Chaos or Wildness?

Reflecting on the European pastoral traditions expressed by at least Western Europe as well as the cowboys of the Western U.S., the motifs of that cultural economy provide lifestyle texture and give context to the story of Manu and Yemo. The livestock bells, the wolf, the herd calls...

Going way back, from what set of conditions was the Yamnaya culture born? The theory is that the ancestors of the Proto-Indo-European speaking Yamnaya people came from Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers and Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers. And the basic creation myth, that of Manu and Yemo, is essentially that there was chaos and then the twin brothers, Manu and Yemo decided to bring order to the world through Manu's sacrifice of Yemo, whose body parts became the world of order, including the land, mountains, sea, and air. This allowed the people to keep and protect their herds from the forces of chaos. And the ritual sacrifice was held presumably every year to keep chaos at bay.

Was Chaos just a description of the hunter-gatherer existence? When we now use the word "chaos" are we referring to the raw wildness of nature? Wolves are like devils in folk stories and songs. And the European Christian inheritors of the Pastoral tradition have equated wildness with the Devil and evil. In Carnaval celebrations of southwestern Europe, devils dance with wolves and stags. 

It is easy to lament European culture's departure from wildness and romanticize hunter-gatherer cultures as being in some way pure, like the original inhabitants of the Garden of Eden - at least as long as we have a warm house with a comfortable armchair and soft bed to return to after our pontificating hike. Most of us have no idea how hard it is to live that way. We hardly understand how hard it is to live as a bonafide pastoralist. 

My point is that when we consider transitioning away from the techno-industrial lifestyle toward a more Earth-centered one, we can have compassion for the ancestors' choices and their unintended consequences. We still have much to learn from our pastoral ancestors, our farming ancestors, and our hunter-gatherer ancestors. 

While the Yamnaya might have been referring to hunting and gathering in a wilderness as Chaos, we know that the contemporary unfolding of creating a culture of order and control is easily as chaotic - or even more so. Therefore, let's continue to hold this ritual of sacrifice to banish the chaos in our lives, borne not by the wild hunt and pesky scavengers, but by greed, hatred, and delusion propagated through modern forms of media.