Tag: Scythians
Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians: the Iranian peoples of ancient Eurasia
Journey to discover the ancient Indo-European populations of warrior knights who occupied, during the Iron Age, the vast territory between Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and the steppes of Central Asia
Travel photo reportage: Northern Mongolia (part II)
(follows from part I)
Β«Land of bare mountains, of plains heated by the sun and frozen by the cold, where the diseases of cattle and men, plague, anthrax and smallpox reign; land of hot springs and mountain passes guarded by demons, of sacred lakes teeming with fish; land of wolves, rare species of deer and mouflons, of millions of marmots, horses, donkeys and wild camels, all animals that have never known the bridle, land of ferocious dogs and birds of prey that devour the corpses that that people abandon in the plains: such is Mongolia.
Homeland of people who are disappearing and watch the calcined bones of their ancestors whiten in the sun, people who conquered China, Siam, northern India and Russia, and whose chests collided with the iron spears of the Polish knights who were defending then Christianity from the invasion of wild and nomadic Asia: such is Mongolia.
A land of great natural wealth that also produces nothing, needs everything, and seems to suffer from all the evils and cataclysms of the world: such is Mongolia. "
(FA Ossendowski, "Beasts, men, gods", chap. XVII, "Mysterious Mongolia")
Metamorphosis and ritual battles in the myth and folklore of the Eurasian populations
di Marco Maculotti
The zoomorphic metamorphosis topos is widely present in the folkloric corpus of a large number of ancient traditions, both from archaic Europe (on which we will focus mainly in this study), and from other geographical areas. As early as the fifth century BC, in Greece, Herodotus mentioned men capable of periodically transforming themselves into wolves. Similar traditions have been documented in Africa, Asia and the American continent, with reference to the temporary metamorphosis of human beings in fairs: bears, leopards, hyenas, tigers, jaguars. Sometimes, in some historically documented cases of the ancient world (Luperci, Cinocefali, Berserker) "The paranormal experience of transformation into an animal takes on collective characteristics and is at the origin of initiatory groups and secret societies" (Di Nola, p.12).
