Notes

         You are up early, however Paul has left for a twenty-four hour shift and Kim is readying herself for work. The cats have been fed and you are having cereal and juice for breakfast for a change. Too much delicious  lasagna yesterday.

         Mid-morning and you have researched the first six of the twelve cultures. For consistency you are using Wikipedia only, making slight modifications for your notes titled “12 Shamans”. Take a break. Owen just said “good” but only the sounds obviously. He is playing in his rain forest, baby talking to his ‘friends’ while Carol is out weeding.

         Almost time for the evening national news and you just completed today’s research project and are excited about what you found in your thirty pages ancient cultural gathering. Take a break, I will help you summarize the material for your notes here after supper. – Amorella.

12 Shamans.Sc.11,C.5,B4.

1. Assyria: Ishtar – Woman Shaman > [star]

The Neo-Assyrian Empire was a period of Mesopotamian history which began in 934 BC and ended in 612 BC. During this period, Assyria assumed a position as possibly the most powerful nation on earth, and vying with Babylonia and other lesser powers for dominance of the region, though not until the reforms of Tiglath-Pileser III in the 8th century BC, did it become a powerful and vast empire.

2. Babylonia: Enki – Shaman [Lord of Earth, High Priest]

Babylonia was a city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers (55 mi) south of Baghdad. All that remains of the original ancient famed city of Babylon today is a mound, or tell, of broken mud-brick buildings and debris in the fertile Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in Iraq.

3. China: Jun – Shaman [Truth]

Chinese civilization originated in various regional centers both along the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valleys in the Neolithic era. Also, the Yellow River is to be said as the Cradle of Chinese Civilization. The origins of Chinese culture, literature and philosophy, developed during the Zhou Dynasty (1045 BCE to 256 BCE).

4. Egypt: Amenhotep – Shaman [Pharaoh]

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. The civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh, and it developed over the next three millennia.

5. Greece: Panagiotakis – Mother’s Shaman ** [Holy]

Ancient Greece is the civilization belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. At the center of this time period is Classical Greece, which flourished during the 5th to 4th centuries BC.

6. India:  Amrita – Woman Shaman >  [immortality]

The history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago (Tamil Nadu) and hominids (Homo Erectus) from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent from c. 3300 to 1300 BCE, was the first major civilization in India. . . .

The Vedic period is characterized by Indo-Aryan culture associated with the texts of Vedas, sacred to Hindus, which were orally composed in Vedic Sanskrit. The Vedas are some of the oldest extant texts, next to those of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Vedic period lasted from about 1500 BCE to 500 BCE, laid the foundations of Hinduism and other cultural aspects of early Indian society.

7. Indo-European:  Teja – Shaman [luster, glow, sharpness]

The term "Indo-European peoples" means those Caucasians who are members of those ethnic groups that are descended from the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European. . . .

Models of the Indo-Aryan migration discuss scenarios of prehistoric migrations of the early Indo-Aryans to their historically attested areas of settlement in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent and from there further across all of North India. Claims of Indo-Aryan migration are primarily drawn from linguistic evidence but also from a multitude of data stemming from Vedic religion, rituals, poetics as well as some aspects of social organization and chariot technology.

Indo-Aryan derives from an earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian stage, usually identified with the Bronze Age Sintashta and Andronovo culture north of the Caspian Sea. . . . An influx of early Indo-Aryan speakers over the Hindukush (comparable to the Kushan expansion of the first centuries CE) together with Late Harappan cultures gave rise to the Vedic civilization of the Early Iron Age.

8. Israel:  Meir – Shaman [Light]

The history of ancient Israel and Judah refers to the histories of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel (Samaria) and Judah. The two kingdoms emerged from the indigenous Canaanite culture of the Late bronze age, and were based on villages that formed and grew in the southern Levant highlands (i.e. today's definition for the region between the coastal plain and the Jordan Valley) between c.1200-1000 BCE, a period during which the biblical united monarchy was formed and eventually split to these two kingdoms. The northern kingdom, Israel, became an important local power in the 9th and 8th centuries BCE before falling to the Assyrians; the southern kingdom, Judah, fell to the Babylonians early in the 6th century; Judean exiles returned from Babylon to found the Second Temple early in the following Persian period. . . .

Israel and Judah were neighbouring Iron Age (c.1200-600 BCE) kingdoms, located in a region defined today as southern Levant. The geographical area where they arose was between the eastern coast line of the Mediterranean Sea and the depression of the Jordan Valley.

 9. Japan: Kagami – Woman Shaman > [Mirror]

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters which make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun". . . .

The first signs of occupation on the Japanese Archipelago appeared with a Paleolithic culture around 30,000 BC, followed from around 14,000 BC by the Jōmon period, a Mesolithic to Neolithic semi-sedentary hunter-gatherer (possibly Ainu) culture of pit dwelling and a rudimentary form of agriculture. Decorated clay vessels from this period, often with plaited patterns, are some of the oldest surviving examples of pottery in the world.

The Yayoi period, starting around 500 BC, saw the introduction of many new practices, such as wet-rice farming, a new style of pottery and Metallurgy brought by migrants from China and Korea.

10. Olmecs: B'alam – Shaman [Jaguar]

The Olmec were an ancient Pre-Columbian civilization living in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, in what are roughly the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco.

The Olmec flourished during Mesoamerica's Formative period, dating roughly from as early as 1500 BCE to about 400 BCE. They were the first Mesoamerican civilization and laid many of the foundations for the civilizations that followed. Among other "firsts", there is evidence that the Olmec practiced ritual bloodletting and played the Mesoamerican ballgame, hallmarks of nearly all subsequent Mesoamerican societies.

The rise of civilization here was assisted by the local ecology of well-watered alluvial soil, as well as by the transportation network that the Coatzacoalcos River basin provided. This environment may be compared to that of other ancient centers of civilization: the Nile, Indus, and Yellow River valleys, and Mesopotamia.

11. Peru: Tiwanaku   Shaman    [Stone in the Center]

The Norte Chico civilization was a complex Pre-Columbian society that included as many as 30 major population centers in what is now the Norte Chico region of north-central coastal Peru. It is the oldest known civilization in the Americas and one of the six sites where civilization separately originated in the ancient world. It flourished between the 30th century BC and the 18th century BC. . . . Complex society in Norte Chico emerged just a millennium after Sumer in Mesopotamia, it was contemporaneous with the pyramids of Ancient Egypt, and it predated the Mesoamerican Olmec by nearly two millennia. . . .

While the absence of ceramics appears anomalous, the presence of textiles is intriguing. Quipu (or Khipu), string-based recording devices, have been found at Caral, tentatively suggesting a writing, or "proto-writing", system at Norte Chico. . . . The exact use of Quipu in this and later Andean cultures has been widely debated. . . . Research has focused on the much larger sample of a few hundred Quipu dating to Inca times; the Norte Chico discovery remains singular and undeciphered.

While visual arts appear absent, instrumental music may have been present: thirty-two flutes, crafted from pelican bone, have been discovered.

Concept for the name of the Shaman: Tiwanaku [Stone in the Center]

Tiwanaku (Spanish: Tiahuanaco and Tiahuanacu) is an important Pre-Columbian archaeological site in western Bolivia.

Some have hypothesized that Tiwanaku's modern name is related to the Aymara term taypiqala, meaning "stone in the center", alluding to the belief that it lay at the center of the world. However, the name by which Tiwanaku was known to its inhabitants has been lost, as the people of Tiwanaku had no written language. Some believe Tiwanaku is the oldest city in the world.

12. Phoenician:  Dido – Woman Shaman > [Virgin]

Phoenicia was an ancient civilization centered in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal regions of modern day Lebanon, Syria and Israel.

The Phoenicians were also the first state-level society to make extensive use of the alphabet. The Phoenician phonetic alphabet is generally believed to be the ancestor of almost all modern alphabets. . . .

In terms of archaeology, language, and religion, there is little to set the Phoenicians apart as markedly different from other cultures of Canaan. They were Canaanites. They are unique in their remarkable seafaring achievements. In the Amarna tablets of the 14th century BC, they call themselves Kenaani or Kinaani (Canaanites).

***

         This is what will be used for heavily edited reference material from Wikipedia in scene eleven. Some attempt is being made to give an illusion of authenticity in terms of time and place, and the names of the shamans are each given meaning from online sources or are solely orndorff’s creation based on reasonability as much as possible. As the books are by my      'hand' first I accept the above for use to add to clarity for the reader. All for tonight, orndorff. Post. - Amorella.