Boat burials in Valsgarde, Sweden. Video from 2015.
"In an Iron Age cemetery in what is now Sweden, two warriors who died during the seventh century A.D. were lavishly buried in boats with an unexpectedly luxurious touch: soft bedding stuffed with feathers, to gently cradle the deceased on their journey into the realm of the dead." Source: Live Science.
"The burial site at Valsgärde, a farm in Uppsala, Sweden, near the country's southeastern coast, holds 15 boat burials dating from the third century B.C. — perhaps even earlier — to the 12th century A.D."
Various helmets discovered at Valsgarde.
"Researchers recently investigated the unusual feathery content in two of the graves, known as Valsgärde 7 and Valsgärde 8. Both burials contained 'richly equipped boats' that were positioned with their sterns pointing toward the Fyrisån river, as though poised for the occupants' journey to the afterlife. Pillows from the boats, dated to around 1,400 years ago, are the oldest bedding-related artifacts in Scandinavia, according to a new study."
The burials also included helmets, swords, knives, shields, cooking and hunting tools. "Horses and birds in the graves further hinted at the warriors' high-ranking status, though one of the animals - a Eurasian eagle owl -- was missing its head. Its decapitation may have had ritual significance for the burial and the feathers filling the cushions may have been selected for the symbolic meaning..."
Publius Quinctilius Varus is a tragic figure remembered only because of his disastrous defeat in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (9 AD), aka the Varian Disaster and "Rome's greatest defeat." I wonder what he would have thought if he'd known he would gain immortality by committing such a gigantic blunder that it would end up being named after him? There are many paths to fame and screwing up big time is one of them.
According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), 3rd ed. revised, Varus came from a "patrician family that had been of no importance for centuries. He owed his career to the favor of Augustus," who probably regretted his choice later on when Varus lost three legions in the forests of Germany. According to Tacitus, many of the defeated Roman soldiers were enslaved or sacrificed to the Germanic gods. Not a good end to a legionary's career.
Varus has gone down in history for his monumental defeat in Germania, but he must have been a reasonably competent man to win the favor of a capable administrator like Augustus. Up until the debacle in the Teutoburg Forest, Varus had had a fairly distinguished career:
"Varus became proconsul of Africa (?7-6 BC), and then legate of Syria. When Judea revolted after the death of Herod the Great, he marched rapidly southwards and dealt firmly with the insurgents." (OCD)
"Next heard of as legate of the Rhine army [governor of Germania] in AD 9, Varus fell victim to geography and the German tribes' resistance to Roman rule:"
According to Livius, "Varus and the three legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX were somewhere near the river Weser (perhaps near modern Minden) when he learned of an insurrection in the west. He decided to return to the Rhine and make a detour through the rebellious area. The only road led through a small strip of accessible land; to the south, there were the inaccessible hills of the Teutoburg forest, and to the north, marshes made progress difficult. It was the perfect place to trap the heavy legionaries."
The terrain probably made it impossible for Varus to cover his flanks, but he seems to have assumed that he wouldn't have problems from the local Germanic tribes. As it turned out, this was a mistake:
"[He] was treacherously attacked in difficult country by Arminius [chief of the Cherusci], whom he had trusted. The Roman army was destroyed ... and Varus took his own life." (OCD)
Arminius apparently lured Varus into the trap by posing as a friend of Rome and informing him of the rebellion in the west. In a disgraceful act all too familiar from recent history, Augustus blamed Varus not only for the disaster, but for the failure of his entire policy in Germany:
"Varus was made the scapegoat for the signal failure of Augustus' whole German policy. He is alleged to have been grossly extortionate in Syria, torpid and incompetent in his German command." (OCD)
This just begs the question, of course. After all, if Varus was so incompetent and corrupt, why was he given command in Germania in the first place? In any case, the defeat had major repercussions for the Roman empire, which halted its attempts to conquer the Germans and limited its frontier to the Rhine, laying the foundations for many more calamities to come.
Conclusion: If you want to go down in history, you have to either achieve great things like Thomas Edison, kill someone important (like Lee Harvey Oswald), or, like Publius Quinctilius Varus, fail in such a spectacular fashion that your name lives on forever.
The Germania by the great Roman historian Tacitus is "a most dangerous book," according to the thought police in the Lugenpresse. Tacitus' description of the history and culture of the ancient Germanic tribes living outside the control of the Roman empire has become a kind of ethnologic bible in Germany and everybody knows that the Germans can't be allowed to have a sense of national pride and identity. For instance, the Harvard Gazette (2008) said that Tacitus "helped to fuel Nazi propaganda" and the New York Times (2011) claimed that the book "was exactly what nationalists had been waiting for." And many other "journalists" agree:
"Perhaps the most fateful decision in all of European history was made by Augustus Caesar, when he chose to fix the border of the Roman Empire at the Rhine. As a result, the region known to the Romans as Germania would go without the products of Roman civilization (1) —good roads and big cities and the Latin language and Christianity (2). But it would also remain vigorous and untamed enough to threaten Roman power, and finally destroy it in the fifth century A.D." Source: "Ideas Are Viruses - How Tacitus' Germania Became the Bible of German Nationalism," Slate.com (2011)
Comment: This is all crap, of course, not to mention the fact that it's obvious anti-German propaganda. The paranoia about Tacitus' history of Germania is the kind of stuff you would expect from these particular sources, however. (See the footnotes below for some of the problems with the arguments in the Slate article.)
Tacitus was the greatest historian ancient Rome ever produced. His primary concern in all of his writings was to analyze and expose the corruption of the Roman state under the emperors.
According to Moses Hadas, in his introduction to the 1942 Modern Library edition of the complete works of Tacitus (p. xii), "[i]t is a temptation to which many have succumbed to look upon the Germania as a sort of Utopia, a conscious idealization of a primitive and unspoiled people calculated to chasten and reform the decadent Romans. This view is justified in the degree that a strong moralizing strain runs through all Tacitus' work. It has been wittily remarked that no one in Tacitus is good except Agricola [his father-in-law] and the Germans."
Concerning the problems with the Slate article:
(1) The writer seems to think that the savage Germans would have become more civilized if they had been conquered by the Romans. It's hard to understand how the warlike Germans would have become less warlike by exposure to the warlike Roman culture, but it hardly matters because the author of this Slate article has his facts all wrong. In reality, the Germans were exposed to Roman civilization and learned Roman methods of warfare from them, among other things.
Many Germans served in the legions. In one notable example, Arminius, the commander of the German tribes who wiped out three Roman legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9AD, had served in the Roman military and was apparently a Roman citizen. The Romans needed mercenary forces and, like modern Americans, they ended up providing weapons and training to some of their worst enemies.
(2) - The author of the Slate piece also got it wrong when he said that Germania wasn't exposed to Christianity. The Germans described by Tacitus were still pagans, but by the time of the invasions, many of the invading tribes were Christians, though of a "heretical" variety. The Visigoths who sacked Rome, for instance, were Arian Christians:
"Being Arian Christians, the Visigoths respected Christian sites and treasures. According to one story, a group of them refused to steal rich gold and silver vessels when told that they belonged to St Peter and on Alaric’s orders the sacred objects were carried safely through the streets to St Peter’s Church, respectfully accompanied by a throng of Christian citizens who were only too glad to find sanctuary there themselves. St Augustine told this story in City of God to help rebut allegations by pagans that the sack of Rome was the fault of the Christians, who had enraged the city’s pagan gods." Source: History Today (2010)
I have no idea how true these stories are, but I really doubt if Christians in Rome ever "respectfully" marched through the city with the invading Visigoths or that the invaders "refused to steal rich gold and silver vessels." St. Augustine is a suspect source, to say the least, and he obviously had an agenda in presenting the Visigoths as being respectful of Christian fetishes.
The "barbarians" were Christians, but their religion didn't have any effect on their warlike behavior. That's not too surprising, however. Even if they had been completely "orthodox," there is absolutely no evidence in history that Christianity has ever made people more gentle or nations more peaceful.
Getting back to Tacitus, it's disingenuous for modern writers to blame him in any way for the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Ethnic nationalism - a sense of common tribal or racial identity - has been a common feature of all countries throughout history. Besides, even if Tacitus did idealize his pagan subjects to a certain extent in order to contrast them with the decadent Romans there's no evidence that I'm aware of that his information on the Germanic tribes is intentionally inaccurate.
According to Moses Hadas again, "More than six hundred items of information are recorded [in the Germania], of a credibility, to be sure, varying with that of Tacitus' sources. The sources were undoubtedly the best available, and included eye-witness accounts as well as written material, and Tacitus was a conscientious workman."
Modern Germans have every right to be proud of their ancestors.
"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.
"Scythian-era people lived across Eurasia from about 700 BCE to 200 BCE, and have long been considered highly mobile warriors who ranged widely across the steppe grasslands. Herodotus describes Scythian populations as living in wagons and engaging in raiding and warfare, and this view has persisted throughout history -- supported by archeologists' observations of similar styles of horse harnesses, weapons, burial mounds and animal style motifs throughout what is now Ukraine." Source: Science Daily.
According to new research, the Scythians may not have been as nomadic as previously believed:
"'Our study demonstrates overall low levels of human mobility in the vicinity of key urban locales of the Scythian era, in contrast to previous stereotypes of highly nomadic populations,' said Alicia Ventresca Miller, lead author of the study... 'While long-distance mobility increased during the Scythian era relative to preceding periods, it was limited to a small percentage of individuals.'"
Note: I have no idea how conclusive any of this is, but the study was highly sophisticated, using techniques developed in the field of bioarchaeology. The researchers "took samples of bone and tooth enamel from 56 human skeletons at three burial sites ... in modern-day Ukraine. The team examined these samples using isotope analysis [next video]. This kind of analysis examines isotopes of elements -- in this study, strontium, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon -- deposited in human tissues through eating and drinking. This allows researchers to determine where an individual traveled and lived based on the unique isotope composition in their tissue."
"Discovered in 1944, this tomb dates from the Hellenistic period, around the end of the 4th century BC. It is located near Seutopolis, the capital city of the Thracian king Seutes III, and is part of a large Thracian necropolis." Source: UNESCO World Heritage List.
Note: The tomb "comprises a narrow corridor and a round burial chamber, both decorated with murals representing a Thracian couple at a ritual funeral feast. The monument dates back to the 4th century BCE and has been on the UNESCO protected World Heritage Site list since 1979. The murals are memorable for the splendid horses and for a gesture of farewell, in which the seated couple grasp each other's wrists in a moment of tenderness and equality (according to Lyudmila Zhivkova—a view that is not shared by all specialists). The paintings are Bulgaria's best-preserved artistic masterpieces from the Hellenistic period." (Wikipedia)
The tomb itself is closed to the public, but a full-scale replica has been constructed nearby [next video].
Video may have some inaccuracies. Subtitles need proofreading.
"'Bosporus, the Cimmerian,' another name for the strait of Kerch which connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov, was the center of the major kingdom of Bosporus in what is now Ukraine. The kingdom was ruled by the Greek Spartocids from around 438 BC until it came under the control of the new Pontic Empire under Mithridates. The whole area later fell under the control of the Romans." Source: Oxford Classical Dictionary, OCD, 3rd ed. revised.
The Greek/Cimmerian Bosporan Kingdom is deep barbarian territory and the ancient history of the region is suitably tumultuous and confusing. The Cimmerians themselves apparently lived in the region back in the 7th or 8th centuries BC, but their original homeland is still obscure and they were apparently defeated by the Scythians:
"...prevailing opinion among the ancients was that the Cimmerians had once inhabited the steppes on the northern shore of the Black Sea. The first surviving evidence of this view is found in the poem Arimaspaea by Aristeas of Proconnesus (ca. 550 b.c.e.), in which the Scythians are said to have driven the Cimmerians from their country in southern Russia..." Source: Encyclopedia Iranica.
Linguistically, the Cimmerians could have been Scythians themselves, or Iranians; it all seems to depend on which source you read.
"Some authorities identify [the Cimmerians] with 'Thraco-Cimmerian' remains of the 8th–7th century BC found in the southwestern Ukraine and in central Europe; these may perhaps be looked upon as traces of the western branch of the Cimmerians, who, under fresh Scythian pressure, eventually invaded the Hungarian plain and survived there until about 500 BC." Source: Encyclopedia Britannica.
Fittingly enough, Thraco-Cimmerian artefacts seem to consist mostly of "grave goods and hoards."
The most famous Cimmerian, of course, is Conan the Barbarian, but the Cimmerians as created by the great Robert E. Howard are a fictional race living in a mythological world of his own invention which was based very loosely on actual history:
"North of Aquilonia, the western-most Hyborian kingdom, are the Cimmerians, ferocious savages, untamed by the invaders, but advancing rapidly because of contact with them; they are the descendants of the Atlanteans, now progressing more steadily than their old enemies the Picts, who dwell in the wilderness west of Aquilonia." -- The Hyborian Age, Robert E. Howard.
"The Cimmerians are known from several Assyrian texts, which call them Ga-mir or Gi-mir-a-a. In the Assyrian language, the last name means something like 'people traveling back and forth' and seems to be the less adequate of the two renderings of the Cimmerians' Indo-European name, but it describes their way of life excellently, because they were nomads. The Cimmerians were closely related and are archaeologically almost identical to the Scythians, who may have expelled them from their home country." Source: Livius.
The Cimmerians appear to have been a warlike, aggressive people, but they weren't a force for very long. According to Wikipedia, their homeland, Gamirr, was first mentioned by the Assyrian king Sargon II around 721-715 BC. They destroyed the Anatolian kingdom of Phrygia in 695 and again in 676-674 and were eventually defeated in 637-626 by Alyattes II, the king of Lydia, after decades of battles, sacks, invasions, short-lived occupations and general mayhem.
The Cimmerians, aka the Cimmerri, had a meteoric rise and fall, but they made their mark on history. According to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, they were "an ancient people of the far north or west of Europe, first spoken of by Homer (Odyssey, xi. 12–19), who describes them as living in perpetual darkness. Herodotus (iv. 11–13), in his account of Scythia, regards them as the early inhabitants of South Russia (after whom the Bosporus Cimmerius [q.v.] and other places were named), driven by the Scyths along by the Caucasus into Asia Minor, where they maintained themselves for a century."
The Cimmerian's push for conquest and expansion only lasted for about a hundred years, but that's not a bad record considering the chaos and constant turmoil in the region back then.
Today is "Christmas," whatever that means. The word comes from the Middle English Christemasse, which is turn comes from the Old English Christes-messe or "Christ's Mass," but it's unclear what the word "mass" actually means here. These days it usually refers to the Eucharist (Holy Communion) and the Catholic mass, but it may have had a different meaning when the first Christmas was celebrated in Rome in 336 AD:
"The English noun mass is derived from Middle Latinmissa. The Latin word was adopted in Old English as mæsse (via a Vulgar Latin form messa), and was sometimes glossed as sendnes (i.e. 'a sending, dismission'). The Latin term missa itself was in use by the 6th century. It is most likely derived from the concluding formula Ite, missa est ('Go; the dismissal is made'); missa here is a Late Latin substantive corresponding to classical missio." (Wikipedia)
If this is correct, the word "Christmas" means something more like "Christ's Dismissal" or "Christ's Sending," which may refer to the dismissal or "sending out into the world" of the congregation after the service. Various other explanations have been proposed, but the original meaning of "Christmas" -- like the origin of Christianity itself -- is still kind of hazy.
One thing that isn't hazy is why we celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 (Gregorian Calendar) even though nobody has the slightest idea when Jesus was born. The date was first adopted by the Western Christian Church, sometime during the first half of the fourth century, because the early church needed to compete with important pagan festivals like the celebration of the winter solstice.
Christmas is a classic example of how the early church Christianized the pagan West by taking over its traditions.
"The Christian ecclesiastical calendar contains many remnants of pre-Christian festivals. Christmas includes elements of the Roman feast of the Saturnalia and the birthday of Mithra. The Chronography of 354 AD contains early evidence of the celebration on December 25 of a Christian liturgical feast of the birth of Jesus. This was in Rome, while in Eastern Christianity the birth of Jesus was already celebrated in connection with the Epiphany on January 6." Source: Wikipedia.
Christmas traditions have deep roots in the ancient pagan world. Take the Christmas tree, for instance. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "The use of evergreen trees, wreaths, and garlands to symbolize eternal life was a custom of the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Hebrews. Tree worship was common among the pagan Europeans and survived their conversion to Christianity in the Scandinavian customs of decorating the house and barn with evergreens at the New Year to scare away the Devil and of setting up a tree for the birds during Christmastime. It survived further in the custom, also observed in Germany, of placing a Yule (1) tree at an entrance or inside the house during the midwinter holidays."
In Rome, the period of the winter solstice brought the seven days of the Saturnalia. "Saturn’s great festival, the Saturnalia, became the most popular of Roman festivals, and its influence is still felt in the celebration of Christmas and the Western world’s New Year." (Encyclopedia Britannica).
"The Saturnalia was the most popular holiday of the Roman year," according to the University of Chicago. Catullus describes it as 'the best of days' ... and Seneca complains that the 'whole mob has let itself go in pleasures" ... Pliny the Younger writes that he retired to his room while the rest of the household celebrated ... It was an occasion for celebration, visits to friends, and the presentation of gifts, particularly wax candles ... perhaps to signify the returning light after the solstice, and sigillaria [figurines given as traditional presents]."
Everything in Rome came to a stop during the Saturnalia, a festival of licentiousness and role reversals, among other things. According to History Extra, "We say that during Christmas today the whole world shuts down – the same thing happened during the Saturnalia. There were sometimes plots to overthrow the government, because people were distracted – the famous conspirator Cataline had planned to murder the Senate and set the city on fire during the holiday, but his plan was uncovered and stopped by Cicero in 63 BC."
Some Christians see the Saturnalia (and, by extension, Christmas itself) as satanic, which isn't too surprising since Christianity demonized all of the old pagan gods while simultaneously hijacking many of their traditions for their own purposes. In one case, that of Mithra (Mithras) -- the early church's main competitor -- the Christians may have appropriated a pagan god so completely that some have argued that Christ is Mithra in another form.
The identification of Mithra's birthday with Christmas is sketchy. While many sources claim that the god was born on Dec. 25, other sources say that this isn't true and the story seems to be a much later invention. According to Wikipedia, for instance, "It is often stated that Mithras was thought to have been born on December 25. But Beck states that this is not the case. In fact he calls this assertion 'that hoariest of 'facts'. He continues: 'In truth, the only evidence for it is the celebration of the birthday of Invictus on that date in the Calendar of Philocalus. Invictus is of course Sol Invictus, Aurelian's sun god. It does not follow that a different, earlier, and unofficial sun god, Sol Invictus Mithras, was necessarily or even probably, born on that day too.'"
Mithra was said to have been born from a rock (in one version of the story) According to The Mysteries of Mithra, by Franz Cumont (p 131), "the tradition ran that the 'Generative Rock,' of which a standing image was worshiped in the temples, had given birth to Mithra on the banks of a river, under the shade of a sacred tree, and that shepherds alone, ensconced in a neighboring mountain, had witnessed the miracle of his entrance into the world." Like the story of Jesus's birth, the presence of shepherds in the fields suggests that Mithra was born in the spring or summer, not in the dead of winter. Whatever the case, however, the Jesus/Mithra connection is persistent in popular culture:
One interesting fact about Mithraism is that it appeared in the Roman Empire around the same time that Christianity appeared and seems to have dropped out of sight around the same time that Nicene Christianity became the official state religion of Rome:
"The Roman deity Mithras appears in the historical record in the late 1st century A.D., and disappears from it in the late 4th century A.D.," according to The Tertullian Project. It's tempting to see this as circumstantial evidence that Christianity evolved out of Mithraism, but the truth is that all forms of pagan religion began to fade out after the church consolidated its power in the 4th century. Besides, very little is actually known about the teachings of Mithraism, an "organization of cells," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised), whose beliefs have to be reconstructed mostly from inscriptions.
None of this really matters, though. Mithras probably wasn't born on Dec. 25, but then neither was Jesus so what difference does it make? The connections between Christmas, ancient Yuletide celebrations and the Roman Saturnalia are clear, so if you're a pagan you might as well go ahead and celebrate Mithra's birthday today as well. Of course, this assumes that you see Christmas as a religious holiday in the first place. A lot of people don't:
"Most Americans celebrate Christmas, but its importance to people as a religious event continues to wane, according to a new survey by Pew Research." (News & Observer, 2017).
"The poll found that while 90 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, only 55 percent regard it as a religious holiday. Further, the survey found, a decreasing majority of Americans believe in the main elements of the Christmas story as told in the Bible: that Jesus was born of a virgin mother; that three magi came to visit, bearing gifts; that an angel announced the baby’s birth; and that the infant was cradled in a manger."
Christmas has become secularized and increasingly commercial, to say the least. The holiday has degenerated into a month-long orgy of rabid consumerism and mass insanity, a typical example of the decline of the modern world. (Next video from 2018)
I have mixed feelings about Christmas. I'm an atheist, I don't believe that Jesus existed and I think that Christianity was a disaster for the Roman Empire and the West in general, but I'm not one of those rabid anti-Christians who protest manger displays and fly into shrieking tantrums every time someone says "Merry Christmas." And while it's obvious that the early (Western) church made Dec. 25 Jesus's birthday in order to hijack a pagan festival, I'm not especially bothered by that fact. I don't get all offended about it and start foaming at the mouth.
I can't stand what Christmas has become, but the holiday is a Western tradition so even though I'm a complete heretic I support the open celebration of the holiday because the West and all of its values and institutions and traditions are under attack by politically-correct vermin. I'd rather see a return to our true pagan roots (something I don't think is possible, by the way), but given the choice between Christianity and, say, Islam or Cultural Marxism or, God forbid, modern neopaganism, I'll take Christianity any day even though I don't believe a word of it.
So Merry Christmas and if saying that offends somebody I couldn't care less.
"The Achaemenid Empire (c. 550–330 BC), also called the (First) Persian Empire, was an empire based in Western Asia, founded by Cyrus the Great. Ranging at its greatest extent from the Balkans and Eastern Europe proper in the west to the Indus Valley in the east, it was one of the largest empires in history, spanning 5.5 million square kilometers, and was larger than any previous empire in history." Source: Wikipedia.
The early history here is very murky and a lot of it seems to be based on one source: The Histories of Herodotus. Basically, Cyrus was a local monarch who revolted against the domination of the Median Empire. "According to the official story, the Achaemenid or Persian empire was founded by Cyrus the Great, who became king of Persis in 559 BCE and defeated his overlord Astyages of Media in 550." (Source: Livius.) Persis, aka Parsa or Persia, was the name of the region Cyrus controlled before he launched his rebellion.
According to the Ancient History Encyclopedia, "We are told that Cyrus was the grandson of Astyages (1) on his mother’s side, but that did not stop him wanting to shake off the Median yoke. By 552 BCE, he had formed the Persian tribes into a federation and begun a series of uprisings. When the inevitable showdown with his grandfather came in 550 BCE, the Medes mutinied and joined Cyrus to march on [the Median capital city of] Ecbatana.
"Cyrus took the title ‘Shah [‘King’] of Persia’ and built a capital on the site of his victory, which he called Pasargadae, after his tribe. Winning the Medes over had landed Cyrus with a vague, sprawling empire of countless different peoples ..." In other words, Cyrus was now in charge of an early multicultural empire which, like all multicultural empires, was highly unstable and could only be held together with force.
(1) Astyages was apparently the son of the Median king Cyaxeres. It's unclear if Astyages ever became king himself, but one way or another Cyrus was directly related to the royal family of the Medes. This is just another example of the old adage that revolutions usually come from the upper strata of society.
Next video is a lecture about the Cyrus Cylinder, written in the name of Cyrus after the conquest of Babylon. Actual lecture begins at app. 6:30.
The Achaemenid empire was only the first in a series of imperial dynasties described collectively as the "Persian Empire." The rise and fall of the Achaemenids was so complex and turbulent that I'm not even going to try to summarize it here. Different rulers came and went, many of them poisoning their previous overlords and rivals only to be poisoned in turn themselves. By the time Alexander the Great invaded Asia Minor around 330 BC, the last Achaemenid king, Darius III, had taken control of the empire and was trying to subdue Egypt (again). "In the ensuing chaos created by Alexander's invasion of Persia, Cyrus's tomb was broken into and most of its luxuries were looted," according to Wikipedia. Alexander was supposedly horrified by this desecration and ordered the tomb to be restored, but this may have been an act of political theater to help establish his control.
Just to put all of this into perspective, the Achaemenid empire, the largest empire in the world up until then, only lasted for around 220 years. That's about the same length of time that the United States -- "the greatest country in the world" -- has been in existence. Two-hundred and twenty years is about 9 generations, assuming 25 years per generation. For most of those people, the Achaemenid empire was their entire world and it probably seemed like it would last forever. And who knows how many brave patriots died for their glorious nation in the service of Cyrus and his successors? Looking back on it now, it's easy to see that the empire -- like all empires and nation states -- was just a transient power coalition based on violence, as ephemeral as the weather.
"Traces of violence on 1700 year old skeletons allow researchers to reconstruct warfare and sacrifices of nomads in Siberia. An international and interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, archaeologists and specialists in forensic sciences performed a detailed and revealing analysis of the traumas found on the skeletal remains." Source: Science Daily.
"Ancient historiographers described steppe nomads as violent people dedicated to warfare and plundering. Little archaeological and anthropological data are however available regarding violence in these communities during the early centuries CE. In a new study in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, an international team led by researchers from the University of Bern and the Russian Academy of Sciences presents new discoveries about the types of violence lived [sic] by nomads from Siberia between the 2nd-4th centuries CE."
Analyzing the remains found in a Siberian tomb known as Tunnug1 (located at Arzhan - "a site of early Scythiankurgan burials"), researchers discovered that Scythian culture -- during this period, at least -- was incredibly violent:
"The study demonstrates that 25% of the individuals died as a consequence of interpersonal violence, mostly related to hand-to-hand combat, often represented by traces of decapitation. Even though violence affected mostly men, also women and children were found among the victims. Some of the individuals from Tunnug1 show traces of throat-slitting and scalping. According to Marco Milella, first author of the study 'this suggests that violence was not only related to raids and battles, but probably also due to specific, still mysterious, rituals involving the killing of humans and the collection of war trophies.'"
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.
Posted at 07:00 AM in Art, Barbarians, Collapse, Commentary, Culture, Greece, Rome, Videos | Permalink