Bronze and Iron Age Autochthons

The central character of the Western Blood and Soil myth is the autochthon, the person born from the soil.

The autochthon is indigenous, and known as the "native".

Its antagonist is the colonist, known by the indigene as the "invader," "alien," "foreigner," "barbarian," "immigrant," "gringo".

> Tellers of the myth valorize the qualities of the autochthon's character. When told from the perspective of the indigene, the character of autochthon is sanctified.

When told from the colonizer's perspective, the character of autochthon is first desecrated and then when land is colonized assumed. When the colonizer uses the myth to justify the taking of land and dispossessing its inhabitants, the colonizer valorizes the character of the autochthon as (the) "savage".

Bronze Age Autochthons

Sumer/Iraq

In the Mesopotamian "Epic of Gilgamesh," Gilgamesh is a semi-divine king and colonizer. In response to the complaints of his victims, Aruru, the goddess of creation, makes an autochthon, Enkidu, to destroy Gilgamesh: "the goddess conceived an image in her mind, and it was of the stuff of Anu of the firmament. She dipped her hands in water and pinched off clay, she let it fall in the wilderness, and noble Enkidu was created." Enkidu fails to subdue Gilgamesh; instead they become best friends and decide to kill another autochthon, Humbaba, who is the protector of the Cedar Forest (located in today's Iran or Lebanon): "Because of the evil that is in the land, we will go to the forest and destroy the evil; for in the forest lives Humbaba whose name is "Hugeness", a ferocious giant." Humbaba is a "savage". Just before they slay him, Humbaba surrenders and, accepting his colonization, makes an appeal:

"The tears started to his eyes and he was pale, ‘Gilgamesh, let me speak. I have never known a mother, no, nor a father who reared me. I was born of the mountain, he reared me, and Enlil made me the keeper of this forest. Let me go free, Gilgamesh, and I will be your servant, you shall be my lord; all the trees of the forest that I tended on the mountain shall be yours. I will cut them down and build you a palace.'" After Humbaba curses Enkidu for convincing Gilgamesh to reject his plea, they kill him. The gods are displeased and, ultimately, Humbaba's curse is realized. Enkidu dies a horrible death and Gilgamesh, frightened, sets forth—but fails—to find the source of immortality. > This telling is primordial, complex and ambiguous but in the end, both autochthons are doomed and killed by the colonizer. The colonizer never achieves the satisfactions he imagined he would as a result of his defeat of the 'child of the mountain and keeper of the forest'.

Iron Age Autochthons

Phoenicia/Libya That country was then ruled by Antaeus, son of Poseidon, who used to kill strangers by forcing them to wrestle. Being forced to wrestle with him, Hercules hugged him, lifted him aloft, broke and killed him; for when he touched earth so it was that he waxed stronger, wherefore some said that he was a son of Earth.

Pseudo Apollodorus > This telling is from the colonizer's perspective: Antaeus "was probably incorporated into Greek mythology after the Greek conquest of Libya in the mid-seventh century BC".

Athens

a) Pelasgus, first person

The Arcadians say that Pelasgus was the first inhabitant of this land. It is natural to suppose that others accompanied Pelasgus, and that he was not by himself; for otherwise he would have been a king without any subjects to rule over. However, in stature and in prowess, in beauty and in wisdom, Pelasgus excelled his fellows, and for this reason, I think, he was chosen to be king by them. Asius the poet says of him:–

The godlike Pelasgus on the wooded mountains Black earth gave up, that the race of mortals might exist.

a) Homer, Iliad:

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" Athens, the well-built citadel, the land of great-hearted Erechtheus, whom of old Athene, daughter of Zeus, fostered, when the earth, the giver of grain, had borne him"

b) "king snake" CECROPS (Kekrôps), according to Apollodorus (iii. 14. § 1, &c.) the first king of Attica, which derived from him its name Cecropia, having previously borne the name of Acte. He is described as an autochthon, and is accordingly called a gêgenês, the upper part of whose body was human, while the lower was that of a dragon. Hence he is called diphuês or geminus. (Hygin. Fab. 48; Anton. Lib. 6; Diod. i. 28; Aristoph. Vesp. 438; Ov. Met. ii. 555.)

c)

“natives sprung from the soil living and dwelling in their own true fatherland; and nurtured also… by that mother-country wherein they dwelt, which bare them and reared them and now at their death receives them again to rest in their own abodes”

“the forefathers of [Athenians] were not of immigrant stock, nor were these their sons declared by their origin to be strangers in the land sprung from immigrants, but natives sprung from the soil living and dwelling in their own true fatherland; and nurtured also by no stepmother, like other folk, but by that mother-country [237c] wherein they dwelt, which bare them and reared them and now at their death receives them again to rest in their own abodes. Most meet it is that first we should celebrate that Mother herself; for by so doing we shall also celebrate therewith the noble birth of these heroes.”

Plato, Menexenus

> This telling is from the indigene's perspective. Notice how it denigrates "immigrant stock".

> Socrates is lauding and riffing off of Pericles' Funeral Oration. Scholars are divided on its import, some saying it is a satire, others that no irony is intended. All agree that the autochthon was an established cultural construct of Classical Greece. > Like Pericles, Socrates is lauding the Athenians who formed the city-states democracy. We find in these tellings the Classical origin of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

Sparta

Chorus

There was Ares' murderous dragon, a savage guard, [660] watching with wandering eye the watery rivers and fresh streams. Cadmus destroyed it with a jagged stone, when he came there to draw lustral water; smiting the deadly head [665] with a blow of his beast-slaying arm; and by the counsel of [PalIas,] the motherless goddess, he cast the teeth upon the deep fields to fall to the earth, [670] from which the earth brought forth a sight fully-armed, above the surface of the soil; but grim slaughter once again united them to the earth they loved, bedewing with blood the ground that had [675] shown them to the sunlit breath of heaven.

Euripides

“[A] dragon, which some said was the offspring of Ares, guarded the spring and destroyed most of those that were sent. In his indignation Cadmus killed the dragon, and by the advice of Athena sowed its teeth. When they were sown there rose from the ground armed men whom they called Sparti.”

Apollodorus

“He did in every thing

As Pallas bade, he tooke a plough, and earde a furrow low

And sowde the Serpents teeth whereof the foresaid folke should grow.

Anon (a wondrous thing to tell) the clods began to move,

And from the furrow first of all the pikes appearde above,

Next rose up helmes with fethered crests, and then the Poldrens bright,

Successively the Curets whole, and all the armor right.

Thus grew up men like corne in field in rankes of battle ray

With shields and weapons in their hands to feight the field that day.”

Ovid

> These tellings are from the colonialist perspective; the Sparti are "savage": essentially violent, stupid and mutually suicidal. The Peloponnesian War that marks the end of Classical Greece pitted Athens against Sparta, and here the Athenian valence of the autochthon's character as essentially rational, just and democratic is countered by its binary opposite.

Judea/Israel

2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

> This telling is from perspective of the indigene. who is homeless, after being exiled from their native land by colonists. Within the imaginarium of their version of the myth, the teller(s) yearn to return to their original land, "Zion". > It was told/recorded around the same time (6-7th century BC) the Hercules/Antaeus myth was.