Andy's Blog: Kamyana Mohyla, Ukraine

Timeless landmark in the steppes, stone snake skulls (10,000 years old)

(originally posted 7-19-2020 on Facebook)

Today’s site that I’m studying that was around 10,000 years ago is Kamyana Mohyla in Ukraine. It’s name means “Stone Tomb”. There aren’t any skeletons actually buried here, but it reminded people of a buriel mound made of stone. It actually formed as an island within a river which has since shifted and now looks like an isolated stone mountain in the middle of the forested plains. It’s a real landmark of the Eurasian Steppes. People have been coming here and etching its stones since before 20,000 years ago all the way through the present, and records of each civilization that passed through here are marked on it.

One discovery that they made that was from around 10,000 years ago were a pair of stones that were carved in the shape of a snake head, one carved about 10,000 years ago and the other one about 500 years later. Some theorize this could be evidence of a long lasting snake cult in the area. I noticed, however, that when you explore the stone mounds, even today you have to watch out for snakes hiding in the crevaces, so maybe they were supposed to offer some kind of luck in avoiding snakes instead? The ones who created these stone snake heads were hunter gatherers and fishers, living before farming or animal husbandry.

It’s possible that these people were among many European’s ancestors, especially those from Northern Europe like Norway or Germany. Later, hunter gatherers from the Caucasian Mountains would mix with the hunter gatherers living in this steppe area and they would start raising livestock. These people became known as the Yamnaya and they would manage herds of domestic horses and master the chariot. They would sweep throughout Europe over many generations all the way to Great Britain, and also down to India, and would mix with the people already living there. The Indo-European language family derives from their languages. So this place could have been very important to many European’s ancestors such as myself.

Sources:

News Stories-

Study Neolithization Plants (Jul 2017)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324330404_Vegetation_shifts_at_the_monumental_Ukrainian_site_of_Kamyana_Mohyla_during_the_Neolithisation_period

Snake Head Rocks (Dec 2018)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/64284-stone-age-snake-sculptures.html

https://www.livescience.com/64284-stone-age-snake-sculptures.html

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/ukraine-rock-art-0011173

https://www.inquisitr.com/5209549/archaeologists-have-discovered-rare-snake-heads-carved-out-of-stone-in-ukraine-that-date-back-8300-years/

Rediscovered Rock Art (Jul 2020)

https://meso2020.sciencesconf.org/324667/document

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