikipedia.

"... tattooed mummies have been recovered from at least 49 archaeological sites including locations in Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Mongolia, western China, Egypt, Sudan, the Philippines, and the Andes." In 2016, Nature reported the discovery of "[a] mummy from ancient Egypt ... heavily tattooed with sacred symbols, which may have served to advertise and enhance the religious powers of the woman who received them more than 3,000 years ago."

According to Smithsonian Magazine (2007), "... the earliest known examples [of tattoos] were for a long time Egyptian and were present on several female mummies dated to c. 2000 B.C. But following the more recent discovery of [Otzi the Iceman] from the area of the Italian-Austrian border in 1991 and his tattoo patterns, this date has been pushed back a further thousand years when he was carbon-dated at around 5,200 years old."

Otzi had 61 tattoos, apparently. Whether these are still the oldest known tattoos remains to be seen:

"Although Ötzi is the oldest tattooed human ... this will likely change: Ötzi’s tattoos are indicative of social and/or therapeutic practices that predate him, and future archaeological finds and new techniques should someday lead to even older evidence of tattooed mummies." Source: Smithsonian (2015).

"Some tribal cultures traditionally created tattoos by cutting designs into the skin and rubbing the resulting wound with ink, ashes or other agents; some cultures continue this practice, which may be an adjunct to scarification. Some cultures create tattooed marks by hand-tapping the ink into the skin [next video] using sharpened sticks or animal bones (made like needles) with clay formed disks or, in modern times, needles." Source: Wikipedia.

Otzi the Iceman's tattoos may have been a form of acupuncture. According to the International Business Times (2015), "eighty per cent of [Otzi's] tattoos had been found along acupuncture meridians used to treat back pain and abdominal problems, which Otzi suffered from ... If correct, the tattoos would predate the first recorded use of acupuncture in China by 2,000 years."

"Pre-Christian Germanic, Celtic and other central and northern European tribes were often heavily tattooed, according to surviving accounts, but it may also have been normal paint. The Picts may have been tattooed (or scarified) with elaborate, war-inspired black or dark blue woad (or possibly copper for the blue tone) designs. Julius Caesar described these tattoos in Book V of his Gallic Wars (54 BC). Nevertheless, these may have been painted markings rather than tattoos." Source: Wikipedia.

Note: According to Caesar, "All the Britons dye their body with woad, which produces a blue color, and shave the whole of their bodies except the head and upper lip." (The Conquest of Gaul, Book V.14)

In Greece and Rome, tattoos were mostly used for identification purposes -- much like brands on cattle -- but this changed over the centuries, at least among certain classes of society:

"... amongst the Greeks and Romans, the use of tattoos or 'stigmata' as they were then called, seems to have been largely used as a means to mark someone as 'belonging' either to a religious sect or to an owner in the case of slaves or even as a punitive measure to mark them as criminals. It is therefore quite intriguing that during Ptolemaic times when a dynasty of Macedonian Greek monarchs ruled Egypt, the pharaoh himself, Ptolemy IV (221-205 B.C.), was said to have been tattooed with ivy leaves to symbolize his devotion to Dionysus, Greek god of wine and the patron deity of the royal house at that time. The fashion was also adopted by Roman soldiers and spread across the Roman Empire until the emergence of Christianity, when tattoos were felt to 'disfigure that made in God's image' and so were banned by the Emperor Constantine (A.D. 306-373)." Source: Smithsonian Magazine.

Closed-captions helpful.

Comment: Tattoos, piercings and scarification are usually associated with barbarian tribes and the lower orders of society. In the classical world, tattooing as a decorative art seems to have been practiced mostly by the more primitive cultures of Europe, Asia and the Orient. In a way, the popularity of tattoos in any given culture could be seen as an indicator of that culture's social development. The more barbaric the culture, the more tattoos. There also seems to have been an inverse relationship between tattoos and social status. In Greece and Rome, for instance, soldiers, slaves, criminals and some priests and acolytes were frequently tattooed, but I'd be amazed to find out that someone like Tacitus had a tramp stamp.

Tattooing seems to become more widespread in civilizations on their way down.  For instance, "the decline of the Ptolemaic dynasty began under the reign of Ptolemy IV," the tattooed Egyptian pharaoh, according to Wikipedia. This is just a theory, but I'd say that the rising popularity of tattoos is a symptom of cultural decay. For example, I don't think it's an accident that the use of tattoos "spread across the Roman Empire until the emergence of Christianity" or that tattoos are becoming a cultural norm in modern Europe and the United States. I guess you could call this the Tattoo Theory of Social Collapse. As a civilization declines into the Third World, more and more people start to cover themselves with body art. I have no idea why this would happen, but maybe the masses are responding in an unconscious way to the barbarism that is slowly engulfing them.

Or maybe it's just a form of masochism.

Sex In A World Of Fear: Scared Rodents Produce More Offspring

"Rodent mothers produce more offspring after smelling odors produced by frightened males. This is reported by a team of biologists from Finland and the Netherlands and bring new information the proximate and ultimate explanations of small mammal behavioral responses." Source: Phys.org (2018).

"Fear of being eaten has the power to shape populations and drive evolution. The effect the authors report is large: exposed mothers produce litters with about fifty percent more pups compared to unexposed control mothers."

Comment: If the rat population can grow so explosively in places like India where they're venerated, I hate to think how quickly they reproduce when living in a state of fear. Rats, of course, are considered to be vermin in the West but they're actually nothing to be afraid of according to the noted English rat expert, James Herbert.