Talk:Proto-Indo-European mythology/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

piereligion.org - Not a reliable source

A great deal of the misattributed information I have been deleting seems to have actually originated from the website http://piereligion.org/, which is definitely not a reliable source by any means. For one thing, the website is written from the perspective of a modern worshipper and is extremely biased to say the least. As just an example of this bias, it dismisses the widely-accepted Trifunctional hypothesis out of hand as nothing more than "Catholic Fascism." Also, the website is not very careful with its information. It claims that "at least 40" Proto-Indo-European deities can be reconstructed. Mallory and Adams 2006, however, only mentions about half that many and even then dismisses over half of the deities it does mention as being too speculative. Similarly, the website, for some reason, associates modern folklore traditions dating back only a few hundred years with Proto-Indo-European religion. For instance, it associates the English "John Barleycorn" folk song, the earliest version of which comes from no earlier than the fourteenth century, with an alleged PIE harvest god. Future editors should be warned against taking the information on the website at face value. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:19, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Bilgyish has twice added a link to the above referenced website. I took a look a the site in question, and it has no "about" section to tell who is running it or what their qualifications are. Their homepage even notes that, "it is often very difficult to find good or even bad sources of information about the Indo-European religion," which makes me wonder if they are indiscriminate in their source selection, thinking that bad information is better than no information, which is kind of the opposite of the view we take here at Wikipedia. I've removed the link, and I think it is a good idea if Bilgyish and anyone else who wants to re-add it discuss it here at the talk page first. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 19:19, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you very much, User:ONUnicorn. I greatly appreciate your help in this. I am trying to clean up this article and make sure that all of the information presented in it is factually accurate and cited to reliable sources. The last thing we need right now are people adding links to unreliable websites. I can only assume that User:Bilgyish has the most honorable of intentions, but I fear he or she may have been misled by shoddy research that simply sounds professional. Just because a site is a ".org" does not automatically make it reliable. Anyone can register a ".org" website and write whatever he or she wants on it, even if it is not true. I think that the creator or creators of piereligion.org probably have good intentions and do not mean to mislead people, but they seem to be motivated primarily by their own interests and, in many cases, resort to sloppy research simply for the sake of having information to present, even if that information is not accurate. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:39, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Since you are working on this, there are a lot of problems with this page. Here are a few of the broader ones.

Many of the entries in the pantheon section are identical with the pantheon page at http://piereligion.org/pantheon.html except where they have been changed recently. No explanation or reference has been offered for why both male and female deities are listed under the same heading. No other author does that except the piereligion page. It’s hard to see why a moon god would even be included. Although the word for moon has cognates in many languages, Mallory and Adams don’t even have an entry for a moon god in the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Many of the entries don’t have any scholarly support, so why are they even included?

There is no reference given for Puhvel using the word pandemonium in this way. The whole section should probably be removed, since that idea seems to have been discarded by recent authors anyway.

The mythology section is obviously copied from http://piereligion.org/piemyth.html and most of the entries don’t have any information about them nor any examples. The reference for almost all of them is George Cox, from the Mythology of Aryan Nations, which looks like a load of hogwash published in 1887. That’s hardly a legitimate source. In other places, entire sections (such as on Romulus and Remus and the part about the Lithuanian bull which seems completely irrelevant) are quoted verbatim from the piereligion page without attribution. The Culture myth section is also quoted verbatim.

The section on ritual and sacredness is almost entirely copied from the http://piereligion.org/pieritual.html page. Benveniste says there is no word for religion, so why are they being listed? That can’t be correct. And who has actually heard of Lyle Campbell? Is he a good authority, since he is almost the only listed source for this entire section?

So it’s not just the pantheon section that is copied from the piereligion.org website. Don’t you think, if you are not going to link to the piereligion page, you might want to rewrite or remove the parts that are obviously copied from it? Otherwise, Wikipedia is subject to accusations of plagiarism or even outright copyright violation. And there are many smaller problems, too many to mention, but especially many statements that don’t have any reference. A few are marked citation needed, but most are not marked.8zimusa8 (talk) 19:37, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing this out. I was aware that much of the information came from piereligion.org, but I was not aware that any of it had been directly copied and pasted. I did not really look very closely at the website and only read enough of it to realize that the pantheon section seemed to have been largely based off of it. I will be deleting the problematic material you mentioned here. If the information I delete is factually accurate and I can find sources to support it, I will add the information back, rewriting it in my own words. Some of the information, however, seems to be either irrelevant or else wildly speculative. This material will be removed permanently. I was planning on significantly reducing, if not totally deleting, the "Bulls" section under "mythology" anyway because I have not seen any significant discussion on the topic in the sources I have been using. The other sections under the "Mythology" section still need work, but I think I can probably fix them up.

The Romulus and Remus myth is pertinent and it is actually briefly mentioned at several different points in the "Mythology" chapter of Mallory and Adams 2006.

For the "Cyclical myths" section, I was planning on investigating to find out which of myths mentioned in it have any scholarly support and deleting the ones that do not. I have already deleted several of the myths mentioned in it because they were uncited. I was not sure of what Cox's reputation was, so I went ahead and left the ones cited to him in, even though I had doubts about them.

I thought that the "Pandemonium" section was problematic from the very start, but, until now, I was not planning on deleting it. Now that you have told me this, though, I think that I will delete it. In any case, even if it did have widespread scholarly support (which, judging from its complete non-mention in my sources and based on what you just told me, it does not) it would be better-suited to the Proto-Indo-Iranian religion article than this one.

In regards to your question about why male and female deities are listed under the same heading, the reason for this is because my principle source when I went through and rewrote most of that section was The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World by J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams (2006), which actually does list male and female deities under the same heading. I suspect that the "Pantheon" page at piereligion.org was probably also modeled after the chapter in that book, which explains why the format is so similar. In regards to your question about why deities with such little scholarly support are even mentioned, it is because, while some authorities reject these reconstructions, there are still some who accept them. That said, though, some of them, such as the alleged river goddess *Dehnu and the supposed love goddess *Priheh can probably be deleted entirely since the evidence to support them seems to be so pathologically lacking.

I have not heard of Lyle Campbell either so I do not know his academic reputation. I do know, however, that Mallory and Adams 2006 does include a list of reconstructed words related to religion. There seems to have been no word for the concept of "religion" itself, but they were words used to refer to related concepts. I will see if I can rewrite the "Ritual and sacredness" section using what information Mallory and Adams 2006 provides.

Right now, my available sources are somewhat limited, but I am planning on buying more scholarly books on the subject to use as sources. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:21, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

I have found yet another very good reason to distrust piereligion.org's reliability. On one page (http://piereligion.org/eastereggs.html), the site seems to argue that Easter eggs are a continuation of Proto-Indo-European tradition, based primarily on the modern widespread popularity of the custom, in spite of the fact that it is widely known that the custom of dying Easter eggs is not especially ancient and originated as a custom among early Greek Orthodox Christians living in Mesopotamia during the first millennium A.D. As a matter of fact, almost the entire section on "Food, Festivals, and Farming" (http://piereligion.org/festivals.html) seems to be almost exclusively a polemic arguing that modern holiday traditions are actually derived from Proto-Indo-European paganism, a ludicrous notion, considering that nearly all modern holiday traditions only go back a few centuries at the most. It has an entire page dedicated to Halloween songs and stories (http://piereligion.org/hallsongs.html), which certainly have nothing to do with the actual reconstructed religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. --Katolophyromai (talk) 23:32, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Katolophyromai, did you actually read the page on the "Halloween songs and stories"? While it mentions a few ideas about how various traditions are connected, most of it is devoted to the author's favorite spooky or haunting music and stories to hear in the Halloween season. He/she is giving recommendations to readers. He/she is not suggesting that (among others) Orpheus in the Underworld (1858) by Jacques Offenbach, St. James Infirmary Blues (1928) by Louis Armstrong, and Minnie the Moocher (1931) by Cab Calloway are representations of Proto-Indo-European religion. Dimadick (talk) 17:34, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

User:Dimadick, I will admit that I mostly just skimmed the page because I did not really consider it worth the time to read the whole thing from beginning to end. In any case, my statements above are mostly just my general impression of the entire section. Please take note of the fact that I do not actually say anything about the author trying to argue that the "Halloween songs and stories" are derived from Indo-European tradition. I merely remarked that the page had nothing to do with Proto-Indo-European religion. My point in making this statement was that, in including this largely irrelevant material on the website about Proto-Indo-European religion, the author seems to give the reader a false impression that the songs and stories actually have some bearing of relevance to the primary subject matter of the website, which, of course, they do not. I apologize if my remarks were misinterpreted. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:14, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree that this site shouldn't be used anywhere on Wikipedia. There are plenty of solid sources out there we could be employing instead of this. :bloodofox: (talk) 19:56, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Consistent notation please?

This article contains weird things like Dyḗus Pḥ_ɑtḗr which disagree with the notation found in other PIE-related articles, such as PIE phonology. For clarity, the same notation should be used in all articles. Is it ok to update these? CodeCat (talk) 17:35, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

The notations used in this article are based off those used in The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World by J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, which is currently one of the few reliable sources I have direct access to. The "alpha" found in the subscripts of some of the names is actually mistake on my part. The font used in the book apparently made the subscript "a" look like an alpha, even though it actually was not supposed to be one. I have just gone through and corrected all of the alphas, replacing them with Latin "a"s. Aside from this error, however, I am not sure what is so "weird" about the notations since they are exactly the same ones used in the book. The notation for *Dyḗus Pḥ_atḗr, which you mentioned, can be found on pages 409 and 431 if you would like to double check to make sure there are no other errors which I have not noticed. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:30, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand. I'm not saying that those PIE terms don't occur in sources, but that is desirable to use a standard notation for all the phonemes. In the more standard PIE notation, used by e.g. Ringe, *Dyḗus Pḥ_atḗr would be written *Dyḗws Ph₂tḗr, and *ĝ^heuH_x- is written *ǵʰewH-. Writing PIE terms in this way makes comparisons easier, since all the more linguistically-oriented articles on PIE use this notation, and Wiktionary uses it as well for its entries. CodeCat (talk) 21:13, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I do understand what you mean. What I am saying is that the notations used in this article are the ones used by Mallory and Adams. I do not recall having ever seen *Dyḗus Pḥ_atḗr written as *Dyḗws Ph₂tḗr. I am not an expert on comparative linguistics, though, so it could be that Mallory and Adams just use really bizarre notation. As for the word *ĝ^heuH_x-, I do not know what the standard notation is because I did not put that word there. It was there long before I came along. If the forms used in this article are outrageously unusual or incorrect, feel free to correct them or replace them with the more commonly-used variants, but these are the only forms I have seen used, or at least that I remember. I suppose it is possible I may have seen other forms and simply do not remember them. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:08, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

As a random reader of the article with no prior knowledge of PIE phonology, the presence of it in the introduction with no note about it makes it just plain weird typeface/characters with no clear purpose. Regardless of consistency of usage, the notion of PIE phonology should at least be mentioned before being used, so as not to confuse the reader with no prior knowledge of the concept.--74.57.201.49 (talk) 17:13, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Chariots, again

As stated above, chariots were a significant part of some expansions of Indo-European branches, and came to have symbolic importance in some societies speaking languages belonging to various Indo-European branches, but chariots and spoked wheels were invented too late to exist during the "period of Indo-European unity" or the earliest expansions (when the only wheeled or horse-drawn vehicles that existed were simple basic wooden carts or wagons with wheels made of solid planks fastened side-by-side). Statements in the article which would seem to contradict this should be modified or removed... AnonMoos (talk) 08:46, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Since no one has given me the courtesy of a response, I may be removing anachronistic material soon. Chariots were part of the religions of some early Indo-European branches, but they could not have been part of Proto-Indo-European religion, since they hadn't yet been invented. AnonMoos (talk) 05:09, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

@AnonMoos: In Chapter Fourteen "Chariot Warriors of the Northern Steppes" of his book The Horse, the Wheel, and the Language (published in 2007 by Princeton University Press), David W. Anthony describes the 1992 discovery of spoke-wheeled chariots in a cemetery at an archaeological site known as Sintashta in the steppes of southwestern Russia. These chariots, believed to be the oldest in the world, most likely date to around 2100 – 1800 BC, based on radiocarbon dating of the central grave of the large kurgan at the site where they were found and the dates of similar sites nearby. Anthony spends a large portion of that chapter, which spans pages 371–411, arguing that the people of the Sintasha culture were both the original inventors of the chariot as well as the ancestors of the Vedic Aryans and other speakers of the satǝm Indo-European languages. I am not entirely sure how relevant this is to our current discussion and I am not an expert on Indo-European archaeology, but it seems to me to show that, at one stage of Proto-Indo-European, speakers of it apparently had chariots, unless I am misinterpreting what Anthony has written. --Katolophyromai (talk) 05:48, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

"The Sintashta culture is widely regarded as the origin of the Indo-Iranian languages", as it says right in the article you linked. The chariot was very important in the early cultures of Indo-Iranian language speakers, but that's something different from "Proto-Indo-European religion". I haven't seen the book in several years, but as I remember it, The Horse, the Wheel, and the Language explains fairly clearly that Proto-Indo-European speakers had relatively crude carts and wagons with solid plank wheels, but not spoked-wheel chariots. I don't know what you're saying about satem languages, because Sintashta was not the origin of the Balts, yet the Baltic languages are satem languages. AnonMoos (talk) 08:16, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

@AnonMoos: I must have been misunderstanding it, then. The last paragraph of the chapter reads:

Their actions reverberated across the Eurasian continent. The northern forest frontier began to dissolve east of the Urals as it had earlier west of the Urals; metallurgy and some aspects of Sintashta settlement designs spread north through the Siberian forests. Chariotry spread west through the Ukrainian steppe MVK culture into southeastern Europe's Monteoru (phase Ic1-Ib), Vatin, and Otomani cultures, perhaps with the satǝm dialects that later popped up in Armenian, Albanian, and Phrygian, all of which are thought to have evolved in southeastern Europe. (Pre-Greek must have departed before this, as it did not share the satǝm innovations.)

Last night, I assumed this meant he was saying that the speakers of satǝm languages originated at Sintashta, but I guess I was clearly wrong. It was very late and I was tired and I am clearly no expert on this subject. I have now gone ahead and removed all the parts of the article dealing with chariots.

I rewrote nearly this entire article back in spring of 2017. I thought I had done a good job rewriting it at the time, but, as I look back over a year later, it seems the section about the sun and moon chariots was almost entirely the guesswork of myself and others who came before me; it was completely lacking in proper scholarly support and, based on what you have said and my rereading of Anthony's chapter, it appears to have also been in direct contradiction with the archaeological and linguistic evidence. I also now realize that I completely misunderstood Anthony's entire chapter about the "Chariot Warriors of the Northern Steppes", because I apparently took it to mean that he was talking about the Proto-Indo-Europeans; whereas I now realize, having reread the chapter, that he was actually only talking about the Proto-Indo-Iranians. It is probably easy to understand why one user described my work here as "terrible and linguistically completely illiterate" and declared that my work "demonstrates no understanding of the cited sources." For this reason, I have been trying to stay away from any articles relating to linguistics, even though I own quite a few books on the subject, since I clearly have no understanding of it.

Nonetheless, I will defend myself somewhat. I think that many of the problems with the article now probably stem less from my own incompetence and more from the fact that, when I first came here, I was extremely reluctant to remove or replace existing information. The original version of this article before I came along, believe it or not, was even more "terrible and linguistically completely illiterate" than the article we have now (probably by far). It was almost entirely plagiarized from http://piereligion.org/pierintro.html, an entirely unreliable self-published amateur website, which was, I think, the original source of all the chariot speculation. I, then, am not responsible for originating the part about the chariots, although I am guilty of perpetuating it. --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:36, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

There's not necessarily any need to beat yourself up unduly, considering that some of these matters only became clear to scholars not all that many decades ago, and there are still some little enigmas (see near the bottom of page 136 of In Search of the Indo-Europeans by J.P Mallory). But I wish someone had paid attention to my message of "21 December 2011" on this page (now in the archives) a little earlier... AnonMoos (talk) 17:23, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Indeed - avoid linguistics and genetics as far as possible is my rule! Johnbod (talk) 02:34, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

@AnonMoos: I removed the image of the Trundholm sun chariot and replaced it with an image of an anthropomorphic stele, which D. Ya. Telegrin and J. P. Mallory identify as belonging to the Yamna culture and speakers of Late Proto-Indo-European.

On a related note, I also removed the content from the "Dawn Goddess" section that I mentioned above as having been criticized as "terrible and linguistically completely illiterate." As I was sorting through that section, I noticed that, actually all of the parts Florian Blaschke criticized were here before me; they were present in this version of the article, before I ever came along, so I am actually not to blame for adding any of that material, though I am guilty of retaining it. It also seems that I attempted (rather clumsily) to find sources for it, even though it was incorrect, and ended up resorting to an unreliable source ("Noyer") that probably found that erroneous information in this very Wikipedia article. This is why I gave up my inclusionist fantasies a long time ago; trying to maintain old, uncited material in an article is dangerous and it is much better to remove uncited content and replace it with cited content rather than trying to find citations for the original. --Katolophyromai (talk) 01:44, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Intro sentence

"Proto-Indo-European religion is the belief system adhered to by the Proto-Indo-Europeans." Religion, belief system?PiCo (talk) 08:09, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

@PiCo: Could you please clarify exactly what your complaint is? It is not really clear from you merely quoting the first sentence of the article. --Katolophyromai (talk) 12:54, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

The idea that religion can be defined as belief is a modern one, rooted in Christianity, specifically in Protestant Christianity, and of limited currency in academic circles. I'm not a student of religion and can't go much further, but I think a better definition is needed. I can ask a professor friend if you want. PiCo (talk) 23:35, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

@PiCo: You are correct about the concept of religion; actually, the word religion itself comes from the Latin word religio, which basically means "observance of traditional rituals." It was not really until after the Thirty Years' War that religion started to take on its modern meaning. Nonetheless, I am not currently aware of specific scholarly objections against using the word religion in reference to belief systems, and that is certainly the sense in which the word is commonly used today.

On the other hand, I have long thought that a better title for this article would be "Proto-Indo-European mythology," since this article, and the sources supporting it, deal more with the deities and myths of the Proto-Indo-Europeans than with actual "religion" per se. Unfortunately, Proto-Indo-European mythology is currently a redirect to this page, so I cannot move this page over a redirect. I do not think that a "requested moves" proposal would have a snowball's chance of going through, since I seem to encounter a large amount of strong objections on Wikipedia to the use of the word myth in general, because people associate that word with the colloquial meaning it holds today (i.e. "a story that is not true") and therefore determine that using the word "myth" violates WP:NPOV. The definition of the word myth used by most scholars, however, is more along the lines of "a traditional story with cultural or religious significance"; in the strict, scholarly sense, the word myth does not imply whether the story in question is true or false.

Also, there are probably many practicing reconstructionist pagans who would object to calling this article "mythology." Proto-Indo-European religion, perhaps because of its association with the so-called "Aryan race" or perhaps because of its inherently speculative nature, seems to attract a surprisingly large number of people who claim to follow a reconstructed form of it as the "way of their ancestors." I suppose that either no one mentioned to them that we know so little about the religion that it would be virtually impossible for a person today to actually follow it or, if someone did, they clearly just chose to ignore that person and make stuff up. In any case, I doubt they would be willing to tolerate this article being called "mythology," due to precisely the same misunderstanding that leads most other people to object to it.

So, we are stuck here with "Proto-Indo-European religion." The name is acceptable, in my view, but I would agree that it is far from the most suitable name. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:22, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Requested move to Proto-Indo-European mythology

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: MOVE Donald Albury 14:01, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

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I have two main reasons for requesting this move:

1. "Religion" principally concerns ritual practices and customs; whereas mythology concerns the body of stories associated with the culture. This article really concerns mythology, not religion. The only section in the entire article that actually concerns religion is the "Ritual and sacredness," which is very brief, mostly uncited, and only talks about words for ritual in PIE. The fact is that we really know nothing at all about the actual ritual practices of the Proto-Indo-Europeans because the rituals in their descendant cultures are too vastly disparate.
2. All the sources mainly call it "mythology" as well. For instance, the chapter on the subject in The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (2006) by J. P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams is titled "Comparative mythology" and the title of M. L. West's 525-page scholarly monograph on the subject published in 2007 by the Oxford University Press is Indo-European Poetry and Myth.

I would have suggested this move over a year ago, but I did not think it would have any chance of going through because people often associate the word "mythology" with the colloquial sense of the word "myth," meaning "a story that is not true," but, as it is used by scholars, the word "myth" does not imply truth or falsehood, but rather merely refers to a traditional story with cultural or religious significance. See, for instance, our own article myth, which defines the subject as follows: "Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in society, such as foundational tales. Myths often consist of sacred narratives about gods." Using the word "religion" in this sense to refer to mythology is just plain euphemistic. --Katolophyromai (talk) 16:40, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Johnbod (talk) 16:52, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support per nom. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:01, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support. Very little of the actual religion is known. Knowledge about the mythology is most of what survives. Rreagan007 (talk) 20:53, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support. Sensible suggestion. – Joe (talk) 10:19, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support. Agreed. per 8zimusa8 --8zimusa8 (talk) 18:02, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support Hrodvarsson (talk) 21:55, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support per nom. --DRrluck (talk) 19:40, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
• Support. If the article includes nothing about the ritual practices (as it doesn't after this edit), and the practices are near-impossible to reconstruct anyway, the myths, deities, and cosmology are all that's left. "Mythology" is the only term that can encompass all three things. A. Parrot (talk) 20:34, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Primordial principle

Requested 3O on this ...

User:Katolophyromai starts an edit war. Added new section Proto-Indo-European_religion#Primordial principle on the primordial principle above the deities in proto-Indo-European religion. User:Katolophyromai declares sources as invalid.

My suggestions for accomodating this difference is :

1 ) Verify if the sources are sufficient to prove that the Three Fates in Indo-European mythology were above the gods in the hierarchy. My personal opinion is yes, the sources are sufficient.

2) do the Three Fates represent a Primordial Principle. Yes, this can still be seen in the Eastern triads Brahman - Vishnu - Shiva,...

i have to point out that i think that User:Katolophyromai is corrupted by his christian faith. An impersonal Primordial principle above the Skyfathers very likely violates his personal worldview, however his personal worldview does not count here ... I think it is strange behavior when checks at 6 a.m. ( before work ? ) if someone wrote something 'evil' in wikipedia — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.20.6.67 (talk) 17:33, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

First, please review Wikipedia:No personal attacks. Second, the material you're adding and re-adding violates a number of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, namely WP:SYNTH, WP:OR, and WP:RS. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:02, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Could you explain why the sources are not reliable because this is one of the key points... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.204.138.216 (talk) 18:38, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

at :bloodofox: The norns are higher than Odin, the norns carve runes in Yggdrasil ( the runes represent fate ) and Odin feels envy because of this. This is why he hangs himself on Yggdrasil what gives him insight in the secrets of the runes. However he still can only see the runes ( precognition , ... ) he can not carve them in Yggdrasil, only the norns are capable of carving the runes and so have a strong influence also on Odin's fate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.204.138.216 (talk • contribs)

First, let me clear a few things up: I was not the one who "start[ed] an edit war"; that was you. Per policy, if an editor makes a change and the change is reverted, the original status quo before the change is the default position until an alternative consensus is reached. Next, you are imputing motives to me that are not at all mine, nor do I think they would even be sensible. I do not equate the Deity that I believe in with *Dyḗus Pḥatḗr. Hypothetical historical influences aside, what the Proto-Indo-Europeans believed about their sky-god's position in their pantheon over four millennia ago has no relevance on what I personally happen to believe today. I do not have a stake in the game here. The reason why I reverted your edit is because the material you added violates numerous Wikipedia policies. Finally, I never called the material you added "evil," nor did I in any way ever remotely imply that I thought it was. I do not consider it "evil" in the slightest. "Evil" is a word that I virtually never use in reference to anything, since I believe it implies malicious intent and, like Plato, I generally believe that most wrongdoing is the result of misunderstanding and ignorance rather than deliberate intent to do harm.

Now, moving on to the section you added, it is highly problematic in a number of ways. The first section is cited to pages 379–385 of M. L. West's 2007 Indo-European Poetry and Myth, but the text severely misrepresents what West actually says, a direct result, I think, of the fact that you have not actually read those pages but rather copied the citation to them in the later "Societal deities" section. Now, it so happens that I am the one who wrote that section and who added the citation to M. L. West to begin with. I actually own a copy of West's book and I have it open in front of me as I write this. The first sentence of the paragraph you wrote reads: "In any European and Eastern mythology that descends from the native proto-Indo-European mythology the theistic pantheon and lower spheres are governed by a triad of fate goddesses, or a similar triad of divine beings." This is flatly contradicted by West (the purported source for this statement), who says on page 379, "I do not know of any Indo-Iranian evidence for this idea, but it is found all over Europe, as well as in Bronze Age Anatolia." Clearly, this means they are not found in every "European and Eastern mythology that descends from the native proto-Indo-European mythology." Furthermore, West calls these three goddesses "Fates"; he never once refers to them as anything resembling "primordial principle." Finally, he does not discuss anything about them being superior to the highest gods; he does not support the idea, nor does he dismiss it, because he simply never mentions it.

Moving on to the next paragraph, you quote Quintus Smyrnaeus, but he is a primary source, which means he should only be cited with at least one secondary, scholarly source interpreting him. Next you quote Lemprière's 1827 Classical Dictionary, which was an excellent reference work when it was first published nearly 200 years ago, but the state of modern scholarship has advanced greatly since then, making it sorely outdated. Furthermore, Lemprière never talks about Proto-Indo-European mythology; he only talks about the Moirai in Greek mythology, so using him here is original synthesis. The exact same problems also apply to Wieland's statements in his 1820 translation of the satires of Lucian. Germanicmythology.com is not a reliable source because it is a self-published internet source written by an amateur with no apparent relevant qualifications. Furthermore, this website only talks about the Norns in Norse mythology and says nothing about Proto-Indo-European fate goddesses, so applying it in this context is also original synthesis. The next paragraph, stating, "The highest-ranking triad represents the concept of a universal principle of natural order that has been compared to similar concepts in other cultures like the Vedic Rta, the Avestan Asha (Arta)," is entirely uncited and uses weasel words.

The bullet points listing the "principal structure in the highest-ranking triads" (a term, which, as I pointed out above, is unsupported by the one scholarly source cited) are uncited and at best oversimplified to the point of radical distortion. The paragraph comparing this unsupported structure to the major gods in Hinduism is also uncited and, frankly, flat-out factually unsupported as well, because there is no good evidence to link Indo-European fate goddesses believed to spin the thread of destiny with three (male) Hindu gods, none of whom are associated with weaving. The statement about the triskelion is cited to The Druid's Primer, a book published by Moon Books, an esoteric self-publishing company, which fails to meet our reliable source guidelines. Furthermore, the statement is unconnected to the actual subject of the article, which is "Proto-Indo-European religion" and, although I do not have access to the source, I am guessing that it probably does even not mention anything about Proto-Indo-European fate goddesses. The statement is also probably wrong, since there is little archaeological evidence that the triskelion was anything more than a decorative motif. The last sentence about the Gankyil is also uncited and I am near certain it is original research. --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:35, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

West's statement "I do not know of any Indo-Iranian evidence for this idea, but it is found all over Europe, as well as in Bronze Age Anatolia." possibly refers to fate goddesses. However there is also the Indo-European triad, in case of the Indo-Iranian religions it is Ṛta - Mitra- Varuna and Zurvan - Ahura Mazda - Angra Mainyu. Note that the concept of Zurvan is equivalent to Brahman and other concepts of a universal balance / nonduality like i.e. Maat and also linked to time like the Norse Norns.

For the female variant of the triad Brahman - Vishnu - Shiva see Tridevi#As_the_feminine_Trimurti however it is not important if the deities are male or female, crucial is the principle they represents ( Mahakali is also linked to time ). The superordinate principle is also the link between the Fates and the Eastern triads. Nowhere in the section i support that the triads are equivalent to the Fates, they only represent the same principle and i do not care if West says that the triads represent a principle or not, they simply do like any other mythological content.

Mythologies are models for description of the world like modern physics and natural sciences and so their content represents principles of nature or social interaction.

On Quintus Smyrnaeus :

In Wikipedia:Identifying_and_using_primary_sources#Uses_in_fields_other_than_history is said nothing about not to use primary sources. And as said in mythology primary sources are the best sources ( like in case of mythology ) :

Primary sources can be reliable, and they can be used. Sometimes, a primary source is even the best possible source, such as when you are supporting a direct quotation. In such cases, the original document is the best source because the original document will be free of any errors or misquotations introduced by subsequent sources.

On the accuracy of the statement in Quintus Smyrnaeus also cf Moirai#cite_note-Prometh.515-6 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.20.6.99 (talk) 10:43, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

In a strict sense you are correct with the usage of sources that make statements about Greek and Roman mythology in context of Indo-European mythology. However it is very likey that the concepts, like a Supreme Triad was inherited from the preceeding Indo-European mythology because it is equal in all ancient European, Iranian and Indian cultures.

So you do not declare the sources as completely invalid, except Germanicmythology.com.

However i have to say that the content i cited from this is trivial knowledge when you are familiar with Germanic mythology and you find this in various other internet sources because, as said, it is trivial, see above in this talk.

The link between triskelion and Gankyil is in the article Triskelion i simply copied it from there.

For now i see point 1 ) as solved, the sources are not generally invalid ( except Germanicmythology.com ), the issue is that they can not be used here because they do not refer explicitely to Indo-European mythology. Is that correct ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.20.6.99 (talk) 10:25, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

That makes them "invalid" sources as far as Wikipedia is concerned. As Katolophyromai has already explained at length, drawing your own conclusions from primary sources, however trivial they may seem to you, is original research and not what we do here. Our job is to summarise information that has already been widely published in reliable, secondary sources that are directly about this topic. This policy is explained at WP:NOR, specifically WP:SYNTH and WP:PSTS. WP:IRS is a guide to identifying reliable sources and it is not particularly relevant here. – Joe (talk) 12:56, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

• I'll just add that for me the quality of the removed material was shown when it touched on an area I know more about, with a list of fate goddesses ending with "...the British Wyrdes{snf|West|2007|pages=379–385},". That would be very much the English Wyrdes for a start, but while there are ample mentions in Anglo-Saxon literature of "wyrd" as apparently a singular un-personified concept of "fate", that there were ever three sister personifications, is entirely a speculation based on the other better-attested cultures in broadly Indo-European mythology. So we have a completely circular argument! No thanks. Johnbod (talk) 17:54, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

I copied the sentence ( that mentions the wyrd ) from section Societal Deities. But thank you for the information about the un-personified concept, this is what i am looking for — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.247.250.91 (talk) 18:38, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

I thought I should note that the original statement in the "Societaly deities" section that the IP user copied that from correctly calls the wyrdes "English," not "British." Also, as West describes at the top of page 383 of his book, Wyrd, even in its early singular attestations, is described as "weaving" destinies, such as in Rhyme Poem 70 and Guthlac 1350 f. West states that, in later texts, the Wyrds do, in fact, appear as a group, noting that Chaucer describes them as "the Werdys that we clepyn Destiné" in the Legend of Good Women, Hypermnestra 19 and that they appear in Shakespeare's Macbeth as the famous "Weird Sisters." --Katolophyromai (talk) 20:49, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Much later - Chaucer knew his Boccaccio well, and Shakespeare had a decent classical education, so they are likely to have done their own synthesis with Latin sources. Other speculative accounts think that "Wyrd" was just one sister, and the others had diffferent AS names, which they attempt to identify. Plural "Wyrds" start with Chaucer, I think. Johnbod (talk) 00:12, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

That said, there's little reason to assume this idea of a threefold fate goddess is due to classical influence. The Matres and Matronae frequently appear in threes, and their veneration continued into the Old English record, as generally accepted as evidenced in Mōdraniht. Further, Old English wyrd and Old Norse Urðr are cognates. There's plenty of discussion out there in ancient Germanic studies. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:38, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

The paper 'Alaric Hall: Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity' does not source the stament in the article, actually it does not mention the Indo-Europeans , let alone the Proto-Indo-Europeans

The critical sentence is marked bold :

(in chapter Nature deities)

In 1855, Adalbert Kuhn suggested that the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have believed in a set of helper deities, whom he reconstructed based on the Germanic elves and the Hindu ribhus.[79][80] Though this proposal is often mentioned in academic writings, very few scholars actually accept it.[81] There may also have been a female cognate akin to the Greco-Roman nymphs, Slavic vilas, the Huldra of Germanic folklore, and the Hindu Apsaras.[82]

source [81] is : Alaric Hall: Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity, it is accessible here : https://www.academia.edu/822022/Elves_in_Anglo-Saxon_England_Matters_of_Belief_Health_Gender_and_Identity

Any appearence of the term 'Indo-European' in Alaric Hall: Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity is not related to the statement in the article, how can it source the statement that the Proto-Indo-Europeans did not believe in helper deities then ?

You can search the entire document with the shortcuts Ctrl+F and Ctrl+G. A statement that is possibly meant is that the earliest source for medieval [!] beliefs about elves is the Wið_færstice of which Alaric Hall states on page 109-110 of Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity'  :

" How old Wið færstice is is hard to judge. Commentators once considered it incoherent and fragmentary, a perspective abetted by their insistence on dissecting it into ‘pagan’ and ‘Christian’ parts. However, critics of the 1970s and 1980s developed the early revisionism of Skemp to argue for its coherence of composition, a position which I accept, and will to some extent consolidate. Although its origins could be disparate, Wið færstice is a coherent text. " source : https://www.academia.edu/822022/Elves_in_Anglo-Saxon_England_Matters_of_Belief_Health_Gender_and_Identity , p. 109

" The age of "Wið færstice" has been hard to judge. Considering all of the available evidence, Medieval literature specialist Alaric Hall deemed it probable that the charm was a "cultural artefact" from the late tenth century. " source : Wið_færstice#Date

Whoever introduced the source Alaric Hall: Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity: Could you specify a page ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.234.254.155 (talk) 09:21, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

I happen to know someone who might be a useful contributor to this discussion. @Alarichall: I am assuming you are the author of the paper that seems to be at the center of the present controversy. Does your paper "Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity" state that very few scholars accept Adalbert Kuhn's reconstruction of a set of Proto-Indo-European helper deities based on the Germanic elves and the Hindu ribhus? If so, could you provide us with a page number for this statement? —Katolophyromai (talk) 15:49, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello! Thanks for asking :-) p. 54 fn 1 discusses the idea that 'elf' and ribhu are cognate words, and cites secondary sources that demonstrate that this is very unlikely. The footnote doesn't discuss Kuhn's work as such, but any arguments based on the idea that 'elf' and 'ribhu' share an Indo-European origin are probably wrong! 16:28, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Alarichall, thank you very much for your response! I believe that clears up the ambiguity. You do great work here, by the way. —Katolophyromai (talk) 22:46, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

White horse?

May I submit for insertion a myth of "The White Horse"? There seems to be a consistency to the imagery: Castor and Pollux are called "riders of white horses", and so are their twin half-brothers Amphion and Zethus; the Dioskouroi take part in the Rape of the Leukippides (daughters of Leukippus, i.e., the White-Horse); Pausanias describes an Iranian worship of white-horses, etc.18:01, 21 March 2020 (UTC) -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 2804:14D:5CE7:8E72:3D74:F34B:8E7C:DBB7 (talk)

From your description, it sounds like it's more of a motif that shows up in other myths, rather than a mythical narrative in itself... AnonMoos (talk) 05:24, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

For a motif to be securely reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, it needs to show up in locations where borrowing is very unlikely (for instance, in Vedic, Baltic and Irish beliefs at the same time; which are known to be rather conservative regarding Indo-European traditions by the way). You cannot reconstruct a motif by comparing Greek and Iranian myths alone as they were neighbours! ps: beware of Greek mythology, it was heavily influenced by Near Eastern and Egyptian beliefs (see: Martin L. West, The East Face of the Helicon) ;-) ps2: the modern standard for mythological reconstruction relies on linguistic cognates rather than shared motifs alone unless, once again, particular details are so precise in Indo-Europeans traditions that the possibly of a loan is very unlikely (e.g., the nymphs of the fresh waters, seen in Greek, Vedic, Ossetic, Baltic, Albanian, Armenian, Celtic, Slavic, etc. traditions). Azerty82 (talk) 08:38, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

On second thought, after more research, the imagery of the white horse, although mentioned by Indo-Europeanist sources, does not seem to be an exclusive IE myth.12:09, 22 March 2020 (UTC)~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 179.218.212.120 (talk)

No problem, thanks again for your contributions ;-) Maybe think about creating an account on Wikipedia! Azerty82 (talk) 12:21, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Kresnik

In the Kresnik (deity) article, there is reference that this Slovene (Slavic?) deity may have thunderer characteristics, specially in a legend where he fights a cthonic snake-like foe. See: Šmitek, Zmago (1998): Kresnik: An Attempt at Mythological Reconstruction. In: Studia Mythologica Slavica, Vol 1, 1998, 93-118. 20:41, 30 March 2020 (UTC)2804:14D:5CE7:8E72:C0A3:8F54:5BDE:1875 (talk)

Yes Kresnik is probably connected to the Serpent-Slaying myth (and other I-E motifs). See: Šmitek, Zmago (2015). "Kresnik: An Attempt at a Mythological Reconstruction" [Kresnik: poskus mitološke rekonstrukcije] (pdf) Feel free to add it to the relevant section! Azerty82 (talk) 20:56, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

PS: the /Myths/ section is also missing an important motif, the threefold death (also known as the "three sins of the warrior"). I haven't got enough time lately to add it to the article. You can do it if you want. Dumézil was the first to highlight it, but there has been tons of papers discussing this specific motif since then. Azerty82 (talk) 21:00, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Speaking of threefold death, I found a comment that three Swedish kings died, each respectively, by drowning, burning and hanging (See: Ynglinga Saga 14, 17, 22).21:05, 30 March 2020 (UTC)21:05, 30 March 2020 (UTC)~~

Yes, I've just seen your edit on the article, thank you. The article also needs to be improved, as it's missing the Indic and Greek (Herakles) examples. I'll look into that as soon as I can. Azerty82 (talk) 21:19, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Greek motif: Meulder Marcel. Les trois morts fictives d'Arès au chant V de l'Iliade. In: Gaia : revue interdisciplinaire sur la Grèce Archaïque, numéro 8, 2004. pp. 13-27. DOI : https://doi.org/10.3406/gaia.2004.1459 [www.persee.fr/doc/gaia_1287-3349_2004_num_8_1_1459]21:31, 30 March 2020 (UTC)2804:14D:5CE7:8E72:C0A3:8F54:5BDE:1875 (talk)

Attestation of the motif of threefold death in Hispanic literary tradition: Almagro-Gorbea, Martin. The threefold death in Hispania: From Lucanus to Libro de Buen Amor. In: ’Ilu. Revista de Ciencias de las Religiones (2012), 17, 7-39. ISSN 1135-4712 [1] 21:58, 30 March 2020 (UTC)2804:14D:5CE7:8E72:C0A3:8F54:5BDE:1875 (talk)

Some comparison of the motif in an Indian source: http://etudesindoeuropeennes.fr/articleContent/373.22:26, 30 March 2020 (UTC)2804:14D:5CE7:8E72:C0A3:8F54:5BDE:1875 (talk)

Thank for those erudite papers which I have read yet. I'm beginning to assemble a bibliography in the article threefold death. Azerty82 (talk) 22:49, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

The Mytheme of "The Fire in the Waters"

A source that might elucidate the mystery of the "fire in waters" of PIE myth:

https://www.academia.edu/36067039/Variations_on_the_Indo-European_Fire_and_Water_Mytheme_in_Three_Alchemical_Accounts — Preceding unsigned comment added by 179.218.212.120 (talk) 01:06, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

An article by Jean Haudry: https://www.academia.edu/40641918/Jean_Haudry_Rejeton_des_eaux 01:13, 31 March 2020 (UTC)179.218.212.120 (talk)

A rather lengthy article: http://nouvellemythologiecomparee.hautetfort.com/media/01/02/2550374375.pdf 01:16, 31 March 2020 (UTC)~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 179.218.212.120 (talk)

Table

There should be a table of different gods/goddesses/concepts comparing different proto-indo-european gods/goddesses/concepts with their respective descendants/counterparts/cognates in different indo-european mythologies just like the ones in the Evidence section in the Indo-European cosmogony article. Danishjaveed (talk) 20:03, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

A Contradiction in the Article

The second sentence of the first paragraph states...

Although these stories are not directly attested, they have been reconstructed by scholars of comparative mythology based on the similarities in the languages and belief systems of Indo-European peoples.

The first sentence of the fourth paragraph states...

Well-attested myths of the Proto-Indo-Europeans include a myth involving a storm god who slays a multi-headed serpent that dwells in water and a creation story involving two brothers, one of whom sacrifices the other to create the world.

The parts in those two sentences I wish to point out are...

"Although these stories are not directly attested,..."

-and-

"Well-attested myths of the Proto-Indo-Europeans include..."

If they are not "directly attested", they can hardly be "well-attested". Therefore, these two sentences contradict each other.

Thibeinn (talk) 02:44, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi, it is not "directly attested" in the Proto-Indo-European culture, although it is well-attested in the daughter cultures. I'll clarify. Azerty82 (talk) 08:54, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Another Indo-European myth? The Quest or Contest for the Ambrosia (Food of Immortality)

It seems Georges Dumézil has suggested another IE myth: some sort of contest or race to acquire the ambrosia, amrita or food of immortality.

Dumézil, Georges. "Les bylines de Michajlo Potyk et les légendes indo-européennes de l'ambroisie". In: Revue des études slaves, tome 5, fascicule 3-4, 1925. pp. 205-237. [DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/slave.1925.7342]; [www.persee.fr/doc/slave_0080-2557_1925_num_5_3_7342]02:07, 28 April 2020 (UTC)02:07, 28 April 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 179.218.212.120 (talk)

Yes, it is discussed in the second paragraph of the sub-section /other propositions/ in /Myths/. Alcaios (talk) 08:02, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

May I put it as a further reading, then? in that article, Dumézil analyses a Russian folk song of "Mikailo the Rover" who falls in love with a swan-maiden, Princess Marya, and points some connections of the song with the "quest for mead".16:45, 28 April 2020 (UTC)16:45, 28 April 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2804:14D:5CE7:8E72:79C8:CAB6:977:2C03 (talk)

Yes of course you can! Alcaios (talk) 14:20, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

An Indo-European myth of the theft of the thunder weapon?

I found some articles that analyse a tale of the theft of a weapon or instrument of a god of/associated with thunder (Dagda's harp in Celtic tradition, Thor's hammer, Zeus's lightning bolt by Typhoeus):

Shaw, John. (2019). The Dagda, Thor and ATU 1148B. Temenos - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion. 55. 97-120. 10.33356/temenos.83427.

Frog, Mr. (2013). CIRCUM-BALTIC MYTHOLOGY? THE STRANGE CASE OF THE THEFT OF THE THUNDER-INSTRUMENT (ATU 1148B). Archaeologia BALTICA. 15. 10.15181/ab.v15i1.25.

Frog, Mr. (2014). Germanic traditions of the theft of the thunder-instrument (ATU 1148B) An approach to Prymskvida and Porrs adventure with Geirrodr in Circum-Baltic perspective. 307. 120-162. 20:45, 7 May 2020 (UTC)~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 179.218.212.120 (talk)

HANSEN, W., 1995. The Theft of the Thunderweapon: A Greek Myth in its International Context. Classica et Me-diaevalia, 46, 5-24.

Mayor, Adrienne. "Bibliography of Classical Folklore Scholarship: Myths, Legends, and Popular Beliefs of Ancient Greece and Rome." Folklore 111, no. 1 (2000): 129-30. Accessed June 18, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/1260985. 179.218.212.120 (talk) 15:11, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

World tree?

It should me mentioned as a separate myth I think.--213.137.72.60 (talk) 19:51, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

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Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 21:02, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Addendum on the Serpent-Slaying Myth (or, the Hero Kills Serpent)

A very interesting article suggests another poetic formula that adds to the [HERO] - [SLAYS] - [SERPENT] formula described by Calvert Watkins's seminal book on IE poetics:

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/13178/SLS2009-01Slade.pdf.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2804:14D:5CE7:8E72:C0A3:8F54:5BDE:1875 (talk) 01:23, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Any possibility of adding this in as its own subheading? — Preceding unsigned comment added by GGiustiniani (talk • contribs) 16:28, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Eras

A user changed the era designations in the article to all be BCE/CE. I reverted the edit, as the article had previously had eight occurrences of "BC", and only one of "BCE". Personally, I prefer "BCE/CE" for articles such as this, which are outside the scope of Christian and European history, but the guidance at MOS:ERA is quite clear. Does anyone want to formally propose a change for this article? - Donald Albury 21:15, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

I formally urge that BCE/CE be used as the dating system for this article for the following reasons: 1. BCE/CE avoids Christian-centred writing, which is important for an article about non-Christian religions; 2. BCE/CE avoids Eurocentric-centred writing, which is important for an article about this Eurasian religions topic; 174.95.75.38 (talk) 21:21, 22 September 2021 (UTC)174.95.75.38

Criticism?

This article should include historical/linguistic/scientific criticism of the theories set out in the article, including references to the fact that many serious scholars think the entire endeavour of attempting to illuminate pre-literate myths through comparisons is either/or ahistorical and unscientific. 92.10.208.18 (talk) 17:51, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree. The article is heavily West 2007 based (look at the references). It reads in places, to me, like an overly enthusiastic attempt to see patterns where there are none.

The section involving placing coins on the eyes of the deceased for the boatman as a PIE mytheme read as if written by a complete amateur. Coins were invented in the 6th century BC. 3000 years after PIE ended. Mistakes like that (and there are many) make the reader question the article’s legitimacy in its entirety.

The main problem is that it considers similarities across cultures (Sweden, Spain, etc) without considering their age. Any similarity between cultures is deemed to be PIE, even if the similarity in question originated in 372 AD and obviously cross pollinated at a much later date than when PIE ended. Gold333 (talk) 03:56, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

M.L. West is a reputable scholar; he is very aware that the earliest coins date to the Iron Age. I've clarified this part. Alcaios (talk) 17:06, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Family tree of the gods

This diagram appears in the article:

Dyēws Daylight-Sky

Dhéǵhōm Earth

The Divine Twins

The Sun Maiden

Hausōs Dawn

An alternative genealogy has been proposed by P. Jackson (2002):
Dyēws Daylight-Sky Diuōneh₂ The Divine Twins The Sun Maiden Perkwunos The Oak-God Dhéǵhōm Earth Hausōs Dawn

This would appear to indicate that the sky father is married to the earth mother, but that his children do not issue from her (or the descender would come from the line joining them), and that the sun maiden is married to the horse twins (horizontal line connecting them), and the sun maiden does not descend from the sky father. Is this what was intended? IAmNitpicking (talk) 21:44, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

That's because the Divine Twins are described as the "descendants of Dyḗus" (*diwós suHnū́ or *diwós népoth₁e) and h₂éwsōs as the "daughter of Dyḗus" (*Diwós Dhuǵh₂tḗr) in Indo-European formulaic expressions, not as the "descendants of Dyḗus and Dhéǵhōm". Alcaios (talk) 21:03, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

References