garden e danu

Ancestral Stomping Grounds of Our Mother-loving Mammoth-eating Ancestors

Around 31,000 years ago our Cro Magnon ancestors painted the mammoths of the above left in a cave in Vallon Pont-d'arc, France. 16,000 years later in a cave in the Ural Mountains of Russia, NE of the Caspian Sea, another Cro Magnon ancestor painted the mammoth pictured above right. The map in the center depicts the vast area south of the receeding glacier ice cap where the hunters followed the mammoths, north in summer, south in winter. See the mighty rivers, the Volga, Dnieper, Dniester, Danube and the river that later would be the Baltic Sea, roadways of prehistory, with grasslands and forests inbetween them, full of herds. Here is where the goddess figurines are found today by archeologists. Scientists tell us that in the earth's entire history four great ice ages have come and gone. The most recent ice age lasted about a hundred thousand years until 12,000 years ago. So, all the human race ever knew from the time of its first entrance into Asia was these river pathways and grasslands and the mammoths. Milleniums passed one after another unchanged, human hunter tribes wending their way along well-known river banks, sometimes taking the time to carve the image of a woman from a piece of mammoth ivory along the way. It's awesome to think of all the thousands of years that passed with humans and mammoths sharing the same world.

About 18.000 years ago the icecap began to melt and withdraw from the great masses of land it had held for so many eons. The receeding icecap engorged the rivers making them uncrossable. Wanderers became stuck in lands between the torrents. The rivers created the huge freshwater lake in the center of the map above, and from here the waters flowed into the sea. This amazing lake was a veritable Disneyland, an incredible Eden, for hunters such as our ancestors. Winter herds would bring them. What a wonderful place it was! The lands to the west of the lake were full of thousands of hot springs for wonderful bathing and relaxing and dreaming and story telling. All around them were herds of every sort -- so full that hunting was never difficult. And the land abounded in vegetables and fruit. The Carpathian mountains around the Tisza river were rich in obsidian and flint for stone axes and blades. And in the land south of the lake there were great quantities of salt and volcanic obsidian. From about 12,000 BC onward the wandering tribes of hunters began to settle into continuous communities in the lands around the lake.

There was another reason the great clans of mammoth hunters were beginning to settle into one place: The woolly mammoths were becoming extinct. There was less and less reason to remain on the move following the herds north in the spring and south in the autumn. With each passing generation there were fewer and fewer mammoths. Humans were evolving into perfect predators. There are many people today who feel that mammoths must have been too huge and formidable for humans to ever hunt, and for a long time no evidence was found to prove otherwise. Until 2003 when a spear-point was found embedded in a mammoth vertebra in a vast graveyard of bones in Lugovskoe near the river Ob, in the Autonomous Area of Khanty-Mansi. The point had been driven deeply into the bone with tremendous force. Still, this is the only instance found so far. However one reason the evidence is scanty could be the fact that primitive hunters burned bones, especially in tree-less areas, thus destroying all trace of the hunt.

Russian scientists have also found proof that many mammoths died of bone disease caused by a lack of the minerals their bodies needed. Half of the mammoth bones found at the Lugovskoe site showed significant signs of osteoporosis, in some cases so bad that several vertebraes were frozen together. The herd of mammoths may have gathered at the spot to eat clay, for the minerals, and got stuck, becoming easy prey for human hunters. Scientists found over 300 quartz spearhead pieces mixed with the bones of the herd. It could be though, that humans followed the mammoth herds for other reasons. Perhaps humans didn't eat mammoths very often. Not simply because mammoths were so huge and formidable. But perhaps, because they considered mammoths sacred.

Consider for a moment all the thousands of years that passed, one day after another, with humans living a short distance away from these immense creatures -- Intelligent creatures with brains that weighed fourteen pounds. Beautiful sensitive creatures with such amazing eyes ! Vegetarian creatures that did not eat other creatures! Creatures capable of great love! What must humans have thought whenever they looked upon them? The Asian elephant today is considered a sister species to the mammoth. By looking at the habits of wild Asian elephants we may understand the ways of mammoths and thereby get a better vision of antiquity...

A herd of mammoths consisted of females led by a matriarch. Immature males remained with their mothers until old enough to leave the herd and fend by themselves in the adjacent areas, where they sometimes formed lifelong friendships with other males. Only the strongest males could return to the herd to breed, after which they would leave again. The females of the herd were mothers-daughters-grandmothers, sisters and aunts. When a mother gave birth she would select other females to help her nurture and protect the youngster. These friendships endured their entire lives. These loving creatures exemplified FAMILY to our human ancestors who observed their behavior. And, 30,000 years ago, if any human wanted to try to grasp the nature and purpose of the Universe they would not have had far to look for inspiration. The mammoth matriarchs led humans to matriarchal pathways of our own and we carved goddess figurines from mammoth ivory.

Mammoths must have given primitive humanity our first clothing and our first nets. The woolly mammoths shed wool once a year leaving piles of two foot long strands under trees and among shrubs and brush. Humans may have covered themselves with pieces of this abundant wool and stealthily crept up on herds. Over thousands of years they would certainly have discovered the warmth of sleeping amidst clumps of mammoth wool when snow covered the land. Draping wool strands over their shoulders for warmth led to clothing and the first nets and ropes and threads. Clumps of 30,000 year old mammoth wool still may be found in places....

The relationship between mammoths and humans nurtured spirituality and wisdom into our basic nature...

There is something else too. Mammoths were vegetarians as are elephants today. Vegetarian creatures have a unique consciousness. Most people today eat meat. But many families know what it is like when one familymember becomes a vegetarian. The whole family ends up learning about vegetarian philosophy, whether they want to or not. It is difficult having a family member with such a different foundation principal living in their midst. The same was true 30,000 years ago.

Good neighbors are conducive of healthy mental attitudes...

Is it possible Mammoths could have influenced mankind to such an extent? In antiquity man was closer to animals than he is today. Man lived in the open with them. Man had no walls between himself and animals. No ceiling between himself and the stars. He was part of the creation, not separate from it. Animals constantly influenced him, communicated with him - in ways and to degrees that few today could comprehend.

Our fellow creatures figured into every concept of God during our early eons - because God was all around and within every thing, in every drop of water, every wind- every living creation. In mankind's earliest art animals were part of Godhead. Mammoths went extinct before most art came about so we have few representations of mammoths. But over the thousands of years that humans interacted with mammoths the impressions they left in our consciousness were vast and immeasurable.

The Natufians of the fertile Lavant were the earliest people to arrange their lives around the gathering of wild cereals and storing them for future use. Yet they had not entirely left their wandering ways. Seasonally Natufian hunters followed herds of deer between Anatolia and along the eastern Mediterannean coast. They congregated in caves and on hill tops and in open air areas that were rich in wild cattle and roe deer and fish.

Food spoiled fast in heat. There would have been no way for early man to become sedentary without learning how to preserve foods to carry him through hard times. The Natufians learned that salt keeps meat from spoiling. But salt was not everywhere available, and those rare natural places in the earth where large salt deposits may be found became the centers of early man's first permanent abodes. Salt came to have a value like gold and early salt reserves were as precious as gold. The locations of natural salt became regular places tribes returned to again and again. Catal Huyuk is located on the southern edge of a great salt depression and to the north is Tuz Golu, a salt lake. The area around ancient Jericho is rich in natural salt. For untold milleniums in the springtime migratory tribes followed the herds north from the area around Jericho up to Anatolia, from one great area of salt to another, and in the end of summer they left Anatolia and returned to Jericho. 12,000 years ago the very first manmade stone walls on earth were created in Jericho to hold supplies of salt, private hordes that wandering tribes collected for their own use.

The goddess figurines found in the first cities, catal huyuk, jerecho, reveal the presence of humans who venerated the ancient matriarch principal which humans had learned from mammoths and carried with them for all the passing milleniums until the foundation of the first cities.

If my theory is correct about early humans adopting some of the ways of mammoth herds, then when the rivers became impassable the women would have made semi-permanent camps, which were as near as possible to all the things which were vital to their existance. Elderly or injured members of the tribe, too feeble to travel long miles anymore would also take up residence in the permanent camps. They created stone parimeters to gaurd stores of salt, salted meat, hordes of acorns, and claimed with their presence the site for their clan. The stone walls became storage bins, and the storage bins in turn became cubicle living spaces, and groups of these cubicles became the first walled cities.

An even older resource equally as important as salt to these people was obsidian, the volcanic material which made for blades sharper than modern surgeon's scalples. The greatest source for obsidian was the base of Hasan Dag volcano which was visible from Catal Huyuk. This valuable stone became the source of perhaps the most significant trading that went on in the upper paleolithic and neolithic. Just as the first walls seem to have been formed in Jericho as a means of safeguarding stores of salt for trading purposes the first walls near Hasan Dag were probably formed to storehouse the valuable obsidian. The Hasan Dag stone was traded to the Lavant for lumber and Dead Sea bitumen.

Obsidian was a stone that required priests and priestesses. Because the obsidian blades and spearpoints must bear sacred incantations to insure their swiftness and true flight to bring down the kill, and to keep the hunter from harm. Half of all the buildings in Catal Huyuk were shrines. Not only was Catal Huyuk a major trade center but more importantly it was a religious center.

7000 people lived in Catal Huyuk at its peak. Carbon dating places the occupation of Catal Huyuk between the years of 7250 BC and 5600 BC. They cultivated three types of wheat and one of barley. They had domesticated cattle and goats. They hunted the abundant deer and wild cattle. In fact sustenance was so easy for the people that they were able to devote great amounts of time to their art and religion.

Marija Gimbutas in her book THE CIVILIZATION OF THE GODDESS says on page 8: “It is clearly evident that the practice of religion was integrated into people’s daily lives. Temples were found within the area of habitation in houses similar to those in which people lived. From 300 excavated rooms 88 had painted walls. Each painting was from 12 to 18 meters long.”

River valleys had always been ancient pathways for mesolithic peoples who followed herds with the seasons. Another ancient route in continual use was the Danube river to the Rhine river which they followed to the sea, and from the sea the same wanderers in turn made the trip east and arrived at the great freshwater Euxine Lake and south into Anatolia to Catal Huyuk.  We know this is so because a high percentage of the skulls unearthed at Catal Huyuk are of a type that come from western Europe.

Great sharing occurs at natural wilderness springs. For there are not separate springs for each person. Every person  must share the treasure with others: the melting pot, --the place where everyone of all walks and languages and races comes and strips out of their clothes and gets into the pool with the others, and feels so other-worldly wonderful, lays back and looks at the blue sky or the starry night, and feels so blessed. The Womb that is the hotsprings. The people of hot springs consider them sacred places. These are universal hotsprings feelings.

The area to the west of the Black Sea now known as Romania has around 3000 natural hotsprings. And further west along the Danube in the land we now call Hungary there are another thousand natural hotsprings. Here in this veritable garden of Eden more than 7,000 years ago the most intelligent cultures of the ancient world came into existance -- the Cucuteni, Lengyel, Karanova, Tisza, Vinca and others.

Go on to the next chapter: the great deluge

Thomas Holme is a bicycle repairman, lecturer, and itinerant intransigent student of esoteric psychosophy and roadside cooking in Eugene, Oregon.