Tag Archives: Navel idols

07/5/25

Looking at Graham Langdon’s Book (2024) “The Mystery of the Navel Idols”  (Part 1 of 4)

0001 The book before me is published by Archaic Lens Publishing (North Carolina).  The author posts podcasts on youtube, writes on twitter, and has a website, www.archaiclens.com.  The book’s subtitle is The Thread that Connects the Ancient World.

0002 The author documents navel idols that are readily identifiable to the human eye on the basis of several characteristics, as shown below.

0003 They appear at the dawn of history, in regions that will end up civilized, but before any advances in the direction of labor and social specializations.  Later, the idols will associate to the Chalcolithic (the Copper Age), corresponding to the era before the Bronze Age (when copper is mixed with other ingredients to create effective weapons).

The oldest navel figure is Urfu man, recovered from Gobekli Tepe in Turkey (Anatolia) and dating to around 10,000 B.C.  This is long before the end of the last interglacial.  The megastructure site associates to the pre-pottery Neolithic, which comes before the pottery Neolithic.  Subsequent Neolithic cultures throughout southwestern Asia will be labeled and identified on the basis of their pottery.

Also, Gobekli Tepe is not associated with a sedentary settlement, such as the contemporaneous Catal Huyuk.

0004 So, what am I saying?

Gobekli Tepe, Catal Huyuk and similar sites do not end up constellating into a tangle of unconstrained social and labor specializations, where social circles transmogrify into networks of economic and political-religious affiliations.

0005 In the section on Turkey, the author makes an interesting point.  The body habitus of Urfu man appears in statuary and figurines in early civilizations around the world.  The further from Gobekli Tepe, the later in time these navel idols appear.

Ironically, this point is precisely the rule of thumb held by archaeologists during the early twentieth century.  The further from southern Mesopotamia, the later an early civilization forms.

0006 Coincidence?

Or is one observation swept up in the other?

0007 In the section on Turkey, the author includes a watercolor image of an awkward looking small artifact, with enormous alien-like eyes, v-neck adornment and hand on either side of navel.  This clay figurine dates to around 5,000 B.C., during the copper age, according to the British Museum.

This artifact dates to 5,000 years after Gobekli Tepe.

The prehistoric cultures associated with the later artifact occur on the cusp of civilization, where the term, “civilization” is characterized by unconstrained labor and social specialization.

0008 A look at the sections on the Kosovo, Serbia and the Balkans support this association.  The navel idols of the Vinca culture (5850-5750 B.C.) appear similar to the latter Turkey artifact.  The Vinca culture practices farming, animal husbandry and copper smelting.  A similar pattern occurs in Bulgaria.  These cultures are on their way to increasing social complexity.

0009 The pattern will hold for all navel idols found to the west of the Aegean Sea.  The navel idols and the Chalcolithic and other features, such as astronomy-related megalithic arrangements, spread west from southwestern Asia.

Since Gobekli Tepe is pre-pottery and pre-Chalcolithic, it cannot be the direct inspiration for the navel idol figures located the West, five millennia later.  So, the old archaeologists’ saying of the early 20th century applies.  Something from southern Mesopotamia sends out emissaries bearing the news of not talking with one’s hands, as well as copper manufacture and astronomy.

Indeed, it may be that the cultural efflorescence that builds Gobekli Tepe and other Anatolian sites spreads into northern, then southern Mesopotamia as the glacial climate gives way to the Wet Neolithic of southwestern Asia and northern Africa. 

0010 The sea-level rise serves as a good way to demark the navel idols before pottery and copper and the navel idols after.

07/5/25

Looking at Graham Langdon’s Book (2024) “The Mystery of the Navel Idols”  (Part 2 of 4)

0011 So, what am I getting at?

0012 The navel idols before the rise in sea-levels are made in order to stimulate an embodied interventional sign-relation, not unlike the Lion Man statue found in southern Germany, dating to 35,000 years ago.

0013 Say what?

They are designed to induce – what Julian Jaynes calls – “auditory hallucinations” in a hand-speech talking Paleolithic human.

The topic is discussed in Razie Mah’s e-book, Synaesthesia and the Bicameral Mind in Human Evolution (available at smashwords and other e-book venues). 

0014 Okay, what about the navel idols after the rise in sea levels?

6800 B.C. corresponds the most rapid increase in sea-levels at the end of the last interglacial.  Among other things, the Persian Gulf fills with seawater.  The rise forces a Mesolithic river and coast hugging culture into proximity with a dryland Neolithic culture (perhaps related to the traditions of Gobekli Tepe).

At the start, both cultures practice their own traditional hand-speech talk, just like all the human Epipaleolithic and Neolithic cultures at the time.  When forced into the same territory, they first develop a pidgin, then a creole.  The creole does not have the hand-component of hand-speech talk.  The emerging union, the pre-Ubaid, practices speech-alone talk.  At 6800 B.C., it is the only culture on Earth to do so.

0015 Creole?

The Sumerian language is unrelated to any family of languages.

0016 Razie Mah tells the story in a course called “The Crystallization of the Fall”, which includes the short work, The First Singularity and its Fairy-Tale Trace.  The spread of speech-alone talk is alluded to in chapter five of An Archaeology of the Fall.

Here is a figure for the hypothesis of the first singularity.

0017 At the time of Gobekli Tepe, all cultures practice hand-speech talk.

Today, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.

0018 Surely, this comes as a revelation to the author, who has laboriously and studiously sought out data for which he has little hope of accounting for.  The book itself is a plea for precisely such an accounting.  I only pray that this examination offers a guess that may be closer to truth than… well… make-believe.

07/5/25

Looking at Graham Langdon’s Book (2024) “The Mystery of the Navel Idols”  (Part 3 of 4)

0019 Once again, here are the references.

0020 By 6500 B.C., the Ubaid culture has undergone one Plutonic cycle.

Plutonic cycle?

Consider the United States of America, 248 years ago (one orbit of Pluto), the United States is founded (around 1777 A.D.).

The dwarf planet of Pluto (and Charon, its moon) is discovered in the year of 1930, using a photographic technique called a blink comparator.  Once named, astrologers go back into history looking for 248-year periodicities.  They find transits corresponding, not to birth and death of social movements, but to the livingness and the corruption of civilizations.  The American Plutonic turning (1777 to 2025) may turn out to be exemplar.

In the late 1700s, the elites of America give life to an enterprise called the “American Republic”. Now, one Plutonic cycle later, the elites of America aim to bury “the American dream”.  These are not the same elites, now, as then.  The same can be said for the first complete turning of the Ubaid culture.

0021 There are no elites at the founding of the Ubaid.  By the end of the first Plutonic cycle, the elites realize that their culture has something that all the surrounding cultures do not.  What is that?  Wealth and power are the faces of labor and social specialization.

0022 The first hand-speech talking cultures exposed to the speech-alone talking Ubaids are the Hassuna, Halaf and Samarra of (less-southern or more-northern) Mesopotamia.  Perhaps, these cultures already produce artifacts of the Tepe-Gobekli type.  The figures are used for speaking to the ancestors or gods.  These figurines continue to be constructed as these Neolithic cultures expand, like rhizomes, throughout Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent.  Such are the first benefits of labor and social specialization for these folk.  Speech-alone talk facilitates invention andinnovation.

0023 Graham’s visit to the Baghdad Museum in Iraq in 2022 supports this notion.  The icons nominally date to 6000-5000 B.C. and are found in Nineveh, Iraq (corresponding to more-northern Mesopotamia).  They look like they support communing with the ancestors.

0024 The oddity, as far as figurines go, is found in the British Museum.  It is associated with the Ubaid and dates to 5200-4200 B.C., six to ten plutonic orbits after 6800 B.C., the midpoint in the sea-level rise and the nominal start of the Ubaid as a speech-alone talking culture.  This figurine has the essential features of the navel idol, but almost every feature is distorted.

0025 The difference is remarkable.

While the other navel idols are configured to support auditory hallucinations for a hand-speech talking culture (and by extension, those cultures that adopt speech-alone talk and retain their bicameral attitudes), this navel idol says, “I am an emissary of a culture practicing speech-alone talk for so long that our social institutions and organizations have undergone many transits between the overworld of creation and renewal and the underworld of depravity and corruption.  Now, we are definitely wealthier and more powerful and weirder than you, a hand-speech talking culture now exposed to the novelty of speech-alone talk.”

0026 The hands on the abdomen originally indicate that the figure will speak through auditory hallucinations (or embodied interventional sign-relations).  After all, the idol cannot move its hands.  But, it would engage in hand-speech talk, if it could.

Now, the hand-positions indicate that the figure does not engage in hand talk at all.  It represents a different living world, the world of speech-alone talk.  So, hear the emissary’s voice, interpellating you (a member of a hand-speech talking culture) to adopt these new-fangled ways.

0027 The hand-speech culture that follows the emissary’s advice will soon find itself on the path to unconstrained social complexity, just like the Ubaid before them.

0028 So, what does this mean?

After the Ubaid sends emissaries preaching the good news of our current Lebenswelt, the navel idols confound two messages.  The original message is, “Hear my voice.”  The confounding message says, “All I have is my voice.  I represent a new way, a new culture, and a new Lebenswelt.  I am an emissary of a world of labor and social specializations, of wealth and power beyond your imagination.  I am here to spread speech-alone talk.”

0029 Plus, the Ubaid emissary can teach the people about obtaining and handling copper, keeping track of the stars and planets, and so much more.

07/5/25

Looking at Graham Langdon’s Book (2024) “The Mystery of the Navel Idols”  (Part 4 of 4)

0030 To the immediate west of Mesopotamia, the navel idols of Israel, dating to 4500-3500 B.C., look like they correspond to the first message.  The Canaanite coffins of 1300-1200 B.C. look as if they are inspired by the latter message.  The coffins do not contain emissaries from Mesopotamia, they contain Canaanite elites who benefitted from trends towards unconstrained social complexity.

0031 In Sardinia, the messages separate into more than one style of navel icon..

0032 Here, this examiner leaves the reader to use the speculative structure of two messages to appreciate the many navel icons that the author presents in this well-appointed art-book.

To me, the overall picture is clear for the West and for the East (as far as Eurasia is concerned).

The navel icons, as well as their speech-alone talking emissaries, are next involved in establishing a foothold in South America, but the messages are confounded with a trend already occurring in China.  The same pose and adornment of the original navel icons are adopted as indications of elite status.

0033 Here is a picture.

0033 The conclusions… er… speculations of this examiner now set forth, I wonder whether the author will agree.

Of course, in this book, the author never entertains the idea that the navel icons are associated with either the bicameral mind (message 1) or the first singularity (message 2).

However, the author hints that intentional diffusion may be a reasonable explanation.  The navel icons spread at the cusps of early civilizations throughout Eurasia and the Americas.  Plus, there are other novel trends associated with the spread of the navel icons.  These include copper metallurgy and… well… something to do with tracking celestial bodies.  Oh, I should not forget v-shaped neck adornments.

0034 My thanks to the author for gathering evidence that is obvious to the eye, yet very difficult to account for.  Perhaps, this examination, based on two works by Razie Mah, may assist.