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Old Europe (Vinca) language and culture in early layers of Serbian and Irish culture

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  • Registered Users Posts: 91 ✭✭Dr.Tank Adams


    Wait a minute, I could be wrong here, but the people you're suggesting moved from modern day Serbia to Ireland would have been pre-Slavic, would they not? And Serbian is a Slavic language, so the language these pre-Slavs would have brought to Ireland would have been very different, perhaps completely unrelated to the language spoken in Serbia today, therefore rendering the similarities between modern Serbian and Irish null and void. Correct me if I'm missing something of course...


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    Hi Tank

    There were many migrations into Ireland in many different times. Some of them were from the Balkans some of them were from the south Baltic. All these people left their mark in the Irish language. This is why it is so difficult to determine who brought what. I have described this problem in the very first post on this thread. Did you read it?
    Wait a minute, I could be wrong here, but the people you're suggesting moved from modern day Serbia to Ireland would have been pre-Slavic, would they not?

    If you are referring to vinca people and bregians (phrigians) then yes they were pre Slavic. However they were the ancestors of both Serbians and Irish and have left their mark in our genes and our culture and language.
    And Serbian is a Slavic language, so the language these pre-Slavs would have brought to Ireland would have been very different, perhaps completely unrelated to the language spoken in Serbia today

    This is where you are wrong. The language spoken in Serbia today is ancestor of the old Balkan languages. It is (with other South Slavic languages) the oldest Slavic language, the ancestor language of the Slavs. It has also preserved a lot of features and vocabulary that does not exist in any other Slavic language but exists in Irish. How do we explain this? I believe that these features and vocabulary come from the old Balkan languages. The same goes for cultural traits like for instance Crom Dubh. He exists only in Ireland (and Scotland) and Serbia. In Serbia he is well defined and known. In Ireland he is a mystery. How do you we explain this? These are questions that i am trying to answer here. Hopefully with help of others on this thread.
    therefore rendering the similarities between modern Serbian and Irish null and void.

    Now similarities and more than similarities do exist. We can't ignore them. If it were couple of words, or place names we could say that they are coincidences. But if you read through this thread you will see that we are talking about hundreds of words, grammatical constructs, place names, mythological themes, customs.... There is no way that they could be a coincidence. How did they get to exist? Some through Vinca migrations. Some through early Indo Europan (Vucedol culture) migrations. Some through Bregian (Hittite) migrations. Some through "Celtic" central European cultural links. Some through South Baltic Slavic migrations to Ireland during early medieval Anglo Saxon and Viking migrations. If you have any better explanation for all the cultural and linguistic links that i have presented on this thread so far, please put it forward here. For instance how to explain the cluster linked to Cur Gur word group? It does not exist in any other European language except Irish and South Slavic languages. And add to that that slang word for penis in Serbian is "budza" and in Irish is "bud, bod"? And believe me i am nowhere near finished with presenting the material that i poses. I don't think i have presented even one third so far.
    Correct me if I'm missing something of course...

    Please read this thread from the beginning. I am not making any of the claims i am making lightly.

    Here is what other people say about South Slavs (including Serbians) of the Balkans as possible carriers of the ancient cultural and linguistic characteristics:
    High levels of Paleolithic Y-chromosome lineages characterize Serbia.

    Regueiro M, Rivera L, Damnjanovic T, Lukovic L, Milasin J, Herrera RJ.

    Abstract

    Whether present-day European genetic variation and its distribution patterns can be attributed primarily to the initial peopling of Europe by anatomically modern humans during the Paleolithic, or to latter Near Eastern Neolithic input is still the subject of debate. Southeastern Europe has been a crossroads for several cultures since Paleolithic times and the Balkans, specifically, would have been part of the route used by Neolithic farmers to enter Europe. Given its geographic location in the heart of the Balkan Peninsula at the intersection of Central and Southeastern Europe, Serbia represents a key geographical location that may provide insight to elucidate the interactions between indigenous Paleolithic people and agricultural colonists from the Fertile Crescent. In this study, we examine, for the first time, the Y-chromosome constitution of the general Serbian population. A total of 103 individuals were sampled and their DNA analyzed for 104 Y-chromosome bi-allelic markers and 17 associated STR loci. Our results indicate that approximately 58% of Serbian Y-chromosomes (I1-M253, I2a-P37.2, R1a1a-M198) belong to lineages believed to be pre-Neolithic. On the other hand, the signature of putative Near Eastern Neolithic lineages, including E1b1b1a1-M78, G2a-P15, J1-M267 and J2-M172 and R1b1a2-M269 accounts for 39% of the Y-chromosome. Furthermore, an examination of the distribution of Y-chromosome filiations in Europe indicates extreme levels of Paleolithic lineages in a region encompassing Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, possibly the result of Neolithic migrations encroaching on Paleolithic populations against the Adriatic Sea.

    What this means is that population of the Balkans consists of people who lived there since paleolithic times and all the migrants who went through Balkans since that time. And majority of the people actually belongs to the oldest European populations, still living in the same place after all these millenniums. They definitely preserved some of the old cultural and linguistic characteristics. But to extract them from all the later overlaying cultural and linguistic layers, you have to compare Balkan cultures with equally old European cultures like the Irish culture. I believe, and maybe i am wrong, that the intersections will give us old European culture.


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    Also have a look at this:

    "The Ram and the Bull, a forgotten belief: Signs of the Vinča and Cucuteni"

    I do not agree with all the conclusions from this work, but it is a very good study of ancient symbols and it shows that there is a definite Vincan cultural influence in Ireland. Go to page 45 for vinca signs in Britain and Ireland.

    Here are some examples: 1. vinca spirals, 2. Vinča tablet from Potporanj – Kremenjak, Late Neolithic, 3. A selection of British passage-tomb motifs, 4. The entrance stone Newgrange

    30-6c48a73759.png

    45-1fe6df0e5c.png

    48-f54adfb417.png

    Here is the link to the document.

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/142922225/The-Bull-and-the-Ram-a-forgotten-belief-Signs-of-the-Vinca-and-Cucuteni-in-Europe-and-the-Aegean


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    Also do you remember Opanak, the old European shoe still preserved as a traditional folk footwear in Serbia whose name can only be explained through Irish?

    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=84754227&postcount=39

    Here is the oldest known depiction from Vučedol culture. The identical ones are still worn in the same area of the Balkan today 5000 years later:

    Prap%204.jpg

    Genetic and cultural continuity exists int the Balkans since paleolithic times. I believe that language continuity exists as well.


  • Registered Users Posts: 91 ✭✭Dr.Tank Adams


    Fair enough, you make a good case I have to say although I'd remain skeptical as to the extent of this Balkan/Germanic/Baltic you talk of, I'm sure there was some, I a firm believer that most European countries are well mixed up with each other, however as for similarities in stone sculptures etc. I wouldn't read too much into it, the oul' swirly patterns seem to have been very common in multiple cultures and not necessarily related. I think maybe you should emphasize more that the "Serbs" you believe came to Ireland are very different from the Serbs of today, more of an Illyrian stock perhaps than Slavic? It's sort of like when people hear we have Iberian heritage and assume that mean's we have Moor admixture like some modern Spaniards.
    As for the similarities you mention in vocabulary, this is something that can be easy to get wrong, for example I see you referenced the word "bud" as a link between Irish and Serbian, there's one big problem with that though, "bud" is derived from German/Dutch and so has nothing to do with Irish and therefore cannot be used as a link between Irish and Serbian. Another pitfall in comparing languages is that people sometimes think that because two words are spelt similarly they must be linked, the problem here is that spelling is a relatively recent invention that wasn't around at the times we're talking about, it's all about the actual pronunciation of the word and if they're similar, so in order to do that you'd need an in depth knowledge of Serbian pronunciation/dialects and Irish pronunciation/dialects.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    Hi Tank

    Thank you for your continuing interest.
    Fair enough, you make a good case I have to say although I'd remain skeptical as to the extent of this Balkan/Germanic/Baltic you talk of. I'm sure there was some, I a firm believer that most European countries are well mixed up with each other.

    The connection between Baklan and Baltic are Serbian, Sirbian, Sorbian people who live along the Carpatian mountains From Balkan to Baltic. They still live there and share language and customs. How long have they been living there i don't know, but considering that central Europe (Balkan - Baltic) is the birth place of I haplogroup, they could have been living there since at least late neolithic. The Balkan - Baltic - British Isles cultural transmission line is well attested and supported by archaeological finds. Cultural traits would first appear in the Balkans, then move up through central Europe to South Baltic and then they would appear in British isles. South Baltic was the main sea exit for Central European cultures from most ancient times. Between central Europe and Atlantic coast lay huge forests which were until late medieval times impenetrable. It was much easier to travel between central Europe and the British isles via south Baltic and then along the Atlantic coast.

    The Serbian-Germanic-Irish connection is something that popped out quite unexpectedly. But more and more i look at particularly the Irish language and culture, the more and more i find Germanic influences.

    For instance holy kings who were venerated as bringers of the good times of plenty and blamed for the bad times of famine and pestilence, is a well attested Germanic custom. The killing of the holy kings as a sacrifice for the return of the good times is also well attested in Germanic lands well in the historical times. We find the same custom in Ireland. Are there any other mentions of this king sacrifices anywhere else in "Celtic" lands except in Ireland? And if not, how did this Germanic custom end up in Ireland? I have been writing a lot about potential Slavic and Germanic presence which somehow failed to be recorded in Irish Annals. Is this another proof that a lot of what we think as being "Celtic" in Ireland is in fact Germanic? But this custom of sacrificing kings for prosperity originated in the Balkans in Lepenski vir culture, 7000 bc. They sacrificed kings every year. Human sacrifices continued to bi practiced in the Balkan well into medieval times.
    As for similarities in stone sculptures etc. I wouldn't read too much into it, the oul' swirly patterns seem to have been very common in multiple cultures and not necessarily related.

    The swirling pattern and chevron are vinca invention and we can trace the spread of the vinca symbolism from the Balkan to all the other parts of Europe, middle east, north Afrika, Mesopotamia, and further east. They are related. They are being spread by proselytizing vincans who one day, in the mid fourth millennium bc, looked at their metal weapons, and said: "hey, guys, you know what, we can actually take over the world?". And they did. It took over a thousand years for them, or their descendants to reach Ireland, but when they did they built almost exact replica of tablet from Potporanj in Newgrange. What else did they bring with them i am trying to find out in this study.
    I think maybe you should emphasize more that the "Serbs" you believe came to Ireland are very different from the Serbs of today, more of an Illyrian stock perhaps than Slavic?

    There is no difference. Ilirians, Thrakians through time and through mixing with other people morphed into Slavs. These are the same people. In diplomatic and historic records of many European countries up to 19th century Slavs from the Balkan were called Illyrians. The Illyrian cultural traits continue to be found in Dinaric alps among the Slavic population. What i am trying to say is that there was no population, cultural and linguistic replacement in the Balkans. There was an evolution. This cultural evolution in the Balkans preserved the old cultural and linguistic layers going probably all the way back to Vinca.
    As for the similarities you mention in vocabulary, this is something that can be easy to get wrong, for example I see you referenced the word "bud" as a link between Irish and Serbian, there's one big problem with that though, "bud" is derived from German/Dutch and so has nothing to do with Irish and therefore cannot be used as a link between Irish and Serbian.

    I don't know where you got this. Bud, Bod is an old Irish, old Celtic word for penis. Bud meaning penis was an Irish slang word brought to America where became a root for word Buddy meaning friend.

    Any Irish dictionary will give you this:

    bod - penis(n m1)

    bodach - a strong, lusty youth
    Buddy is another Irish Gaelic word, which comes from the Irish expression, a vuddy, or a bhodaigh, which means something like "pal." The root of the word bhodaigh is strangely, bod, which is the Irish word for penis, and pronounced like bud.

    http://www.irishcentral.com/story/ent/the_keane_edge/dirty-irish-gaelic-words-litter-new-york-city-slang----how-a-lot-of-american-words-for-vice-come-from-irish-88839767.html

    Dictionary of early Irish:
    penis - bot

    http://www.wales.ac.uk/Resources/Documents/Research/CelticLanguages/EnglishEarlyIrishWordList.pdf

    Proto Celtic dictionary:

    penis *butto- (?) / *bosdo- (?)
    penis *muto- (?)

    http://www.wales.ac.uk/Resources/Documents/Research/CelticLanguages/EnglishProtoCelticWordlist.pdf

    By the way here is another word for penis that is the same in "Celtic" and Serbian: muto. In Serbian word is mudo and means di*k. According to the linguists, the words for genitals are some of the oldest and most conservative words. They point to a very old link between Serbs and "Celts" or Irish.
    Another pitfall in comparing languages is that people sometimes think that because two words are spelt similarly they must be linked, the problem here is that spelling is a relatively recent invention that wasn't around at the times we're talking about, it's all about the actual pronunciation of the word and if they're similar

    I am aware of this. I have in depth knowledge of South Slavic languages and dialects. Also very good knowledge of several other Slavic languages. My knowledge of Irish is ok and is getting better every day. I am not really interested in modern Irish, so i am more concentrated on the the old stuff. I also have lots of Irish people that i can consult on dialectic issues regarding Irish language pronunciation. One of the reasons why i decided to publish my finds on an Irish board is precisely because i need help from Irish speakers regarding my understanding of the Irish language. What i am finding though, is that once you start digging into the Irish language things get pretty murky and muddy and i am a lot of times on my own trying to figure out why some things are the way they are.

    For instance take the word "rath". There are actually two old Irish words today spelled as "rath"

    ráth m - earthen rampart, ring-fort

    rath - granting, grace, gift, success

    When you look at O Donaill's dictionary, you can find two pages worth of words derived from the second "rath" but only one single line for the first "rath". When we look at the pronunciation of the word we find this:
    Pronunciation note: “th” is pronounced “h” in Modern Irish, but in Old Irish it was pronounced like the “th” in “thing”.

    http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaeilge/donncha/focal/focal107.html

    We have hundreds of place names with "rath" in it (for instance Ráth Cruachan) and all of them are pronounced as rath (raθ) not as rah.

    In Serbian we have word rat meaning war. Was rath originally rat, which became rath: place where you go during war times, fort? Is there any possible root for rath in Gaelic? Rat has no root that i know in Serbian. Maybe Serbian Rat (war) came from Irish Rath (the time of forts and fighting) who knows. What i wanted to Illustrate is that you can not actually depend on modern Irish pronunciation either. :)

    One last thing. I mentioned old shoes representation from Vučedol culture. Numerous were found of different types of Opanak. The fact that these shoe depictions were made points to religious significance of these shoes for the people of Vučedol culture. The same shoes, opanak, still have retained some cult status among the Balkan Slavs.
    Opanak is shaped like a boat and represents a boat that takes you over land. They are like boats connected with travels and search for knowledge and wisdom. They are often magical and can cover huge distances and carry its owner at huge speeds. Some of them can even allow you to cross any water without getting wet.

    They are through folk beliefs linked to gaining wisdom through experience. Someone's experience is measured by number of opanaks he had worn out. Opanaks are also sign and symbol of power and authority. Who ever puts his opanak first rules. Restringing opanak is a cure against nightmares so opanak is a magical tool as well. Opanak is also simbol of male power. In serbian folk poetry only women are barefoot, men never unless they are presented as completely fallen and broken. Opanak and even more boot is also very often connected with gold, money, treasure booty :). Treasure is often found in boots symbolizing link between travel, experience, wisdom and fortune. Bribe money in Serbian folk songs and stories is always given in shoes or boots.

    In Serbia St Sava, patron saint of Serbia, took all attributes of god Dabog, Hromi Daba. In the same way St Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, took all attributes of Crom Dubh. St Sava traveled a lot while fighting Dabog and preaching. His opponents often stole his shoes in an attempt to steal his wisdom. St Sava is patron of cobblers and shoe makers, which means that the teacher and shoe maker are connected. Opanak is sown on the knee. Knee is also place where kids are placed when they are being taught by their fathers. In Serbian language, knowledge is passed "from knee to knee" meaning "from generation to generation".

    The only place where you are not allowed to enter in Opanak is a holy place. In Serbian tradition home is the most holy place, the ancestral temple, and this is why people take their shoes off when they enter someone's home. In christian tradition, shoe as a symbol of knowledge and authority was replaced with hat. This is why the only person wearing a hat in church is the priest, the teacher and leader.

    To take your shoes off means to say everything, to revile everything, to be completely truthful.

    This was a partial translation of the below article:

    http://www.exodus-cudo.com/2012/09/obuca/

    Now have a look at this interesting unexplained thing about Lugus (Lugh):
    [Scholars have long noted the interesting parallel between Lugus being worshiped by shoemakers in Spain and his Welsh counterpart Lleu being represented as a shoemaker in the 4th branch of the Mabinogion[11][12]]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugus

    The emphasis on shoemaking in both the Third and Fourth Branches, taken together with the dedication to the Lugoues by the Spanish shoemakers' guild, suggests that this was an ancient and important attribute of Celtic "Mercury". It may, of course, have been no more than a symbol of craftsmanship in general, but some recent finds in Romano-Celtic cemeteries imply a more specific association of this image with the god. In British graves of the 3rd and 4th centuries, together with other paraphernalia related to the cult of Lugus, one typically finds a pair of hobnailed boots, obviously intended for the use of the dead in the Otherworld.30 "Mercury", as the archetypal mover between states, is the patron of all roads and travelling, but particularly of the ultimate journey between the realms of life and death. Shoes are a basic need of the traveller, in this world and the next, so Lugus, in his knowledge of all crafts, is the specific provider of this necessity.)

    http://www.imbas.org/articles/lugus.html

    I believe that Serbian tradition sheds some new light on this "emphasis on shoemaking" of the "Celtic" Lugus, Lugh


  • Registered Users Posts: 91 ✭✭Dr.Tank Adams


    Fair enough, I see what you're saying now has much wider implications than just linking Serbia to Ireland (essentially you're saying these Vincan's spread around Europe, Middle East and North Africa?) An interesting theory, one that I personally would place many question marks over but I commend you for following it up, always good to see people go against the grain and form their own hypotheses, it can only add to our overall knowledge. As for the "bud" thing, I apoligise, I though you meant bud as is buddy or friend. Anyway, I wish you the best of look with your research and I'll follow the thread with interest.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,218 Mod ✭✭✭✭slowburner


    For instance take the word "rath". There are actually two old Irish words today spelled as "rath"

    ráth m - earthen rampart, ring-fort

    rath - granting, grace, gift, success

    When you look at O Donaill's dictionary, you can find two pages worth of words derived from the second "rath" but only one single line for the first "rath". When we look at the pronunciation of the word we find this:

    Pronunciation note: “th” is pronounced “h” in Modern Irish, but in Old Irish it was pronounced like the “th” in “thing”.
    I have never heard rath pronounced 'rah' or 'raw'.
    Occasionally, you hear small ringforts or enclosures described as 'raheens' which would equate to 'rathín' - the 't' would be naturally silent in this case.


    The word 'lios' was sometimes interchangeable with rath.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,497 ✭✭✭ezra_pound


    slowburner wrote: »
    I have never heard rath pronounced 'rah' or 'raw'.
    Occasionally, you hear small ringforts or enclosures described as 'raheens' which would equate to 'rathín' - the 't' would be naturally silent in this case.


    The word 'lios' was sometimes interchangeable with rath.

    Yes but if you were speaking Irish you would hear : raw - as in silent t.


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    ezra
    Yes but if you were speaking Irish you would hear : raw - as in silent t.

    Are you talking about "rath" meaning fort as in all the place names, or "rath" meaning granting, grace, gift, success. I do believe that the second rath is pronounces with silent t, but not the first.

    slowburner

    Thanks very much for your comment.
    I have never heard rath pronounced 'rah' or 'raw'.

    Me neither. It was always pronounced as "t" harder or softer. But if you look at the irish pronunciation rules you will see that "th" is pronounced "h" or "w". Everyone i asked bout this peculiar case of "mispronunciation" told me that "it's the English who got it wrong and they forced everyone to pronounce it wrongly...". This doesn't make sense as invaders would usually ask the locals: "what do you call this place" and then they would try to capture what ever they heard.

    I just wanted to give an example when things don't make much sense when you put it all together. I really believe that these type of words are foreign to Gaelic and are being "Gaelicised".

    As for "lios" we already talked about it as being the actual Gaelic word possibly at the root of Ilios:
    Troy (Ancient Greek: Ἴλιον, Ilion, or Ἴλιος, Ilios; and Τροία, Troia; Latin: Trōia and Īlium;[1] Hittite: Wilusa or Truwisa;[2][3] Turkish: Truva)

    In Irish we have this word cluster:

    tré- triad - trojstvo
    tréad - flock, heard, congregation - stado,pastva
    tréadach - pastoral - cobanski, nomadski
    tréadai -shepard, pastor - cobanin, pastor
    tréadaioch - hearding -skupljati uterivati stado
    treabhcas - tribe - pleme
    treabhann -tribune, leader - tribun, lider, bodja
    treablaht - household,family - domacinstvo, porodica
    treabh - plough - plug
    treibh -house, homestead, tribe, race - kuca, domacinstvo, pleme, rasa
    trea- spear - koplje
    trean - warior- ratnik. So Trean or Trajan is awarrior.
    treas- battle - bitka
    treasair - conquer - osvojiti
    treis - strong,in power - jak, na vlasti
    triath - lord, prince - gospodar, princ

    This is an incredibly important cluster. I have never seen any other word group that describes iron age society in a better way. And it shows us that Trean or Trojan means warrior. So Is Trea Treas, or Troja, Troas the land of warriors? And if so was the original Troja in the Balkans in the second millennium BC and that Troas in Anatolia is the second Troja ? I think that there are things that point to exactly that.

    The other name, Ilios, Ilion probably also comes from Irish:

    lios - ring,ring fort,halo,fairy round
    il - many, varied
    il + lios(san) = many ring forts, the land of ring forts

    Was Troy or Ilios, Iliosan, Ilion the land of warriors who live in ring forts? Both names have etymology in Irish which perfectly matches what we know about troy, but no etymology in any other language. So what do we make of this?


    Tank
    I see what you're saying now has much wider implications than just linking Serbia to Ireland (essentially you're saying these Vincan's spread around Europe, Middle East and North Africa?) An interesting theory, one that I personally would place many question marks over

    This is not actually my theory. I came across it while i was researching the links between Serbians and Irish and when they lead me all the way back into neolithic. The theory of Vinca and Cucuteni being the birth place of ancient civilizations such as Sumer and Egypt is becoming fast the mainstream theory. After it was discovered that all Sumeran and Egyptian early cultural traits existed in vinca much earlier, including religion and writing, people started accepting that we could be talking about the mother culture in the Balkans. Add to that that first copper and bronze and iron was invented and first time industrially made in the same area of the Balkans and you get clear picture of a power center which wielded huge economic and cultural influence on the rest of the world at that time. By the way, last week they discovered the oldest metal ring in Vinca Plocnik site. It is over 7000 years old.

    Here is and article that shows where the European historiography is at the moment. When translated from double talk it says: There used to be a great civilization in Central Europe before there was any in the Mediterranean. We don't know who these people were, or where they went, but what we know doesn't fit into any of our hi(stories) so we will have to rewrite them.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01arch.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1369823581-LrzjtexT+I4BT9ZQO+DskQ&

    If you dig around you will see more and more articles being written on the influence of Vinca.
    I commend you for following it up, always good to see people go against the grain and form their own hypotheses, it can only add to our overall knowledge.

    Thanks for your encouragement.

    As you can see from the above example of Troy, relationship between Serbia and Ireland is a lot more complex than just vinca people reaching Ireland from the Balkans some time after the 4th millennium BC. I believe there were many contacts going both ways at different times all the way down to the last Celtic invasion of the Balkans in the 3rd century BC. This is what makes it difficult to determine which cultural traits originate in which time and which migration.

    Here is another example. I believe that South Slavic traditional shoe "opanak" points to something very very important.

    We find opanak for the first time in Vučedol culture. The same type of shoes are still used in the Balkans. The word "opanak" has no etymology in Slavic languages but it has clear etymology in Gaelic. Does this point to Vucedol culture being Gaelic? Or were their neighbors to the east in the Carpatian mountains Gaelic? I always suspected that Serbs and Irish lived together in the Balkans in the neolithic, i just couldn't figure out who could be the carrier of the Gaelic language and who could be the carrier of the Serbian language. If I was an Irish historian I would start looking very carefully at Vučedol culture. Particularly because it is believed that it could have been the ancestor culture of the "Celtic" Volcae and Later "Slavic" Volci from south Baltic.
    The Vučedol culture (Croatian: Vučedolska kultura) flourished between 3000 and 2200 BC[1] (the Eneolithic period of earliest copper-smithing), centered in Syrmia and eastern Slavonia on the right bank of the Danube river, but possibly spreading throughout the Pannonian plain and western Balkans and southward. It was thus contemporary with the Sumer period in Mesopotamia, the Early Dynastic period in Egypt and the earliest settlements of Troy (Troy I and II). Some authors regard it as an Indo-European culture.[2]

    Following the Baden culture, another wave of perhaps Indo-European speakers came to the banks of the Danube. One of the major places they occupied is present-day Vučedol ("Wolf's Valley"), a location six kilometers downstream from the town of Vukovar, Croatia. It is estimated that the site had once been home to about 3,000 inhabitants, making it one of the largest and most important European centers of its time.Coordinates: 45°21′N 19°00′E According to Bogdan Brukner,[3] proto-Illyrians descended from this wave of Indo-European settlers.
    The early stages of the culture occupied locations not far from mountain ranges, where copper deposits were located, because of their main invention: making tools from arsenical copper in series reusing double, two-part moulds.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vu%C4%8Dedol_culture

    The main Vucedol culture site was in Vucedol (meaning wolf valley in South Slavic languages) which lies on river Vuka (meaning wolf river in South Slavic languages). What is interesting is that the old name of this river was "Volcos". This indicates that "Volcos" actually means "wolf(s)" river.
    Vuka is a river in eastern Croatia, a right tributary of the Danube river. At 112 kilometres (70 mi) it is the 11th longest river in Croatia and it has a drainage area of 644 square kilometres (249 sq mi).[1] The river is located in Vukovar-Syrmia County, in Slavonia region. It empties into the Danube at the town of Vukovar, which got its name from the river.
    Ancient name of Pannonian Illyrians for Vuka was Volcos.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcos
    The Volcae (Latin pronunciation: [ˈwɔlkaj]) were a tribal confederation constituted before the raid of combined Gauls that invaded Macedon c. 270 BC and defeated the assembled Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae in 279 BC. Though a modern view of Celtic tribal configurations has to be pieced together from mentions in Greek and Latin sources, for archaeology determines no tribal identities purely through material culture of the late La Tène Celts, tribes called Volcae were to be found simultaneously in southern France, Moravia, the Ebro River valley, and Galatia in Asia Minor (Anatolia).

    Traditional etymologies have attributed Volcae to a word akin to Welsh golchi 'to wash' and Irish folc 'to bathe' (Proto-Celtic *wolkiō), making this tribe the 'river people' after a rough semantic adjustment. A more likely scenario is that this or a cognate in Pannonian Illyrian was used to name the river Volcos, from which the Volcae took their name.[citation needed] C. W. von Glück[18] derived the name from a word related to Old Irish folg 'agile, energetic'.[19]
    Most Celticists today seem to agree that the tribal name Uolcae is related to Welsh gwalch 'hawk', akin to Latin falco 'hawk', (and they compare the Gaulish personal name Catuuolcus to Welsh cadwalch 'hero', literally 'battle-hawk'), though some prefer to translate Gaulish *uolco- as 'wolf' and, by semantic extension, 'errant warrior'.[20] There seems to be indication that their name is related to their breed of war greyhounds since before the 600 BC when the Tectosages and Tolistobogii Celts sacked Delphi. Survivors left accounts of the fierce Celts and the huge dogs who fought with them and at their side. They were described by Julius Caesar in his war reports, The Gallic Wars.

    When you manage to wade through the etymological gibberish saying that the fierce Volcae had the name which meant "to wash" :), you come to wolf river and Slavic volk (wolf), Irish faolchú (wolf )and Gaulish uolco (wolf) and the reports of terrifying war hounds that they used in Battle. Both the Irish and Serbians have tradition of war dogs, wolf hounds. We know that Volcae came from Central Europe and that they were in the Balkans living peacefully way before their invasion of Greece as latest archaeological data shows us:

    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=85056467&postcount=67

    This could explain a lot of Gaelic toponims and hidronims in the Balkans. But how do we explain things like this:

    Mag Muirthemne [Murtemne] – Mag Muirthemne “in Brega” or “in Conaille” was one of 12 plains
    cleared in Nemed’s time. “Mag Muirthemne is the maritime plain of Co. Louth.” Fodbgen, king of the Fir
    Bolg, was slain on Mag Muirthemne. The plain, Mag Muirthemne, was named for Muirthemne son of
    Breogan one of the chieftains of the Milesians. Three battles were fought here between Conmáel son of
    Éber and the descendants of Érimón. The river Nith Nemandach burst over the land of Mag Muirthemne
    during the reign of Rothechtaid, the 15th king of Ireland. Óengus king of Conaille of Muirthemne died in
    the battle of Mag Sered. Cobthach, son of Ugoine Mór, was granted as his share of Ireland “Muirthemne,rich in mead.” (source: Macalister, LGE, Vol. 3, p. 123, 135, 173, 191; Vol. 4, p. 9, 19, 33, 45, 51, 78; Vol.
    5, p. 23, 119, 201, 231, 393, 467)

    http://www.ucc.ie/celt/LGLM.pdf

    And then we have this:
    Mag Muirthemne, whence the name? Not hard to say. The sea covered it thirty years after the Flood, and hence it is called Muirthemne, that is, ‘darkness of the sea’, or ‘it is under the sea's roof’. Or there was a magic sea over it, and an octopus therein, having a property of suction. It would suck in a man in armour till he lay at the bottom of its treasure-bag. The Dagda came with his 'mace of wrath' in his hand, and plunged it down upon the octopus, and chanted these words: ‘Turn thy hollow head! Turn thy ravening body! Turn thy resorbent forehead! Avaunt! Begone!’ Then the magic sea retired with the octopus; and hence, may be, the place was called Mag Muirthemne.

    http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/T106500D/text099.html

    Here Dagda, like Thor or Perun uses Thunder Hammer or Axe to destroy the Serpant of the Underwarld and water (Veles) which was here depicted as Octopus. But the most interesting thing is the explanation for the name: "Muirthemne means darkness of the sea".

    In Serbian word "Tamno" or "Tavno" or "Temno" means dark. More means Sea. So Muirthemne = Muir themne = More Tamno = Sea dark = darkness of the sea. Here we can also see how people who did not know how to use these foreign words changed the ending of "tamno" into "tamne" to match the ending of "more". Maybe i am wrong but i could not find word in Irish that sounds like Tamno Temno which means dark.

    Who and when brought this name to Ireland? The story obviously talks about one of the catastrophic weather events probably the one that occurred in mid 3rd millennium BC when it rained for years and a lot of Ireland was flooded. Could the name be that old?

    You can see now how difficult it is to figure out who did what to who and when. But Serbs and Irish definitely had lots of fun together. :)


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  • Registered Users Posts: 3,284 ✭✭✭dubhthach


    slowburner wrote: »
    I have never heard rath pronounced 'rah' or 'raw'.
    Occasionally, you hear small ringforts or enclosures described as 'raheens' which would equate to 'rathín' - the 't' would be naturally silent in this case.


    The word 'lios' was sometimes interchangeable with rath.

    Check out pronunciation on Forvo, form two native speakers (Connacht Irish vs. Munster Irish)

    http://www.forvo.com/word/r%C3%A1th/#ga

    Bod (Bot in Old Irish) had two meanings these been Tail and Penis (membrum virile -- as noted in eDIL)


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    dubhthach
    Check out pronunciation on Forvo, form two native speakers (Connacht Irish vs. Munster Irish)

    No one is denying that the pronunciation of "rath" in modern Irish is "rah, roh". What i am saying is that it used to be "rat, rath", which is attested by all the "rath" place names which preserved the old pronunciation . All the linguistic sources also say that the old pronunciation for "rath" meaning fort was "rath" and that it changed to "rah". Probably the word was actually "rat" without h and h was added to the end later. Or the pronunciation has drastically changed.

    If "rath" as in fort was ever in the past pronounced as rah all the place names like "rathcormac" would not be pronounced by the locals as "rathkormak" but as "rahkormak". Maybe they are but i am not aware of it.
    Bod (Bot in Old Irish) had two meanings these been Tail and Penis (membrum virile -- as noted in eDIL)

    Have you ever seen pictures of the Devil with his tail between his legs pointing down looking very much like a penis?

    Bod probably comes from "bod" - to prick :) to stab. In Serbian this is the root word for words like:

    bode - it pricks
    bodež - knife
    ubod - stab

    budža - penis, large metal rod, someone important
    budžiti - to stuff in forcefully, to put a rod or shaft through a hole.

    interesting anyway.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,284 ✭✭✭dubhthach


    dubhthach



    No one is denying that the pronunciation of "rath" in modern Irish is "rah, roh". What i am saying is that it used to be "rat, rath", which is attested by all the "rath" place names which preserved the old pronunciation . All the linguistic sources also say that the old pronunciation for "rath" meaning fort was "rath" and that it changed to "rah". Probably the word was actually "rat" without h and h was added to the end later. Or the pronunciation has drastically changed.

    If "rath" as in fort was ever in the past pronounced as rah all the place names like "rathcormac" would not be pronounced by the locals as "rathkormak" but as "rahkormak". Maybe they are but i am not aware of it.



    Have you ever seen pictures of the Devil with his tail between his legs pointing down looking very much like a penis?

    Bod probably comes from "bod" - to prick :) to stab. In Serbian this is the root word for words like:

    bode - it pricks
    bodež - knife
    ubod - stab

    budža - penis, large metal rod, someone important
    budžiti - to stuff in forcefully, to put a rod or shaft through a hole.

    interesting anyway.

    Irish use to have a -th- sound like in English. This is what Linguists call a "Voiceless dental fricative" (equivalent to "th" in The). It was lost by the 12th century, the orthographic "th" was reduced to a h. It survives today as a fossil in the orthography.

    Likewise Irish had a "Voiced dental fricative" (equivalent to "th" in That). This was also lost at the same time. The "dh" digraph merged with "gh" and took on same values.

    In old Irish Ráth was spelt as Ráth, this can be seen in "Book of Armagh" -- th was a valid diagraph in Old Irish (along with -ch and -ph)

    Regarding place name pronunciation you are looking at the affect of anglicisation. A good example of this is the fact that the modern english pronuciation of "Bally-" is due to the ordance survey of the 19th century. It's not a reflection of how Baile is pronunced in Irish. "y" was chosen by John O'Donovan to reflect the "schwa" vowel (unstressed eg. Baile) and not to represent a "y" sound.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,497 ✭✭✭ezra_pound


    Ráth is pronounced raww in Irish.

    What do you mean you've heard it pronounced otherwise? As in rawth?


    Confused


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    How old is Crom Dubh?

    To answer that i will first quote an article from theoretical structural archaeology blog:
    Longhouse 6 from Olszanica in Poland [1] has a doorway 2.20m wide, and it is dated to 5000 BC. So what is that all about?

    Olszanica+B1+longhouse+6+plan+details.jpg

    Olszanica+B1+longhouse+6+with+Ford+Mondeo.jpg

    In 1976, an excavation at Bronocice in SW Poland uncovered parts of a pot with incised decoration depicting two carts with yokes.
    [9]
    The site was occupied during the Funnel Beaker or TBR culture phase, one of a complex group of cultures that succeeded the LBK in northern Europe, in the Fifth and Fourth Millennia BC.
    Bones from the pit in which the pot was found gave radiocarbon dates of around 3635--3370 BC, which, as the excavators pointed out, is earlier than dates for pictograms of wheels from the Samarian Uruk Period.

    Bronocice+pot.jpg

    Bronocice+pot++decoration.jpg


    There a two other main lines of evidence in this period, both from graves associated with the Baden culture that is found in central Europe in the period 3600--2800BC.[11]
    In cemeteries like Budakalász on the Danube in Hungary, pottery models of carts have been found. The example, from Grave 177, was painted and is incised with zigzag decoration.
    [12] Some models with handles, which may be drinking cups, have been found on the earliest Baden cultures sites like Boglarelle on Lake Balaton.
    What was also found at Budakalász was a grave containing two humans with the bodies of a pair of cattle laid out at right angles to them. Double cattle burials occur in other Baden cemeteries dated to the middle of the Fourth Millennium.

    baden+culture+model+cart+from.jpg

    It would clearly be unwise to argue for a cart shed in a late LBK building -- it simply does not fit with the other evidence. Irritatingly, it is not actually 'impossible', as the building is roughly contemporary with the earliest wheel-made pottery.
    There are two important points about wheels and animal traction. Firstly, they are two separate technologies; and secondly, they are difficult ideas to keep secret [compared with metallurgy, for example.] We could also consider sledges, or some other form transport dragged by an animal. I have always tacitly assumed that the several hundred pieces of timber required for building a longhouse could be dragged by an animal, presumably an ox.

    http://structuralarchaeology.blogspot.ie/2009/10/35-olszanica-longhouse-6-why-has-it-got.html

    So first wheeled vehicles appear in the fourth millennium central Europe. But houses with wide doors and space wide and big enough for a car appear much earlier, a whole millennium earlier. The only explanation is that first cars or carts did not have wheels but sleighs.

    Now here is a passage from a from folk tale "St Patric and Crom Dubh":
    Before St. Patrick came to Ireland there lived a chieftain in the Lower Country1 in Co. Mayo, and his name was Crom Dubh...
    When he used to go out about the country he used to send his two sons and his two mastiffs before him, and they announcing to the people according as they proceeded, that Crom Dubh was coming to collect his standing rent, and bidding them to have it ready for him. Crom Dubh used to come after them, and his trickster (?) along with him, and he drawing after him a sort of yoke like a wheelless sliding car, and according as he used to get his standing-rent it used to be thrown into the car, and every one had to pay according to his ability. Anyone who would refuse, he used to be brought next day before Crom Dubh, as he sat beside the fire, and Crom used to pass judgement upon him, and after the judgement the man used to be thrown into the fire....

    http://empoweringminds.spd.dcu.ie/documents/serve-version?id=131

    Crom Dubh had "a sort of yoke like a wheelless sliding car". This kind of description of Crom Dubh vehicle shows that the narrator clearly did not have an idea what that car could have been. Did whoever told the story new what the vehicle was and was that forgotten later? Or was even the first narrator constructing the story based on legends whose meaning was long lost and forgotten?

    What kind of vehicle did Crom Dubh have? Well i can actually show you one:

    sanke.png

    This picture was taken about 10 years ago in south of Serbia in the mountains near the place where i was born. This is me (hi everyone :)) sitting on an example of the most common means of transport in the area still to this day: "a sort of yoke like a wheelless sliding car". In this area mountain villages consist of houses strewn across the side of the mountain, so building roads is impossible.

    009.jpg

    Also even if there were roads connecting houses, local people would still have to get to their fields and forests. They would also have to be able to do that during the winter too, when the whole area is covered with over a meter of snow. The answer to this problem is sledge pulled by oxen. Here is another example from Serbia this time actually being used:

    volovi%20vuku%20sanke.jpg

    Sledge as means of transportation is perfectly suited for European climate and landscape. In early Ireland, with its hills, mountains, bogs, beaches and no roads, it would have been much easier to transport things using sledge pulled by oxen than using wheeled carts. To use wheeled carts you need hard dry ground, like desert or worm steppe or roads. Unfortunately no desert or worm steppe can be found in Ireland, and no roads were built in Ireland before mid 3rd millennium BC and even then there were only handful of them and they were probably ceremonial:
    There is almost no evidence that large roads were constructed in Ireland during the Stone Age. However, a very large oval henge enclosure, thought to date from c. 2500 BC (the Neolithic period) may possibly have had an ancient roadway associated with it.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_roads_in_Ireland

    So stone age people in Ireland used oxen pulled sledges for transport. So did Crom Dubh. Did sledges disappear from Ireland with the introduction of wheeled vehicles? I doubt it considering they are still used in Serbia today. But did Crom Dubh arrive on one of these sledges from Central Europe with first wheat farmers way back in 5th or 4th millennium BC? Probably, considering that he not only had sledge pulled by oxen, but he also brought on them the first wheat and the knowledge of wheat cultivation:
    Using the magic artifacts the sons of Tuireann have gathered, Lugh leads the Tuatha Dé Danann in the Second Battle of Mag Tuireadh against the Fomorians. Nuada is killed in the battle by Balor. Lugh faces Balor, who opens his terrible, poisonous eye that kills all it looks upon, but Lugh shoots a sling-stone that drives his eye out the back of his head, wreaking havoc on the Fomorian army behind. After the victory Lugh finds Bres, the half-Fomorian former king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, alone and unprotected on the battlefield, and Bres begs for his life. If he is spared, he promises, he will ensure that the cows of Ireland always give milk. The Tuatha Dé Danann refuse the offer. He then promises four harvests a year, but the Tuatha Dé Danann say one harvest a year suits them. But Lugh spares his life on the condition that he teach the Tuatha Dé Danann how and when to plough, sow and reap.[11]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugh

    Fomorians, Pomorians, Central Europeans from Pomerania, Pomorje, brought with them both the knowledge of "how and when to plough, sow and reap" and also Dabog, Hromi Daba, Crom Dubh, their main god whose fertility face was known as Crom Cruach, the god of bread.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,218 Mod ✭✭✭✭slowburner


    Dublinviking, this is very interesting material but perhaps you rely a little too much on questionable sources. No serious enquiry would or should use Wikipedia as a major source. Equally, much of the material in the various Annals is open to interpretation and is itself questionable.
    An enquiry of this sort is of course, significantly different from a historical enquiry in the sense that there are no primary sources apart from contextual artefacts. The case of the sled (or slipe) in Ireland for example, what ancient remains have been found to support your assertion?
    Antiquity is always going to be open to a certain amount of speculation/interpretation and theories can be made to fit vague facts more easily than concrete facts.
    'Outside the box' thinking can be refreshing and can throw up new ways of looking at questions but to have any substance, the information sources need to be more dependable.
    It's not going to be easy to find more reliable sources of information but I wish you well in your venture and I hope you continue.


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    slowburner

    Thanks for your support.
    No serious enquiry would or should use Wikipedia as a major source

    I don't. I cross reference everything and check the sources listed in Wikipedia first. I just couldn't be bothered rewriting the stuff someone else has already written and i agree with. Collecting everything and organizing it in a way that is easy to read is job in itself without having to retype stuff from books. :)
    The case of the sled (or slipe) in Ireland for example, what ancient remains have been found to support your assertion?

    This is what i wanted to ask Irish archaeologists if there are any present. But i would expect none to be found. I grew up around sledges like the ones on pictures. They can be made without any metal parts. This means that unless they sunk into some bog pit they would not be preserved through time. None were found in Serbian archaeological localities and these oxen pulled sledges have been in continuous use there probably since paleolithic times.

    The line in the story of Crom Dubh that mentions "a sort of yoke like a wheelless sliding car" is so out of place that the reason it was preserved must have been because it was significant. Otherwise it would not have been retold without knowing the meaning of "a sort of yoke like a wheelless sliding car".

    Another bit that sticks out in the chapter that i have quoted (and there are lots more in that story), is: "and his trickster (?) along with him". Irish word for trick is "cleas" and for trickster is "cleasaí" which is too close to Serbian word "klas" meaning "ear of wheat" and "klasje" or "klasovi" (pronounced klasye, klasovi) meaning "ears of wheat" to be ignored. Especially when the word for ear in Irish is "cluas" and word for ears is "cluasa"???

    Was the actual chapter part of the original story about Crom Dubh (Cruach) bringing wheat to the people? And was the actual bit originally saying: "Crom Dubh used to come after them, carrying his ears of corn (wheat) with him, and he drawing after him a sort of yoke like a wheelless sliding car"?

    Was the original "class", "cluas", "klasje, klasovi", "cluasa" meaning "ears of wheat, wheat" forgotten and later replaced with "clais", "cleasaí" meaning trick trickster? We know that it should have been wheat as Fomorians, the people who brough Crom Dubh (Cruach) are credited as people who brought wheat to Ireland. So I believe that here we have a very significant bit of history preserved in this story.

    The reason why i am so confident that this is the meaning of this chapter is because everything else regarding Crom Dubh (Cruach), Lugh, Lughnasad points to Balkan origin of this cult. Particularly anything that has to do with the wheat season celebrations. I will elaborate this in next posts and things are going to become a lot clearer.
    'Outside the box' thinking can be refreshing and can throw up new ways of looking at questions but to have any substance, the information sources need to be more dependable.

    I don't believe this is outside of the box thinking really. Just thinking. :) I am joking of course. I have a huge advantage over Irish historians, which is that I posses knowledge of south Slavic languages and culture and archaeology of the Balkans, as well as Irish language and culture. So rally the difference is that i am probably the first to look at Ireland from the Balkans with ability to compare the languages and cultures to this extent. In that way you could say it is "outside of the box". But i still try to employ very conservative thinking and i am asking more questions than i am giving answers.
    It's not going to be easy to find more reliable sources of information but I wish you well in your venture and I hope you continue.

    As i said before i believe there are jewels to be found here, but i need help digging. Anyone with any additional information on any of the topics touched by me is more than welcome to present them here.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,218 Mod ✭✭✭✭slowburner


    The line in the story of Crom Dubh that mentions "a sort of yoke like a wheelless sliding car" is so out of place that the reason it was preserved must have been because it was significant. Otherwise it would not have been retold without knowing the meaning of "a sort of yoke like a wheelless sliding car".
    Sleds or slipes and slide cars, were in use in Ireland up to the early C20th. Broadly speaking the Irish styles differ from the Serbian one you showed.
    See here for a little on the Irish type.


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    Archaeological locality Blagotin in Serbia belongs to the earliest proto Starčevo culture period.

    rep-trstenik_620x0.jpg
    The Starčevo culture, sometimes included within a larger grouping known as the Starčevo–Kőrös–Criş culture,[1] is an archaeological culture of Southeastern Europe, dating to the Neolithic period between c. 5500 and 4500 BCE[2] (according to other source, between 6200 and 5200 BCE).[3]

    The Starčevo culture covered sizable area that included most of present-day Serbia and Montenegro, as well as parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, and the Republic of Macedonia.[4][5]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star%C4%8Devo_culture

    First bread was made in Blagotin 6000 bc. Blagotin was a city which covered one hectare and had 100 houses. Houses were built along streets which all lead to a circulars square which measured 30 meters in diameter. In its precise center was a temple, first man made temple in human history. In neolithic time temples were normally found inside of the houses, so this is extremely important development. Blagotin had no defense structures, ramparts or moats.


    The temple was built 6000 years BC. It had an altar with a semi wall which separated profane space from the sacred space. There are four thrones which are positioned in absolute north south alignment, which is interesting because in the locality of Blagotin it is impossible to determine absolute north south direction based on sun and moon. In the oldest part of the altar, at the dept of 2,5 meters there was a broken deer scull with antlers positioned at a certain angle, which is the first time this appears in human history. Inside the altar we find the zigzag line which is closely connected with the cult. In the south part of the temple archaeologists found two figures of the great mother goddess facing west. They had over emphasized gluts stylized short legs and stylized deer head. This means that the sculpture presents the female principle (lower part of female body) extending into the male principle (deer head, penis) which is the earliest representation of evolution from matriarchate to patriarchate.

    blagotin.jpg

    Among many other objects, archaeologists have found clay models of grains of wheat which were brought as votive offerings into the temple.

    Trstenik%20i%20Poljna%201%20nn.jpg

    Archaeologists have also found tools, blades, toys and amulets.

    prona%C4%91eni-predmeti-u-Blagotinu-650x457.jpg

    Some jewelry found in the temple resembles ones found in the Alps, which suggests that Blagotin was an important regional (Balkan) and maybe even European religious center where people came at certain part of the year to celebrate (my comment: probably the harvest).

    On one of the votive wheat grains, archaeologists have discovered an engraving which closely corresponds to the plan of the central square. This is the oldest town plan ever found:

    Blagotin-zrno-psenice.jpg

    It has been determined that people of Blagotin made and baked bread which moves the date and place of the invention of the first bread from 3000 BC in UR Mesopotamia to 6000 BC Blagotin Balkan.



    Only 2.5% of the locality has been excavated so far. Dr Svetozar „Nani“ Stanković (1948 - 1996) who lead the excavation, died in 1996 and the whole archaeological site was closed and forgotten??? No one works on it and the only book published about this site is out of print. The site is not protected by Serbian government or by Unesco.


    Here is a three part tv series about this archaeological site which features interview with the late Dr Svetozar „Nani“ Stanković.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z9u4FHXhrcU

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TbdmhjO2Xfk

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dWb3xLIC7UI

    This is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world and i can bet you never heard of it. If you are looking for the origin of Crom Dubh (Cruach) maybe we can start with this place where they invented bread and venerated wheat. The bread cult is still one of the most important cults in Serbia and other Slavic countries. I will talk about this later.


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    slowburner thanks for this link it is great. It shows that slide carts were used in Ireland, so it is plausible that this is what the story refers to. Here i am adding two excerpts from the book:

    Did you notice how all the example are from the north, the land of cranogs which i already connected with the south Baltic in so many ways. Some of the types seem to be exact copies of the south Baltic ones.

    sledge1.png

    sledge2.png

    What is very interesting about this is the conservatism of the rural substance farming life. What works gets used for thousands of years almost unchanged. You have an example of opanak and now sledge. I believe that these rural communities are equally conservative about their taboos, beliefs and customs as well as language. If you have a custom that you believe brings you good harvest, you will not abandon it even if official religion of the land changes. The example is Crom Dubh day and all the harvest rituals in Serbia which survived arrival of Christianity for centuries.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    Something else from Starčevo culture (5th millennium BC): a votive model of a bread loaf.

    neolitnova2.jpg

    It contains the oldest known solar calendar depicting the period of six months from winter solstice to summer solstice and marking the spring equinox, the beginning of the solar year and vegetative year. When the wheat starts to grow. Sun is represented with the symbol of a fire steel which is the oldest and the most wide spread symbol of the sun.

    Birka_Grave_727_Firesteel.gif


    The fire steel lies under the horizontal line which represents the winter solstice. The six months period between the winter solstice and the summer solstice is represented with six lines, one for each month. These six months represent one half of the solar year and that is represented with half of the fire steel at the top of the diagram's vertical line representing summer solstice. The 45 degree angle line represents the spring equinox.

    This next picture shows the position of the spring equinox in the sky depending on the position of the observer and the time of observation.

    I = 2000 AD. Spring equinox is between constellations of Pisces and Aquarius

    IV = 5000 BC: Spring equinox is in constellation of Taurus

    xcchart1a.jpg.pagespeed.ic.dS5vK7NFRQ.webp

    So at the time when this votive bread was made (5000 BC), Sun, God, the lord of harvest was awakening every year as a bull. Is that the Bull of Crom Dubh?

    And here is an example of a votive bread baked for Serbian Slava celebration, the celebration of the ancestor cult. The ancestor of the Serbs, Dabog, Hromi Daba is God, The sun, so this is why the bread is in the shape of the sun and has a ring of fire steels pointing outwards representing the sun's heat. The bread also contains the representations of the ears of wheat, kalasje, forming the "celtic" sun cross.

    krsnihljeb2004.gif

    Irish word for sun is: " grian". Serbian verb "grijati" (pronounced greeyatee) means to heat up. "grije" (pronounced greeye) means it emits heat. "grijan" (pronounced greeyan) is that which emits heat or that which is being heated.


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    Fire steel, fire, sun. They give life but also connect Serbians and Irish:

    serbian:

    greje, grije - emits heat.
    sunce greje, grije - sun heats us up
    sunce sine, sija - sun shines

    Look at the English verb to shine. It seems again only South Slavic and Germanic languages have this word.

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shine

    grejati, grijati - to heat
    ogrev - firewood

    Irish:

    grios - hot ashes
    griosach - glowing
    griosagh - fire
    grios(c) - broil, grill
    grian - sun

    For grian we find this:
    From Old Irish grían, from Proto-Indo-European *ghreinā, from Proto-Indo-European *gher- (“to shine, glow; grey”).

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grian

    Do you know any other language except the Irish and South Slavic languages that have these words?

    We also have these words which show that the connection between the Irish and Serbs is indeed very very old:

    Irish:

    tine - fire
    From Old Irish teine, from Proto-Celtic *teɸnet- (“fire”) (compare Breton and Cornish tan, Welsh tân).

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tine#Etymology_2

    Serbian:

    tinja - to smolder but also a verb that describes the behavior of the first small flame of fire that catches the tinder wood when a spark from the flint falls on it.

    vatra tinja - fire is catching, starting its life from a spark or dying as hot coals. tinja, tine is the first fire a man managed to make, the fire which had a mind of its own, which was not easy to "catch" and which had to be conjured as if by magic. This kind of fire, made by hand, using the oldest known way of making fire by rubbing two pieces of wood against each other, or using two stones, or using stone hammer and piece of iron, or using fire steel and stone, is still called "live fire" in Serbia and is considered to have magic properties.

    Live fire is made once a year in a special ceremony during the month of July which used to be called Gorešnjak, the fiery month. The ceremony was done in every village. All the fires would be extinguished in the village in the evening. All the villagers would then gather usually on top of a hill. The fire making ceremony took place in the middle of the night or just before dawn. In some parts of Serbia people were part naked. The fire was made by twins or by the oldest and the youngest brother in a family, or by two men born on the same day, or by two men with the same name...who for couple of days before the ceremony had to leave particularly clean and good life. The ceremony took place in complete silence. When the fire is finally burning strong, every woman would take a burning brunch and bring it home, where a new young fire would be lit in the house hearth. There the fire would be burning for the rest of the year, because the hearth fire in Serbia was never extinguished except just before the new live fire was about to be made or when someone dies in the house. This tradition probably comes to us from the earliest times, probably paleolithic, when making and maintaining fire was a magical and sacred duty and shows us again how resilient customs and traditions are (at least among Serbs) and how long they could be preserved.

    Lighting of the live fire:

    http://www.pmfbl.org/irena/radovi/vatra_u_srpskoj_tradiciji.pdf

    Folk names for months

    http://tinyurl.com/kdn43jm

    Then I have these two words:

    Irish:

    creasa - flint fire
    tinechreasach - sparcling

    Serbian:

    kresati - to smash two stones against each other in such a way that their sides slide over each other making sparks. to do the same with fire steel and a stone. to make sparks.
    kres - fire steel, flint
    kresivo - tinder

    How old is this? I believe that these words are ancient. And they prove that the connection between Serbian and Irish language is ancient as well.

    There is even a Slavic god of fire called Kresnik:
    Kresnik (or rarely Kersnik and Krsnik) is a Slavic god associated with fire, the summer solstice, and storms. His mythical home, a sacred mountain at the top of the world, represents the axis mundi....Kresnik gradually evolved into a Slovenian national hero who lives on a golden mountain, sometimes as a deer with golden antlers. As a human, he is a great king skilled with magic, but who interests himself in farming....

    Kresnik is the son of the great creator deity, ruler of heaven, who has been identified in various sources as Svarog[6] or Perun.[7] He lives in a fantastical country, sometimes called the "Land of the Rising Sun", "Eastern Land", or the "Ninth Country", and rules on the "world mountain", which is frequently described as being golden, crystal, or glass.[7][8][9]
    Kresnik is described as having golden hair and golden hands or arms.[1][10] He was born either with horse earlaps, horse hooves, or a birthmark shaped like hooves, and he frequently is said to be able to take the form of a horse.[10][11]
    Connected to sun and fire, he travels the sky on his golden chariot, armed with thunderbolt, axe, hammer, club, or sword. Like Hercules, Kresnik performed twelve great deeds. Sometimes he is helped by his brother Trot or his four-eyed dog. His chthonic opponent steals his property, cattle, or wife-sister, but Kresnik defeats him. Rain or wheat falls from the sky after such combat.[12]
    In most tales, his wife is his sister, a goddess of spring named Alenčica, Marjetica, Vesina, or any number of variations.[7][13] In some versions, Kresnik also has a lover who is the daughter of a chthonic snake deity, his perpetual enemy, and Kresnik is eventually killed due to either his wife or lover's jealousy....

    With the rise of Christianity, Kresnik was replaced with John the Baptist. A pre-Christian water holiday was probably preserved by association with John the Baptist.[21] Kresnik's association with midsummer, fire, and rain are tied to St. John's Eve, when in parts of Slovenia, fires are lit and water poured over the people around them.[21] The washing of sin parallels Kresnik, who creates rain by vanquishing the serpent of evil. On St. John's Day, many customs retain memories of the Kresnik mythology, like the lighting of fires, rolling of sun-shaped wooden wheels, and young girls called "Kresnice" singing harvest songs.[14] The Slovenian translation for "Baptist" is »Krstnik«, a similar word.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kresnik_(deity)

    St. John's Day or Ivandan (7th of July) is one of the old bonfire nights of the Slavs. This one was marking the beginning of harvest. The next one, marking the end of the harvest was on the 2nd of August on the Ilindan, the day of st Ilia, St Ilios, The holy sun day, The Crom Dubh day, Lughnasad.



    In the end i would like to show you this word:

    tinder - small dry sticks and finely-divided fibrous matter etc., used to help light a fire.

    The etymology given is this:
    From Old English tynder,[1] from tind. Compare to Swedish tända (“to light, to set on fire”), German zünden.

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tinder
    From earlier tend, from Middle English tenden, teenden, from Old English tendan (“to kindle”) (usually attested in compounds); related to Danish tænde, German zünden. More at tend.

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tind

    Isn't it more logical that the etymology is: tinder = tine der = tine derv(o) = tinja derv(o) = wood that catches fire (derv is the Serbian root word for wood)? Word tinder does not come from tender, or tenden. They are related. You have to be tender and you have to tender in order to make (catch) live fire.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,995 ✭✭✭Ipso


    Keep an eye out for this boom, it will most likely cover a lot of what you mentioned.
    http://www.amazon.com/Ancestral-Journeys-Peopling-Venturers-Vikings/dp/050005178X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377210420&sr=1-1


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    Touchwood fungus, Oaks, Fire, Sun and the Drvids
    When a fire-steel is used to create a spark, this spark has to be made to land on a substance which is readily flammable and which will hold the ember produced long enough for the fire-maker to start feeding tinder and building the spark into a fire....

    ...In the Viking Age, apparently the preferred substance was called hnjóskr or fnjóskr, which is usually translated as "touchwood". Touchwood has a wide variety of names, but is technically a fungus of the Polyporus or Boletus family, especially Fomes fomentarius, Polyporus fomentarius or Boletus chirurgorum. Other terms used for this substance are amadou, punk, surgeon's agaric or oak agaric.

    images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSz3wytXQrJPRFLWMAnaXRka4EUHeoL2c-Dic39FvEmrzFPTpPFJA


    The touchwood fungus is shaped somewhat like a horse's foot, with a diameter of from 6 to 10 inches. It is soft like velvet when young, but afterwards becomes hard and woody. It usually rests immediately upon the bark of the tree, without any supporting foot-stalk. On the upper surface, it is smooth, but marked with circular ridges of different colours, more or less brown or blackish. On the under surface, it is whitish or yellowish and full of small pores; internally, it is fibrous, tough and of a tawny brown colour. It is composed of short, tubular fibres, compactly arranged in layers, one of which is added every year.

    Touchwood was collected in Europe in August and September, chiefly from oak and beech, the best being from oak.
    The substance was then prepared for use by removing the exterior rind and cutting the inner part into thin slices, which were washed first in weak alkali, then in water and then beaten with a hammer and worked until they become a soft, pliable felt-like material that could be easily torn by the fingers. For making tinder, the felt-like material was charred in exactly the same way that charcloth is made, and then soaked in "strong urine" where it was boiled for several days. Urine contains sodium nitrate, which is very similar to the potassium nitrate ("saltpeter") found in gunpowder. The difference is that sodium nitrate tends to be more hygroscopic (absorbs moisture more readily) than saltpeter.

    The charred "felt" made from touchwood can be kept smoldering with very little heat. It is thought to have been used to transport fire from one place to another before matches were invented. It was certainly in use in Neolithic times, and was one of the substances that the "Iceman" carried with him. The Iceman (sometimes called Oetzi) is an incredibly well-preserved 5,000 year old Neolithic man found in 1991 in a glacier near the border of Austria and Italy. In his pouch was a black felt-like substance that upon examination proved to be touchwood. Also in this pouch were "several small sharpened flint stones, a small drill-like piece of flint, and slender bone-tool" - an early fire-making kit....

    http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/fire.shtml

    Druid
    The modern English word druid derives from the Latin druides (pronounced [druˈides]), which was considered by ancient Roman writers to come from the native Celtic Gaulish word for these figures.[9][10][11] Other Roman texts also employ the form druidae, while the same term was used by Greek ethnographers as δρυΐδης (druidēs).[12][13] Although no extant Romano-Celtic inscription is known to contain the form,[9] the word is cognate with the later insular Celtic words, Old Irish druí ("druid, sorcerer") and early Welsh dryw ("seer").[11] Based on all available forms, the hypothetical proto-Celtic word may then be reconstructed as *dru-wid-s (pl. *druwides) meaning "oak-knower". The two elements go back to the Proto-Indo-European roots *deru-[14] and *weid- "to see".[15] The sense of "oak-knower" (or "oak-seer") is supported by Pliny the Elder,[11] who in his Natural History considered the word to contain the Greek noun δρύς (drus), "oak-tree"[16] and the Greek suffix -ιδης (-idēs).[17] The modern Irish word for Oak is Dair, which occurs in anglicized placenames like Derry - Doire, and Kildare - Cill Dara (literally the "church of oak"). There are many stories and lore about saints, heroes, and oak trees, and also many local stories and superstitions (called pishogues) about trees in general, which still survive in rural Ireland. Both Irish druí and Welsh dryw could also refer to the wren,[11] possibly connected with an association of that bird with augury bird in Irish and Welsh tradition (see also Wren Day).[11][18]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid

    Knowing the connection between the oak and the touchwood fungus and the fire and the sun and all the related words, I have to ask a question:

    What were the first Drvids actually collecting in August in Oak groves?

    This is the Serbian coat of Arms. It is a cross with four fire steels in the shape of the Cyrillic letter s, the first letter of the word Sunce, Sun, Sol, Sur, Swarozić, which were various names for Sun.

    63250210351394ocila.jpg

    This is the same symbol on a battle flag, on one of medieval engraving. This time the cross is made of fire wood and the fire steel are connected with sun emanating fire. You can say this is an explanation of the true meaning of the Serbian cross: the sun's fire:

    6n05055.jpg

    Here we see the cross made of dry rotten wooden branches from which the bark is falling off, ideal for catching fire, connected with the fire steel. Please note flames emanating from it. This is the Sun fire cross, where fire steel is in the shape of letter S meaning Sunce - Sun.
    Please note how much the fire steel resembles a regal crown.

    6n05033.jpg

    And the last is showing us an actual crown over the fire steel cross, the sun cross, the sun our lord. The regal power comes from the sun and fire. Who knows the secrets of the sun and fire rules.

    6n05034.jpg

    In Slavic mythology the Sun is the Son of Svarog, the god of heaven. Being the son of Swarog he is Swarožić (pronounced Svarožich) where -ić is Serbian suffix meaning a son of, a descendant of. Swarožić was Slavic god of fire. But Dabog was also the son of Swarog, so Swarožić is Dabog who who is also Hromi Daba who is also Crom Dubh the sun god "God" our Sun. In Christianity, Isus Hrist is the the son of Heavenly Father. Please note that Serbian word for oak is hrast. And that apparently Hrist is supposed to mean teacher. Oak is the symbol of the sun, because oak and fire steel produce fire on earth like sun produces fire in the sky. And oak tree priests, Drvids are teachers. Is Christianity just the old European religion in disguise? Did Christianity develop as an attempt to conquer old European religion by wrapping it in a cloak of Judaisam until it became almost unrecognizable? This is a theme for another discussion.

    What is very interesting is that the fire steel being a symbol of the sun is found all over the world, but that the first place it was found was in Starcevo. The first fire steal cross was found in Vinca. Here you can see it in this partial list of Vinca symbols:

    xgimbutasvincaschriftle4.jpg.pagespeed.ic.j9wV1-lQCG.webp

    And in the same row you can see the transformation between the Serbian cross and the "celtic" cross, fire and light.

    Ireland sun cross with four fire steals (letters s), 2000 BC Dublin national museum:

    xsundiskirska2000bc.jpg.pagespeed.ic.gBM1mQHcca.webp

    A "celtic" cross with four fire steals (letters s)

    Old%20Celtic%20Cross.jpg

    The "son" of the heavenly father is in the center. "Sun" Swarozić, the son (sin in Serbian) of the heavenly father Svarog is shining out on the world.

    kilfenora-high-crosses-galway-ireland+1152_13043599019-tpfil02aw-21205.jpg

    Serbian cross

    142891040814s1ig.jpg


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    In Slavic religion, Sun has another name: Vid, Svetovid, Sveti vid.

    Let's go back to word druid:
    The two elements go back to the Proto-Indo-European roots *deru-[14] and *weid- "to see".[15]
    *dóru n - tree

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/d%C3%B3ru#Proto-Indo-European
    *weyd-to see, to know

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/weyd-#Proto-Indo-European

    Vid in Serbian has these meanings: to see, to know, to foresee, to teach, to tell stories, to heal. This one word in Serbian describes all the attributes of drvid priest.

    In Slavic languages Vid can also be pronounced as Vit or Ved or Vet.

    Here are the words which have Vid, Vit, Ved or Vet as their root. You can see that in the same way as the words which have "god" as their root, all the words here denote actions and attributes of a god and sun god to that. I am posting it here so you can see how important the sun god Vid was to the Serbs. Swarozić, Svetovid, Dabog are all one and the same god, Sun god, god of fire and light. They are also gods of war and gods of fertility and agriculture.


    vid - site, ability to see, what god vid is lighting up - pogled, sposobnost gledanja, ono sto bog vid osvetljava

    vidit, vidjen - famous, having vid looking at him, on his side - slavan, onaj koga vid gleda, na cijoj je vid strani

    videti - to see, to be able to see because god vid has lit up the world for you - videti, biti sposoban da vidis jer je bog vid osvetlio svet

    vidljiv - visible, lit up by god vid - ono što se vidi, ono sto je osvetlio bog vid

    uvid - insight, good knowledge - dobro znanje razumevanje nečega. ovde se vidi da su znati i videti sinonimi.

    uvideti - to realize, to have things, problems lit up by the light of god vid - shvatiti, biti sposoban da vidis kako stvari stoje jer ih je bog vid osvetlio svojom svetloscu

    predvideti - to forsee, to be able to see the future because god vid has lit it up for you - videti buducnost jer ju je osvetlio bog vid

    vidovit - clairvoyant, able to see the future because god vid has lit it up for you - sposoban da vidis buducnost jer ju je osvetlio bog vid

    svideti se - be liked, be likable because god vid has made you beautiful, has lit you up with beautiful light - biti osvetljen vidovim svetlom, biti lep

    zavideti - be envious, wanting to have things that vid did not give to you - hteti stvari koje vid nije namenio tebi

    vit - reason, intellect - razum, pamet

    dovitljiv - quick-witted, sharp witted.

    dovitljivost - ability to solve problems, to come up with ideas, to be able to reach to vid and get his advice - biti sposoban da resis probleme, da iznadjes rešenja, da dodjes do vida i da od njega dobijes savet

    savitljivost - elasticity, ability to adjust, to change shape, to move with god vid as he is reshaping the world - biti elastican, sposoban da se prilagodis promenama, da promenis oblik u skladu sa time kako vid menja svet oko tebe

    vit - suffix meaning full of, famous for, good at. examples:

    lekovit = lek + vit = medicine + full, contains, famous for = medicinal
    glasovit = glas + vit = voice, good comments, fame + full = famous
    darovit = darova + vit = gifts + full = gifted

    osvit - down - jutro

    vita (latin) - life, from vid dal meaning energy that vid gives - zivot, sto je vid dal, energija koju daje vid

    here is official etymolgy so you can compare it:
    From vīvō („I live”). Possibly corresponds to a derivative of Proto-Indo-European *gʷih₃wo-teh₂ (compare Ancient Greek bíotos, Old Irish bethu, bethad, Irish beatha, Welsh bywyd, Old Church Slavonic животъ (životŭ, „life”), Lithuanian gyvatà („life”), Sanskrit जीवित (jīvitá), Avestan gayo (accusative ǰyātum) „life”)), ultimately from *gʷeih₃w- („to live”), cf. *gʷih₃wós („alive”).

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vita#Latin

    vit - tall, high - visok

    vitak - thin, slender

    providan - see through

    providjenje - providence, have things given to you by god vid - promisao, dobiti savet, omen ili znak od boga vida. takođe biti zbrinut od boga vida

    nevidljiv - invisible

    nevid - misery, bad luck, be invisible to god vid, not have good vid look at you, smile at you, shine at you - jad i beda, ono što se desi kad te bog ne vidi, kad ti se ne smesi, kad te ne greje njegova svetlost

    obnevideti - to become blinded by emotions, mad from rage, to loose it, to loše connection with vid - postati zaslepljen negativnim emocijama, besom, mrznjom, izgubiti vezu sa bogom vidom

    zanovitati, zanovetati - complain. from „zašto no vit dati” meaning „why did not vid give it” - zaliti se zato što ti vid nije nešto dao

    čuvida, čuv + vida - mask, protects, saves + site, what protects us from site, from god vid - ono sto nas cuva od pogleda od boga vida

    vid i vit are interchangeable and depend on the accent and dialect. Also in some dialects i turns to e so vid becomes vet, ved:

    svit, svet - world, what is, what exists with the help of god vid - svet, sto jeste, sto postoji uz pomoć boga vida

    svit, savit, svita - council, advice, worning - vece, savet, upozorenje

    svitlo, svetlo - light, what comes from (with) god vid and lights up the world - svetlo, ono sto dolazi od boga vida i osvetljava svet

    osvitliti, osvetliti - light up, shine light on things like god vid does - osvetliti kao sto to vid radi

    svitiljka, svetiljka - light source, torch - izvor svetlosti, baklja

    svidočiti, svedočiti - witness, be present, be in presence of someone or something which is lit up by god vid - videti svojim očima

    zavitovati se, zavetovati se - to sware oath, to promise before god vid, to do it for vid - obecati, zakleti se pred bogom vidom, uraditi nešto za vida, za vid to vati

    svitkovina, svetkovina - celebration, religious celebration of god vid - religiozna proslava, originalno slavljenje boga vida

    savit, savet - advice how to follow god vid so things will work for you - objašnjenje kako da sledis boga vida, kako da budes sa vidom da bi ti se planovi ostvarili

    savitovati, savetovati, sa vid to vati - to give advice with wisdom given to you by god vid

    sviti, sveti - holly, enlightened, which is with vid, shares his light - sveti, blazeni, onaj koji se kupa u vidovom svetlu, koji
    zraci vidovim svetlom, koji je sa vidom

    prosvitljenje, prosvetljenje - enlightement, reaching god vid - pro s vid ti jesi, prici k, uci u, doći do boga vida, postati jedan s vidom

    stanovit - certain, persistent, strong, where vid's will doesn't change - izvestan, stalan, jak, gde se vidova volja ne menja

    vitez - knight, person full of highest qualities besowed to him by god vid - vitez, osoba koja poseduje najviše kvalitete koje mu je udelio bog vid

    vidati - to cure, to mend, to heal, to use power of god vid (knowledge about life, energy of life, life itself like plants and miterals) to heal - leciti, popravljati, koristiti ono sto nam daje vid (znanje, zivotnu silu, zivot kao biljke i minerale) za lecenje

    vidar - doctor, medicine man

    vida, veda - teaching, story, knowledge, experience that vid gave us - ucenje, prica, znanje koje nam je dao bog vid

    vidati, vedati - to teach, to tell a story, to talk, to pass on knowledge, experience that vid gave us - uciti nekoga, pricati pricu, pricati, predavati znanje i iskustvo koje nam je dao bog vid

    vidati, vedati - to understand. here vid is equated with reason, mind - razumeti. ovde se vid izjednacuje sa umom

    povidati, povedati - talk, tell stories, tell about what we saw, what we experienced, what god vid made happen - pricati, pricati price o onome sto smo videli, sto smo iskusili, sto je vid učinio da se desi

    zapovidati, zapovedati - to command, make others do things, like vid does - komandovati, narediti drugima da nešto urade, kao sto to vid radi

    se vidi, se vida, se veda - it is understood, of cours - naravno, razume se

    odvid - answer - odgovor

    providati, svidati - worry about something - brinuti se za nešto

    svidati se - to regain conciesness, to reunite with vid - osvestiti se, ponovo se povezati sa bogom vidom

    sviditi se - to regain conciesness, to like something, to become convinced of something - osvestiti se, zavoleti nešto,

    osvedociti se - to see something with your own eyes - uveriti se u nešto

    vistovit - conscious - svestan

    svidok, svedok - withness, someone who saw something, someone who experienced something, someone who was with god vid - svedok, neko ko je iskusio nešto, neko ko je bio s vidom

    svidocanstvo - proof - dokaz

    ispovidati, ispovedati - to confess, to tell god vid about your sins - ispovediti se, reci bogu vidu svoje grehe

    propovidati, propovedati - to preach, to let vid talk through you - dozvoliti da vid govori kroz tebe

    vitija - poem, something containing vit - pesma, ono sto poseduje vit

    vitiznanec - poet - pesnik

    vitar, vetar - wind

    viti se - to flap, fly in the wind, to be high up - leprsati, leteti na vetru, biti visoko

    nadviti se - to lean over, to be higher than. from here we can see that vid, vit also means high- nadneti se, biti visi. odavde vidimo da vit, vid takođe znaci visok

    pravedan - just

    krivedan - unjust

    vedar - bright, clear, happy,

    zaveden - enchanted

    naveden - persuaded

    sveden - narrowed down, brought to it's essence, core

    ved, vedene, vedihu - news - vesti

    sazvedavec - curious - radoznao

    zvedati - find out - saznati

    vedriti - to clear, to clean - cistiti

    vedriti - be powerful - biti mocan

    izvedikovati se - to become skillful - izvestiti se

    vedro - bucket, vessel for water. zašto se vedro zove vedro? da li je voda veda, vedra, prozirna cista?

    proveden - moment spent

    priveden - brought close to, doveden - brought here, odveden - taken away, izveden - brought out, uveden - brought in. from here ved is presence, here, now

    rasvediti se - to get ill, sick - razboleti se

    izvedljiv - curious - radoznao

    kleveta - lie about someone, slander - laz

    osveta - revenge

    odvetak - inheritor, someone who gets something as inheritance - naslednik

    posvetiti - dedicate - nameniti

    veten - promised, dedicated - obecan, namenjen

    from here you can see that vet, vit, vid also means to give, to bestow, to give as a present, to promise, to dedicate - odavde se vidi da vet, vit, vid takođe znaci dati, pokloniti, nameniti,obecati

    posvetilište - mystery - misterija

    posvetilište - sacrifice - žrtva

    šakovet, rukovet - hand full, arm full - koliko stane u šaku, koliko stane u ruke.

    from here you can see that vet, vit, vid also means full - odavde se vidi da vet, vit, vid znaci pun

    svetište - temple, the place of god Vet, Vid - crkva, mesto boga Veta, Vida

    vet, vid - sun god

    vet - this, it - taj, to

    vetov - old - star

    avet - ghost, apparition, something which has no vid in itself whre a is prefix that gives the opposite meaning. here opposite from being alive - duh, nešto ne zivo, nešto sto nema vida u sebi

    istovetan - the same, made in the same way - isti, jednak

    in russian privet means with vet, with god, god Vid, Vet be with you - na ruskom привет sa vetom, sa vidom, s bogom, pozdrav


    Sve to vid - all that see - good who sees all. He is represented with four sided pillar but also with the cross with four fire steels.

    Svetovid

    200px-Swiatowit3011.jpg

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetovid

    Serbian medieval medalion:

    medaljon.png

    Irish high crosses:

    North%20C%20E%20face%20web.jpg

    West%20C%20West%20face.jpg

    Plain%20Cross%20web.jpg

    http://www.megalithicireland.com/High%20Cross%20Kilkieran.htm


    Please note the "hat" on top of Svetovid's column as well as on these "celtic" crosses. That is actually a loaf of bread. Sun supports the tree of life, and the Sun god is also the god of plenty, the god of agriculture and bread. I will talk about this more in my next post. And here is an example from Ireland of the tree of life growing from a fire steel, the symbol of sun god Vid, Svarozic, Hromi Daba, Dabog, Crom Dubh, Dagda:

    [IMG]http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/searagen/searagen0812/searagen081200026/4069312-an-ancient-celtic-tombstone-in-an-old-monastery-with- many-of-the-old-decorations-still-showing-the-c.jpg[/IMG]


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    Need fire

    800px-%D0%94%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%8B%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%B6%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BD%D1%8F.png
    Need-fire, or Wild-fire (Ger. Notfeuer, O. Ger. nodfyr, Scottish Gaelic tein'-éigin), a term used in folklore to denote a curious superstition which survived in the Scottish Highlands until a recent date.
    Like the fire-churning still customary in India for kindling the sacrificial fire, the need- or wild-fire is made by the friction of one piece of wood on another, or of a rope upon a stake. Need-fire is a practice of shepherd peoples to ward off disease from their herds and flocks. It is kindled on occasions of special distress, particularly at the outbreak of a murrain, and the cattle are driven through it. Its efficacy is believed to depend on all other fires being extinguished.
    The kindling of the need-fire in a village near Quedlinburg was impeded by a night light burning in the parsonage (Heinrich Pröhle, Harzbilder, Leipzig, 1855). According to one account, in the Highlands of Scotland the rule that all common fires must be previously extinguished applied only to the houses situated between the two nearest running streams (Kelly, Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folklore, p. 53 seq.).
    In Bulgaria even smoking during need-fire is forbidden. Two naked men produce the fire by rubbing dry branches together in the forest, and with the flame they light two fires, one on each side of a cross-road haunted by wolves. The cattle are then driven between the two fires, from which glowing embers are taken to rekindle the cold hearths in the houses (A Strauss, Die Bulgaren, p. 198).
    In Caithness the men who kindled the need-fire had previously to divest themselves of all metal. In some of the Hebrides the men who made the fire had to be eighty-one in number and all married. In the Halberstadt district in Germany, the rope which was wound round the stake, must be pulled by two chaste boys; while at Wolfenbüttel, contrary to usual custom, it is said that the need-fire had to be struck out of the cold anvil by the smith. In England the need-fire is said to have been lit at Birtley within the last half of the 18th century. The superstition had its origin in the early ideas of the purifying nature of flame.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-fire

    Please note that the two places in Germany mentioned in the text both fall withing the Slavic territory occupied by Western Slavs Sorbs. In Serbia, the "Live fire" is used for curing animals as well. There is a curious custom that had survived until 1950 near Belgrade:

    "A tunnel was dug big enough for cattle to go through. Then a live fire was lit at one of it's ends. The cattle was pushed through the tunnel towards the live fire, where people wold touch every animal that appeared from the tunnel with a burning brunch to protect it from diseases. This is a ceremonial rebirth where both mother Earth and father Sun, in the form of live fire, are invoked"

    Force fire
    The force-fire (Scottish Gaelic: teine-éiginn, which also translates to Need-fire), or a fire produced by friction, was used in folk magic practice in the Scottish Highlands up until the 19th century. Believers considered it an antidote against bewitching, as well as the plague, murrain and all infectious diseases among cattle. It is also known as In Scotland and elsewhere as Need-fire or Neatsfire from an old word for cattle retained in the name "Neatsfoot oil".
    Method[edit source | editbeta]

    The Scottish writer Dr. Martin Martin described the force-fire's use. According to him, all the fires in the parish were extinguished and 81 married men, being deemed the proper number for effecting this purpose, took two planks of wood, and nine of them were employed by turns, who by their repeated efforts, rubbed the planks together, till the heat thereof produced fire, and from this forced fire, each family was supplied with a new fire. No sooner was the fire kindled than a pot filled with water was afterwards sprinkled on people who had the plague, or on cattle that had the murrain, and this process was said to be followed invariably by success.
    A differing account suggests that if a family believed that they were under evil influence, all fires in the district between two running streams were extinguished on a set day. Then a spinning wheel was put in motion, and kept going furiously until the spindle became heated. Tinder or tow was applied to the hot spindle, fire was thus procured and distributed to all households under the alleged evil influences. In the nineteenth century, fire was thus procured to check witchcraft in a township in Uist where some sickness, supposed to be evil eye had carried off some cows and sheep. It is odd that neither cow nor sheep died after, possibly because the epidemic had exhausted itself.
    In 1812, J. Henderson of Caithness described the process:
    "In those days [1788], when the stock of any considerable farmer was seized with the murrain, he would send for one of the charm-doctors, to superintend the raising of a need-fire. It was done by friction, thus: upon any small island, where the stream of a river or burn run on each side, a circular booth was erected, of stone and turf . . . in which a semicircular, or Highland couple of birch, or other hard wood, was set. . . . A straight pole was set up in the centre of this building, the upper end fixed by a wooden pin to the top of the couple, and the lower end in an oblong trink in the earth or floor; and lastly, another pole was set across horizontally, having both ends tapered, one end of which was supported in a hole in the side of the perpendicular pole, and the other end in a similar hole in the couple leg. The horizontal stick was called the auger, having four short arms or levers fixed in its centre, to work it by. . . . By constant friction and pressure, the ends of the auger would take fire, from which a fire would be instantly kindled, and thus the needfire, would be accomplished. The fire in the farmer’s house . . . was immediately quenched with water, a fire kindled from this needfire, both in the farm-house and offices, and the cattle brought to feel the smoke of this new and sacred fire, which preserved them from the murrain."

    Last occurrences

    The force fire was last made in North Uist in about 1829, in the Isle of Arran about 1820, in Helmsdale about 1818 and in Reay in about 1830. It is interesting to note that the breaking of this tradition occurred round about the same time as the Highland Clearances.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force-fire
    ...There were definite customs which were common at all four Quarter Days.
    These included such as their being valued as Holy days. The need-fire, or
    communal bon-fire was ritually kindled, though on only two of these days were
    household fires extinguished and re-lit from the need-fires....

    Samhain

    ...As with all the fire festivals, fires were lit on
    the hilltops Samhain. This festival was one of the two when all hearth fires were
    extinguished and re-lit from the communal bonfires. The cattle were driven back
    from the mountains where they had been sent for the summer. At this time of
    their return they were driven between two bonfires to purify and protect them....

    Beltaine

    ...This season ended at Beltaine. Approximately May 1st. Bonfires were lit and the
    cattle were set out to pasture in the mountains, driven between the bonfires to
    purify them....

    http://homepage.tinet.ie/~kthomas/gaelic/gaelic6.htm

    Does anyone know of any other parts of Europe where these live fires were lit? So far it seems that the custom is only found in Slavic lands and Ireland and Scotland and north England, the exact places where we see repeated colonisation from south Baltic Western Slavic people, Sorbs.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,497 ✭✭✭ezra_pound


    It is incorrect to assume that Germanic practices and customs related to the need fire are of Slavic origin. The mythology surrounding need fires is in all Germanic cultures including Norse mythology and the Freya/fro goddess. There are historical records of need fires in Sweden.

    See chapter ii of this book:

    http://archive.org/details/curiositiesindo00kellgoog


  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    Ezra

    I said:
    Does anyone know of any other parts of Europe where these live fires were lit? So far it seems that the custom is only found in Slavic lands and Ireland and Scotland and north England, the exact places where we see repeated colonisation from south Baltic Western Slavic people, Sorbs.

    Obviously i am not assuming anything i am stating the extent of my knowledge on the subject. I am asking for more information. Then you say:
    It is incorrect to assume that Germanic practices and customs related to the need fire are of Slavic origin.

    I don't know who is assuming things here. You are taking an ancient pan European religious practice and calling it "germanic" just because it is found in some "germanic" countries???

    This practice of drawing the live fire, is also found in Hittite records from 2000 BC, to it definitely predates any "germanic" practices. The practice is found in all Slavic lands, hardly place where you could find too many "germanic" religious practices.

    Here is a picture showing drawing live fire from Serbia:

    images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSF0yg-jV4iNSaxNIOHkvKF0FtV2BTeQZICPqilvosCmReJy-TJuPiClXXC

    But there is a particular type of cleaning practice involving living fire, living water and earth, used for cleaning of people and animals which is also recorded in Hittite records and which, to my knowledge is only found in one more place: eastern Serbia, the land of King Trayan with goats ears. It is similar to the cattle cleaning practices from the area around Belgrade, but more complex:

    A tunnel was dug big enough for people and cattle to go through. Then a live fire was lit at one of it's ends. The cattle was pushed through the tunnel towards the live fire, where people wold touch every animal that appeared from the tunnel with a burning brunch to protect it from diseases and bad energy. In Hittite records people were greeted at the end of the tunnel by an old woman (baba) and given bread. In Serbia they were greeted by a "babica" and given porridge. The ceremony took place next to the spring so that "live water" would take the rest of the bad energy, sickness and sins away. This is a ceremonial rebirth where both mother Earth and her water and father Sun and his fire, are invoked to clean people and animals.

    Remember all the other things we found which exist in British isles, Central Europe and are also found in Hittite records as well? Do you see the pattern emerging???

    I am looking forward to reading about this custom in the book you recommended.
    The gods Agni and Soma are described in the
    Vedas as descending to earth to strengthen the
    dominion of their own race, the Devas, who are at
    war with their rivals, the Asuras, and to exalt men to
    the gods. The story of this great event is variously
    told. One of its many versions as relates to Agni,
    the god of fire, is that he had hid himself in a cavern
    in heaven, and that Mitarisvan, a god, or demigod,
    brought him out from it and delivered him to
    Manu, the first man, or to Bhrigu, the father of the
    mythical family of that name. Mitarisvan is thus a
    prototype of Prometheus, and the analogy between
    them will appear still closer when we come to see in
    what way both were originally believed to have
    kindled the heavenly fire which they brought down
    to earth. The process was the same as that by
    which Indra kindles the lightning, and which is
    daily imitated in the Hindu temples in the production
    of sacred fire. It is so like churning, that both
    operations are designated by the same word.

    This is the first chapter i read from your book. Did you actually read it yourself?

    Drawing of live fire is an ancient practice. Fire came from Agni, the fire of the sky.

    Oganj is the Serbian word meaning fire.

    Wiktionary says:
    From Proto-Slavic *ognь, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ngʷni-.

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oganj

    Now have a look which "Indo Europeans" use words related to *h₁ngʷni-:
    Balto-Slavic:

    Latgalian: guņs
    Latvian: uguns
    Lithuanian: ugnis
    Old Prussian: ugnis
    Samogitian: ognis
    Slavic: *ognь

    Indo-Iranian: *Hagnis

    Indo-Aryan:

    Sanskrit: अग्नि (agní)
    Bengali: আগুন (agun), অগ্নি (ôgni)
    Hindi: आग (āg), अग्नि (agní)
    Nepali: आगो (Āgō), अग्नि (agni)
    Romani: jag
    Urdu: آگ (āg), اگنی (agní)

    Italic:Latin: ignis (but no any other italic language. Strange and telling)

    Hittite: (akniš, “name of a deity”) (could be inherited, borrowed from Indo-Iranian, or unrelated)

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/h%E2%82%81ng%CA%B7ni-#Proto-Indo-European

    No Germanic languages.

    Now have a look who received the fire from Agni: Bhrigu.

    Bregians, Phrigians, Frigians, Balkan, south Baltic, British Isles, Asia minor...


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,497 ✭✭✭ezra_pound


    Quote from dubviking'Please note that the two places in Germany mentioned in the text both fall withing the Slavic territory occupied by Western Slavs Sorbs. In Serbia, the "Live fire" is used for curing animals as well. There is a curious custom that had survived until 1950 near Belgrad'

    First off you did imply that slavs influenced german traditions in this respect.see above quote.

    '

    Secondly yes ive read all that book and overall its very interesting.

    Thirdly it doesnt disagree with anything in my last post or any other ive written in this thread so how you deduce that I havent read it is beyond me.

    Fourthly I have no idea what your point about agni is.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 310 ✭✭dublinviking


    Hi Ezra

    First, thank you very much for recommending "Curiosities of Indo-European tradition and folk-lore". I am currently reading it, but even the first couple of pages which i have read so far, contained some very interesting pieces of information that i was hoping to find about the ancient fire worship. And they are actually confirming that the origin of the live fire cult is ancient, and it did originate in the Balkans. I will explain what i mean by presenting the excerpts from the "Curiosities of Indo-European tradition and folk-lore" related to the live fire cult, and commenting them. But first i want to answer your first question:

    "...you did imply that Slavs influenced German traditions in this respect..."


    Yes i did. Slavs lived everywhere east of Jutland peninsula since at least the 5th century CE, which includes the whole of north Germany. They are mentioned in early medieval texts as Wends in Lowlands all the way to Utreht (or Wilteburg as the Slavs called it) which they founded, and in Switzerland and the above Frankish lands. They also lived in southern Scandinavia. Even after anti Slavic crusade of the middle ages, and genocidal 30 years war, the bloodiest war ever fought in Europe which decimated Slavic population of Germany, and all the other wars to date, today north Germany contains significant Western Slavic Sorbian minority.
    Let me show you couple of maps which show distribution of Slavic place names in Germany. Today there are no Slavs living in most of these places that they named. Where do you think they have all gone? A lot have been killed and expelled. But, 30% of all German surnames today have Slavic origin. This is according to professor Jürgern Udolph, professor of research at the Institute of Slavic names of the University of Leipzig, who published his findings in the book entitled: "Professor Udolphs Buch der Namen. Woher sie kommen". So maybe Slavs do have some influence on German culture.

    Slavic place name north of Germany

    35l4vic.jpg

    Slavic place names Rugian area (detailed)

    Rujana-Karte2.jpg

    Slavic place names (blue) and mixed Slavic Germanic place names (yellow) in Bavaria

    140.jpg

    Slavic place names in Austria

    image004.jpg

    Any ancient custom coming from north of Germany, Bavaria, Lowlands, Switzerland, Austria, and which is also found in all Slavic countries including South Slavic countries is most probably of Slavic origin.

    Southern Scandinavia had a very significant Western Slavic population which was completely assimilated over the centuries. But place names and cultural traits as well as historical and archaeological records of their presence there survived. Slavic type houses are found all over Scandinavia and Viking held territories in early medieval time. This is significant proof that Slavic population lived mixed with the Norse population, as Norse lived exclusively in long houses or boat houses. Long houses were held sacred by the Norse. They were their temples as well as their dwellings, so any other type house found in Scandinavia must have belonged to some other cultural or ethnic group. And all the houses which were found in Scandinavia and which were not long houses belonged to one of Slavic house types. Slavic type pottery was also widely distributed in Scandinavia and the viking lands in early medieval times, even though Norse did not know how to make pottery and did not use it. They used soapstone dishes and wooden dishes. This is another archaeological proof of the widespread Slavic presence in Scandinavia. And we also have surviving place names as well as toponimes and hydronimes.

    Here are some works that talk about Slavs in Scandinavia:

    Danemark
    HVOR BOEDE VENDERNE PÅ LOLLAND-FALSTER?

    af Friederike W. Housted

    I dette oplæg har jeg valgt at behandle den væsentligste del af mit oprindelige stednavnemateriale fra Lolland og Falster. Jeg har undladt de lokaliteter, hvor der kun forekommer et enkelt marknavn af slavisk oprindelse, da jeg primært vil koncentrere mig om de steder på de to øer, hvor der kan registreres en øget slavisk aktivitet i form af bebyggelsesnavne, steder, der er relevante for en arkæologisk undersøgelse og områder, der har flere slaviske stednavne, liggende tæt på hinanden.
    Translation of the above paragraph:

    In this paper I have chosen to deal with the major part of my original place names material from Lolland and Falster. I failed the localities where there are only a single field name of Slavic origin, as I will mainly concentrate on the locations of the two islands, which can be detected increased Slavic activity in terms of building names, places that are relevant to an archaeological survey and areas that have more Slavic place names, lying close to each other.

    http://www.aabne-samlinger.dk/venderprojekt/seminar-stedn.htm

    The place names Vindeby and Win Mark [2] and Vindbyholt , Vindeballe , Win Helsinge , Vindelev (at Vejle), Vindeltorp and possibly Vinderød [3] are names given by the Sorbian Danish neighbors.

    http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendere


    Sweden
    Study of West Slavic toponymes in Icelandic sagas:

    West Slavic toponyms in Knýtlinga tale from the printer's perspective: orthographic adjustments or spelling errors?

    This paper examines orthographic adaptation name of the West Slavic place names in three 16th century manuscripts of Knýtlinga tale, Cod. Holm. 41 4to x , Cod. Holm. 55 fol x , and 222 Lbs fol x . The aim of the work is to theoretically and methodologically contribute to the discussion about names adjustment process and especially in orthographic name customization and to study individual orthographic name adaptation in a particular handwriting materials. The study material consists primarily of those in the selected manuscripts coated place name forms at 39 West Slavic toponyms. Among the survey theoretical and methodological results may include delineation and definition of key terms ( names replication , adaptation name , orthographic name customization , etc.) and the development of specific methodological tools for studying the names adaptation phenomenon in writing, eg sorting out orthographic errors in accordance with a determined principle by comparison of the examined place name forms the so called original shapes , ie the place name forms that are coated in the manuscript preserved specimen. There are 28 orthographic adjustments across 11 of the 39 surveyed toponyms. These adaptations can be divided into four types: formal, semantic, formal-semantic orthographic adaptation name and place name replacement. In all of the studied manuscripts it is possible to trace a clear tendency towards formal adaptation of place names. Adaptation rate varies from printer to printer, but it is possible to observe that most adaptations made ​​by Jón Þórðarson, author Lbs 222 fol x . The main reason for the detected adaptations seem to be in the system constraint, then most original forms of place that becomes adapted the material in different ways contrary to onomastikonet / language system. It turns out that one of the factors in the majority of cases examined contributed to the name finally adjusted, the name's synchronous opacity.


    ...it would be interesting to determine the etymology of the investigated West Slavic place names in Knýtlinga order to examine their development in the Scandinavian onomastikonet. Such a study could for example show early contacts between Slavs and Scandinavians and provide more information about names adjustment process of areas with interrupted language contact and the name orthographic adaptation.

    http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:325732/FULLTEXT01.pdf


    You also have to consider the strong and long lasting cultural ties between Swedes, Fins and Russians which streach back to at least early medieval time and probably even earlier:
    Present-day Finland belonged to the kingdom of Sweden from the 12th century and was ceded to Russia in 1809, becoming an autonomous Grand Duchy. Swedish was retained as the official language and language of the upper class even after this. When Finnish was accepted as an official language, it gained only legal "equal status" with Swedish, which persists even today.

    Typical Russian loanwords are old or very old, thus hard to recognize as such, and concern everyday concepts, e.g. papu "bean", sini "(n.) blue" and pappi "priest". Notably, a few religious words such as Raamattu ("Bible") are borrowed from Russian, which indicates language contact preceding the Swedish era. This is mainly believed to be result of trade with Novgorod from the 9th century on and Russian Orthodox missions in the east in the 13th century. For example, the similarity of the words Hirvas (a male reindeer in Finnish) and Irvas (meaning reindeer in Serbo-Croatian), shows very old contacts between Finno-Ugric and Slavic language families. Hirvas is also a name for Eastern Sámi (Skolt Sámi) village which proposes the eastern origin of the word.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language

    Forest Finns (Finnish: Metsäsuomalaiset, Norwegian: Skogfinner, Swedish: Skogsfinnar) were Finnish migrants from Savonia and Northern Häme in Finland who settled in forest areas of Sweden Proper and Norway during the late 16th and early-to-mid-17th-centuries, and traditionally pursued slash-and-burn agriculture, a method used for turning forests into farmlands.

    Eventually, from the 1620s on, the Forest Finns began settling to Norway. There, they settled in the Eastern counties of Hedmark, Oppland, Akershus, Oslo and Buskerud. The largest concentration of settlements, however, was in the forest-rich eastern part of Hedmark, close to the border of Sweden, in what today is denoted as Finnskogen in Norwegian and Finnskog[arna] in Swedish (literally "Finn Forest"). In this rather remote region the Forest Finns were able to move back and forth between the two countries – the border itself was not properly established until 1751.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Finns

    Considering the long ties with Russia, there were probably many Slavic settlers in Sweden and Norway as well. This is attested by the introduction of a Slavic log house which replaced Scandinavian long boat house. This house type was introduced by the Russians into Sweden from where it spread all over Scandinavia. Considering that long boat houses were sacred to the Norse, the only way these log houses could have been introduced into Scandinavia was by the presence of a large Slavic or culturally Slavicised population:

    The Slavs in the beginning of the Middle ages settled in the extended territories of Central and Eastern Europe from the Elbe in the west up to the Don in the east and from the coast of the Baltic sea in the north up to Peloponnesus in the south and were differentiated in several dialect-tribal formations.

    One of those large formations was Prague-Korchak culture formed on the basis of late Przeworsk antiquities (Southern Poland, Western Ukraine and north-eastern Slovakia). Its main markers are hand-made pottery, square semi-subterranean dwellings with heating devices in a corner and cremation burial rite. From the tribes of this group only the Dulebs are known, who appeared in the 8th - 12th centuries divided and scattered in different pans of its former territory. The S-shaped hair-rings are their ethnographical feature.

    Another dialect-tribal formation of the Slavs is represented by Sukow-Dziedzice culture, which have been formed also on the basis of late Przeworsk culture in Central Poland. Its characteristic elements are distinctive hand-made pottery, ground timber buildings and surface cremation burials. In the 7th century a part of Sukow-Dziedzice area was captured by the Slavs of another group - the bearers of Feldberg ceramics. On the territory of Sukow-Dziedzice culture the tribal groups of the Obodrits, the Velets, the Pomoryans and the Polyans have been formed. For all of them the S-shaped hollow hair-rings were common.

    http://www.rastko.rs/arheologija/vsedov-slavs_2.html

    From the book "Across the western Baltic": Slavic type pit houses in Scandinavia found in pre-Roman iron age and "Vendel" period:
    In a Late Viking Age context there are examples of a relatively large rectangular type of pit-house with roof-supporting posts at each gable, posts in the corners and an oven, from a number of excavations in Denmark and Skåne. This type is larger and more regular than the average Viking Age pit-house. It is often suggested that it is a sign of Slavic influence, even though the Slavic rectangular or square shaped pit-houses with a hearth or an oven are rare in Mecklenburg and Vorpommern. Examples dating from the 9th and 10th century are known from Holstein and Niedersachsen, but generally Slavic pit-houses belong in Central Europe (Donat 1980; Brather 2001). In Denmark pit-houses are known from the Late Roman Iron Age, and are seen as an adoption of building methods from northwest Germany. From the 2nd to the 5th century pit-houses are few in number and only found at a very limited number of sites, mostly in southern Jylland and in three Across the western B 240 altic. Jens Ulriksen cases on Fyn. In Skåne, though, there are examples of pit-houses that have been dated to the Pre-Roman Iron Age (Tesch 1992, 186 and 204). This is very early compared to Sjælland or other parts of Denmark, and how they are to be placed into the overall picture of settlement development in southern Scandinavia is unclear. On Sjælland, pit-houses do not appear until the 6th century with the exception of one or two examples, and generally the pit-house is a phenomenon of the Vendel Period and Viking Age. Thus there is no constructional evidence of Slavic settlements north of the Baltic Sea. As a contrast, the Slavic pottery style is present in settlement sites and towns in many parts of Denmark in the 10th to 12th century, suggesting a massive presence of Slavs (fi g. 3). However, it is generally accepted that Baltic ware was adapted and produced by the Danes rather than being the result of large scale migration. Rim shapes and - in particular - decoration north of the Baltic are not as varied as in Mecklenburg and Pommern, indicating that potters in Denmark copied a style rather than being an integral part of the original manufacturing tradition. Characteristic Slavic metal objects dating from this period such as ‘Schläfenringe’ and ‘Gürtelhaken’ are rare in the otherwise plentiful material found with metal detectors in Danish settlement sites. However, knife-sheath mounts (thin sheets of copper alloy) are frequently found (M. Andersen 1988), and hack silver deposits from the turn of the millennium contain bits and pieces of both Scandinavian and Slavic origin...

    http://tinyurl.com/muu23a7

    Book: "About the Introduction of Joint Timber Building in Scandinavia"

    The Swedish log-house or lafting tradition started in Sigtuna in the first half of the 11th century and then spread rapidly in central and north Sweden. The technique were used in part of Danevirke and in a well construction or two during the Viking age in Scandinavia but was not part of the house building tradition until Sigtuna (and Oslo and Tromsö, starting at the same time).
    From ca 700 e. Kr. houses and forts were lafted on the Baltic east-coast in today’s Poland, the Baltic’s and Russia and bit later in Ladoga and Novgorod. Wladyslaw Duczko, archaeologist in Uppsala believes that the west-Slavs are an important transmitter for the Scandinavian tradition.

    I suggest the reason for the delay was cultural. The Scandinavians readily adopted foreign dress fashion and consumer goods, but not so readily foreign housing. They probably had much of their identity in the houses, especially in their dwellings. The dwelling house shows who is the owner, and for the Vikings an old family was important. So a traditional house could be associated with an old and impressing family. In addition, the dwelling house had a religious dimension and had often sacrifices under the posts. Such things made the housing more conservative than other cultural features. There are theories, expressed by Rapoport, about socio-cultural factors having a considerable impact on house form, and about house form having a considerable degree of constancy due to culturally linked aspects.15 These theories point in the same direction as my suggestion. Towards the end of the 10th century, the cultural difference between the Scandinavian and Slavic peoples decreased. They both—or at least parts of them converted to Christianity, they made political pacts, and the royal families married into each other. All this probably made the Scandinavians more ready to adopt the building tradition from the east. And when they did at last, they made important innovations, and in course of time time they developed a very high-level house building tradition. So the meeting of the cultures was indeed most stimulating.

    http://www.karinrosberg.se/jointtimber.pdf

    So here again, any ancient custom coming from Scandinavia, and which is also found in all Slavic countries including South Slavic countries, is most probably of Slavic origin.

    As for the presence of Slavs in the ancient Gaul and their cultural influence there i will just give you these two links:

    http://www.korenine.si/zborniki/zbornik10/seraf_slavic_gaul.pdf
    http://www.korenine.si/zborniki/zbornik06/serafimov_celtoslav06.pdf

    As for the Slavic presence and influence in the Anglo Saxon lands i will again remind you of the book "The origine of the Anglo Saxon race"

    http://archive.org/stream/originofanglosax00shoruoft/originofanglosax00shoruoft_djvu.txt

    Here are mentions of Veneti, Wends, Vandals and their equating with Slavs by various sources from Antiquity to medieval times:
    Homer (9th century B. C.) records in Iliad[1] the Veneti in Paphlagonia as Enetoi (the Greek did not know the letter v).
    Herodotus, historian (5th century B. C.), writes about Illyrian Veneti, about Veneti living around the lower stream of the Danube, and finally about Veneti inhabiting the Northern Adriatic territory.[2]
    Polibus (2th century B. C.) added to the description of events during the years 219 to 146 B. C., following: »The land to the Adriatic coast was mastered by another, very old folk, named Veneti ... They speak a different language as the Celts, but what their habbits and their clothing is concearned, they differ from them only slightly /.../ Veneti and Gonomani were persuaded by Roman representatives, to join the Romans«.[3]
    Demetrius of Scepsis, grammarian, archeologist (2nd century B. C.), mentions the capital of the Veneti (Enea) in Troas (Asia Minor).[4]
    Strabo, historian, geographer (1st century B. C.), designates the (V)eneti in Paphlagonia as the major tribe moving towards Thrace (nowadays territory of Bulgaria) after the fall of Troy (Asia Minor).[5]
    Julius Caesar, historian (1st century B. C.), reports about the Veneti living in Gaul (Brittany).[6]
    Titus Livy, historian (1st century B. C.), describes how Veneti came up to the coasts of the (northern) Adriatic, also mentioning the river "Timava", which flows through the duskiness of the Škocjan caves (Slovene Ti(e)ma means the darkness).[7]
    Pliny the Elder (1st century B. C.) talks about an extensive land, named Eningia, where Sarmatians, Venedi, etc. lived. He also mentions the Venetulani in central Italy.[8]
    Tacitus, historian (1st century C. E.), places Veneti on the border of Suebia together with Peucinians, Sarmatians and Fenns.[9]
    Ptolemy, geographer (2nd century), mentions exceedingly large nations - the (O)venedi on the whole coastal region of the Venetic gulf (The Baltic sea).[10]
    Emperor Julian (4th century) presents evidence of Veneti, who settled in the proximity of Aquilea (Italy).[11]
    Jordanes, historian (6th century), notes a numerous nation of Veneti, populating the area between north of Dacia (now Romania) and up to the Visla delta (the Baltic sea). [12]
    In Vita s. Columbani[13] (7th century) (the Alpine) Veneti, who call themselves Slavs, are recorded (»termini Venetorum qui et Sclavi dicuntur«).

    In the Fredegarius Chronicle (7th century) we can read about the Slavs designated as Vinedi.[14]
    Adam of Bremen, chronicler (11th century), mentions an extensive land Sclavania, settled by Winulians, who used to be called Vandals. The land could have been ten times bigger then Sachsen, especially if we include Bohemians (Czechs) and Polians, since they are not distinguishable from each other, nor by their appearance, or by their language.[15]
    In Denmark (from latest 12th century and until the year 1972) the title "King of the Vends" (Latin Vandals) was used for enthroning Danish kings.
    Helmold, historian (12th century), records a vast Slavic country, where the ancient Vandals are now named Wends or Winulians.[16]
    Wincenty Kadłubek / Vincent of Cracow, historian (12th century), affirms that Poles used to be called Vandals.[17]
    Heimskringla, the Chronicle of Norwegian kings(12th century) mentions, that the Black Sea »divides three parts of the earth, from which is the eastern part called Asia, whereas the western part is by some called Europe, and by others Enea.«[18]
    Miersuae Chronicon (13th century) equates Vandals with Slavs.[19]
    Albert Crantz, historian (15th century), reports about Wandals or Wends, and says that they are Slavs, living as a single nation from Poland to Dalmatia. According to him, the mighty acts in France, Spain and Africa are ascribed to the Wends.[20]
    Marcin Bielski (16th century) says that Wandals was once the name for Slavs.[21]
    The Pomeranian chronicler Thomas Kantzow (1505-1542) writes that the »Slau(v)s and Wandals are the same thing / .../ just like the Germans are called differently - Germani, Teuthones, Alemanni.«: Original text: »Dan Slaui und Wandali ist ein Dinck / .../ gleich wie die Teutzschen werden oft on Unterschied geheissen Germani, Teuthones, Alemanni.«[22]
    Christophorum Entzelt von Saluelt (16. century) records ancient populousness of the lands east from the Elbe (Laba) river with Wends. At the same time he equates Veneti and Sclavenes.[23]
    Sebastian Münster, cartographer (16th century), mentions a once mighty nation on the East sea (Ostsee) named Vandals or Wends. He also reports on Wandals who settled regions in eastern Germany, where inhabitants are called Sclavs or Wends. Original text: »Mecklenburg-Pommern-Preussen: jtem Brandenburg und was dem Polenland zugelegen, alles Wandali geheißen und ihre Einwohner haben auch Sclaven oder Wenden geheißen.«[24]
    Antol Vramec, chronicler (16th century), writes in his chronicle for the year 928 the following: The Heneti, who name themselves Sloveni, were at that time knocked down in Germany.[25]
    Adam Bohorič, linguist (16th century), links Heneti, Vene(d)ti, Vinds, Vandals and Slavs together as a single nation.[26]
    Mavro Orbin (16th century) numbers Veneti, Vends, Vandals, Illyrians, Sarmatians ... among Slavs.[27]
    The Chronicle of Brandenburg (16. century) emphasizes the mighty predecessors of Wends, the Vandals, who sacked Rome and Carthage, and mentions their king Genserich as the king of Vandals.[28]
    Johann Weichard Baron von Valvasor, historian, geographer (1689), wrote: »Wends and Sclavenes are one folk, Wandals and Wends one and the same nation.« (»Wenden und Sclaven seynd ein Volk, Wandalen und Wenden einerley Nation.[29]
    V. N. Tatiščev, ethnographer (17th -18th century), classifies the Veneti as Slavs, as well as the Vandalic or Vendenic state as the first known Slavic state.[30]
    A. L. Schlözer, historian (18th century), defended his thesis about Slavs originating from Illyrians and the Veneti.[31]
    Vasilij Trediakovski (18th century) classifies Dalmatians, Serbians, Bulgarians ... among Vandals.[32]
    Davorin Trstenjak (19th century) wrote about the ancient Adriatic Veneti, who belonged to a Vindish-Slavic family. He accented their affinity with the Aremoric (Brittany) and Baltic Veneti.[33]
    In Helmolts Weltgeschichte (end of the 19th century) it is indicated, that the Veneti, Wends and Winds were actually ancestors of Slovenes, and that they used to settle the old roman provinces Vindelitia, Raetia, Noricum, Pannonia.[34]

    I really don't want to go any deeper into this now. I just wanted to show you the extent of the "Slavic" presence in "Germanic" and "Celtic" countries and their potential cultural influence on "Germanic" and "Celtic" cultures.

    The reason why i think that we should look for the origin of the live fire cult found in Germanic and Celtic lands in Slavic culture is because the live fire cult is actually Agni cult predating any "Germanic" culture. So this is the answer to your questions 2 and 3. You did suggest that the origin of the cult is Germanic and then you recommend the book which overturns this claim in the first sentence of the paragraph you have recommended:

    The gods Agni and Soma are described in the
    Vedas as descending to earth to strengthen the
    dominion of their own race, the Devas, who are at
    war with their rivals, the Asuras, and to exalt men to
    the gods. The story of this great event is variously
    told. One of its many versions as relates to Agni,
    the god of fire, is that he had hid himself in a cavern
    in heaven, and that Mitarisvan, a god, or demigod,
    brought him out from it and delivered him to
    Manu, the first man, or to Bhrigu, the father of the
    mythical family of that name. Mitarisvan is thus a
    prototype of Prometheus, and the analogy between
    them will appear still closer when we come to see in
    what way both were originally believed to have
    kindled the heavenly fire which they brought down
    to earth. The process was the same as that by
    which Indra kindles the lightning, and which is
    daily imitated in the Hindu temples in the production
    of sacred fire. It is so like churning, that both
    operations are designated by the same word.

    This is why i wandered if you have read the book.
    Agni (Sanskrit: अग्नि) is a Hindu deity, one of the most important of the Vedic gods. He is the god of fire[1] and the acceptor of sacrifices. The sacrifices made to Agni go to the deities because Agni is a messenger[2] from and to the other gods. He is ever-young, because the fire is re-lit every day, and also immortal... Agni has three forms: fire, lightning and the Sun...The word agni is Sanskrit for "fire" (noun)...In some Hindu symbolism, Agni's parents are said to be the two components of the firedrill used to start the fire, and when young he was said to be cared for by ten servants, which represent the fingers of the man who is starting the fire...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agni

    The live fire ceremony is the ceremony performed in celebration of god Agni, the holy fire, the three formed fire, the fire of the sun, the fire of the thunder and the fire of the hearth.

    Only people, in whose language Agni, Ogni means fire would have named their god of fire Agni, Ogni. Which people have agni or ogni as the word for fire:
    Balto-Slavic:

    Latgalian: guņs
    Latvian: uguns
    Lithuanian: ugnis
    Old Prussian: ugnis
    Samogitian: ognis
    Slavic: *ognь

    Indo-Iranian: *Hagnis

    Indo-Aryan:

    Sanskrit: अग्नि (agní)
    Bengali: আগুন (agun), অগ্নি (ôgni)
    Hindi: आग (āg), अग्नि (agní)
    Nepali: आगो (Āgō), अग्नि (agni)
    Romani: jag
    Urdu: آگ (āg), اگنی (agní)

    Italic:Latin: ignis (but no any other italic language. Strange and telling of the balkan influence on Latin). By the way english ignite is a borrowing from latin and this is why it is not listed here.

    Hittite: (akniš, “name of a deity”) (could be inherited, borrowed from Indo-Iranian, or unrelated)

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/h%E2%82%81ng%CA%B7ni-#Proto-Indo-European

    All these languages come from the lands inhabited mainly by the R1a people, the actual Indo Europeans. What is interesting is that R1a haplogroup most likely evolved in the Balkans. The people of the R1a haplogroup are also the carrier of Indo-Iranian, Thracian, Baltic and Slavic branches of "Indo European" languages, the exact ones that use agni, ogni as word for fire:

    Haplogroup-R1a.gif
    Haplogroup R1a probably branched off from R1* around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (19,000 to 26,000 years before present). Little is know for certain about its place of origin. Some think it might have originated in the Balkans or around Pakistan and Northwest India, due to the greater genetic diversity found in these regions. The diversity can be explained by other factors though. The Balkans have been subject to 5000 years of migrations from the Eurasian Steppes, each bringing new varieties of R1a. South Asia has had a much bigger population than any other parts of the world (occasionally equalled by China) for at least 10,000 years, and larger population bring about more genetic diversity. The most likely place of origin of R1a is Central Asia or southern Russia/Siberia.

    R1a is thought to have been the dominant haplogroup among the northern and eastern Indo-European speakers who evolved into the Indo-Iranian, Mycenaean Greek, Thracian, Baltic and Slavic branches.

    http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_R1a_Y-DNA.shtml
    http://www.eupedia.com/europe/origins_haplogroups_europe.shtml#R1a
    Haplogroup R1a, Its Subclades and Branches in Europe During the Last 9,000 Years

    Igor L. Rozhanskii, Anatole A. Klyosov

    ABSTRACT

    This study identifies and describes 38 branches of the haplogroup R1a STR haplotypes which currently exist in Europe or which migrated from Europe to areas in the east, south, and southeast between 6000 and 4500 years before the present (ybp). The study is based on 2471 haplotypes which have been tested for either 67- or 111-markers; it essentially creates a unified robust system, which assembles dozens of R1a-SNPs and thousands of STRs and assigned haplotypes to branches, some of which do not have SNP assignments as yet. The assembled system consists of base (deduced ancestral) haplotypes, one for each STR branch and for each SNP-assigned subclade, each with its characteristic (ancestral) set of alleles, arranged in the chronological space from ~ 9000 ybp to 1300 ybp. We found that the most ancient R1a subclades (R1a1-M198- and R1a1a-M198+/M417-) bearers of which currently live in Europe (the present day haplotypes are scattered between England and the Balkans) appeared in Europe at least 7300 ybp, and possibly 9000 ybp. R1a’s three principal downstream subclades, L664 (North-Western branch), Z93 (South-Eastern branch), and Z283 (Eurasian branch), split from their common European ancestor at about the same time, around 7000 - 6000 ybp. L664 apparently stayed in North-Western Europe; its lineage recovered and began expanding ~ 4575 ybp. The Z93 subclade began to expand during the Aryan migrations, on the Aryan's journey to India and the Middle East in the 3rd-2nd millennia BC. The Z283 subclade split ~ 5500 ybp into three branches. One of them, Z280 (the Central Eurasian branch) moved east to the Russian Plain in 4800 - 4600 ybp, and formed at least 16 sub-branches there and in the course of the later westward repopulation of Europe in the 1st millennium BC – 1st millennium CE. Some of the older branches, like the Russian Plain branch, largely stayed in the present Russia-Ukraine-Belarus-Poland- Baltic countries region, and were described by early historians as the Scythians, Antes, Veneti, and a multitude of different proto-Slavic tribes (though many of them belonged to haplogroups other than R1a, primarily I1 and I2). Those R1a branches which are “older” than 3000 years, such as the Russian Plain branch (4600 ybp), the Western Eurasian (4300 ybp), and the Balto-Carpathian (4300 ybp), did not move en mass to Europe but stayed behind at the Russian Plain. In the middle of 1st millennium CE, the time of the collapse of the Roman Empire, multiple migrations of R1a were taking place eastward and westward; these migrations gradually formed the current landscape of R1a in Europe. All 38 branches and their datings are listed in the Appendix of this paper; current distribution maps are shown in the body of the paper.

    http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=21698

    So the most ancient R1a subclades (R1a1-M198- and R1a1a-M198+/M417-) bearers of which currently live in Europe (the present day haplotypes are scattered between England and the Balkans) appeared in Europe at least 7300 ybp, and possibly 9000 ybp.

    Knowing this, we can assume that the oldest Slavic languages are west Balkan Slavic languages: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Slovene. What is interesting though is that up until late middle ages, Slavic language was almost completely homogeneous across huge territories inhabited by Slavic people, showing how conservative the Slavic culture was. Once the unified Slavic language started to split into many local languages, due to Christian missionary involvement and political pressures, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Slovene stayed the most conservative languages, preserving some of the oldest characteristics of the proto Slavic language:
    The Slavic languages are a relatively homogeneous family, compared with other families of Indo-European languages (e.g. Germanic, Romance, and Indo-Iranian). As late as the 10th century AD, the entire Slavic-speaking area still functioned as a single, dialectally differentiated language, termed Common Slavic. Compared with most other Indo-European languages, the Slavic languages are quite conservative, particularly in terms of morphology (the means of inflecting nouns and verbs to indicate grammatical differences). Most Slavic languages have a rich, fusional morphology that conserves much of the inflectional morphology of Proto-Indo-European.[13]

    The modern languages vary greatly in the extent to which they preserve this system. On one extreme, Serbo-Croatian preserves the system nearly unchanged (even more so in the conservative Chakavian dialect);

    This general process of palatalization did not occur in Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian. As a result, the modern consonant inventory of these languages is nearly identical to the Late Common Slavic inventory.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_languages

    Here is what some linguists had to say about Slavic languages and in particular Serbian language:

    Ami Boue french linguist Stated: ,,... au IX siecle, le slav apparait beucoup plus rapproche que toute autre langue du vieux type indo-europeen."
    ,,... In IX century The Slav language seems more then any other European language closer to the Indo-European language.

    Abel Hovelacque stated: ,,... le latin et le grec sont, en maintes circontances, plus eloignes que le slav de la langue commune indo-europeene..."
    ,... Latin and Greek in the majority of instances are more distant then Slav in the shared Indo-European languages.
    ,,... the established fact is concluded that they are the archaic configuration of the Slav language!!!..."

    The conclusion of the Great Larousse encyclopedia:
    The Slav language seems to be more then any other language closer to the ancient "Indo-European" type"

    Georges Dumezil, member of French academy, author of: "Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus ", "Mitra-Varuna", La religion romaine archaique", "Mythe et epopee I, II, III", says:

    Georges Dumezil: "Entre la periode de la vie commune (IIIe mollenaire avant J.-C.) et l'apparition des preieres langies europeennes occidentales il y a un hiatus impossible a combler... "
    Between the common Indo European epoque (3rd millennium BC), and the emergence of modern Western European languages, there is huge gap which is impossible to fill...

    This means that western European languages are not direct descendants of Proto Indo European language, but have acquired Indo European characteristics while mixing with Indo Euroepan languages.

    Mejer and Vajan say:

    Mejer and Vajan: "... le slave continue sans rupture l'indoeuropeen; on n'y epercoit pas de ces crises brusques qui ont donne au grec, a l'italique (et surtout au latin), au celtique, au germanique leur aspect caracteristique. Le slave est une langue indo-europeen fraconne par un long usage, profondement alterre par beaucoup d'influences, mais qui a conserve un aspect general archaique..."2

    1 - A. Meillet, "Le slave commun", Seconde edition revue et augmentee avec le concours de A. Vaillant, Paris, Ed. Honore Champion, 1965., p. 13.

    2 - Les races et les langues,Paris, 1893.- "Bibliotheque Scientfique Internationale", p. 170.
    Slavic language is an uninterrupted continuation of Indo European language. In it you do not see sudden changes that you see in Greek, Italic, Celtic and Germanic languages which give them their characteristic look and feel. Slavic language is pure Indo European language shaped by a continuous long use and which preserved it's archaic look and feel...

    In the introduction we find this:

    Mejer and Vajan: "L'unite lingnistique du slave est evidente. Aujourd'hui encore elle apparat partout au premier coup d'oeil; et, si on examine les formes anciennes des langues slaves, les ressemblances sont si grandes, qu'elles approchent souvent de l'identite. PAREILLE UNITE NE COMPORTE QU'UNE EXPLICATION: L'EXISTENCE A UNE CERTAINE DATE D'UNE LANGUE UNE, PARLEE PAR UN PEUPLE AYANT CONSCIENCE DE SON UNITE..."
    Linguistic unity of Slavic languages is obvious, and you can see it at a glance. If you investigate and compare old Slavic and modern Slavic languages, the similarities are incredible, making old Slavic and modern Slavic almost identical. This is only possible if we have a homogeneous population, speaking one language over a long period of time while being aware of its own cultural identity.

    And on the page 18:

    Mejer and Vajan: "... Le ton du slave ... se comportait... comme le ton grec, ou vedique. La langue qui donne le mieux aujourd'hui quelques idees de ce ton,.. est le serbe, avec son accent mobil et ses voyelles longues et breves, les unes toniques, et les autres atones... "
    Slavic accent...behaves like Greek or vedic accent. Language which today is capable to give you the best idea about the old vedic accent is Serbian, with its moving accent, and with it's long and short vowels, of which some are accented and some are not...

    Andre Lefevre:

    Andre Lefevre: "... la culture, relativement moderne des langues slaves, ne les empeche pas de remonter aux plus antiques epoques du parler indo-europeen; leur grammaire est empreinte d'un caractere tout-a-fait archaique..."
    Relatively modern culture of the Slavic language does not stop the slavic languages to reach to the most remote epoques of the Indo European language. Slavic gramar carries a very archaic characteristics...

    Ami Bue:

    Ami Bue: "LE SERBE EST ENVIRON AUX LANGUES SLAVES CE QUE LE LATIN EST AUX LANGUES QUI EN SONT DERIVEES."
    Serbian language is for Slavic languages what Latin is for the languages which developped from it...

    Surrien Robert:

    Surrien Robert:"... les serbes d'illyrie etaient vraiment les plus. anciens des slaves!"
    Serbians of Illyria are really the oldest Slavs...

    Surrien Robert:"CETTE LANGUE.CETTE NATION, CETTE POESIE PRIMITIVE SLAVE, JE C'TOIS LES AVOIR TROUVE CHEZ LES SERBES D'ILLYRIE."3
    If you want to learn about the oldest languages you need to learn Serbian, the oldest Slavic language.


    So what we have here is:

    The origin of the (R1a) people was in the Balkans at about 1000 BC in the Balkans.

    The R1a people are people who speak Indo-Iranian, Mycenaean Greek, Thracian, Baltic and Slavic languages.

    Indo-Iranian, Baltic and Slavic languages are languages which use agni ogni as the word for fire.

    The current carriers of the oldest R1a genes in the world are Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Slovene people.

    They stil live in the Balkans, they practice live fire ceremony, the live fire ceremony which is dedicated to Agni, the oldest vedic god of fire, who was brought to India from the west with white invaders.

    Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Slovene people still use word Vid for knowledge and sight and ved for knowledge,
    science and teaching and all the other vid, ved words i listed in one of my previous posts.

    Slavic languages are considered the only European languages derived directly from Vedic Indo European language.

    Serbian is the oldest Slavic language.

    Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Slovene people still use these words:

    Oganj - fire
    Ognji - burns
    Ognjište - hearth
    Ognjilo - fire steel
    Ognjen - fiery

    So who do you think is more likely to have invented the live fire ceremony, Slavic people (proto Slavic) or Germanic people (proto Germanic)? You could argue that there are some Germanic people who also have R1a genes and that fire cult is R1a rather than Slavic cultural tradition. But the language argument would be against you. This would actually point to all the Slavic (Indo European) people which have been assimilated by other European peoples....

    I will continue my discussion on the live fire ceremony in my next post, where it will become even more obvious where live fire ceremony and indeed the whole fire cult comes from.


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