The words “Pagan” and “prehistory” conceal far more than they reveal! They’re artifacts of a time when we knew little about what had happened anywhere in the centuries before Christ.
Now, due to huge advances in science, archaeology, linguistics, religion, mythology and other disciplines, we know enormous amounts about the vastly different sub-types of so-called “pagans.”
We ought to be chary of defining highly complex and knowable societies of human communities by reference to an absence: their lack of “Christianness” which “pagan” signifies.
The frontiers of “prehistory” (a time about which, by definition, we don’t know too much) have been pushed back beyond the seventh millennium BCE. Many experts, even in archaeology and other associated disciplines, still use such outdated and loaded phrases! They’re not doing themselves or their disciplines any favours.
Fortunately, someone like me, with a fresh mind and unburdened by hyper-normalised conventions inside archaeology, has come along to sculpt Finding Manuland from their unexploited mounds of raw material located in neat little piles inside the walls of their academic siloes. Of their amazing, yet badly presented work, the secret to understanding Ukraine as the cradle of our civilisation emerges like a beacon.
Ancient Ukrainian Yamnaya Culture, for example, had very complex religious beliefs. Decades of research into artifacts buried with ancient Ukrainians across the entirety of the Indo-European cultural zone from India to Ireland have uncovered this complexity. Yamnaya buried with golden deer-shaped buttons in modern Kazakhstan or Irish Beaker People buried with horses by the Mansion on the Boyne, for example, tell us much about their religious practices.
Some of these beliefs – for example related to sacrificial offerings - can be traced in one way or another through the millennia into Buddhism and into Christianity. Buddhists offer water and spices, while Christians’ core sacrament is an offering of bread which turns into the body of Christ, according to their beliefs. Both faiths evolved from the blood sacrifices of ancient Ukrainians into much more gentle and symbolic acts of sacrifice.
Nevertheless, the idea of making deals with their respective deities is a core ancient Ukrainian cultural trait. It’s even reflected in one of the oldest texts we have.
The parties to the Treaty of Mitanni ask the ancient Ukrainian Hittite Gods - Mithra, Varuna, Indra and Nasatya (cognate with *Tiwaz, *Wodhanaz, Thor, and Freyja/Frigg respectively) – to bear witness to their agreement. Implicit in the treaty’s terms is the deal that if either of the parties breach the treaty, then, they will be subjected to the punishment of those specific Gods.
Rome’s possession of Jerusalem as a colony at the time of Christ as a vehicle for this transfer of ancient Ukrainian memes, particularly about the social importance of self-sacrifice, is often overlooked as an influence in the Roman Catholic and other Christian sects. Even the story of Socrates who according to Plato’s account nobly submits to execution when the city fathers determine his teachings are harming the community is a reflex of this ancient Ukrainian cultural meme. The Greek and Italic languages, including Latin, grew out of ancient Ukrainian. Many of the religious, mythological and cultural traits we consider to be definitively Greek or Roman entered Roman culture from Ukraine.
Deep cultures, such as the now centralised Romance language of a unified France, are a melange of layer upon layer of many influences: Celt, Latin, Basque, Wallonia, Provencal, Langue d’oc, Norman, Breton,…
Like a croissant, which is made with fold upon fold of pastry, such a culture (including its language) comprises thousands of new layers, added over the past five millennia. Yet in this palimpsest culture, most of these cultural layers themselves can be traced back to the ancient Ukrainian culture forged in river valleys like those of the Sura and Dnieper rivers by the Dnipro cromlech.
This is a phenomenon that Finding Manuland identifies and will trace through its journeys across Europe. Ancient Ukraine is more of a founder culture than the ancient Romans or ancient Greeks, because those languages, mythologies and cultures are themselves recognisably the product of ancient Ukraine.
Finding Manuland will follow the routes ancient Ukrainians took on their migrations, primarily, across Europe through the subsisting remnants of these migrations that remain in our cultures today.
Many of identical geographical features – mountains, rivers, sea levels – that impact on the routes modern Ukrainians escaping Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine’s ancient lands take on their journeys looking for temporary refuge determined the routes their ancient Yamnaya ancestors took on their migrations over the millennia.
Finding Manuland’s itinerary and content is as much, therefore, a function of this hyper-modern Ukrainian exodus as it is of the ancient migrations which spread Indo-European language and culture across Europe. I, albeit as a retiring diplomat, am participating in this war-provoked exodus too.
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