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Comment by drhagen | Hacker News Reader

Given that Western civilization worshiped Jupiter as top god for a thousand years, you would be in good company historically [1] to have have a Jupiter appreciation day.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_(mythology)#Religious_...

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The sky father was the chief god of the steppe people that lived north of the Black and Caspian Seas during the Neolithic into the Bronze Age, so 'Jupiter' as such was worshiped for 2000 years before the Greek speakers called him that.

As these people (according to all the currently most accepted archaeological and linguistic evidence) are the ancestral culture of most of Europe, Iran, and India (with the exception of the native Dravidians), it makes sense the Greeks as well as most of the religions of Europe and southwest Asia also worshipped him.

I think by steppe people, you are referring to Indo-Europeans (Aryans). There is also a sky-god in Tengrism (Mongols, Turks). But are either of those actually referring to the planet Jupiter?

Nah, the naming of the planet came much later, I don't think the planet itself was ever worshipped.

And the Proto-Indo-Europeans are not the Aryans - the Aryans were a much later daughter culture in Western Afghanistan, Northern Iran and India, and probably the folks that had the beliefs outlined in the first pages of the Rig Veda.

The steppe people I am referring to are the people of the Yamnaya culture and related peoples within their horizon. The Mongols and Turks were relative late comers to the western steppes.

Pretty sure "Aryans" is a 19th and 20th century term used for the Indo-Europeans (or roughly approximating "Indo-Europeans"), hence the association of "Aryan" and 20th century race ideology (e.g., theories of an "Aryan homeland" was in Germany, that the Germans were a pure Aryan race, etc).

The racialists of the late 19th Century and early 20th co-opted the term, but there was a real peoples that really called themselves 'Aryans'. They weren't blue eyed blonde-haired, that's for sure, and the weren't at the root of Europe either. Like I said, they were a central Asian daughter culture. They probably spoke Indo-Iranian and their beliefs were later written down in the Riga Veda as well as being a component of Iranian Zoroastrianism.

('Aryan' is cognate with the proto-Indo-European 'h₂éyos')

> They weren't blue eyed blonde-haired, that's for sure

ok but the world-wide "suppress melanin/blue eyes" gene emerged in that same part of the world (north of the Black Sea) some 10,000 years ago, so it seems that the Aryans could have been as blue eyed as anybody.

https://web.archive.org/web/20091101055254/http://www.telegr...

well, possibly, but as they are probably the ancestors of many North Indian, Iranian, and Afghanistani peoples that gene didn't stay dominant for their line. (Though I guess it shows up in that region now and again).

And they certainly weren't the 'Aryan ideal' as pictured in racist propaganda.

I agree, I wasn't disputing that there were real people who self-identified with the term, I was contesting your correction that "Aryan" solely refers to these people. You might counter that the overloaded meaning is invalid for whatever reason, but (1) meanings of the propriety of words are boring and subjective and (2) I'm only saying there exists an overloaded meaning, not that everyone will find it valid nor that it excludes the validity of other meanings.

As an aside, I recently discovered (from my new Iranian neighbors) that the term "Aryan" is cognate with "Iran" the country. "Iran" in Persian means something like "Land of the Aryans", and that in 1935 the government of Iran asked its diplomatic partners to refer to it as Iran instead of Persia because of the popularity of Aryan racial ideologies.

Ah gotcha, yeah, the notion of the 'Aryans' as the ancestors of Europe was a common misconception of early European archaeology even when it didn't have the racist propaganda connections.

The etymology of Jupiter is also fascinating. https://www.etymonline.com/word/jupiter

> also Juppiter, c. 1200, "supreme deity of the ancient Romans," from Latin Iupeter, Iupiter, Iuppiter, "Jove, god of the sky and chief of the gods," from PIE dyeu-peter- "god-father" (originally vocative, "the name naturally occurring most frequently in invocations" [Tucker]), from deiw-os "god" (from root *dyeu- "to shine," in derivatives "sky, heaven, god") + peter "father" in the sense of "male head of a household" (see father (n.)).

Greek and Sanskrit also had similar deities:

> Compare Greek Zeu pater, vocative of Zeus pater "Father Zeus;" Sanskrit Dyaus pitar "heavenly father."

Basically the Greeks dropped the `-pater` bit and `Zeus` remained.

Whether or not these deities were similarly associated with the planet Jupiter is a different question though.

> Whether or not these deities were similarly associated with the planet Jupiter is a different question though.

Very doubtful, those names are modern applications to the planet. Although, there is zero doubt they were aware of and cognizant of the visible planets and their motions and no doubt had important names for them, it wasn't what western astronomers called them, almost certainly.

Also Dyaus Pater was a god of the daylight sky for the most part, which in the steppes, as you can imagine, made him pretty important and omnipresent.

Hm, Jove and Yahwe are pretty close i'd say.

We have no idea how the Hebrew tetragrammaton YHWH is supposed to be pronounced. And there are no etymological common roots between this semitic root and the attested Indo-European origin of Iove.

It's possible that the Yahweh vocalization has been influenced by the Roman Catholic church in order to "romanize" christianity

I've been researching these cultural echoes of the Proto Indo-Europeans online for some time now; it's fascinating that over a billion people (Catholics, etc.) use roughly the same term 'Deus Pater' to describe their supreme deity up through the modern day without full cognizance of the concept's historical roots. Sky father worship may be the most highly conserved human cultural idea of all time.

Do you have any suggestions for reading material (ideally academic in book form) that covers the archaeological and/or linguistic reconstruction research in depth?

The best accessible archaeology reference I can recommend is "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language", and that book can guide you to many other resources.(https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691148182/th...)

Though the research is a tad dated since we have more genetic evidence since it was written, and there are many disputes about the author's assertions about the timing of the advent of horse riding, it still stands up very well. AFAIK the genetic research made since the book's publication has only strengthened his archaeological and linguistic arguments.

Thank you very much! I will order it.

Doesn't exactly fit your request, but maybe consider reading the book Suns of God too:

https://www.amazon.com/Suns-God-Krishna-Buddha-Unveiled/dp/1...

In India, Jupiter is called as "guru" (Sanskrit:बृहस्पति). बृहस्पति roughly translates to "guru" of the gods.

Interesting. Is there any connection in Sanskrit for that word to Dyaus [1], as that deity was an equivalent of Zeus/Jupiter

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyaus

Isn't that Thursday every week?

Jupiter, along with Zeus, Tyr, and a whole host of others are cognate with the Proto-Indo-European *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr, literally 'sky father'.

Not because they understood the gravity thing, though. I've always thought civilisations that worship the Sun have the right idea.

So do many Eastern civilisations...

Ok...

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