32.䷟ 少數民族 Popoli di Thera, forgotten elders

Camunni. The history of Valle Camonica (near city of Brescia) begins with the end of last ice age, 15,000 years ago when the glacier, melting, creates the valley. The inhabitants, who had begun to visit the valley settled from the Neolithic. They were called by Romans the Camunni, famous for stone carvings: in Val Camonica they left about 300,000 petroglyphs, which made the area one of the largest centers of rock art in Europe. After many passage, in 1859 Val Camonica was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy.

Otzi. Like many shamans from many cultures the body was tattooed; his weapons (a roughly-hewn bow made of yew, several unfinished arrows, and an all wood dagger), resembled dummy weapons; he carried a medicine bag containing, among other things, a leather thong on which was threaded two pieces of a common birch fungus Piptoporus betulinus which contains polyporic acid C, an effective antibody, especially against stomach microbacteria. A similar fungus, also closely associated with the birch, Amanita muscaria, it has been used by various shamans cultures as an aid to ecstasy before the dawn of history. Otzi also carried with him a copper-headed axe and a net, an object used to trap spirits and seen in various forms as a dream catcher and such. The Shaman is a survivor, he has passed in one way or another through Pain, Disease and Death. The map of the world the Shaman operates in can be understood from what is psychologically called modified states of consciousness, usually accessed through a period of transition and sometimes identified as trance or journey. Not only the healer is in these states, but also the attended person and many times the other participants. Jose Maria Poveda wrote: The word shaman, used internationally, has its origin in Manchú-Tungus and has reached the ethnologic vocabulary through Russian. The word originated from saman (xaman), derived from the verb scha (to know), so shaman means someone who knows (techniques of ecstasy), is wise, a sage. In altaic Turkish it was kam; in Yacuto, ojon (female shaman was the udujan); in Butirates, böo, in Central, Asia bakshi; for the Samoans, tadibe; Lapps, moita; Finnish, tieöjö; Hungarians, táltos, Etruscan Maenas or Asena (wolf-medicine people); etc. This knowledge or wisdom, in the Tungu languages, implies mastery of spirits, whose powers can be introduced by the Shaman into himself at will, using them in his own interest, especially in order to help others who suffer because of spirits. Shaman has more definitions: Someone who is hyperactive, excited or in movement, or who is capable of warming himself and practicing austerities. An indigenous healer who deliberately alters his consciousness in order to obtain knowledge and power from the world of the spirits in order to help and cure the members of his tribe; in some way, he/she is in his activities a prehistoric ethnopsychiatrist. A person prepared to confront the greatest fears and shadows of the physical world. And depending on the results: A healer who has experienced the world of darkness and who has fearlessly confronted his own shadow as much as the diabolic of others, and who can successfully work with the powers of darkness and light. A guide, a source of social connection, a maintainer of the group’s myths and concept of the world. Person of any sex who has a special contact with the spirits (forces, ally, totem, ancestors, etc.) and capable of using their ability in order to act upon those affected by the same spirits.

Shamanism is tied to groups that show a tight relationship with nature, up to the point in which any menace towards it impoverishes our possible comprehension of its concrete manifestations. Around 9,000 years ago agriculture and the domestication of stock-animals came into being in what is now Turkey. Larger amounts of food enabled the peoples that raised the animals and crops to increase their populations a hundred-fold. Having done so, those same people, who only generations before were once small tribal peoples themselves, gradually forayed into Europe, taking their animals and crops with them and driving back into even more inhospitable regions the hunter-gatherers. The movement took place over a period of 4,000 years, affecting the whole of Europe and all of the people and tribes therein. Unlike what is found on the North American continent, most of the European tribal names, customs, culture and rituals were almost totally wiped out or erased during that 4,000 year period.

Etruscos-Turanian 伊特鲁里亚人 The original site of the Etruscan city of Tarquinia, known as the Civita, was changed to Tarquinia in 1922 as part of the nationalist campaign to evoke past glories. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was the legendary seventh and final King of Rome, reigning from 535 BC until the popular uprising in 509 BC that led to the establishment of the Roman Republic. Tarquin's father, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, was the fifth King of Rome. His grandfather was said to be Demaratus the Corinthian. Tarquinii (Rasena Tarch-u-na) was already a flourishing city when Demaratus of Corinth, an immigrant from the Greek city of Corinth, brought in Greek workmen. It was the chief of the twelve cities of Etruria (referred to in Greek and Latin source texts as Tyrrhenia, Τυρρηνία, a region of Central Italy). Descendants of Demaratus, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus and Lucius Tarquinius Superbus became kings of ancient Rome. From Tarquinii many of the religious rites and ceremonies of Rome are said to have been derived, and even in imperial times a collegium of sixty haruspices continued to exist there. Priscus migrated to Rome with his wife Tanaquil, at her suggestion. On their arrival, Tanaquil interpreted an omen as predicting Priscus' future as King of Rome. Superbus was not the immediate successor of his father Priscus, since Servius Tullius took the throne on Priscus' death. According to Roman tradition, Tarquinius Superbus gained the kingship by ordering the assassination of his predecessor, Servius Tullius. The reign of Tarquin is described as a tyranny that justified the abolition of the monarchy. In 509 BC, after the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, the family of Tarquinius Superbus went into exile in Caere in Etruria. Tarquin sought to regain the throne. He convinced the cities of Tarquinii and Veii to support him, and led their armies against Rome in the Battle of Silva Arsia. More resulting war ended in 351 with a forty years' truce, renewed for a similar period in 308. When Tarquinii came under Roman domination is uncertain, as is also the date at which it became a municipality. Tall poppy syndrome (TPS) is a pejorative term primarily used in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other Anglosphere nations to describe a social phenomenon in which people of genuine merit are resented, attacked, cut down, or criticised because their talents or achievements elevate them above or distinguish them from their peers. The specific reference to poppies occurs in Livy's account of the Roman King, Tarquin the Proud. He is said to have received a messenger from his son Sextus Tarquinius asking what he should do next in Gabii, since he had become all-powerful there. Rather than answering the messenger verbally, Tarquin went into his garden, took a stick, and symbolically swept it across his garden, thus cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies that were growing there. The messenger, tired of waiting for an answer, returned to Gabii and told Sextus what he had seen. Sextus realised that his father wished him to put to death all of the most eminent people of Gabii.

Phoenissa, the Bloody One, was the mother of the Phoenicians. Phoinis, crimson, Tyrian purple, was the unique sea-shell dye for which the Phoenician coast was long famous. Menstrual blood was considered life-giving. Its Latin description, purpura, purple, means 'very pure, purus. The Greek Phoenix was the transformed Phoenissa, the Snake-Bird Goddess, called Asherah, The Laughing Goddess by the Phoenicians. Asherah means queen in Akkadian-Phoenician and princess (Sarah) in Hebrew. Until Josiah put a stop to it (2:Kings:23:7), Asherah was considered El's wife in Judah. Crete, and all the surrounding islands, were as much a home of Lady Asherah of the Sea as Phoenicia. The fierce Asherah below comes from the Ionian island of Corfu's Greek name, Kerkira, means the Island of Circe, the ecstatic weaver of magical plants who stung like a bee and bit like a snake. Persephone, originally a Cretan Goddess, was also known as Korykia (the winged Iris of the Rainbow, prototype of Hermes) from krokus, bulb. Greek midwives carried the staff of the winged snake-nymph Korykia, the entwined psychopompic snakes that escorted their charges into the precincts of the Goddess. The kerykeion (Latin caduceus) became the symbol of modern medicine. Hippokrates, as he himself acknowledged, got it from Korykia. The greatest Phoenician trading center from 1800 to 1200 BC was the port city of Ugarit in North Syria, modern Ras Shamra, a metropolis connecting Crete, Cyprus and Greece with Egypt, Babylonia, Khatti (Turkey) and Assyria (northeast Iraq, south Turkey). Syrian, Anatolian, Cretan and Cypriot copper, tin, wine, grain, opium, kannabis, olive oil, dyed wool, timber, rare stone, minerals, finished metal products and ships were traded for Babylonian, Egyptian, Somali and Ethiopian copper, gold, grain, wool, fabrics, incense, ivory, ebony, wine, beer, foodstuffs, medicines, jewelry and cosmetics. Baal is the Phoenician Dionysos and he's struggle was pharmaco-shamanic ritual. One Ugaritic text reveals Mot, Baal's evil twin, God of the Underworld, enraged at Baal's conquest of the seven-headed Leviathan. Mot repays Baal with terror and death, but not before Baal copulates with a heifer, who bears him a Bull. Thereupon Baal dies and the Earth becomes barren. Anath decides to avenge her brother Baal: She cleaves Mot with a sword. She winnows him with a fan. She burns him with fire. She grinds him in the millstones. She plants him inthe fields. As if by seed, Baal is resurrected in the renewed Earth. Shapsh, the Sun Goddess who sees all, is dispatched by El to find Baal, who is once more battling with Mot. After seven years, Mot will have yet another victory. The rites enacted by Anath are a virtual duplicate of the rites enacted by Demeter in the Hymn to Demeter, the founder myth of the Eleusinian Mysteries religion. Persephone's need to return underground for a third of the year was insured by Aidoneus gift of a single pomegranate seed, a reference to the ancient aspect of Demeter, Rhea, whose spell cannot be broken. It is the seed that must be reborn.

The wolf (Canis lupus) is often found in the mythic lore of the Turkish and Mongolian peoples native to the steppe regions North of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and that the Scythians from whom they arose transmitted archetypes throughout much of European and Asian folklore. The wolf, even in the monotheistic religions it is respected, feared and reviled. The Roman Catholic Church often used the negative imagery of wolves to create a sense of real devils prowling the real world. However, legends surrounding Francis of Assisi show him befriending a wolf; Francis, ever the lover of animals, even made a pact on behalf of the town dogs, that they would not bother the wolf again. Wolves were generally revered by tribes that survived by hunting, but were thought little of by those that survived through agriculture. Some tribes, such as the Nunamiut of northern and northwestern Alaska and the Naskapi of Labrador respected the wolf's hunting skill and tried to emulate the wolf in order to hunt successfully. Others see the wolf as a guide. The Tanaina of Alaska believed that wolves were once men, and viewed them as brothers. According to the Pawnee creation myth, the wolf was the first creature to experience death. The Wolf Star (Sirius), enraged at not having been invited to attend a council on how the Earth should be made, sent a wolf to steal the whirlwind bag of The Storm that Comes out of the West, which contained the first humans. Upon being freed from the bag, the humans killed the wolf, thus bringing death into the world. The Pawnee, being both an agricultural and hunting people, associated the wolf with both corn and the bison; the birth and death of the Wolf Star was to them a reflection of the wolf's coming and going down the path of the Milky Way known as Wolf Road. In Japan, grain farmers once worshiped wolves at shrines and left food offerings near their dens, beseeching them to protect their crops from wild boars and deer. Talismans and charms adorned with images of wolves were thought to protect against fire, disease, and other calamities and brought fertility to agrarian communities and to couples hoping to have children. The Ainu people believed that they were born from the union of a wolflike creature and a goddess. Unlike fox and bear, the wolf has always been feared and hated in Finland, and wolf has been the symbol of destruction and desolation. While bear has been the sacred animal of Finns, wolves have always been hunted and killed mercilessly. In India, Krishna, to convince the people of Vraja to migrate to Vrindavan, creates hundreds of wolves from his hairs, which frighten the inhabitants of Vraja into making the journey. The wolf is equated with creativity, fertility and protection, as well as with destruction, usually in association with the sun and the heroes. This outlook was similar to the Native American perception of the wolf as embodying both protection and destruction. Before the development of farming and agriculture, when hunting and gathering formed the basis of survival, the wolf held a place of great importance. Just as did many American Indian peoples, some European peoples considered themselves descended from wolves, and thus worshiped the wolf as both a god and an ancestor. In European Antiquity, seeing a wolf before the beginning of a battle was an omen of victory, the wolf being symbolic both of the hunter and warrior. Turpalo-Noxchuo, the founder of the Chechen nation in legend, was raised by the Wolf Mother. Chechens are descended from Turpalo-Noxchuo and the Wolf Mother like sparks off steel. Wolf clans are often equated to Chechen teips. The wolf for Chechens (and generally also Ingush) is the national animal and the national embodiment: free and equal like wolves, intelligent, organized in clans, loyal, and brave. As with most ancient peoples' beliefs, the wolf was thought to possess spiritual powers, and that parts of its body retained specific powers that could be used by people for various needs. In Mongolian folk medicine, eating the intestines of a wolf is said to alleviate chronic indigestion, while sprinkling food with powdered wolf rectum is said to cure hemorroids. Mongol mythology explains the wolf's occasional habit of surplus killing by pointing to their traditional creation story. It states that when God explained to the wolf what it should and should not eat, he told it that it may eat one sheep out of 1,000. The wolf however misunderstood and thought God said kill 1,000 sheep and eat one. the Mongol peoples are said to have descended from the mating of a doe (Gua maral) and a wolf (Boerte chino).

Pan. Neolithic and Bronze Age temples and shrines yield a profusion of cups, bowls, vases, funnels and ladles. Many of these ancient jugs show the pharmaco-shamanic snake, symbol of death and resurrection (initiation) drinking from the spout. In Hagar Qim temple on Malta (3300 BC), was a stone table-altar into which had been carved a bowl decorated in front with a tree of life growing from a pot. Next to it was a standing slab, a pillar with floating eyes, double-spiral eyes out of which grew sacred plants. In the temple's central courtyard were two large carved mushroom-shaped limestone altars with cups. The Gold Ring of Isopata, near Knossos (1500 BC), explicitly depicts bee-headed women dancing in ecstacy, surrounded by drawn floating plants and snakes. This is a depiction of ekstasis, animal transformation and the disembodied flight of the soul.

Native Italian' tribes Praloĝantoj de Italujo 意大利原 住民 Xiān mín พื้นเมืองของอิตาลี
Native Italians tribes (from Turanian language group, and Kurgan group). The archeologist Marja Gimbutas identified the Indoeuropeans as a warrior culture of the bronze age (4000 - 2000 B.), that she called Kurgan. She thinks Kurgans migrated from an area confined with north Urales and Danubian river, expanding to Europe until India, fighting and absorbing many neolitic popolations they meet on they migration ways, becouse of their advanced militar technology as metallurgy of bronze and horses domestication, changing the social and religios structure of indigenous people. They bring also a sky God. The Kurgans, everywhere, were ierarchic societies divided into three castes: the warriors, the priests and the land-workers, with women and slaves, in the last step. King was the carismatic leader chosen by warriors. Erodoto tells that after the Golden Age, came the Silver Age, where the sons are more time with mothers, wars becoming simple hunting and no sacrificies are made to the gods. Among the pre-Indoeuropeans divinities, there was a Mother Goddess linked with Owl and a male Moon-Earth God linked with Bull.. For the ancient Europeans the world of the dead and the kingdom of the fairies (Faery) were adjacent to the living world. In special days, like the last night of October (Halloween), they invaded the world of the living passing through special gates as banks fog or megalithic circles. This night exchange between humans and fairy under the light of the Moon Queen, was neither good nor bad, it depended on the mood of those who attended the meeting, where the moon was a bridge between humans and the elves of enchanted circle. The Latins. The ancient Latium (Latium Vetus) was from Thyrrenian sea to the Tiber river until Aurunci tribal land near Terracina. In 2000 B.c., it was occupied by the Prisci Latini, indoeuropean peoples mixed with local aborigenals and Cretean migrantes. They was sheperds and farmers, changing forests and many swamps of Latium into farms and villages. The Latins use to make villages federation (gens, tribe) for defense from the mountanes Sabines. Slowly they organized a strong and organized army, as the Cincinnato legend tells: a farmer if necessarily become warrior to fight for his federation villages, then he go back to his simple farm (small ranch). The Latium villages (as the Rasenna one and Iroquos in US) made a strong federation among themselves, there was federal religious meeting during festivites up the Mount Cavo, the most Latin famous sanctuary; or at Diana nemorense temple on the Nemi's lake; or Giunone temple in Gabi; the Venus-Circe sanctuary up the Circeo hill; or the Fortunes Goddess sanctuary in Preneste; or the holy Forest of Tusculum and Aricia (sanctuary of Diana and Vertumnia); the sacrum Laurentum forest of Lavinium (controlled by the clan-gens-tribe of Laurentes); sanctuary of Horta (Orte), where all villagers were practicing vegetable-gardening as holy custom taught them by the Goddess of gardens (Horta Dea); Tibur, ancient sicilyan colony shared with Latin, Sabines and Appennines tribes; the sadhus' sanctuary of Lanuvium; Velitrae shared with Etruscan and Volsci; Antium, center of Volsci tribal land; the baby Juppiter temple (Giove Anxur) of Tarracina; etc. Later, most of this center were inglobated into the Roman federation state until the later Empire age.

In the world of the Mir (Russian village) there were positions of authority and responsibility of women more vivid. The woman who, immediately after the first child living improved up to be erected at the head of the house if, as was the custom, the husband strayed during the summer season (after harvest) to lend his art on distant markets or for a military campaign (for several months) and here we find that the same thing happened among the nomadic peoples of the steppes of Ukraine. Since then prevailed traditionally exogamy, our head home (hozjaika) was from outside and the new assignment was the most prestigious in the case of judgments and disputes as woman was more free from the constraints local. If, as happened then, was at the same time around the age of 40 years (when it intervened menopause), the tribute was made more and more obedience. The families we are talking about were so-called extended, that within which several generations lived together, and therefore it could happen at certain times of the year to have a whole team of women to the direction of entire villages. Here is the Greek legend of the Amazons of the company and the story of Herodotus of the fourth century. B.C. The greek historian puts this tribe of women in the north where the Sarmatians lived (their heirs are properly Ossetians or Alans). In exogamous marriage (married outside of their own village), already in the etymology of the Russian word for bride, nevesta (unknown, alien), translates it comes from non-local and secondly its complete acculturation in the company of her husband . The number of brides for men was limited and who could, had more than one! It is explained by the high rate of perinatal death of the mother and infant and is therefore the need to have more children, always with the aim of enhancing and play the race. The marriages were of various kinds, but the marriage is the most common way to establish alliances between clans and clans, between village and village, family and family. The feeling of the race was very strong and was reflected in the religious worship of the deity magic-founder in a world far away in time in the sacred original tribe to which most believed to belong mir. The woman, by virtue, was delegated by the god Rod and his body, inextricably linked to the family of his companion, was available. The assimilation of the woman and her loose from the native was final until after the first birth. In cases of infertility, in particular, the woman was sent back to her family. The available space (material and ideological) is small and costumes allowed gender relations that the Church condemned as homosexuality or bestiality or sexual intercourse outside of marriage. For example, the right to sleep with her daughter in law, if the husband was away, competed to his father or the patriarch could sleep with his own daughter, it was necessary to have other children. In short, shot down the matriarchy, Eva becomes a sexual object without a specific item that passes from one owner or guardian (father, brother or anyone for them) to another, and, as the labor force, is assigned the additional role of servant and nursing.

Many pagan beliefs originated from the steppes own. In the reconstruction of M. Gimbutas's Indo-European nomadic shepherds, with their patriarchal organization, came in from the steppes of Central Europe already as farmers and shepherds and spread in all directions imposing their type of society to the people who lived there (some remains are Basque). The Indo-European fight forces the woman always lower positions beginning with the contempt of the gods to her due. In the numerous female deities venerated by the Baltic Finno-Ugric are the remains of a matriarchal society destroyed. The patriarchal society of Indo-Europeans arrived in 2500 BC on the banks of the Dvina and conquered the natives. In the plains south of the Russian Plain, remaining female statues (in Russian kamennye baby) standing here and there and worshiped until a few centuries ago by nomadic Turkic Islamized. Slavic Paganism lies in a humble desire to maintain a balance with the rest of nature beyond those who have created a christian God or a pagan god. Spells for each case of life have been collected by the voice of the wise folk, as well as the numerous amulets, also made by them, such as amber. Various holy places (crossroads along the banks of rivers-lakes, springs, wells, large boulders, stone labyrinths) also offered its security environment. Important Goddess is the moon called Moon in Russian (feminine), then Mesjaz (male) under patriarchal rule (Latin Moon and Mensis) and the greatest of all, was Mother Moist Earth that smierd then assimilate with the Virgin Mary.

Max Dashu wrote: Matrika (diminutive of mother) icons seem to represent the maternal ancestor, life-giver, and cultural founder celebrated in traditions of living matrix cultures. Several key themes of the iconic woman repeat on a global scale: vulva signs, female figurines, ancestor megaliths, and ceremonial vessels in the form of women or female breasts. These recurring signs reflect the spiritual concerns and ritual life of the people who created them. They belong to animist consciousness and philosophies, rich in complex meanings underlain with myth and mystery, pulse and flow. Sign is especially important to cultures based on oral tradition, conveying meaning on multiple levels. Where the transmission of orature has been interrupted or severed, signs remain as primary testimony to the cultural life of ancient cultures. The concept of Matrix exemplifies the multivalent capacity of the sacred sign. Matrix of time and space, which various cultures call Mother Nature, Priroda, Prakriti, Aluna, or Tao. The Tao Te Ching describes it as the creating Mother of everything that exists under heaven, upon which myriads of beings depend for their birth and existence. These are core values in the matrix (Latin word for womb, Indo-European root that gives mother, mater, meter, mat) cultures: a sense of kinship systems based on mother-right, that are matrilineal, matrilocal, and egalitarian (matriarchy implies a mirror image of patriarchy’s relations of domination and subordination), a life-support network within the maternal kindreds, which are cooperative and communal, and circles of exchange that reach beyond it. In the San Agustín complex of Colombia, megalithic women clasp their breasts or hold a child in front of their body. One smiles broadly, showing jaguar teeth. Some of the female megaliths of Pasemah in southern Sumatra also carry children; others ride on the backs of water buffalo. The women wear necklaces, earhoops, and circular leg-bands. Breasts and necklaces are a distinctive theme in megalithic art of northern Africa and western Europe, and southern Ethiopia. A megalith at Pedras Mamuradas in Sardinia has breasts but no necklaces, while others have necklaces but no breasts. The face of the ancestor, defined by a schematic brow-and-nose, turns up in many places. A female megalith from Georgia (Caucasus) is described as an owl-face. Mouths are often entirely missing. As folklore attests, this sign often indicates a connection with the dead. These are not portraits of individuals, but ancestral presences. In megalithic Europe, they are usually associated with collective burials. Devotional scrapings have hollowed out the vulva of a medieval serpent-woman at Sanchi, India. Many of Irish sheila-na-gigs (sculptures of women displaying their vulvas) show clear traces of this boring or scraping process. The old statue from Seir Kiaran is an archtypical Irish sheila: a hairless crone, with prominent ribs and small, pendant dugs. The Seir Kiaran sheila is old, a progenitor and ancestor. A ring of borings circles her womb, with the deepest, representing the vaginal portal all sheilas display, at the base. Atop the sheila’s bald head are two holes, placed as if to attach a headdress, or a pair of horns. Rock dust from these icons was revered as potent in healing, blessing, conception, and protection. Even in modern times, women in some districts of Europe went to sacred stones and megaliths said to confer the power to conceive. They rubbed their bellies or vulvas against the rock, or lay in a rock bed, often sleeping in it overnight, as Scottish women did on the Witches’ Stone near Edinburgh, which was carved to resemble a vulva. Animist practices of this kind draw on the sacred power of the living rock. Indigenous cultures often address and describe divinities as mothers (matrikas). In Brazil, the Tupians believe that every animal and plant species has its ‘mother’. The Mundurucú make offerings to Putcha Si, Mother of Game, to the Mother of Fish, tapir, peccary, deer and monkey. The Camayura venerate similar animal mamaé. Manioc and corn have mothers venerated over most of the Americas, like the Quechua mamasara in Peru. In Chile, Mapuche ceremonies begin by invoking the grandmothers and grandfathers of the directions. Reverence for spirit mothers also persisted in the Baltic region of Europe. Latvians revered fifty-some animist essences which they called mate: Mother Fire, Mother Sea, Mother Forest, and so on. Estonians chanted to the old woman, mother of the forest. In Nigeria, the Yoruba invoke awon iya wa, our mothers, which is a collective term for female ancestors and for older living women, the owners of the world whose power over the reproductive capacities of all women is held in awe by Yoruba men. Aboriginal Bambara assign multiple meanings to their Gouandousou statues: female ancestor, either individual or collective, Moussou Koroni, the white-haired old woman who created plants, animals, and humans, and who personifies air, wind, fire, and exuberant vitality. The same has been said of the gramadevi (village goddesses) in India. Matrikas were kept in shrines, household altars, or granaries. These last, as repositories of future vitality, are animist shrines in their own right. In Peru, the fertility goddess is often shown in a granary watching over the harvest. Frequently the matrikas are painted with red ochre, signifying the life-giving blood of the mother, and of Earth. Matrikas seem to reference the maternal ancestor progenitor of a lineage or clan, even a people. Matrikas are often found together with animal figurines. This association repeats the connection of vulvas with animals in many ancient petroglyphs. Sometimes the matrikas themselves show animal traits, like the vulture-headed icons of Amratian Egypt or the snake-faced nursing mother at al-Ubaid, Iraq. At Vinca, Serbia, a bear-headed mother suckles a bear-baby, and several other icons have duckbills. The goddess from a granary at Çatal Höyük sits on a throne flanked by leopards, the prototype for Kybele and her lions many millennia later. Matrix icons are still a living egalitarian tradition, and their custodians unequivocally affirm their sacredness.