

The beaten bronze buckets from Unterglauheim in Bavaria and Hajdu-Boszormény in northern Hungary both have repoussé ornament in which these bird motifs are balanced about a sun-disc, while radiating sun-symbols recur on several examples of body armour, and both birds and sun-discs are found on greaves.



The same combination of water-birds and sun-disc or wheel-motif occurs on the beaten bronze amphora from Mariesminde, Fyn, Denmark, one of several exotic items of beaten bronze-work that have been interpreted as the products of long-distance trade or gift-exchange from eastern Central Europe. Bird imagery is widespread throughout the Urnfield and Hallstatt Iron Age



Celtic funerary practise and ritual

edit on Kam731185vAmerica/ChicagoSunday0531 by Kantzveldt because: (no reason given)



Not many people realize that the car was invented at least 7,500 years ago according to the earliest model version found near Mardin in Turkey and fashioned from stone, not a motor car but still a car.The design was similar to racing vehicles of the present with larger wheels at the rear, it appears to have been a single seater sports model also, similar ceramic models have turned up from Mesopotamia.So they were fully aware of the car as an invention but unfortunately had not managed to invent the engine to drive it.There is some suggestion though at least to me that they may have realized the benefits of pedal power as a means of propulsion in the absence of the engine.There are examples of tri-wheeled carts found in Vinca culture dating back around 5,500 years that to all intents and purposes appear to be powered by ducks, seemingly not a very practical way of going about things but the association could have been made between paddling ducks feet and pedals and spindles.The duck then as the totemic symbol of pedal power, instead of a six cylinder engine they had the six paddling feet of three ducks, nature providing as ever.The Goddess for whom this is the preferred mode of transport had interesting associations with the Swastika, interesting because this motif related to the turning of Ursa Major around Celestial North seen describing the four quarters of the day or year in terms of it's four positions, and thus natural symbolic relationship to any four spoked wheel.The example seen right however seems to have relied upon horsepower to draw it forward, but does contain the shallow bowl platform which became a general feature of examples from the Bronze age.Below an example from China which is reliant upon duck power and which the sacred shallow bowl is an important feature of, other examples ofseen here. Probably even during the Vinca period and certainly into the Bronze age in Celtic culture these vehicles were seen as a magical mode of transportationIt seems the case then that the cultic associations of the bird with the turning of the Heavens in conjunction with the daily and yearly solar cycle is the tradition that lingered but that this had once practical association with how to turn the wheel and drive the cart was long lost, so ducks just became totemic animals in connection to funerary urns placed upon the carts reflecting the cycle of life.The ritual associations then of the Bronze age seem a long way off from the early inventiveness of the earliest Neolithic period and their models which don't have an apparent religious context until the Vinca period, so perhaps the fun went out of things along the way and people lost interest in single seater sports models.