Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Acorns And Pine Nuts

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

I'll put the search strings in bold, these are the beginning of a quote, and the link(s), the ulr(s), which are highlighted too, will be the quote(s) end(s)...


Arcadia California

For over 8,000 years the site of Arcadia was part of the homeland of the Tongva people ("Gabrieliño" tribe), a Californian Native American tribe whose territory spanned the greater Los Angeles Basin, and the San Gabriel and San Fernando Valleys.


Arcadia, California

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
 
Arcadia Greece
 
Due to its remote, mountainous character, Arcadia seems to have been a cultural refuge. When, during the Greek Dark Age, Doric Greek dialects were introduced to the Peloponnese, the older language apparently survived in Arcadia, and formed part of the Arcado-Cypriot group of Greek languages. Herodotus says that the inhabitants of Arcadia were Pelasgians, the Greek name for the supposed 'indigenous' inhabitants of Greece, who dwelt there before the arrival of the 'Hellenic' tribes.[
 

Regions of ancient Greece

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
 
The Arcadia in California is named after Arcadia in Greece...and both have landscapes of oak tree dotted foothills, and near mountains, though Arcadia in California is now built up, with an economy to rival the Balboans in Newport Beach, California...Arcadia in Greece is more of a region, and it is still to this day sparsely settled it would seem...a visitor to either Arcadia eight thousand years ago would find the tribes thereabout engaged in the same pursuits as hunter gatherers, acorns and pine nuts major staples...
 
While taking marine science classes at Orange Coast College, I had a class, forget what it was called, where I had a project to make acorn cookies...I went out to Irvine Park, gathered up acorns, broke the shells and crushed the pith? into a mush, that I dutifully hung in the toilet reservoir tank which flushed out the tannin from the acorns mush with each flush--I was following instructions!...and I baked some cookies, and made a display explaining with labels, and set it outside along the sidewalk for passing students to peruse, along with everyone else's projects...it was much fun...should do it again just to do it!...and I left for another class, and, and, when I returned, to my chagrin, students had been eating my cookies!...I think I got all the tannin out!...and tried a cookie my own self...kind of bland, overcooked, but no ill effects...
 
and, and, with Arcadia in Greece, I'm back on p.58 of Robert Graves White Goddess...the natives hereabout at an ancient time, around the fall of Troy, were thought in the lore of ancient Greece to have been the original inhabitants, the original Greeks...
 
pelasgians arcadians
 
The first person was a different story. In this tradition, the first human was the man Pelasgus who sprang from the soil of Arcadia (soon followed by others). They made little huts and ate acorns and wore pig-skin tunics.
 
 
Pelasgians
 
The name Pelasgians (/pəˈlæziənz, -ənz, -ɡiənz/; Greek: Πελασγοί, Pelasgoí; singular: Πελασγός, Pelasgós) was used by some ancient Greek writers to refer to populations that were either the ancestors of the Greeks or preceded the Greeks in Greece, "a hold-all term for any ancient, primitive and presumably indigenous people in the Greek world".[1] In general, "Pelasgian" has come to mean more broadly all the indigenous inhabitants of the Aegean Sea region and their cultures before the advent of the Greek language.
 

Pelasgians

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
 
it's an aside, but a curio for sometime, the connection with the Pelasgians and the regions of Troy in Turkey...
 
Pelasgians Troy
 
An ancient etymology based on mere similarity of sounds linked pelasgos to pelargos ("stork") and postulates that the Pelasgians were migrants like storks, possibly from Egypt, where they nest.[4] Aristophanes deals effectively with this etymology in his comedy The Birds. One of the laws of "the storks" in the satirical cloud-cuckoo-land, playing upon the Athenian belief that they were originally Pelasgians, is that grown-up storks must support their parents by migrating elsewhere and conducting warfare.[
 

Pelasgians

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
 
oh...the linking of the Pelasgians with Troy is on that page too...but that about the Storks is a fine curio too!
 
It isn't just that the Greeks regarded Pelasgos as the first man, and the Pelasgians their ancestors, they were the people that came from Deucalion's ark...the ark is said to have landed at two places, near Delphi, and near Dodona in Arcadia...
 
Pelasgians Deucalion ark
 
Plutarch mentions a legend that Deucalion and Pyrrha had settled in Dodona,
 

Deucalion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
 
Deucalion Dodona
 
Dodona is the Mythological landing place for Deucalion after the flood, while Ararat is known in Hebraic as the landing place of the Ark for Noah. Apart from this early mythological connection between sites, there is a geographical similarity in that both have ancient oracle centres to the earth-mother placed next to dominant mountains and the distance between them is the same as the distance between Dodona and Thebes, so that the three sites form an almost exact equilateral triangle .
 
 
well...that's diverting!...but what I'm reaching for is the Oak Tree at Dodona...my stepping stones: Arcadians to Pelasgians to Oracle at Dodona
 
Oracle Dodona
 
ZEUS DODONAIOS was the god of the great oracle at Dodona, reputedly the oldest in Greece. It was located in Epeiros, in the north-west of Greece. The oracles were received from the rustling of the branches of the holy oak tree by the bare-footed priests of the god, the Helloi or Selloi. Later three elderly priestesses, named Peleiades ("Doves"), were appointed to be the voice of the oracle.
 
 
in the lore of Dodona there's a story of Doves...
 
Dodona Doves
 
Herodotus follows with what he was told by the prophetesses, called peleiades ("doves") at Dodona:
"...that two black doves had come flying from Thebes in Egypt, one to Libya and one to Dodona; the latter settled on an oak tree, and there uttered human speech, declaring that a place of divination from Zeus must be made there; the people of Dodona understood that the message was divine, and therefore established the oracular shrine. The dove which came to Libya told the Libyans (they say) to make an oracle of Ammon; this also is sacred to Zeus. Such was the story told by the Dodonaean priestesses, the eldest of whom was Promeneia and the next Timarete and the youngest Nicandra; and the rest of the servants of the temple at Dodona similarly held it true."
In the simplest analysis, this was a confirmation of the oracle tradition in Egypt. The element of the dove may be an attempt to account for a folk etymology applied to the archaic name of the sacred women that no longer made sense and the eventual connection with Zeus, justified by a tale told by a priestess. Was the pel- element in their name connected with "black" or "muddy" root elements in names like "Peleus" or "Pelops"? Is that why the doves were black?
Herodotus adds:
"But my own belief about it is this. If the Phoenicians did in fact carry away the sacred women and sell one in Libya and one in Hellas, then, in my opinion, the place where this woman was sold in what is now Hellas, but was formerly called Pelasgia, was Thesprotia; and then, being a slave there, she established a shrine of Zeus under an oak that was growing there; for it was reasonable that, as she had been a handmaid of the temple of Zeus at Thebes, she would remember that temple in the land to which she had come. After this, as soon as she understood the Greek language, she taught divination; and she said that her sister had been sold in Libya by the same Phoenicians who sold her."
"I expect that these women were called 'doves' by the people of Dodona because they spoke a strange language, and the people thought it like the cries of birds; then the woman spoke what they could understand, and that is why they say that the dove uttered human speech; as long as she spoke in a foreign tongue, they thought her voice was like the voice of a bird. For how could a dove utter the speech of men? The tale that the dove was black signifies that the woman was Egyptian."

Dodona

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
hmmph...I kind of fixed on those two doves, as in earlier post I went on about how ancient temples, certainly the ancient Egyptians, used messenger pigeons...
 
and Dodona is a fascination, more so than most ancient temples...it wasn't a grand acropolis temple complex...it was set in wild Arcadia, the priests/priestesses went about barefoot and slept on the ground...to make a prophecy they'd listen to the wind rustling the leaves in the Oaks, one Oak in particular...to help, the Oaks may have had like wind chimes in their branches...
 
Dodona oracle oak
 

The oracle was renown throughout ancient Greece and it is mentioned in both the Iliad and the Odyssey"O thou supreme! high-throned all height above! O great Pelasgic, Dodonaean Jove! Who 'midst surrounding frosts, and vapours chill, Presid'st on bleak Dodona's vocal hill: (Whose groves the Selli, race austere! surround, Their feet unwash'd, their slumbers on the ground; Who hear, from rustling oaks, thy dark decrees; And catch the fates, low-whispered in the breeze;)" Homer. The Iliad (Kindle Locations 9147-9151).
This passage of Achilles' words at the funeral pyre of Patroclus describe how the Dodona priests slept on the earth and never washed their feet so they could always be one with the earth (perhaps a remnant of the earlier worship to the Great Goddess), and recited their decrees after listening to the "rustling oaks" as they "low-whispered in the breeze". While this seems to be the dominant account of the oracle delivery, several other versions exist. Sophocles mentions "oracular doves", Herodotus implies a lot process, and a 1st century version indicates that the sounds of bronze cauldrons hit by fallen acorns provided the source for the priests' prophecies.

http://ancient-greece.org/history/dodona.html

I listened to the acorns fall from the Black Oaks over the Creek like rain...

anyway, a Christian zealot, destroyer of libraries, uprooted the most revered Oak at Dodona...

Oak Dodona

And so, after all of the centuries that bore witness to the violent destruction and desecration of this holy sanctuary, the tree itself remained.  It was left to the Christians to destroy the most sacred tree in Greece.  Prior to its murder, this ancient oak had stood, speaking its messages in the wind, for many more than two and a half thousand years.  The one that stands in its place today was planted by the archaeologists who unearthed the site. (79)  No doubt they felt the emptiness in a place that once filled the world with hope.  

THE ORACULAR OAK AT DODONA

by Tracy Boyd
© 2004
 
http://www.sacredthreads.net/www.sacredthreads.net/oak_at_dodona.html

oh...and I find in these readings that Philopoemen, the last Greek, was an Arcadian...from Megalopolis...I named my Death Knight, my second toon in World of Warcraft, Philopoemen...
 
DavidDavid
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

No comments: