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But I'm not so sure other religions sprang from PIE "paganism", as they call it. It was pretty brutally suppressed in some instances. Unless you mean how it kind of snuck in to later X-ianity. Celebrating the fertility goddess at Easter, and similar influences.
Interestingly enough, the early pre-Christian traditions survive today in a pocket of IE descendants in Kashmir, specifically Ladakh, where it's sort of blended in with Tibetan pre-Buddhist traditions, that are somewhat similar.
Perhaps you could flesh out your topic a bit more...?
what is pre indo european religion?
we dont even know where these dudes come from? is it THE STEPPES,the arctic?
I think most experts agree now, that Indo-Euro people originated in the steppes, though I think there was a second locus of origination, probably related to the steppe people, in Anatolia.
what is pre indo european religion?
we dont even know where these dudes come from? is it THE STEPPES,the arctic?
Hello!
PIE is actually based on a language rather than geography but the migrations give us clues.
PIE begins around 4000-5000 BCE depending upon the researcher. Their first indication (by archaeology) is in the Caspians (Russia, Ukraine). But by about 1500 BCE, they were all across Eurasia.
Those from the steppes probably invented horseback riding and the wheel. They became primarily pastoral and agricultural.
It is difficult to piece together an exact pantheon but common root words and their cognates give us more clues. And amazingly, these spread all the way from India to Britain; from Greece to Scandinavia.
But I'm not so sure other religions sprang from PIE "paganism", as they call it. It was pretty brutally suppressed in some instances. Unless you mean how it kind of snuck in to later X-ianity. Celebrating the fertility goddess at Easter, and similar influences.
Interestingly enough, the early pre-Christian traditions survive today in a pocket of IE descendants in Kashmir, specifically Ladakh, where it's sort of blended in with Tibetan pre-Buddhist traditions, that are somewhat similar.
Perhaps you could flesh out your topic a bit more...?
I guess I'm just thinking, with the age of these, and the less branched out and added-on doctrines later, they could potentially hold some wisdom, a more basic wisdom.
I love that you know about this!!!! So glad you answered, Ruth!
It's mostly about spirits of different sorts (house spirits, forest spirits, etc.), and a pantheon of gods similar to the Scandinavian gods and goddesses: a Thunder God, and so on. This has been well-researched by folklorists in the Baltic states and Russia. The Baltic tribes and Estonians were the last people in Europe to practice this early religion; the last hold-outs against the Christianization process that swept Europe.
I guess one question is, could it be an older religion is closer to the truth of what God really is?
You're already showing your Christian, or perhaps I should say more generically--Abrahamic, bias. There were multiple deities representing the forces of nature.
Well, but that's still relatively more recent than going back all the way to the very early PIE people. I'm not sure it's known what their belief system was thousands of years ago. I guess that's more your question, isn't it? They don't have a way of knowing that, AFAIK, other than through burial material. Let me think about that.
What they do know, is that women were the keepers of the spiritual traditions. They've found ancient burials of "priestesses" across southern Siberia. And we know that some women in Viking society had a similar role; being seeresses and visionaries. Also healers. So women's "intuitive" and other gifts were recognized and elevated in status.
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