It must be thought that in the Paleolithic of the Russian plain, grain collected by women in meadow grass steppes, consisting of wild sowing rye (found in the 19th century in the Kanin tundra), wild sowing wheat (a wild type of sowing spelled found in the Middle Urals), wild sowing oats, wild sowing barley, wild peas (found in the 18th century by academician I.
Lepyokhin in the Kanin tundra) and wild flax (found in the 18th century by academician I. Lepyokhin in the Kanin tundra, in the 19th century – on Timan), had to be dried and stored.
The ears were dried in sheaves, most likely in that archaic type of barn, which survived in the Russian North until the beginning of the 20th century and was called «shish». Indeed, even in the «stubble» song, recorded in the Pskov region in 1964, it is said that the sheaves should be «plant in rai», that is, placed on top of the barn’s poles, in the buried hole of which a fire was burning at that time.
It is worth paying attention to the fact that they bring the rune «Ir», which looks like a schematic representation of an ancient barn (shisha), and emphasize that the rune «Ir» is a sign of the feminine, and «in one ritual spell, the rune» Ir «is understood as» Comprehensive.»
So, after the «rai» – the barn, the grain had to be saved. Let us once again recall the long ground dwellings «of the Paleolithic inhabitants of the Russian Plain. These were very impressive structures. So in the 30s of the 20th century P. P. Efimenko, the remains of a large ground dwelling, 31 meters long and 8 meters wide, with eight hearths along the central axis and a complex heating system were uncovered in layer I of the Kostenki 1 site. Near the dwelling there were small dugouts and pits – storerooms. Let us remind you that back in the late 19th – early 20th centuries, such pits were arranged in the barn (in the barn, in the barn). They were coated with clay, then burned with straw, and covered with straw or sheaves from above.
Probably, the structure of communal grain pits came from the depths of thousands of years of Paleolithic antiquity without any significant changes.
But where there is a lot of grain, as noted earlier, mice always appears, the number of which grows exponentially over time. And in order to preserve the grain for themselves, our ancestors had to make every effort. They attracted the natural enemies of mice – owls – to the barn. How this was done, we do not know. Most likely, the owls flew in on their own. After all, mice are their natural food. And people, in gratitude for the saved harvest, began to worship owls. And women – grain collectors and housewives – gradually merged with the image of an owl – the keeper of the barn, and hence the harvest. And since it was women who were responsible for the fertility of the fields, burning straw, drying grain on fire and cooking food on fire, the duet woman – owl naturally turned into a trio: woman – owl – fire. And all this was connected with the barn. But even at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in barns: they washed like in baths, gave birth, they brought the deceased there and put straw (corn or pea) under his head.
Therefore, the image of a woman – an Owl, already in ancient times, united not only with fire, but also with water, straw, ash and ash, life and death. Already in the cultural layer of the Upper Paleolithic Mezen site in the Chernihiv region, there are figurines made of mammoth bones, which «some researchers call «birds», and others – «emale figurines». Neolithic images of women with the head of an owl found in the Russian North (6—4 thousand BC) were mentioned earlier. In Tripoli (Eneolithic 4—3 thousand BC), female figurines with owl heads were sculpted by adding grain and flour to soft clay, and such images of goddesses were found at every grain mill in the «sanctuary of bread» found by archaeologists. And here it makes sense to cite one of the mysteries that existed in the Totemsky district of the Vologda province at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (materials of the Ethnographic Bureau of Prince V. N. Tenishev):
«The owl flew out
From the red window
Sela Owl
Four pillars».
Here, the owl symbolized the «rug of bread taken out of the oven».
In Tripoli, the belly of the owl-headed goddess of bread is sometimes guarded by two snakes. Goddesses with snakes will also go through millennia, reaching the beginning of the 20th century in North Russian embroidery. Summing up the above, we can say after Robert von Ranke Graves: «Ancient Europe did not know any gods, there was only one Great Goddess, and only she was revered as immortal and unchanging.» The only addition to this text will be – Eastern Europe, since Western Europe until the turn of 4—3 thousand BC the Indo-Europeans with their Great Goddess Mother Sova did not know, and they, in turn, did not live in Western Europe.
Over time, the ancient deity of earth, abundance, fire and water, life and death Owl-Mother-in-law received many different names: Gaia, Aditi, Rhea, Cybele, Astarta, Ishtar, Lilith, Ma, Divia, Rato, Lato.
Academician B. A. Rybakov wrote: «The area of ethnographic veneration of mother Lada is very wide: it completely includes the entire land of the Balts – Hyperboreans (both in the Latvian-Lithuanian and Slavicized Great Russian part), the entire territory of the Proto-Slavs and all areas of later Slavic settlement. In the Bronze Age, the cult of Lato reached Greek Crete, where it met with the local cult of Demeter and Persephone. It is possible that the primitives knew the cult of Lato (Latona) – Lada.»
It was already noted earlier that the two daughters of the titan Kay, whom ancient Greek mythology placed on the shores of the Kronian (Arctic) Ocean and whose city the Vologda ritual song calls «our homeland», Leto and Asteria were embodied in the images of quails. It was in the images of a quail and a quail that Zeus and Leto were married – the parents of Artemis and Apollo of Hyperborean.
But here we have a Russian Christmas song recorded in the middle of the 20th century in the Kirov region:
Dil-dil, quail,
Yes Lada, young!
Yes there, yes I flew here,
Yes dil-dil, quail,
Lada, young!
Yes, yes, yes, I gave wings to this,
Yes dil-dil, quail,
Lada, young!
Lada-quail, probably at a later stage of plow farming, became another image of the bird goddess associated with the Earth and the live.
But she still could not replace the Owl-Mother-in-law until the end. The owl Mother Goddess, in the process of migration of the peoples who worshiped her, had new names: the Sumerian-Akkadian Ereshkigal, depicted with an owl in his hand; Lilith – Ishtar – Astarte with owl quills and paws, standing between two owls; Egyptian Neith with her later hypostasis – Nephthys, whose most ancient name sounds like Lun (that is, Owl); The Great Mother of the Gods Rhea – Cybele, on the armrests of the throne of which were placed two owls; «Owl-eyed» Tethys-Tefida, wife of the Ocean; Hera – «Mother-in-law», according to one of the versions of the myth – the granddaughter of «owl» Tethys; and, of course, «owl-eyed» Athena, about which they write the following: «Athena is one of the most important figures not only in Olympic mythology, she is equal in importance to Zeus and sometimes surpasses him, rooted in the most ancient period in the development of Greek mythology – matriarchy. In power and wisdom, she is equal to Zeus… her place is closest to Zeus… The ancient zoomorphic past of the goddess is indicated by her attributes – a snake and an owl. Homer calls Athena „owl“, the Orphic hymn – „motley snake“ … Athena goes back to the image of the goddess with snakes of the Cretan-Mycenaean period. An owl and a snake guarded the palace of the goddess with the shield of the Mycenaean time – the prototype of the Olympic Athena… Athena herself was thought of as fate