Tarot of the Origins: A Time line through History

A Time line through the history of us becoming human as seen through the images of the
Tarot of the Origins:


This first post will list all the cards in the sequence they appear in my little history lesson, so owners of the deck can lay them out and follow along.

Subsequent posts will address each of these cards in this context and be in sequence..... hopefully (confused homo computerensis here....)


Then we can talk and I am eager to hear your input! :

Soooo :
Time wise,
When did it all begin?

5 of Nature
XVII The Star
7 of Blood
14 Man of Blood
4 of Blood
12 Animal of Blood
12 Animal of Soul
XIII Death
Xii The Sacrifice
13 Woman of Blood
5 of Blood
9 of Souls
XX The Prey
IV The Father
III The Mother
7 of Soul
XIV The Source
8 of Jewels
All the cards with bone jewelry in the image
All cards with tattoo art in the image
4 of Soul
8 of Blood
6 of Nature
9 of Nature
9 of Jewels
5 of Soul
4 of Jewels
2 of Jewels
XVIII the Moon
XIX The Sun
VII the Chariot
XXI The World
12 Animal of Blood

5 of Nature = in the Beginning:

5 of Nature.
About this card the fold out LWB notes:
A Gorilla holds a stone suspended above his head, as if thinking. Balance.

I see something quite different in this card:
Am I looking at a rock and brush formation that somehow looks like the face of a Gorilla? With a cave entrance in one eye and a rock shelter in the other?
Is this the rock formation of Olduvai gorge in Africa, where some of the earliest evidence of our still quite ape- like Ancestors were discovered?
When the stone on the head of this Spirit Ape gets rolling, nothing will stop it!
Our history starts......
This card to me speaks of earliest beginnings and also of the change/ transformation from one species into another.


This card is the one, that has inspired me to explore a time-line through the history of early man using the cards of this deck.

XVI The Star:

XVI The Star:
We have Fire!!
Just when and where early humans first claimed fire for themselves and then subsequently learned to make it and control it is to date still controversial.
Certainly the very first pre-humans discovered, that the charred remains of Animals killed by fire were more delicious and nourishing than raw meat scavenged or hunted down fresh. But it was a looooong road from that insight to going out and grabbing a branch, sticking it it into naturally lit wildfires and taking it to a prepared pile of brush, light that, AND control it. I wonder, from there, how long it took and just who was then the very first human, to light the very first spark and nursed it into controllable flames.......

Scientists agree, that Choucoutien in modern day China that was occupied by Homo Erectus
400 000 years ago had such a controlled camp fire and food was prepared over it.

7 of Blood or an Neanderthal Man!!??

- 7 of Blood:
Yes, here he is!
BUT!!!!
Are you looking at the proverbial stereotypical Neanderthal man ?
They lived in Asia and Europe as early as 160,000 years ago.
Their ancestors however, the Homo Heidelbergensis, were the ones, that looked very much like the image of this card. They had these huuuuuge brow ridges and certainly wielded a big stick!
Rightfully so, since they were around for 600 000 years!!!!

Their younger and more sophisticated cousins, the Neanderthals, were very successful hunters, and had the place to themselves – until 35 000 years ago the first modern humans showed up. To an extent they interbred with modern humans and Europeans have between 1 and 4 % of Neanderthal DNA
From Wiki:
Neanderthals were first thought to be almost exclusively carnivorous and ; however, new studies do indicate that they had cooked vegetables in their diet. They made advanced tools,had a language (the nature of which is debated) and lived in complex social groups. The Molodova archaeological site in eastern Ukraine suggests some Neanderthals built dwellings using animal bones. A building was made of mammoth skulls, jaws, tusks and leg bones, and had 25 hearths inside.
….....................
Neanderthals made very fine stone tools, wore heavy furs finely sown and effective against the cold, They painted their bodies with red ocher, revered the Cave Bear and build altars using Cave Bear skulls.
There were never too many of them around.
Estimates have them at in and around 70 000 at any given time of their existence.
What made them disappear?
We?
The diseased we brought ?
Did we out-compete them with more modern tools and methods?
Did we out-breed them?
Did we just absorb them into – us?

- - ….........................................................................................................
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17179608

What Did the Well-Dressed Neanderthal Wear? Jewelry:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1952933,00.html

Man of Blood - and a mighty appetite....

14 Man of Blood
Biiiiiiiig Dinner!
The Neanderthals were excellent hunters. They lived right through the ice ages and intermediate warm periods like the Eem that was quite a bit warmer than our climate today.
Back then, there were Hippos in the Rhine, Thamse and Danube Rivers and monkeys were swinging from Trees in the Alps. Since there was only little ice in Greenland, its climate was somewhat like Denmark's today, and low lying areas like the Netherlands, New Orleans and New York as well as Bangladesh were under about 2 to 6 meter of water ( 20 feet) – as they will be again – soon.

Then during the maximum expansion of the ice, during Riss and Würm there was no England or Ireland, no Scandinavia. There were glaciers covering the Alps, northern Spain much of the circumpolar north. But since sooo much water was captured in this Ice there was a lot more dry land everywhere where we now have coast.
Still, after the ice receeded 10 000 years ago there was dry and fertile land from France all the way to Ireland – NO water! That is where most of the people lived. Along the - then - coast which now is waaaay out in the Atlantic, as well as along the valleys of the large rivers. There they occupied the caves and painted them, leaving us to marvel at their art.

Card Blood 14
shows a man and a Hippo – that is only possible during the Eem warm period and so we are looking at Neanderthal man – unless you place this image into today's modern Africa where somebody is big game hunting.

4 of Blood wielding sa sticky bone......

The 4 of Blood
shows a guy wielding a long sharp dagger made from a long bone.
That is a typical Neanderthal tool.

Animal of Blood - or Guardian of the cave?

12 Animal of Blood
shows a HUUUUUUG Bear and a puny little human with a spear, white like bone and fastened to a stick – A Neanderthal or a modern human?
I think, we are to assume, that this is a homo, facing down a Cave Bear.
Cave Bears were a bit larger than modern day Brown Bears, but not quite that large as shown in the artwork here. We also see the fear of the person, as the Bear looms larger than life.
Cave Bears were strictly vegetarian but never the less formidable foes!
Cave Bears were around during the Pleistocene until about 27 000 years ago, which provides only a slim window of our guy on the card having been a modern human.
But I feel, that this person saw this giant Bear, turned around and ran! Because the Bear is outside a cave. And when our ancestors hunted cave bears they were not quite as brave as we would like them to be: They came in winter, when the Bears were in hibernation in the cave and that is, when and where they killed them, as shown by many finds of Cave Bear bones and Bear cub bones with spear marks and cut marks on the skeletal remains.



These days there is evidence, that already the neanderthals worshiped Bears and used their skulls and bones in ritual. they certainly wore Cave Bear teeth as jewelry, as seen in graves.
Here is also a pic of a Cave Bear altar from Chauvet cave in France with the following comment:
Quote:
Another example of human activity within the cave can be found in the Skull Chamber. In this space it is possible to see prints and bones on the floor, and on the walls, claw marks, engravings, paintings, hand prints and torch wipes. But in the very center a cave bear skull was moved and placed on the rock. Sedimentary tests suggest, that this would have been done either 36,000 to 30,000 years ago, before the paintings were created.

12 of Soul and XIII Death

12 of Soul The Rhino
XIII Death – by Rhino – or of Rhino –
I did a write up about the 12 of soul and then subsequent a shamanic journey to find out more about Rhinos.
Please see my post here:
http://shamanicdrumm.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/ice-age-anyone/

and the journey here:

http://shamanicdrumm.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/should-ijust-because-i-can/

XII the Sacrifice, 13 Woman of Blood, 5 of Blood

Here we are and we are doing well!

It is a warmer period during the last Ice age – and it is getting more crowded:
We are all here – in the gene pool of our ancestors, who created the weapons we see on the cards that follow:
XII the Sacrifice
the
13 Woman of Blood
and the 5 of Blood
We are confronted with formidable spears and, a large dagger in all likelihood made from flint or obsidian by an experienced flint napper.
Here is a site where you can find out a little more about just how something like this was made:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapping
the lsat pic on this post shows how large these Obsidian blades could get - and then there is a speer point I found in the fields outside Teotihuacan in Mexico. Not as ooooold, but....

9 of Soul

9 of Soul
is a large spear and it definitely would not be much fun to be sacrificed with one of these. Finds in bogs however show, most people dispatched into the Otherworld were strangulated, their bodies unblemished and beautiful.
So I feel this card much mirrors the imagination of the artist.

Why were people sacrificed? They were supposed to reach the Otherworld unblemished and petition to the Spirits. Sacrifices however are only done by people that firmly belief in the notion, that the Spirits of the Otherworld could intervene on behalf of the people here and - send more game for example.
It is also seen, that sacrifices people and Animals are more often done by people believing in return of their loved one at a later time -> reincarnation.
As the game returns along the same routes every year, as the Bear returns from the cave, followed by small cubs, so the volunteer to this ordeal shall return......