Study Suggests Indo-European Languages Originated in Anatolia

Hmmm....and where are the "mountains of Ararat?"  Hey, just asking...  I find linguistics an absolutely fascinating area of study.  Perhaps in my next life, I will become a studier of languages and their origins; probably starve to death, too.  Sigh. 

Indo-European Languages Originated in Anatolia, Research Suggests
ScienceDaily (Aug. 23, 2012) — The Indo-European languages belong to one of the widest spread language families of the world. For the last two millenia, many of these languages have been written, and their history is relatively clear. But controversy remains about the time and place of the origins of the family. A large international team, including MPI researcher Michael Dunn, reports the results of an innovative Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of Indo-European linguistic and spatial data.

Their paper appears this week in Science.

Map from article.  Red area, and particularly the red area circled in gold,
is the proposed linguistic hot-spot.  The accepted hot spot for the origin of
P-IE is circled in black.

The majority view in historical linguistics is that the homeland of Indo-European is located in the Pontic steppes (present day Ukraine) around 6,000 years ago. The evidence for this comes from linguistic paleontology: in particular, certain words to do with the technology of wheeled vehicles are arguably present across all the branches of the Indo-European family; and archaeology tells us that wheeled vehicles arose no earlier than this date. The minority view links the origins of Indo-European with the spread of farming from Anatolia 8,000 to 9,500 years ago.

Lexicons combined with dispersal of speakers

The minority view is decisively supported by the present analysis in this week's Science. This analysis combines a model of the evolution of the lexicons of individual languages with an explicit spatial model of the dispersal of the speakers of those languages. Known events in the past (the date of attestation dead languages, as well as events which can be fixed from archaeology or the historical record) are used to calibrate the inferred family tree against time.

Importance of phylogenetic trees

The lexical data used in this analysis come from the Indo-European Lexical Cognacy Database (IELex). This database has been developed in MPI's Evolutionary Processes in Language and Culture group, and provides a large, high-quality collection of language data suitable for phylogenetic analysis. Beyond the intrinsic interest of uncovering the history of language families and their speakers, phylogenetic trees are crucially important for understanding evolution and diversity in many human sciences, from syntax and semantics to social structure.

Done in by an Arrow in the Back

Ach!  What a way to go.  Poor dude from the Chalcolithic age (yeah, I said the same thing - what the heck is that?) bled to death.  The "in plain English, please" name for Chalcolithic age is the Copper Age.  That "age" varies, depending upon the location of the civilization, as the use of metal-working spread from place to place.  In this case, in Turkey, the generally accepted dates are Early Chalcolithic Period (5500 - 4500 BCE.); Middle Chalcolithic Period (4500 - 4000 BCE.); Late Chalcolithic Period (4000- 3000 BCE.

The tumulus (burial mound) where the body was excavated dates as far back at c. 8000 BCE. 

From todayszaman.com (Turkey)
Tumulus skeleton found with arrow tip in spine
09 December 2010, Thursday / TODAY’S ZAMAN, İSTANBUL

The body of a man with an arrow tip still lodged in his spine was found during ongoing excavations in Bursa’s Aktopraklık tumulus. Archeologists believe that the man had died shortly after he was shot with an arrow from a bowman on higher ground. The tumulus where the skeleton was buried is estimated to have a history of about 8,500 years.

“This tomb of a man in his 30s from the early Chalcolithic period did not seem unusual at first glance. He was buried in accordance with the burial traditions of the period. … On closer examination of the skeleton, we discovered a deep arrow wound in the bottom of his spine,” paleoanthropologist Songül Alpaslan Roodenberg from the excavation team told the Anatolia news agency. “The arrow tip explained the cause of this Aktopraklık man’s death almost precisely,” she said.

Roodenberg also noted that the arrow tip was made of flint and it was lodged 12 millimeters into the spine. “It is most likely that the arrow struck his spine and damaged the abdominal aorta, which was located near the path of the arrow. This indicates that the man died shortly after he was injured [via the arrow],” she explained.

Adding that it is very probable that the man died quickly due to excessive bleeding, the paleoanthropologist said: “It seems that he was injured not far from the village and was taken back to the village shortly after he died. Otherwise, it would have been impossible for him to be buried in the traditional fetal position. “Although it is hard to tell whether the man was a warrior, hunter or just a peasant, this finding will certainly attract attention in the near future,” she added.

Roodenberg also noted that the tumulus, whose history stretches back to about 8,500 years ago, is one of the earliest farming villages. Nearly 60 tombs have been discovered during excavations at the ancient site, which were launched seven years ago with the support of the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality. The tombs are from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods.

“Rites for burying the dead give us clues about the belief systems of prehistoric people. Details including the shape of the tombs, the way the bodies are positioned or objects buried near the dead reveal much information,” she added.

Car, Oh Car, Forgotten by These Infidels...

I find a few things about this article interesting, including the absence of any references to the origins of the word "kar" or "car" referring to the ancient Moon Goddess Herself who, I believe, was once worshipped most fervently in this area of Anatolia.  Well, read it for yourself and come to your own conclusions:

From Al-Ahram Weekly
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
1 - 7 April, 2010
Issue No. 992

In the footsteps of the Bronze Men
Nevine El-Aref finds out who the Bronze Men were, and how they helped boost Egypt's power to reunite the country 2,700 years ago

When Herodotus toured the known world during the fifth century BC to compile his international history, he did not forget his hometown Caria, now Bodrum in Turkey.

Caria (the name means "the steep country") stood in the western part of Anatolia, whose coast, according to the ancient world map, stretched from mid-Ionia to Lycia and east to Phrygia. Mountains and valleys were the main features of the country's scenery, and it was poor in agriculture in comparison with its counterparts at the time: Egypt and Babylonia. Its hilltops were fortified, while villages were scattered in valleys and it was hard to find a city of any size. There was thus little similarity between the inhabitants, the Carians, as each village had its own version of the Phoenician alphabet, its own customs and tradition. The only thing in common among all Carians was their religion. One of the ritual centres was Mylasa, where their supreme deity the Carian Zeus. They also had other deities such as Hecate, the goddess responsible for, among other things, magic and road crossings.

The first mention in history of Caria and its inhabitants was in the cuneiform texts of the Old Assyrian and Hittite Empires, who called the area Karkissa. History forgot about it for almost four centuries until the second citation by the legendary Greek poet Homer in his catalogue of ships.

The Carian language belonged to the Hittite-Luwian subfamily of Indo-European languages, and was related to Lycian and Lydian. Those who lived in the west of the country spoke a language closer to Greek.

According to Herodotus the inhabitants of Miletus spoke Greek with a Carian accent, which implies that during the dark ages, between about 1200 and 800 BC, the Greeks settled on the coast of Caria. Herodotus himself was a good example of the close ties between the Carians and Greeks: his father is called Lyxes, which is the Greek rendition of a good Carian name, Lukhsu.

Because of the hard and poor nature of Caria's land, Carians, like many other mountain people at the time, hired themselves out as mercenaries and military specialists. According to Herodotus, the Greeks were indebted to the Carians for three military inventions: making shields with handles; putting devices on shields; and fitting crests on helmets. Because of this last invention, the Persians called the Carians "cocks".

What, however, was the relationship between the Carians and the Egyptians? And how did they help Egypt?

Turkish archaeologist Canan Kèçèkeren, who has devoted herself to following the tracks of the Carians, the original inhabitants of her hometown of Bodrum, says that the Carians were working for the Egyptian army mainly during the 26th Dynasty and were known the most loyal of soldiers to the Pharaohs. Ancient Egyptian sources described them as "the bronze men who came from the sea".

Kèçèkeren told Al-Ahram Weekly that they were living in Egypt between the eighth and fourth centuries BC and evidently felt at home there, as they settled first in the eastern Delta northeast of Bubastis before spreading to other parts of the Nile Valley.

"My project is to follow up their footsteps along the Nile and document in detail the remains of their cultural heritage," Kèçèkeren says, adding that: "I am sure that if I have a chance of realising my project in a good way, this will establish a cultural bridge between Caria's capital Bodrum and Egypt with the help of archaeology."

From Herodotus, who was also a Carian citizen, we learn that Carians made their appearance as mercenaries in Egypt in the seventh century BC when they teamed up with Ionians to help Psammetik I assume power as founder of the 26th (Saite) Dynasty.

Kèçèkeren relates that Psammetik I visited an oracle where he was told that one day the "bronze men" would come from the sea and would help him. This vision became true and the Carians, who were pirates and wore metal suits of armour, came from the sea, and he opened his heart to them and took them into his army and reunited Egypt, which at that time was divided into 12 parts. Later Pharaoh Amasis, one of Psammetik's descendants, recruited his bodyguard from among the Carians, whom he resettled in Memphis; one of this city's quarters bore the name Caricon, while its inhabitants were called Caromemphites.

Several texts written in the Carian language have survived and been found in the Memphite cemetery near modern Saqqara, where Caromemphites were buried. Carians were also attached to the campaign of Psammetik II, and Carian soldiers who immortalized their names at Abu Simbel Temple participated in the invasion of Nubia.

When the Persian king Cambyses invaded Egypt in 525 BC, the Carian contingents were still there, serving Psammetik II. According to Herodotus, they sacrificed children before they went into battle against the invaders. They managed to switch sides, however. (They were not the only ones: even the commander of the Egyptian navy, Wedjahor-Resne, deserted his king.) In Egyptian sources from the Persian age we still find Carians, now serving a new lord. One of the latest examples is an Aramaic papyrus from a date equivalent to 12 January, 411 BC. Seven years later the Egyptians became independent again; this time, the Carians were unable to switch sides, and it appears that the collaborators were found out and dismissed. ["Dismissed?"  What does this mean, exactly?]

Kèçèkeren told the Weekly that the largest number of inscriptions in the Carian language was in the form of graffiti written by mercenaries on rocks, temples and tombs, mostly in Egypt and Sudan. More than 300 inscriptions in Carian have been found, with about 200 of them located in Egypt, namely in Memphis, Sais, Buto, north Saqqara, Luxor, Elephantine Island, Abu Simbel, Silsilis, Buhen, Gebel Al-Sheikh Suleiman and Khartoum.

"It is interesting that more were found abroad than in their homeland," Kèçèkeren says. "My aim is to visit these settlements for documentation and photographs [of the inscriptions]. I have already visited some of the towns or places like Luxor, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Tel Aswan and Abu Simbel, and I have found some graffiti written in the Carian language on the knee of Pharaoh Ramses II's colossus at Abu Simbel Temple.'" She explained that the Tomb of Maussolus, which gave rise to the word "mausoleum", was the best known of Carian buildings and one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Sadly, it no longer exists.

Her purpose is to contribute to a study that will add new dimensions and promote the Carian civilisation, as well as ensuring the Carians' place on the upper level in culture. "I also hopes that this will establish a cultural bridge and a platform between the Carian capital, Bodrum, and Egypt with the help of archaeology, as they share the same Mediterranean Sea and have a long, shared and friendly past," she said.

Kèçèkeren has been greatly encouraged by her friends and colleagues in Egypt. "They have supported my project and helped me in every way," she said.

Gobekli Tepi

The Smithsonian has a feature on 11,000 year old Gobekli Tepi. Anatolia, darlings - that's where it all began - on the slopes of the mountains of the Ararat region, also around Lake Van, the border regions of ancient Armenia. Coincidentally (or is it?) the same place in which the first spoked wheels were invented in about 1850 BCE, a technology that spread like wildfire across the old world and revolutionized warfare. Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization By Andrew Curry Photographs by Berthold Steinhilber Smithsonian magazine, November 2008 Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple. "Guten Morgen," he says at 5:20 a.m. when his van picks me up at my hotel in Urfa. Thirty minutes later, the van reaches the foot of a grassy hill and parks next to strands of barbed wire. We follow a knot of workmen up the hill to rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof—the main excavation site. In the pits, standing stones, or pillars, are arranged in circles. Beyond, on the hillside, are four other rings of partially excavated pillars. Each ring has a roughly similar layout: in the center are two large stone T-shaped pillars encircled by slightly smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides. Schmidt points to the great stone rings, one of them 65 feet across. "This is the first human-built holy place," he says. From this perch 1,000 feet above the valley, we can see to the horizon in nearly every direction. Schmidt, 53, asks me to imagine what the landscape would have looked like 11,000 years ago, before centuries of intensive farming and settlement turned it into the nearly featureless brown expanse it is today. Prehistoric people would have gazed upon herds of gazelle and other wild animals; gently flowing rivers, which attracted migrating geese and ducks; fruit and nut trees; and rippling fields of wild barley and wild wheat varieties such as emmer and einkorn. "This area was like a paradise," says Schmidt, a member of the German Archaeological Institute. Indeed, Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant. And partly because Schmidt has found no evidence that people permanently resided on the summit of Gobekli Tepe itself, he believes this was a place of worship on an unprecedented scale—humanity's first "cathedral on a hill." With the sun higher in the sky, Schmidt ties a white scarf around his balding head, turban-style, and deftly picks his way down the hill among the relics. In rapid-fire German he explains that he has mapped the entire summit using ground-penetrating radar and geomagnetic surveys, charting where at least 16 other megalith rings remain buried across 22 acres. The one-acre excavation covers less than 5 percent of the site. He says archaeologists could dig here for another 50 years and barely scratch the surface. Gobekli Tepe was first examined—and dismissed—by University of Chicago and Istanbul University anthropologists in the 1960s. As part of a sweeping survey of the region, they visited the hill, saw some broken slabs of limestone and assumed the mound was nothing more than an abandoned medieval cemetery. In 1994, Schmidt was working on his own survey of prehistoric sites in the region. After reading a brief mention of the stone-littered hilltop in the University of Chicago researchers' report, he decided to go there himself. From the moment he first saw it, he knew the place was extraordinary. Unlike the stark plateaus nearby, Gobekli Tepe (the name means "belly hill" in Turkish) has a gently rounded top that rises 50 feet above the surrounding landscape. To Schmidt's eye, the shape stood out. "Only man could have created something like this," he says. "It was clear right away this was a gigantic Stone Age site." The broken pieces of limestone that earlier surveyors had mistaken for gravestones suddenly took on a different meaning. Schmidt returned a year later with five colleagues and they uncovered the first megaliths, a few buried so close to the surface they were scarred by plows. As the archaeologists dug deeper, they unearthed pillars arranged in circles. Schmidt's team, however, found none of the telltale signs of a settlement: no cooking hearths, houses or trash pits, and none of the clay fertility figurines that litter nearby sites of about the same age. The archaeologists did find evidence of tool use, including stone hammers and blades. And because those artifacts closely resemble others from nearby sites previously carbon-dated to about 9000 B.C., Schmidt and co-workers estimate that Gobekli Tepe's stone structures are the same age. Limited carbon dating undertaken by Schmidt at the site confirms this assessment. The way Schmidt sees it, Gobekli Tepe's sloping, rocky ground is a stonecutter's dream. Even without metal chisels or hammers, prehistoric masons wielding flint tools could have chipped away at softer limestone outcrops, shaping them into pillars on the spot before carrying them a few hundred yards to the summit and lifting them upright. Then, Schmidt says, once the stone rings were finished, the ancient builders covered them over with dirt. Eventually, they placed another ring nearby or on top of the old one. Over centuries, these layers created the hilltop. Today, Schmidt oversees a team of more than a dozen German archaeologists, 50 local laborers and a steady stream of enthusiastic students. He typically excavates at the site for two months in the spring and two in the fall. (Summer temperatures reach 115 degrees, too hot to dig; in the winter the area is deluged by rain.) In 1995, he bought a traditional Ottoman house with a courtyard in Urfa, a city of nearly a half-million people, to use as a base of operations. On the day I visit, a bespectacled Belgian man sits at one end of a long table in front of a pile of bones. Joris Peters, an archaeozoologist from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, specializes in the analysis of animal remains. Since 1998, he has examined more than 100,000 bone fragments from Gobekli Tepe. Peters has often found cut marks and splintered edges on them—signs that the animals from which they came were butchered and cooked. The bones, stored in dozens of plastic crates stacked in a storeroom at the house, are the best clue to how people who created Gobekli Tepe lived. Peters has identified tens of thousands of gazelle bones, which make up more than 60 percent of the total, plus those of other wild game such as boar, sheep and red deer. He's also found bones of a dozen different bird species, including vultures, cranes, ducks and geese. "The first year, we went through 15,000 pieces of animal bone, all of them wild. It was pretty clear we were dealing with a hunter-gatherer site," Peters says. "It's been the same every year since." The abundant remnants of wild game indicate that the people who lived here had not yet domesticated animals or farmed. But, Peters and Schmidt say, Gobekli Tepe's builders were on the verge of a major change in how they lived, thanks to an environment that held the raw materials for farming. "They had wild sheep, wild grains that could be domesticated—and the people with the potential to do it," Schmidt says. In fact, research at other sites in the region has shown that within 1,000 years of Gobekli Tepe's construction, settlers had corralled sheep, cattle and pigs. And, at a prehistoric village just 20 miles away, geneticists found evidence of the world's oldest domesticated strains of wheat; radiocarbon dating indicates agriculture developed there around 10,500 years ago, or just five centuries after Gobekli Tepe's construction. To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies. The immensity of the undertaking at Gobekli Tepe reinforces that view. Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. "This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," says Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who excavated Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric settlement 300 miles from Gobekli Tepe. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies." What was so important to these early people that they gathered to build (and bury) the stone rings? The gulf that separates us from Gobekli Tepe's builders is almost unimaginable. Indeed, though I stood among the looming megaliths eager to take in their meaning, they didn't speak to me. They were utterly foreign, placed there by people who saw the world in a way I will never comprehend. There are no sources to explain what the symbols might mean. Schmidt agrees. "We're 6,000 years before the invention of writing here," he says. "There's more time between Gobekli Tepe and the Sumerian clay tablets [etched in 3300 B.C.] than from Sumer to today," says Gary Rollefson, an archaeologist at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, who is familiar with Schmidt's work. "Trying to pick out symbolism from prehistoric context is an exercise in futility." Still, archaeologists have their theories—evidence, perhaps, of the irresistible human urge to explain the unexplainable. The surprising lack of evidence that people lived right there, researchers say, argues against its use as a settlement or even a place where, for instance, clan leaders gathered. Hodder is fascinated that Gobekli Tepe's pillar carvings are dominated not by edible prey like deer and cattle but by menacing creatures such as lions, spiders, snakes and scorpions. "It's a scary, fantastic world of nasty-looking beasts," he muses. While later cultures were more concerned with farming and fertility, he suggests, perhaps these hunters were trying to master their fears by building this complex, which is a good distance from where they lived. Danielle Stordeur, an archaeologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, emphasizes the significance of the vulture carvings. Some cultures have long believed the high-flying carrion birds transported the flesh of the dead up to the heavens. Stordeur has found similar symbols at sites from the same era as Gobekli Tepe just 50 miles away in Syria. "You can really see it's the same culture," she says. "All the most important symbols are the same." For his part, Schmidt is certain the secret is right beneath his feet. Over the years, his team has found fragments of human bone in the layers of dirt that filled the complex. Deep test pits have shown that the floors of the rings are made of hardened limestone. Schmidt is betting that beneath the floors he'll find the structures' true purpose: a final resting place for a society of hunters. Perhaps, Schmidt says, the site was a burial ground or the center of a death cult, the dead laid out on the hillside among the stylized gods and spirits of the afterlife. If so, Gobekli Tepe's location was no accident. "From here the dead are looking out at the ideal view," Schmidt says as the sun casts long shadows over the half-buried pillars. "They're looking out over a hunter's dream." Andrew Curry, who is based in Berlin, wrote the July cover story about Vikings. Berthold Steinhilber's hauntingly lighted award-winning photograhs of American ghost towns appeared in Smithsonian in May 2001.

Genetic Link Between Etruscans and Anatolia?

The dating seems strange - can't make it out. As far as I can tell KYA means "thousand(s) years ago." If this is correct, then the article is saying the genetic linkage between Anatolia and the Etruscans was first made between 2,300 years ago (plus or minus 400 years?) and 1,100 years (plus or minus 100 years?) History tells us that the Etruscans first became an identifiable civilization in Italy about 900-800 BCE (2,900 to 2,800 years ago). That would put the oldest date from the article (2,300 plus 400 years, or 2,700 BCE) near this date range: Abstract from the European Journal of Human Genetics Short Report 3 December 2008; doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2008.224 The Etruscan timeline: a recent Anatolian connection Francesca Brisighelli1,2, Cristian Capelli3, Vanesa Álvarez-Iglesias1, Valerio Onofri4, Giorgio Paoli5, Sergio Tofanelli5, Ángel Carracedo1,6, Vincenzo L Pascali2 and Antonio Salas1 1Unidade de Xenética, Facultade de Medicina, Instituto de Medicina Legal, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain 2Forensic Genetics Laboratory, Institute of Legal Medicine, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy 3Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK 4Institute of Legal Medicine, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche, Policlinico Torrette, Ancona, Italy 5Department of Biology, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy 6Fundación Pública Galega de Medicina Xenómica (FPGMX-SERGAS), CIBER enfermedades raras, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain Correspondence: Dr A Salas, Unidade de Xenética, Facultad de Medicina, Instituto de Medicina Legal, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 15782, Galicia, Spain. Tel.: +34 981 582 327; Fax: +34 981 580 336; E-mail: antonio.salas@usc.es Received 14 April 2008; Revised 14 October 2008; Accepted 15 October 2008; Published online 3 December 2008. The origin of the Etruscans (the present day Tuscany, Italy), one of the most enigmatic non-Indo-European civilizations, is under intense controversy. We found novel genetic evidences on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) establishing a genetic link between Anatolia and the ancient Etruria. By way of complete mtDNA genome sequencing of a novel autochthonous Tuscan branch of haplogroup U7 (namely U7a2a), we have estimated an historical time frame for the arrival of Anatolian lineages to Tuscany ranging from 1.10.1 to 2.30.4 kya B.P. (emphasis added) Short of paying $32 to download the current issue online, I guess I'll remain in the dark as to whether the authors are suggesting that ALL Etruscans can be traced back to Anatolia through this mitochondrial DNA or whether only a certain portion of Etruscans can be traced back to Anatolia through this DNA tag inherited from one's mother!

The Eye Goddess Memorialized

Thank goddess for The New York Times, else I would never find out about such exhibits as this one:

From Around the Globe, a Mustering of the Tribes
By BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO
Published: May 16, 2008

All art fairs are messy, but the New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show is messier than most. It assembles a ridiculously broad range of tribal art from Africa, Oceania, Asia and North and South America. It is a forceful, entrancing ensemble nonetheless.

This year’s fair has relocated to smaller quarters in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, at 26th Street, far south of its former home in the Park Avenue Armory. There is a tighter floor plan downtown — where the fair actually began 14 years ago, under a different name — but it looks and feels pretty good, with 76 participating galleries from 10 countries.

...

The New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show runs through Sunday at the 69th Regiment Armory, Lexington Avenue at 26th Street; (212) 532-1516, caskeylees.com.
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Ach! Too bad the show finishes today. I highly recommend checking out the slide show at The New York Times article, which contains a short sampling of some of the art and artifacts at the show, absolutely stunning, wonderful pieces.

The "rug" image I included here is from the slide show. If that isn't a representation of an Eye Goddess, I'll eat my wool beret. Yes, she's from the 19th century - but she's from eastern Anatolia, an ancient hotbed of goddess worship (and I'll bet she's still worshipped there today, despite Islam).

Take and look and see what I see: She's got a sort of diamond-shaped head with two eyes (classic eye goddess iconography), a tree of life in the upper third of her body, and what look to be "chakra" points down the remaining two-thirds of her body. She's also outlined with - for lack of a better term on my part - an "energy mantra" that reminds me very much of the ancient serpent figures we see enclosing/ guarding the Sun God Re/Ra in ancient Egyptian iconography -- the serpents were representations of Mehen, the ancient serpent goddess/protector of Pharaoh as manifestation of the Sun God, as well as the serpent-had fringed cloak worn by archaic Athena. Altogether, She's an excellent example of ancient religious symbolism melding into certain iconic displays over the millenia.

I very much doubt this "rug" was ever meant to be walked upon as we trod upon our rugs today. For one thing, notice the much wider designed border at the "top" of the rug (above the Goddess' head) than at the bottom. I believe it was designed this way to facilitate hanging. The white "zig-zag" pattern across the top (an ancient pattern that is familiar on many goddess icons, I call it "M/V" for the wave-like pattern it forms, or "chevron") forms eight each "triangles" whose bottom edges are formed or closed by two miniature "eyes," also picked out in white threads. Extremely clever design on the part of the female weaver, because these "triangles" in and of themselves each represent a miniature "eye goddess" - diamond shaped head with two eyes!

Notice, too, the use of EIGHT - and the multiple of TWO TIMES EIGHT - or SIXTEEN. Hmmmm, where have we seen those numbers crop up before??? Hint: In chess.