*Kóryos

The Männerbund (German: 'alliance of men') refers to the theoretical Proto-Indo-European brotherhood of warriors in which unmarried young males served for several years, as a rite of passage into manhood, before their full integration into society.

Scholars such as Kim McCone and Gerhard Meiser have theorized the existence of the Männerbund based on later Indo-European traditions and myths that feature links between landless young males, perceived as an age-class not yet fully integrated into the community of the married men; their service in war-bands sent away for part of the year in the wild, then defending the host society for the rest of the year; their mystical self-identification with wolves and dogs as symbols of death, lawlessness, and warrior fury; and the idea of a liminality between vulnerability and death on one side, and youth and adulthood on the other side.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.