0249 Chapters 11, 12 and 13 are devoted to debunking an agenda, called “the ancient astronaut theory”, proposed by various hucksters starting in the 1950s. This theory is multifaceted, since there is more than one proponent. Basak’s book says that the theory sweeps into public popularity because of the uncertainty following the second battle among the Enlightenment gods, the hot war among fraternal ideologies (1938-1945 AD) and leading into the third battle among the Enlightenment gods, the cold war among materialist ideologies (1945-1989).
0250 Against this interpretation, which explains this social phenomenon in terms of a model where material arrangements after the Second World War and the start of the Cold War [substantiate] conditions ripe for scam-ideas about ancient civilizations, I place a Lotmanist suggestion that the social popularity of the ancient astronaut theories is accounted for by the inadequacies of Marxist-interpretations of archaeological research into the Neolithic period.
0251 Here is a picture of the framework of the latest cycle of Neptune in Aries.
Highly successful excavations by Western archaeologists offer the promise of coming to terms with the rise of ancient civilizations, based on Marxists formulations.
The Marxist thing does not quite do the job, so alternate theories are proposed by hucksters anticipating an explanatory breakthrough. Basak’s exercise in debunking the very entertaining alternatives only replays the Marxist thing. Basak relies on the Marxist thing to debunk the alternatives that arose from the lack of explanatory power of the model that material arrangements [substantiate] human conditions.
Now, anthropologists are starting to realize that all those people who entertained the now-debunked “ancient astronaut theory” were not as stupid as the Marxist thing presumes.
0251 Once again, Razie Mah’s four part blog, Looking at Melinda A. Zeder’s Article (2025) “Unpacking the Neolithic”, offers insights. The results of anthropological research into the so-called “Neolithic” does not… indeed, cannot… account for another trend hidden within the data. That trend is towards unconstrained social complexity. Basak’s AI program (my speculation, of course) trains only on results and discussions produced by researchers interested in looking for the material arrangements that substantiate neolithic conditions. They cannot account for a change in semiotic practices. They cannot account for what Razie Mah’s hypothesis of the first singularity suggests.
0252 Therefore, why not postulate ancient astronauts?
Surely, ancient monumental constructions, such as pyramids, stone circles, and tracks of figures that can only be seen from the sky indicate ways that civilizing humans communicate with these alien beings.
0253 If this is not a cry for a semiotic accounting for the emergence of unconstrained social complexity, I don’t know what is.
0254 Chapter 14 offers a standard summary of the achievements of ancient Sumeria.
0255 Chapter 15 returns to the topic of the Sumerian creation myths. Once again, the text re-iterates established points. On one hand, the Marxist thing can provide an explanation that cannot be challenged because… well… it is supposedly just like a mathematical or mechanical natural science model. On the other hand, the Marxist thing cannot account for the emergence of unconstrained social complexity in southern Mesopotamia.
Lotman’s thing can.
0256 Here is a picture.
0257 Although this pair of options may appear stunningly simplistic, the ancient astronaut theory shows that stunningly simplistic can work. It can offer an off-ramp to the current academic highway of a publication-based arms race, where young professional archaeologists struggle to pass through the substance called “tenure” only to realize that they have merely passed from antithesis to thesis (see points 0124-0128).
0258 Beck et al.’s manifesto, “Changing the Landscape of Archaeological Publishing” (Current Anthropology 67(1) (2026), https://doi.org/10.1086/739789), is well worth contemplating as a marker for the end of one Neptune in Aries spiral and the beginning of another.
0002 In 2012, the European Science Foundation convened an exploratory workshop, titled, “The Neolithic of Arabia: New Paradigms and Future Perspectives”. The schema is available online.
In the section on the main objectives of the workshop, the organizers (Dr. Remy Crassard and Dr. Phillipp Drechsler) note that the fragmentary characteristics of scientific knowledge to date favors the persistence and acceptance of current theories and precludes the development of new paradigms, along with comprehensive and coherent approaches to the Neolithic.
0003 This “favoring” and “precluding” is intrinsic to a recent essay in the journal, Prehistory, which is examined in Razie Mah’s blogs on January 1, 2026, titled Looking at Melinda Zeder’s Article (2025) “Repackaging the Neolithic”.
0004 While the workshop organizers do not call for a novel global vision, they do call for a synthetic approach that encourages the integration of diverse research on the topic.
0005 This open letter calls for more comprehensive research into the link between the early Holocene infilling of the Arabian Gulf and the emergence of two spheres of interaction for the Ubaid (southern Mesopotamia and the western Gulf littoral). The addendum provides an introduction.
0006 How comprehensive?
0007 Consider the questions raised by Razie Mah in the e-book, The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.
0008 First, does the forced migration induced by the early Holocene marine transgression explain the ‘Ubaid phenomenon, where this culture may be considered to be the first to practice speech-alone talk?
0009 Second, does speech-alone talk spread from the Ubaid, along established paths of down-the-line trading, to the rest of Eurasia? Why do all hand-speech talking cultures adopt speech-alone talk after coming into contact with a speech-alone talking culture? Are there archaeological markers indicating that, not only has contact occurred, but the transition is underway. Artifacts that might demand labels, like copper, certain types of pottery (such as the white pottery of the Archaic Hassuna), changing habits of lithic-tool knapping, might serve as markers.
0010 Third, what are the semiotic natures of hand-talk, hand-speech talk and speech-alone talk? Does hand- and hand-speech talk constrain social complexity? Does speech-alone talk potentiate unconstrained social complexity?
0011 These questions can be bundled into one grand question, which, ironically, is what the workshop specifically forbade.
Is our current Lebenswelt the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?
Are we who we evolved to be?
0012 I hope this call is heard by all people of good will. The time has come to set aside the swords and pick up where European Science Foundation’s exploratory workshop left off.
0010 Earnestly yours,
The Desk of Razie Mah
September 2-15, 2026
0011 Addendum: Looking at Richard Cuttler’s Article (2013) “Considering Marine Transgression as a Mechanism for Enforced Migration and the Littoral Gulf ‘Ubaid Phenomenon” in Razie Mah’s blog, September 1, 2026
0001 The citation for this article is: Cuttler, R. (2013). Considering marine transgression as a mechanism for enforced migration and the littoral Gulf ʿUbaid phenomenon. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy, 24(1), 37–43.
I obtained my copy from Wiley online. Thank you.
0002 In the early 2010s, Dr. Richard Cuttler smells a very interesting intellectual aroma, but is unable to sense where the trail leads. What is the link between the infilling of the Persian Gulf and the appearance of the Ubaid culture of southern Mesopotamia?
0003 The titular “consider” is one way of saying, “Imagine the possibility.”
If the marine transgression into the Arabian… or is it Persian?.. Gulf enforces a migration of the people who originally settled the fresh water marshes of the Ur Shatt (that’s “Ur Schatt” for Germans) waterway, then does that account for the Ubaid appearing in both Mesopotamia and on the shoreline of central Arabia?
0004 Why would an archaeologist consider such an if-then scenario?
During the glacial period, the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers flowed together into a waterway, the Ur-Shatt, that fed a corridor of lakes and marshes (now underwater “basins”) into the sea. Such a concourse would be a favorable place for Epipaleolithic enthnoses to settle, taking advantage of diverse natural resources.
0005 Little did they realize that the Ur-Shatt waterway, a veritable oasis during the glacial period, would slowly be covered with around 70 meters of sea-water. By “slowly”, I mean thousands of years. At the same time, the rise in sea-level has a horizontal dimension. After filling the basins, sea-water spreads into a shallow geological bowl.
0006 Here is a picture of the scenario once the low-lying basins are full.
The indigenous settlements are represented by red and purple dots.
The sea-rise will force these people to migrate.
0007 Here is a picture once the Gulf is filled to the brim (as far as the sea-rise would go, which is several meters above the present sea-level).
The Ubaid settlements are represented by magenta dots. Plus, the background color has taken on a magenta hue, denoting two spheres of interaction, the central Arabian Gulf and southern Mesopotamia. This is my rendition of Figure 1 of the article.
0008 How does anyone know that there are two spheres of Ubaid settlements?
Originally, the term, “Ubaid”, labels a type of pottery found in excavations throughout southern Mesopotamia. Why did archaeologists not also look at the central Arabian Gulf region?
The author is perhaps too embarrassed to say that late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century archaeologists focused on this region because… well… that is where the Garden of Eden is supposed to be. That is where Noah’s flood took place. That is where Judah was taken into exile in ancient times. So, of course, Protestant Christians are going to pay for exorbitant excavations in order to reveal… you know… something about justification by faith alone, scripture alone, and grace alone.
0009 Okay, I am just guessing on that one.
0010 Then, in 1968, G. Burkholder discovers Ubaid pottery in the western Gulf littoral.
0011 What a surprise.
The Ubaid is the lowest level excavated in southern Mesopotamia, which means that it has the deepest time horizon. Now, the Ubaid shows up near Bahrain. Doesn’t that smell like a great research project? To an archaeologist, it sure smells good… but, how does one follow the scent when the trail goes under the waters of the Gulf?
Professor Richard Cuttler, who I am sure has some good stories to tell, seeks funding for seismic reflection maps of the Gulf’s underwater landscape, in order to obtain better placed sediment cores of the sea-floor. He wants to investigate, but he does not know that there is another component to the puzzle. Also, big funding is hard to come by.
0012 If the project is funded, what will he find?
Among other points, the sediment cores would provide pollen-based clues to the changing climate of the time.
0013 At the start of the current interglacial, the Inter-Tropical Conversion Zone (ITCZ) shifts north, then back, then north again, in a most fickle manner. For the time under consideration, the ITCZ moves north, but not as far north as the gulf-to-be.
Here is a picture.
0014 The two dotted gray lines indicate the furthest extend of the ITCZ currently, and between 9.5 and 6.3 thousands of years ago (kyr). South of the line, the monsoons deliver plenty of rain water. North of the line, the westerlies lose all their water before arriving in Arabia.
0015 Curiously, all the Ubaid sites develop north of the early Holocene ITCZ line, suggesting that water was not a crucial issue. That makes no sense. Southern Mesopotamia obviously has lots of fresh water because of the Euphrates and Tigris and other rivers. What provides water to the pre-Ubaid sites in the central western Gulf?
0016 Take a look again at the above figure. The gray brushstrokes and the red line denote a massive aquifer that is tilted. It is high in the west and low in the east. The Dammam label is a concatenation of the saying, “That’s a damn aquifer, ma’am.” Am I kidding? This aquifer relies on a huge tilted fault-riddled plate of non-porous rock supporting porous layers that allow rain water, falling south of the northernmost ITCZ line, to flow underground and come to surface in springs that stand outside the low-lying basins.
0017 Here is my version of the article’s Figure 2.
Note how water flows downhill in the Dammam aquifer then comes up in springs further inland from the sea-water filled basins.
0018 Why is this so important for this examination?
This examiner wants to show that… in the land surrounding the freshwater marshes and salt-water depths of the basins at 10,000 BP… there are two cultures: a Mesolithic culture that lives right along the water and uses fresh and salt water resources and a Neolithic culture that exploits the water from Dammum-fed springs to engage in rudimentary agriculture and stockbreeding.
0019 The question is, “Why would I want to establish two disparate cultures in the same region?”
Wouldn’t that just complicate the story of an enforced migration?
0020 Here, I review.
0021 First, the sea level starts to rise, if there is not a paleolithic culture already on the fresh-lakes of the Ur-Shatt waterway, then a Mesolithic culture displaced from living on the continental shelf could enter into the environs. Such a culture would simply follow the water into the eastern, central and western basins, since they already know how to exploit fresh-water and marine resources.
0022 Second, there is a shift from dry to wet climactic conditions, as the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) shifts north. Does it shift north enough to provide water directly to lands around the infilling Gulf? The author establishes that even if it does not, the ITCZ shifts north enough to feed the Dammum aquifer which would provide fresh water to a Neolithic agricultural and stockbreeding culture that migrates in from the north and settles in the dry-lands just beyond the marshes.
0023 Then the sea-level rises more, overfilling the basins and entering into the flat-bowl terrain of the surrounding landscape. Now, both the Mesolithic and Neolithic culture are forced to migrate in response to the rising seas.
0024 Here is where I introduce an idea that Dr. Cuttler did not think of and may have never heard about until this moment.
The economies of the Mesolithic and the Neolithic culture are different. They do not depend on the same resources. Practical reason predicts that these cultures should mingle with one another and eventually become one.
However, each culture practices its own hand-speech talking language. That means that they have a serious impediment to talking with one another. Both practice a dual-mode style of language. How are they going to get around that?
0025 Let me step back and say that the evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language. Almost every book available on human evolution discusses the evolution of language as a facet of hominin communication. Only Razie Mah’s books discuss the evolution of talk as a semiotic adaptation.
0026 Here is a brief overview.
0027 The first period ranges from the separation of the chimpanzee and human lineages (around 7 Myr) to the start of bipedalism (around 3.5 Myr). The hominin lineage communicates in two small and one larger social circles. The small social circles are family (5) and friends (5). The larger social circle is the band (50).
0028 The second period ranges from the start of bipedalism to the domestication of fire (around 0.6 Myr). Michael Tomasello says that this period is dominated by “obligatory collaborative foraging”. That means that the social circle under the most intense selection pressure is the team (15). Hominins forage in teams. Pre-linguistic hand-talk is an adaptation to team work. Pre-linguistic hand-talk relies on sensible construction. Sensible construction relies on content and situation.
0029 The third period ranges from the domestication of fire to the first singularity (around 9kyr). The social circle under the most intense selection pressure is the community (150), the team of teams. This period is dominated by, what Razie Mah calls, “obligatory social-circle harmonizing”. Hand-talk becomes fully linguistic as an adaptation to the semiotic dynamics of social construction. Social construction involves content, situation and perspective.
0030 Prior to the evolution of Homo sapiens, the voice comes under voluntary neural control for singing. Why sing? There are two social circles larger than the community, the seasonally gathering mega-band (500) and the occasionally gathering tribe (1500). Their episodic gatherings require rapid synchronization. The voice was recruited to do precisely this. Singing identifies each participant within these larger social circles as belonging to the group. Plus, singing synchronizes all participants to the tasks at hand.
Sexual selection does the rest.
0031 With the evolution of Homo sapiens, the voice is systematically adapted for use as an adornment to hand-talk. In liminal lighting, communal hand-talk is difficult to instantly recognize. The voice is added as an adornment. Sound-word adorns gestural-word. The semiotics of the union remains grounded in hand-talk. However, the semiotic qualities of the sound-word (speech) are unique. So, cultural evolution produces two independent channels of talk, hand and speech talk, that are highly socially regulated.
In short, the transition from the voice as an adornment to hand-talk to fully elaborated hand-speech talk occurs over hundreds of thousands of years during the Paleolithic. My guess is that archaeological evidence of adornment parallels the development of this cultural adaptation.
0032 The fourth period begins when two hand-speech talking cultures, one Mesolithic and one Neolithic, are forced into the same migration. These cultures have different economies, so they do not fight over resources. Rather, they trade and get along. They intermarry. They engage in interactions familiar to anthropology. They start with a pidgin. Then, later generations establish a creole. That creole is the proto-Sumerian language. Sumerian is unrelated to any large family of languages.
0033 Plus, that creole is the first speech-alone talk on Earth.
The semiotic properties of hand- (and hand-speech) talk and speech-alone talk are significantly different. The following figure presents dyads (characteristic of the Charles Peirce’s category of secondness) that may be read as Aristotle’s dyad of {matter [substance] form}.
0034 Hand- (and hand-speech) talk requires only one hylomorphe. A referent as matter substantiates, by way of icon and index, a manual-brachial word-gesture as form. The fact that word-gestures become routinized, and thereby instantly recognized, does not detract from this semiotic grounding. The referent precedes the hand-talk word.
0035 Speech-alone talk requires two hylomorphes, one on the content and one on the situation level. In terms of content, Ferdinand de Saussure (1859-1913) defined spoken language as “two arbitrarily related” systems of differences. What I think is arbitrarily related to what I say. So, where does the referent come in?
The referent comes on the situation-level, because each content-level word-utterance2af must be validated2bm(as situation-level matter) by the form of an artifact2bf. The spoken word precedes its referent.
0036 While this explanation sounds like gibberish to any newcomer to the field of semiotics, including many anthropologists and archaeologists in 2026, there is clearly method to the madness.
0037 Here is a list of Razie Mah’s e-works that are pertinent to this topic.
0038 The bottom line?
Hand- and hand-speech talk constrain social complexity.
Speech-alone talk facilitates unconstrained social complexity.
0039 This is precisely the theory that Dr. Cuttler needs in order to bring his research proposals to the next level.
0040 The origin of the Ubaid is the first step in a huge research project that is intrinsic to The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.
0041 Cuttler’s analysis concerns the material arrangements that set in motion a dramatic shift in semiotic reality.
0042 Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
The image on the left represents two hand-speech talking cultures that belong to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
The image on the right represents one speech-alone talking culture that initiates our current Lebenswelt.
0043 I suspect that the Ubaid narod knows that they are different. They are surrounded by ethnoses that are poor and disorganized, in comparison to the wealth and the power that comes from (even a little) labor and social specialization.
The Ubaid does not know why it is special, it only knows that the surrounding hand-speech talking cultures talk with their hands. The hand-speech talking culture cannot help but notice the inverse. The Ubaid emissaries do not talk with their hands. However, they have the best dried fish. Plus, they want to give us their pottery, but it seems that they expect something in return.
Soon enough, the Ubaid strains at maintaining communality, or whatever it was that they had before their creation. Meanwhile, their way of talking encourages them to create artifacts that validate their spoken words, condemning them to further social complexity.
0044 It is hard to imagine what it was like, when every youth is ready to move past the tired artifacts that validate their grand-parent’s words.
Or, maybe it is not hard to imagine.
0045 Nor is it hard to imagine Abdullah Hassan Masry’s 1974 “sphere of interaction” hypothesis. Each Ubaid site belongs to a sphere of interaction, where it takes on its own “specialties”, its own gods, and its own ways of accommodating its labor and social specializations.
Doesn’t that sound like the contemporary term, “multipolar world”?
0046 Here is a picture.
0047 What is the second research project demanded by the hypothesis of the first singularity?
From the spheres pictured above, speech-alone talk spreads to the four corners of the world.
Imagine the research project needed to establish whether that claim is plausible!
0048 Dr. Richard Cuttler, the door is open. Follow your nose. Thank you for publishing your considerations.
0001 The book before me is published by Fidelity Press. The subtitle is “The Rise, Fall and Return of American Identity”. The author is editor of Culture Wars Magazine. And, everyone knows what “culture wars” means.
For students who are pursuing Semiotics and History, please have a copy of this book at hand. Look at the title and read the table of contents. The instructions in this examination should be clear.
Dr. E. Michael Jones, the author, reads and comments on literature from a Catholic point of view. His works are iconic, in so far as he is orthodox. “Ortho” means “right”. What about “dox”? Here, I mix terminology. Orthodox love icons. You know, those paintings that adorn the churches with names like “Saint Basil’s”.
0002 Of course, for the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce, an icon is one of three types of natural signs. An icon is a triadic sign-relation whose sign-object is based on the qualities of similarity, imagery, pantomime, likeness and so on. In other words, an icon offers a sign-vehicle that allows me to visualize its sign-object.
0003 But what about the icon rendered in E. Michael Jones’s text?
What about the icon on the wall of St. Basil’s?
Razie Mah’s blog appearing in January 2025, Looking at Boris Uspenskij’s Article (2016) “Semiotics and History”, contains a hypothesis about Russian icons.
0004 Boris Uspenskij (1937-present) is a Soviet era expert on Slavic literature who, along with Juri Lotman (1922-1993), proposes that semiotic arrangements substantiate the human condition. He does so in the 1990s, after the Soviet political system lost all credibility. The Soviet system enshrined Marx’s slogan: Material arrangements substantiate the human condition. How well did that thing work?
0005 Boris Uspenskij’s journey into semiotics begins in the 1950s, when the Soviet empire is intimidating and everyone senses that Marx’s slogan applies. After all, it sounds so scientific.
Uspenskij wants to offer a materialist explanation for the power of Russian iconography. Russian icons are portraits and scenes painted on the foreground with a background of thinly hammered gold foil. Uspenskij figured that icons are meant to be viewed by candlelight. The flickering light of candles produce the aesthetic effect associated with Russian icons.
0006 Of course, this is a materialist explanation for Russian iconography, fully congruent with the central slogan of the Marxist thing: material arrangements [substantiate] human conditions.
However, from the Korean War until the fall of the Berlin Wall, Uspenskij (along with Lotman) reach the conclusion that Marxism does not have the vocabulary to explain Slavic literature. Instead, they figure out the aesthetic effects of Slavic art by using the vocabularies of semiology and structuralism.
“Figuring out” means “bricolage”. They practice what they figure out. The vocabularies of semiology and structuralism hammer out a model. Then, when the form of the work of art is viewed in the flickering light of that model, an aesthetic effect is reproduced as matter. The work of art entangles the contemporary language of the positivist mind.
0007 In the flickering illumination of a semiological and structuralist model, the work of art begins to speak to the viewer.
The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics is discussed in Razie Mah’s blogs, spanning from December 2025 to May 2026. These blogs initialize an online course titled “Semiotics and History”. See Razie Mah’s blogs for October 3-6, 2025 for an introduction.
0008 This is confounding.
“Confounding” is a technical term, labeling a single form (B) that originates from one matter (A), yet entangles another matter (C)
A historical literary text (or a work of art, such as a Russian icon, A&B) becomes a form (from the perspective of a semiological and structuralist model, B alone) that entangles a voice (matter within the viewer, speaking to the viewer, in a contemporary vocabulary of meaning, presence and message, C).
0009 A as matter [substantiates] B as form. {A[&]B} constitutes a thing.
B as form [entangles] C as matter. {A[&]B[entangles]C} is a confounding.
0010 The question that I pose is this.
Does Dr. E. Michael Jones construct a similar cognitive apparatus in the USSA, during the years preceding the collapse of its big government (il)liberal and neoconservative Marxist ideations?
0011 I know what you are thinking.
USSA?
United Sycophantic States of America?
I love acronyms.
But, what the hell is a “sycophant”?
Okay, the author has another word that begins with “S”.
0001 The book before me is published by Intervarsity Press. The subtitle is “Advances in the Origins Debate”. This work is the latest in the “Lost World Series” that delves into how Genesis should be regarded in light of the archaeological discoveries of the past three centuries.
Of course, “new explorations” implies “advances”. Advances adjust previous positions. The reader is advised to consult the conclusion immediately after the introduction, and before the section on methodology.
An examination of a prior work can be found in Looking at John Walton’s Book (2015) “The Lost World of Adam and Eve” appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in August 2022. The review is updated and fashioned as the first and fifth chapters in Razie Mah’s 2024 e-book, Exercises In Artistic Concordism, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.
0002 The term, “literature of the ancient Near East” is somewhat awkward, because the writings of the ancient Near East were buried in the ruins of royal libraries throughout Egypt and the Levant. The writings are in cuneiform, wedge impressions on clay tablets. The clay fires into brick when the royal library burns, along with the rest of the royal city. Then, the ruins get buried in vegetation, and later human settlements, and so on. Then, the tells (or hills) are excavated by modern archaeologists. Archaeologists discover thousands of cuneiform tablets and learn how to translate them. These translations constitute “the literature of the ancient Near East”.
0003 Of course, this story sounds implausible.
However, God tends to manifest the implausible.
0004 In fact, if God only performs sensible… what is the correct term?… “interventions”, then no one would notice. If anyone could turn water into wine, then the miracle at Cana would be ho-hum.
The Uruk culture invents writing by impressing tokens onto the surface of clay balls (which then contain the impressed tokens). That seems sensible. Centuries later, a Sumerians scribe uses a reed stylus to create impressions on a clay surface that is curved, like the surface of a ball. That seems sensible, also. Then, stylus impressions on a clay tablet become so routine that cuneiform is used for centuries to record transactions and inventories. Eventually, the same writing is used to record the civilization’s origin myths.
0005 Okay, each of these steps is sensible, although unlikely.
How many unlikely, yet sensible, developments can be strung together before the results may be declared “miraculous”?
0006 So, what is miraculous with respect to Walton’s lost-world propositions?
God provides eighteen centuries of biblical interpretation by Christians before creating the conditions where a challenge to traditional reference and affirmation occurs.
The archaeology of the ancient Near East unearths literature that is (more or less) contemporaneous with the Old Testament.
That is the challenge.
0007 The Old and New Testaments are no longer subject to plain reading as the sole foundation of interpretation.
Why?
How can one conduct an honest reading of the Old and New Testaments and not accommodate the literature of the ancient Near East?
0008 Okay, replace the word, “honest”, with the word, “literal”.
It seems that figurative and allegorical readings are not challenged.
0001 If I may present my conclusion at the beginning, “I suggest the following motto: First the bauplan, then the twist.”
0002 The full title of the essay under examination is “Unpacking the Neolithic: Assessing the Relevance of the Neolithic Construct in Light of Recent Research”. The article appears in the Journal of World Prehistory (2025) in volume 38:11, pages 1-58 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-025-09198-0). The author is affiliated with the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.
0003 The author’s argument follows the Greek tradition of (A) setting out prior propositions, (B) adding further information and assessments and (C) proposing one’s own solution.
Prior propositions (A) are covered in the section titled, “The Origin of the Term ‘Neolithic'”.
Further information (B) includes sections on neolithic emergences in southwest Asia and other regions, including China, Japan, eastern north America, Mesoamerica and the northwest America.
The author’s proposal (C) appears in a section titled, “Repackaging the Neolithic”.
0004 I examine each movement in the sequence A, C then B.
0005 In regards to the historical origin of the term, “neolithic” (A), the word appears in the 1850s in the context of prehistoric lithic technology. A distinction between old “paleolithic” and new “neolithic” tools reflects a fairly recent change in the human condition. The Paleolithic extends very far back into the evolution of the Homo genus. The Neolithic is fairly new and applies only to Homo sapiens. By “new”, I mean, say, starting less that 20,000 years ago.
0006 As it turns out, stone tools and fossilized bones are the most recoverable items from the distant past. So, the idea that our kind evolves will of course rely of this type of data. The implications are significant. If lithic technologies are like matter, then the archaeologist may speculate on forms of prehistorical human (or “hominid” or “hominin”) conditions.
0007 For example, the earliest paleolithic stone tools are labeled “Oldowan”. These tools can be made on the fly. If I strike one rock with another, I can fracture off a shard and expose a sharp edge. Of course, one must choose the right rocks for this trick. Plus, technique is important.
Later stone tools are labeled “Acheulean”. These stone tools are made ahead of time, by the same technique of hammering off shards to reveal an intended form that… somehow… is intrinsic to the original rock.
0008 So, what am I suggesting?
Is the actuality of matter and form intrinsic to rocks, and ancestral hominins learn to tamper with one real element (matter) in order to sculpt the other real element (form)?
0009 I am suggesting more than that.
Aristotle’s hylomorphe (hylo = matter, morphe = form) is an exemplar of Peirce’s category of secondness. Secondness consists of (at least) two contiguous real elements. For paleolithic hominins, a rock (matter) could be sculpted into a stone tool (form). From the point of view of the archaeologist, the hylomorphic structure still applies. The question is, “How?”
Paleolithic stone-tool technology “sculpts” prehistorical human conditions.
0010 Of course, the word, “sculpts”, serves as an aesthetic metaphor for the contiguity between paleolithic technology as matter and hominin conditions as form.
0011 The challenge for nineteenth-century anthropology is clear. Propose a better, more scientific, or at least, less metaphysical, label for the contiguity.
With only geological strata, stone tools and fossilized bones as evidence, proposals were necessarily speculative. But, archaeologists continued digging, and by the 1850s could make the distinction between paleolithic and neolithic. Also, they figured out a reason for why the advance from Oldowan to Acheulean stone tools “sculpted” more advanced hominin conditions. Man was making himself.
0012 What do these evidential and rational developments suggest?
For a Peircean, secondness is the dyadic realm of actuality. Secondness is only one of Peirce’s three categories. The other two are thirdness (the triadic realm of normal contexts, judgments, signs, mediations and so forth) and firstness (the monadic realm of possibility).
Each of these categories manifests its own logic. Also, each higher numbered category prescinds from the adjacent lower category. Thirdness prescinds from secondness. Secondness prescinds from firstness. Prescission allows the articulation of the category-based nested form, as described in Razie Mah’ e-book, A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form.
0013 Thirdness bring secondness into relation with firstness.
A triadic normal context3 brings a dyadic actuality2 into relation with the possibility of ‘something’1.
0014 Now I can slide the above dyad into the slot for actuality2 for the category-based nested form intimated by the title of V. Gordon Childe’s 1936 book, Man Makes Himself.
0015 The slide clarifies the contiguity, paleolithic technology constellates a substance, which I label, “technique”, that manifests an essence for the conditions of evolving hominins (that is, a substantiated form).
Consequently, the appearance of a new stone tool technology indicates a change in techniques as well as a change in the essence of the prehistoric human condition.
0016 According to Childe (1892-1957), the “neolithic” label encompassed more than a change in lithic technology. The prehistoric human condition gets entangled with all sorts of other matters, including sedentary communities, economies of delayed returns, various modes of storage and so forth. A long list of material arrangements gets entangled.
0017 As it turns out, once matter substantiates form, then form can entangle other matter, which is a confounding. Here, “confounding” is a technical term, precisely labeling one form originating from one matter and entangling another matter.
Historically, a confounding is an idea that belongs to Aristotle’s tradition. It is stumbled upon long after Aristotle’s campus went out of business. It is the brainchild of the Byzantine and Slavic civilizations.
0018 Here is a picture of Childe’s confounding.
0019 The upper three lines presents the neolithic thing. Neolithic stone-tool technology [substantiates] the prehistoric human condition. The nature of the [substance] is labeled, “technique”.
The lower two lines presents the entangled matter. The [entanglement] is difficult to label, because its nature is.. well… a long list of material arrangements.
0020 A list of material arrangements appears in Table 1 of the article. Even the social components of social mechanism, magico-religious sanctions and trade can be shoved under the rug labeled, “material arrangements”.
0021 As such, the “neolithic” may serve as an adjective to a noun, “revolution”, that appeals to academics sympathetic to Marxist formulations. Yes, they are the ones who only promote academics with similar sympathies. Also, Childe was… um… a sympathizer.
The question is not about whether prehistoric folk are “communist” or “fascist”, even though these labels may apply to this or that anthropologist of the 1930s.
The question is whether the Marxist formula applies to prehistoric folk.
0022 The answer becomes obvious, when Childe’s confounding resolves into the following hylomorphic structure.
0023 The above figure depicts a Marxist version of Aristotle’s hylomorphe, {matter [substantiates] form}. Childe’s hylomorphe lasts for nine decades (that is, until the present day at the start of 2026). Man makes himself through a standard Marxist formulation. Soon, Soviet era archaeologists adopt the stance that the appearance of pottery is a hallmark of neolithic emergence. Pottery is a material arrangement. The emergence of the neolithic is a human condition.
0056 Okay, I will continue drinking my cocktail in the following exposition.
I regard the last two figures, along with the figures that appear in the article under examination.
0057 There is something in B that suggests two bauplans3. Early Neolithic Bauplan 1 marks the terminus of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. Late Neolithic Bauplan 2 denotes the start of our current Lebenswelt.
0058 Bauplan 1 looks like this.
The early Neolithic bauplan3does not permit untrammeled social and labor specializations. Rather, all social circles2m (family (5), friends (5), teams (15), bands (50), and community (150)) are optimized2f in the pursuit of the final cause of ‘settling down’1. It is the same way that different organs and organ systems are optimized for ‘settling down’ into an individual.
Details of optimization will be specific to each location (because efficient causes differ), yet produce something ‘general’, that manifests in excavation sites as varied as Catal Hoyuk and Tepe Gobekli. Domestication includes the local geography, plants and animals. Domestication may even include settlements more than a day’s walk away. Domestication may include the heavens.
0059 Once rendered in this manner, the slow, seemingly reversible, spiral into the neolithic thing2 gets depicted as thin dotted horizontal lines along the axes of arrangements versus time.
0060 The late Neolithic bauplan3 permits individual social and labor specializations. Something significant has changed. The key final cause of ‘settling down’ remains relevant. However, another key final cause cannot be ignored. The optimization of the early Neolithic somehow breaks down and the late Neolithic initiates a search for order1 that continues to this day.
0061 Here is a picture of what Bauplan 2 might look like.
0062 It is as if an individual, having been formed by a bauplan 1 gestation, gets born.
What a rude awakening.
0063 What about the timeline?
If I replace the increasing boldness of the horizontal dotted lines with a slowly rising bauplan 1 slope, and if I depict the most bold horizontal dotted lines as a bauplan 2 phase transition, then I get the following graph.
0064 What does this imply?
Obviously, bauplan 1 ends in a twist, that is, bauplan 2.
I noted this slogan at the start of my examination.
0065 Less obviously, the Neolithic revolution is not in the actuality of {material arrangements [substantiating] the neolithic condition}2.
“The Neolithic Revolution” involves a transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.
0066 Fortunately, for the author, the American Marxist academic candle is about to exhaust itself, just as the Soviet Marxist illumination did decades ago.
Yes, the crisis begins.
0067 The impending change of cognitive grounds will be at least as great as the following transition from Karl Marx (1818-1883) to Juri Lotman (1922-1993). This transition goes sigmoidal in 1989.
0068 The following hylomorphic transition is derived in Razie Mah’s blog for December 2025, titled Looking at Igor Pilshchikov and Mikhail Trunin’s Article (2016) “The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics”.
0069 Marx’s actuality2 is supposed to arise from the potential of scientific models1, even though the actuality2 served as doctrine, rather than a mechanical or mathematical formulation. Remember, Marx’s actuality2 conforms to the structure of Peirce’s secondness. Secondness is the realm of actuality. How easy is it to confuse this actuality with the realness of a mechanical or mathematical model? Yet, they are not the same.
0070 Lotman’s actuality2 arises from the potential of the semiosphere1, the universe of sign-relations. Semiotic arrangements are not the same as material arrangements. They are not even close.
0071 So, what am I saying?
The author senses that ‘something’ is coming and she figures out that it must concern a bauplan.
After all, bauplan is a term that is familiar to evolutionary biologists.
0072 Happily, the semiotician, Razie Mah, has already explored human evolution from the point of view of Peirce’s categories. The human bauplan is an adaptation to the niche (or the potential) of triadic relations. Plus, human evolution comes with a twist.
Here is a list of works by Razie Mah that pertain to Bauplan 1 and Bauplan 2.
0073 Surely, this is a lot to unpack. But, that is precisely what Melinda Zeder’s article calls for.
My thanks to the author for publishing this thought piece.
0001 This essay comments on a 2017 book by biologist, Dennis Venema, and theologian, Scot McKnight. The title is Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture after Genetic Science. The publisher is Brasos Press in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The book consists of two equal parts. The geneticist shows that Adam and Eve cannot be a single pair who founded the human species. The theologian wrestles with how to read Genesis in light of modern archaeology.
0002 My goal is to supplement these arguments in two ways. I will re-articulate ideas about evolutionary biology using the specialized language of the category-based nested form. I will present a scientific hypothesis that re-images the Adam and Eve stories as ancient Near Eastern fairy tales.
Perhaps, at the end of these comments, I can declare, “The old historical Adam is dead. Long live the new historical Adam.”
0003 Before I begin, I attend to some housekeeping items.
‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.
Suggested readings include Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form (#1), Primer on Sensible and Social Construction (#2), and the chapter on message in How to Define the Word “Religion”. These works, by Razie Mah, are available at smashwords and other e-book venues, along with the compilation of this blog, titled, Comments on Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight’s Book (2017) Adam and the Genome.
0004 In order to see where many evangelicals are coming from, consult the September 2010 issue of Perspectives in Science and Christian Faith. This particular journal of the American Scientific Affiliation presents a snapshot of some of the difficulties posed by the early chapters of Genesis.
0005 The 2017 book, Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture after Genetic Science, addresses one conundrum with a simple admission: Adam and Eve cannot be the progenitors of all humans, as proposed by Saint Augustine, 1600 years ago. The admission rebukes Christians striving to locate the primal couple in a genetic bottleneck event between 50 and 150 thousand years ago.
0005 Unfortunately, their solution provides little defense for Christian doctrine. Big government (il)liberals (BGilLs) claim that evolution disproves the second creation story in Genesis, just like the mercantilists, fascists and communists before them. BGiLs also insist that the Bible is the stuff of myths.
0006 Evangelical communities continue to bleed students.
Why?
Original Sin.
Christians think it describes the human condition.
BGilLs do not.
0007 Christians believe that humans are disoriented. Jesus provides orientation. Jesus is the way.
For BGilLs, the human condition is perfectible through a never-ending revolution by an administrative state. The human condition may be fulfilled by knowing one’s self. Or, is it – constructing – one’s self?
With Original Sin, we are actors in a theodrama that transcends critical theory. Indeed, critical theory may typify the corruption of Original Sin.
Without Original Sin, we are foolish players strutting on the world’s stage, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. So why not accept the ministrations of a totalitarian government? Why not construct oneself?
0243 Certainly, Venema and McKnight lower two curtains on the historical Adam envisioned by Saint Augustine.
0244 With these comments, each curtain takes on a life of its own.
0245 The fact that descent with modification embodies the same relational structure as the message underlying the word “religion” suggests that there is more to evolutionary biology than meets the eye. The discussion ends with the “university” becoming the “ulistentome”, the “college” getting relabeled as “harangue” and the seminary turning into “hope for salvation”.
Genetics rules out Adam and Eve as the biological parents of all humanity along with Augustine’s version of Original Sin.
What about the word games that speech-alone talk allows?
0246 The fact that the stories of Adam and Eve are written in the style of (excavated) ancient Near East literature suggests that all these stories came to us through a process of descent with modification.
All written origin stories of the ancient Near East point to the trauma ofthe first singularity. They cannot see beyond this particular time-horizon.
The same goes for the Genesis stories starting with Adam and Eve. The stories of Adam and Eve mark the start of our current Lebenswelt.
0247 Here is a new image for Original Sin.
Indeed, the new version accounts for the old version.
0248 So, instead of pursuing ulistentome or harangue, seek hope for salvation.
Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture after Genetic Science lowers the curtains on Augustine’s stage play about the nature and consequences of the Fall. Yet, the curtains come alive with the category-based nested form and the hypothesis of the first singularity.
0001 The full title of the book before me is Rescuing Inerrancy: A Scientific Defense (2023, Reasons To Believe Press, Covina California). The author, Hugh Ross, is an excellent writer and a Christian scientist. The qualifier is crucial here, because biblical inerrancy is mysteriously conjunct the modern construct of scientific inerrancy. “Conjunct” means “stuck with”.
0002 The book has both a greek and a semitic architecture. As noted in The Instructor’s Guide to An Archaeology of the Fall (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues), the two literary styles represent different types of recognition.
The greek argument presents a variety of opinions, weeds out the inadequate ones, then proclaims the one left standing, the winner. One might call it “linear thinking”. The greek style dominates the second half of the book (chapters 12 through 20), concluding with the proposal of a “model approach”.
The semitic style presents various rhetorical tricks, aiming to induce the reader to recognize a possibility. Am I saying that the Bible is full of rhetorical tricks? I suggest the reader look at the appendix of Ross’s book on that one. Or, consider the Genesis use of the word, “day”, in the Creation Story. The word leads to a flight of fancy, so to speak, asking the reader to recognize that the reported events are themselves, a flight of… what?… not of fancies, but of revelations… or significations… that become more and more esoteric (or hidden) even as they appear more and more exoteric (or obvious).
0003 What about Adam and Eve, fashioned from dust and rib, respectively?
Oh, they end up getting fooled by a talking snake.
0004 Christians are fine following the exoteric lessons and scratching their heads about some of the esoteric implications.
The problem is that Christians are stuck with the sciences. Conjunct! Science is all about truncated material and efficient causalities. Truncated? Scientific causalities are shorn of formal and final causation. Formal and final causes are metaphysical (a step beyond physics) because they concern triadic relations. It is like being able to account for all the motions (the truncated material and efficient causes) of a mechanical clock without acknowledging that the clock has a design (formal cause) and purpose (final cause)
And, the purpose has ‘something’ to do with us!
0005 The positivist intellect has a rule. Metaphysics is not allowed.
So Christians are conjunct with a positivist intellect who has no idea that the purpose of the Genesis text may have something to do with us, right now, not as we once were at some time in the not-so-distant past. The positivist intellect cannot consider that the first chapter of Genesis may be like a clock or whatever mechanical analogy one wants to use. Is it a story designed to set the “time”? The time of what?
Truncated material and efficient causalities cannot ideate what Christians observe (and sort of… measure, in the sense of “weighing”) in Scripture. Christians struggle to discern what the early chapters of Genesis could possibly reveal. Plus, those possibilities are not obvious at all. Even a plain reading of these stories tells the inquirer, “A plain reading of this text is not enough.”
0006 The Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics, published in 1982, says as much. Ross lists the relevant articles in chapter three.
For example, in article eighteen, the convening theologians confirm that the text of Scripture is to be interpreted by grammatical and historical exegesis, so that Scripture is used to interpret Scripture. Then, they reject the legitimacy of various modern quests, including postulating extra-Biblical civilizational sources, relativizing the text by comparing it to evolutionary science, demonstrating that the accounts are not “historical” in the modern sense of the word, and rejecting the Bible’s claims to authorship.
Here is a picture.
0007 I ask, “Are these theologians affirming that Genesis 1-11 confronts the reader with the possibility of ‘something’, and that ‘something’ is not obvious from a plain reading of the text?”
They say, “Look at the grammar. Look at what the stories are saying in regards to history, in the widest sense of the term.”
0008 I ask, “Are these theologians denying that Genesis 1-11 can be assessed, compared to, and explained by scientific empirio-schematic inquiry?”
It sure looks that way.
And, that is a problem in a civilization where science appears triumphant.
