| 2. Vucedol Year Compared to the Other Prehistoric Calendars | 3. The Four Seasons of the Year |
The pot shown on the picture above, dated prior to 2600 BC, is an extraordinary archaeological discovery: it is one of the most important products of Vucedol Culture, as it is the oldest European calendar, and also the world's oldest astral calendar. Although evidence exists that solar or lunar positions were marked from the mid third millennium BC, true calendars (structures such as Stonehenge) were created hundreds of years after the Vucedol period.
The calendar is synchronous with the Sumerian and Egyptian calendars and is by no means their replica, because it had been established on the far more northern, 45th parallel. The climatic conditions corresponding to that latitude brought about four yearly seasons.
The pot from is decorated with four parallel bands, from the broadest part to the base, and only the neck is undecorated. Even in the period of the Vucedol Culture the vessel was seriously chipped and is missing part of the decoration, but from the position of the find, it is apparent that it was still in function. Only the decorative band on the lowest layer was completely preserved, and it was divided into 12 fields. Every other field was decorated with various marks that do not have any mutual symmetry. The upper rows, although they were not entirely preserved, were decorated so that an undecorated field in the lower row would have a decoration in the upper row. The square fields were parallel along the verticals, but at one spot they narrowed in three upper rows, so that they most probably could form 13 squares.
The simple explanation of Vucedol Calendar is: each of the four lateral bands on the vessel represents the four seasons, starting with spring on the top. Each band is divided into twelve boxes, making up 12 "weeks" for each season. Each of the little boxes contains a picture of what you see when you look at a certain point on the horizon right after twilight. The place of reference on the horizon is the point at which (in those days) Orion's belt disappeared from view at the end of winter, which meant the beginning of a new year. The pictographs in the boxes represent: Orion, the Sun, Cassiopeia, Cygnus, Gemini, Pegasus, and the Pleiades. If the box has nothing in it, it means there was nothing visible at the reference point. Naturally, the very common symbolism of the Sun (without a single depiction of the Moon) shows the complete displacement of lunar symbolism, which is an Indo-European trait.
The Pleiades were depicted in three belts (summer, autumn and winter), and were left out of the spring one, as they set below the horizon several days before Orion's Belt.
In conclusion we can once again confirm that this calendar recognized 4 seasons, with 12 fields (weeks?) in the lowest belt. Perhaps someplace near the previously hypothesized extrusions was a marker to determine a certain number of days or weeks, but this can only be conjectured.
There are several things remarkable about this. While the other cultures in the world were trying to construct a lunar calendar to mark the passage of time and then trying to figure out why it didn't work right, the Vucedols instead went astral. Like other ancient cultures, they probably saw Orion as the primary sky-god among the constellations - in Egypt, Osiris-Ra is also associated with Orion - so, naturally, they wanted him as the focal point of their calendar.
The year at Vucedol began with the spring equinox, when the Sun symbolically supplanted the most important winter constellation of Orion. To be more exact, that night Orion s Belt appeared a short while for the last time in the winter sky, disappearing for several months. This chance circumstance, noted by the inhabitants of Vucedol, today no longer exists because of the course of time (precession), helped them in determining the first day of the new year, but also in coordinating the number of days in their year (unknown to us) with the actual number of days of the yearly revolution of the Earth around the Sun.
Judging from the clearly recognizable solar decoration in the upper belt, the other signs, with more or less difficulty, could be attributed to astral symbolism. More precisely, all other than the Sun bore the symbolism of constellations. The four horizontal bands represent the four seasons. Each is divided by a system of checkerboards into twelve quadrants and they could represent the weeks in a single season (12: with 4 weeks to a month) lasting for three months. Nonetheless, within the horizontal field, no additional division can be perceived that would correspond to months.
Naturally, four seasons, each with three months, correspond to a calendar year, but we must wonder how many days these months, if they actually existed, would have had, and what was the total number of days in the annual calendar of Vucedol. This number is exceptionally important, as it can tell us how much sense this calendar had in the next year. It should be emphasized that the most dependable Egyptian calendar had a year of 365 days, and only in the prehistoric period did the Chinese (from the 14th century BC) introduce a year of 365.5 days. Closer geographically, only in the Roman period (Ptolemy, AD130) was a correction to the calendar introduced, with the adding of 1 day every fourth year.
If we attempt to conjecture the number of days in the Vucedol year, according to the preserved vessel, the following variants are possible:
1.) 12 months x 28 (4 x 7) days = 336 days. At the end of the year yet another month of 28 days could be added, and the year would have 364 days. Thus, it would be shorter by only 1.5 days, but this extra month has no space on the vessel. Four weeks, each of seven days, is not in accord with the lunar cycle, as the changes of the moon on which this division is based, which can be observed in a relatively short period, occupy somewhat more than 29 and a half days. Already after the second lunar cycle, confusion would rule, and some order had to be established with possible corrections. In any case, a year that has months of 28 days, despite the possibilities of corrections, has not been recorded. The Sumerians had a division into seven days, but this was tied by name to seven mobile heavenly bodies. In later times, the Jews had a division into seven days (the creation of the world took 6 days, and God rested on the seventh), and this seemingly evolved from a Mesopotamian heritage.
2.) Perhaps the decorated symbols corresponded to a number of 8 days, and the undecorated to 7, and the total number of days in a month (8+7+8+7) would be 30 days (a season of 90 days), which would be close to the actual lunar cycle of 29.53 days.
With twelve months of 29.5 days, the year measured 354 days, and was 11 days shorter than in fact. This was how they started with the calendar in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. At first, they added another month as a correction every third year, but because of a lack of continued rule in a single center, this was inconsistently carried out. The months of the lunar calendar alternatively had 29 and 30 days. A corrected calendar of 360 days was introduced by bureaucratic administration in the 24th century BC (12 x 30 days).
Both the solar and lunar calendars were known in Egypt, and the year had 12 months of 30 days, and a further five days were added, each day dedicated to a certain god or goddess. Naturally, this year also lagged behind, and through 1460 years, one celebration would pass through all days in the year and return to the starting point (the so-called Sothis year). Correction was nonetheless made at the rising and setting on the horizon of the start Sirius (Sothis), who in the Egyptian religion corresponded to the goddess Isis, sister and wife to Osiris (Orion). The Egyptian month was divided into three decadic periods or intervals of ten days.
The Vucedol calendar is entirely distinctive, and it could be termed more astral than solar, and it could have had a correction, not in terms of the Moon and Sun, but rather every eight years when Venus was located at a point on a line drawn from the Earth to some constellation. This constellation must have been located in the ecliptic or its vicinity, and the small Pleiades, which was entering the spring equinox in the ecliptic just in the period of the Vucedol Culture (because of the precession), could have served as this target.
The inhabitants of Vucedol, in contrast to some other people, probably recognized Venus in two of its appearances, as the Evening Star in the East and as the Morning Star in the West. This is an indicative detail, as observing Venus from the Earth as an inner planet, the Sun covers it once for 50 days, and a second time "eclipses" it with light for 8 days, so it would be hard to connect its appearance in the eastern and western skies. Thus Venus is not seen from Earth for 8 days (conjunction inferior), so it is visible 263 days, and again 50 days it is not seen (conjunction superior), and finally it is again seen for 263 days, before a new cycle. Perhaps the irregular number of 14 Venus symbols on the lid of the censer has some connection with the rising and setting of Venus in the Earth's 8-year cycle.
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Throughout most of Western Europe, the population in the time of what is termed the Megalithic cultures was also preoccupied with control of the passage of time. They attempted to define the lunar and solar positions in the heavens in relation to some firmly placed stone block, or they observed them according to their position at prominent points in the landscape in relation to a constant point from which they watched. Of greatest interest to them was the solar position at the summer solstice, and in the course of time, they added from 8 to 16 temporal positions. Although evidence exists that solar or lunar positions were marked from the mid third millennium BC, true calendars (structures such as Stonehenge) were created considerably after the Vucedol period, from 2200 to 1600 BC. As can be seen, all those cultures chronologically and spatially relatively close to Vucedol based their observations on solar and lunar relations. |
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In all known symbols used by the Vucedol Culture, there is nothing that would correspond to a symbol for the Moon, other than this indirect association of 12 divided fields in an annual season. It is very difficult to determine a year with the help of the moon, and it is as if it did not exist for them, just as the "Megalithic people" did not know the planets.
Other than the Sun, the constellations played an important role for the Vucedol inhabitants. In entirely concrete situations these can occasionally replace a planet, and clearly they knew of Mars and Venus. The determination of the seasons can best be perceived in the positions and relations between certain symbols that undoubtedly mark constellations characteristic for individual parts of the year. The constellations were depicted that can be seen in a given season at the moment of sunset, as the first visual signs of the evening sky (Orion, Gemini, Pegasus, the Pleiades, Cassiopeia, Cygnus), and within only one season, the Sun.
In the eternal dilemma of when a new annual cycle actually begins - at the winter solstice (when the shortening of days has been stopped) or at the spring equinox (when the day has overcome the length of night), the sky over the Vucedol Culture offered an ideal beginning point - the disappearance of Orion's Belt. The Hellenic Orion comes from a root that designates the concept of "beginning", which in the Hinduistic sphere, the term Agrahayani (occasionally used as a synonym for Mriga, or Orion), literally denotes the beginning of the year. The second cycle, when the spring equinox was in the region of the constellation of Orion, passing through the Pleiades constellation, encompasses the period from the fourth millennium to the twenty-fifth century BC. The period from the twenty-fifth to the fourteenth centuries BC was "the Pleiades period". In the Vedic system, the Pleiades are presided over by the god of the element of fire, Agni, while the Croatian name for the same constellation, 'Vlasici', evidently comes from Voloszara, the fire of the ancient Slavic god Volos. The Pleiades appear like the fluttering remains of fire in a hearth in the night sky.
Spring
On the first, uppermost zone, which is proportionally badly damaged, quadrants can clearly be recognized in the following sequence:
1) Empty square, Sun, empty, Orion, empty, Sun, empty, and the rest is broken off.
This belt undoubtedly evoked spring, according to the previously mentioned terrines that had the Sun or Orion on the horizon. This is the only zone on the vessel where the Sun appears. The depiction particularly emphasized the relation of Orion, the main constellation of the winter sky, and the Sun, which begins to dominate in the following part of the year.
Orion dominates the winter sky from the first trace of darkness to the late evening hours. Because of its southerly position, this constellation is present in the sky for a shorter and shorter period each day towards the end of winter. First it loses two large southern stars, then the belt of three stars sink in the same day, and finally the last signs of this powerful constellation disappear from the sky for several months. The fact that Orion's Belt sank below the horizon on the very day of the spring equinox was the essential point for the Vucedol community, as this marked the end of winter, its death. Winter disappeared with Orion's Belt. Thus in early periods, yearly corrections of calendars could be made in a very exact manner. Today, because of what is known as the precession, Orion remains in the evening sky deep into spring.
This is more as if it is a depiction of the triumph of the Sun (light and heat) in overcoming the darkness and cold of Orion's part of the year rather than a mere symbol of spring. The Sun is there as proof that the last winter day of Orion has been marked, and the first day in the new year of Vucedol.
Summer
The second, lower zone depicts summer, which has only two dominant constellations. This belt is the widest on the vessel, as if this particularly marked the length of the days and the amount of sun in this part of the year.
2) Empty square, the Pleiades, empty, Cygnus, empty, Cassiopeia, empty, the Pleiades.
The constellation of Cassiopeia in the form of the letter W is particularly interesting, as then it was not circumpolar, and at the summer solstice it rose at the setting of the sun at 8 PM. Cygnus (like the cross of St Andrew) was high above the eastern horizon. The third symbol with several concentric circles represents the Pleiades. The six small stars from the Pleiades constellation were replaced here by the symbol for Mars, as it is difficult to mark them all in such a small area, and it is most likely that the planet Mars was their planetary representative, as in Babylonian astronomy. The Pleiades rose one hour after midnight.
"When the Pleiades born of Atlas rise before the sun, begin the reaping; the ploughing, when they set." points out Hesiod in Works and Days, 383-384. Cygnus and Cassiopeia are also in the present zenith of the summer sky at night.
Autumn
Autumn is shown in the third belt:
3) The Pleiades, empty quadrant, Gemini, empty, the Pleiades, empty, Pegasus and Pisces, empty, the Pleiades...
In 3000 BC, the Pleiades rose on the first day of autumn at 7 PM, and Gemini (two diagonally placed stars) around 8:30 PM. The constellations of Pisces and Pegasus, then treated as a single astral symbol, were most often depicted on the Vucedol vessels as two diagonally overlapping squares, although at least two other artistic variants. Pegasus/Pisces at 8 PM was high in the heavens, practically at its culmination.
In the early Sumerian Zodiac of 18 signs around 1000 BC, these two signs were separate, but in the 6th century BC reduction to 12, they were united into one, and as early as the 4th century BC, the large rectangle of Pegasus was removed from the combination, and only the corner remained that closes off the two fish. This symbol was particularly difficult to decipher, but on the basis of analogies from Sumer, the zodiac from Dendera in Egypt, the modern sign of the zodiac for Pisces from Toba Batak in Sumatra, the zodiac from a drinking gourd from the Ivory Coast, etc. it was possible to recognize this sign. Its three variants come from combinations of the corner that closes off the fish and the rectangle from the body of Pegasus. It is most commonly found as a combination of two overlapping squares at a 45-degree angle, or as a rectangle or rhombus filled with a checkerboard pattern with nine of more small squares.
Winter
The winter sky in the lowest belt is particularly interesting. This is not merely because of the total preservation of the vessel in this section with 12 squares, but also because of the entire depiction of the winter sky.
4) Empty square, Cassiopeia, empty, Pegasus/Pisces, empty, Orion, empty, Pleiades, empty, Pegasus, empty, Gemini.
Cassiopeia can be seen in winter in perpendicularly to its summer appearance (like the Greek letter sigma). Cassiopeia is generally known as the heavenly W when it is below the North Pole and as the heavenly M when it is above it. Pegasus/Pisces set already at 9 PM on the 21st of December in 3000 BC. Orion is the dominant constellation of the winter sky and practically its symbol. Gemini, with its two brilliant stars, also ornament the vault of heaven, and the already well-known star grouping of the Pleiades (here with the symbol of Mars in replacement) would have been directly above the head of an observer of the night sky in Vucedol.
Copyright © Josip Stajfer 2003. All rights reserved.
