Tyndall Center Director Anderson: Rapid Emissions Reduction Hard: 4-6C Far, Far Worse

[GliderGuider]

35. Well, here's one example:

The Turkish town of Çatalhöyük flourished between 7500 and 5700 BC, for about 2,000 years after the invention of agriculture in the area. Here's a description of the religious archaeology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_religion#Religion_at_the_neolithic_revolution

The religions of the Neolithic peoples provide evidence of some of the earliest known forms of organized religions. The Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük, in what is now Turkey, was home to about 8,000 people and remains the largest known settlement from the Neolithic period. James Mellaart, who excavated the site, believed that Çatalhöyük was the spiritual center of central Anatolia. A striking feature of Çatalhöyük are its female figurines. Mellaart, the original excavator, argued that these well-formed, carefully made figurines, carved and molded from marble, blue and brown limestone, schist, calcite, basalt, alabaster, and clay, represented a female deity of the Great Goddess type. Although a male deity existed as well, “…statues of a female deity far outnumber those of the male deity, who moreover, does not appear to be represented at all after Level VI”. To date, eighteen levels have been identified. These careful figurines were found primarily in areas Mellaart believed to be shrines. One, however – a stately goddess seated on a throne flanked by two female lions – was found in a grain bin, which Mellaart suggests might have been a means of ensuring the harvest or protecting the food supply.

a little later on the article says,

The period from 900 to 200 BCE has been described by historians as the axial age, a term coined by German philosopher Karl Jaspers. According to Jaspers, this is the era of history when "the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently... And these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today". Intellectual historian Peter Watson has summarized this period as the foundation of many of humanity's most influential philosophical traditions, including monotheism in Persia and Canaan, Platonism in Greece, Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism in India, and Confucianism and Taoism in China. These ideas would become institutionalized in time, for example Ashoka's role in the spread of Buddhism, or the role of platonic philosophy in Christianity at its foundation.

My take on it is that the rise of what we think of as "religion" was completely independent of the development of agriculture. No doubt religious and spiritual practices became more organized as people settled in larger groups, but the appearance of monolithic, hierarchical organizations and especially monotheism came much later. Rome after all was still polytheistic at the dawn of Christianity.

The organizational aspects of modern religion make it a fearsome imperial force, but those tendencies were already visible in agrarian societies like Assyria, Rome and even the Aztecs who survived as an agrarian empire with an essentially pantheistic religion until the God-fearing Spaniards arrived on the scene.

Oh, and I'm an old guy who is also just now trying to figure it out. You've sure made a good start!