“Growing up isn’t so much. I’m not a man, and I can do anything! You can’t.“
– Charlie X to Captain Kirk, after making Yeoman Janice Rand vanish – Star Trek TOS
My last post established that the Aryans had moved The West to demote The Temporal in its pantheons. I then looked into where this people had originated. The first paragraph of Wikipedia [(as of 12/8/23, 9:36am EST,)] on the Sintashta culture tells us that this it…
...is widely regarded as the origin of the Indo-Iranian languages[1][2][3] (Indo-Iranic languages in non-ambiguous terms[4][5]), whose speakers originally referred to themselves as the Arya.[6][7] The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare.[8][9][10][11] Sintashta settlements are also remarkable for the intensity of copper mining and bronze metallurgy carried out there, which is unusual for a steppe culture.[12] Among the main features of the Sintashta culture are high levels of militarism and extensive fortified settlements, of which 23 are known.[13]
Returning to the system that began this series, we can thus establish their military (Sensual) power base in their extensive fortifications and the innovation of chariots; and …
That a large part of their economy (Potential) base was in their mines. Further down, the Wikipedia article notes that their economies “heavily exploited domesticated cattle, sheep, and goats alongside horses with occasional hunting of wild fauna”.[14]
Their politics (Temporal) base can safely be called hierarchical in the importance to them of the military and in the “extravagant sacrifices seen in Sintashta burials…Higher-status grave goods include chariots, as well as axes, mace-heads, spearheads, and cheek-pieces.”
Their culture (Integral15) is somewhat more difficult to ascertain, looking at the controversies surrounding even the meaning of one of their most important God’s names.
I found that Antoine Meillet (according to Encyclopedia Britannica, “one of the most influential comparative linguists of his time,”) had interpreted the name of this deity, Mitra (one of a proposed dyad, Mitra-Varuna), as “contract.” I saw this god in Britannica’s entry for Ancient Iranian Religion described as an “ahura,” a “lofty sovereign deity,” closely associated with the highest god, and who presided over covenants. This would seem to confirm Meillet’s translation. However, Wikipedia dismisses this translation based on the work of French comparative philologist and mythologist Georges Dumézil. Although he has no individual entry in Britannica, his Wikipedia entry is quite long and complimentary, despite that he has been accused by many people of “crypto-Fascism.” I’ll put the rest of this controversy into a footnote[16] to avoid getting off track here.
I just want to finish by emphasizing the importance to these Aryans of mining. This blog has discussed this form of extraction often – its physical destructiveness as well as its effect on dialogue and growth. I should mention here that the Romans, whom we designated in the last entry of this series as the “people supposed to know,” were great innovators in mining.
This is a page (I count 13, though pages are unnumbered,) from the first issue of Alan Moore’s brilliant text, Promethea. The student in distress is researching for a paper about a the titular character, who had appeared several times throughout literary history.
I’ll link a website about this issue here.
1 Mallory, J. P.; Mair, Victor H. (2008). The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 9780500283721.
2 Anthony, David W. (2007). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-05887-0.
3 Lubotsky, Alexander (2023), Willerslev, Eske; Kroonen, Guus; Kristiansen, Kristian (eds.), “Indo-European and Indo-Iranian Wagon Terminology and the Date of the Indo-Iranian Split”, The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited: Integrating Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 257–262, ISBN 978-1-009-26175-3, retrieved 2023-11-16.
4 Rowlett, Ralph M. “Research Directions in Early Indo-European Archaeology.” (1990): 415-418.
5 Heggarty, Paul. “Prehistory by Bayesian phylogenetics? The state of the art on Indo-European origins.” Antiquity 88.340 (2014): 566-577.
6 Schmitt 1987: “The name Aryan is the self designation of the peoples of Ancient India and Ancient Iran who spoke Aryan languages, in contrast to the ‘non-Aryan’ peoples of those ‘Aryan’ countries.”
My Note: This footnote had no reference or outside link, but I Googled and found a link. – Viola.
7 Anthony, David W. (2007).
8 Chechushkov, I.V.; Epimakhov, A.V. (2018). “Eurasian Steppe Chariots and Social Complexity During the Bronze Age”. Journal of World Prehistory. 31 (4): 435–483. doi:10.1007/s10963-018-9124-0. S2CID 254743380.
9 Raulwing, Peter (2000). Horses, Chariots and Indo-Europeans – Foundations and Methods of Chariotry Research from the Viewpoint of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. Archaeolingua Alapítvány, Budapest. ISBN 9789638046260.
10 Anthony, David W. (2007).
11 Holm, Hans J. J. G. (2019): The Earliest Wheel Finds, their Archeology and Indo-European Terminology in Time and Space, and Early Migrations around the Caucasus. Series Minor 43. Budapest: ARCHAEOLINGUA ALAPÍTVÁNY. ISBN 978-615-5766-30-5
12 Hanks, B.; Linduff, K. (2009). “The Sintashta Genesis: The Roles of Climate Change, Warfare, and Long-Distance Trade”. In Hanks, B.; Linduff, K. (eds.). Social Complexity in Prehistoric Eurasia: Monuments, Metals, and Mobility. Cambridge University Press. pp. 146–167. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511605376.005. ISBN 978-0-511-60537-6.
13 Semyan, Ivan, and Spyros Bakas, (2021). “Archaeological Experiment on Reconstruction of the ‘Compound’ Bow of the Sintashta Bronze Age Culture from the Stepnoe Cemetery”, in EXARC Journal Issue 2021/2, Introduction. https://exarc.net/issue-2021-2/ea/reconstruction-compound-bow-sintashta
14 A. R. Ventresca Miller, A. Haruda, V. Varfolomeev, A. Goryachev & C. A.Makarewicz (2020): “Close management of sheep in ancient Central Asia: evidence for foddering,transhumance, and extended lambing seasons during the Bronze and Iron Ages,” STAR: Science &Technology of Archaeological Research, DOI: 10.1080/20548923.2020.1759316, p. 2.
15 This is the member of The Four I hadn’t described in my last entry. I’d start with “The Divine Feminine, Reimagined.” – Viola
16 The linked discussion of linguist Antoine Meillet’s interpretation of Indo-European god Mitra as the personification of contracts has five references, but all of them (as do many other references in this article) go to “Mitra-Varuna Georges Dumézil.” The bibliography of Dumézil works provides two titles, – as far as I can tell, neither specify “Mitra-Varuna,” and one of these books is in French. Looking on Google and Jstor, I haven’t yet found any translation (at least, in English,) of Meillet – or anything by his defenders – that presents his arguments about Mitra, just arguments against it by authors predisposed to argue with him.
As to Dumézil, his page’s section on criticisms of him appears to mostly accuse his accusers. The main source defending Dumézil is Covington Scott Littleton, member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Indo-European Studies, a journal founded by, among others, white supremacist Roger Pearson. The article references another founder of this journal, University of Texas Professor Edgar Ghislain Charles Polomé, as well as an editor, Dean Arthur Miller (author of The Epic Hero, a book which might suggest glamorization of the warrior class.)
An ambiguous source is Bruce Lincoln. Early in Dumézil’s article, he seems to be defending Dumézil, whereas further down, it is suggested Lincoln attacked him from “a Marxist perspective.” Oddly, Lincoln’s entry (as of 12/10/23, 6:47am EST) shows no indication that he was a Marxist: from the Maria Carlson article linked in the Wikipedia entry, Lincoln’s work seems have presented Dumézil’s work through numerous perspectives, finding it a major promoter of Aryanism as against “the other” – groups that this people had displaced. (2/25/24, 7:38am EST: Even more oddly, the article tells us not to cite it without the author’s permission – with any luck, my link will still lead to it when this entry is published.)
If any of my readers want to do further research on this issue, I’d be interested in their findings.
Seeker247365v2 