The Great Shift
Page 46
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13. Note the ingenious theory of Zevit (2013).
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14. The British anthropologist Colin Turnbull studied the Mbuti (or Bambuti) pygmies of the Congo, noting that, unlike their Bantu neighbors, the Mbuti lacked any sacred hierarchy; instead, they “believe in a beneficent deity or supernatural power which they identify with the forest”; it is regarded as the source of pepo (life force) and of their whole existence. When evil befalls them, it is because the forest is asleep; in such cases, the noisy molimo ritual is employed to wake the forest up. See Turnbull (1961) and (1965).
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15. As of this writing, archaeologists in Israel have announced a find in the Galilee region of modern Israel that suggests the very first humans to practice cereal cultivation may go back to around 20,000 BCE, roughly double the previous dating. See Schuster (2015).
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16. Pinker (1997), 183.
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17. Digestive tissue is particularly expensive in metabolic terms, but a brain consumes even more. (For example, a gram of brain tissue takes twenty times more energy to grow and maintain than a gram of tissue from the kidney, heart, or liver.) So as brain size increased, its demands had to be compensated from elsewhere: the quantity of digestive tissue decreased. See Aiello (1994) and (1995).
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18. The recent discovery at the site known as Lomekwi 3, near the western shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya, may revise the chronology somewhat. Although as of this writing scholars are just beginning to investigate it, the site would appear to contain signs of stone knapping going back 3.3 million years ago, some 700,000 years earlier than the previous evidence. The identity of the hypothetical knappers is not known; see Harmand et al. (2015).
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19. A recent genomic study of different populations around the world has apparently revealed that all non-Africans today trace their ancestry to a single African population that emerged between fifty thousand and eighty thousand years ago. See: Simons Genome Diversity Project (2016).
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20. The evidence comes again from Gesher Benot Ya’akov in northern Israel; see Alperson-Afil and Goren-Inbar, (2006); also Alperson-Afil (2000) and (2008). A 1999 study led by the British primatologist Richard Wrangham suggested that regular cooking began much earlier and is reflected even in the physiology of H. erectus. See Wrangham et al. (1999); but other scholars have expressed doubt, arguing that the evidence for cooking fires at such an early date is lacking.
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21. Stout and Chaminade (2009). The authors conclude: “Stone tool-making is an ancient and prototypically human skill characterized by multiple levels of intentional organization. In a formal sense, it displays surprising similarities to the multi-level organization of human language. Recent functional brain imaging studies of stone tool-making similarly demonstrate overlap with neural circuits involved in language processing. These observations [are] consistent with the hypothesis that language and tool-making share key requirements for the construction of hierarchically structured action sequences and evolved together in a mutually reinforcing way.”
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22. Coolidge and Wynn (2009), 112.
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23. Eventually, humans developed the highly sophisticated “Levallois technique” of knapping (so named because the first evidence of it was found in a Paris suburb by the same name). This technique requires first shaping the core stone into a rounded, tortoise-shell-like form, more convex at the top but rounded as well at the bottom; this core can then be used to create an especially useful chip, thicker in the middle and sharp around the edges, which might serve as a highly effective knife, scraper, or projectile. Scholars disagree about where and when this technique evolved, as well as whether its appearance in different locations bespeaks a chain of transmission or reinvention. See Adler et al. (2014).
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24. Pinker (1997), 201–2.
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25. Perhaps the most intriguing evidence of this interest will come from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic site of Ҫatal Höyük in today’s Turkey, currently being excavated. See Faraone and Naiden (2012), 45.
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26. In general, caves preserve things better than open-air settlements, so we are back at the common problem of “absence of evidence.” Archaeologists are often in the same position as the fellow whose house key fell out of his pocket one night; he decides to concentrate his search for it under the street lamps “because those are the places that have the best lighting.”
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27. See Leroi-Gourhan (1993), 108; also the paper by Wunn (2001).
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28. I have borrowed the phrase from Charles Taylor (2007), though in a different sense.
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29. Claude Lévi-Strauss and other anthropologists have demonstrated the complex acts of classification that underlie the “science of the concrete,” and even more than this, the way in which classifying moves beyond the utilitarian value of sorting things into groups to classification for its own sake. Summarizing the researches of H. C. Conklin (1954) and (1958) and R. B. Fox (1952), Lévi-Strauss wrote: “Among the Hanunóo of the Philippines, a custom as simple as that of betel chewing demands a knowledge of four varieties of areca nut and eight substitutes for them, and of five varieties of betel and five substitutes. Almost all Hanunóo activities require an intimate familiarity with local plants and a precise knowledge of plant classification. Contrary to the assumption that subsistence level groups never use but a small segment of the local flora, ninety-three per cent of the total number of native plant types are recognized by the Hanunóo as culturally significant . . . The Hanunóo have more than a hundred and fifty terms for the parts and properties of plants. These provide categories for the identification of plants and for discussing the hundreds of characteristics which differentiate plant types and often indicate significant features of medicinal or nutritional value. Over six hundred named plants have been recorded among the Pinatubo and in addition to having an amazing knowledge of plants and their uses . . . [they] employ nearly one hundred terms in describing the parts or characteristics of plants. Knowledge as systematically developed as this clearly cannot relate just to practical purposes”: Lévi-Strauss (1966), 2–3.
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30. The understanding of causality (and what this last term specifically designates) has been the subject of much recent research. Chimpanzees have been shown to be capable of distinguishing the components of a causal sequence (actor, object, and instrument) but incapable of more complex causal reasoning. “When given information showing the inference to be unsound—physically impossible—4-year-old children abandoned the inference but younger children and chimpanzees did not”: Premack and Premack (1994). It has been argued that by the age of seven months or so, infants demonstrate surprise at simple “launching” displays that seem to violate their notion of causality. See Oakes (1994); Kotovsky and Baillargeon (2000); G. E. Newman et al. (2008); Rips (2008). Citing Oakes, Rips observes: “What we do know, however, is that infants take longer than seven months to recognize causal interactions even slightly more complex than simple launching. For example, at seven months they fail to understand situations in which one object causes another to move in a path other than dead ahead, situations that adults report as causal” (p. 602).
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31. Scholars have sought to connect this phenomenon to a built-in feature of the brains of various species, the so-called agency detection device (ADD) or hyperactive agent detection device (HADD); on this see next chapter.
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32. Studied by N. Chagnon (1992) and J. Lizot (1985).
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33. See above, note 14.
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5. THE FOG OF DIVINE BEINGS
1. Scholars have long recognized that this epithet was adapted and applied to Israel’s God in Ps 68:5.
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2. Presumab
ly, Hosea is claiming, because they were an illusion.
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3. This seems to be the case as well with Isa 1:3, “An ox knows its owner (qonehu), and an ass the trough of its master (be’alayw),” where the two Hebrew words are intended to evoke epithets of YHWH. See the discussion in Cooper (1981) and Smith (2002), 50–55.
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4. Of course, some deities were not conceived to be heavenly at all. In fact, classical studies of Greek religion have distinguished between heavenly gods and chthonic gods (deities located on or below the earth); for a time, some scholars equated the heavenly gods with originally Greek traditions and the chthonic ones with pre-Greek religion, or saw in them an ancient opposition between Indo-European deities and those of the eastern Mediterranean and beyond. See Burkert (1985), 199. In a broader perspective, however, it is clear that there have always been earthbound gods in a variety of ancient religions. This notwithstanding, it is well known that deities across the globe are often depicted as living somewhere in the skies above, frequently connected with heavenly bodies like the sun, the moon, and various prominent planets and stars. Scholars have rightly asked how this apparently extremely ancient way of conceiving of deities got started. One possible explanation is connected to “embodied cognition,” the notion that human thought is not some abstract, disembodied activity, but is shaped at every turn by the fact that the thinker has a body and therefore perceives reality in paradigms created by the very fact of his embodiment. So we move forward in searching for solutions, “progressing” (a Latinate term for moving forward) toward an answer and so forth, because this is how the human body works: it doesn’t usually move backward or sideways toward a desired goal. The extent of our embodiment’s role in shaping human thought goes well beyond what can be said in a sentence or two here, but in regard to the role of the “up there” in religious thought, the connection to our embodiment seems clear enough: since the gods are the powerful ones, they are naturally held to be “up,” because up is the embodied way in which humans perceive all that is superior and, hence, in charge of things. See further: Lakoff and Johnson (1999), 16–44 and esp. 30–39; Shapiro (2011), 70–113. Another factor favoring a heavenly location: in Canaan as in many parts of the world, various forms of precipitation also played a vital role in survival; this obviously figured in the location of deities in the skies. Finally, note that the heavens were also thought to be the place of unchanging eternity, as opposed to “down here,” where things are born, grow, and die. Hence the biblical Enoch and Elijah, both of whom were said to have entered heaven while still alive, were believed by ancient biblical interpreters to be living up there still. See Kugel (1998a), 173–74, 192–93, 813–14.
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5. Burkert (1985), 12. Much later, from early Neolithic times (seventh millennium BCE), comes the evidence of the Sesklo culture in Thessaly and northern Macedonia, and that of the Anatolian town of Çatal höyük in what is now southern Turkey. In the latter site are “wall reliefs of a Great Goddess with uplifted arms and straddled legs—clearly the birth-giving mother of the animals and life itself.”
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6. An approximate model of a widely shared tradition of worshiping such deities is that of the kami of Shintoism, whose worship has survived into modern times; see Reader and Tanabe (1998).
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7. These ideas are nicely surveyed in Boyer (2001), 1–31.
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8. A more science-based approach leading to a similar conclusion is the recent study by the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson (2003). Wilson combines his own evolutionary approach, based on the previously discredited role of group selection, with the work of anthropologists and other social scientists in order to argue that, like a biological organism, societies developed religious beliefs that select for their own smooth functioning and survival. Note the brief critique by Dennett (2006), 106.
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9. Some of their efforts were reviewed briefly in Kugel (2011a); see especially pp. 209–13. An important early work not mentioned there was that of Stewart Guthrie (1993). Guthrie highlighted the brain’s tendency to anthropomorphize objects—for example, to see the two headlights of a car as the “eyes” of a humanlike face—or, as his title indicates, to see human faces in the clouds. This same tendency, he argued, is reflected in the anthropomorphic features of gods and spirits: we say that they are very different from ourselves, but in fact, they are very much like us. The doctoral dissertation of Justin Barrett (1997) carried this line of inquiry further; see also Barrett (2000), 29–34. From an early stage, the philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett has been a leading figure in the scientific exploration of religion; see among other of his writings Dennett (1987) and (2006). Another approach was put forward in Lawson and McCauley (1990), which sought to adapt the methods and model of contemporary linguistic theory in order to deduce a kind of generative grammar of religious ritual, or what it called the “universal principles of religious ritual structure”—see pp. 84–169, esp. 121–36—but this approach has met with little approval. Two other highly significant contributions should be mentioned here: Boyer (2001) and Atran (2002). Shortly after these appeared another excellent work of synthesis, Tremlin (2006). (Somewhat more polemical are various popular books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchins, and others written during this same period.) See also below.
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10. It was Justin Barrett who introduced the name hyperactive (or hypersensitive) agent detection device (HADD). See previous note.
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11. The term was apparently introduced by Premack and Woodruff (1978). This is what Dennett (above, n. 8) referred to as the “intentional stance,” our tendency to attribute intentionality to animals and even inanimate objects that are perceived to move. Our capacity to imagine the thoughts of others may be inborn, but it is only developed after a certain age. This was illustrated by the “Smarties task”; children are shown a box that looks as if it contains candy (in the original experiment, the candy involved was Smarties). The box is then opened and instead it turns out to contain pencils. The box is then closed again and the children are asked what other children, who haven’t seen the open box, will think it contains. Up to age four or so, the children will say pencils, while after that age they will say candy. See further, Kugel (2011a), 211–12 and sources cited there. The interaction of theory of mind (ToM) with the HADD is nicely explained in Tremlin (2006), 79–81.
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12. The term “exaptation” was originally coined by Gould and Vrba (1982). It referred to features in evolutionary development that were originally designed to accomplish one purpose but ended up being exapted for another: for example, evolutionary biologists theorize that feathers were originally evolved for the regulation of body heat, only later evolving for display purposes, and finally so as to enable birds to fly. By analogy, the attribution of conscious agency to heavenly or terrestrial bodies may be an exaptation of an altogether helpful feature of human evolution, the so-called hyperactive agent detection device (HADD).
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13. “Spandrel” is a term from architecture. It refers to a byproduct of some intended design feature: the classic example is the “dead space” underneath a set of stairs in a house. Such a spandrel can end up being used for some other purpose—a set of shelves or closet space underneath the stairs—but these uses are secondary to the main purpose, creating a set of steps leading to the upper floor. Similarly, it is claimed, a design feature of the brain such as the HADD, which originally evolved to help humans to survive, may have led to a secondary effect, the belief in the existence of unseen agents who control aspects of human existence. See Atran (2002), 43–50; also Tremlin (2006), 75–86.
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14. This claim is associated with the work of Eugene D’Aquili and Andrew Newberg (2001). Using brain imaging techniques, the pair sought to demonstrate that “spiritual experience, at its very root, is intimately interwoven
with human biology. That biology, in some way, compels the spiritual urge” (p. 8). In a sense this was nothing new; the connection of religious feeling with the onset of epileptic seizures has long been observed and was mentioned in William James’s seminal work, The Varieties of Religious Experience. See Kugel (2011a) and sources cited there, pp. 60–61 and 214. In the 1990s V. S. Ramachandran sought to demonstrate that patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) are particularly sensitive to religious symbols and ideas. Subsequent experiments with nonepileptic volunteers have produced similar results by using an oscillating magnetic field to excite temporal lobe neurons. Researchers on religion and TLE have focused in particular on the onset stage of the seizure, known to researchers as the “aura.” This stage may last up to several hours, during which the seizure is relatively contained in one part of the brain and in which patients sometimes report intense religious feelings. (The seizure then gradually spreads to other parts of the brain, resulting in loss of consciousness, muscle contractions, and other classic symptoms of epilepsy.) These phenomena were studied in Persinger (1983); note also Churchland (2002), 381–89. Psychologists as well have sought to connect the worship of divine agents to recent experimental results with children; see Keleman (2004); also Bloom (2007).
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15. Cf. Tremlin (2006), 143: “People have minds that easily and quite naturally entertain religious concepts.”
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16. See Dennett (2006), 116–25; also Pascal Boyer’s discussion of “counterintuitive mentation” in Boyer (2001), 51–91 and passim; Atran (2002), 83–113; Tremlin (2006), 86–106.