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A couple of months ago, a book on horses arrived from Uppsala University, written by archaeologists Anders Kaliff and Terje Oestigaard: “The Great Indo-European Horse Sacrifice.” This week, the book took center stage in a seminar organized by the LAMP – Languages and Myths of Prehistory project.
The LAMP project, which is funded by the Riksbank’s anniversary fund, deals with early Indo-European languages and myths. It would hardly have been possible to start a project of this type a few years ago. For many decades, since the end of World War II, research on Indo-Europeans has lived an isolated life, accused of being challenged by the Nazis. It is certainly true that far-right circles in Nazi Germany and elsewhere have abused research into so-called Aryans. But the criticism in many cases has been exaggerated, incorrect and unfair.
New DNA research, published as of 2015, has changed the conditions.
DNA analysis from several competing research groups clearly shows how extensive migrations occurred a few thousand years ago. These migrations are almost in line with the theories that linguists have long had about how Indo-European languages spread.
From the steppes of present-day southern Russia and Ukraine, an early wave reached Europe, beginning around 4,800 years ago. Here new cultures arose that eventually spread back to the steppes. About 3,500 years ago, a new wave of Indo-Europeans moved south from the steppes into the regions of present-day India and Iran.
With this knowledge in mind, Kaliff and Oestigaard seem to see patterns. For example, the connection between the Indian ashwamedha tradition (Sanskrit for “hästoff”) and the many fragments burned in Old Uppsala. They believe the rubble is the remains of large bonfires that were part of similar ceremonies.
That the substances occurred in Scandinavia it is covered, among other things, in the Stentoftenstenen runestone on the outskirts of Sölvesborg, which is approximately from the 6th century. HaþuwulfR is said to have slaughtered nine goats and nine horses during a good year.
There are a number of other written sources, each of which can be questioned, but which together point to the fact that hyenas were included in Scandinavian ceremonies.
And there are several rock carvings from the Bronze Age that can hardly be misinterpreted. They clearly show men exercising tidal teams with horses.
In the Vedic ritual of ashwamedha, it is the opposite. There, the queen handles the penis of the murdered horse. (Similar stories are mentioned in texts from, among others, ancient Greece.)
From india There are various accounts of how an Ashwamedha sacrifice goes, from the earliest Vedic scriptures onwards. One text says, for example, that a total of 636 animals were sacrificed. Among these animals there was only one horse, which was the culmination of the ceremony.
Anders Kaliff and Terje Oestigaard point out that this distribution of animals makes it difficult for an archaeologist to want to show that, for example, Skeke and Gamla Uppsala in Uppland or Aneby in Småland were actually big horse settings already during the Bronze Age.
Since the Iron Age and Viking Age is easier, there are many preserved horse skeletons from ship graves. And it appears that powerful men have stallions with them in the grave, while powerful women have a mare, according to archaeologist Torun Zachrisson.
Kaliff and Oestigaard also see parallels with the so-called skeid (rigged battle between two stallions) and Staffans walks that have occurred in the 20th century.
Of course, it is possible to question the continuity of the tidal layers from rock carvings and Vedic ashwamedha up to these more recent phenomena. But it can also be seen as a step forward for linguists, religious scientists, and archaeologists to incorporate DNA and new science as they put their puzzles together and formulate what may be most likely.
