Wilsford beaker replica (Graham Taylor)

 Replica of a beaker from the Wilsford Beaker Group by Graham Taylor

 

 You can buy one of these at potted-history.co.uk

 ...and quite honestly, given the meaningless fucking crap that fills the box stores these days, to give one of these beautiful vessels as a birthday or Christmas present would mean a lot to just about anyone.

The Flood (Crecganford)

Crecganford is my evening go-to for reconstructed PIE mythology.

This video concerns the phylogenetic branching of flood myths in deep history.  I'm more interested in the secondary branch spreading from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe.  I commented asking if he could give his opinion of the Black Sea Deluge hypotheses and how this catastrophe became a basis for PIE myth.

In some ways, the PIE flood myth may point to a real event that repackaged an older Paleolithic myth.  For example, in the United States many families have a "three brother myth", whereby the immigrant progenitor to a particular family, say McFarland, came to the US as one of three brothers.  There was a real event, but whose lost details are able to ride in the wagon of a relatable narrative of deeper antiquity.

Crecganford's view (I believe) is that the modern Near Eastern flood myths are borrowings of one originating in the PIE urheimat.  I think locationally that may be true, but it may be complicated by the possibility that parts of the northern Black Sea were home to the water-hugging Impresso Peoples, ultimately originating from the Levant (although not a linear or simple migration), prior to the flood/or salinization tipping point.  Given the patrilocality of hunter-gatherers in this forest-steppe region, there may be a situation in which female exogamy was occurring between two peoples before the territory of one became uninhabitable.

It should be interesting to note that in the Bible, it is the Ararat Mountains in which the Ark finally rests.  In other words, in the southeast of the Black Sea.  So of course, it would be reasonable to assume that the Black Sea is a focus area of the Near Eastern tale, just as it might be for the PIE one.  And remember, this is 40,000 square miles of farms, settlements, deltas, estuaries and hunting lands; not real estate on the moon.  This was probably home to specific peoples of a specific archaeological tradition, one originating secondarily in the Levant, one which is now mostly under water.  

Aside from its physical expansion, why should the PIE urheimat be central to this secondary expansion?  I believe it is because the PIE urheimat bordered an area with the greatest losses in terms of land area.  Again, if we look at the Biblical version, it may be that the landing in Ararat Mountains is emblematic of a locational and protagonist shift in the narrative.  From one location to the next scene.

Secondary motif originating in green

Beaker Spirits and Iconoclasm

A few thoughts on Bell Beaker "iconoclastic" tendencies.  

Crecganford notes Indo-European gods were originally spirit gods.  Theologically, they lacked incarnation, but also the iconography and idolatry that was prominent throughout the Mediterranean and temperate Europe at that time.  

Bell Beaker impulses appear, as Antonio Valera described, almost "iconoclastic" in their approach or art.  Their decorations are highly geometric and repetitive.  If icons of religion are depicted, they seem to be highly stylized skeumorphs, whether solar boats or suns.  And at our very best, we can only say the things they drew well were daggers and little else, and these appear to by symbolic.

Every culture before them had art, any art.  What does this mean?

If Bell Beakers had a largely IE religion, then it would make sense that their gods were worshipped in song and story, not in ways that involved incarnations.  Physical representations might have even been taboo.

Knapping a British Dagger (Pathways of the Past)

 

A "long-tanged" British Beaker of the class 2 type, distributed across of England and Wales.  

According to the video, the source of the British dagger flint has never been found, and it made me think of the industry at Sussex, see proceeding post.  Quite a few of these daggers have traces of chalk remaining on them, which suggests that these items were probably knapped by a specialist and then traded across the island.

Sussex Flint Mines (Time Team)

 Not really what they were looking for, but they found a lot of activity associated with flint mining in chalk.  The strangest feature was a kind of sacred tree enclosure with flint nodule offerings.

No bodies apparently, just these sacred pits surrounding the ring ditch.