Sunday 26 June 2011

The birth of Religion

The birth of religion

Now there's a big title for you. Nothing small about that. Not to be daunted however I thought I would have a go courtesy of a story I read in a National Geographic about some amazing archaeological discoveries in southern Turkey.

In the last 20 years these discoveries have overturned the accepted theory about the birth of worship. Instead of seeing religion as the cultural culmination of the increasingly sophisticated settlements that arose following the deveopment of farming, the discoveries at Gobekli Tepe suggest that perhaps religion came first and that farming came afterwards - perhaps as a response to feed the pilgrims at sites like Gobekli Tepe or simply just as a way to survive in the harsher conditions that followed the end of the last mini ice age in 9,600BC.

The evidence points to Gobekli Tepe being the world's first temple and therefore perhaps marking the beginning of religion as we know it. Certainly Gobekli Tepe builds on the Natufian settlements discovered nearby to cast doubt of the "Neolithic Revoltion" theory

Previously the "Neolithic Revolution" theory held that hunter gatherers in the Sumerian flood plains of the Tigris and Euphrates at the western end of the "Fertile Crescent" embraced agriculture in a flash of inspiration 8,000 years ago. That discovery led to a population explosion that gave rise to cities and later to writing, art and eventually religion. It was agriculture that came first and then religion. That was the theory anyway.

Even though it is likely that hunter gatherers tended patches of wild grain prior to 6,000BC, the plants they watched over were still wild. It was only the explosion in harvest yields from domesticated grains that allowed cities to grow exponentially. Wild wheat and barley, unlike their domesticated versions, shatter when ripe, spilling the grain onto the ground. True agriculture only began when hunter gatherers planted a mutation of wild wheat that didn't shatter when ripe allowing predictable harvesting - giving rise to fields of ripe wheat waiting, so to speak, for farmers to harvest them.

However in the late 1950's archaeologists working in the Levant or eastern end of the Fertile Crescent discovered settlements that called the Neolithic Theory into question. These Natufian settlements (named after the first site to be discovered), and suggest a different sequence for the growth of large settlements. The Natufian settlements were 5,000 years older than the Sumerian settlements and dated back to 13,000BC. Importantly these villages were much bigger than had previously been thought could be supported by foraging. Their size called into question the idea that larger settlements only came about after man had learned how to domesticate wheat and barley. Although still relatively small - perhaps a few hundred people - they suggested a level of social order higher than had been assumed previously for hunter gatherers. Perhaps man had become more adept at collecting the seeds from wild grains than was previously thought. Perhaps the farming of wild wheat wasn't so inefficient after all.

(The Fertile Crescent being the arc of land bounded by the mountains of Turkey to the North and the Syrian desert to the South that incorporates the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys to the east and modern day Lebanon and Israel to the West)

The Natufian villages however ran into hard times around 10,800BC when a mini ice age dropped regional temperatures by nearly 7oC. This ice age lasted 1,200 years and turned the landscape into the dry arid region of today. Much more recent archaeological discoveries have also suggested a much earlier date for the domestication of wild grains which was contemporaneous with the end of this ice age.

Perhaps the contraction of the food supply that would have resulted from the onset of these drier conditions was the driver for the domestication of wild grains. Perhaps the domestication of wild wheat was developed as a way to feed the starving Natufian villages - large settlements came first then agriculture. This is however a controversial hypothesis based solely as it is on the evidence of a small number of seeds found in a few sites

Discoveries at a small site at Gobekli Tepe in Southern Turkey however have thrown further doubt on the Neolithic Revolution theory. Working slowly and patiently since 1994 Klaus Schmidt has uncovered an extraordinary series of gigantic carved stone pillars that date from 9,600BC. This makes Gobekli Tepe contemporaneous with the end of the mini ice age that would have devastated the Natufian villages and places it at the start of the pre pottery Neolithic era.

The Gobekli pillars are the oldest manmade monumental structures.

Just think about that statement. The oldest. They predate Stonehenge by 6,300 years. There is in fact more time between Gobekli Tepe and the earliest evidence of writing (the Sumarian clay tablets dating from 3,300BC) than there is between start of writing and now.

They are quite simply inconceivably old


These enormous "T shaped" monoliths that are nearly 5.5m tall and weigh approximately 16 tonnes. They have straight sides, sharp corners and are covered by elaborate carved motifs.

In just about every aspect these pillars are breathtaking, challenging and awe inspiring.

By comparison the most monumental part of the only city that is broadly contemporaneous with Gobekli Tepe is utilitarian and mundane. The Tower of Jericho was only 3.6m tall and was built about the same time as the last of the Gobekli pillars in 8,000BC. Built of stone blocks, its use is unclear - it was possibly a grain store and or a part of the defensive wall around the city. Whatever its use - the structure is squat heavy and crude. The contrast with Gobekli Tepe is extraordinary

The Gobekli pillars are a third taller and built from a single slabs of limestone.




Unlike Stonehenge, the sands which buried the Gobekli Tepe pillars have preserved their original form. Their flat sides and sharp corners have been preserved in breathtaking clarity. They were carved using flint axes by stone age hunter gatherers who had not yet discovered metal or pottery. 

Perhaps Stonehenge was also covered with carvings like Gobekli Tepe but we will never know. The thousands of years of weathering have eroded any trace.

How did they communicate and describe the vision over the generations it would have taken to build Gobekli Tepe. No plans no drawings; just oral history.

The carvings on the face of monoliths remain clear and distinct. How did such a sophisticated sculptural awareness and visual language appear out of nowhere? The abstract T shape fascinates me. Perhaps they supported a roof structure but some of the pillars are located within a circle in locations that don't appear to be sensible points from which to support a roof. It appears to be just an abstract shape.

Monumental abstract shapes wouldn't arrive for another 5,900 years with the rise of the Egyptian civilisation and their pyramid building. No other examples of contemporaneous abstract sculptural shapes have been found. So where did this awareness spring from. It seems so disproportionately advanced when considered against a society without writing, metal tools or even pottery.

The most sophisticated aspect for me however is the sculptural beast carved on the side of one pillar. The three dimensional sculptural qualities of this creature are extraordinary. Remember these people didn't even have pottery.

What flash of inspiration gave rise to such a powerful expressive figurine. What flash of artistic vision led to carving such a figurine in such a difficult place. I mean they could have picked up any old rock and carved the beast something people had been doing since 20,000BC,

But to carve a figure as part of a monumental sculptural so that it appears on the surface of a flat plane takes a sculptural vision of a wholly different order. To see that possibility when they were looking at a large amorphous lump of limestone is extraordinary. Perhaps it was happenstance that an extra piece of limestone remained on this slab and the carvers decided to show a bit of imagination. But what a bit of imagination!
Gone are the two dimensionality that characterised Paleolithic sculpture like the clay and stone relief bison figures from Le Tuc d'Audobert in Southern France that date from c.15,000 BC


Schmidt has described discovering that hunter gatherers had constructed Gobekli Tepe was like "finding that someone had built a 747 in a basement with an x-acto knife".

In a further challenge to previous theories, archaeologists have found no sign of habitation at the site. It appears that Gobekli Tepe was not the site of a settlement; it was just some sort of major ritualistic site miles from where people lived or camped. So far no evidence of housing cooking or animal bones have been found at the site.

What led people with no form of writing to spend so much time laboriously carving and erecting such sophisticated pillars away from where they lived? When you consider the utilitarian nature of the Jericho Tower built in the midst of a town, one is struck even more forcefully by the isolated sophistication of Gobekli Tepe.

The "Neolithic Revolution" theory suggested that religion arose after the creation of the new cities that had grown out of the surplus food generated by the discovery of agriculture. The theory goes that, as people began settling in ever larger numbers, religion arose to promote social cohesion.

Gobekli Tepe however suggested a different possibility. The fact that the site does not appear to be connected to a settlement suggests that ritual or sacred sites came first, before the rise of larger settlements. Perhaps a monumental architecture was created to codify the rituals that arose in response to a sense of wonderment at the major changes in the natural world wrought by the end of the mini ice age. Perhaps agriculture and permanent settlements were the outcome of these rituals and arose from the need to grow food for large groups gathering near sacred sites.

MaybeGobekli Tepe represents mankind's first temple and that these structures mark the first evidence of the birth of religion. That is certainly a bold claim. Perhaps we will never know. Certainly the ideas above are just speculations.

So far only 5% of the site has been excavated. Perhaps when more of the site has been excavated the history of Gobekli Tepe will be clearer. Perhaps these pillars are the true monoliths from Arthur C Clarke's short story "The Sentinel" on which Kubrick based his epic film "2001 A Space Odyssey". For the time being they stand as silent sentinels teasing us with their immutability.

If you want to read more here is an article from the Smithsonian Institute

Life

Just thought I'd do a catch up on life over here

Sonya finishes up her old job this week ending more than 8 years with Orbit Housing Association in various roles. I think she is glad to be moving on. Best of all though for Sonya is that she has a new job. She is looking forward to it on a variety of levels:
  • The office is just down the road
  • It is a small organisation - 12 people - so she wont be swallowed up in bureaucracy
  • It's a different area of work - training clients to use a particular piece of software related to the housing sector
  • It still draws on her knowledge of the affordable housing sector
  • She will get to travel round the country and see some cities she has never visited before
  • Oh yeah and she gets an I Phone
Sonya has also just finished a mentoring programme run through work which she found very rewarding. She even volunteered to give a speech at the conference they hold to celebrate the end of each programme. A 10 minute talk in front of 110 people! Apparently some window cleaners chose her speach to descend behind her on their cradles. She was wondering what the giggling was about as she hadn't got up to the joke in her speech. She turned around to see this window cleaner grinning at her the audience. Not to be fazed she commented that this felt like a can of coke moment. How's that for thinking on your feet under pressure

Sonya has also joined the Croydon Speakers Club and goes once a fortnight with an old friend of hers. I am very impressed. It is very structured and they really grill the participants. It has done wonders for her confidence

Michael has finished his exams and predictably has got mixed results. He pulled some out of the bag and others were a disappointment. The frustrating thing is that he leaks so many marks from carelessness and rushing. These exams are used to set his classes for his GCSE exams next year (for those not in the UK - these are the ones that start counting towards University entrance marks) so  his marks this year are important but the mixed bag of results is not catastrophic. He is drinking at the last chance saloon however. Next year he needs to get his attitude and exam technique under control.

He breaks up for summer in a few weeks time so we figure there is not much point tackling him now as it will all be forgotten by the timehe starts again in September

As always our frustration is focussed on his ongoing addiction to PS3. We are just going to have to tough out more intermitable arguements once he goes back to school as we try and help avoid messing up. Joy of joys

Michael continues to enjoy his tennis and goes to lessons twice a week. I hope he can get to play in some more tournaments and he needs to learn to be a better winner and loser. This is a maturity thing I know but practice makes perfect they say.

Costandina has been back home from Winchester for a couple of weeks now. She is doing so well and is hoping for a 2:1 next year. She is already planning her major piece for her 3rd year. She has decided to drop Drama and just concentrate on the Creative Writing course for her 3rd year. Importantly she has also got herself a job at the Uni bookshop next year to supplement her income from her home waxing business. This hasn't taken off yet so she needs to find ways to makes some money.

For those not on Facebook, her and Sam continue to be an item. Although they are spending a lot the Summer apart doing their own things, I gather they are planning a big holiday together later in the year. Costandina also appears to have sorted out a better mix of flatmates for next year. This year there were 4 boys and 2 girls in her house and I think she found that a bit tedious. Their hygiene habits left a bit to be desired. She will have 4 or 5 girls in the house when she goes back in September so hopefully it will be a happier house

Costandina is off with her Dad for a few weeks in Cyprus to go to two christenings. Michael is going out to Cyprus in mid summer.

We are trying to see if we can book a holiday with both of them in late August. Might be our last holiday as a family. Not sure where we are going yet though.

My work continues to be up and down. The sector is in dire trouble and the company has had a very poor start to the FY (which begins in April for us). More significant redundancies are being made including two equity Directors who have been with the company for more than 12 years. They are having to cut into the DNA of the company now.

Sadly though the whole ethos of the company is changing as certain Directors are using these diffcult time to reshape the company. I dont like how it is changing but as for so many people in my position, there are no real options available for me out there.

I suspect my next career move will involve a complete change - i'm just not sure where to look to find it. I mustn't complain though; i still have a job that is often rewarding in the narrow sense (when I succeed in closing my ears and eyes to the games being played out around me)

Hope you are all well out there

Wednesday 22 June 2011

RIP Clarence Clemons

The big man has passed away. Sad day for music. Iconic, great soul, great music and from all accounts a great human being
RIP

London Sluts

Go girls

Sadly we were otherwise engaged and couldn't attend. Stiil the sluts reigned supreme in London on Sunday 11 June.

Pensioner Slut


Wednesday 15 June 2011

world wide

Out of interest I looked up the stats for page views of my blog. Seems I have achieved world wide coverage. Seems that including the word "slut" in one of my headlines helped but so did the word "swearing". "Conspiracy" in the Bilderberg headline was also good as was "Plan B" but strangely the blog "Home on the range" also got a lot of hits. Go figure

Saturday 11 June 2011

Lest we forget

Our trip to France reminded me of the time before when we visited the WW1 cemetary at Etaples
Home to more than 10,000 graves the Lutyens designed cemetary is a quiet and sombre place. So many dead; so many young men. 18, 19 and 20 years old many of them. Row of row quietly marking the needless slaughter

The entrance contains a memorial book which is full of poignant entries from visitors. The most moving for me are the ones from young children who have come to see the graves of the grandfathers they never knew - sad voices reaching out to tell them how proud they are of them.

I cant imagine the horror of the trenches. The fear knowing your day would come. And for what? Not one inch of progress would be made for your sacrifice. Knowing that you joined up full of naivety and now that you know the truth - the lies, the futility - knowing there is nothing you can do about it short of deserting as a coward.


The cemetary helped make WW1 real for me and helped me understand those words from Binyon's poem "For the fallen" that we all just gloss over:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Pictures of really big numbers

In the true spirit of the web I am reposting a link to a wonderful website sent to me by Robin and Michael. In it Chris Jordan gives a talk explaining his pictures of really big numbers that we should stop and think about.

One example is his picture of thousands of barbie dolls that represents the number of breast augmentations performed on girls under 21 each year in America

Have a watch
 TED: Chris Jordan

In so doing they also introduced me to the TED website. Thank you

The Bilderberg Conspiracy

On the basis that one can never have too much conspiracy theory I thought I would repost this recent BBC article that uses the recent gathering of the Bilderberg Group as its starting point to take a quick canter through many of the more recent conspiracy theories

The Bilderberg Conspiracy

As William S Burough's once said - "Sometimes paranoia is just having all the facts!"

Philip the fool


The media has been genuflecting at the feet of Prince Philip for the last few weeks in celebration of his 90th birthday. Its really quite sickening. The man is a bigotted offensive obnoxious odious fool.

Thankfully its not completely one way traffic. Here is a lone voice trying to set the record straight.
Stop the fawning

Ships and ceiling wax

We just got back last weekend from a few days in France with our friends Don and Caroline. We stayed at their holiday cabin on the north coast of France. Weather was lovely and sunny. Very civilised

I remember an architecture lecturer of mine a long time ago musing that, for a holiday to be good, one should set oneself a task - read a book, finish a jigsaw, learn to scuba dive etc. (He had other criteria as well but this was the one that stuck in my mind) Anyway I decided to read a couple of books over the 5 days we were out. Just switch off and immerse myself.

The first - The Mambo Kings play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos - was a sweeping novel about NY in the 1950's and centred on two Cuban musician brothers who emigrated to find their fame and fortune.

Almost encyclopedic in its detail of NY in the 1950's the novel powerfully evokes the era. It also explores many of the issues of emigration - the loss the nostalgia and the sense of having a foot in two disconected camps - all feelings I could identify with very strongly

I found this review of the book online and think its quite accurate. And yes there is a lot of "pinga" talk (read the review!)
Mambo Kings book review

The other was Amistead Maupins restarted Tales of the City novel - Michael Tolliver Lives. Quick, light and frothy, it lacked some of the pathos of his earlier writing. A bit like white bread it wasn't as satisfying as I had hoped.

The main news of the holiday however was my stunningly clever effort in loosing Michael's glasses on our second day there. We had driven to the beach in the afternoon at Hardelot which is long and flat. The day was sunny and windy but not that warm. Michael and I however were determined to get our feet wet so we waded in. We had to go out about 50m just to get up to our knees. We still had t shirts and a hat on and had no intention of getting fully wet. Michael had given me his glasses to hold and I tucked them into my t shirt
The beach at Hardelot

As we continued to wade further in the waves got a bit choppier and were now splashing our t shirts. Michael takes off his t shirt for me to hold to stop it getting wet. Brainiac me decides to do the same thing forgetting Michael's glasses are tucked into the collar. Anyway Michael calls out what was that plop as I take the t shirt off over my head. Big sinking feeling. Oh sh*t. Was that my glasses says Michael? Oh f*ck. Quick pat down of the t shirt now in my hands. No glasses. Panic rising quickly. Look down at feet. Sea opaque with sand swirling in the water from the choppy waves. Can't see bottom at all even though less than 3 feet of water. Sh*t.

Give clothes and my glasses to Michael to take back to Sonya. Fairly certain have no hope of finding glasses as I can feel the swirling pull at feet from the ebbing tide. Glasses will be feet away by now. Sea is pretty chilly but decide I owe Michael at least to make an effort to find glasses. So crouch down in chilly water and start feeling around for glasses. Michael makes his forlorn way to beach. Top Dad!

After 20 minutes figure must be respectable effort and can give up. Stand back up see Sonya standing at waters edge. Expression on face suggests better get back under water and keep looking. Isolated words like "f*ck" and "doing" float across water. Pleased there remains a stretch of water separating Sonya from me.

Sometime later finally give up and stand up. No Sonya so make my slow way back up beach to towels. Adopt contrite facial expression and offer observation that this was not my best effort.

Michael spent the rest of the holiday wearing his prescription sunglasses everywhere including indoors and thereby adopting a cool dude appearance - Je Suis un Rock Star!

We didn't do a lot of sighseeing as we have visited the area a couple of times now but did spend one day pottering around looking for an escargot factory we had read about as well as a local chocolate factory. We didn't have any luck with the snail farm which was closed but we did find the chocolate factory.

It turned out to be a tiny little boutique chocolate factory in the small French village of Beussant. Gleaming spotless modern factory churning out yummy uber expensive chocolates. Did you know the cocoa bean is red. Very bizarre

Tuesday 7 June 2011

What did I tell you about not swearing

Loyola pole vaulter Evan Barr


When Los Angeles (Calif.) Loyola High pole vaulter Evan Barr, who you can see pictured in a practice below, failed to clear his final height at the California state track and field meet, he was understandably disappointed. The miss cost him an individual state title and ensured he would finish in third place instead.
Yet, to say that he expressed that disappointment in an inappropriate way is a bit of an understatement. As it turns out, his reaction cost Barr another state title as well.
After falling short of clearing the bar, Barr, whom you can see competing at the 2011 California Relays (not the state championship meet) in this video, let out a loud expletive. According to the Los Angeles Times, the curse word inspired judges to disqualify Barr from the event, with his points taken away from Loyola's team total.
That proved to be incredibly costly, as the adjusted points total cost Loyola a state track and field title. Instead, the Cubs finished second, with 32 points, behind Long Beach (Calif.) Poly High's 35 points.
"He uttered a profanity out of frustration, and the officials thought it was significant to disqualify him," Loyola track and field coach Mike Porterfield told the Times. "He apologized immediately after he said it."
Apologies weren't enough to save Barr or his team from what has to go down as one of the more ignominious and costly setbacks in recent prep track and field history.
If nothing else, the star vaulter has provided a compelling case of the importance of minding ones manners in the heat of competition.
"You can't be profane in a competitive area," California state track and field rules interpreter Hal Harkness told the Times' Eric Sondheimer. "He made an unfortunate lapse in judgment."

Hmmm Mister Popular!

Home on the range

A fortnight ago Sonya turned 36 once again

We had a lovely meal at the Trafalgar Tavern on the banks of the Thames. In addition to having the pleasure of Costandina up from Winchester we also had her brother Philip and his girlfriend Juliet along

Two other pictures from early that day. One is a lovely pensive snap of Costandina; the other is a gorgeous one of Sonya teasing her Aunty