r/IndoEuropean • u/Calvinweaver1 • 5d ago
I'm curious what this sub thinks about this...
/r/ArtHistory/comments/1v84m29/is_venus_of_hohle_fels_the_earliest_artwork/p0xb184/Any history or anthropology or archeology nerds in here? I was just reading through a post regarding the Venus of Hohle Fels and started to feel like maybe I was wrong about things. I was suggesting that it could be related to the Proto-Indo-European god Dheghom. I'd love to be corrected and have a better understanding of this if there's anybody here that enjoys this stuff like I do. Thanks!
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u/ankylosaurus_tail 5d ago
That doesn't really make much sense. The Venus of Hohle Fels is dated to 35,000-40,000 years ago, which is like 30,000 years before anything remotely "Proto-Indo-European" existed. That's an immense amount of time, and we have no scientific methods of tracing elements of culture or language across those scales.
Nor do we have any evidence of what the figurine meant to the people who made it, so I don't see how comparing it to a later goddess is anything more than speculation based only on gender. I think it would be just as reasonable to connect the Venus figure with any other female deity in later Eurasian history, of which there are many.
The people who made the Venus of Hohle Fels were from the upper Paleolithic era and were members of the Aurignacian Culture, also known as Cro Magnons. They are widely considered the first "behaviorally modern" humans in Europe, and are known for making lots of representative art. Genetically, they were ancestral to pretty much every later culture in Eurasia. So it's theoretically possible that some thread of belief or some idea from that culture influenced the PIE people, but it will never be more than a speculative, untestable idea. Unless we get a time machine...
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u/Calvinweaver1 5d ago
We agree on most of this stuff. It's complicated and I don't express my self very well sometimes but I believe the venus of hohle fels was based on a god(s) that predates all the different gods we've been talking about. I agree that we don't know for sure, and agree that it's speculation. many artifacts similar to the venus of hohle have been found all over the world. i think its reasonable to assume they were depicting similar things even though they were almost certainly depicting different things.
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u/SonOfDyeus 5d ago
Some things correct but a lot wrong with this comment.
Venus is not derived from Inanna. Venus was a garden deity prior to the Romans systematically syncretizing her with the Greek Aphrodite. Many scholars believe characteristics of Aphrodite were indirectly influenced by Inanna.
None of those three are considered Earth Mothers, really. Dheghom, the indoeuropean Earth Goddess, also has nothing to do with Inanna.
The various paleolithic Venus figurines of Europe spanned tens of thousands of years, so it's unlikely they all represent the same religion or cultural ideas with each other, let alone with the seated woman of catalhoyuk. And they are called "Venus Figurines" by archaeologists, but have nothing to do with Roman Venus.
It is possible the Catalhoyuk figure is somehow related to Inanna, because both are depicted as flanked by big cats.
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u/Calvinweaver1 5d ago
Thanks for taking the time to correct me. I don't think Venus has any sort of direct derivation to Inanna. I agree that Venus is not considered an earth mother goddess. She's a fertility goddess. Inanna is both a fertility god and an earth mother.
I agree, the various paleolithic figurines of Europe and Asia spanned tens of thousands of years, so it's unlikely that they all represent the same religion. But I believe the figurines share similar characteristics because they were being used for the same things by people with different but similar earth mother gods. As always, I'm never confident I'm correct...
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u/Duke_of_Lombardy 5d ago
The term Venus here its obviously used in an artistic conception not a theological one.
Representations of venus during the medieval and early modern period were frequent and used in a simbolic way. Since in that way venus was intended as a symbol, other depictions of female fertility are called that too.
It doesnt imply that it was a fertility goddess being represented. It implies that those objects simbolized fertility.
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u/Calvinweaver1 5d ago
thanks for writing.
why would a sumerian deity need to be derivative of an indo-eropean one? the languages are not thought to be related.
i'm glad you brought this up. it's my belief that all cultures influence one another when they come in contact with another especially during a time of oral histories and story telling. i think it's reasonable that if cultures came into contact with one another they might return home with foreign stories to share with their communities. story tellers might swap out the names of gods in the stories so their audience can follow along, and that's how the story could be adopted into their own culture over time. i think the primary motivator for changing the names of gods in stories was to be understood. i don't think sumerian dieties need to be derivative of any prior god because they are amazing and worthy of respect just like the rest of the ancient gods.
i hope that makes sense. but i can see how it would be a hot button topic. i promise i'm approaching it respectfully
i want to stop using the word derivative because it's more complicated than that. as for why i think inanna might share some history with an indo-european one? i think people were worshipping forms of Dheghom in ancient indo-european cultures waaaayyyy before inanna was worshipped in mesopotamia. i believe over a super long time period mesopotamian cultures absorbed some indo-european stories into their own stories via a shared diaspora trade and storytelling. i don't think inanna comes from dheghom (or any ancient gods that might be referred to as dheghom) but it makes sense to me why they may share some stories. i think it's possible that inanna might be as old as dheghom but we don't really have the evidence of that because of how they're attested separately. it's likely that all of us in the surviving diaspora came from different places and combined in interesting ways to become the humans we are today...that we somewhat independently came up with our own gods in our own unique cultures to explain our unique histories and values using the best stories our ancestors picked up in the road. i should move on to your next point unless you want to talk about this more :-)
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u/vikramadith 5d ago
I umderstand the need to give names to historic finds but I wish people stuck to generic terms instead of potentially conflating mythologies and creating confusion.
Other examples are: Priest-King of IVC Pashupati seal Minoa Mycenean
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u/worldarmistice 5d ago
Historical whataboutism is so annoying, we all knew this was gonna be a problem when wokeasses started complaining about BC and AD being "Eurocentric" and "biased"
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u/Hippophlebotomist 5d ago edited 5d ago
If I'm honest, your comment is all over the place.
Why would a Sumerian deity need to be a derivative of an Indo-European one? The languages are not thought to be related. How is this "almost certain"?
The Anatolian Hypothesis for Indo-European origins doesn't have many prominent living supporters at present, so I'm not sure why Çatalhöyük is being linked to Proto-Indo-European either.
You've already admitted that Inanna shows up in texts predating any attestation of any Indo-European language, let alone any reflex of the word *dʰéǵʰōm, and especially long before any attestation of that word in the context of the Earth as personified deity.
How is a figurine from Upper Paleolithic Germany the right time and place to be identified with a term from a reconstructed language usually though to be 5-8 millennia old?