Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods

by E Fuller Torrey

  Some of those tombs included a single burial chamber, while others had several. Stones in the passage or burial chamber were sometimes engraved with symbols, the meaning of which is not known. Burial chambers contained anywhere from one to hundreds of bodies. Grave goods were relatively sparse but could include jewelry made of shells, limestone, or a turquoise-like stone; tools and weapons such as flint blades, axes, and arrowheads; and pottery, including vessels originally containing a beverage. In some of the graves, the hands and feet of the deceased were severed and a large stone slab placed on top of the body, perhaps to keep the dead from returning to harass the living. The passage leading to the burial chamber was often closed with large stones, thus creating a sealed tomb.44

  Some of these megalithic tombs are very impressive. The cairn of Barnenez, overlooking the sea near Morlaix in Brittany, was built 6,500 years ago, at the same time the Mesopotamian temple at Eridu was being built and the cemetery at Varna was in use. It has 11 separate passages and burial chambers, in some of which flint blades, polished stone axes, arrowheads, pottery, and other grave goods were found. The cairn is 230 feet long, 82 feet wide, and 26 feet high, and contains more than 13,000 tons of stones. The exterior stones of the cairn were originally placed to create the appearance of a stepped pyramid, similar to those that would be built in Egypt 2,000 years later. André Malraux, as Minister of Culture for France, called Barnenez a “megalithic Parthenon.”45

  It has been said that the construction of megalithic tombs in western Europe was “closely tied to the settling of a new class of farmers.” These farmers, who are thought to have come from southeastern Europe, apparently brought with them their beliefs, and scholars have assumed these beliefs included ancestor worship. Many of the burial chambers were large enough for groups of people to have gathered for communal rites, and the use of torches would have dramatically highlighted the engravings on the stones. The probable spiritual significance of the carved stones has long been recognized; in 1805, observing these megalithic tombs, one writer commented on “the peculiar genius of their religion.” Recent excavations have also suggested that “important events or ceremonies took place in front of the entrances to the tombs.… Large quantities of shards of pottery have been found there, coming sometimes from ceremonial sorts of pots.”46

  Beginning about 5,000 years ago in western Europe, farming became more widespread. At that time, “larger communities formed, some with apparent fortifications of earthworks and enclosure walls of timber.” Megalithic tombs continued to be built, but in addition to the tombs, massive construction projects were undertaken. Among the best examples, Brodgar is the least known and Stonehenge is the best known, but Avebury, 20 miles to the south, is the most complete.47

  Brodgar is located on the Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland. Although the standing stones, the Ring of Brodgar, have been long known, an elaborate complex of interconnected stone buildings has only recently been discovered. One such building is 80 feet by 60 feet, with a stone roof and butterfly-shaped incisions on the stones. The building is thought to have been a “temple or meeting hall” and is referred to by the lead archeologist as the “cathedral” building.

  One nearby burial chamber contains 16,000 human bones mixed with eagle talons. There is also evidence of feasting in the stone buildings, and human figurines have been found. Brodgar is still in the early stages of excavation, so additional clues regarding its religious significance will probably come to light.48

  Both Stonehenge and Avebury consist of standing stone circles, monumental earthworks, and burial chambers, but the latter’s are better preserved. The structures at Avebury were built one mile from an ancient hilltop village. People who lived there cultivated wheat, collected wild fruits and nuts, hunted deer, fox, and rabbits, and kept domesticated sheep, cattle, pigs, and dogs. There is evidence at the village site that butchering of animals took place in the spring and fall, at which time there was almost certainly feasting and celebration. The population of the surrounding region at the time has been estimated to have been about 10,000.49

  Approximately 4,700 years ago the residents of the Avebury region began building a huge earthen pyramid covering 5.5 acres and standing 130 feet high. Today, it is called Silbury Hill, and seen from the air it is almost perfectly symmetrical. Construction was done using bone and wooden tools, then carrying the dirt in wicker baskets. It is estimated that construction took 18 million man-hours, equivalent to 700 men working for ten years, although the work was carried out over more than 200 years.50

  While Silbury Hill was still being built, an even more massive construction was undertaken one mile away. An outer earthen bank 18 feet high and inner ditch 30 feet deep were built in a circle almost one mile around. The height of the bank from the bottom of the adjacent ditch was thus 48 feet. Inside the circular earthen bank, 98 large stones, one weighing 65 tons, were erected in a circle. Within this outer stone ring, two smaller stone rings were added, one with 29 and the other with 27 standing stones. Seen from the air, the complex resembles a giant face, with the inner stone circles being the eyes.51

  The primary purpose of Avebury was clearly religious in nature. This is supported by the burial of an estimated 500 individuals in the ditch. Many of the burials are not entire skeletons but rather disarticulated bones, collections of human skulls, mandibles, and long bones. British archeologists Mark Gillings and Joshua Pollard, who have studied Avebury extensively, speculated that the bones were “selected from mortuary deposits elsewhere and may even have been quite ancient ancestral relics by the time they were deposited” at Avebury. Grave goods are surprisingly rare with these burials; according to Gillings and Pollard, they include “a rather bizarre range of items” such as “a dog mandible, a boar tusk, a piece of burnt bone, an antler fragment.” Such items, they speculated, may have been “ritual paraphernalia.”52

  The possibility that Avebury was a massive mortuary complex is supported by a stone- lined road that led from the stone circle past Silbury Hill to a hilltop one and a half miles away. Referred to now as the Sanctuary, it consisted of stone circles surrounding some timbered buildings. Archeologist Aubrey Burl, considered to be the leading British authority on megalithic constructions, viewed the Sanctuary as “a series of mortuary houses for the storage of corpses until desiccation was complete and the bones could be removed to nearby chambered tombs.”53

  The nearby tombs included the West Kennet long barrow, a 330-foot-long earth and stone burial chamber a short walk from the Sanctuary. This is the longest stone burial chamber known anywhere in Europe. It contained the skeletons of 46 individuals, most of which were disarticulated. Crematory remains were found in one chamber, and a row of skulls in another. Such burial chambers are thought to have been used “as temporary housing or storage of the dead, removal [of remains] being as common as deposition.” Many of the burials in the long barrow were accompanied by ceramic pots, bowls, and cups, presumably for use in the afterlife.54

  In addition to having a religious function, some have proposed that Avebury also had an astronomical function. It has been compared to nearby Stonehenge, where the standing stones were aligned to correspond with the rising and setting of the sun at the solstices. An astronomical explanation may also apply to Avebury, although nobody has yet proposed a reasonable one. Astronomical explanations are not exclusive of religious explanations but rather complementary, as has been demonstrated at Stonehenge, which began as a cemetery. Many cultures have combined the worship of sun gods with other gods and ancestors, and this may also have been true at Stonehenge and Avebury.

  In the absence of any written record, a definitive understanding of Avebury is likely to permanently elude us. What we can say with certainty, to quote Burl, is that “in the new stone age death and the dead obsessed the living.” Sites such as Stonehenge and Avebury suggest “scenes of communities engaging in seasonal ceremonies, making offerings in rites made powerful by the manipulation of the dead.” As Mark Gillings and J
oshua Pollard summarized it:

  The sheer scale of a monument like Avebury provides the most immediate impression of power. Like the awe-inspiring architecture of a medieval cathedral, the magnitude of both the enclosure and the stone settings evokes a sense of the sublime. Here power over people is perhaps exercised through an exaggerated scale that dominates the human body and generates a perceptual awareness of the colossal labour necessary for its production. Such a scale of work could serve to legitimize the authority, whether worldly or supernatural, that lay behind the creation of Avebury.

  It is not possible to know whether or not gods were present at Avebury, but the monumental scale of the construction would be consistent with that possibility. It is perhaps also relevant that the stone circles resemble a giant face when seen from the air, as gods in the heavens would have observed it.55

  CHINA

  Between 5,000 and 4,000 years ago in northern China, the Longshan culture developed. It has been called “China’s first civilization” and the start of “one of the most brilliant and complex civilizations of antiquity,” one that gave us paper, printing, the magnetic compass, gunpowder, paddle-wheel propulsion, and a writing system different from that of Mesopotamia. Agriculture and trade were well developed, and the population density at this time was probably higher than anywhere in the world. Many villages were surrounded by rammed-earth walls, some as much as 20 feet tall and 30 feet thick, because of ongoing warfare between villages. There is evidence of decapitation and massacre of victims.56

  One of the hallmarks of Longshan culture was ancestor worship. Communication with ancestors was done by divination using “oracle bones,” which were the shoulder blades of oxen, water buffalo, pigs, or sheep. A specific question was posed to a dead ancestor; the bone was then heated until cracks appeared, and the pattern of the cracks was interpreted as the answer given by the ancestor. Bones with evidence of having been used for divination have been found in large numbers throughout northern China. Although writing had not yet begun during the Longshan period, it was introduced during the Shang period, which immediately followed the Longshan period and thus has been used to understand the former. It appears that the dead ancestors were expected to intervene with the gods on behalf of the living. The highest god, Di, could only be influenced by the ancestors of royal persons, but lesser gods could be influenced by the ancestors of lesser persons. Some Chinese scholars believe that Di was originally an ancestor spirit, whereas other scholars think Di was originally a nature deity. In addition to Di, “there were a number of nature deities, river and mountain gods … a sun god … and various deities as well.”57

  Monumental structures were built in China during this period. At Chengzishan, northeast of Beijing, “a massive temple on a platform” was recently uncovered and dated to approximately 4,300 years ago. The platform is 542 feet wide and 2,955 feet long, said to be “nearly half the size of the National Mall in Washington, D.C.” It is still being excavated, and its religious significance is not yet clear. However, in one subterranean room beneath the platform researchers found “a life-size ceramic head of a female with inlaid nephrite-jade eyes,” reminiscent of sculptured heads found in southwest Asia 5,000 years earlier. It seems likely that it represented either an ancestor or a goddess.58

  The Longshan culture was also marked by concerns about death and an afterlife. There were “highly differentiated burials” depending on the person’s social status. In graves of the social elite, bodies were interred in wooden coffins and often covered with red cinnabar powder. Some graves were “richly furnished with one hundred to two hundred items, including a red pottery plate printed with dragon design; wooden drum covered with crocodile skin; music stone (ch’ing); drum-like pottery; wooden table, stand, vessels, and other objects painted in bright colors; jade and stone rings; and whole pig skeletons.” The grave of one young man included four pottery vessels, 14 stone and jade implements, 24 jade rings, and 33 jade tubes, called congs. The function of the latter is unknown, but some of them have carved heads of animals or humans. Vessels found in graves from the Shang period have been shown to have been filled with various kinds of beer and wine made at that time. Other elite graves have been found with additional human bones; some have interpreted this as evidence of human sacrifice, perhaps servants sent to the afterworld to continue working for their master.59

  PERU

  Despite the absence of written records, it is clear that coastal Peru had a highly developed civilization between 5,500 and 4,000 years ago. A sophisticated system of irrigation-based agriculture produced beans, squash, guava, pacay, lacuma, and cotton. From the ocean, the inhabitants obtained fish, anchovies, clams, mussels, and even sea lions. The various river valleys lining the northern coast traded with one another, with the Andean highlands, and even with the Amazon basin.60

  The outstanding feature of coastal Peru during this period was the construction of more than 100 platform mounds, many of which had what appear to have been temples on top. The oldest site identified to date is Sechin Bajo in the Casma River Valley. There, in 2008, archeologists announced the finding of a circular stone plaza 5,500 years old. Archeologists theorized that the plaza “may have been a site for gatherings, perhaps a kind of ceremonial center.” Sechin Bajo also has a 53-foot platform pyramid. At nearby Sechin Alto, dated to 3,700 years ago, the platform pyramid was 144 feet high and covered an area the size of 14 football fields; it has been called “probably the largest single construction in the New World during the second millennium BC.”61

  Aspero, at the Pacific shore in the Supe Valley, has been dated to 5,000 years ago. It includes six platform pyramids up to 35 feet in height. In one, called Huaca de los Idolos, “a cache of at least 13 small figurines of unbaked whitish-gray clay was buried between two floors of a small room.” In another, called Huaca de los Sacrificios, “an infant less than two months old was buried wearing a shell bead cap, and wrapped in a cotton cloth which was placed inside a blanket.” The burial has been interpreted “as a dedicatory offering for the public architecture.”62

  The best-known and most extensively excavated site in early Peru is Caral, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Supe Valley, approximately 12 miles from Aspero. The total population of Supe Valley at that time has been estimated at approximately 20,000 people. The Caral complex covers 160 acres and includes “six large platform mounds, numerous smaller platform mounds, two sunken circular plazas, an array of residential architecture, and various complexes of platforms and buildings.” The largest platform pyramid is 100 feet high with a base the size of four football fields. The oldest finds have been dated to 4,600 years ago.63

  What appear to be altars have also been identified at Caral. An adult and several child burials, appearing to have been human sacrifices, have been found in the largest pyramid. In another pyramid, whale vertebrae “were found in association with two pacay tree trunks … in an evident ceremonial context. The tree trunks were driven into the ground and covered with a woven plant fibre fabric.” A variety of musical instruments have been uncovered, including bone whistles, cornets, flutes, panpipes, and rattles, which may have been used in ceremonies. Inhalers have also been found, suggesting possible hallucinogen use.64

  It is also of interest that on the southern Peruvian coast during this period the dead were being mummified, a practice started in Peru more than 1,000 years before it started in Egypt. Initially, the dead were merely salted and allowed to desiccate in the desert sun. Later, according to University of Florida archeologist Michael Moseley, the Chinchoros people in southern Peru and northern Chile became highly skilled at mummification:

  Chinchoros morticians perfected unusual skills: in disassembling bodies; in removing cerebral and visceral matter; in treating organs, structures, and skin to arrest deterioration; in reassembling the corpse components; in implanting cane or wood supports into the vertebral column, arms, and legs; in adding fiber, feather, clay or other fill to body cavities; in applying an exterior coat of
clay permitting the sculpting and painting of facial details; and in replacing pelage with wigs and human hair embedded in clay.

  In some parts of Peru, mummies were wrapped in brightly colored cotton or wool. Grave goods were not common but could include “tools, food, or even pet monkeys or parrots” for the deceased. Mummification was also practiced in highland Peru, where bodies were placed in stone-lined galleries within burial mounds, sometimes “accompanied by textiles and jewelry” such as “shell discs with engraved birds and a stone disc mosaic with a cat-like face.”65

  Although it seems probable that the Peruvians had deities at this time, nothing is yet known about them. At one site, a carving was found that has been referred to as “the staff god.” Dated to 4,600 years ago, it is “a fanged creature with splayed feet, holding a snake and a staff.” It appears to be identical to a god worshiped by the Incas more than 3,000 years later.66

  In summary, although higher gods apparently became manifest to modern Homo sapiens sometime before 7,000 years ago, we do not have definitive proof of a belief in their existence until the advent of written records. In Mesopotamia 6,500 years ago, there is such proof in the form of a temple built to honor Enki, the water god. Over the following 2,500 years, gods also emerged definitely in Egypt and China, probably in Pakistan, southeastern Europe, and Peru, and possibly in western Europe. In China and Peru, the emergence of gods was almost certainly independent of the other sites, suggesting parallel evolution, whereas for the others, independent development is less certain.