Splitting Hairs with Occam's Razor: The First Temple

The Enemy of My Enemy's Friend is My?

The historical record on this Pale Blue Dot, as the deceased astro-physicist Carl Sagan once deemed the  Earth, has been fraught with violence and war. Carl Sagan used the Pale Blue Dot nomenclature as a metaphor to humanity in order to reflect on the infiniteness of the universe and subsequently the Earth's place within this vastness. When Voyager 1 took its last instructed photograph as it exited our solar system, that speck of blue in the lower left corner was the place where everything and everyone we know happened. There dangling in space was the epicenter of our history which constitutes only a fraction time in the space time of the universe.

The present day infighting amongst various religions, some which have emphatically entwined lineages, only strengthens the concept sent forth by Carl Sagan. Violent clashes between groups of people is sadly endemic to the human species. Taken to the extreme war then becomes the penultimate expression of violence between groups. There is a biology infused anthropological premise that resources and access to them precipitates groups to resort to violence. This theory is called the “protein theory” which romantically applies to hunter gather societies. Societies which Rousseau labeled the “noble savage”.

In the modern age not much has changed in the way of motivation which sways the “noble savage” to conduct violence in the form of war. Yet as societies developed more abstruse ways of differentiating themselves from other societies their intrinsic motivations also evolved. Of course, the fundamental reason might be an overextended population which was in competition with its neighbors for resources. But with an extended philosophical and metaphysical palette the society could paint a richer and more convoluted rationale for war. The desire for the “US” feeling is defined by psychology as a sense wanting to identify and belong to a group. A sense of “brotherhood” is this psychological concept as it is borrowed and tweaked by sociology when they apply it more widely to societies.

Brotherhood is a term with a thousand faces. It can allude to nations, subcultures, secret societies and even ethnic groups. However, the one pervasive group throughout modern history which the concept brotherhood is inextricably linked is that of religion. From the Christianization of pagan Europe through to the bellicose clashes of Europe and Asia Minor during the Crusades then the upheaval of the Counter Reformation when the Catholic Church attempted to reassert its hegemony over Christian doctrine, modern history is defined by the careening of ideologies wrapped in the concept of brotherhood. It is not a level of sophistication which mans the wheelhouse of derision between brotherhoods and leads them to war. Rather, it's an inability to collectively gaze at the Pale Blue Dot.

Sometime before the Neolithic Revolution about 12-13,000 years ago disparate groups were able to meld their sense of brotherhood and create a landmark to religious unity. They accomplished this without the aid of a priest class or arcane philosophical tenets. These devices enable a modern stratified society to set parameters for the brotherhood concept to function. Yet the earliest religious temple built tells a different tale even if the scientific community isn't able to see the Pale Blue Dot.

Göbekli Tepe is the earliest sophisticated temple constructed by man before the neolithic revolution which belies a level of sophistication and societal diversity that wasn't developed for thousands of years later. From the weird to the wonderful a handful of theories have been postulated for the sociological quantum leap. The theories run the gamut from a benevolent extraterrestrial assistance to a culmination of hitherto undiscovered advancement in technology and familial cohesion.

Science and scientific discovery are driven by a conjecture motor made up of guess work and hunches. The allure of unraveling a mystery by using an avalanche of intricate data and detail often befuddles the basal goal which is to explain. Sometimes removing the cadre from scientific protocol is what is truly propels knowledge and discovery. The refocussing on more concise and simple explanations will facilitate the development of ones which prove to be the most plausible. This is sometimes referred to as Occam's Razor which posits that if you are confronted with two competing theories the simplest of the two is usually right. Put another way, if you are able to think outside the box you might be able to see a container.

So what is Göbekli Tepe? Why is it a mystery? How does it shape and mold our perception of the sociological and anthropological leap forward? As will become apparent; the enigma wrapped in a mystery is also cloaked orthodox scientific paradigms which untangle neatly when we slice them open with Occam's Razor.

The theory goes that the evolution of a nation state journeys through immutable phases until it reaches it peak of a stratified society. The domestication of plants and animals theoretically frees the entire clan/tribe from necessarily foraging and hunting for food. A key factor is that it call in a de facto cooperation mechanism with strangers. In the case of Göbekli Tepe it was a shared codified belief system presumably in an afterlife. The fact is that there had to have been a fully functioning cosmology beyond a basal animistic/totem belief. The complexity of the temple suggests that a diverse array of animals and demigod like deities existed in their shared cosmology because of the wide variety of stone carvings. But they were not a settled, stationary society. 

My claim is they were semi-nomadic and came together during an immense abundance of food stuff which grew naturally around the area of Göbekli Tepe. The climate did not afford the builders of Göbekli Tepe to remain year round in this place and thusly they convened only during the more hospitable weather months. The fact is that they needed to have time and expertise to practice and perfect these new building techniques and artistic trades. No social or evolutionary advancement occurs in a vacuum. But how did they acquire the technology to carve and build? Moreover, why are there no jewelry or ornamental beads or adornments found in situ? Clearly, if they were able to produce the carvings they should have been able to make animal bone necklaces or trinkets like totems or tikis to travel with on their semi-nomadic treks to warmer climes during the winter and autumn? Perhaps several different ethnic groups gathered in the same area and the same time during the wet and cold months of the year. During these periods they were able to swap technologies and stories and building techniques through diffusion or enculturation. These accomplishments were made with basic stone tooled flint flake technologies. The point is that the temple was constructed and it was done so outside the confines of orthodox scientific theories.

To illustrate the axiom of Occams Razor as it applies to the confounding theory of how Göbekli Tepe was erected a brief overview the Calusa Indians of Florida will be discussed. The Calusa Indians society will prove that a fully developed an functioning stratified post Neolithic Revolution society is not required to evolve culturally. Of course there are other examples, like the Monte Sano Middens in present day Louisiana or the dissemination of Polynesia culture from the Marquesas Islands, but for sake of space I have limited it to one example.

The Calusa were a people who inhabited the coastal regions and interior waterways of Southwest Florida from about 5000 BC until the Spanish encountered them on their explorations in the early 1500's. The Calusa had a vast kingdom built upon a tribute system to a single chief who had many thousands of subjects encompassing a huge amount of territory. They erected large religious middens and settlements as well as waterways for irrigation and transportation. These accomplishments seem tame almost benign at first glance. However, all of these advancements were made without sedentary farming and agriculture. The Calusa culture, also referred to as the Caloosahatchee culture, was based on estuarine fisheries. This means to say that the classic model employed by scientists to trace the evolution and therefore the ability for complex societal endeavors is turned on its head. In other words, similar to Göbekli Tepe there was a “goldilocks” scenario in the region where the climate was right for staying in one place.

The Calusa didn't construct anything quite on the magnitude of the religious edifice found at Göbekli Tepe but they did prove that the evolution of societies are like snowflakes; each one is unique. So what does this tell us about brotherhood and war? The commonality of the human experience is what binds those details of that experience, like religion, culture and brotherhood. But what binds us more as we move forward is the global brotherhood we share as we gaze in our minds eye at the Pale Blue Dot.

List of 5 Persistent Celtic Superstitions

Tikis, relics, talismans, lucky charms, omens or just a personal ritual to hedge your bets against bad fortune; they all are symbolic footholds in a chaotic unpredictable existence. The earliest temple yet discovered is Göbekli Tepe which is located in modern day Turkey. The in situ finds date the temple to it's earliest construction stage at 9000 BC. Preliminary evidence points to a codification of ritualized superstition in the form of animism as seen on the menacing statues of adorning many of the pillars found at the site. The people who built the temple complex were seemingly erecting a sacred area in which rituals could be preformed. Try envisioning the temple as a place where rituals were carried out as a “insurance policy” against possible malevolent supernatural forces which they were otherwise unable to abate or avoid. Both the animal paleozoological and paleobotanical finds at Göbekli Tepe indicate that the architects of this temple complex were still heavily dependent on hunting and gathering and not a fully developed sedentary farming society. 

The standard theories of the development of religion state that a stratified and complex religion (e.g. religious hierarchy) would not exist before a society adopted the technological fundamentals of neolithic revolution into their culture. Klaus Schmidt, the principle archeologist studying Göbekli Tepe, has said about the temple; "First came the temple, then the city". In other words, superstition came before religion. Several millenniums later these aspects of superstition along with technological and cultural traditions spread out over the Eurasian plate by peoples emanating from the edge of Fertile Crescent. The fertile crescent a.k.a the “bread basket of the world” or the “cradle of civilization” is seen by the archeological evidence to be the epicenter of the neolithic revolution which was can be viewed as the birth of the modern era. There were peoples who, like in the case of those who built Göbekli Tepe, were influenced by the advancements of the neolithic revolution but who didn't adopt the sedentary lifestyle needed to evolve into a complex and hierarchal society; i.e cities. 

This rudimentary process of influence from one culture to another is called diffusion. Diffusion is basically the transference of a cultural “artifact” from it's place of origin to another place. This process is manifested in such exchanges involving population migrations, trade, war or diplomatic contact. Often diffusion has an undertone of conquest as denoted by technological dominance. This anthropological theory has been altered and refined to become what it now deemed acculturation. Acculturation encompasses, therefore, the same mechanisms for adoption of new cultural traits from a dominant society interacting with a subordinate culture but with out an a priori malevolent intent.

One such group on the fringes of the neolithic European landscape was the ubiquitous but disparate category of people known collectively as the Celts. Celtic European occupancy traces back more than 2500 years and spans a territory from Eastern Europe, Greece, Spain, Northern Italy, Western Europe, England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Celts are considered to be the first major Indo-European peoples to spread across all of Europe. They apparently migrated begrudgingly due to pressures from other Indo-European groups such as the Germanic, Greek and Latin peoples. The Celts were a pre-literate society whose culture was preserved mainly through oral tradition. The sparse written accounts of the Celts are those of classical authors; chiefly the Greeks and Romans.

Accordingly, due to the late pacification and ensuing subjugation of Ireland and Scotland as well as other pockets of recalcitrant “pagans” in Europe, some vestiges of ancient celtic traditions in the form of superstition persisted. Some of those superstitions are so ingrained in our lives we neglect to realize the origin and meaning of the superstition. Here is a list of 5 Celtic Superstitions that have been with us for thousands of years and don't seem to be going away anytime soon. So, if the languid state of current world affairs has you in a pragmatic conundrum my advice would be to follow the Celt's lead.

Wishing Wells

The precise origins are obscured by history, yet there is archeological evidence to suggest that the practice of offering up money to water dates back to the period of the Roman occupation of Britain. The county of Northumberland is home to the Coventina Well where thousands of coins have been excavated. The minting dates on the coins range from the first through the fifth century AD. Due to the fact that the Coventina Well was discovered amidst apparent temple ruins the conclusion archeologists have drawn is that the offerings were made as part of a religious observance.

Mirrors

The superstition that ones soul could be absconded with by nefarious supernatural forces if ones reflection was seen in water predates the mirror. Accessing the original time frame of this superstition is almost impossible. Logic dictates that the superstition of a broken mirror's shards ensnaring the soul and the harbinger of bad luck is probably just a continuation of the aforementioned older superstition. The arbitrary length of time before the misfortunes are lifted comes from the Romans belief that seven years are needed for life to regenerate. This one is a superstition wrapped in a superstition.

Touch or Knock Wood

There are diverse explanations as to why touching or knocking wood developed into a superstition. The explanation which conforms to possible Celtic influence is the one discussed here. Celtic mythology held that faeries, pixies, brownies and other woodland little people used trees as their homes. Presumably, by knocking on the bark of a tree would awaken the slumbering faerie folk allowing them to hear your plea for a good favor. Simultaneously the knocking prevented the more malevolent and evil spirits of the woods from eavesdropping on your plea to the faeries and potentially sabotage it. The modern variation of touching or knocking wood to stave off ill fortune may have been adapted by the early Christians from the Celts. The early Christians attributed wood to being a symbol of the Cross on which one of their primary deities was sacrificed. Touching the Cross would imbue them through transference with the protection of their god.

Four Leaf Clover

Although the origins may be traced to the Celtic (Druid) priests throughout Europe, the survival of this superstition is chiefly due to its prevalence in modern Irish folklore. The scarcity of four leaf clovers contributed to their mystical quality among the Druids. The clovers were a viewed as tools to pry open the esoteric third-eye which allowed the Druid to initiate contact with the spirit world. Once in the spirit realm the Druid was able to consult the deities as a shaman on behalf of his people.

Rabbits Foot

Possessing a rabbit's foot talisman is so deeply engrained in Indo-European culture that assigning an origin to the superstition quickly becomes a fools errand. It is believed by some mythology scholars to have been practiced by Celts several thousand of years ago. This is only conjecture based on the Celtic belief that the rabbit or hare spent so much time underground allowing for more frequent contact with the underworld. Another explanation would be their association with fertility and rebirth. The Christian holy day of Easter has its roots planted in the ancient Celtic celebration of the birth of Spring. Rabbits, hares, chicks and eggs are all part of the rebirth symbolism connected to Spring and Easter. Furthermore, structural anthropologists deem the hare or rabbit as embodying a duality of good and bad which manifests itself in origin stories centered around twins. Claude Levi-Strauss, the late proponent of Structural Anthropology, states that the rabbit represents the twins because of its mouth being equally split down the middle: harelips. The twins in mythology emerging from the hare's mouth embark on different adventures one good and one bad. To possess the good (right) foot and to dismiss the bad (left) foot of a rabbit would garner the owner with symbolic power over the evil twin. 

Spinoza's Chutzpah

Synching up the profane and the sacred

 

     When I made the decision as an undergrad to pursue a minor in Anthropology instead of a double major along with History, my philosophical world view was disassembled, rearranged and pieced back together. But in a positive way. It galvanized the dissimilar and sometimes incongruent paradigms which oozed back and forth between the hard and soft science classes at the university. One of the prerequisite courses was an introduction to Anthropology of the Family. Although the course was as interesting as the professor could eek out in a 4 month stint, ultimately it proved to be underwhelming at best. By default I was able to enroll in this course but the course I really wanted to follow to satisfy my requirements was Medical Anthropology. At the time, youth was my driving force like a fire in the belly which spurred me on and didn't accept disappointment. I told myself that if I couldn't follow the lectures, so be it; but I was going to study the book and handouts which were listed. 
 

      The title of the book eludes me now but the contents of the book; its basic tenets, the gist of the narrative, fascinated me to the point of obsession. Primitive cultures, now abandoned for the p.c. Pre-literate moniker, was and still is the first stepping stone in American and European Anthropology education. The early 20^th century paradigm shift in Anthropology from the concept of “other” to “different” is still prevalent and woven seamlessly into today's curriculum. Pioneering anthropologists like Franz Boas taught a second generation of pioneering anthropologists to throw off the shackles of Social Darwinism and study indigenous cultures as unique and intrinsically equal cultures. Without being laden down in nominal conclusions of good and bad, anthropologists like Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead spearheaded the Relativism movement in the social sciences. Mead's seminal work on sexuality; “Coming of Age in Samoa”, shown a light on a sexually repressed Western Culture. Franz Boas, in his forward to her book, illuminates what Mead's work represented; “Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, very good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways." This was what the textbook from Medical Anthropology was espousing at its core; knowledge and wisdom are two separate concepts which are universal to all cultures but differ in meaning within various cultures. 
 
      The example which rattled my brain as most poignant and epiphanic was not from some far flung exotic Polynesian island; it was from New England USA. In the winter months when Northern climes are subject to but seldom reported epidemics of flu those areas utilize home spun remedies to combat and stave off the demoralizing secondary infections. One of those remedies is called Grog. Apparently the word grog stems from the British Vice Admiral Edward Vernon who was know as "Old Grog". The libation was formerly a mixture of alcohol and fruit juices and spices which rationed to sailors as a means of avoiding drinking stagnant water and preventing scurvy. Sailors being sailors the rations were often gulped down prematurely leaving them little recourse but to drink the algae ridden water. The solution was to dilute the mixture with water which stretched the rations for a longer duration. Initially a maritime drink it is found all over Europe and the Western world. It is documented to even have an equivalent in Fuji, no doubt unintentionally introduced by seamen on shore leave. Regardless, the New England variant was a combination of vinegar, honey and occasionally alcohol. The ratio of ingredients shows a dichotomy at work; bitter and sweet made palatable by a jigger of alcohol (exact amount may vary). Of course, the honey has a dearth of nutritional goodness and the alcohol can lull the sick and afflicted into a nice slumber. I believe the vinegar might give the illusion of a medicinal wheelhouse. If it doesn't taste bad then it's probably not helping. 
 
      This explanation is the HOW. This is what it would tell us empirically, scientifically. But to the those drinking the grog it is only the WHY which is important. The disparate properties jumbled together work because they work together well. This is maybe over simplified and tautological but it led me to continue to extrapolate on pre-literate societies and their ethnobotanical remedies. A healer or a shaman or a witchdoctor in a pre-literate community has a mind numbingly expansive knowledge of his or her immediate pharmacopeia. Much like the New England grog maker, the healer, shaman or witchdoctor mixes and blends a variety of plants, roots and herbs and often hallucinogens to aid in the recovery of a ailing tribesman. The chemistry, biology, and scientific underpinnings can be studied and understood giving us the HOW the remedy worked. That doesn't satiate a cosmology where the profane and sacred are inexorably intertwined. The need to complete the whole must have a WHY. Those pre-literate societies might assume that a deity is embodied in a plant or root and through a concisely dictated ritual resulting in drinking the liquid, a spirit is released which goes forth and heals. The WHY doesn't negate the HOW. It forms a set; an ethical circuit which satisfies the sacred and the profane and ipso facto brings structure. This allows for an individual within a society to experience moral cohesion below the surface tension of empirical reality. 
 
      How and Why are therefore cut from the same cloth but remain in the western world at odds with each other. For example, take the words demonstrate and inspire. Etymologically demonstrate is taken from Latin meaning “de = proove/monstrum = divine, sacred” but it has been bastardized into meaning empiricism: science. Inspire derives from the Latin word inspirationem which connotes breathing. At its root it incorporates the word spirare which is where we get the word spirit. The act of blowing and inhaling would allow us to ingest the sacred. So are science and mythology doomed to be at rivaling ends of our ethical world view? We can stoically marvel at the universe and proclaim that there must be some sort of intelligent design for such complex sequencing of DNA as proven in the multi-celluar life forms we call humans. There are, however, numerous flaws in the design which make me reluctant to believe in an omnipotent and benevolent greying old man perched on a cloud who's counting the number of fire ants who die in order to keep the biosphere in balance. The fact that life is sustained by killing seems to me to be a major flaw. Science supplies us with a progression of replicable hypotheses which allow us to comprehend the HOW of evolution. They tell us what mechanisms are at work selecting certain traits. Which of these traits may be helpful in the long run but also which ones are benign or antique but continue to be passed down from our homo sapiens ancestors who first interbred with Neanderthals. Like the archaic genes for small brains or the still valid but rapidly fading gene for red hair. 
 
      The total of nature's wonders in the vastness of diversity on this blue marble or the greater cosmos, either perceived or theorized like dark energy and dark matter, causes me to add credence to Spinoza's view God and the divine. Spinoza theorized a God who exists and is abstract and impersonal. The nutshell of Spinoza's believe in God is that the profane and the sacred are one in the same and exemplified by nature. All the cosmos and all the terrestrial beings are part of a God who is the sum of the universe and nature and not of a guardian overlording it. Spinoza was, uncharacteristically for the Jewish faith, excommunicated because of his heretical philosophy. Thankfully he was able to fused together the HOW and the WHY eloquently and holistically and in a neat and tidy philosophy; albeit posthumously. 
 
      If we accept the union of the sacred and the profane as being equally beneficial to our moral and ethical development we can begin to pose more stringent philosophical questions. When we ask ourselves one of the quintessential philosophical question : “what is death?” Intrinsically and by default the HOW alone becomes moot and irrelevant. The WHY usurps our self-reflective brain power and takes over the philosophical high ground. Will it be that the sacred provides us with solace not only in preparation for death but also moral support for those we leave behind? Science is not devoid of its WHY deliberation. Let's assume that most of the educated population believes in the Big Bang theory. In doing so we a priori concedes that we are all made from the same interstellar flotsam and jetsam that was spewed out over the universe at the moment of the Big Bang. If we agree to those two criteria then the WHY for science becomes easy. We humans just as all organic matter will return to the cosmic dust fragments from whence we came.

     Bridging the gab between the HOW and the WHY will make the derisive camps of the profane and sacred irrelevant and at the same time reduce a heap of metaphysical stress on all of us.