Check out this 6000-year old storage jar from ancient Ukraine. Standing nearly 2½ feet tall, it's a product of the Copper Age Trypillian culture.

I saw this jar myself some years back at a traveling exhibit of artifacts from what archaeologist Marija Gimbutas calls the “Old European” cultures. What may look at first like abstract designs soon emerge as an owl—you can see the eyes and beak on the jar's upper register—and, strikingly, the back of the jar bears exactly the same patterns. This is a janiform owl, double, looking you directly in the eye no matter what direction you're coming from.

We don't know what was stored in the jar, but we can make a good guess. The people of ancient Trypillia raised all the staples of the Neolithic diet: wheat, emmer, barley, peas, lentils. The advantage of agriculture is that it produces lots of good, nourishing, storeable food with which to feed your family through long, cold Central European winters.

The disadvantage: stored grains and legumes draw rodents.

Hence the owl. Marija Gimbutas would have it that we are here in the realm of the Bird Goddess, Lady of Death. Perhaps. But, as my friend and colleague Helga Hedgewalker pointed out at the time, owls are good at keeping down vermin, whatever your mythology. Thank you, Mother Owl.

The breathtaking mastery of the ceramicist who made this jar is apparent only when you get close. From a distance, the patterns of the “head” and “body” of the jar look very similar. It's only when you get close that you see that they are, in fact, quite different. The owl's face—faces—are painted; the running spirals along the body are engraved. The potter has used two different techniques to achieve the same visual effect. Artistically speaking, it's a bravura performance.

We know from the house models that the Trypillians buried beneath their hearths that a row of just such storage jars stood along the side wall of every house: the Mother Jars that feed us through the winter.

In fact (plus ça change...), I've got a similar row of gallon Mother Jars (they're glass, though) lining the wall of my own butler's pantry, filled with the grains, peas, and beans that will feed me through the months to come.

And on Midwinter's Eve, as the very first course of our Mother Night feast, we'll eat—in the old way, from the communal bowl—a pudding made of whole wheat berries, sweetened with honey, enriched with nuts and poppy seeds.

Just as they did—we can't prove it, but who could doubt it?—in ancient Ukraine, some 6000 years ago.