GODS: SYMPTOMS? or Causes?

I'm going to pick on Lisa again today; Lisa I hope you don't mind, too much. It's just that you're bringing up so many good points!

LISA: "Since male war gods are symptoms, I think it's a fruitless waste of time to go after something that will just manifest as something else once we've misdirected our collective energies upon it."

ATHANA: Well said! And of course that's an entirely different way to look at it. Male gods as symptoms, not causes of the woes of the world. And it would be a waste of time to fight a symptom versus a cause. But I do think you have it backwards. I do think male gods are the cause of our ills. I do think that if we excised them and put female deity back where it belongs, that things would slowly right themselves.

LISA: "... It's too superficial for me to accept that 3000 BCE + sudden male gods = war."

ATHANA: But why do things have to be complex?

And of course you know that it wasn't 3000 BCE everywhere. The time period varied depending on where you were, from about 4000 or 5000 BC, on down to the ADs in some areas.

Here's a major theory which I'll try to explain simply & briefly (and leaving out all the details and qualifications): Small, select, and culturally backward groups (mentally ill people perhaps outcast from society? Men genetically predisposed to violence -- with that extra Y [?] chromosome?) discovered iron and how to use it to make weapons. They also domesticated the horse and used it as a war weapon. These two discoveries, of course, gave them a distinct advantage over everyone else in town. These outcast societies grew. They wanted the things the goddess societies had, but didn't know how to produce them. (The steps I'm describing didn't necessarily happen in the order I'm giving them, and I'm thinking about the spiral analogy you posted on this blog a while ago....)

Anyhoo, these culturally backward people wanted the things the complex societies had, so they just began swiping them -- with the help of their new metal and animal war weapons, that is. The name we've given these peoples is "Indo-Europeans." I know there's discussion over whether the IEs took over violently or peacefully. But does it matter? If you're staring at a horde of hairy men sitting on the backs of big beasts and brandishing weapons you know could knock your teeth down your throat in a twinkling, are you going to ask questions?!?

But take over they did, there's no doubt about that. The proof? For one, all of us in Europe and India today speak "Indo-European" languages! And these Indo-Europeans, who swamped out the Goddess peoples, worshipped male gods. I haven't read it, but here's a book with an instructive title: The War of the Gods: The Social Code in Indo-European Mythology (International Library of Anthropology), Routledge & Kegan Paul Books Ltd.

What follows is an excerpt from a page by a Stanford University professor. The guy writes about the pattern I'm talking about. It's the same pattern you find all over Europe and the Middle East several thousand years ago. At first there's peace and the good life. The language has no words for war or king. Evidence shows there's probably a democratic form of government. What the author leaves out (they always do!) is that it is Goddesses not gods who are being worshipped at this point. I need to admit right here, however, that this professor teaches geotechnical engineering at Stanford, and I would ordinarily look for something else, but my computer is on the fritz tonight.

Okay, then BANG (I'm shouting, now, LOL): "Around 3000 BC" all this is overturned. No more easygoing life where everyone's equal. Suddenly there's "social stratification" and some people are much better than others, others are at the bottom of the heap. Suddenly democracy disappears. Kings pop up out of nowhere. Armies suddenly materialize. Art deteriorates. And new powerful male gods arrive on the same train with all these other goodies (also not mentioned below-- it rarely is):

"3000 BC. Sumerians in Mesopotamia. By late fourth millenium [BC] a network of Sumerian towns has developed in lower Mesopotamia of which perhaps the best known is Uruk.... The first known written documents appear at Uruk's Level IV along with representations of priestly figures. Absence of ideograms associated with war, king, and palace along with other evidence suggest a democratic and peaceable society engaged in trade to cities in the upper Euphrates, enjoying the pleasures of beer, fish, and sex, advised by sages and teachers and making exquisite pottery and engaging in diplomacy with neighboring cities. Evidently this changed sometime around 3000 BC with the arrival of strong social stratification, kings, and armies. Sumerians have moved from Eastern Anatolia bringing a new language and advanced culture to the existing Ubaidian peoples who have already started developing population centres in the lower Tigris Euphrates."

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And you see this same pattern -- described here for the Sumerians -- happening in India, in other parts of the Middle East, in Egypt, in the Mediterranean, and in Europe: Goddesses*PEACE, followed by gods*WAR.

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Thnx to levi sz for the foto