Prehistoric symbols of transformation: The case of the bell-shaped figurines

This text is an exercise in using Jung's definition of a symbol as the best possible explanation of something that can only be explained with analogies taken from our physical world. In it I discuss five prehistoric bell-shaped figurines not only as objects but as symbols that can be read as a written text.; They are spread out over a period of nearly four thousand years. The earliest one comes from the very beginning of the Copper Age in the second half of the fifth millennium, when the copper is being introduced and the person of the smith begins to change the old view of the world. Then I discuss two figurines from the Minoan civilization on Crete, one from its beginning and one from its end. The fifth figurine comes from the virtually unknown Urnfield culture in Europe, and the last one stands on the threshold to the Classical Greek world in the end of the eighth century BCE. Through their details they symbolize the unity that is transformed into diversity, in analogy to the fertilized egg that after the first seconds of immobility begins its transformation into the diversified cells that make the unity of the body.; The Bronze Age seems to have thought in symbols, as people not influenced by the Western culture still do. However, during the eighth century BCE in Greece, the society is changing. Architecture, urbanism, writing, colonization of foreign countries, and organized warfare begin changing the old world, and at the same time the images painted on the pottery begin to tell stories. However, although banished to the collective unconscious, the bell-shaped figurines do not disappear. They have survived to our modern time both as musical bells and in the architecture. The church-bells are still making music, and the church of Saint Peter in Rome, and the Capitol in Washington DC are only two examples of the architecture where the androgynous bell-shaped figure, symbol of transformation of unity into diversity, can still be seen.