Ancient World Review

The Cult Of Cybele: Mother Of The Gods

"A 2,100-year-old marble statue of Cybele, an ancient Phrygian mother goddess, has been unearthed in excavations in northwestern Turkish province of Ordu [Greek Kotyora] located on the Black Sea coast." Source: Archaeology News Network (2016).

Notes: Cybele may have evolved from an even older fertility goddess in the proto-city of Catalhoyuk (7500-5700 BC), also located in ancient Anatolia. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), Cybele was "the great mother-goddess of Anatolia, associated in myth, and later at least in cult, with her youthful lover Attis. Pessinus in Phyrgia was her chief sanctuary, and the cult appears at an early date in Lydia."

According to Theoi Greek Mythology, "Kybele (Cybele) was the ancient Phrygian Mother of the Gods, a primal nature goddess worshiped with orgiastic rites in the mountains of central and western Anatolia. The Greeks identified her with their own mother of the gods--the Titaness Rhea."

The cult of Cybele was apparently introduced fairly early (3rd cent. BC) in Rome. "Thanks to its official status and early naturalization in Rome and in Ostia, the cult spread rapidly through the provinces, especially in Gaul and Africa, and was readily accepted as a municipal cult. Its agrarian character made it more popular with the fixed populations than with the soldiers, and it was especially favored by women." (OCD)

Cybele was also known as the Magna Mater or Great Mother (1). According to The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Ancient Texts, edited by Marvin W. Meyer (p.113), "she was honored as the mother goddess of fertility, but her particular power was evidenced in the wilds of the untamed forests and mountains." After Cybele entered the official Roman pantheon, "she was to function practically as a Roman national goddess" and enjoyed great favor with the emperors starting with Claudius in the first century.

(1) Several other goddesses were also referred to as "Great Mother."

"The most well-known Roman festival in honor of the Anatolian deities [Cybele and her consort Attis] was celebrated in the spring, during March," according to The Ancient Mysteries (p.114). These rites were associated with violent religious frenzy. "March 24 was aptly named The Day of Blood. On this day some of the fanatical celebrants flogged themselves until they bled and sprinkled their blood upon the image and altars in the sanctuary, while others are said to have imitated Attis by castrating themselves." (Ibid) Bulls were also sacrificed in honor of the Great Mother of the Gods.

Several Roman historians and poets described the cult of Cybele in detail. Livy, for instance, described how the cult was first brought to Rome in his History of Rome (Book 29.10-14):

"About this time a sudden wave of superstition swept over Rome. The Sibylline Books had been consulted because it had rained stones that year more than usual [!], and in the Books a prophecy was found that if ever a foreign enemy should invade Italy, he could be defeated and driven out if Cybele, The Idaean Mother of the Gods, were brought from Pessinus to Rome." (Ibid, p. 121).

Christian writers denounced the cult of Cybele and the church banned it altogether when they gained the secular power required to force their intolerant monotheism on the pagan world, but the tradition of the Great Mother still survives in the figure of the Virgin Mary.

2500-Yr-Old Scythian Warrior Grave Discovered In Siberia's "Valley Of The Kings"

Video from 2017.

"The 2,500-year-old tomb of a Scythian warrior has been found in the ‘Siberian Valley of the Kings’ in Russia." Source: Archaeology News Network.

"Buried with his weapon and golden ornaments, the warrior discovered by archaeologists from Jagiellonian University in Krakow was found in an untouched grave in an area known for both its rich burial sites and notorious grave-robbing."

The Valley of the Kings is located in the Russian republic of Tuva, an area with a deep barbarian history:

"The territory currently known as Tuva has been occupied by various groups throughout its history. Sources are rare and unclear for most of Tuva's early history. Archeological evidence indicates a Scythian presence possibly as early as the 9th century BC. Tuva was conquered relatively easily by the succession of empires which swept across the region. It was most likely held by various Turkic khanates until 1207. It was then ruled by Mongols until the 18th century, when it submitted to Manchu rule under the Qing dynasty. Slow Russian colonization during the 19th century led to progressive annexation of the region to Russia in the 20th century." (Wikipedia)

"...Archeological finds indicate a long occupation of what is now Tuva. Tombs have been found dating back as far as the late Paleolithic Era. Probably the most spectacular Scythian finds known to archaeologists have been discovered in northern Tuva near Arzhaan. Dating to between the 7th and 9th centuries BC they are also among the earliest known, as well as the easternmost."

Next video (2011) gives a good overview of the general region.

Related: Focus on Tuva: Stunning treasures -- and macabre slaughter -- in Siberia's Valley of the Kings (2016).

Groundbreaking DNA Study Reveals Ancient Egyptians Were Indo-European (2017)

"The tombs of ancient Egypt have yielded golden collars and ivory bracelets, but another treasure — human DNA — has proved elusive. Now, scientists have captured sweeping genomic information from Egyptian mummies. It reveals that mummies were closely related to ancient Middle Easterners, hinting that northern Africans might have different genetic roots from people south of the Sahara desert." Source: Nature (2017).

This is huge news. The opening paragraph in this Nature article is worded very carefully, but if you keep reading, the story of who the ancient Egyptians were and where they originated comes into sharp focus. We now have solid evidence that the ancient Egyptians were Indo-Europeans, not sub-Saharan Africans:

"Both types of genomic material showed that ancient Egyptians shared little DNA with modern sub-Saharan Africans. Instead, their closest relatives were people living during the Neolithic and Bronze ages in an area known as the Levant. Strikingly, the mummies were more closely related to ancient Europeans and Anatolians than to modern Egyptians." (Emphasis added)

Note: "The Anatolians were a group of distinct Indo-European peoples who spoke the Anatolian languages and shared a common culture," according to Wikipedia.

This study is truly groundbreaking. The Afrocentrists won't like it so they'll probably ignore it altogether, but no one has ever taken their heavily politicized Black Egypt mythology seriously. Afrocentrists have never seemed to be able to grasp the concept that "Africa" doesn't mean "black." North Africa was always part of the Mediterranean world. The Sahara desert formed a natural barrier that basically divided the continent in two, both geographically and genetically. 

Modern Egyptians do have some black African ancestry, but the mixture appears to have occurred fairly recently. According to the researchers who conducted this latest DNA study, "there was probably a pulse of sub-Saharan African DNA into Egypt roughly 700 years ago. The mixing of ancient Egyptians and Africans from further south means that modern Egyptians can trace 8% more of their ancestry to sub-Saharan Africans than can the mummies from Abusir el-Meleq."

Note: I might be wrong about this, but I think Abusir el-Meleq is ancient Bousiris, aka Abusir (?), the location of a large necropolis where the mummies used in this DNA study were discovered.

Another important result of this study is that it reveals where the ancient Egyptians came from originally and by extension gives us a general picture of how north Africa was settled. Neolithic and Bronze Age people from southwest Asia, the Anatolian peninsula, eastern Europe and the region around the Black Sea migrated down along the Mediterranean coastline into north Africa and apparently settled throughout the area between the Med and the Sahara desert. At one time the region was green and lush, but desertification forced them to concentrate in the Nile Valley where they laid the foundations of the Old Kingdom.

These people were Indo-Europeans or Proto-Indo-Europeans, the ancestors of the Hittites, the Mycenaeans, the Corded Ware Culture in western Europe, the Yamna culture in Central Asia and the Afanasevo culture in southern Siberia. (Wikipedia)

This study is being described as a first, but I'm not sure that's completely accurate. Years ago a DNA study was conducted on the mummy of King Tut which may have confirmed his European ancestry. As far as I know the full study was never released, though several reports claimed that Tut's DNA showed that he was "disabled, malarial and inbred." The Egyptian government apparently suppressed the full test results, but iGENEA, a Swiss genomics company, "started a Tutankhamen DNA project based on what [they said were] genetic markers that appeared on a computer screen during a Discovery Channel special on the famous pharaoh's genetic lineage," according to a 2011 Live Science story which dismissed the project as "unscientific".

According to iGENEA, King Tut belongs to haplogroup R1b1a2 which "arose about 9.500 years ago in the surrounding area of the Black Sea. The migration of this haplogroup into Europe started at the earliest with the spread of agriculture since 7.000 BC. It is very probable that it is also connected to the Indoeuropeans who spread over Europe a little later in several waves of migrations."

That sounds pretty accurate. Maybe the iGENEA study was unscientific, but in light of these new DNA results they may have been right after all, at least in general.

Comment: Many of the sources I've read about this story use semantic tricks in their lead paragraphs to soften the impact of the DNA results. For example, Science Daily concludes its opening summary of the research with the sentence "[t]he study found that modern Egyptians share more ancestry with Sub-Saharan Africans than ancient Egyptians did." Technically, that's true, but the sentence is deliberately worded to obscure the most important finding. To get the full picture you have to dig deeper into the article, but that's typical with subjects which have become contaminated with modern identity politics. I have a feeling that this news won't get a lot of exposure in the modern indoctrination camps that still try to pass themselves off as universities.

Researchers Determine Age Of Last Known Homo Erectus Settlement

"An international team of researchers has determined the age of the last known settlement of the species Homo erectus, one of modern humans' direct ancestors. The site is called Ngandong, on the Indonesian island Java. The team dated animal fragments where Homo erectus remains were found and the surrounding landscape. The team determined the last existence of Homo erectus at Ngandong between 108,000 and 117,000 years ago." Source: Science Daily.

Note: Technically, these remains belong to a subspecies of Homo Erectus called Solo Man:

"Solo Man (Homo erectus soloensis) is a subspecies of Homo erectus, identified based on fossil evidence of 18 specimens discovered between 1931 and 1933 by Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald from sites along the Solo River, on the Indonesian island of Java, dated to between 550,000 and 108,000 years old. The remains are also commonly referred to as Ngandong ... after the village near where they were first recovered, and older remains located at Bapang."

Video from 2014.

Humans Migrated To Mongolia Earlier Than Previously Believed

Video from 2018.

"Stone tools uncovered in Mongolia by an international team of archaeologists indicate that modern humans traveled across the Eurasian steppe about 45,000 years ago, according to a new University of California, Davis, study. The date is about 10,000 years earlier than archaeologists previously believed." Source: Science Daily.

"The site also points to a new location for where modern humans may have first encountered their mysterious cousins, the now extinct Denisovans, said Nicolas Zwyns, an associate professor of anthropology and lead author of the study."

Video from 2013.

In The Footsteps Of Zuanzang In Kyrgyzstan

The rest of this 12-part series can be found here.

"At the start of the Tang dynasty, in the early 7th century, a young wandering monk embarked on a 16-year long voyage from the imperial capital Chang’an (today’s Xian) to India to collect Buddhist manuscripts. At the time Chang’an was six times bigger than Rome at its height, with a population of over one million – the epicenter of Asian civilization." Source: UNZ Review.

3D animation of ancient Chang'an.

"History ended up converting Xuanzang into a legend and a national hero in China – although in the West he would never reach Marco Polo levels of popularity.

"Xuanzang had embarked on a quest that still resonates today. He wanted to know whether all men – or just an enlightened few – could attain Buddhahood. There was only one way to find out: ride all the way to India and bring back Sanskrit texts to China, especially from the Yogacara school of Buddhism, which professed that the outside world did not exist: it was merely a projection of one’s consciousness."

Related: The China History Podcast: Buddhism Zuanzang and the Silk Road (2014).

The Sky Caves Of Nepal

"Mustang Caves or Sky Caves of Nepal are a collection of some 10,000 man-made caves dug into the sides of valleys in the Mustang District of Nepal. Several groups of archaeologists and researchers have explored these stacked caves and found partially mummified human bodies and skeletons that are at least 2,000–3,000 years old. Explorations of these caves by conservators and archaeologists have also led to the discovery of valuable Buddhist paintings, sculptures, manuscripts and numerous artifacts belonging to the 12th to 14th century. The caves lie on the steep valley walls near the Kali Gandaki River in Upper Mustang. Research groups have continued to investigate these caves, but no one has yet understood who built the caves and why were they built.^" Source: Wikipedia.

Note: Back in 2011, National Geographic announced that "The remains of 27 ancient men, women, and children" had been discovered in these caves. Several of the bodies had been defleshed and "many of the bones bear cut marks that point to a previously unknown Himalayan death ritual." Defleshing or excarnation "refers to the practice of removing the flesh and organs of the dead before burial, leaving only the bones." (Wikipedia)

According to Mental Floss (2016), "[s]cientists recently sequenced the whole genomes of eight individuals found in these ancient chambers, revealing the secrets of the first inhabitants of the Himalayas." The DNA analysis revealed that "the first inhabitants of the Himalayas came down from the north, from East Asian populations of the Tibetan plateau. Their genetic profile most closely resembles modern-day Sherpa and Tibetan populations."

Video from 2011.

Greek & Roman Shipwrecks In The Black Sea

"The Black Sea is considered to be one of the world’s finest underwater laboratories due to the anoxic (un-oxygenated) layer which preserves artefacts better than any other marine environment." Source: Black Sea Marine Archaeology Project. The sea bottom is a museum full of ancient shipwrecks from all over Europe, Asia and the Near East, as well as submerged artefacts and shorelines dating back to prehistoric times:

"Ancient trade routes in the [Black Sea] are currently being extensively studied by scientists, as the Black Sea was sailed by Hittites, Carians, Colchians, Thracians, Greeks, Persians, Cimmerians, Scythians, Romans, Byzantines, Goths, Huns, Avars, Slavs, Varangians, Crusaders, Venetians, Genoese, Georgians, Tatars and Ottomans." (Wikipedia)

"Perhaps the most promising areas in deepwater archaeology are the quest for submerged prehistoric settlements in the continental shelf and for ancient shipwrecks in the anoxic zone, which are expected to be exceptionally well preserved due to the absence of oxygen. This concentration of historical powers, combined with the preservative qualities of the deep anoxic waters of the Black Sea, has attracted increased interest from marine archaeologists who have begun to discover a large number of ancient ships and organic remains in a high state of preservation."

Video from 2008.

World's Oldest Cave Art Uncovered In Indonesia

"A team of archaeologists led by Griffith University has discovered a cave painting in Indonesia that is at least 44,000 years old and which portrays a group of part-human, part-animal figures – ‘therianthropes’ [next video] – hunting large mammals with spears or ropes, casting new light on the origin of modern human cognition. As reported in Nature, this ancient painting from Sulawesi is our species’ oldest known rock art." Source: Archaeology News Network.

Video from 2018.

"... These therianthropes – human figures with animal characteristics – are portrayed in the act of killing or capturing six fleeing mammals, two Sulawesi warty pigs and four dwarf buffaloes known as anoas. The latter are small but fierce bovids that still inhabit the island’s dwindling forests. Remarkably, some figures appear to be using long ropes to capture these dangerous animals.

"This is the first time such a detailed visual narrative or ‘story’ has been identified at such an early period in the vast record of prehistoric cave art worldwide. The received wisdom [sic] is that humanity’s first rock art appeared in Europe and consisted of abstract symbols."

Note: "The oldest known cave painting is a red hand stencil in Maltravieso cave, Cáceres, Spain. It has been dated using the uranium-thorium method to older than 64,000 years and was made by a Neanderthal." (Wikipedia)

Mediterranean Shipwrecks: Knidos X & Y (2012)

Note: "Cnidus or Knidos (pronounced K-nee-dos) lies at the tip of a long finger of land projecting into the sea in the south-west corner of western Turkey. It was founded in around 360 BC on terraces built into ground that rises a 1, 000 feet from the sea to a towering fortified acropolis. The city was inhabited until late antiquity, when it was abandoned, probably as a result of repeated raids by pirates." Source: The British Museum

"Cnidus boasted two fine harbours, four theatres and other fine civic and sacred buildings, the most important of which were situated on the western edge, overlooking the sea and with a fine view of the island of Cos. The Cnidians exported their wine and other produce far and wide, but the city was chiefly famous for its statue of Aphrodite. This naked representation of the goddess of love was carved by the Athenian sculptor Praxiteles, celebrated for his ability to turn white marble into living flesh.