Incisioni rupestri di Naquane. Capo di Ponte, Valcamonica.

Il nucleo dei Veda doveva già esistere, almeno come tradizione orale, quando il processo d’indoeuropeizzazione dell’Europa tocca il suo apice, quello che prelude immediatamente al sorgere del mondo greco-romano.

È la cosidetta «migrazione dorica» ossia quel movimento di popoli del Nord – caratterizzati dai loro Urnenfelder – che spinge in Grecia i Dori, avvia le migrazioni italiche nella penisola appenninica e causa la irradiazione dei Celti in tutta l’Europa dell’Ovest.

La presenza dell’incinerazione in questa seconda e risolutiva ondata indoeuropea ci introduce a un nuovo avvenimento spirituale che si colloca sempre nel solco del simbolismo solare e della «negazione della Madre».

L’incinerazione ha antiche radici nell’Europa-Centrale, ma solo alla fine dell’età del bronzo raggiunge quella espansione e quella compattezza che ci metton di fronte a una nuova visione della vita. È un rituale tipicamente uranico, orientato verso il cielo e la luce. La purificazione dello spirito dal peso della terra e la sua liberazione in pura sostanza di fuoco trovano un’eco precisa in una nuova fioritura del simbolismo celeste.

Il cerchio solare, la croce celtica, il disco puntato, la ruota raggiata traversano tutta l’Europa tra quei due grandi centri di riferimento che sono le incisioni rupestri del Bohuslän e quelle della Valcamonica. Allo stesso modo, dalla Svezia all’Italia – partendo da un focolare mitteleuropeo – fa la sua comparsa il motivo del cigno astrale, destinato a perpetuarsi fino alla leggenda di Lohengrin e del Graal. Il motivo dei due cigni affiancati che tirano la nave del sole, le protome di cigno stilizzate a 5, sono una delle più caratteristiche manifestazioni della cultura dei campi d’urne e ne accompagnano l’espansione giù giù, fin nel Lazio.

Il carro solare – questa volta trainato da un cavallo – è emerso in una palude della Danimarca a confermare la veridicità del mito ellenico dell’Apollo dimorante nel paese degli Iperborei.

Significativamente, nelle incisioni rupestri della Svezia e della Valcamonica, accanto al moltiplicarsi degli standars solari e di divinità maschili, vi è una rimarchevole assenza delle figurine femminili:

«Manca la fanciulla, così come la madre e la partoriente; manca l’immagine del piccolo animale che sugge il latte, immortalato sia a Creta che in Egitto in indimenticabili figurazioni. È un’anima radicalmente diversa quella che si esprime in queste incisioni rupestri nordiche e italiche. All’antico mondo mediterraneo, col suo naturalismo femminile, si contrappone una cultura tipicamente virile. Essa si apre una via verso il Sud» (Altheim, Italien und Rom, Amsterdam und Leipzig 1940, S. 25-26).

Un’assenza che ha un preciso valore indicativo circa il contenuto spirituale della «migrazione dorica». È un contenuto che verrà presto alla luce sia nel pantheon olimpico che nello stile di vita asciutto e severo del doricismo e della romanità.

Intorno al 950 circa, la grande migrazione è finita: nel Peloponneso ci sono ormai i Dori e sui Colli Albani i Latini. L’ethnos italico ed ellenico, saturo di elementi nordici, si prepara alla grande stagione della civiltà classica. Dalla Grecia all’Italia si diffonde una nuova costellazione simbolica la cui stella polare è la svastica – ripetuta centinaia di volte sia sui vasi del cosidetto « periodo geometrico », sia sulle urne a capanna del Lazio.

La preistoria è finita. Sull’Ellade albeggia l’aurora omerica. Significativamente, quando il primo popolo indoeuropeo d’Europa incomincia a parlare, il suo messaggio è quello della religione olimpica.

Di duemilacinquecento anni di preistoria religiosa europea, una parola ci è rimasta: *dyeus.

È il nome della Divinità: Juppiter – da Dius-pater (gen. Iovis, dat. Iovii) tra i Latini; Zeus (gen. Diòs) tra gli Elleni; Dyaus in India; Tyr o Ziu nel mondo germanico. È il nome del dio supremo e – al tempo stesso – quello del cielo divino in tutta la sua luce e tutto il suo splendore.

È questa una importante scelta spirituale: gli Indoeuropei, la razza nordica, gli europei sono il popolo di *dyeus, il popolo della luce. Il popolo destinato a portare il lògos, la legge, l’ordine, la misura. Il popolo che ha divinificato il Cielo di fronte alla Terra, il Giorno di fronte alla Notte, la razza olimpica per eccellenza.

È una scelta destinata a segnare un orientamento di millenni: l’ordine, nel mondo, è opera dell’uomo bianco.

Ma il Giorno, *dyeus, è – al tempo stesso – il Padre. Juppiter, Zeus patér, Dyaus pitàr sono termini che si pronunciano l’uno nell’altro.

L’ordine della luce è un ordine maschile. Non l’ordine della Madre – confondente tutto e tutti in una pacifica promiscuità, e che sta al di qua della civiltà come noi la concepiamo:

«Dal principio della maternità generatrice scaturisce il senso della universale fratellanza di tutti gli esseri, senso che declina e non trova più risuonanze con l’avvento del principio della paternità. La famiglia incentrata nel patriarcato è conchiusa come un organismo individuo, quella matriarcale conserva invece quel carattere tipicamente universalistico che si ritrova nei primordi. Da esso procede quel principio di universale eguaglianza e libertà, che noi spesso ritroviamo come tratto fondamentale dei popoli ginecocratici, insieme alla filoxenìa (simpatia per gli stranieri) e ad una decisa insofferenza per ogni specie di limiti e restrinzioni; infine, non diversa origine ha l’esaltazione del sentimento d’una generale parentela e di una simpatia, synpàtheia – che non conosce limiti… » (Bachofen, Le madri e la virilità olimpica, Milano 1949, pg. 34-35).

Il genio spirituale indoeuropeo – quale si manifesta fin nei primordi, sta appunto nel rifiuto di questa fratellanza promiscua del regno della Madre. Contro la promiscuità stanno la Famiglia e lo Stato, contro la fratellanza universale e bastarda la stirpe e la razza.

Contro il livellamento sta l’Ordine – come principio di differenziazione luminoso. L’Ordine solare del giorno, l’ordine di *dyeus, quale si trova simboleggiato nella svastica, primordiale simbolo della luce .

INTRODUCCIÓN

Este texto que presentamos a continuación tiene un valor especial en tanto que Evola rechaza aquí lo sostenido por un conocido suyo, el joven y talentoso Adriano Romualdi, muerto tempranamente de manera trágica, y por extensión por el maestro de éste, el pensador alemán Hans Günther importante investigador sostenedor de un racismo biológico.
Lo que ambos autores sostienen es la adhesión a una herencia común a los europeos que trascendería los distintos nacionalismos particularistas, tal es lo que denominan como indoeuropeo y respecto de lo cual se encargan de darnos una serie de caracteres que según ellos serían propios de tal raza. Evola, si bien concuerda con gran parte del valor que se atribuye a los mismos, pone en claro en este texto que él no es racista y que tales valores, si bien pueden haber tenido su manifestación (incluso mejor que en otros casos) entre tales pueblos no son exclusivos de ninguna raza en particular sino que forman parte del patrimonio de toda la humanidad en su conjunto. Es decir que él no cree en la existencia de razas superiores y considera que el fenómeno de la decadencia no es de carácter racial, como el producto de determinados mestizajes, sino que forma parte del mal uso que pueden haber efectuado determinadas comunidades de su libertad.
Y en segundo lugar considera que el término raza solamente tiene valor positivo por su carácter selectivo presente en el seno de cualquier comunidad, representando aquella condición propia de determinadas élites que poseen naturalmente ciertos valores que en los demás en cambio deben ser adquiridos a través de un largo aprendizaje. No es pues una categoría propia y común de un determinado pueblo, en este caso el indoeuropeo, sino que es una cosa que aparece en forma excelente y paradigmática solamente en algunos.
El tercer valor de este texto es el rechazo de Evola hacia la idea de lo indoeuropeo concebido como fundamento doctrinario a utilizar por parte de los pueblos que constituyen una determinada comunidad de naciones, lo que hoy ha dado en llamarse como la Unión Europea. Evola desdeña de tal posibilidad y considera que no es detrás de un ideal racial de superioridad lo que puede darle una unidad a su continente, sino en cambio el rechazo pleno del ideal democrático, aun concebido bajo la forma racista, a fin de que los hombres de raza verdaderos, las élites, sean los que efectivamente gobiernen. Hoy la quiebra de la unidad europea, su inminente colapso monetario, entidad en la que ésta se funda, le está dando plena razón a su escepticismo formulado hace 41 años respecto del ideal de Europa una sostenido en su momento también por los indoeuropeistas.

Marcos Ghio

* * *

En el período anterior se sostuvo por parte del movimiento que estuviera en el poder en la Europa central la exigencia justa de que una lucha política no puede ser completa si no se encuentra fundada en una concepción del mundo. El término que habría de convertirse en un estereotipo, Weltanschauung, significaba la actitud general que el hombre debía asumir no sólo ante el mundo y la vida, sino también en relación a los valores éticos y espirituales, en modo tal de abarcar en una cierta manera los mismos problemas religiosos. Y para llevar a cabo esta lucha en un plano superior se pensó que la mejor fórmula fuese la del retorno a los orígenes, es decir la remisión a las ideas y a la manera de sentir que fueron conocidos antes de que manifestasen todo su poder aquellos factores que han dado forma a la civilización última conduciéndola hacia el spengleriano ‘ocaso’ (espiritual) ‘del Occidente’.

Muchas veces sin embargo la mencionada orientación tuvo un aspecto ‘racista’. Se habló de ‘arianidad’, de herencia nórdica-germánica y de cosas similares. El peligro de una limitación de los horizontes debida sea al racismo, como a una utilización unilateral y tendenciosa de las ideas en función simplemente germánica, resultó algo sumamente evidente. Esto se nos aparece de manera notoria en un libro que en el Tercer Reich tuvo una gran difusión, El mito del siglo XX, de Alfred Rosenberg, el cual en el fondo era apenas una compilación basada en materiales de tercera mano sumamente heterogéneos. Menores reservas en cambio se nos imponen respecto de las investigaciones de un especialista, el profesor Hans Günther, autor de numerosas obras sobre las razas y las civilizaciones antiguas, comprendidas las de Grecia y de Roma. Es digno de mención un ensayo suyo en el cual trató de definir la concepción fundamental del mundo y la religiosidad de los pueblos indoeuropeos manteniéndose en un plano desapegado de las contingencias políticas. Este ensayo ha sido reeditado (en una sexta edición) aun después de la guerra y ahora ha aparecido en una traducción italiana (para las Ediciones Ar) a cargo de Adriano Romualdi y Carlo Minutoli. El título originario de la obra era Frömmigkeit nordischer Artung, es decir ‘La religiosidad de tipo nórdico’; el italiano es en cambio Religiosità indoeuropea, modificación esta última que nos parece oportuna y que permite obviar las diferentes reservas que, en razón del uso del término ‘nórdico’, habría que hacerle a las tesis del autor. ‘Indoeuropeo’ es un concepto sumamente más vasto en tanto que el mismo retoma diferentes estirpes y civilizaciones pertenecientes a la raza blanca, comprendidas sus manifestaciones asiáticas (los Indoeuropeos de Irán, de la India, etc.) que son también tenidas en consideración por Günther, aun si nos queda el inconveniente relativo a la tesis respecto de que el núcleo originario formativo de todas estas civilizaciones hubiese sido de origen ‘nórdico’. Aun concediendo que tal término debe ser entendido aquí en manera particular, con referencia a migraciones de pueblos primordiales, en modo tal de no aplicarse meramente a las poblaciones nórdico-escandinavas o germánicas-septentrionales de los tiempos más recientes, sin embargo no puede dejar de haber a tal respecto algunos equívocos.

Los mismos podrían ser favorecidos en parte por el amplio “Ensayo sobre el problema indoeuropeo” de Adriano Romualdi que aparece como introducción del texto de Günther y que en cuanto a su extensión es más del doble del mismo. Se trata de una monografía desarrollada muy seriamente, con una amplia y variada documentación que retoma todo aquello que a partir de investigaciones filológicas, antropológicas, étnicas, históricas y culturales se ha manifestado respecto de los orígenes indoeuropeos, manteniéndose sin embargo la tesis nórdica con un notorio acento racista.

Pero independientemente de ello nos parece apropiado atenerse a la extensión propia del concepto de ‘indoeuropeo’ y no sin relación por lo demás con aquello que ha impulsado a la actual traducción italiana del ensayo de Günther. Se trata a tal respecto de la actitud de retomar la exigencia de la ‘lucha por la concepción del mundo’ en un marco ya no más germánico-nacionalsocialista, sino europeo. Escribe al respecto Romualdi (p. 6):

“Todos nosotros, y en particular nosotros, los de la nueva generación, sentimos que nos encontramos en una encrucijada histórica. Las antiguas perspectivas nacionales, tal como fuimos educados, se quiebran a nuestro alrededor por todas partes. Una autosuficiencia de la patria italiana, o francesa o germánica, y con ésta la particular interpretación histórica sea italiana, francesa o germánica, no existe y no debe existir más. Nacionalistas sin nación, tradicionalistas sin tradición, nosotros buscamos reconocernos todos en una patria y en una tradición más vastas”.

A tal respecto vuelve a proponerse la idea indoeuropea sea como mito de los orígenes comunes, sea como idea capaz de otorgarle un sentido a una unidad europea u occidental que no se reduzca a un conglomerado informe. Pero es justamente por ello que la connotación ‘nórdica’, a pesar de cualquier precisión que se efectúe, aparece como una cosa equívoca. Puesto que la mayoría no puede ser llevada a alguna referencia concreta, entre otras cosas incluso se hace ostensible que son justamente los pueblos europeos nórdicos (comprendidos a esta altura lamentablemente los mismos Alemanes) aquellos que son en la actualidad los últimos en sentir exigencias de tal tipo y en encarnar este tipo de concepción del mundo.

Pero ya a esta altura es necesario decir algo respecto del ensayo de Günther. En general, hay que resaltar que hubiera sido oportuno atenerse sobre todo a una consideración de carácter morfológico reduciendo al máximo los factores raciales, es decir definir sólo una cierta forma de los valores y del modo de sentir y de comportarse, presentándolo sobre todo como un ‘ideal’. En efecto se le podría formular a Günther una muy fundada objeción metodológica, resaltando cómo él muchas veces se mueva en un círculo vicioso. En efecto, él reconoce que las fuentes de su investigación no pueden estar constituidas por el material aportado por los pueblos nórdicos en sentido propio, incluso las antiguas concepciones germánicas habrían sido alteradas por aportes extraños, célticos y ‘druídicos’, incluso la mitología nórdica por excelencia, la de los Edda, sería muy poco utilizable como verdadero documento del espíritu nórdico; Günther considera como fuentes mejores aquellas que se pueden recabar del antiguo mundo helénico, romano, iránico, y en parte también hindú, dentro de cuyo conjunto él sin embargo opera una cierta discriminación: aísla ciertos elementos de otros, que se encuentran presentes pero que no pueden ser remitidos a una idea en el fondo preconcebida en forma apriorística como ‘nórdica’ (o ‘aria’ o ‘indoeuropea’), él los refiere a influencias extrañas, a alteraciones raciales producidas por cruzas, etc.: procedimiento equivalente a aquello que en lógica se define como petición de principio. Tal objeción perdería parte de su fuerza en el caso de que se tratase de una impostación esencialmente ‘morfológica’. Luego las referencias de Günther se refieren esencialmente a élites, y aquí vale como un postulado que es en las élites en donde se habrían conservado los valores de la raza originaria portadora de una superior concepción del mundo. Es así como Günther dice (pg. 116):

“En verdad mucho de aquello que nos es descripto como formando parte de la religión indoeuropea no es otra cosa sino la expresión de castas inferiores que habían aprendido a expresarse en lengua indoeuropea”,

lo cual es una señal del mencionado procedimiento de discriminar a priori. No hay pues duda de que por parte del autor se ha idealizado y generalizado mucho, haciendo silencio respecto de todo aquello que no se conformaba con su tesis.

En cuanto a las características que según Günther no serían indoeuropeas, hallamos la concepción de un Dios trascendente al cual uno se aproxima servilmente y por miedo, así como la concepción del hombre como mera ‘creatura’.

“Puesto que no es el siervo de un Dios soberano, el Indoeuropeo no reza prostrado de rodillas, sino de pié, con los ojos hacia el cielo y los brazos extendidos hacia adelante”. (pg. 122)

Él tiene un sentimiento de vinculación y de familiaridad con lo divino, con los ‘dioses’. El mundo para él no es ‘creado’, sino eterno, ‘sin principio’ y sin fin. No conoce un dualismo entre ‘este mundo’ y el ‘otro mundo’, por lo menos aquel dualismo a través del cual el primero es devaluado respecto del segundo y sólo en el segundo concentra el espíritu. En parte como consecuencia, no es sentido ni siquiera un contraste “entre cuerpo perecedero y alma inmortal, entre la carne y el espíritu”. Carecería pues de la ‘redención’, como del pecado, de la salvación por obra de un ‘Salvador’ y no como una “autoredención del alma que se purifica y se sumerge en lo profundo del propio ser” (tal sería la orientación del misticismo indoeuropeo), como aquella superación de las pasiones en la cual consistiera la vía del primer buddhismo y también del estoicismo. En cuanto al ‘pecado’, en la manera de sentir indoeuropea se sustituiría el concepto de ‘culpa’ por el de responsabilidad que un ‘alma noble’ es capaz de asumir.

Por parte del Indoeuropeo el mundo habría sido concebido como orden y como kosmos, como un todo formado por una ratio superior. Pero esta característica nos parece que no concuerda demasiado con la otra, indicada por igual por Günther, relativa a una concepción ‘agonista’: el mundo como arena de una permanente lucha, en correspondencia con “la vocación hereditaria y congénita al combate” por parte del Ariano o Indoeuropeo. En efecto, esta segunda concepción presupone evidentemente un dualismo, no la existencia de un orden racional universal, sino también la presencia de alguna cosa antitética respecto del mismo, del kosmos, contra la cual combatir. Mayores reservas impone luego la idea, para nosotros errada, de que los Indoeuropeos

“habrían tenido siempre la inclinación en ver en la fuerza del Destino una cosa superior a los mismos dioses, sobre todo los Hindúes, los Helenos y los Germanos” (pg. 129).

No vemos cómo pueda fundarse una idea semejante, la cual, en todo caso ha prevalecido en áreas no reputadas propiamente como indoeuropeas (como en la tardía civilización etrusca y en la pelásgica, no-helénica y justamente Bachofen pudo mostrar el origen pelásgico, no-helénico, que en cambio Günther denominaría ‘no-nórdico’, de aquello que en la antigua Grecia se resintió de aquella oscura idea fatalista). Günther en cambio la conserva pues le sirve para indicar, como ulterior característica del hombre indoeuropeo, la aceptación del destino o el mantenerse inquebrantable frente al mismo:

“orgullosa fiereza con la cual se acepta el Destino que incumbe a la propia existencia, que él hace frente de pié manteniéndose así fiel a sí mismo” (pg. 131).

Por lo demás Günther opera un grave menoscabo de la herencia de la espiritualidad indoeuropea al negar y desconocer aquella que podemos denominar como la “dimensión de la trascendencia” en el orden humano no menos que en el divino (en donde reinaría el Destino y no una suprema libertad), no teniendo en forma apriorística para nada en cuenta testimonios múltiples y unívocos en un sentido opuesto. Por suerte Günther no ha insistido en una tesis anterior, según la cual los Indoeuropeos ‘nórdicos’ tan sólo cuando emigraron al Asia y al haber hallado tierras insoportables por el clima y ambiente fueron determinados a invertir su originario impulso de ‘afirmación de la vida’ por uno en el fondo extraño a su raza (artfremd), el de liberarse de la vida, comprendida ahora como ‘dolor’. De hecho un ideal fundamental indoeuropeo ha sido el de la “Gran Liberación”, de la conquista de lo Incondicionado (por ejemplo en el buddhismo de los orígenes), de la salida del ‘ciclo de la generación’ (en la Hélade).

Y esto ha sido así porque en Günther han tenido primacía ciertas preocupaciones ‘racistas’ las cuales a pesar de todo lo que hemos recién mencionado no han podido evitar terminar dándole un carácter naturalista a sus interpretaciones. Así pues, por ejemplo, para él resulta inexistente el hecho de que justamente en la tradición indo-aria la ‘vía de los dioses’ (deva-yana) que conduce hacia lo Incondicionado fue contrapuesta a la ‘vía de los padres’ (pitri-yana) que es la de aquellos cuyo destino es el de perpetuarse en la vida de su estirpe de aquí abajo.

Aquí es donde se hacen sentir las consecuencias de la presunta inescindibilidad entre cuerpo y alma, la cual termina coartando toda superior concepción de la inmortalidad. En el fondo Günther termina reduciendo los horizontes espirituales a una ‘inmortalidad inmanente’ (efímera), que consiste en la perpetuación y continuidad en la estirpe y en la raza, respecto de la cual un sujeto forma siempre parte, lo cual “en el orden de las generaciones produce perennemente la vida” (pg. 147). Si bien con intentos de mitigación, Günther termina viendo en el panteísmo, que implica una negación de toda verdadera trascendencia, un rasgo fundamental de la religiosidad ‘ariana’ (hallamos en él la expresión “inspirado panteísmo naturalista”), lo cual equivale a degradarla arbitrariamente, así como sostener un sospechoso ‘culto a la vida’ como contraparte. Es bueno tener presente que no se debe confundir con el ‘panteísmo’ una concepción sacralizadora del mundo, que fue propia de los orígenes y que debe decirse tradicional en sentido general, y que de ninguna manera debe sostenerse como una prerrogativa únicamente ‘aria’ o indoeuropea.

Es en el campo de la ética que en parte las caracterizaciones de Günther tienen un valor más convincente. Él habla de los ideales de la firmeza y de la grandeza de ánimo, de un natural dominio de sí mismo, de un también natural sentimiento de las distancias y de no promiscuidad, de la desconfianza por todo abandono del alma y por lo tanto hacia un desordenado, anhelante misticismo. Además, el sentimiento del honor, la disposición a la fidelidad y a la lealtad, una medida, consciente dignidad y la humanitas en la acepción clásica, el amor por la verdad y la repugnancia por toda mentira. La libertad es un ideal, sin embargo en la perspectiva indicada por el dicho de Goethe:

“Todo aquello que libera a nuestro espíritu sin elevarnos a un mayor señorío sobre nosotros mismos, nos corrompe”.

La ética que se articula en tales valores, para Günther sería ‘natural’ en el Indoeuropeo, no ligada a preceptos exteriores (así como la religiosidad indoeuropea sería ‘natural’ y no determinada por ‘revelaciones’).

En esto se puede estar de acuerdo tan sólo en parte, pero con referencia a una concepción no-racista de la raza. El ser ‘de raza’ en un sentido superior encuentra justamente como una cosa natural actuar y comportarse de una determinada manera, sin referencias externas. Pero aquí no es el caso de hablar de algo que sea propio de la ‘raza’ indoeuropea. Tales cualidades éticas naturales del ‘hombre de raza’, para dar un ejemplo, están también presentes entre otros pueblos (bastará tan sólo la referencia a la nobleza tradicional del Japón) y la mención a lo ‘tradicional’ no es una cosa extrínseca, a tal respecto se puede considerar también aquello que se convierte en congénito en base a una rigurosa tradición. En cuanto a la ‘nobleza’, resaltémoslo de pasada, es bastante curioso el hecho de que Günther hable frecuentemente del espíritu y de la noble ética de una “aristocracia campesina” (en todo caso, habría que hablar de una aristocracia feudal). Aquí nos parece percibir el eco de un slogan ‘racial’ del hitlerismo, ‘sangre y tierra’, por el cual en nombre de un determinado ‘arraigo’ y de una cierta política era liquidado el precedente mito de las razas arias originarias como las de los cazadores y conquistadores emigrantes ávidos de grandes distancias y de lejanos horizontes.

Se ha ya hecho mención al hecho de que para aislar los elementos ‘nórdicos’ Günther ha debido poner sistemáticamente a cargo de postuladas contaminaciones raciales debidas a cruzas y a influjos exógenos desnaturalizadores todo aquello que en las sociedades indoeuropeas, aun siéndoles cosas presentes de hecho, no correspondería a los mismos valores y comportamientos. Nuevamente esto delata la subyacencia del racismo biológico el cual tiene muy poco en cuenta el hecho de que las mezclas no son el único factor de alteración puesto que son posibles procesos de involución, de decadencia y de colapso en el contexto del mantenimiento de una suficiente integridad originaria de sangre. Ya al comienzo hemos notado que justamente los actuales pueblos mayormente ‘nórdicos’, que se han mantenido tales más que los otros, son particularmente insensibles a los ideales ‘nórdicos’ tal como Günther los define. En el contexto histórico bastará tan sólo recordar este ejemplo. Günther considera justamente como extraño a la línea ‘aria’ el espíritu de la Reforma protestante en razón de su exasperación de los conceptos del pecado y de la naturaleza irremediablemente corrompida del hombre, del confiarse a la sola fe, a la necesidad de la gracia gratuitamente acordada por Dios, de la servidumbre humana (de servo arbitrio- Lutero). Bien, la Reforma hizo pié sobre todo entre los pueblos alemanes y nórdicos, mientras que los pueblos más al sur o al occidente, a los que se reputa como alterados en mayor medida por cruzas, permanecieron refractarios a la misma.

Hacia el final de su ensayo (pg. 172) Günther escribe:

“Con el siglo XX los Indoeuropeos comenzaron a eclipsarse en el mundo de la espiritualidad y de la historia. Hoy en día todo aquello que en la música, el arte, la literatura (se debería agregar: la moral y las formas políticas predominantes) del ‘Occidente libre’ es reputado como particularmente ‘progresivo’ no refleja más una espiritualidad indoeuropea”.

Esto nos parece justo, pero tan sólo si somos capaces tal como dijimos de definir aquello que es indoeuropeo en términos esencialmente morfológicos y generales, sin estrictas referencias étnico-raciales. En cuanto luego a la capacidad de conjunto de los valores ‘indoeuropeos’ (también con el fin de superar alteraciones, unilateralidades o evidentes idealizaciones del tipo de las precedentemente mencionadas) de poder operar como una nueva solidaridad y unidad supranacional occidental, dados los tiempos actuales por los que transitamos, a diferencia de lo que dice Romualdi, somos sumamente escépticos: no creemos para nada que pueda visualizarse algún suelo apto de resonancia y cristalización.

Por lo demás, un análogo sentimiento parece manifestarse en el mismo Günther cuando en el prefacio de la última edición de su interesante ensayo (pgs. 105-106), al referirse “a nuestros tiempos, en la era del ocaso del Occidente Spengler dice: ‘Aun si aquello que permanece en el mundo europeo occidental tuviese que perecer por la carencia de verdaderos Indoeuropeos de raza, es decir de verdaderos Occidentales, permanecerá de todos modos un sentimiento arraigado en la tradicional espiritualidad indoeuropea, aquel sentimiento que fuera ya de los últimos Romanos, Romanorum ultimi, en un imperio ya no más ‘romano’ el sentimiento del carácter inquebrantable ante el destino… por lo cual ya Horacio exhortaba: Quocirca vivite fortes, – fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus!”

Una instancia de tal tipo, por lo demás recabable tan sólo por parte de pocos y quizás a ser modulada mayormente en el sentido de una desapegada impasibilidad, nos parece más realista que cualquier optimismo de trasfondo ‘nostálgico’ (en el sentido negativo dado a este término en relación a un cierto aspecto de ciertas orientaciones políticas italianas), con la correspondiente nueva evocación de los orígenes nórdicos.

* * *

Il Conciliatore, agosto 1970.

1. Les états successifs du disque

Il est apparu récemment (le film n’en fait pas mention) que l’iconographie du disque de Nebra a subi plusieurs modifications avant son enfouissement. Dans son état initial, elle ne comportait ni les deux horizons, ni le demi cercle inférieur, mais seulement les étoiles, le croissant de lune, et la pleine lune. Dans son état initial, le disque figurait donc le ciel de la nuit, et par les Pléiades signalait les deux temps forts de l’année agricole: le temps des semailles et celui de la récolte. C’était encore le cas à l’époque d’Hésiode: “Au lever des Pléiades, filles d’Atlas, commencez la moisson, les semailles à leur coucher. Elles restent, on le sait, quarante nuits et quarante jours invisibles; mais, l’année poursuivant sa course, elles se mettent à reparaître quand on aiguise le fer.” (1). Un premier ajout, qui a contraint à déplacer plusieurs étoiles indifférenciées, a été celui de deux arcs de cercle latéraux figurant deux horizons. Comme l’horizon n’est visible que le jour, il apparaît, que le disque a changé de signification: il ne représente plus le ciel nocturne, mais le ciel en général dans ses états successifs. La troisième modification est l’ajout au bas du disque d’un demi-cercle dans lequel Flemming Kaul a vu la représentation de la barque dans laquelle le soleil traverse l’océan céleste au cours de la nuit, un motif d’origine égyptienne bien connu de l’iconographie scandinave et de la mythologie baltique, mais inconnu du monde indo-iranien. Désormais, le cercle qui représentait initialement la pleine lune est probablement interprété comme l’image du soleil. La dernière modification sûrement intentionnelle a consisté à percer des trous tout autour du disque, sans doute pour le fixer sur un support vertical. Enfin, l’un des deux arcs de cercle figurant un horizon a été enlevé ou s’est détaché de lui-même, et n’a pas été retrouvé.

Il est curieux de constater que l’évolution de l’iconographie du disque reflète celle des conceptions successives du ciel dans le monde indo-européen préhistorique. Le vocabulaire reconstruit ne comporte aucune désignation du ciel; le terme le plus largement utilisé, russe nebo, etc., est le nom du nuage, conservé avec son sens initial dans le grec néphos. Le “ciel du jour” *dyews, dont les représentants signifient soit “jour” (latin dies), soit à la fois “ciel” et “jour” (vieil-indien dyaus), était initialement une réalité distincte du “ciel de la nuit”, dont la désignation nous est inconnue, mais que représente par exemple le “Ciel étoilé” Ouranos asteroeis des poèmes homériques, dont Hésiode évoque en ces termes la venue à la tombée de la nuit: “Vint, amenant la nuit, le grand Ciel; il s’étendit amoureusement sur la Terre” (2). Bien entendu, cette conception est bien antérieure à l’époque du disque.

2. Le disque et l’archéoastronomie

On nomme archéoastronomie “la connaissance du ciel visible à l’époque où le monument fut édifié, ainsi que du lieu où il était physiquement situé”, selon la définition donnée dans le Bulletin n°24, Février-Mars 2000, p. 6, dans le compte-rendu du livre d’Adriano Gaspani et Silvia Cernuti. Comme il est indiqué dans le précédent article, l’étude astronomique de l’iconographie (Wolfhard Schlosser) identifie le groupe des sept étoiles aux Pléiades, alors que les autres ne correspondent à aucune constellation.

La représentation directe d’une constellation est une innovation notable, qui n’apparaît pas avant 1400 en Egypte; antérieurement, les constellations étaient figurées sous la forme d’un animal. L’étude astronomique révèle d’autre part que l’arc de cercle conservé présente un angle de 82 degrés qui correspond à l’écart entre le coucher du soleil au solstice d’hiver et le coucher du soleil au solstice d’été, et indique les points correspondants pour l’époque du disque; cet arc de cercle est donc l’un des deux horizons, l’autre ayant disparu. La datation avait été effectuée de façon approximative à partir du métal: l’objet appartenait à l’âge du bronze. Mais confirmant l’indication fournie par les deux épées l’horizon subsistant permettait de situer l’objet à la transition entre le bronze ancien et le bronze moyen, autour de 1600 avant notre ère. Le disque et les deux épées qui l’accompagnaient appartiennent à la culture d’Aunjetitz (Únětice) qui s’étend de 2300 à 1600 en Europe centrale; Bernd Zich en rappelle les caractéristiques principales dans le même volume. Bien qu’elle ne puisse être associée à une aucune ethnie historique, cette culture, liée à la Céramique cordée et aux Vases campaniformes de la période précédente, peut être attribuée au monde indo-européen.

De telles connaissances astronomiques dans l’Europe centrale de l’âge du bronze ont de quoi surprendre; mais le parallèle de l’enceinte circulaire de Gosek (arrondissement de Weißenfels) présenté dans le même volume par François Bertemes et Wolfhard Schlosser montre qu’elles s’inscrivent dans une longue tradition qui remonte au Néolithique. Trois mille ans avant le disque de Nebra, cette enceinte circulaire de 71 mètres de diamètre découverte en 1991 à partir de photographies aériennes présente trois portes dont l’emplacement est indiqué par des interruptions du fossé. Une étude menée en 2004 a trouvé la trace d’une double palissade et attribué l’enceinte aux périodes initiale et moyenne de la culture de la céramique pointillée (5000-4800 avant notre ère). Elle a également révélé que l’emplacement des deux portes méridionales de l’enceinte correspondait exactement pour l’une au point où, à l’époque, se levait le soleil au solstice d’hiver, pour l’autre au point où il se couchait. Ce dispositif permettait d’en fixer la date et d’en prévoir l’échéance.

Ajoutons que cette culture dérive de celle de la céramique rubanée linéaire considérée par certains auteurs (Pedro Bosch-Gimpera, Venceslav Kruta) comme celle de la période commune des Indo-Européens, et qui en est en tout cas l’une de ses composantes. On signalera à ce propos l’étude d’Alexander Gurstein (3) qui conclut à l’existence d’un premier zodiaque à quatre signes, Gémeaux, Vierge, Sagittaire, Poissons correspondant, compte tenu de la précession des équinoxes, aux quatre saisons, conçu par les pasteurs et agriculteurs néolithiques d’Europe centrale (6000-4300) auxquels il identifie les Indo-Européens.

3. Images solaires contemporaines du disque

Un peu plus récent que le disque, ce qu’on nomme improprement le “char” solaire de Trundholm, daté de 1400 avant notre ère montre que le mouvement quotidien du soleil était attribué à un cheval qui tire le disque solaire sans que celui-ci soit placé dans un char, conception attestée par diverses représentations figurant sur des objets du Bronze final danois et dans les gravures pariétales du Bohuslän (Suède). Cette conception, qui diffère à la fois de celle du char du Soleil et de celle du Cheval solaire (le Rohita du livre XIII de l’Atharvaveda), concorde en revanche pleinement avec l’image et la formule poétique traditionnelles de la “roue solaire” : une roue ne nécessite pas d’être placée sur un char pour rouler. L’attelage solaire de Trundholm représente le trajet diurne du soleil. La barque du disque doit représenter son trajet nocturne sur l’océan céleste. C’est ce qu’indiquent plusieurs objets de bronze, notamment des rasoirs, étudiés également par Flemming Kaul: on y voit le cheval solaire tirer le soleil du bateau matinal pour son trajet diurne ou le remettre sur le bateau vespéral pour son trajet nocturne.

On rappellera à ce propos que K. Randsborg (4) résume en ces termes “la conception nordique et probablement centre-européenne des mouvements du soleil vers 1300 avant notre ère”: “deux trajets, l’un diurne sur un char et l’autre nocturne dans un chaudron placé sur un bateau auquel sont attachés de oiseaux symbolisant l’univers et gardant le soleil pendant sa période de sommeil et de faiblesse”. Mis à part le char solaire qui, comme on l’a vu, peut faire défaut, la conception est identique.

A partir de ses travaux, Christoph Sommerfeld fait le point sur cette tombe découverte en 1748, aujourd’hui détériorée, mais connue en partie grâce à des dessins de l’époque de sa découverte; cette tombe datée de 1300 avant notre ère représente, selon les termes de Randsborg, “la somme des connaissances sur le royaume de la mort et le rituel qui permet d’en triompher”. La présence de traits orientaux et méditerranéens, notamment mycéniens, reconnu depuis longtemps, est attribuée à la personnalité du défunt.

Les gravures rupestres de Lökeberg (Böhuslan, ouest de la Suède) étudiées par Flemming Kaul représentent des disques solaires fixés sur des socles ou tenus en mains par des hommes de l’équipage des bateaux: il s’agit donc d’objets rituels. L’un des bateaux porte également deux arbres, un feuillu et un conifère, symbolisant le cycle annuel de la végétation.

Les gravures rupestres danoises représentent également des objets circulaires, disques ou roues solaires, fixés sur des supports et reposant sur des bateaux. L’une d’elles, celle d’Engelstrup (Zélande) représente deux bateaux dont l’un est pourvu d’une étrave en forme de tête de cheval; deux hommes de l’équipage portent chacun un disque, représentant peut-être le soleil et la lune. Ces gravures ne représentent pas des scènes mythologiques mais des cérémonies réelles dans lesquelles étaient utilisés des disques solaires.

L’un de ces objets a été trouvé récemment dans un site du bronze final à Moselund (Zélande): une pierre sphérique de 17 cm de diamètre sur laquelle est gravée une croix celtique, et qui devait reposer sur un socle: “autel du Soleil de l’âge du bronze”. D’autres illustrations de ces rituels solaires s’observent dans les figurines de Fårdal (nord du Jutland) et de Grevensvænge (sud de la Zélande) qui concordent avec une série de gravures pariétales où le bateau constitue un “temple naviguant”. La barque solaire est représentée avec une étrave en forme de tête d’oiseau sur une hache italienne du Bronze final trouvée dans un tumulus d’Osternienburg (Köthen) avec le soleil sous la quille.

Dans le même article, Ralf Schwarz signale la présence de barques solaires sur des récipients de bronze provenant du nord-est de la Hongrie. Loin de la mer, à Ortsrand (Halberstadt), deux barques opposées par la quille figurent sur un torque du Bronze final (IXe-VIIIe siècles) que présente Regine Maraszek.

4. Deux disques de bronze contemporains du disque de Nebra

Les disques de bronze sont une rareté, observe Gabriele Zipf, qui en présente deux, probablement contemporains de celui de Nebra. L’un provient de Haschendorf (est de l’Autriche), l’autre de Balkåkra (sud de la Suède), ce qui confirme l’existence de relations entre l’Europe centrale et la Scandinavie depuis le début de l’âge du bronze. Contrairement au disque de Nebra, ceux-ci reposaient horizontalement sur leur support, et n’étaient décorés que de motifs géométriques interprétables comme des symboles solaires.

5. Le disque et la sépulture de Leubingen

A partir de la comparaison avec la sépulture princière de Leubingen, distante de trente kilomètres et antérieure de trois cents ans, dans laquelle le prince et un enfant de dix ans sont entourés de poignards, de haches et de burins, Harald Meller conclut que le matériel similaire qui accompagne le disque montre que ce dépôt prolonge la tradition des sépultures princières, le disque tenant la place du prince. C’était donc, conclut-il, un objet cultuel lié à un chef charismatique symbolisant sa science et sa position sociale, avant d’être offert en sacrifice vers 1600 “comme si c’était à la fois le corps et l’esprit du roi”. On rapprochera de ces observations celles de Florian Innerhofer (ci-dessous § 7) sur la coïncidence entre l’enfouissement du disque et la fin de la culture d’Aunjetitz, où l’on observe un changement caractéristique dans le mode de sépulture.

6. Commerce avec les dieux

Christoph Sommerfeld voit dans les trésors, nombreux à l’âge du bronze, la “forme visible de la communication avec les dieux “. Ces trésors rassemblent soit des objets, d’abord des haches, puis des faucilles à partir de 1200, soit des fragments d’objets brisés intentionnellement pour être offerts aux dieux, ou même “commercer avec eux”: on observe entre les dépôts des unités de poids similaires. A la fin de l’âge du bronze, ils sont remplacés par des anneaux qui deviennent l’unité de compte interrégionale: “l’idée de monnaie est née”.

D’autres exemples en sont présentés: dépôts accompagnant la sépulture de Dieskau (Arnold Muhl), collier d’ambre découvert en 2001 (Heiko Breuer et Harald Meller), objets votifs de forme insolite provenant de Welbsleben et de Thale (Urte Dally), matériel de bronzier de Rotta (Heiko Heilmann et Torsten Schunke), lingots en forme de haches, d’anneaux, de colliers (Florian Innerhofer).Un dépôt remarquable est celui de la vaste sépulture circulaire de Kötzschen présenté par Christoph Sommerfeld, qui étudie également les faucilles de bronze caractéristiques de Champs d’urnes marquées au moulage de signes dont le nombre, de 0 à 29, correspond au nombre des jours du mois, ce qui atteste un symbolisme lunaire; ces marques étaient imprimées sur les moules au moyen d’une estampille dont un exemplaire unique a été trouvé à Ruthen. Les signes correspondants utilisés sur d’autres objets comme le gobelet de Coswig (Saxe) peuvent avoir constitué le système graphique et conceptuel qui a précédé les runes; trois d’entre elles, j, ng, g peuvent tirer leur forme de ces signes.

7. La culture d’Aunjetitz

Une présentation générale de la culture d’Aunjetitz / Únětice (2300-1600 avant notre ère), identifiée en 1879, est proposé par Bernd Zich, qui en rappelle les principales caractéristiques, la position recroquevillée des morts, la maison longue (7m x 20-25 m) et les principaux objets comme la tasse, qu’il considère comme indigène, le poignard et l’épée qui le remplace comme objet de prestige vers le milieu de l’âge du bronze. Ernst Pernicka rappelle les débuts de la métallurgie du cuivre en Europe centrale, où elle venue du Proche-Orient par l’Anatolie. Resté rare et précieux jusqu’aux alentours de 2000, le cuivre est alors allié à l’étain, dont la provenance demeure incertaine pour donner le bronze, l’une des productions typiques de la culture d’Aunjetitz.

La fin de cette culture, qui survient vers 1600, sans qu’on en connaisse les causes, est évoquée par Bernd Zich. C’est à cette période de transition avec celle des tumuli, ou plutôt de bouleversement, pour la région de la Saale et de l’Unstrut, que le disque de Nebra a été enterré, et, selon Florian Innerhofer, ce n’est pas un hasard: le mode de sépulture venait de changer, et, comme l’a montré Harald Meller à partir d’une comparaison avec la sépulture princière de Leubingen, le disque tenait en quelque sorte la place du défunt (ci-dessus § 5): “Nebra marque à la fois le point final à l’intérieur de la tradition du bronze ancien et un nouveau départ. Avec les épées, le disque et en particulier la barque solaire”.

8. Forgerons et princes

A propos de quelques tombes connues de forgerons qui apparaissent à la fin de l’âge du cuivre et au début de l’âge du bronze, dans lesquelles figurent des outils usagés de leur profession parfois accompagnés de défenses de sanglier et de griffes d’ours, François Bertemes rappelle le haut statut dont jouit le forgeron dans certaines cultures africaines où l’on connaît même des rois forgerons.

Dans la culture des gobelets campaniformes, les tombes de forgerons montrent que ceux-ci appartenaient à l’élite de la société. Ces forgerons semblent avoir transmis leur savoir à la culture de la céramique cordée (2700-2200) dans sa période finale. Leur statut résulte à la fois de leur production locale et des échanges interrégionaux, impliquant unités de compte et de mesure communes, dont ils étaient les principaux acteurs. Ils perdent une part de leur prestige vers 2200 au début de l’âge du bronze. Mais les sépultures princières de l’époque, comme celle de Leubingen (ci-dessus § 5) contiennent quelques outils de forgerons comme symbole de la source de leur richesse. L’apparition, au quatrième millénaire, de la métallurgie du cuivre, de l’emploi de la charrue et le développement de l’élevage entraînent des changements dans l’organisation de la société. A une société faiblement différenciée gouvernée par ses chefs lignagers et ses prêtres succède une société inégalitaire plus complexe comportant différents métiers, dont le commerce, un pouvoir central et une hiérarchie.

L’inégalité sociale se manifeste dans les sépultures d’Europe centrale du troisième millénaire dès la période finale de la culture de la céramique cordée (2500-2200) et dans celle de la céramique campaniforme à la même époque, où les tombes richement pourvues sont souvent celles de forgerons. Il s’agit parfois de tombes d’enfants, comme celle d’Apolda étudiée par Gabriele Zipf, ce qui atteste que la hiérarchie sociale était désormais héréditaire. La différenciation sociale se marque aussi par la position du corps, allongée sur le dos pour l’élite, recroquevillée pour la masse. Le fondement de l’autorité des chefs réside moins dans la possession de richesses que dans le pouvoir de la répartir. Deux sépultures princières de la culture d’Aunjetitz, celle de Leubingen, également étudiée par Harald Meller (ci-dessus § 5) et celle de Helmsdorf sont présentées dans leur ensemble par Bernd Zich. Il montre que la puissance des princes s’y fonde sur la richesse qu’ils tiraient de la production et du commerce du bronze et du sel. La diversification de la structure sociale du Bronze ancien se reflète dans celle des sépultures comme le montre l’étude d’ensemble que leur consacrent Hermann Genz et Ralf Schwarz. Répandues sur l’ensemble des cultures européennes du Bronze ancien, les hallebardes (Stabdolche) dont on ignore le point de départ sont représentées dans celle d’Europe centrale; Hermann Genz y voit dans les unes des armes, dans les autres des objets de prestige: celles qu’on trouve dans les sépultures, et dans les marais et les cours d’eau, où elles ont été offertes aux dieux. Les gravures rupestres de Scandinavie montrent qu’elles étaient utilisées aussi dans le culte.

9. Les contacts de la culture d’Aunjetitz

Hermann Genz met en évidence l’importance des échanges interrégionaux au début de l’âge du bronze en Allemagne centrale; il énumère les types d’objets et les produits exportés. Ces échanges étaient contrôlés par l’élite sociale récemment apparue et se faisaient principalement par voie fluviale, faute de routes.

Regine Maraszek étudie les influences occidentales sur l’Allemagne centrale, haches d’apparat en provenance d’Irlande, de France, des Pays-Bas, lunules d’or d’Irlande, reproduites en bronze par la suite.

Trevor Cowie présente trois poignards écossais, des poignards d’apparat en bronze datés de 2050-1700 qui présentent les même décorations du manche (aujourd’hui disparu) que les épées accompagnant le disque, mais sans qu’une relation puisse être établie entre ces objets. En revanche, on trouve des exemples indubitables de matériaux importés avec les pommeaux d’ambre de certains poignards des Iles britanniques.

Autre exemple d’importation, la hache de Hermannshagen (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) étudié par Ralf Schwarz: c’est une hache danoise dite de Fårdrap, d’un type répandue au Jutland, dans les îles danoises et le sud de la Suède vers 1650-1550. Mais ces haches sont elles-mêmes imitées de modèles en provenance de l’est de la Hongrie et de Transylvanie.

C’est aussi de ces régions que proviennent les haches d’apparat du type de celle trouvée en 1937 à Naunburg (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) étudiée par ce même auteur. Les haches d’apparat en forme de cuiller d’Allemagne centrale proviennent de l’ouest de la Suisse, comme les poignards alpins caractérisés par leur manche; en revanche, l’Allemagne centrale exporte des aiguilles, selon Hermann Genz, qui signale également des pointes de lance grecques des Cyclades trouvées en Allemagne centrale à Kyhna (Saxe) dans un dépôt datable de 2200-2000, mais l’analyse a montré qu’il s’agit d’une imitation, non d’une importation; et c’est un cas isolé, qui n’a pas exercé d’influence sur la production locale. Le modèle des aiguilles ornementales recourbées à tête en boucle étudiées par Hermann Genz et Helge Jarecki provient du Proche Orient, où elles apparaissent au milieu du troisième millénaire. Mais les transferts de techniques et d’objets n’aboutissent pas nécessairement à des contacts culturels: Reinhard Jung confirme que le disque de Nebra ne doit rien aux mondes minoen et mycénien; les quelques exemples d’objets religieux mycéniens trouvés dans la région ne sont pas antérieurs aux XIVe-XIIe siècles avant notre ère.

Le catalogue se clôt par une étude, due à Hermann Genz, du rayonnement de la culture d’Aunjetitz dont les productions se sont diffusées sur une vaste partie de l’Europe centrale et septentrionale, diversement selon les coutumes et les besoins des différentes régions.

* * *

1 – Les travaux et le jours, 383-387 (trad. P. Mazon, CUF).

2 – Les travaux et les jours, 176 et suiv.

3 – Did the Pre-Indo-Europeans Influence the Formation of the Western Zodiac, Journal of Indo-European Studies, 33, 2005, 103-150.

4 – Kivik du Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA), 16, 2000, p. 596.

In un’epoca in cui la classe dirigente raccoglie consenso attraverso la divinizzazione dell’omosessualità, ci si deve interrogare su quali possano essere le fonti che ispirano tanta sollecitudine verso la lobby gay. Sull’argomento esiste un diluvio di letteratura che ha affrontato il tema nelle sue varie manifestazioni storiche.

Uno studio di particolare interesse sul fenomeno è stato pubblicato da Bernard Sergent, col titolo Omosexualité et initiation chez les peuples indo-européens.

L’indagine parte dai rituali pederastici ampiamente attestati nell’antica Grecia e si propone di dimostrare che l’omosessualità iniziatica sarebbe un retaggio ancestrale dei popoli indoeuropei derivante dalla loro preistoria comune. Il saggio considera come punti di riferimento le testimonianze sulla pederastia cretese del IV secolo a.C. e il racconto di Ammiano Marcellino sulla tribù barbara dei Taifali nel IV secolo d.C.

In entrambi i casi si ha un rapporto omosessuale fra un adulto e un giovane. A Creta il ragazzo è considerato adulto dopo un periodo di due mesi passato con l’erastes, al termine del quale riceve le armi e può sacrificare un bue a Zeus. Presso i Taifali, il ragazzo conquista l’autonomia uccidendo un orso e dimostrando in questo modo di essere giunto all’età adulta.

Fra questi due episodi si inserisce un vasto insieme di testimonianze della civiltà greca: dalla storia alla mitologia, dalla letteratura all’archeologia, ci sono numerose attestazioni di pederastia rituale. Le storie di Giacinto e di Ciparisso documentano il ruolo del dio Apollo nell’omosessualità iniziatica. Un mito analogo era quello di Zeus e Ganimede, e alcune tradizioni riportano storie del genere riferite all’eroe Eracle.

Anche la relazione fra Achille e Patroclo è suscettibile di interpretazioni omosessuali, ed è ben nota la storia del Battaglione Sacro di Tebe, costituito da coppie di soldati omosessuali.

Per Sergent il senso della pederastia iniziatica era quello di formare la classe dirigente della polis: attraverso la femminilizzazione del giovane iniziato si escludeva la partecipazione delle donne alla vita pubblica e si istituiva la comunità maschile che deteneva il potere politico. Si tratta quindi di un tema estremamente complesso e le cui interpretazioni risultano difficilmente utilizzabili anche dagli allucinati sostenitori delle “pari opportunità”…

Quindi Sergent cerca di raccogliere dati per avallare la sua tesi sull’origine comune indoeuropea di tali costumi, ma al di fuori della civiltà greca gli elementi in questo senso sono del tutto frammentari. Per quanto riguarda i Germani il solo dato di fatto è quello già citato dei Taifali. Per il resto si può arguire qualcosa dal comportamento sessuale piuttosto trasgressivo degli dèi Vani nella mitologia nordica.

Presso i Celti testimonianze di Diodoro e di Strabone parlano di comportamenti omosessuali, ma al riguardo nulla dice Cesare, che è la fonte più esaustiva sulla civiltà celtica: l’assoluto silenzio del condottiero romano è un elemento decisamente imbarazzante per Sergent! Inoltre nella letteratura celtica medievale non si hanno significativi riferimenti a eventuali pratiche di omosessualità rituale.

Nella civiltà persiana si riscontra la testimonianza di Erodoto su riti omosessuali improntati alla civiltà greca, tuttavia i testi zoroastriani condannano fermamente l’omosessualità assimilandola a pratiche demoniache.

In Albania alcuni studi antropologici hanno riscontrato forme di omosessualità iniziatica ancora praticate nel XIX secolo, ma è impossibile individuare fonti più antiche che possano attestare una continuità attraverso il tempo di questo fenomeno.

Per quanto riguarda l’antica Roma, sappiamo che abitudini omosessuali si diffusero nell’alta società su imitazione dei Greci, tuttavia l’omosessualità era malvista nelle classi sociali più umili e criticata in alcuni ambienti culturali. In ogni caso non sembra che si riscontri a Roma un fenomeno di pederastia iniziatica.

Infine un altro grande pilastro della civiltà indoeuropea, l’antica India, non ha lasciato traccia di forme ritualizzate di omosessualità e di pederastia.

A questo punto Sergent, pur costretto ad ammettere che non c’è modo di ricostruire un mito comune indoeuropeo riguardante l’omosessualità, tenta qualche acrobazia intellettuale per dimostrare le sue tesi, e ipotizza che la classe sacerdotale abbia preso il sopravvento su quella guerriera mettendone a freno la sessualità impetuosa e incontrollata (!?!).

Il tema merita di essere studiato senza lasciarsi influenzare da moralismo e pruderie. Che l’omosessualità iniziatica sia stata ampiamente diffusa nel mondo greco è fuori discussione, che sia stata praticata in altri gruppi di origine indoeuropea è plausibile, ma che si voglia farne un elemento della cultura comune indoeuropea sembra una conclusione piuttosto temeraria. In effetti l’impressione che si ricava dallo studio di Sergent è quella di un lavoro volto alla dimostrazione di una tesi preconcetta che procede per supposizioni e per ipotesi senza alcun supporto scientifico. Del resto forme di omosessualità rituale sono testimoniate dalle ricerche antropologiche in svariati gruppi umani: non c’è motivo di pensare che tali comportamenti siano stati una specificità indoeuropea.

Ma l’omofilia è un pregiudizio profondamente radicato nella società contemporanea, e il fatto che l’autore sia stato nominato membro del Consiglio Nazionale della Ricerca Scientifica proprio in virtù dei suoi studi sull’omosessualità desta il fondato sospetto che il libro sia stato scritto su commissione…

Lo stesso autore, del resto, scrive una postfazione che ha tutto il sapore di un servile omaggio alla potentissima lobby omosessuale. Infine Sergent si lascia sfuggire che l’umanità non avrebbe mai sperimentato tanta libertà sessuale come nell’epoca della pederastia iniziatica: parole che suonano quasi come un’istigazione alla pedofilia…

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Bernard Sergent, Homosexualité et initiation chez les peuples indo-européens, Payot, Paris 1996, pp. 670.

«La luce del nord», «il mistero iperboreo», questo è dunque un motivo fondamentale della nostra dottrina della razza, motivo che ad alcuni sembrerà però paradossale, ad altri sospetto e avvilente nei riguardi delle tradizioni nostre, ritenute mediterranee. Per cui s’impone qualche chiarimento.

Anzitutto parlando di Nord non si deve intendere la regione germanica. La sede primordiale della razza aria va riconosciuta invece in una regione corrispondente all’Artide attuale: ciò, in quella remotissima preistoria, di cui si è detto. In un periodo successivo, ma sempre preistorico, il centro di irradiazione sembra essersi spostato in una sede nordico-atlantica. Nelle altre opere nostre si sono riferiti gli elementi che giustificano una tale tesi, corrispondente, peraltro, a ricordi e insegnamenti tradizionali concordanti di varie civiltà. Anche dal punto di vista positivo, geofisico, è possibile ammettere che la regione artica, o iperborea che dir si voglia, non sia divenuta quella inabitabile dei ghiacci eterni che gradatamente, partendo da una data epoca: mentre il centro successivo, nordico-atlantico, sembra essere scomparso per via di un cataclisma oceanico.

Quanto poi all’allarme destato dalla tesi nordico-aria, esso poggia su di un equivoco. Sostenendo tale tesi non si vuol per nulla aderire al mito pangermanista, col quale, dopo aver fatto di «nordico», di germanico, di ario e di tedesco più o meno dei sinonimi, si va a sostenere, che tutto quel che vi è di superiore nelle varie civiltà e nelle varie nazioni del nostro continente sarebbe derivato da elementi germanici, mentre quel che a tali elementi non è riconducibile sarebbe senz’altro inferiore e deteriore.

È proprio per evitare un equivoco del genere che, nei riguardi della razza aria primordiale, noi di solito usiamo il termine iperboreo, forgiato in Grecia, prima ancora che dei Germani si sapesse qualche cosa. In ogni modo, diciamo senz’altro che ario, nordico-ario, nordico-occidentale ecc., in una seria dottrina della razza non voglion per nulla dire «tedesco» o «germanico»: sono designazioni di una realtà assai più vasta. Esse si riferiscono a un ceppo, del quale i popoli germanici del periodo delle invasioni non sono che una fra le tante diramazioni, poiché allo stesso ceppo avrebbero avuto diritto di riferire le loro origini le maggiori stirpi creatrici di civiltà in Oriente e in Occidente, nell’antica India e nell’antica Persia, come pure nella prima Ellade e nella stessa Roma. Fra tutte queste stirpi può esistere un rapporto di consanguineità, ma per nulla di derivazione. Di derivazione può parlarsi rispetto a quel comune ceppo «iperboreo», di cui si è detto, il quale però retrocede in una preistoria così remota, da far apparire sciocca ogni pretesa, da parte di un qualsiasi popolo storico, e tanto più moderno, di accaparrarsene come che sia la esclusiva discendenza.

La corrente delle genti nordico-arie seguì due direzioni fondamentali, l’una orizzontale (direzione da Occidente attraverso il Mediterraneo, Baleari, Sardegna, Creta, Egitto), l’altra trasversale (direzione nord-ovest sud-est, dall’Irlanda fino in India, con centri nella regione danubiana e nel Caucaso, il quale dunque non fu, come si credeva, la «culla» della razza bianca, ma un focolare di irradiazione sull’itinerario percorso da una delle correnti nordico-arie). Quanto alla migrazione dei popoli propriamente germanici, essa, rispetto alle altre due, è di data incomparabilmente più recente, recente d’interi millenni. Ora, lungo la direzione orizzontale e, in parte, anche per interferenze di essa con la direzione trasversale nel continente eurasiatico, sono sorte le massime civiltà del Mediterraneo, quelle conosciute, e altre, di cui a noi sono giunti solo i residui degenerescenti. Rispetto a tali civiltà, sulla base di questi nuovi orizzonti preistorici bisogna vedere nei popoli nordico-germanici del periodo delle invasioni solo degli epigoni, coloro che, della comune famiglia, per ultimi apparvero sulle quinte della storia. Né vi apparvero «puri» sotto ogni punto di vista.

Certo, non avendo dietro di sé tutta la storia degli altri gruppi della stessa famiglia, essi non furono così esposti al pericolo degli incrocî, quanto questi: fisicamente e biologicamente si presentarono dunque «più in ordine». Nella vita in regioni ove erano subentrate dure condizioni climatiche e d’ambiente, e che essi lasciarono per ultimi, si rafforzò poi un processo selettivo, si confermarono e rafforzarono doti di carattere, di tenacia, di ingegnosità, di ardire, mentre il non essere entrati in contatto con forme esterioristiche e urbanistiche di civiltà mantenne vivi, in questi popoli germanici, rapporti virili cementati dalle virtù guerriere e dal sentimento di fedeltà e di onore. Altrimenti vanno però le cose, nei riguardi dell’elemento propriamente spirituale, in questi epigoni della razza nordico-aria primordiale. Questo elemento subì una certa involuzione. Le tradizioni vi si oscurarono nel loro contenuto metafisico e «solare» primordiale, divennero frammentarie, decaddero nella forma di folklore, di saghe e di superstizioni popolari. Inoltre, in queste tradizioni, più che il ricordo delle origini, predominano i ricordi mitologizzati delle vicende tragiche subite da uno dei centri della civiltà iperborea, quello degli Asen o eroi divini del «Mitgard»: donde il noto tema del «ragna-rökkr», termine tradotto volgarmente con «crepuscolo degli dèi». Così, per orizzontarsi in siffatte tradizioni nordico-germaniche dei popoli del periodo delle invasioni, e per individuare il vero significato dei principali simboli o ricordi che vi sono contenuti, bisogna trarre i punti di riferimento dallo studio di più antiche tradizioni arie, ove gli stessi insegnamenti si sono mantenuti in forma più pura e completa, tradizioni che non sono germaniche, ma delle civiltà arie dell’antica India e della antica Persia, della prima Ellade e della stessa Roma. E razzisti germanici, come il Günther, vanno senz’altro a riconoscere tutto ciò.

L’inquadramento del problema delle origini, che qui è stato esposto, non deve dunque per nulla suscitare un sentimento di inferiorità o di subordinazione da parte nostra, italiana, di fronte ai popoli germanici più recenti. Al contrario: come la parte migliore della gente italiana, dal punto di vista della razza del corpo, corrisponde a un tipo da considerarsi come una variazione di quello stesso della razza nordica, del pari nel patrimonio delle nostre più alte tradizioni, che risalgono spesso a tempi primordiali, si possono ritrovare gli stessi elementi di «razza dell’anima» (stile di vita, ethos, ecc.) e di visione del mondo comuni a ogni grande civiltà aria e nordico-aria. Con la tesi nordico-aria del nostro razzismo, dunque, si va piuttosto a contestare a qualsiasi popolo attuale il diritto di accaparrarsi e di monopolizzare la nobiltà della comune origine, si va a dire che noi, in quanto siamo e vogliamo essere eredi della romanità antica e aria così come della successiva civiltà romano-germanica, non ci riconosciamo secondi rispetto a nessuno in fatto di spirito, di vocazione e di tradizione nordico-aria.

Ma, naturalmente, una simile presa di posizione impegna, dal razzismo teorico essa ci conduce al razzismo attivo e creativo, cioè a quello inteso a far sì che nel tipo generale italiano, in sé così differenziato, in misura sempre più vasta e in forma sempre più precisa vada a enuclearsi e ad affermarsi il tipo fisico e spirituale della razza superiore, presente nel popolo italiano quanto quello propriamente nordico lo è nel popolo tedesco, nei due casi, ostacolati, l’uno e l’altro, da detriti etnici, da altre componenti razziali e dagli effetti di precedenti processi di degenerescenza biologica e culturale.

Si vede da ciò il preciso valore che l’inquadramento razziale del problema delle origini ha per la formazione della volontà e per la consapevolezza del nuovo Italiano. Ne deriva effettivamente una «idea-forza», un sentimento di dignità e di superiorità, che non significa boria e che non si basa su miti confusi a uso semplicemente politico, ma su precise conoscenze tradizionali.

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Tratto da Indirizzi per una educazione razziale, Conte, Napoli, 1941.

It was remarked above that through the action of heredity prehistoric European racial characteristics may have been occasionally preserved in isolated cases down to the present day.

The races that are now living, and have been living since Neolithic times, in Europe were preceded by several races in Palaeolithic times, who occupied in turn wide stretches of Europe over long periods of time. Here we cannot go into these Palaeolithic races¹. The appearance in prehistory of the European races of today can likewise only be briefly dealt with.

They are found from the time of the beginning of the Neolithic Age, that is, from over ten thousand years ago.

In North-west Europe it is the Nordic race which appears, whose original home must be sought there. In the British Isles, France, Spain, and Italy, it is the Mediterranean race. The Alpine race seems to have spread from the Alps westward and north-westward. To-day we can say but little as to the first appearance of the Dinaric race; probably it must have originally formed a single group with the Hither Asiatic race, a group whose earliest home, it may be supposed, was in the region of the Caucasus. Later, after a part of this group had wandered away, a change in the process of selection under different conditions must have formed two groups out of the original single group; these two groups differ in many characters, but not to such an extent that their kinship is not still recognizable. Owing to the characteristics common to the Nordic and the Mediterranean races, we are led to postulate a common origin for these races in a palaeolithic group. We are led, too, to bring the Alpine and East Baltic races into a close relation with the short, short-headed, broad-faced Inner Asiatic race; and we may suppose a migration out of Asia into Europe for both those races. But hardly anything is known about the first appearance of the East Baltic race. Its original home — that is to say, the environment where it underwent the process of its separate formation through selection in isolation — must be sought for between Moscow and Kazan, or between Moscow and the Urals. Philologists have put the original home of the peoples speaking Finnish-Ugrian tongues in south-east Russia or in the neighbourhood of the central Urals, mainly on the European side, by the Karna and its tributaries². Here in a group akin to the Inner Asiatic race there must have been a lightening of the colours through selection, which may be compared to that lightening which took place in the group that came to form the Nordic race, and which had its original home in North-western Europe.

The East Baltic race spread mainly north and north-west from its original home, carrying with it a very simple culture, probably with mother-right — a culture having a simple pottery, and the dog and sheep as domesticated animals, and with hunting and fishing its main activities. It is generally assumed that the so-called Comb-pottery culture of the Stone Age represents the culture of the original Finnish-Ugrian people (East Baltic race). Over the Comb-pottery area it is mainly peoples of Finnish-Ugrian speech that are still living to-day. In Herodotus’ time (fifth century B.C.) the whole of central and northern Russia was still in the occupation of Finnish-Ugrian peoples. Of far-reaching importance for the East Baltics, there then came the meeting with Nordic tribes and peoples — above all, with the Nordic proto-Slavs, who took with them East Baltics wherever they settled. As the Nordic upper layer disappeared, the appearance of the Slav peoples (except the South Slavs) was more and more determined by East Baltic characteristics. It may be assumed that among the North and West Slavs by about the twelfth century the East Baltic race was predominant through the weight of numbers born. Meanwhile in these peoples the East Baltics had given up their Finnish-Ugrian speech in favour of Slav (that is, Indo-European) tongues, so that to-day only the Finns and Esthonians and the peoples akin to them in Northeast Europe still speak their original tongues, as also the Magyars, an originally East Baltic people, with their home probably about the middle Volga. The Magyars still clearly show the East Baltic blood, but since their entry into Hungary (in the ninth century A.D.) have taken up much Alpine, Dinaric, and Nordic, with some Mediterranean blood³. On the whole, the predominantly East Baltic peoples have shown themselves to be not very creative. The Finns, too, who have a richly developed culture, owe, like the Slavs, their creative achievements rather to the Nordic upper layer in their peoples⁴.

With the advance of the Finnish-Ugrian tribes of East Baltic race towards the Baltic lands, the tribes, too, with Baltic (that is Indo-European) speech (the Lithuanians, Letts, Kurs, and Livs), which were originally Nordic, received an East Baltic strain. The old Livs are seen from their graves to have all had narrow faces and long heads.

To the development of European culture, the Alpine race, too, has hardly contributed anything of its own. Their spread from the Alps was not a conquest, but a slow trickle. That the Alpine race is still found to-day more thickly spread in the less hospitable districts is the reflection of prehistoric conditions. A French anthropologist, after examining the racial map of France, wrote the words which apply to the whole of Europe: ‘To the conquerors, the lowlands and the valleys; to the conquered, the mountains’. The Alpine race seems to have been ever crowded back into the undesired, barren districts by the forward thrust of the other races, especially the Nordic. The ways by which the Alpine race spread would be clearer to determine if it had carried with itself its own style of implements and vessels. But its prehistoric emergence gives the picture of an uncreative race, taking forms of culture now from a predominantly Mediterranean, now from a predominantly Nordic civilization, and probably borrowing them for the most part from whatever upper class from another race happened to be ruling them. The ruling class may have changed often, and disappeared in the fight with other conquerors, or through the mixing of race gradually sunk into the more numerous lower class. The predominantly Alpine section of the population has always kept itself in existence throughout the course of time.

The languages which originally belonged to the Alpine race were given up by the Alpine populations in favour of those spoken by the conquering peoples. These cast-off languages must be reconstructed after the pattern of the Finnish-Ugrian languages (originally peculiar to the East Baltic race) or of the Altaic (peculiar to the Inner Asiatic race). The languages spoken in the Alps have a number of words which are not Indo-European as a common peculiarity. Possibly these words are derived from the vanished languages of prehistoric tribes belonging to the Alpine or the Dinaric race.

The first tracks of the Dinaric race are less clear than the roads by which the Alpines spread in Neolithic times. But some districts in Europe show the traces of Dinaric immigrations, pointing to an energetic spread by conquest. From northern France there was at the end of the Stone Age an advance into central Germany by a short-headed people, in whose racial composition I suspect a Dinaric strain. It brought with it the use of copper for spears and daggers, and that shape of vessel called the bell-beaker, a shape which must have been borrowed by these short-heads from a West European culture of the Mediterranean race. Possibly with this movement is connected a Dinaric advance from the mainland into the British Isles⁵. Here, about 2000 B.C., there landed Dinaric tribes, whose bones, implements, and vessels appear along the whole of the east coast of England and Scotland: tall short-heads, with the head cut away at the back, and with high noses, bringing the bell-beaker with them (and called the beaker-makers or beaker-people), breeding cattle, and planting wheat, but seemingly as yet without the knowledge of bronze. But in the England of today there is but a scanty inheritance of Dinaric blood; it seems to have been preserved more clearly here and there in certain families in the liberal professions⁶.

Fig. 1. Prehistoric skull from the Adlersberg near Worms; Dinaric.

The Keltic tribes of Nordic race who landed in later times in the British Isles seem then to have displaced the Dinaric bell-beaker tribes.

The predominance, or the strong strain of Dinaric race, is clearly to be seen in a population of the Bronze Age which, as a warlike tribe of bowmen, and apparently coming, too, from the west, took possession of the heights in the Rhenish district about Worms. Their remains have been found on the Adlersberg, near Worms, and with them again the West European bell-beaker. In the early Bronze Age the Swabian Alb and parts of Bavaria seem to have been settled by an Alpine Dinaric people; the Bronze Age mound-graves in this district hold their remains. A fairly strong Dinaric strain (besides an Alpine strain, and with a Nordic predominance) seems to have characterized the population in the area of the so-called Aunjetitz Culture, an early Bronze culture with its centre in northern Bohemia, and branching into Silesia, east Thuringia, Moravia, Hungary, and Lower Austria.

In the early Hallstatt period populations with a Dinaric element seem to have come from the Alps to Bohemia (and Silesia?). The later Hallstatt period may have been brought in by a more intense forward movement of Dinaric people from the eastern Alpine region. Some of the features of the Hallstatt culture were derived from the Balkans, whence probably the Dinaric migration into the Alpine region first started. From the time of the later Bronze Age Dinaric skulls appear in Switzerland. From there south-west Germany may have been reached (as also the Hotzenwald of south Baden?) These mainly Dinaric people in the Alpine region and south Germany must have belonged in the later Hallstatt period to the Keltic population, for the mainly Nordic Kelts had by then penetrated into the Alps, and then formed together with the earlier dwellers Nordic-Dinaric-Alpine tribes. Owing to the Keltic predominance in Europe (about 900-200 B.C.), Dinaric, as also Alpine blood, has been spread over wide areas of Europe along with the conquests of the Keltic ruling class of Nordic race.

All these vestiges of Dinaric settlements show, however, that the Dinaric, like the Alpine race, made its way into Central Europe without any independent culture of its own⁷. The people of the Dinaric race, too, gave up their original language in favour of languages brought to them by Nordic tribes.

The original Dinaric languages are to be thought of as akin to the Caucasian (Alarodic) languages of the peoples of Hither Asiatic race. In the prehistory of Europe two races only have shown themselves to be truly creative, and these must be looked on as the true European races: the Nordic and the Mediterranean, the Nordic first and foremost as the true history-making race of prehistoric and historic times.

The prehistoric achievements of the Mediterranean race have been minutely described by Schuchhardt in his remarkable work, Alteuropa in seiner Kultur- und Stilentwicklung (1919). It is there shown how Western European culture forms spread from the Mediterranean people of the British Isles, France, and Spain along the shores of the Mediterranean, and then develop through long periods of time into the early historical forms of art characterizing a part of the Egyptian and North African cultures, and the cultures of the earliest pre-Hellenic and of early Hellenic Greece, as also that of the Etruscans. ‘It was not from the east, as is still generally held, but from the west, from the old culture of the Palaeolithic Age in France and Spain, that the Mediterranean received its strongest influences. This can be seen in the structure of the houses and graves, in the sculpture, and in the implements and vessels. The earlier stages are generally found in the Western Mediterranean and the final development was usually carried through in the Mycenean area’⁸.

Fig. 2. Etruscan woman of Nordic race; painting from grave at Corneto.	Fig. 3. Etruscan woman of Mediterranean race; painting from grave at Corneto.
Fig. 4. Ignatius Loyola; Bask of predominantly Hither-Asiatic race; engraving: Van Dyck.	Fig. 5. Etruscan man of Hither Asiatic Race; painting from grave at Corneto.

Schuchhardt describes these Mediterranean forms of culture in Old Europe by means of the archaeological discoveries, and shows how round houses, round tombs with the bodies crouched, pillar worship, the tokens of the belief in a ‘blessed life in the Beyond’, and a whole set of characteristic features can be followed up from England to Troy, and how these features are clearly distinguished from those of Nordic cultures. He shows how the round house in Italy became the Roman house, expressing a conception of structure other than that expressed by the rectangular Nordic house, which became the Megaron house in Greece.

In the Etruscans Schuchhardt sees ‘the most faithful wardens of the old West Mediterranean culture’, and rejects the theory of their origin in Asia Minor, a theory held by Herodotus and ever coming up again since his time. It seems to me, however, that an ethnographical consideration of the Etruscan paintings strengthens the view of an origin in Asia Minor (not for all Etruscans, but for some of the population), as also the theory of a transitory Etruscan ruling class of Nordic race, although the Etruscan people as a whole may have been predominantly Mediterranean, and indeed for Schuchhardt is a people whose original home was in Italy. Alpine blood may originally have been only in small quantity in the Etruscans, but it can be clearly recognized from the Etruscan paintings: thick-set people with round faces and short noses are found among those represented. There are some signs that the Alpines among the Etruscan people went on growing in numbers towards its end. On this more will be said below. Etruscan skulls that have been found are (according to Sergi’s researches) generally mesocephalic to dolichocephalic.

The Mediterranean Sea, after the Neolithic spread of the West European culture of Mediterranean race, seems to have been the theatre of an eruption in the Early Bronze Age as far as Spain by tribes of Hither Asiatic race, by way of Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy. During the Bronze Age the cephalic index in Sicily increased. The incoming short-heads seem to have been Hither Asiatic. The Etruscan paintings show a predominance of Mediterranean features (Fig. 3), but also Hither Asiatic features (Fig. 5), and occasionally Nordic ones, as in the blonde girl here given (Fig. 2). Fair hair, indeed, is often clearly to be seen in these paintings.

I am inclined to believe that a Hither Asiatic advance brought the Bask language, too, from Hither Asia into Spain. Bask shows kinship with the Caucasian (Alarodic) tongues, which were originally peculiar to the Hither Asiatic race, and are still spoken by many peoples and tribes predominantly of this race. Hither Asiatic blood would seem still to show itself among the predominantly Mediterranean Basks (cp., too, Fig. 4).

But the Hither Asiatic migration into the Mediterranean does not seem to have caused any real disturbance in the life of the Mediterranean race there. This first happened when Nordic conquerors came upon the scene, who now brought change into the cultural system of the Mediterranean, and of the Etruscans last of all. The description of the latest times of independent Mediterranean history will also be an account of the earliest irruptions of Nordic tribes into the Mediterranean. The happy life of these peoples of Mediterranean race was suddenly disturbed by conquerors who knew nothing of a belief in a blessed life beyond the grave, who had Nordic forms of art instead of the joyous decorative plant-forms of Mediterranean art, who brought wooden buildings and rectangular houses, who burned their dead, or buried them stretched out, and who brought with them new implements, new weapons. The non-Nordic peoples of the Mediterranean had had as their own the long shield covering the whole body; the intruding Nordic conquerors bring the round shield, and finally fashion the bronze panoply described by Homer. Troy and Tiryns in their architectural changes show the ever-renewed and ever-growing intrusions of Nordic bands. These events have been very vividly drawn by Schuchhardt. Remarkable compromises are made between the two colliding cultures. ‘Thus the plan of the stronghold in the Mycenean civilization is almost certainly brought from the north, but the manner of carrying it out with walls made of huge blocks of stone is Mediterranean. This the Nordic comers learnt first in the south. On their way down the Danube they built in wood and clay, and even in Thessaly used only small stones‘.⁹ The oldest Hellenic temples had walls of sun-dried brick on stone feet, wooden beams, and wooden pillars. The transition to stone was in the seventh century B.C. In the earliest Hellenic history the form of the grave is often autochthonic-Mediterranean, the form of burial is Nordic, the ruler’s stronghold Nordic with autochthonic-Mediterranean pillars. A happy compromise of the Nordic and the Mediterranean is shown particularly by the Mycenean culture. In Tiryns there has come to light two metres below the Nordic buildings a huge building in the round style, holding graves with crouched bodies — giving very clear evidence of the fall of independent Mediterranean cultures before a Nordic conquest.

With the Nordic conquerors father-right spread itself over the regions about the Mediterranean. The people of Mediterranean race had lived under mother-right institutions, that is to say, kinship and inheritance with them was determined not through the father, but through the mother, as is the case still to-day among various peoples. Under mother-right there is not generally any lasting marriage, so that the conception of married faithfulness is not developed, but there is generally a very free intercourse among girls and married women. The predominantly Mediterranean old Etruscans had mother-right, so also the predominantly Mediterranean Picts in Scotland; the Basks in their methods of inheritance still show traces today of mother-right. From Spain to Greece traces can be found of mother-right in the times before the inroad of Nordic tribes. Among the peoples of Nordic origin father-right is found everywhere; among them the conception of married faithfulness, and with it that of adultery, is developed; and along their trail of conquest their ideas and their (Indo-European) languages were likewise spread.

The racial contrasts between Nordic and Mediterranean, arising as a result of the intrusion of the Nordic tribes, may still be gathered by the judgment passed by the early Romans on the Ligurians (of Mediterranean race), who are described as slender, dark-skinned, and curly: they were felt to be deceitful and given to lying (fallaces mendacesque), as Diodorus Siculus (v. 39) writes.

Over the whole of the area about the Mediterranean Sea the languages which the Mediterranean race had evolved must have disappeared in the time we speak of. The languages of Nordic origin, the Indo-European languages, were victorious as being those of the Nordic ruling classes. The Pictic vanished before the tongue of the Nordic Kelts; the Iberian — the language of the Iberians, described by Livy (xxxix. I) as small and quick, by Tacitus (Agricola, ii.) as dark-skinned and curly — the Ligurian, and the Etruscan vanished before the tongues of Keltic and Italic (Roman) conquerors of Nordic origin. The languages spoken in Greece of the Bronze Age disappeared before the Greek, brought with them by the Nordic Hellenes from an original home about the Danube. It was only after the exhaustion of Nordic blood in the Hellenic (Greek) and in the Roman people that the Mediterranean element could lift its head again. Perhaps it shows itself in the structure of the Romance tongues¹⁰ which sprung out of the Latin of the Roman ruling class of Nordic race, or maybe it shows itself in southern Catholicism, or even in the rounded style of the late Roman Pantheon.

Footnotes

¹ For this cp. Werth, Der fossile Mensch, Bd. i., 1921, Bd. ii., 1923; and Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes, chap. xix.

² Cp. Szinnyei, Finnisch-ugrische Sprachwissenschaft, 1910.

³ Probably the Magyars at their entry and for some centuries later were far more East Baltic than today. Perhaps it is because of their sallow-fair (not rosy-fair) skin and their faded-fair (not golden-fair) hair that they were called the Fahls or Falbs in the Middle Ages (fahl = sallow); so it is in a lament on the defeat of Ottokar of Bohemia in the battle of Marchfeld against the Magyars, 1278 (cp. Golther, Deutsche Liederdichter, etc., 1910, p. 378).

⁴ So, too, the Finnish Kalevala was composed in Finland and Esthonia by a noble class of Nordic-Germanic descent, which probably was bilingual down to the eighth and ninth centuries. The leaders of the Finnish people — those, moreover, of Finnish not Swedish descent — still show predominantly Nordic characteristics.

⁵ Possibly, too, the Borreby skull (found near Borreby, in Denmark) is to be explained as a skull with a Dinaric strain (not from a native of Denmark?) and brought into connexion with this advance of Dinaric bell-beaker tribes. This at least is what Reche suggests (Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte, under ‘Borrebyschädel’).

⁶ Cp. Fleure, ‘Geographical Distribution of Anthropological Types in Wales,’ Journ. Anthrop. Inst., 1926; ‘Anthropology and Older Histories,’ ibid., 1918; Keith, ‘Bronze Age Invaders,’ ibid., 1915.

⁷ Possibly, however, in south-east Europe the people of the so-called Tripolye culture were predominantly Dinaric. This Neolithic culture stretched from Galicia and Transylvania through Podolia and the Ukraine provinces of Kiev, Chernigkov, Kherson down to Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Rumania; that is to say, over a region that shows also to-day on the whole a predominantly Dinaric population. In that case the specific achievements of the Dinaric race would have to be looked for in the culture of Tripolye, unless perhaps this latter drew its main characteristics from a Nordic ruling class. This ruling class has been suggested by Peake for this culture (‘Racial Elements . . . the Siege of Troy’, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., vol. xlvi., 1916).

⁸ Schuchhardt, Alteuropa, etc.

⁹ Schuchhardt, Alteuropa, etc.

¹⁰ It is indeed noteworthy that Romance tongues are found to have arisen wherever the people show a more or less heavy Mediterranean strain (cp. Maps XIV, XV).

Source: The Racial Elements of European History, First Published in 1927 by Methuen And Company, London (Chapter 7).

Avec les Celtes, nous entrons de plein pied, sans reconstruction préalable, dans les deux dernières périodes de la tradition indo-européenne: la société lignagère des quatre cercles et des trois fonctions, qui est celle des royaumes celtiques de la période historique, et la société héroïque, qui est celle des fianna. Tout ce qui, dans le monde gréco-romain, appartient à un passé mythique est encore vivant.

1. La société des quatre cercles et des trois fonctions

L’ancienne société irlandaise telle qu’elle ressort des textes en moyen-irlandais a pour base la tribu túath (*tewtā) gouvernée par un roi, rí (*rēg-s). La formule du serment des héros irlandais «je jure le serment que jure ma tribu» illustre l’importance de ce cercle d’appartenance. L’évolution de la société a entraîné la création d’unités supérieures et par suite une hiérarchie des rois: il y a des «hauts rois», des «rois des hauts rois», et au-dessus d’eux le roi d’Irlande. A chaque échelon est attachée une assemblée. En dessous de la tribu, il y a la famille de quatre générations, derb-fhine «famille certaine» qui succède à la fois au village clanique et à la famille de la société antérieure; la lignée proprement dite, fine, ici comme ailleurs, est réservée aux familles nobles.

La société comporte trois castes, celle des druides, celle des nobles, celle des hommes libres. Cette institutionnalisation de la triade des fonctions, qui ne se retrouve que dans le monde indo-iranien, peut être considérée soit comme une conservation commune et donc un archaïsme, soit comme une évolution parallèle et, vu l’éloignement géographique, indépendante. Comme dans le monde indo-iranien, les esclaves, qui sont ordinairement des prisonniers de guerre, ne font pas partie de la société. On sait que cette organisation a servi de modèle à la société des trois ordres du moyen âge occidental: la société germanique dont elle était issue ne comportait pas de caste sacerdotale et ne pouvait donc faire une place au clergé chrétien. La société irlandaise médiévale est donc plus proche de la société védique du deuxième millénaire que de la cité grecque ou à plus forte raison de la république romaine ou de l’empire romain. Ses institutions et ses coutumes confirment cet archaïsme. Le roi y est soumis à divers interdits (geis) dont la violation entraîne des calamités publiques; il en va de même pour son obligation de «vérité», c’est-à-dire surtout de justice. La pratique magique de l’énonciation de vérité, celle du jeûne du créancier sont aussi des archaïsmes. Les diverses modalités du mariage sont en partie parallèles à celles du droit indien. Louange et blâme sont les mécanismes essentiels de cette société où l’honneur est tenu pour la valeur centrale. C’est une société purement rurale, où la ville est inconnue. La monnaie l’est également: tous les paiement se font en bétail.

2. La société héroïque

En marge de cette société existe une contre société institutionnalisée qui reflète les idéaux, les valeurs et les comportements de la société héroïque: la f́ian, troupe de jeunes guerriers, les fianna, qui bien qu’issus de la noblesse vivent en dehors de la société comme les vrātyas indiens, les maryas iraniens, les berserkir scandinaves. En entrant dans la fían, ils quittent leur lignage. Comme l’indique une étymologie ancienne leur nom, fíanna a venatione, ils vivent de chasse, mais aussi de diverses formes de prédation. Marie-Louise Sjoestedt les a définis en ces termes: «Les fíanna sont des compagnies de guerriers chasseurs, vivant sous l’autorité de leurs propres chefs, en semi-nomades; on les représente passant la saison de la chasse en de la guerre (de Beltine à Samain) à parcourir les forêts d’Irlande, à la poursuite du gibier, ou menant la vie de guérilla; des récits plus récents en font les défenseurs attitrés du pays contre les envahisseurs étrangers, mais tout indique qu’il s’agit là d’un développement secondaire du cycle. Pendant la mauvaise saison (de Samain à Beltine) ils vivent principalement sur le pays à la façon de troupes cantonnées chez l’habitant. Ils n’obéissent pas au pouvoir royal, avec lequel leurs chefs sont fréquemment en conflit». Ce conflit avec les autorités de la société lignagère est typique de la société héroïque. Il se double de conflits internes aux clans fíanna dont on trouve nombre d’exemples dans le cycle de Finn.

En Gaule, la société lignagère des communautés naturelles est elle aussi concurrencée, mais de l’intérieur, par des solidarités électives, comme l’a observé César, La guerre des Gaules, 6,11: «En Gaule, non seulement toutes les cités, tous les cantons et fractions de cantons mais, peut-on dire, toutes les familles sont divisés en partis rivaux; à la tête de ces partis sont les hommes à qui l’on accorde le plus de crédit; c’est à eux qu’il appartient de juger en dernier ressort pour toutes les affaires à régler, pour toutes les décisions à prendre. Il y a là une institution très ancienne qui semble avoir pour but d’assurer à tout homme du peuple une protection contre plus puissant que lui: car le chef de faction défend ses gens contre les entreprises de violence ou de ruse et, s’il agit autrement, il perd tout crédit. Le même système régit la Gaule dans son ensemble: tous les peuples y sont groupés en deux partis». Inutile de préciser que César a tiré de cette situation un avantage décisif. On voit par là que les réalités de la société héroïque de l’âge du bronze coexistent avec celles de la société lignagère, qui remontent au néolithique.

3. Formulaire et groupes de notions

Or paradoxalement les textes ne nous conservent à peu près rien du formulaire traditionnel, et la triade des fonctions est absente des récits et en particulier de la mythologie. On ne saurait expliquer l’absence du formulaire par le caractère oral de la tradition, auquel les druides étaient aussi attachés que leurs homologues indiens et iraniens, car une foule de légendes nous ont été conservées de cette façon. La raison essentielle est que ces récits sont en prose; la poésie, domaine privilégié du formulaire, n’y figure que sporadiquement. L’absence des trois fonctions, surprenante dans une société trifonctionnelle, s’explique par le fait que les récits se fondent en grande partie sur des traditions qui remontent à la période la plus ancienne, celle de la «religion cosmique» et de l’habitat circumpolaire, dont l’Irlande conserve le souvenir avec ses «Iles au nord du monde», où les «tribus de la déesse Dana», c’est-à-dire les dieux du panthéon irlandais, ont «appris le druidisme, la science, la prophétie et la magie, jusqu’à ce qu’ils fussent experts dans les arts de la science païenne». C’est là une attestation directe de l’origine polaire de la plus ancienne tradition indo-européenne. Un bon exemple en est la conception du «héros» telle que l’a résumée Philippe Jouët à l’article correspondant de son Dictionnaire de la mythologie celtique à paraître: «On peut donc attribuer aux cultures celtiques une doctrine d’héroïsation, issue d’une conception préhistorique selon laquelle la survie effective dépendait de la capacité à traverser l’hiver. Traduite en métaphores, cette conception a engendré mythes et doctrines. Par son aptitude à dominer la ténèbre hostile, le héros gagne un lieu généralement insulaire, parfois souterrain quand la terre noire équivaut à la ténèbre, où il reçoit les marques de sa promotion: illumination solaire, faveur des Aurores, trésors, «fruits de l’été» découverts en plein mois de novembre, gloire et renommée. Le vieux schéma celtique de l’incursion dans le Síd, le monde des Tertres enchantés, prend tout son sens dans cette perspective. C’est par là qu’il faut expliquer les métaphores, les images, les scénarios mythologiques et épiques les plus archaïques de la tradition celtique». Un tel «héros» n’a pas grand chose en commun avec celui de la société héroïque, mais illustre la parenté formelle entre son nom grec hērōs et celui de la déesse Hērā «Belle saison».

* * *

De Les peuples indo-européens d’Europe.

Ceramica cordata, ca. 3000 a.C.

L’affiorare d’una fisionomia europea dalle nebbie dell’alta preistoria ha luogo nel quarto millennio a. C. È un avvenimento che si accompagna ad una scelta già spiritualmente significativa: il rifiuto della «civiltà della madre» e l’affermazione dell’Urvolk indoeuropeo come comunità essenzialmente virile e patriarcale.

Il neolitico – l’età della prima agricoltura e dei primi villaggi, l’età in cui le famiglie diventano tribù e le tribù popoli — si inaugura sul continente europeo con una penetrazione dell’elemento orientale e mediterraneo. Sono le cellule tessale di Sesklo-Dimini — eredi delle comunità medio-orientali — che, risalendo il corso del Danubio, prolificano in tutta l’Europa centrale e balcanica. È la cosidetta cultura danubiana, con la sua ceramica a nastro (Bandkeramik) , le rozze zappe di legno e le grandi case collettive. Questa cultura ci trasmette il suo messaggio spirituale attraverso le figurine rappresentanti una divinità femminile nuda. È la madre terra — gê metér — la gran madre delle messi, dispensatrice di fecondità che tiene le chiavi della vita e della morte. È la dea nuda, il cui regno si estende dalla Mesopotamia fino all’Asia Minore, a Creta, a Malta e oltre. Anche in tutta l’Europa occidentale e atlantica, dalla Spagna alle Isole Britanniche, ricorre, nelle incisioni megalitiche, la dea armata di pugnale. È il cielo euroasiatico ed euroafricano della Madre che — attraverso la razza mediterranea, nelle suo prolificazioni libiche, liguri, iberiche, pelasgiche penetra fin nel cuore del continente europeo.

Dalla dominazione della Madre resta intatta l’Europa Settentrionale. E’ la regione intorno al Baltico meridionale, l’area del faggio, del tasso, della betulla, dell’abete; l’area del lupo, dell’orso, del salmone, del castoro; il territorio che la geografia linguistica presuppone per la Urheimat indoeuropea. E’ altresì il territorio della razza nordica dove — fin dalla metà del quarto millennio — i gruppi locali di cacciatori e pescatori, eredi delle comunità magdaléniane d’epoca glaciale, si riorganizzano in una nuova cultura agricola che resta estranea al mondo dei Danubiani e della Grande Madre.

La cultura nordica megalitica, con le grandi tombe di pietra attestanti una salda struttura politica e gentilizia, e le sue due emanazioni — la cultura delle anfore globulari e quella della ceramica cordata — sono la matrice originaria delle lingue indoeuropee e — con esse — d’una violenta trasformazione che investirà l’Europa e vaste regioni dell’Asia. A partire dal 2500 a., C., tutta l’Europa centrale, orientale e balcanica subisce le incursioni dei popoli del Nord. La cultura delle anfore globulari, quella della ceramica cordata — partendo dalle loro sedi nel bassopiano germanico — investono, con le loro asce-martello, le pacifiche comunità della Madre, trasformando il quadro archeologico fino alla Grecia e all’Ucraina.

E’ significativo che questa irruzione s’accompagni alla comparsa di simboli solari. Nasce la svastica — il più antico esemplare è su una ceramica della cultura delle anfore globulari rinvenuta in Polonia — nascono la croce raggiata, il cerchio riquadrato, il disco puntato e quello radiante.

E’ tutta una vasta gamma simbolica che trova la sua massima fioritura a Troia, città di confine tra l’Europa e l’Asia e che marca il passaggio di ceppi indoeuropei in Asia Minore. La svastica — il primordiale simbolo della generazione e della resurrezione della luce — è associata al primo apparire dei popoli indoeuropei nel cuore del terzo millennio, e solo millecinquecento anni più tardi raggiungerà l’India e la Cina.

Nel cuore dell’Anatolia, le tombe di Alaja Huyuk — preludenti ai futuri splendori del reame ittita — ci mostrano, insieme agli spilloni a testa di martello dei barbari del Nord — gli stendardi ornati di svastiche e altri simboli solari. Uno di questi stendardi ci mostra un grande cervo in mezzo a  due tori più piccoli. Assistiamo qui al rovesciamento del simbolismo tellurico, meridionale, materno.

Al toro — simbolo della cieca forza generatrice, connesso con la ideologia della fecondità, rozzamente raffigurato insieme con la Dea Nuda nelle più antiche culture agricole europee — si contrappone il cervo, I’animale dei cacciatori del Nord, Seelentier des nordischen Menschen, e, secondo Weisweiler, «animale della civiltà artica».

Il cervo è significativamente associato col simbolismo del sole e della luce:

«Den Sonnenhirsch sah ich von Süden her gehen
Seine Füsse standen auf der Erde
aber die Hörner reichten zum Himmel».

Questi versi dell’Edda ci vengono illustrati da una quantità di figurazioni preistoriche — prime tra tutte quelle della Valcamonica — in cui le corna del cervo sono stilizzate in forma di disco solare.

È altresì significativo che, in Irlanda — quando l’elemento celtico si scontra con gli aborigeni di stirpe iberica — il cervo e il toro giocano un ruolo centrale nelle saghe, là dove le parole oss, dag e ag, che nella saga del Leinster indicano il cervo, in quella dell’Ulster sono passati a significare «toro».

Dietro a questo urto di simboli, dietro alla espansione dei popolidell’ascia da combattimento e alla diffusione dei linguaggi indoeuropei, si cela un avvenimento di grande importanza spirituale.

È il principio paterno che si urta contro la «civiltà della Madre»; la virilità olimpica contro il mito taurino e materno della fecondità; l’ethos delle «società degli uomini» contro la promiscuità entusiastica dell’antico matriarcato.

L’eco se ne spande per tutta l’Europa dove, mille anni più tardi, la migrazione dorica e latina creerà le premesse della visione classica della vita. Ma, prima ancora, gli effetti di questa subitanea ascesa della stirpe nordica, bianca e indoeuropea si fanno avvertire nei più lontani centri d’irradazione: sugli altipiani della Persia e alle soglie dell’India.

* * *

Tratto da Sul problema di una Tradizione europea, Edizioni di Vie della Tradizione, Palermo 1973, pp. 8-12.

The real scene of the Iliad and the Odyssey can be identified not in the Mediterranean Sea, where it proves to be weakened by many incongruities, but in the north of Europe. The sagas that gave rise to the two poems came from the Baltic regions, where the Bronze Age flourished in the 2^nd millennium B. C. and many Homeric places, such as Troy and Ithaca, can still be identified. The blond seafarers who founded the Mycenaean civilization in the 16^th century B. C. brought these tales from Scandinavia to Greece after the decline of the “climatic optimum”. Then they rebuilt their original world, where the Trojan War and many other mythological events had taken place, in the Mediterranean; through many generations the memory of the heroic age and the feats performed by their ancestors in their lost homeland was preserved, and handed down to the following ages. This key allows us to easily open many doors that have been shut tight until now, as well as to consider the age-old question of the Indo-European diaspora and the origin of the Greek civilization from a new perspective.

Ever since ancient times, Homeric geography has given rise to problems and uncertainty. The conformity of towns, countries and islands, which the poet often describes with a wealth of detail, with traditional Mediterranean places is usually only partial or even nonexistent. We find various cases in Strabo (the Greek geographer and historian, 63 B. C. – 23 A.D.), who, for example, does not understand why the island of Pharos, situated right in front of the port of Alexandria, in the Odyssey inexplicably appears to lie a day’s sail from Egypt. There is also the question of the location of Ithaca, which, according to very precise indications found in the Odyssey, is the westernmost in an archipelago which includes three main islands, Dulichium, Same and Zacynthus. This does not correspond to the geographic reality of the Greek Ithaca in the Ionian Sea, located north of Zacynthus, east of Cephallenia and south of Leucas. And then, what of the Peloponnese, described in both poems as a plain?

In other words, Homeric geography refers to a context with a toponymy with which we are familiar, but which, if compared with the actual physical layout of the Greek world, reveals glaring anomalies, which are hard to explain, if only on account of their consistency throughout the two poems. For example, the “strange” Peloponnese appears to be a plain not sporadically but regularly, and Dulichium, the “Long Island” (in Greek “dolichos” means “long”) located by Ithaca, is repeatedly mentioned not only in the Odyssey but also in the Iliad, but was never discovered in the Mediterranean. Thus we are confronted with a world which appears actually closed and inaccessible, apart from some occasional convergences, although the names are familiar (this, however, tends to be more misleading than otherwise in solving the problem).

A possible key to finally penetrating this puzzling world is provided by Plutarch (46 – 120 A.D.). In his work De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet (“The face that appears in the moon circle”), he makes a surprising statement: the island of Ogygia, (where Calypso held Ulysses before allowing him to return to Ithaca) is located in the North Atlantic Ocean, “five days’ sail from Britain”.

Plutarch’s indications lead us to identify Ogygia with one of the Faroe Islands (where we also come across an island with a Greek-sounding name: Mykines). Starting from here, the route eastwards, which Ulysses follows (Book V of the Odyssey) in his voyage from Ogygia to Scheria allows us to locate the latter, i.e. the land of the Phaeacians, on the southern coast of Norway, in an area perfectly fitting the account of his arrival, where archaeological traces of the Bronze Age are plentiful. Moreover, while on the one hand “sker” in Old Norse means a «sea rock», on the other in the narration of Ulysses’s landing Homer introduces the reversal of the river current (Od., V, 451-453), which is unknown in the Mediterranean world but is typical of the Atlantic estuaries during high tide.

From here the Phaeacians took Ulysses to Ithaca, located on the far side of an archipelago, which Homer talks about in great detail. At this point, a series of precise parallels makes it possible to identify a group of Danish islands, in the south of the Baltic Sea, which correspond exactly to all of Homer’s indications. Actually, the South-Fyn Archipelago includes three main islands: Langeland (the “Long Island”; which finally unveils the puzzle of the mysterious island of Dulichium), Aerø (which corresponds perfectly to Homeric Same) and Tåsinge (ancient Zacynthus). The last island in the archipelago, located westwards, “facing the night”, is Ulysses’s Ithaca, now known as Lyø. It is astonishing how closely it coincides with the directions of the poet, not only in its position, but also its topographical and morphological features. And here, amongst this group of islands, we can also identify the little island «in the strait between Ithaca and Same», where Penelope’s suitors tried to waylay Telemachus.

Moreover, the Elis, i.e. one of the regions of the Peloponnese, is described as facing Dulichium, thus is easily identifiable with a part of the large Danish island of Zealand. Therefore, the latter is the original «Peloponnese», i.e. the “Island of Pelops”, in the real meaning of the word “island” (“nêsos” in Greek). On the other hand, the Greek Peloponnese (which lies in a similar position in the Aegean Sea, i.e. on its southwestern side) is not an island, despite its name. Furthermore, the details reported in the Odyssey regarding both Telemachus’s swift journey by chariot from Pylos to Lacedaemon, along «a wheat-producing plain», and the war between Pylians and Epeans, as narrated in Book XI of the Iliad, have always been considered inconsistent with Greece’s uneven geography, while they fit in perfectly with the flat island of Zealand.

Let us look for the region of Troy now. In the Iliad it is located along the Hellespont Sea, which is systematically described as being «wide» or even «boundless». We can, therefore, exclude the fact that it refers to the Strait of the Dardanelles, where the city found by Schliemann lies. The identification of this city with Homer’s Troy still raises strong doubts: we only have to think of Finley’s criticism in the World of Odysseus. It is also remarkable that Schliemann’s site corresponds to the location of the Greek-Roman Troy; however, Strabo categorically denies that the latter is identifiable with the Homeric city (Geography 13, 1, 27). On the other hand, the Danish Medieval historian Saxo Grammaticus, in his Gesta Danorum, often mentions a population known as «Hellespontians» and a region called Hellespont, which, strangely enough, seems to be located in the east of the Baltic Sea. Could it be Homer’s Hellespont? We can identify it with the Gulf of Finland, which is the geographic counterpart of the Dardanelles (as both of them lie northeast of their respective basins). Since Troy, as we can infer from a passage in the Iliad (XXI, 334-335), lay North-East of the sea (further reason to dispute Schliemann’s location), then it seems reasonable, for the purpose of this research, to look at a region of southern Finland, where the Gulf of Finland joins the Baltic Sea. In this area, west of Helsinki, we find a number of name-places which astonishingly resemble those mentioned in the Iliad and, in particular, those given to the allies of the Trojans: Askainen (Ascanius), Karjaa (Caria), Nästi (Nastes, the chief of the Carians), Lyökki (Lycia), Tenala (Tenedos), Kiila (Cilla), Raisio (Rhesus), Kiikoinen (the Ciconians) etc. There is also a Padva, which reminds us of Italian Padua, which was founded, according to tradition, by the Trojan Antenor and lies in Venetia (the «Eneti» or «Veneti» were allies of the Trojans). What is more, the place-names Tanttala and Sipilä (the mythical King Tantalus, famous for his torment, was buried on Mount Sipylus) indicate that this matter is not only limited to Homeric geography, but seems to extend to the whole world of Greek mythology.

What about Troy? Right in the middle of this area, halfway between Helsinki and Turku, we discover that King Priam’s city has survived the Achaean sack and fire. Its characteristics correspond exactly to those Homer handed down to us: the hilly area which dominates the valley with its two rivers, the plain which slopes down towards the coast, and the highlands in the background. It has even maintained its own name almost unchanged throughout all this time. Today, Toija is a peaceful Finnish village, unaware of its glorious and tragic past.

Various trips to these places, from July 11 1992 onwards, have confirmed the extraordinary correspondence between the Iliad‘s descriptions and the area surrounding Toija. What is more, there we come across many significant traces of the Bronze Age. Incredibly, towards the sea we find a place called Aijala, which recalls the “beach” («aigialos»), where, according to Homer, the Achaeans beached their ships (Il., XIV, 34). The correspondence extends to the neighbouring areas. For example, along the Swedish coast facing Southern Finland, 70 km north of Stockholm, the long and relatively narrow Bay of Norrtälje recalls Homeric Aulis, whence the Achaean fleet set sail for Troy. Nowadays, ferries leave here for Finland, following the same ancient course. They pass the island of Lemland, whose name reminds us of ancient Lemnos, where the Achaeans stopped and abandoned the hero Philoctetes. Nearby is Åland, the largest island of the homonymous archipelago, which probably coincides with Samothrace, the mythical site of the metalworking mysteries. The adjacent Gulf of Bothnia is easily identifiable with Homer’s Thracian Sea, and the ancient Thrace, which the poet places to the North-West of Troy on the opposite side of the sea, probably lay along the northern Swedish coast and its hinterland (it is remarkable that the Younger Edda identifies the home of the god Thor with Thrace). Further south, outside the Gulf of Finland, the island of Hiiumaa, situated opposite the Esthonian coast, corresponds exactly to Homer’s Chios, which, according to the Odyssey, lay on the return course of the Achaean fleet after the war.

In short, apart from the morphological features of this area, the geographic position of the Finnish Troas fits Homer’s directions like a glove. Actually, this explains why a «thick fog» often fell on those fighting on the Trojan plain, and Ulysses’s sea is never as bright as that of the Greek islands, but always «dark-wine» and «misty». As we travel through Homer’s world, we experience the harsh weather which is typical of the Northern world. Everywhere in the two poems the weather, with its fog, wind, rain, cold temperatures and snow (which falls on the plains and even out to sea), has little in common with the Mediterranean climate; moreover, sun and warm temperatures are hardly ever mentioned.

There are countless examples of this; for instance, when Ulysses recalls an episode of the Trojan War:

«The night was bad, after the north wind dropped,
and freezing; then the snow began to fall like icy frost
and ice congealed on our shields» (Od., XIV, 475-477).

In a word, most of the time the weather is unsettled, so much so that a bronze-clad fighting warrior invokes a cloudless sky during the battle (Il., XVII, 643-646). We are worlds away from the torrid Anatolian lowlands. The way in which Homer’s characters are dressed is in perfect keeping with this kind of climate. In the sailing season they wear tunics and heavy cloaks which they never remove, not even during banquets. This attire corresponds exactly to the remains of clothing found in Bronze Age Danish graves, down to such details as the metal brooch which pinned the cloak at the shoulder (Od., XIX, 226). Moreover, this fits in perfectly with what Tacitus states on Germanic clothing:

«The suit for everyone is a cape with a buckle»
(«sagum fibula consertum»; Germania, 17, 1).

This northern collocation also explains the huge anomaly of the great battle which takes up the central books of the Iliad. The battle continues for two days (Il., XI, 86; XVI, 777) and one night (Il., XVI, 567). The fact that the darkness does not put a stop to the fighting is incomprehensible in the Mediterranean world, but it becomes clear in the Baltic setting. What allows Patroclus’s fresh troops to carry on fighting through to the following day, without a break, is the faint night light, which is typical of high latitudes during the summer solstice. This interpretation -corroborated by the overflowing of the Scamander during the following battle (in the northern regions this occurs in May or June owing to the thaw)- allows us to reconstruct the stages of the whole battle in a coherent manner, dispelling the present-day perplexities and strained interpretations. Furthermore, we even manage to pick out from a passage in the Iliad (VII, 433) the Greek word used to denominate the faintly-lit nights typical of the regions located near the Arctic Circle: the «amphilyke nyx» is a real “linguistic fossil” which, thanks to the Homeric epos, has survived the migration of the Achaeans to Southern Europe.

It is also important to note that the Trojan walls, as described by Homer, appear as a sort of rustic fence made of wood and stone, similar to the archaic Northern wooden enclosures (such as the Kremlin Walls up to the 15^th century) much more than the mighty strongholds of the Aegean civilizations.

Troy, therefore, was not deserted after the Achaeans plundered and burnt it down, but was rebuilt, as the Iliad states:

«At this point Zeus has come to hate Priam’s stock,
so Aeneas’s power will rule the Trojans now
and then his children’s children and those who will come later on» (Il., XX, 306-308).

On the contrary, Virgil’s quite tendentious, and much more recent, tale of Aeneas’s flight by sea from the burning city of Troy (a homage paid to the emperor Augustus’s family, considered Aeneas’s descendant) is absolutely unrelated to the real destiny of the Trojan hero and his city after the war. As regards this “Finnish” Aeneas, the first king of the dynasty that, according with Homer, ruled Troy after the war (that is a kingdom which, under Priam, dominated a vast area in southern Finland; Il., XXIV, 544-546) it should be very tempting to suppose a relationship between his name and «Aeningia», Finland’s name in Roman times (Pliny, Natural History, IV, 96).

It is remarkable that farmers often come across Bronze and Stone Age relics in the fields surrounding Toija. This is proof of human settlements in this territory many thousands of years ago. Further, in the area surrounding Salo (only 20 km from Toija), archaeologists have found splendid specimens of swords and spear points that date back to the Bronze Age and are now on display in the National Museum of Helsinki. These findings come from burial places, which include tumuli made of large mounds of stones that can be found at the top of certain hills, which rise from the plain today, but which, thousands of years ago, when the coastline was not as far back as it is nowadays, faced directly onto the sea. This relates to a passage in the Iliad, where Hector challenges an Achaean hero to a duel, undertaking, in case of victory, to give back the corpse of his opponent

«so that the long-haired Achaeans can bury him
and erect a mound for him on the broad Hellespont,
and some day one of the men to come,
sailing with a multioared ship on the wine-dark sea, will say:
“This is the mound of a man slain in ancient times,
he excelled but renowned Hector killed him”»
(Il., VII, 85-90; the description of Achilles’ tomb in the last canto of the Odyssey is analogous).

These Homeric mounds «on the broad Hellespont» and the Bronze Age ones near Salo are remarkably similar.

Let us now examine the so-called Catalogue of Ships from Book II of the Iliad, that lists the twenty-nine Achaean fleets which took part in the Trojan War, together with the names of their captains and places of origin. This list unwinds in an anticlockwise direction, starting from Central Sweden, travelling along the Baltic coasts and finishing in Finland. If we combine this with the data contained in the two poems and in the rest of Greek mythology, we may completely reconstruct the Achaean world around the Baltic Sea, where, as archaeology confirms, the Bronze Age was flourishing in the 2^nd millennium B. C., favoured by a warmer climate than today’s.

In this new geographical context, the entire universe belonging to Homer and Greek mythology finally discloses itself with its astonishing consistency. For example, by following the Catalogue sequence, we immediately locate Boeotia (corresponding to the area around Stockholm). Here it is easy to identify Oedipus’s Thebes and the mythical Mount Nysa (which was never found in the Greek world), where the Hyads nursed baby Dionysus. Homer’s Euboea coincides with today’s island of Öland, located off the Swedish coast in a similar position to that of its Mediterranean counterpart. Mythical Athens, Theseus’s native land, lay in the area of present day Karlskrona in southern Sweden (this explains why Plato, in his dialogue Critias, refers to it as being an undulating plain full of rivers, which is totally alien to Greece’s rough morphology). The features of other Achaean cities, such as Mycenae or Calydon, as described by Homer also appear completely different from those of their namesakes on Greek soil. In particular, Mycenae lay in the site of today’s Copenhagen, where the island of Amager possibly recalls its ancient name and explains why it was in the plural. Here, in the flat island of Zealand (i.e. the Homeric «Peloponnese»), we can easily identify Agamemnon’s and Menelaus’s kingdoms, Arcadia, the River Alpheus, and in particular, king Nestor’s Pylos, whose location was held to be a mystery even by the ancient Greeks. By setting Homer’s poems in the Baltic, this age-old puzzle is also solved at once. What is more, it is equally easy to solve the problem of the strange border between Argolis and Pylos, which is mentioned in the Iliad (IX, 153) but is “impossible” in the Greek world. After the Peloponnese, the Catalogue mentions Dulichium and continues with Ithaca’s archipelago, which was already identified by making use of the indications the Odyssey supplies. We are thus able to verify the consistency of the information contained in the two poems as well as their congruity with the Baltic geography. After Ithaca, the list continues with the Aetolians, who recall the ancient Jutes. They gave their name to Jutland, which actually lies near the South-Fyn Islands. Homer mentions Pylene in the Aetolian cities, which corresponds to today’s Plön, in Northern Germany, not far from Jutland. Opposite this region, in the North Sea, the name of Heligoland, one of the North Frisian Islands, recalls Helike, a sanctuary of the god Poseidon mentioned in the Iliad (it is remarkable that an old name for Heligoland was Fositesland, where «Fosite», an ancient Frisian god, is virtually identical to Poseidon).

As regards Crete, the «vast land» with «a hundred cities» and many rivers, which is never referred to as an island by Homer, it corresponds to the Pomeranian region in the southern Baltic area, which stretches from the German coast to the Polish same. This explains why in the rich pictorial productions of the Minoan civilization, which flourished in Aegean Crete, we find no hint of Greek mythology, and ships are so scantily represented. It would also be tempting to assume a relationship between the name «Polska» and the Pelasgians, the inhabitants of Homeric Crete. At this point, it is also easy to identify Naxos (where Theseus left Ariadne on his return journey from «Crete» to «Athens») with the island of Bornholm, situated between Poland and Sweden, where the town of Neksø still recalls the ancient name of the island. Likewise, we discover that the Odyssey‘s «River Egypt» probably coincides with the present-day Vistula, thus revealing the real origin of the name the Greeks gave to Pharaohs’ land, known as «Kem» in the local language. This explains the incongruous position of the Homeric Egyptian Thebes, which, according to the Odyssey, is located near the sea. Evidently the Egyptian capital, which on the contrary lies hundreds of kilometres from the Nile delta and was originally known as Wò’se, was renamed by the Achaeans with the name of a Baltic city, after they moved down to the Mediterranean. The real Thebes probably was the present-day Tczew, on the Vistula delta. To the north of the latter, in the centre of the Baltic Sea, the island of Fårö recalls the Homeric Pharos, which according to the Odyssey lay in the middle of the sea at a day’s sail from «Egypt» (whereas Mediterranean Pharos is not even a mile’s distance from the port of Alexandria). Here is the solution to another puzzle of Homeric geography that so perturbed Strabo.

The Catalogue of Ships now touches the Baltic Republics. Hellas lay on the coast of present-day Esthonia, and thus next to the Homeric Hellespont (i.e. the «Helle Sea»), today’s Gulf of Finland. In this area also lies Kurland -the Curians’ country, that is the mythical Curetes, linked with the worship of Zeus- where is found the figure of a supreme god, who is called Dievas in Lithuania and Dievs in Latvia; in local folklore he shows features typical of Hellenic Zeus (the genitive case of the name «Zeus» in Greek is «Diòs»; Il., I, 5). Moreover, Lithuanian has very archaic features and a notable affinity with the ancient Indo-European language. Phthia, Achilles’s homeland, lay on the fertile hills of southeastern Esthonia, along the border with Latvia and Russia, stretching as far as the Russian river Velikaja and the lake of Pskov. Myrmidons and Phthians lived there, ruled by Achilles and Protesilaus (the first Achaean captain who fell in the Trojan War) respectively. Next, proceeding with the sequence, we reach the Finnish coast, facing the Gulf of Bothnia, where we find Jolkka, which reminds us of Iolcus, Jason’s mythical city. Further north, we are also able to identify the region of Olympus, Styx and Pieria in Finnish Lapland (which in turn recalls the Homeric Lapithae, i.e. the sworn enemies of the Centaurs who also lived in this area). This location of Pieria north of the Arctic Circle is confirmed by an apparent astronomical anomaly, linked to the moon cycle, which is found in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes: it can only be explained by the high latitude. The «Home of Hades» was even further northwards, on the icy coasts of Russian Karelia: here Ulysses arrived, his journeys representing the last vestige of prehistoric routes in an era which was characterised by a very different climate from today’s.

In conclusion, from this review of the Baltic world, we find its astonishing consistency with the Catalogue of Ships -which is, therefore, an extraordinary “photograph” of the Northern Early Bronze Age peoples- as well as with the whole of Greek mythology. It is very unlikely that this immense number of geographic, climatic, toponymical and morphological parallels is to be ascribed to mere chance, even leaving aside the glaring contradictions arising from the Mediterranean setting.

As regards Ulysses’ trips, after the Trojan War, when he is about to reach Ithaca, a storm takes him away from his world; so he has many adventures in fabulous localities until he reaches Ogygia, that is one of the Faroe Islands. These adventures, presumably taken from tales of ancient seamen and elaborated again by the poet’s fantasy, represent the last memory of the sea routes followed by the ancient navigators of the Northern Bronze Age out of the Baltic, in the North Atlantic (where the «Ocean River» flows, i.e. the Gulf Stream), but they became unrecognizable because of their transposition into a totally different context. For example, the Eolian island, ruled by the «King of the winds», «son of the Knight», is one of the Shetlands (maybe Yell), where there are strong winds and ponies. Cyclops lived in the coast of Norway (near Tosenfjorden: the name of their mother is Toosa): they coincide with the Trolls of the Norwegian folklore. The land of Lestrigonians was in the same coast, towards the North; Homer says that there the days are very long (the famous scholar Robert Graves places the Lestrigonians in the North of Norway; moreover, in that area we find the island of Lamøj, which is probably the Homeric Lamos). The island of sorceress Circe -where there are clear hints at the midnight sun (Od., X, 190-192) and the revolving dawns (Od., XII, 3-4), typical phenomena of the Arctic regions- is one of the Lofoten, beyond the Arctic Circle. Charybdis is the well-known whirlpool named Maelstrom, south of the island of Moskenes (one of the Lofoten). South of Charybdis Odysseus meets the island Thrinakia, that means «trident»: really, near the Maelstrom lies Mosken, a three-tip island. The Sirens are shoals and shallows, off the western face of the Lofoten, before the Maelstrom area, which are made even more dangerous by the fog and the size of the tides. The sailors could be attracted by the misleading noise of the backwash (the «Sirens’ Song» is a metaphor similar to Norse «kenningar») on the half-hidden rocks into deceiving themselves that landing is at hand, but if they get near, shipwreck on the reefs is inevitable.

Besides, we can find remarkable parallels between Greek and Norse mythology: for example, Ulysses is similar to Ull, archer and warrior of Norse mythology; the sea giant Aegaeon (who gave his name to the Aegean Sea) is the counterpart of the Norse sea god Aegir, and Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea (who is a mythical shepherd of seals, who lives in the sea depths and is capable of foretelling the future) is similar to the «marmendill» (mentioned by the Hàlfs Saga ok Hàlfsrekka and the Landnàmabòk), a very odd creature, who resembles a misshapen man with a seal-shaped body below the waist, and has the gift of prophecy but only talks when he feels like it, just like Proteus. On the other hand, there are remarkable analogies between the Achaean and Viking ships: by comparing the details of Homeric ships with the remains of Viking ships found in the bay of Roskilde, we realize that their features were very similar. We refer to the flat keel (one infers this from Od., XIII, 114), the double prow (we can deduce this from the expression «amphiélissai» Homer frequently uses with regard to their double curve, i.e. at the stern and the prow), and the removable mast -this is a sophisticated feature typical of Viking ships, which was typical of Homeric ships, too: many passages in both the Iliad (I, 434; I, 480) and the Odyssey (II, 424-425; VIII, 52) confirm without a shadow of doubt that the operations of setting up and taking down the mast were customary at the beginning and the end of each mission.

More generally speaking, apart from the respective mythologies, remarkable parallels are found between the customs of the Achaeans and those of the populations of Northern Europe, although they are separated by almost 3000 years. The systems of social relations, interests and lifestyles of the Homeric world and Viking society, despite the elapsed years, are surprisingly similar. For instance, the «agorà», the public assembly in the Homeric world, corresponds to the «thing» of the Vikings: this was the most important political moment in the running of the community for both peoples. In his turn, Tacitus informs us that at his time the northern populations held public assemblies (Germania, chap. 11), that appear to be very similar to the «thing» (therefore, to the «agorà», too). In a word, the parallels between the Homeric Achaeans, who lived during the Bronze Age, the Germans of the Roman period, and the Medieval Vikings testify to the continuity of the Northern world throughout the ages.

We should note that many Homeric peoples, as the Danaans, Pelasgians, Dorians, Curetes, Lybians and Lapithae, whose traces are not found in the Mediterranean, probably still exist in the Baltic world: they find their present counterparts in the Danes, Poles, Thuringians, Kurlandians, Livonians and Lapps (this identification is supported by their respective geographic locations). Moreover, both poems mention the Sintians, mythical inhabitants of Lemnos who were linked with the smith god Hephaestus (Il., I, 594; Od., VIII, 294): their name is exactly the same as today’s Sintians, i.e. a tribe of Gypsies’, who traditionally are metalworkers and coppersmiths. We also note a possible relationship between the «Argives», another name for the Achaeans, «Argeioi» in Greek -i.e. (V)argeioi, considering the usual loss of the initial V (the «digamma») in the Homeric language- and the “Varangians” (Swedish Vikings).

As regards the Homeric Danaans («Dànaioi» in Greek, who were also Achaeans), at the beginning of the Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus states that «Dudon, who wrote a story about Aquitania, believes that the Danes owe their origins and name to the Danaans» (I, I, 1). This comparison has hitherto been interpreted as a means of exalting the origin of the Danes, but now one could start to see them in a new light. If we still dwell upon the digamma, we should consider now the relationship between the Greek words «areté» (valour) and «àte» (fault or error) and their Latin counterparts «virtus» and «vitium» respectively (apart from the initial V, the vowels A and I are often interchangeable: for example, «ambush» corresponds to the Italian «imboscata»). By applying the same alteration (i.e. A→VI) to the name of the Achaeans («Achaioi» in Greek), we get the word “Vikings”. In a word, Argeioi, Danaioi, and Achaioi, i.e. the three main names Homer gives the peoples comprising the protagonists of his poems, possibly came down to modern times as Varangians, Danes, and Vikings (never found in the Mediterranean area, even in ancient times) respectively.

Here, therefore, is the “secret” which is hidden inside Homer’s poems and is responsible for all the oddities of Homeric geography: the Trojan War and the other events Greek mythology handed down were not set in the Mediterranean, but in the Baltic area, i.e. the primitive home of the blond, «long-haired» Achaeans (the Odyssey claims that Ulysses was fair-haired; XIII, 399; XIII, 431). On this subject, the distinguished Swedish scholar, Professor Martin P. Nilsson, in his works reports considerable archaeological evidence uncovered in the Mycenaean sites in Greece, corroborating their northern origin. Some examples are: the existence of a large quantity of baltic amber in the most ancient Mycenaean tombs in Greece (which is not to be ascribed to trade, because the amber is very scarce in the coeval Minoan tombs in Crete as well as in later graves on the continent); the typically Northern features of their architecture (the Mycenaean megaron is identical to the hall of the ancient Scandinavian Kings); the similarity of two stone slabs found in a tomb in Dendra with the menhirs known from the Bronze Age of Central Europe; the Northern-type skulls found in the necropolis of Kalkani, etc.. Moreover, Aegean art and Scandinavian remains dating back to the Bronze Age present a remarkable affinity -for example, the figures engraved on Kivik’s tomb in Sweden- so much so that a 19^th century scholar suggested the monument was built by the Phoenicians.

Another sign of the Achaean presence in the Northern world in a very distant past is a Mycenaean graffito found in the megalithic complex of Stonehenge in Southern England. Other remains revealing the Mycenaean influence were found in the same area (“Wessex culture”), which date back to a period preceding the Mycenaean civilization in Greece. A trace of contact is found in the Odyssey, which mentions a market for bronze placed overseas, in a foreign country, named «Temese», never found in the Mediterranean area. Since bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, which in the North is only found in Cornwall, it is very likely that the mysterious Temese corresponds to the Thames, named «Tamesis» or «Tamensim» in ancient times. So, following Homer, we learn that, during the Bronze Age, the ancient Scandinavians used to sail to Temese-Thames, «placed overseas in a foreign country», to supply themselves with bronze.

This theory -which has already undergone a positive check by means of inspections carried out on the territories concerned, and meets Popper’s requirement on “falsifiability”- solves many other problems, such as the backwardness of the Homeric civilization compared to the Mycenaeans’; the absence of reference to seafaring and Greek mythology in the Minoan-Cretan world; the inconsistencies between the morphology of several Homeric cities, such as Mycenae and Calydon, and their Greek namesakes; the absurdities concerning the regions of the Peloponnese, and the distance of the allies of the Trojans from the Dardanelles area, and so on. We should also note that oxen are of the utmost importance in the Homeric world: this is the yet further evidence that we are not dealing with a Greek setting, undoubtedly more suitable for goats than oxen, but with a Northern one. Moreover, in a Greek environment one would expect a surfeit of pottery, but this is not the case: in both poems tableware is made solely of metal or wood, while pottery is absent. The poet talks of metal vases, usually of gold or silver.

For example, in Ulysses’s palace in Ithaca,

«a maid came to pour water from a beautiful
golden jug into a silver basin» (Od., I, 136-137).

People poured wine «into gold goblets» (Od., III, 472) and «gold glasses» (Od., I, 142). Lamps (Od., XIX, 34), cruets (Od., VI, 79) and urns, like the one (Il., XXIII, 253) containing Patroclus’s bones, were made of gold. The vessels used for pouring wine were also of metal: when one of them fell to the ground, instead of breaking, it «boomed» (Od., XVIII, 397). In a word, on the one hand, the Homeric poems do not mention any ceramic pottery, which is typical of the Mediterranean world, but, on the other, they are strikingly congruent with the Northern world, where scholars find a stable and highly advanced bronze founding industry, compared to the pottery one, which was far more modest. As to the poor, they used wooden jugs (Od., IX, 346; XVI, 52), i.e. the cheapest and most natural form of vessel, considering the abundance of this material in the North: Esthonia and Latvia have a very ancient tradition of wooden beer tankards.

Therefore, it was along the Baltic coast that Homer’s events took place, before the Mycenaean migration southwards, in the 16^th century B. C.. This period is close to the end of an exceptionally hot climate that had lasted several thousands of years, the “post-glacial climatic optimum”. It corresponds to the Atlantic phase of the Holocene, when temperatures in northern Europe were much higher than today (at that time the broad-leaved forests reached the Arctic Circle and the tundra disappeared even from the northernmost areas of Europe). The “climatic optimum” reached its peak around 2500 B. C. and began to drop around 2000 B. C. (“Sub-Boreal phase”), until it came to an end some centuries later. It is highly likely that this was the cause that obliged the Achaeans to move down to the Mediterranean for this reason. They probably followed the Dnieper river down to the Black Sea, as the Vikings (whose culture is, in many ways, quite similar) did many centuries later. The Mycenaean civilisation, which did not originate in Greece, was thus born and went on to flourish from the 16^th century B. C., soon after the change in North European climate.

The migrants took their epos and geography along with them and attributed the same names they had left behind in their lost homeland to the various places where they eventually settled. This heritage was immortalized by the Homeric poems and Greek mythology (the latter lost the memory of the great migration from the North probably after the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, around the 12^th century B. C., but kept a vague memory of its “hyperborean” links). Moreover, they renamed with Baltic names not only the new countries where they settled, but also other Mediterranean regions, such as Libya, Crete and Egypt, thus creating an enormous “geographical misunderstanding” which has lasted until now. The above-mentioned transpositions of Northern place-names were certainly encouraged, if not suggested, by a certain similarity (which the Mycenaeans realized owing to their inclination for seafaring) between Baltic geography and that of the Aegean: we only have to think of the analogy Öland-Euboea or Zealand-Peloponnese (where they were obliged to force the concept of island in order to maintain the original layout). The increasing presence of Greek-speaking populations in the Mediterranean basin, with their cultural and trade supremacy, later consolidated this phenomenon, from the time of Mycenaean civilization to the Hellenistic-Roman period.

In short, besides the geographic correspondences, in favour of this theory there is the remarkable temporal concurrence between the end of the “climatic optimum” in northern Europe and the settling of the Mycenaeans in the Aegean area. We should also note that a catastrophic event happened at that time: we refer to the eruption of the volcano of Thera (Santorini), around the year 1630 B. C., which presumably extinguished the Minoan civilization in Crete and certainly had severe climatic consequences worldwide (traces of it were found even in the annual rings of very ancient American trees), giving rise to atmospheric phenomena which must have terrorized the Bronze Age civilizations in Northern Europe. If we consider that the “optimum” had begun to decline some centuries before, this event probably started, or quickened, the final collapse.

This is the same age as the arising of Aryan, Hyksos, Hittite and Cassite settlements in India, Egypt, Anatolia and Mesopotamia respectively. In a word, the end of the “climatic optimum” can explain the cause of the contemporary migrations of other Indo-European populations (following a recent research carried on by Prof. Jahanshah Derakhshani of Teheran University, the Hyksos very likely belong to the Indo-European family). The original homeland of the Indo-Europeans was probably located in the furthest north of Europe, when the climate was much warmer than today’s. However, on the one hand G. B. Tilak in The Arctic home of the Vedas claims the Arctic origin of the Aryans, “cousins” of the Achaeans, on the other both Iranian and Norse mythology remember that the original homeland was destroyed by cold and ice. It is also remarkable that, following Tilak (The Orion), the original Aryan civilization flourished in the «Orionic period», when the constellation of Orion marked the spring equinox. It happened in the period from 4000 up to 2500 B. C., corresponding to the peak of the “climatic optimum”.

We also note the presence of a population known as the Tocharians in the Tarim Basin (northwest China) from the beginning of the 2^nd millennium B. C. They spoke an Indo-European language and were tall, blond with Caucasian features. This dating provides us with yet another confirmation of the close relationship between the decline of the “climatic optimum” and the Indo-European diaspora from Scandinavia and other Northern regions. In this picture, it is amazing that the Bronze Age starts in China just between the 18^th and the 16^th centuries B. C. (Shang dynasty). We should note that the Chinese pictograph indicating the king is called «wang», which is very similar to the Homeric term «anax», i.e. “the king” (corresponding to «wanax» in Mycenaean Linear B tablets).

On the other hand, the terms «Yin» and «Yang» (which express two complementary principles of Chinese philosophy: Yin is feminine, Yang masculine) could be compared with the Greek roots «gyn-» and «andr-» respectively, which also refer to the “woman” and the “man” («anér edé gyné», “man and woman”, Od., VI, 184). Moreover, it is no accident that in this period the Steppe peoples -the Scythians, as the Greeks used to call them- who were blond or red-haired, flourished in the area where the Volga and the Dnieper run, the rivers that played such an important role as trade and transit routes between north and south. A passage from Herodotus about the origin of the Scythians corroborates this picture:

«They say that 1000 years elapsed from their origin and their first king Targitaos to Darius’s expedition against them» (History, IV, 7).

As this expedition dates back to 514 B. C., their origin would thus date back to the 16^th century B. C., i.e. the epoch of the Mycenaean migration. One could venture to include in this picture the Olmecs also. They seem to have reached the southern Gulf Coast of Mexico in about the same period; thus, one could infer that they were a population who had formerly lived in the extreme north of the Americas (being connected to the Indo-European civilization through the Arctic Ocean, which was not frozen at that time), and then moved to the South when the climate collapsed (this, of course, could help to explain certain similarities with the Old World, apart from other possible contacts).

Returning to Homer, this reconstruction not only explains the extraordinary consistency between the Baltic-Scandinavian context and Homer’s world (compared to all the contradictions, over which the ancient Greek scholars racked their brains in vain, arising when one tries to place the Homeric geography in the Mediterranean), but also clarifies why the latter was decidedly more archaic than the Mycenaean civilization. Evidently, the contact with the refined Mediterranean and Eastern cultures favoured its rapid evolution, also considering their marked inclination for trade and seafaring which pervades not only the Homeric poems, but also all Greek mythology. Furthermore, this thesis fits in very well with the strong seafaring characterisation of the Mycenaeans. As a matter of fact, archaeologists confirm that the latter had been intensely practicing seafaring from their settling in Greece (their trade stations are found in many Mediterranean shores). Therefore, they had inherited a tradition dating back to a long time before, which implies that their original land lay near the sea. Further, the northern features of their architecture and their own physical traits fit in perfectly with the parallels between Homeric and Norse myths, which not only possess extremely archaic features, but also are of an undeniably seafaring nature. This is hard to explain with the current hypotheses about the continental origin of the Indo-Europeans, whereas the remains found in England fit in very well with the idea of a previous coastal homeland (by associating this with the typically northern features of their architecture we remove any doubt as to their place of origin).

Many signs prove the antiquity of the two poems and their temporal incongruity with Greek culture (this also explains why any reliable information regarding the author, or authors, of the poems had been lost before classical times), showing that they in fact belong to a “barbaric” European civilization, very far from the Aegean, as has been noticed by authoritative scholars, such as Prof. Stuart Piggott in his Ancient Europe. Moreover, Radiocarbon dating, corrected with dendrochronology (i.e. tree-ring calibration) has recently questioned the dogma of the Eastern origin of European civilization. Prof. Colin Renfrew describes the consequences for traditional chronology:

«These changes bring with them a whole series of alarming reversals in chronological relationships. The megalithic tombs of western Europe now become older than the Pyramids or the round tombs of Crete, their supposed predecessors. The early metal-using cultures of the Balkans antedate Troy and the early bronze age Aegean, from which they were supposedly derived. And in Britain, the final structure of Stonehenge, once thought to be the inspiration of Mycenaean architectural expertise, was complete well before the Mycenaean civilization began» (Before civilization, the radiocarbon revolution and prehistoric Europe, chap. 4, “The Tree-ring Calibration of Radiocarbon”).

Consequently, Prof. Renfrew goes so far as to say:

«The whole carefully constructed edifice comes crashing down, and the story-line of the standard textbooks must be discarded» (Before civilization, chap. 5, “The Collapse of the Traditional Framework”).

To conclude, this key could allow us to easily open many doors that have been shut tight until now, as well as to consider the age-old question of the Indo-European diaspora from a new perspective.

Iscrizione licia a Xanthos

L’indeuropeista danese Holger Pedersen (1867-1953), autore della monumentale Vergleichende Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen (Göttingen 1909-1913), si occupò anche, tra l’altro, di albanese, di armeno, di lingue balto-slave, di tocario e di ittita. A quest’ultima lingua Pedersen dedicò un lavoro intitolato Hittitisch und die anderen indoeuropäischen Sprachen (København 1938), nel quale affermò che l’ittita, per quanto lontano sia dal tipo indeuropeo, è per certe sue caratteristiche “così arcaico che, per l’aspetto generale della famiglia linguistica, è altrettanto importante quanto l’antico indiano e il greco” (p. 191).

Fra il 1879 e il 1902, insieme coi norvegesi Sophus Bugge (1833-1907) ed Alf Torp (1853-1916), Holger Pedersen sostenne il carattere indeuropeo del licio e del lidio, due lingue parlate nell’Anatolia occidentale nel I millennio a. C. A quell’epoca si conoscevano soltanto circa 150 iscrizioni licie, risalenti ai secc. V e IV a. C., ma non erano ancora note le lingue anatoliche del II millennio, sicché l’ipotesi dei glottologi nordici non poté scuotere l’autorità della teoria allora dominante, secondo cui la popolazione pregreca dell’Asia Minore non sarebbe appartenuta alla famiglia indeuropea.

Sul finire del XIX secolo alcuni linguisti avevano infatti formulato la teoria secondo cui la lingua dei Lici e le altre antiche lingue dell’Asia Minore (misio, lidio, cario ecc.) sarebbero appartenute ad una famiglia diversa sia da quella indeuropea sia da quella semitica. Faceva eccezione il frigio, ritenuto lingua indeuropea per via dei numerosi elementi lessicali assai simili al greco contenuti nelle iscrizioni frigie. Fu così che nacque l’ipotesi di un’affinità delle lingue egeo-microasiatiche con quelle caucasiche.

Soltanto nel 1936 un professore di glottologia dell’Università di Pavia, Piero Meriggi (1899-1982), decifratore dell’ittita geroglifico, rilanciò i risultati delle ricerche compiute da Pedersen, Bugge e Torp, rafforzandoli con nuove argomentazioni. Da parte sua, basandosi su alcune analogie morfologiche nella declinazione e nella coniugazione e sulla presenza di un gruppo di elementi lessicali comuni, Pedersen metteva in luce la vicinanza del licio e dell’ittita, affermando in particolare che il licio rappresenta un più tarda fase di sviluppo del luvio: “In gewissen Beziehungen würde das Luwische sich besser als Stammutter des Lykischen empfehlen” (Lykisch und Hittitisch, Kopenhagen 1949). Tali vedute furono confermate alla fine degli anni Cinquanta dalla Comparaison du louvite et du lycien (“Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris”, 55, pp. 155-185 e 62, pp. 46-66) del francese Emmanuel Laroche (1914-1991), il quale mostrò la corrispondenza del termine ittita per ‘Licia’ (Lukka) con il luvio Lui-, da un più antico *Luki-, donde l’identità dei nomi Luwiya e Lykìa.

Dal fatto che nelle iscrizioni licie siano individuabili alcuni elementi tipici di una lingua satem l’indeuropeista bulgaro Vladimir Ivanov Georgiev conclude che nel licio sarebbero presenti due componenti: “la prima è probabilmente il licio, successore del luvio (e vicino all’ittita), la seconda è probabilmente il termilico, successore del pelasgico” (Vladimir I. Georgiev, Introduzione alla storia delle lingue indeuropee, Roma 1966, p. 233), sicché la lingua licia del I millennio costituirebbe il risultato della mescolanza di queste due lingue.

Siamo dunque in presenza di un caso che giustifica la nozione di “peri-indeuropeo”, in quanto nel licio, come nel lidio, gli elementi indeuropei sono innegabili, però “è difficile considerare queste lingue sullo stesso piano delle lingue indeuropee normali” (Giacomo Devoto, Origini indeuropee, Padova 2005, p. 206). Così il Devoto, per il quale il licio e il lidio, assieme alle altre lingue anatoliche più o meno vicine all’ittita, “completano l’imagine di una complessità linguistica accanto ad una etnica, intorno alla nozione etnico-linguistica ben definita dagli Ittiti” (op. cit., p. 426).

Alla componente etnolinguistica indeuropea corrisponde, nella cultura politica del popolo licio, un caratteristico “tratto delle vecchie radici indoeuropee, [ossia] che le città licie erano governate da consiglieri anziani (senati)” (Francisco Villar, Gli Indoeuropei e le origini dell’Europa. Lingua e storia, Bologna 2008, pp. 352-353), mentre dal sostrato preindeuropeo proviene quell’aspetto matriarcale che non era sfuggito all’osservazione di Erodoto. “Solo questo uso è loro proprio – scrive il padre della storia – e in ciò non assomigliano a nessun altro popolo: prendono il nome dalle madri e non dai padri. Se uno chiede al vicino chi egli sia, questi si dichiarerà secondo la linea materna (metròthen) e menzionerà le antenate della madre. E qualora una donna di città sposi uno schiavo, i figli sono considerati nobili; qualora invece un uomo di città, anche il primo di loro, abbia una moglie straniera o una concubina, i figli sono perdono ogni diritto” (I, 173, 4-5).

Già in Omero, d’altronde, è attestato il singolare costume licio della discendenza matrilineare: Bellerofonte, scelto dal re di Licia come genero e reso partecipe di metà del potere regale, rappresenta una “eccezione ai normali costumi matrimoniali attestati nel mondo omerico” (Maria Serena Mirto, Commento a: Omero, Iliade, Einaudi-Gallimard, Torino 1997, p. 970); tra i suoi nipoti, l’erede del potere regale e il comandante supremo dei Lici nella guerra di Troia non è Glauco, “lo splendido figlio di Ippoloco” (Iliade, VI, 144), bensì Sarpedonte, figlio di Laodamia: “Accanto a Laodamia giacque il saggio Zeus, – ed essa generò Sarpedonte dall’elmo di bronzo, pari agli dèi” (Iliade, VI, 198-199).

Questa storia viene presa in considerazione da Bachofen nelle pagine introduttive al Mutterrecht: “Accanto ad una testimonianza assolutamente storica di Erodoto, la storia mitica del re presenta un caso di trasmissione ereditaria matrilineare. Non i figli maschi di Sarpedone [Sic. "Sarpedone" in luogo di "Bellerofonte" è ovviamente una svista del traduttore], ma Laodamia, la figlia, è l’erede legittima, e questa cede il regno a suo figlio, il quale esclude gli zii. (…) La preferenza data a Laodamia nei confronti dei suoi fratelli conduce Eustazio all’osservazione che un tale trattamento di favore della figlia rispetto ai figli maschi contraddice interamente le concezioni elleniche” (Johann Jakob Bachofen, Introduzione al “Diritto materno”, a cura di Eva Cantarella, Editori Riuniti, Roma 1983, pp. 44-45).

Nel 1862, un anno dopo la pubblicazione del Mutterrecht, Bachofen riprende l’argomento con Das lykische Volk und seine Bedeutung für die Entwicklung des Altertums, Freiburg im Breisgau. Ne esistono due traduzioni italiane: quella di Alberto Maffi (Il popolo licio e la sua importanza per lo sviluppo dell’antichità, in: Il potere femminile. Storia e teoria, a cura di Eva Cantarella, Il Saggiatore, Milano 1977) e quella ormai irreperibile del latinista E. Giovannetti (Il popolo licio, Sansoni, Firenze 1944), che viene riproposta nel presente fascicolo.

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Tratto, con il gentile consenso, dal sito dell’Autore.