Manu, Yemo and Trito

The people who spoke Proto-Indo-European lived on the Eurasian

steppe, the vast territory where now the countries of Ukraine and
Kazakhstan are and the southern part of Russia between these two
countries north of the Caucasus
mountains, also Turkmenistan
and Uzbekistan. Roughly the
steppe area north and east of
the Black Sea and the Caspian
Sea. Their ancestors arrived on
the pristine steppe some 40.000
years ago after having split off
to the north through Iran and
Afghanistan from the group of
the first modern people (homo
sapiens ‘sapiens’) that 85.000
years ago left Africa. They met
favourable and survived harsh
climatic conditions on those plains, including the last Ice Age. These
Proto-Indo-European speaking people are in part the ancestors of the
populace of India and Iran and are the direct ancestors of the
Italics/Romans and Greek, the Celts and Germans; these latter people
spoke a language that over time would evolve including present day
English. They left us this creation myth.

At the beginning of time there were two brothers, twins, one named
Man (*Manu, in Proto-Indo-European) and the other Twin (*Yemo).
They traveled through the cosmos accompanied by a great cow.
Eventually Man and Twin decided to create the world we now inhabit. To
do this, Man had to sacrifice Twin (or in some versions the cow). From
the parts of this sacrificed body, with the help of the sky gods (Sky
Father, Storm God of War, Divine Twins), Man made the wind, the sun,
the moon, the sea, earth, fire, and finally all the various kinds of
people. Man became the first priest, the creator of the ritual of sacrifice
that was the root of world order.
After the world was made, the sky-gods gave cattle to "Third man"
(*Trito). But the cattle were treacherously stolen by a three-headed,
six-eyed serpent (*Ngwhi, the Proto-Indo-European root for negation).
Third man entreated the storm god to help get the cattle back.
Together they went to the cave (or mountain) of the monster, killed
it (or the storm god killed it alone), and freed the cattle. *Trito
became the first warrior.1 He recovered the wealth of the people, and

1
The myth of Trito, the warrior, also rationalized cattle theft as the recovery of
cattle that the gods had intended for the people who sacrificed properly.
Proto-Indo-European initiation rituals included a requirement that boys initiated into
manhood had to go out in a Männerbünde or Korios and become like a band of dogs
or wolves to raid their enemies. (Continued next page)
his gift of cattle to the priests insured that the sky gods received
their share in the rising smoke of sacrificial fires. This insured that
the cycle of giving between gods and humans continued.
The three sky gods named here almost certainly can be ascribed to
Proto-Indo-European. Dyeus Patar or Dyaus Pitar, Sky/Heaven Father,
is the most certain.2 The Thunder/War god was named differently in
different dialects but in each branch was associated with the
thunderbolt, the hammer or club, and war. The Divine Twins likewise
were named differently in the different branches -the Nâsatyas in Indic,
Kastôr en Polydeukçs in Greek3 , and the Dieva Dçli in Baltic-. They were
associated with good luck, and often were represented as twin horses,
the offspring of a divine mare.

The two myths were fundamental to the Proto-Indo-European

system of religious belief. * M anu and * Yem o are reflected in
creation m yths preserved in m any Indo-European branches, where
*Yem o appears as Indic Yama, Avestan Yima, Norse Ymir and,
perhaps, Roman Remus (from *iemus, the archaic Italic form of *yemo,
meaning "twin"); and Man appears as Old Indic Mann or Germanic
Mannus, paired with his twin to create the world. The deeds of *Trito,
the same basic story of the hero who recovered primordial lost
cattle from a three-headed monster can be found in Indic, Iranian,
Hittite, Norse, Roman and Greek myths. The myth of Man and Twin
established the importance of the sacrifice and the priest who
regulated it. The m yth of the "Third on e" defined the role of the
warrior, who obtained an im a ls for the people and the gods. Many
other themes are also reflected in these two stories: the Indo-European
fascination with binary doublings combined with triplets, two's and
three's, which reappeared again and again , even in the m etric
stru ctu re of I n do-Eu ropea n poetry. T h e th em e of pa irs w h o
represen ted m agica l a nd legal power (Twin and M an, Varuna-
M itra, O din-Tyr); and the pa rtition of society and the cosm os

(Continued) Proto-Indo-European also had a word for bride-price, *ßedmo. When

bride-prices escalated as one aspect of regional competition, the result would be
increased cattle raiding by unmarried men with the justification provided by the
Trito myth.

2
While the second part of the name -Pitar, Patar (or Pater)- may be understood as
the word for father, the first part of the name developed into the name of the Greek
supreme deity Zeus, while from the whole the name of his Roman counterpart
Jupiter (Jove) developed.

3
Kastôr en Polydeukçs are personae from Greek mythology. Together they are
called the Dioskouros, “the sons of Zeus”. Their pendants in Roman mythology are
Castor and Pollux. The constellation of Gemini was named after them; the brightest
stars of this sign of the Zodiac are still called Castor and Pollux.
between three great functions or roles: th e priest (in both his
m agical and legal aspects), the warrior (the Third Man), and the
herder/cultivator (the cow or cattle). (...) P roto-I n do-E u ropea n
m ythology w a s, a t its core, the worldview of a male-centered, cattle-
raising people - people who held sons and cattle in the highest esteem.
Tribal- or village chiefs first appeared in the archaeological record when
domesticated cattle, sheep, and goats first became widespread, after
about 5200-5000 bce . The Proto-Indo-European vocabulary contained a
compound word (*weik-potis) that referred to a clan- or village chief, a
person who sponsored feasts and ceremonies and to whom immortality
was given in praise poetry. The apparently most important amongst
them were buried in a kurgan, a burial mound. Another root (*reg-)
referred to another kind of powerful officer. This second root was later
used for king in Italic (rex), Celtic (rix), and Old Indic (raj-), but it
might originally have referred to an official more like a priest, literally a
"regulator" (from the same root) or "one who makes things right"
(again the same root), possibly connected with drawing "correct" (same
root) boundaries.

The Yamnaya horizon, way of life, was the first more or less unified
ritual, economic, and material culture to spread across the entire steppe
region, starting around 3300 bce when the steppe climate grew dryer,
but it was never completely homogeneous even materially. The most
obvious material division within the early Yamnaya horizon was between
east and west. The eastern (Volga–Ural–North Caucasian steppe)
Yamnaya pastoral economy was more mobile than the western one
(South Bug–lower Don). This contrast corresponds in an intriguing way
to economic and cultural differences between eastern and western
Indo-European language branches. W estern Indo-European
vocabularies contained a few roots that were borrowed from Afro-Asiatic
languages, such as, the word for the domesticated bull, *tawr- (taurus).
Eastern Indo-European generally lacked these borrowed Afro-Asiatic
roots. Western Indo-European religious and ritual practices were
female-inclusive, eastern
Indo-European rituals and gods,
however, were more male-centered.
In western Indo-European branches
the spirit of the domestic hearth was
female (Hestia, the Vestal Virgins),
and in Indo-Iranian it was male
(Agni). W estern Indo-European
mythologies included strong female
deities such as Queen Magb and the
Valkyries (Old Norse, Valkyrjar), whereas in Indo-Iranian the furies of
war were male Maruts.
Proto-Indo-European institutions included a belief in the sanctity of
verbal contracts bound by oaths (*hóitos), and in the obligation of
patrons (or gods) to protect clients (or humans) in return for loyalty and
service. "Let this racehorse bring us good cattle and good horses, male
children and all-nourishing wealth," said a prayer accompanying the
sacrifice of a horse in the Rig Veda (I.162 )4 , a clear statement of the
contract that bound humans to the gods. In Proto-Indo-European
religion generally the chasm between gods and humans was bridged by
the sanctity of oath-bound contracts and reciprocal obligations, so these
were undoubtedly important tools regulating the daily behaviour of the
powerful toward the weak, at least for people who belonged under the
social umbrella. Patron-client systems like this could incorporate
outsiders as clients who enjoyed rights and protection. This way of
legitimizing inequality probably was an old part of steppe social
institutions, going back to the initial appearance of differences in wealth
when domesticated animals were accepted.
The Indo-Iranian ‘society’ and perhaps already the proto-Indo-European
community of tribes on the steppe showed more similarities, like the
midwinter New Year's sacrifice and initiation ceremony, held on the
winter solstice. Many Indo-European myths and rituals contained
references to this event. One of its functions was to initiate young men
into the warrior category (Männerbünde, korios), and its principal
symbol was the dog or wolf. Dogs represented death; multiple dogs or a
multi-headed dog (Cerberus, Saranyu) guarded the entrance to the
Afterworld. At initiation, death came to both the old year and boyhood
identities, and as boys became warriors they would feed the dogs of
death 5.

4
The oldest texts in Old Indic are the "family books", books 2 through 7 , of the Rig
Veda. These hymns and prayers were compiled into "books" or mandalas about
1 5 0 0 -1 3 0 0 bce, but many had been composed earlier. The oldest parts of the
Avesta, the Gathas, the oldest texts in Iranian, were composed by
Zarathustra/Zoroaster probably about 1 20 0 -1 0 0 0 bce.
The undocumented language that was the parent of both, common Indo-Iranian,
must be dated well before 1 5 0 0 bce. Common Indo-Iranian probably was spoken
during the Sintashta period, 2 1 0 0 -1 8 0 0 bce. Archaic Old Indic probably emerged as
a separate tongue from archaic Iranian about 18 0 0 -1 6 0 0 bce.
The Rig Veda and the Avesta agreed that the essence of their shared parental
Indo-Iranian identity was linguistic and ritual, not racial. If a person sacrificed to the
right gods in the right way using the correct forms of the traditional hymns and
poems, that person was an Aryan. Rituals performed in the right words were the
core of being an Aryan.

5
In the Rig Veda the oath brotherhood of warriors that performed sacrifices at
midwinter were called the Vrátyas who also were called dog-priests. The
ceremonies associated with them featured many contests, including poetry
In many ways the cultures between the upper Don and Tobol rivers in
the northern steppes showed a common kinship with the Aryans of the
Rig Veda and Avesta. Between 2100 and 1800 bce they invented the
chariot, organized themselves into stronghold-based chiefdoms, armed
themselves with new kinds of weapons, created a new style of funeral
rituals that involved spectacular public displays of wealth and
generosity, and began to mine and produce metals on a scale previously
unimagined in the steppes. 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. Chariotry spread west
through the Ukrainian steppe culture into southeastern Europe's
Monteoru (North Valachia, Romania, Moldavia), Vatin (Serbia,
Vojvodina), and Otomani cultures, perhaps with the satcm 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 in the satcm innovations). And
the Ural frontier was finally broken - herding economies spread
eastward across the steppes. With them went the eastern daughters of
Sintashta, the offspring who would later emerge into history as the
Iranian and Vedic Aryans.

M ain source: D avid W . A n thon y, T h e h orse , th e w h e e l an d langu age

(Continued) recitation and chariot races. The Rig Veda mentions Vrátyas about eight
times (e.g. 3:2 6 :6 ; 5 :5 3 :1 1 ; 5 :7 5 :9 ; 9 :1 4 :2 ). The Atharva Veda ( 1 5 th kanda) devotes
an entire hymn titled Vrátya- Suktha, to the "mystical fellowship" of the Vrátyas.
Above: The Caspian Sea in the lower left corner. The red colours show the
locations of the Andronovo cultures. The Sintashta culture is located where the
darker red is. The purple part shows where to date the oldest spoke wheeled
chariots have been excavated. Below: Spread of the chariot through the ancient
world. The numbers are dates bce.
Spread of Indo-European languages around 2000 bce. The Rope Beaker Culture
sits on a yellow background. The area where the satcmization began is in dark
red and coincides with the Abashevo/Sintashta/Srubna cultures. Blue: centum
languages.

BRONZE AGE HERDERS OF THE EURASIAN STEPPES

Archeological Cultures of Steppe Nomads
Tripolye Culture (4000 - 3500 bce)
Sredny Stog Culture (4000 - 3000 bce)
Khvalynsk Culture
Karanovo VI Culture
Kemi Oba Culture
Neolith
Usatovo Culture
(5000-3300 bce)
Botai Culture
Poltavka Culture
Fatyanovo Culture
Abashevo Culture
Sintashta-Arkaim Culture
Maikop Culture 3500 - bce)
Pit Grave Culture ( 3300 - 2300 bce)
Early Bronze Age
Baden culture
(3300-1900 bce)
Funnel Beaker Culture (3300 - 3000 bce)
Catacomb Culture (2800 - 1900 bce)
Timber Grave Culture (1900 - 1200 bce)
Middle Bronze Age Andronovo Culture (1800 - 1200 bce)
(1900-1200 bce) Mnogovalikovaya Culture
Glina III/Monteoru Culture