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[INLINE]

COSMOLOGY OF THE ANCIENT BALTS

Vytautas Straižys and Libertas Klimka

Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy, Gostauto 12, Vilnius
2600, Lithuania
Vilnius Pedagogical University Studentų 39, Vilnius 2600, Lithuania

Summary. The paper reviews the outlook of ancient Balts on the
structure and origin of the world as reconstructed from the
archaeological excavations, folklore, mythology, linguistics
and chronicles. Conclusion is drawn that 4 - 5 thousand years
ago the ancestors of the modern Baltic nations (Lithuanians and
Latvians) had developed views on the relations between man and
natural forces, on the origin of the world and its
construction, based on religious and mythological notions.
Later on, this cosmological interest developed into
astronomical observations, finding the regularity of celestial
phenomena, and calendar management.

CONTENT

[5]1. Historical background
[6]2. Religion and mythology of the ancestors of the Baltic
nations
[7]3. The concept of the World-Tree
[8]4. Astronomical symbolism in folk painting
[9]5. Natural rythms and calendar
[10]6. Heavenly bodies and phnomena in the Baltic religion
[11]7. Astronomical knowledge
[12]8. Conclusions

1. Historical background

In the present territories of Lithuania and Latvia archaeologists find
habitation sites of the ancient man established 11-12 thousand years
ago, at the end of a 60000 year long glacial period during which the
Baltic region was under the ice sheet at least for three long periods.
With the recession of the ice, the land gradually turned into tundra
with herds of reindeer going further north in the summer. Reindeer
were followed by hunters who left their permanent settlements
somewhere in the northern parts of Central Europe. These were men of
the Paleolithic Swiderian and Magdalenian cultures, armed with spears,
bows and flint-head arrows, bone and horn harpoons, stone slings, and
followed by their domesticated dogs. Art finds that reflect the
spiritual world of the Paleolithic man are scarce. However, burial
grounds of that period survived to our time. The fact that ancient
people were buried together with their clothes, decorations, daily
life utensils and arms witnesses their belief in afterlife. An image
of the heaven, as an extension of the earth, might also appear in the
Paleolithic. The starry sky has been inhabited by different animals,
while the Sun and the Moon were symbolically imagined as the deer.

In the Mesolithic (7500-3500 B.C.) the Baltic area was gradually
covered by forests with abundant fauna. The people of the Nemunas and
Kunda cultures who inhabited these forests, lived on hunting, fishing
and gathering the food that nature provided. From that period, a
number of artifacts, made of bone and decorated with the ornaments,
demonstrating some kind of a symbolic script, have survived to our
day. Among them is the symbol of the Sun, a circle, and the symbol of
fire, a cross with equal-length arms. It is quite probable that the
myth of European and Asian nations which explains the world being
formed from a duck egg, originated in the Mesolithic or even earlier.
According to one of Lithuanian versions of this myth, the primordial
egg exploded into fragments which gave birth to different parts of the
world: the egg yolk turned into the earth, the egg white turned into
the waters and the egg shell gave birth to the heavenly sphere, full
of stars. More information on the Paleolithic and Mesolithic in the
Baltics can be found in the monographs by Rimantienė [13][1] and
Gimbutienė (known in the West as Marija Gimbutas) [14][2, 3].

In the fourth millennium B.C., artifacts made of polished flint with
perforated holes, fishing nets and fired pottery appear on the coasts
of Baltic sea: these products belong already to the Neolithic age. At
that time in the continental Baltic area, people of two Neolithic
cultures, Nemunas and Narva, were living. They differed in their
pottery types and comparative distribution of bone and horn artifacts.
Besides hunting, fishing and food-gathering, there were also rudiments
of cattle-breeding and agriculture. From that period, we find
considerably more art objects made of amber, bone and wood. Pottery is
decorated with geometric ornaments and the imagery of animals, birds
and men [15][4]. It is quite probable that both Mesolithic and
Paleolithic man had totems, i.e. worshiped some chief animal; in
western Lithuania such an animal was she-elk.

Excavations in the Šventoji settlement [16][5, 6] revealed three
beautiful ritual bone staffs with she-elk head tops (Fig. 1) [17][5].
Such staffs may have been used by wizards in performing pre-hunting
rites. In eastern Lithuania and in Latvia numerous deer figurines have
been found. From analogy with other mythologies, we can suppose that
the men of Nemunas and Narva cultures considered the Goddess-elk or
Goddess-deer to have specific power, such as life-, fertility- and
birth-giving. Even the present Lithuanian Advent songs mention a
she-deer with nine horns. Some European myths reveal two she-elks,
women, birth-givers of the world [18][7].

[19]Fig.1 Fig. 1. One of the ritual bone staffs with a she-elk head
found in the Šventoji settlement (2400 B.C.).

It is also probable that Neolithic man started worshiping the
grass-snake which is often represented by bone and horn figurines and
frequently in pottery decoration [20][8]. Primeval worship of gods and
demons in the shape of animals expressed the idea of human
identification with them after death, metempsychosis. An important
place in cultic rites was given to fire [21][9, 10].

In the Neolithic, anthropomorphic gods appear as evidenced by a
two-meter high wooden sculpture of a man found in the Šventoji
settlement (Fig. 2.) [22][5], by amber figurines of the Juodkrantė
(Schwarzort) settlement [23][11], by a bone figurine found near the
Kretuonas lake [24][12] and the Nida pottery decorations [25][13]. A
number of bone and clay figurines of antropomorphic beings has been
found in the Neolithic settlements in eastern Latvia [26][14].

[27]Fig. 2 Fig. 2. The wooden sculpture found in the Šventoji
settlement.

There is no doubt that in the Early Neolithic the people of Nemunas
and Narva cultures lived in a matriarchal community. It is also
thought that main deities of that time were female, i.e. goddesses.
This is a common feature of all cultures of Old Europe [28][15].

The fourth millennium B.C. witnesses important historical processes
connected with the Indo-European invasion [29][16]. First, in the
steppes of eastern Europe (in the basins of the Donn, Dnieper and
Dniester) appear the so-called Kurgan tribes, mobile and warlike
horsmen, stock-breeders and nomads, who assimilate the
Charpathian-Balkan culture of Old Europeans. A millennium later
another wave of occupants invades the Danube area and Central Europe
reaching the Baltic sea around 2500 B.C. A rapid change of pottery
ornaments and axe forms is observed. Amphoras, pots and bowls become
decorated with imprinted cord ornaments, which gave name to the whole
culture: the Corded Ware culture.

The Indo-European culture brought by the invaders to the Baltics
assimilated the local Nemunas and Narva cultures, and a new culture,
the Pamarian (Rzucewo or Haffküstenkultur) Corded Ware culture
appeared (Fig. 3). People of this culture are direct ancestors of the
Baltic nations. Other related cultures of that time were the Dnieper
culture living in the upper Dnieper area and the Fatianovo culture in
the upper Volga area. Over a large part of these two areas, numerous
place names and hydronyms of Baltic origin are still found.

[30]Fig.3 Fig. 3. The area of the Pamarian Corded Ware culture and
other cultures, the ancestors of the Baltic nations:
1. Pamarian culture,
2. Upper Dnieper culture,
3. Fatyanovo culture,
4. Balanovo culture.
Arrows show the directions of the Indoeuropean spreading.

The Baltic parent language was formed at that time; later on it split
into Prussian, Lithuanian, Latvian and other languages and dialects.
However, these Baltic languages preserved many archaisms of the
Indo-European parent language [31][17].

[32]Read second chapter

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