Category Archives: The Emergence (of the Possibility) of Unconstrained Complexity
Prior to the Developed Neolithic in Southwestern Asia, all human cultures exhibited constrained complexity. The Uruk culture of southern Mesopotamia was the first to exhibit unconstrained complexity, that is, social changes that would lead to the formation of civilization. In between, is the possibility of unconstrained complexity, such as the Ubaid. This is discussed in chapters 3, 4A, 5, 6A&B, and 7 of Razie Mah’s An Archaeology of the Fall.
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.
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.
0180 If David Graeber and David Wengrow’s recent book, subtitled, A New History of Humanity, is a breakthrough in postmodern anthropology, then it is so because it displays a semitic textual structure, instead of a greek textual structure.
These two styles are discussed in An Instructor’s Guide to An Archaeology of the Fall. Rather than eliminating possibilities in order to arrive at the most likely correct interpretation, these authors play literary tricks, coupling chapters one and twelve, A:A’, chapters two and eleven, B:B’, and chapters three through nine and chapter ten, C:C’.
Figure 24
0182 The semitic structure is A:B:C:C’:B’:A’. In Comments on David Graeber and David Wengrow’s Book (2021) The Dawn of Everything (by Razie Mah, available and smashwords and other e-book venues), the work is discussed in the pattern A:A’, B:B’ and C:C’. Notably, the bulk of the book covers the last layer, C:C’, and balances seven chapters (three through nine, C) against one chapter (ten, C’). Chapter ten is twice as long as any other chapter.
0183 Plus, chapter ten stands on its own, allowing me to place an examination in Razie Mah’s blog, with the title Looking at David Graeber and David Wengrow’s Chapter (2021) “Why The State Has No Origin”. If the reader first encounters the blog, the commentary is available. If the reader first purchases the commentary, then the reader can call the blog to the attention of others.
0255 Graeber and Wengrow’s exploration of the dawn of everything ends with a cruel joke.
The “state”2b, as defined by social science, cannot indirectly emerge from (and situate) righteousness1aC, while, at the same time, manifesting the characteristics of “domination”2a.
So, how is the contemporary left’s dream of achieving the virtues of liberty, equality and fraternity through the apparatus of the state2b going to work?
Thus ends the third layer, C:C’, of the author’s wide-ranging exercise in the semitic textual style. The Dawn of Everythingis contemporary postmodern social science at its finest. The authors start by searching for the origins of social inequality. They end with the promise of a new history of humanity.
These authors do not know what they do not know. But they do suspect this…
0256 …A new history of the world awaits. There is a new way to describe the dawn of everything, where “everything” corresponds to “our current Lebenswelt”.
Yet, their explorations play out as a dark joke, almost as cruel as the joke that, long ago, a talking serpent plays on a naive young woman.
My thanks to the authors. My condolences as well, on more than one level.
These comments provide views that dramatically re-present the vistas intimated in David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book. Welcome to a new age of understanding: The Age of Triadic Relations.
0107 Is our current Lebenswelt a way to envision the Garden of Eden?
If so, then humans in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, created as the image of God, associate to a reification, the Tree of Life. The tree of life is rooted in our evolved relationality. The tree of life branches out in cultural practices that maximize the fruits of our evolved relationality.
0108 The term, image of God, offers a vision, where worship conjoins life. Yet, our ancestors could not picture or point either “image” or “God” with hand talk. Just as birds fly, without intellectual awareness of the abstraction of flight, hominins talk to one another with manual-brachial gestures, without intellectual awareness of the abstractions that can be drawn from their discourse. Hand talk does not permit explicit abstraction.
0109 The term, the tree of life, is an abstraction. The meaning, presence and message that we project into the term, the tree of life, produces an artifact that validates our projection. The tree of life is a symbol that validates the word-symbols that compose the term.
Welcome to our current Lebenswelt.
0110 How do we define3the tree of life2? What meaning, presence and message1 do we project into the actuality of the term2?
In the epic of Gilgamesh, the reader finds one definition. Gilgamesh obtains, then loses, a plant that confers immortality.
In Genesis 3:22, the reader finds the a similar rendering, uttered by the Lord God.
The tree of life confers immortality, by definition.
0111 But, does this definition represent a projection that reinforces an artifact (a particular interpretation) that validates an abstraction inherent in the spoken term, “the tree of life”?
This circularity is characteristic of spoken words.
Does the tree of life confer immortality because it is composed of the spoken words, “tree” and “life”?
0111 It makes me wonder about the term, “immortality”.
Immortality is just a word.
“Immortality” is also an abstraction.
Can one die and still remain alive?
Are there other meanings, presences and messages underlying the actuality of the term, the tree of life?
0125 Chapter ten addresses the question, “Whose fault is it?”
Subsidiary questions include (more or less), “Why doesn’t God stop sin and suffering?”, “Did God create humans in a way that permitted sin?”, and “Was the Fall inevitable or unavoidable?”
These questions will eventually be leavened with Haarsma’s interscope, containing the hypothesis of the first singularity2Has the twist in human evolution2H.
Figure 24
0126 If one looks at the first singularity2H from the point of view of original sin2V, one could ask, “Why does God not stop the transition from hand-speech to speech-alone talk?”
Why does God permit it?
If one looks at original sin2V from the point of view of the first singularity2H, one could ask, “Was it inevitable or unavoidable that the multi-generational and incomprehensible increase in labor and social specialization in the early Ubaid would naturally give rise to the stories of Adam and Eve?“
Of course not.
So, why does our Creator the speak to us through the depths of the confusion associated with the emergence of unconstrained social complexity?”
Why tell us the stories of Adam and Eve?
Is it a coincidence that the serpent has no hands in which to hand talk?
0127 These are not questions of blame.
These are question of mystery.
0128 Our current Lebenswelt binds the hypothesis of the first singularity2H and the doctrine of original sin2V, allowing cross-talk between two apparently independent nested forms. Cross-talk opens our awareness to irresolvable contradictions between the two constituting actualities. Thus, the potential of Genesis 2:4-111V is in conversation with the potential of speech-alone talk, in contrast to hand-speech talk1H.
Spoken words allow abstraction in ways that cannot be imagined in hand-speech talk. Speech-alone talk offers the capacity to exploit and corrupt human relations by manipulating the meanings, presences and messages underlying purely symbolic words.
0129 Indeed, speech-alone talk is a vector for Satanic deception. Consider the serpent’s conversation with Eve. What a demonstration of speech-alone talk in action.
0130 In chapter eleven, Haarsma raises other difficult questions.
I would like to elevate my own question for examination.
0131 When does sin begin?
Here is an artistic way to appreciate the answer.
Consider the two interscopes of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in and our current Lebenswelt.
0132 Consider the theological actualities2V.
For the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, it2V is humans as images of God.
For our current Lebenswelt, it2V is the tree of life.
Here is a picture.
Figure 25
Consider the tree of life as a metaphor for the roots and the branches of belonging, intuitively nurtured by prehistoric humans living out their lives as images of God, …
0133 … then, in order to appreciate the depths of callousness and total depravity implied by the doctrine of original sin,consider the wickedness of plucking the fruit of the tree of life in order to attain immortality.
0134 Loren Haarsma tries to calm the dissonance of two apparently independent actualities: human evolution2H and original sin2V.
In doing so, he creates a semitic textual structure that allows my comments to suggest that these two actualities belong to a single reality. Two category-based nested forms intersect. The intersection of two nested forms offers a message. Here is a mystery.
0070 In chapter five, Mark Smith asks, “When does the story of human sin begin in Genesis?”
0071 At this point, conditions further clarify.
The first audiences for the early stories of Genesis are children. The first authors are their mothers, the daughters of Seth. Eve is their great-great-…-great grandmother. The stories convey to each child this lineage, a direct descent to this mother, who is center stage. Eve is more than a foolish woman who talks to serpents. Eve is your mother as well.
0072 What does it mean to be a mother, a woman, cursed under Eve’s indictment?
A Primer on the Family presents the family as a prototype of the corporation, the content level of the organization tier. Eve, the woman, is the producer. Her man is the management. Her children are the service, or, in today’s terms, the human resources. Eve does not change the centrality of the mother. She magnifies it.
She offers a warning.
0073 The story of Eve’s temptation offers many lessons, including ones on the nature of desire. As Smith points out, Genesis 3 portrays a deeply disturbing psychological narrative. Don’t all good fairy tales?
Plus, I add, Eve’s narrative, along with other Genesis stories, captures the weirdness of the constellation of unconstrained social complexity during the Ubaid. Adam and Eve are made in paradise, eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and are expelled. Neither Genesis 2 nor 3 use the word, “sin”. The label, “evil”, is only mentioned in the name of the infamous tree.
Afterwards, Eve bears two children, Cain and Abel. Eve is the producer.
0074 “Sin” is mentioned in Genesis 4, along with the word for desire, “teshuqah”. Desire appears in the temptation of Eve and in her rebuke, where God says, “Your desire will be for your man.” Yes, the woman will desire her man to be her manager. There is no sin in that.
So, where does the word, “sin”, first appear?
When Cain, the gardener, complains about God preferring burnt offerings of meat, God offers a revealing repost, saying (more or less), “If you do what is right, you can bear it. If you do not do right, sin crouches at your door. Its desire (teshuqah) is for you, but you can rule over it.”
The word, “sin”, appears for the first time. It does so in conjunction with a desire that crouches, like a predator, at Cain’s threshold. Cain can rule it. Or, it can rule Cain.
We all know what happens next.
0075 The daughters of Seth do not pull punches. This conjunction of “sin” and “desire” is so provocative that I wonder, what child would not remember it, later, as an adult?
Even more intriguing is how this conjunction exposes a disquieting reality within the Ubaid’s spiral towards unconstrained social complexity. The idea of one brother killing the other is not out of the question. Why? Such killingis an artifactthat validates what the murderous brother has been telling himself.
0076 In hand-speech talk, gesture-words picture or point to their referents. So, the words cannot lie about what they refer to.
In speech-alone talk, spoken words do not picture or point to their referents. Instead, we construct artifacts that validate our projection of meaning, presence and message. We speak, and the world comes into creation. Not just any creation. Our creation. Our imagination constructs artifacts that validate our spoken words.
0077 Oh, those damned artifacts.
When fatty portions are added to a fire, the fire jumps to life.
When cabbage is added to a fire, the fire smolders.
0078 One son does not talk to himself. Instead, he praises God.
The other mutters under his breath. He complains about God’s rejection of his artifacts.
0079 The children hear a fairy tale, telling them of dangers in their upcoming lives.
The mothers hear the tragedy of two sons, where one rules over his desires and the other does not.
0080 This is one of the poisonous fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of speech-alone talk. I can create my own world through my own symbolic actions that simultaneously do not honor God and open the door to the one whose desire is for my desire.
Sin crouches at Cain’s door. It desires to speak to him.
0081 Mark Smith points out other links between Genesis 3 and 4.
When God rebukes Adam, He curses the ground.
When God confronts Cain, He says, “…now you are cursed from the ground…”
God expels Adam and Eve from Eden.
Cain replies to God, saying, “…you have driven me out…”
Adam and Eve settle east of Eden.
Cain goes to live in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
0082 Genesis 4 does not elaborate on the crouching sin. I suppose Abel’s murder is plain enough.
Smith notes that Abel’s offering is pleasing to the Lord.
Smith adds that God does not punish Cain for murdering Abel.
Smith does not say what happens next. He is tracking two words, “sin” and “evil”.
0083 However, what happens next provides insight into the author-ity of Genesis 4. After the murder, God gives Cain a mark, deterring others from killing Cain. Cain founds a city. Within a few generations, another murder occurs. Lamech, who has two wives, murders a man with none.
0084 Here is a critique of the social conditions of the Ubaid. Increasing labor and social specializations lead to greater wealth and power. The haves learn to take from the have nots.
