Ancient World Review

Merry Yule, Saturnalia & (Maybe) Mithra's Birthday

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 Latin missa. 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."

(1) "Yule or Yuletide ('Yule time' or 'Yule season') is a festival historically observed by the Germanic peoples. Scholars have connected the original celebrations of Yule to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin, and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Mōdraniht [Old English 'Night of the Mothers']. ." (Wikipedia)

"Later departing from its pagan roots, Yule underwent Christianised reformulation, resulting in the term Christmastide. Many present-day Christmas customs and traditions such as the Yule log, Yule goat [see next video], Yule boar, Yule singing, and others stem from pagan Yule traditions."

 Also see The Symbols of Yule.

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:

Related: Sol Invictus and Christmas

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). Note: this article is now hidden behind a paywall.

"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 Temple Of Isis In Pompeii

"The Temple of Isis is a Roman temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis. This small and almost intact temple was among one of the first discoveries during the excavation of Pompeii in 1764." (Wikipedia)

"... The preserved Pompeian temple is actually the second structure; the original building built during the reign of Augustus was damaged in an earlier earthquake of 62 AD. Seventeen years later with the massive volcanic eruption, the Iseum [Isis temple] alone was the sole temple to be completely rebuilt—ahead even of the Capitolium."

Next video shows the standing ruins of the temple as they appeared in 2009. All of its wall paintings and statues were apparently moved to the Archaeological Museum at Naples.

"The worship of Isis was [originally] treated with suspicion in official circles [in Rome] because of its associations with Ptolemaic Egypt," according to Pompeii: The Last Day by Paul Wilkinson (p.47). "After the annexation of Egypt by Augustus in 30 BC, however, attitudes relaxed and by AD 38 Rome itself had a Temple of Isis. The cult of Isis had its own full-time priests, whereas the more official Roman religions did not[??]."

More views of the temple (including the entrance to an underground ritual purification chamber) can be seen in the next video. Turn up the volume.

According to Pompeii: The Last Day (pp. 176-177), "The sanctuary around the Temple of Isis is enclosed by walls on its east and north sides. It adjoins the Samnite Gymnasium [1] to the west and the theaters to the south. Very little is left of the original temple because it had been almost completely destroyed by the earthquake of AD 62. It was completely rebuilt in interesting circumstances by Numerius Popidius Celsinus. He was a six-year-old child who was admitted into the ruling body of Pompeii, the collegium decurionum, as a reward for his generosity (his father having actually provided the finances)." [2]

[1] "In the 5th century BC, the Samnites conquered [Pompeii] (and all the other towns of Campania); the new rulers imposed their architecture and enlarged the town. After the Samnite Wars (4th century BC), Pompeii was forced to accept the status of socium of Rome, maintaining, however, linguistic and administrative autonomy. In the 4th century BC, it was fortified. Pompeii remained faithful to Rome during the Second Punic War." (Wikipedia)

[2] According to Wilkinson, Numerius Popidius Celsinus was the name of the six-year-old child, but other sources give this as the father's name. It's possible that they both had the same name, however. One of the temple inscriptions reads "'Numerius Popidius Celsinus, son of Numerius, rebuilt at his own expense from its foundations, the Temple of Isis, which had collapsed in an earthquake; because of his generosity, although he was only six years old, the town councilors nominated him into their number free of charge.'" Source: The Post Hole. The Latin and an English translation of the inscription can be found here.

Note: The video above is part of a longer lecture series on a variety of ancient history topics.

Isis was an important deity in Pompeii, probably because of the goddess's association with water:

"Because this temple served the Isis cult and was not a public civil space, the Temple of Isis, or Iseum, and Isis herself must have held special meaning and value for the city of Pompeii. Pompeii’s seafaring economy and the rise of personal religion in the Roman world may explain this high value. Since Pompeii relied on commercial seafaring to support its economy, Isis’s emphasis on stable and life-giving water defeating the often treacherous, unpredictable, and sometimes-deadly water of the sea, strengthened the local cult. The confluence of architecture, art, and rituals implies why the Pompeiians so highly valued a cult sanctuary – gentle Isis, offering resurrection and regulated water, provided a comforting counterbalance to unpredictable Neptune." (The Post Hole).

Related: The Temples of Pompeii

Oriental and Mystery Cults in Pompeii

1600-Year-Old Illuminated Manuscript Of The Aeneid Digitized & Put Online By The Vatican

"It’s fair to say that every period which has celebrated the literature of antiquity has held epic Roman poet Virgil in extremely high regard, and that was never more the case than during the early Christian and medieval eras." Source: Open Culture (2016).

"...We should keep the cult of Virgil, and of his epic poem The Aeneid, in mind as we survey the text you see represented here — an illuminated manuscript from Rome created sometime around the year 400 (view the full, digitized manuscript here). Beginning at the end of another great epic — The Iliad — Virgil’s long poem connects the world of Homer to his own through Aeneas and his companions, Trojan refugees and mythical founders of Rome. It is somewhat ironic that the Christian world came to venerate the poem for centuries — claiming that Virgil predicted the birth of Christ — since the Roman poet’s purpose ... was 'to see effected… a revival of faith in the old-time religion' — the old-time pagan religion, that is."

Note: The Aeneid was also a work of pro-Roman propaganda, which is one of the reasons why Augustus ordered it to be published after Virgil's death (as described in the next video).

Comment: This fantastic old manuscript must have been worth a small fortune when it was first written, and I can't imagine what it's worth today. As for the Aeneid itself, I read it several years ago and thought it was incredible. There's something luminous and primordial about the whole poem. There are several English translations available, but I can personally recommend the Robert Fitzgerald version. This is one of the greatest works of literature ever written.

A Brief History Of Hell (Updated)

The myth of Hell can be traced all the way back to the first civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, but I'm guessing that the concept of an "underworld of the dead" had its origins in the earliest funerary religions of the Stone Age. The dead were buried under the earth, so the land of the dead was also seen as being somewhere underground.

Hell wasn't called Hell in Mesopotamia and it wasn't a place of punishment for sinners. That's a much more modern idea. Originally, the place we call Hell was just a grim vision of the afterlife waiting for everyone. In other words, back around 3,000 BC or so, everybody went to "Hell" so I guess you could say that Hell was the original Heaven:

"The Sumerian afterlife was a dark, dreary cavern located deep below the ground, where inhabitants were believed to continue ^'a shadowy version of life on earth^'. This bleak domain was known as Kur, and was believed to be ruled by the goddess Ereshkigal. All souls went to the same afterlife, and a person's actions during life had no effect on how the person would be treated in the world to come." Source: Wikipedia.

Closed-captions helpful. Sort of.

The Old Testament Sheol, also known as Hades, is basically identical to the Mesopotamian Kur. According to Wikipedia, "Sheol is a place of darkness to which all the dead go, both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of the moral choices made in life, a place of stillness and darkness cut off from life and from God."

The concept of an underworld where sinners are punished after death seems to have evolved in ancient Egypt and Greece, but several different versions of the myth were floating around the Near East and Mediterranean world back then.

The Greeks, for instance, had a concept of the underworld (Hades) as a "deep, gloomy place" where everyone went after death, but the element of judgment was also present in their mythology. " In the Gorgias, Plato (c. 400 BC) wrote that souls were judged after death and those who received punishment were sent to Tartarus," a pit or cave in Hades that was used as a dungeon. (Wikipedia) "Tartarus is the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans."

The next clip is from the great 1997 miniseries, The Odyssey, with Armand Assante (highly recommended). It starts off with the scene where Odysseus travels to Hades to ask the blind prophet Tiresias how to get home. The Hades in this scene is more of an underworld of shades than a place of divine punishment.

Hades was not only a place, but the name of the god of the underworld. Originally, he appears to have been one of many anonymous chthonic deities and it was dangerous to mention his actual name:

"...Hades lacked a proper name; as in the case of other nameless chthonians, his anonymity was a precaution. He was referred to by descriptive circumlocutions as 'chthonian Zeus' ... 'the chthonian god,' 'king of those below,' 'Zeus of the departed' ... 'the other Zeus,' 'the god below,' or simply 'lord.' As the Lord of the Dead, he was dark and sinister, a god to be feared and kept at a distance." Source: Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised).

The history of Hell and its demons is too long and complex to describe in detail here, but our modern concept of Hell apparently originated with the Abrahamic religions, particularly Christianity. From what I've read, Judaism sees Hell as a state of shame and atonement rather than a physical place. The full-blown description of Hell as a literal pit of fire and brimstone and eternal torment seems to be an invention of the medieval Christian church. 

Interestingly enough, "[t]he Christian doctrine of hell derives from passages in the New Testament. The word hell does not appear in the Greek New Testament; instead one of three words is used: the Greek words Tartarus or Hades, or the Hebrew word Gehinnom (1)." So the Hell of the New Testament has clear roots in the underworld of the dead as described by the ancient Greeks and Mesopotamians.

(1) The word Gehinnom derives from Gehenna, a reference to the "Valley of Hinnom," a garbage dump outside of Jersualem where people burned their trash. According to Wikipedia, "[b]odies of those deemed to have died in sin without hope of salvation (such as people who committed suicide) were thrown there to be destroyed. Gehenna is used in the New Testament as a metaphor for the final place of punishment for the wicked after the resurrection."

The valley is said to be cursed because some of the early kings of Judah sacrificed children to Moloch there.

These days, a majority of Americans still believe in Hell and a 2007 Harris poll revealed that more Americans believe in a literal Hell and Devil than they do in the theory of evolution. Some Christian denominations reject the concept of Hell altogether, while others still embrace the literal version of Hell famously described by Jonathan Edwards in his notorious 1741 sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

The full text of this sermon is a classic well worth reading.

Back in 2018, Pope Francis created a storm of controversy when he supposedly said that Hell doesn't exist and that condemned souls just disappear, though it's possible that his actual words were misreported. If Francis doesn't believe in Hell, he apparently still believes in demons, however, because the Vatican announced in the same year that it would hold a "training course for priests in exorcism ... amid claims that demands for deliverance from demonic possession have greatly increased across the world."

Vikings Created Massive Rock Boat In Iceland Cave To Ward Off Ragnarok?

"Archaeologists have discovered the remains of rare artifacts from the Middle East in an Icelandic cave that the Vikings associated with Ragnarök, an end-times event in which the gods would be killed and the world engulfed in flames." Source: Live Science (April, 2021).

"The cave is located by a volcano that erupted almost 1,100 years ago. At the time of that eruption, the Vikings had recently colonized Iceland. 'The impacts of this eruption must have been unsettling, posing existential challenges for Iceland's newly arrived settlers,' a team of researchers wrote in a paper published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science. 

"Archaeological work shows that after the lava cooled, the Vikings entered the cave and constructed a boat-shaped structure made out of rocks. Within this structure, the Vikings would have burned animal bones, including those of sheep, goat, cattle, horses and pigs, at high temperatures as a sacrifice. This may have been done in an effort to avert Ragnarok."

The Roman Cult Of The Vestal Virgins

Video from 2013.

The cult of the Vestals was the heart of the Roman empire, the symbol of its life and future. It's importance to the state can be seen in the continual improvements made to the Atrium Vestae, the House of the Vestals:

"Researchers have carried out scientific analysis of the materials used to build the Atrium Vestae in Rome. They found that successive phases of modification to the building saw improvements, including higher quality raw materials, higher brick firing temperatures, and better ratios between carbonate and silicate building materials." Source: Science Daily (2019).

Video from 2011.

This whole area was sacred. "[The Atrium Vestae was] the house of the Vestal Virgins at the foot of the Palatine, just east of the forum proper. By the end of the republic this term had come to mean their dwelling-house, in which sense it is ordinarily used in extant literature ... but originally it included the whole precinct of Vesta ... This precinct contained the temple of Vesta, the dwelling of the Vestals, the sacred grove, and the Regia or house of the king. This group was called both Regia and atrium Vestae ... and regia Vestae." Source: University of Chicago.

The cult of Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth, home and family, "expressed and guaranteed Rome's permanence," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised). "...The sacral status of the six sacerdotes Vestales, the Vestal Virgins (the sole female priesthood in Rome), was manifested in many ways. Though they were required to maintain strict sexual purity during their minimum of 30 years' service, their dress alluded to matrons' wear, their hairstyle probably to a bride's."

Most Vestals came from senatorial families, reflecting their elite religious function. "Though they had many ceremonial roles, their main ritual tasks were the preparation of the grain mixed with salt for public sacrifices and the tending of Vesta's 'undying fire.' The extinction of the fire provided the prima-facie evidence that a Vestal was impure: impurity spelled danger to Rome."

When Rome was still Rome, the cult of the Vestals was taken seriously. The punishment for impurity was to be buried alive. According to the OCD, "the last known case of living entombment ... occurred under Domitian in AD? 89. The last known chief vestal is Coelia Concordia (AD 380); the cult was finally abandoned in 394."

The cult of the Vestals was abandoned 14 years after Nicene Christianity was established as the state church of the Roman empire. Perhaps more than any other change that took place during that time, the dissolution of the Vestals shows just how radically the new religion had transformed Roman culture. The sacred fire symbolized the permanence of Rome. In many ways, it was Rome. When the fire was extinguished by official decree Rome -- the real Rome -- had basically ceased to exist. It's future was gone. By 394, when the last chief Vestal stepped down from her post, Rome was already in serious trouble. Eighty-two years later, the empire officially collapsed in the West when the last Roman emperor was deposed by the barbarians.

Closing down the cult of the Vestals was literally an act of cultural suicide.

Medusa And The Gorgons

"In Greek mythology, a Gorgon ... is a mythical creature portrayed in ancient literature. While descriptions of Gorgons vary and occur in the earliest examples of Greek literature, the term commonly refers to any of three sisters who had hair made of living, venomous snakes, as well as a horrifying visage that turned those who beheld her to stone. Traditionally, while two of the Gorgons were immortal, Stheno and Euryale, their sister Medusa was not and she was slain by the demigod and hero Perseus." (Wikipedia)

Related: Ancient World Monsters in the Museums and Monuments of Rome.

From Clash of the Titans, 1981.

Note: The depiction of Medusa's death in Clash of the Titans deviates from the traditional story:

"According to the canonical version of the [Gorgo/Medusa] myth, Perseus was ordered to fetch the head of Medusa, the mortal sister of Sthenno and Euryale; through their horrific appearance these Gorgons turned to stone anyone who looked at them. With the help of Athena, Hermes and nymphs, who had supplied him with winged sandals, Hades' cap of invisibility, and a sickle Perseus managed to behead Medusa in her sleep; from her head sprang Chrysaor and the horse Pegasus [according to Wikipedia, Medusa foaled Pegasus when she died]. Although pursued by Medusa's sisters, Perseus escaped and, eventually, turned his enemy Polydectes [1] to stone by means of Medusa's head." Source: Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised)

[1] Polydectes, king of the island of Seriphos, is said to have fallen in love with Perseus' mother, Danae, but the protective Perseus wouldn't let the king anywhere near her. In order to get her meddlesome son out of the way, Polydectes sent Perseus on a suicidal mission to bring him Medusa's head.

When Perseus returned, he discovered that the king had been threatening and abusing his mother in his absence. Polydectes, less than pleased to see Perseus still alive, demanded to know if he had succeeded in his mission and Perseus held up the gorgon's severed head, turning the king and all his advisors into stone.

Note: "Petrifaction, or petrification as defined as turning people to stone, is a common theme in folklore and mythology, as well as in some works of modern literature." (Wikipedia)

One classic example of the use of petrifaction in modern fiction can be found in the great story Out of the Aeons by H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald. One of the best of Lovecraft's collaborations, this is a truly dark and frightening story about a museum which obtains a mysterious mummy that turns out to be the petrified remains of a man who confronted the ancient god Ghatanothoa, a gorgon-like entity so horrible that anyone who looks at it is instantly turned to stone while their brain remains alive and conscious for all eternity. Highly recommended.

8-Ft-Tall Pagan Idol Unearthed In Irish Bog

Video from 2020.

"A 1,600-year-old pagan idol, made from a wooden pole carved from an oak tree, has been unearthed in a bog in western Ireland." Source: Live Science.

"Archaeologists say the idol dates to the very late stage of pagan Ireland, only about 100 years before the conversion of the Irish to Christianity during the mission of St. Patrick in the fifth century.

"The idol appears to have been broken in two — a common practice with sacrificial objects, perhaps signifying that it was 'dead' and could no longer be used — and deliberately deposited in the bog, maybe as a substitute for a human sacrifice or 'bog body,' according to the archaeologists."

Note: This idol was unearthed in Gortnacrannagh, a rural area in the western region of Ireland (see video above), a few miles from Rathcroghan, a complex of archaeological sites in the western region of Ireland. This was a sacred place, according to one of the archaeologists:

"'It was a sacred bog, a place that would have been special or important for several thousand years, from the late Neolithic all the way through to the early medieval period ... People came and deposited objects, like our idol, into the wetland — essentially a fen [a strip of marshy land] along a river."

Next video (2015) shows an aerial view of the Rathcroghan Mound, the central feature of the prehistoric complex.

Was The Byzantine Empire Roman?

Documentary from 2014.

"The Byzantine Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire [see comment]  in the Greek-speaking, eastern part of the Mediterranean. Christian in nature, it was perennially at war with the Muslims, Flourishing during the reign of the Macedonian emperors, its demise was the consequence of attacks by Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, and Ottoman Turks." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.

Comment: The Byzantine Empire is usually referred to as the "Roman empire in the East," but I've never thought there was anything particularly Roman about the Byzantines. Romans weren't Greek-speaking Christians; they were pagans who spoke Latin. If you ask me, the real Roman empire had already ceased to exist as a distinct social organism by the time Constantinople was founded by Constantine in 324 - 337.  After Italy and the western provinces of the old empire were overrun by Germanic tribes in the fifth century AD the Byzantines retained Roman institutions, but they were essentially an Oriental kingdom, a hybrid of western and eastern traditions.

According to this view the Roman Empire collapsed as a culture long before it was conquered militarily. When Rome fell in the West, that was the end of it. Parts of its territory still remained, however, most of it in the East, but it's hard to see these surviving territories as Roman.

The picture is very complicated, naturally. There were similarities and differences between the Roman and Byzantine empires. It would be surprising if nothing had carried over from the old world. As a general rule, civilizations aren't suddenly obliterated, leaving no trace behind. Collapse doesn't work that way. Kingdoms and empires rise and fall and evolve into new political systems, usually after a period of chaos and warfare. Zombie civilizations are common in history -- nations that still exist long after their cultures have died or changed out of all recognition. Christian Rome and the Roman Byzantine Empire are both good examples, I think, of zombie empires.

The Byzantine empire was a "continuation" of the Roman Empire in the sense that it was once part of the Roman empire with all of its legal and political institutions, but it was Roman in name only. The main difference, I think, was religious. Paganism had been outlawed and driven underground, replaced by Christianity, an essentially Oriental religion.

Here's a modern analogy. Let's say that the United States becomes an Islamic caliphate, but keeps all of its current institutions in place. There's a White House, a Congress, a Supreme Court, and so on. People still vote, but all the candidates are Muslims. The county courthouse still looks the same, but Christianity is illegal and the judges enforce Shariah Law. Then the western half of the country is invaded and overrun by savage barbarians who settle down and take over the existing legislative machinery. The eastern half of the country still survives as an independent nation, but is it American? The answer is obvious.

Related: Continuity and change in the Byzantine Empire.

Is It Possible To Live An Iron Age Life In The Modern World?

Many groups including experimental archaeologists have tried to replicate the lifestyles of prehistoric and medieval cultures. Some of these groups, like the one in the 1978 BBC documentary, Living In The Past, have spent various lengths of time living under past conditions, but they always ended up returning to the modern world with its undeniable comforts and labor-saving devices. And who can blame them? After all, these were just temporary experiments. But what if a group of modern "neopagans" actually tried to do this for real? What would happen?

Most people living in the modern West would die like flies if they were suddenly transported back to the Iron Age and couldn't return after a few weeks or months. Just staying alive back then was a full-time job in itself, at least for most of the population, and it must have been precarious, but despite all the hardships life couldn't have been too harsh, at least not all the time, or no one would have survived.

Let's say that a group of modern "pagans" decided to start living like this full-time. They could band together, form an agricultural co-op or something, buy some land and return to an Iron Age way of life, building their own shelters, making their own clothes and tools, growing and hunting their own food. To be truly authentic, their community should be based on solid archaeological evidence, which means, for one thing, that they would have to dispense with their idiotic and ahistorical New Age "religions." 

Real pagans were agrarian and they practiced blood sacrifice. They didn't live in cities and drive out to Stonehenge a couple times a year to get loaded and dance around like Hollywood Apaches to the beat of drum circles while the cops kept an eye out for drunks and dope dealers. I've written several posts on this site mocking the "pagans, Druids and pantheists" who swarm over Stonehenge for every solstice and equinox, but I can understand their alienation from Christianity and the modern world.

Modern pagans have a serious problem. There's very little evidence about how people lived back then and what they believed, so the modern pagan has to make it all up and the result is usually ludicrous. This got me thinking about what an authentic neopagan movement would look like and two basic requirements came to mind.

First of all, as I've already said, real neopagans should toss out everything that isn't backed by solid archaeological evidence. Second, they should drop out of the modern world and go back to living in the Iron Age like the people in this video did. Note: They couldn't recreate a migratory Stone Age hunting and gathering existence for obvious reasons.

They would have to live like this all the time, though. There would be no going back. They would essentially have to live like Iron Age farmers and, given enough time, some of them might actually figure out how to survive as clans, living in many ways like the modern Amish. Even if they did, though, they would still be surrounded by the modern world and there would be no way to escape it entirely. They would have to pay taxes on their land, for instance, so they would need to set up small businesses or something.

And that's the catch. There's no way to escape the over-policed total state in the modern world. Not completely. These neopagans would be anachronisms, psychologically modern humans living an Iron Age life in the center of a decaying, post-industrial civilization. Keeping their communities going at that point would probably be even harder than learning how to feed themselves and stay warm in the winter.

It could be done, but the first generations would be in for a shock and a lot of them would drop out very quickly. Living without electricity is one thing, raising your own food another, but to be truly authentic, they couldn't use modern medicines or hospitals and the women would have to give birth naturally out there in the woods. There would be sickness, malnutrition, deaths. Their children couldn't go to modern schools. The dead would have to be buried right there on the land -- something that could be done here in the States as recently as the the middle of the 20th Century, but which is probably illegal now. The list of problems goes on and on, but this biggest problem is this:

The modern state would never allow people to live like this. An authentic Iron Age life is impossible in the modern world because we have lost too much freedom.

Note: The rest of the Living in the Past documentary can be found here.