Why is this news?

Oh come on!  Distinctly Indo-European people who wove plaids just like their compatriots to the west, had fair skin, red, brown and even blonde hair, and blue eyes, coupled with unusual height, were in the Tarim Basin at least 4000 years ago.  I think it is pretty well etablished that these peoples migrated from the Iranian Plateau, and perhaps from even further west.  So this article about an Indo-European male showing up in a 2000 year old Mongolian cemetery is news exactly how?  (Image: belt decoration from Duurlig Nars Man's grave, from article.  Okay - intertwined serpents.  Where have we seen this pattern before?  Hint:  The Shar-i Sokhtah (i.e., The Burnt City) gameboard, far southeastern corner of Iran). 

Skeleton of Western man found in ancient Mongolian tomb
DNA from 2,000-year-old skeleton may put Indo-Europeans in East Asia By Bruce Bower Web edition : 4:10 pm

Dead men can indeed tell tales, but they speak in a whispered double helix.

Consider an older gentleman whose skeleton lay in one of more than 200 tombs recently excavated at a 2,000-year-old cemetery in western Mongolia, near China’s northern border. DNA extracted from this man’s bones pegs him as a descendant of Europeans or western Asians. Yet he still assumed a prominent position in ancient Mongolia’s Xiongnu Empire, say geneticist Kyung-Yong Kim of Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea, and his colleagues.

On the basis of previous excavations and descriptions in ancient Chinese texts, researchers suspect that the Xiongnu Empire — which ruled a vast territory in and around Mongolia from 209 B.C. to A.D. 93 — included ethnically and linguistically diverse nomadic tribes. The Xiongnu Empire once ruled the major trading route known as the Asian Silk Road, opening it to both Western and Chinese influences.

Researchers have yet to pin down the language spoken by Xiongnu rulers and political elites, says archaeologist David Anthony of Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. But the new genetic evidence shows that the 2,000-year-old man “was multi-ethnic, like the Xiongnu polity itself,” Anthony remarks.

This long-dead individual possessed a set of genetic mutations on his Y chromosome, which is inherited from paternal ancestors, that commonly appears today among male speakers of Indo-European languages in eastern Europe, central Asia and northern India, Kim’s team reports in an upcoming American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The same man displayed a pattern of mitochondrial DNA mutations, inherited from maternal ancestors, characteristic of speakers of modern Indo-European languages in central Asia, the researchers say.  [Shock!  Was the guy perhaps a Tocharian???]

“We don’t know if this 60- to 70-year-old man reached Mongolia on his own or if his family had already lived there for many generations,” says study coauthor Charles Brenner, a DNA analyst based in Oakland, Calif.

Two other skeletons from the Xiongnu cemetery in Duurlig Nars show genetic links to people who live in northeastern Asia, according to Kim’s team. Other team members include Kijeong Kim of Chung-Ang University and Eregzen Gelegdorj of the National Museum of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar.

The Duurlig Nars man’s genetic signature supports the idea that Indo-European migrations to northeastern Asia started before 2,000 years ago. This notion is plausible, but not confirmed, says geneticist Peter Underhill of Stanford University. Further investigations of Y chromosome mutation frequencies in modern populations will allow for a more precise tracing of the Duurlig Nars man’s geographic roots, Underhill predicts.

Scholars have long sought to trace the origin and spread of related languages now found in Europe, India and other parts of Asia. One hypothesis holds that Indo-European languages proliferated via several waves of expansion and conquest by nomads known as Kurgans who had domesticated horses and thus could travel long distances. In this scenario, Kurgans left a homeland north of the Black Sea, in what’s now Russia, around 6,400 years ago.

Another view holds that farmers from ancient Turkey spread Indo-European tongues as they swallowed up one parcel of land after another, beginning around 9,000 years ago.

Since 1978, discoveries of 2,400- to 4,000-year-old mummified corpses with European features in northwestern China, not far from Mongolia, have fueled the Kurgan hypothesis (SN: 2/25/95, p. 120). Remains of large wheels found with these blond-haired individuals raise the controversial possibility that these foreigners introduced carts and chariots to the Chinese.

Add to those discoveries a report in the September 2009 Human Genetics. Geneticist Christine Keyser of the University of Strasbourg in France and her colleagues found that nine of 26 skeletons previously excavated at 11 Kurgan sites in northeastern Russia possess a Y chromosome mutation pattern thought to mark the eastward expansion of early Indo-Europeans. That same genetic signature characterizes the Duurlig Nars man.

By 2,000 years ago, the easternmost Indo-European languages were probably spoken in northwestern China, Anthony holds. So an Indo-European speaker could have aligned himself with Xiongnu political big shots and earned an eternal resting place in an elite Xiongnu cemetery, in his opinion.

Kim agrees. The Duurlig Nars man’s tomb lies close to the tomb of an especially high-ranking Xiongnu man whom he may have served in some way, he suggests.

Kim’s group plans to extract and study DNA from additional Duurlig Nars skeletons. For now, Anthony remarks, “this new study from Mongolia is important because it adds one more point of light to a largely dark prehistoric sky.”

Jael

Prior post mentioning Jael (and giving the biblical account). I was looking in Barbara Walker's "A Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" for other information when I came across an entry on Jael! Jael (var. Jaala) "Wild She-Goat," alternate name for the Israelite queen Deborah as a mate of the scapegoat-god, Baal-Gad or Pan. Ja-El was the same as the Persians' primal Goddess Jahi, adopted by tribal queens of the pre-patriarchal period. Jael sacrificed Sisera in a strange way, nailing his head to the ground (Judges 4:21), which may be likened to the priestesses of Artemis Tauropolos nailing the head os their victims to crosses.(1) Notes: (1) Graves, G.M., 2, 78. ************************************************************************************* Hmmmm, well, I don't know about that. I'm skeptical of the definition Walker gives for Ja-El. "El" is "god" - but no "god" is mentioned in "Wild She Goat." If "El" means god, than Ja means goat woman (as "Ba" means goat man)? So Jehovah (Jah) was actually a female goat goddess - or some hybrid form of goat and woman? Well, that's an interesting supposition, but I'd like to know more about the meanings of these words. The conflating of Deborah and Jael is also interesting. In the biblical account they are definitely two distinct women, although it certainly is possible that the death of Sisera was at the hands of Deborah, the "queen," rather than Jael. Deborah, it will be recalled, prophesied the death of Sisera at the hands of a woman rather than her general, Barach, who evidently showed some doubt about Deborah's prophecy that the Israelite army would be victorious over Sisera's forces! Walker's Encyclopedia also has an entry on Jahi the Whore. What a title, oh my! Persian patriarchal epithet for the Great Mother who brought forth, then mated with, the serpent Ahriman, as Lilith or the pre-Adamic Eve was supposed to have done with the biblical serpent. Zoroastrian scriptures said Jahi brought menstruation into the world, for she menstruated for the first time after mating with her serpent. Jahi also brought sex into the world by seducing the first man in the primal gardne. Jewish patriarchs probably derived their notions of the sinfulness of women (by virtue of their descent from Eve) from Persian ascetics who claimed all women were "whores" because they were descendants of Jahi. [Would this have been during the 70-Year Exile in Babylonia?] Oddly enough, some of the earliest forms of the name of the Jewish God seem to have been masculinized versions of the name of Jahi. Variations included Jahu, Jah, Yahu, Yahweh, Iau, Jaho. Some myths indicate that this God like Ahriman once had a serpent form and may have played the part of the Great Mother's serpent. *************************************************************************************** A serpent and a mother-creator-goddess are among the oldest deities (if not the oldest) in Chinese iconography and myth. The pre-dynastic serpent goddess of Egypt is also extremely old. I'm not too familiar with the religious legends of Sumer, but she's probably there, too.

Mehen

Mehen was both a goddess - the protector of Ra - and one of the earliest known board games played in Egypt. (Image: Mehen, British Museum, c. 2800 BCE). While online you'll find many references to Mehen as a "god," in her archaic form Mehen was definitely a female protectoress of the Sun God, perhaps closely allied with (or perhaps, an incarnation of or subsumed into) the Egyptian serpent-goddess and protectoress of Pharaoh, Uadjet. Upon the uniting of Upper and Lower Egypt, the vulture goddess Nekbhet of Upper Egypt and the serpent goddess Uadjet (also known as Buto) of Lower Egypt were united in one of the ceremonial crowns worn by Pharaoh to protect the physical incarnation of Ra on earth.

Stone Mehen board games have been recovered from First Dynasty Egyptian tombs but it's origins lies somewhere in the pre-dynastic period. The game gradually lost favor over the ensuing thousand plus years after the founding of the united Egyptian kingdom and ceased to be played in Egypt during the Intermediate Period. According to Peter Piccione, "Later in the Saite Period, the play of the game is again depicted on the walls of two tombs, as part of the neo-Memphite revival--when Old Kingdom artistic motives and themes were temporarily revived for socio-political purposes. The pattern strongly suggests that the *mehen*-game ceased to be played in Egypt after the Old Kingdom."

By that time, Senet and the 58-hole game (or Hounds and Jackals) were very popular in Egypt and Senet had taken on religious significance and mystical connotations that may have been appropriated from Mehen.

A form of Mehen evidently continued to be played by the Baggara Arabs of the Sudan called "the Hyena game." The modern "Game of the Goose" which also employs a spiral playing board is not, however, related to ancient Mehen.

For general information on Mehen:
P.S. Neely's website entry on Mehen (including post done by Peter Piccione in 1994 on the old ANE network)

Pascal Romain's website entry on Mehen (he posits a date as far back as 6000 BCE for the game outside of Egypt)

See also Board Game Geek, although it really is not known just why Mehen ceased to be played in Egypt, Neely's speculations (based on Kendall's) aside.

Mehen the Enveloper from Barbara Walker's "A Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets:" Egyptian serpent-goddess who enclosed the Phallus of Ra every night, as Hindu phallic gods were enveloped in their sleep cycles by the serpent-goddess called Infinity. See Serpent.

Walker's entry under "Serpent" is 7 pages long! There's a thunderstorm going on here now, I'm going to power down for the night -

Python

From Barbara Walker's "A Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets." Python Great Serpent born of Mother Hera without the aid of Zeus, which meant the Mother's firstborn serpent antedated all father-gods, like the Ophion-serpent of the creatress Eurynome. Also like Lucifer, Python was the lightning-serpent who descended into the Deep to fertilize the Goddess. Mother Hera also bore Hephaestus without the aid of any male god, and Hephaestus was the same lightning-god who "fell from heaven."(1) Python personified the prophetic spirit of the Delphic oracle, whose prietstess was always the Pythoness even when the shrine was taken over by Apollo. Python lived in the earth-womb and knew its secrets, which is why he was an oracle. Some myths said Python was a Lord of Death because Apollo had killed him. But, like all other light-and-dark twins, Apollo and Python were really the same god. Sacred kings of Delphi always killed their predecessors, who were laid to rest in the stone omphalos where the Pythoness sat to commune with the oracular spirit.(2) Sometimes Python was the nether aspect of Apollo himself, the Black Sun corresponding to the celestial sun. This serpent-figure was the familiar Sata, Thoth, Ouroboros, Okeanos, Hermes, and other subterranean oracle-gods. Notes: (1) Guthrie, 73. (2) Graves, G.M., 1, 80-82.