Tag Archives: speech alone talk

01/1/26

Looking at Melinda A. Zeder’s Article (2025) “Unpacking the Neolithic” (Part 1 of 4)

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.

01/1/26

Looking at Melinda A. Zeder’s Article (2025) “Unpacking the Neolithic” (Part 4 of 4)

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 bauplan3 does 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.

Happy New Year.

10/31/25

A First Look at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” (Part 1 of 21)

0236 Why do I examine this work?

I reviewed Steven Mithen’s book, The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together The Six-Million-Year Story Of How Words Evolved (2024, Basic Books, New York).  See Razie Mah’s blog for September 2025.  The examination concludes on point 0235.

During the examination, I recall a book that Julian Jaynes publishes in 1976. 

I wonder, “Why does Mithen’s book remind me of Jaynes?”

I now have a copy of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (First Mariner edition (2000), New York, New York) before me.

This explains why I start the current examination on point 0236.

0237 Julian Jaynes (1920-1997 AD) earned master and doctoral degrees in psychology at Yale University.  He lectured in psychology at Princeton from 1966 to 1990.  In 1990, he writes a postscript that appears in the Mariner edition.

This afterward lists the four hypotheses in Books I and II.  Plus, the postscript expands on Part III, by discussing the psychological transition from the bicameral mind to subjective consciousness at the end of the Bronze Age in the Near East.

0238 Here is the list.

0239 So, why does Mithen’s book remind me of Jaynes’s work?

My review of The Language Puzzle led me to conclude that Mithen’s explicit rejection of a gestural origin of languageprevents him from realizing that his information implicitly supports the very position that um… he rejects.

Yes, if I ignore his declaration against a gestural origin to language, then I can start to recognize that speech is added to fully linguistic hand-talk after the domestication of fire, when the community becomes a social circle under pressure from natural selection.

0240 That reminds me of a curious pun that seems to have import in the year 2025AD.

The Russian word for “no” is “nyet”.

To the American ear, “nyet” sounds like “not yet”.  And, that means, “Yes, but not now.”

So, when Mithen says, “nyet”, to the gestural origins of language, his English speaking bicameral mind hears, “not yet”.  So, Mithen unwittingly drops clues to his nyet hypothesis within his own subjectively conscious argument.  These hints offer a weird twist to Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) The Language Puzzle.  It is as if Mithen’s own bicameral mind offers – what I will call – “a nyet hypothesis”.

0241 Now, consider the first two hypothesis (A and B) in Jaynes’s Books I and II.

First (A), subjective consciousness relies on spoken language.  Mithen consciously proposes that spoken words are built over millions of years through synaesthesia, cross modal “leakage” of sensations, from visual things and events to auditory vocalizations.

0242 Of course, this proposal comes across as sketchy.  Why would early hominins, such as the australopithecines and the early species in the Homo genus (3.5 to 0.6Myr – millions of years ago) do this?  And how?  The voice is most likely not under voluntary control.  Involuntary calls rule the day.

But, the vocal tract changes over time.  Most likely, the voice is on the verge of coming under voluntary control by the time that Homo heidelbergensis appears in the fossil record (perhaps, over 600kyr – thousands of years ago).

On top of that, Homo heidelbergensis shows up during the period when hominins domesticate fire (800-400kyr).  So, Mithen consciously and cautiously suggests that the synaesthesia business really takes off around that time.

0243 The nyet hypothesis?

Well, of course, proto-linguistic hand talk has plenty of time to evolve without cross-modal leakage during the early period (3.5 to 0.6Myr) and even has a couple of hundred-thousand years to become fully linguistic after hominins start to play with fire (0.8 to 0.6My).

So, synaesthesia would not make a jump from things themselves to vocal utterances, but from manual-brachial word-gestures to vocal utterances.

Suddenly, synaesthesia no longer seems implausible.

0244 Second (B), compare Mithen’s nyet hypothesis with Jaynes’s proposal of the bicameral mind.

To me, the idea that manual-brachial word-gestures provide stimuli allowing synaesthetic crossover from visual to auditory sensations seems like “auditory hallucinations”.

0245 My goal in this first examination is to develop this impression.

10/3/25

The Evolution of Talk: A Note on How to Proceed (Part 1 of 1)

EOT 0001 The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language.

Language evolves in the milieu of hand-talk.

So, what is the story?

0002 A course on the topic of human evolution is already on the market.

See Razie Mah’s, A Course on the Human Niche, consisting of the masterwork, plus four commentaries.

The Human Niche

Comments on Clive Gamble, John Gowlett and Robin Dunbar’s Book (2014) Thinking Big

Comments on Derek Bickerton’s Book (2014) More Than Nature Needs

Comments on Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky’s Book (2016) Why Only Us?

Comments on Steven Mithen’s Book (1996) The Prehistory of Mind.

0003 The works are available for purchase at various e-book venues.  In order to conduct the course, purchase the e-book to read on a tablet (or as a PDF to print).  The class is not didactic.  It is Socratic.  The style is read and discuss.  The text is broken into points.  Each point can be discussed.  So, a leisurely class may open the text, read out loud and ask what the point suggests.

0004 The masterwork came out in 2018 and is still highly relevant to inquiry into the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

How so?

The human niche is the potential of triadic relations.

No other course on human evolution poses this ground-breaking hypothesis.

0005 Nonetheless, six years later, Razie Mah adds to the first course with a second, consisting in two sequences of blogs.  This blog-inclusive (as well as e-book exclusive) course serves as a supplement to the master course, especially in regards to the evolution of talk.

0006 The first sequence is collated and rounded out in a compilation, titled, Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), making the blogs and the compilation ideal for a guided- and home-schooling course.

Michael Tomasello worked at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology for twenty years.  He wrote a series of books on the evolution of human cognition, communication, thinking, morality and so on.  In short, his books cover the evolution of the stuff of talk.

0007 Here is a list of the five commentaries in this first sequence.

One: Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (1999) “The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition”

(January 18-31, 2024, 12 blogs, 0-82 points)

Two: Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2008) “Origins of Human Communication”

(January 17-4, 2024, 12 blogs, 83-186 points)

Three: Looking at Michael Thomasello’s Book (2014) “A Natural History of Human Thinking”

(February 29-5, 2024, 22 blogs, 187-388 points, completes Part 1 of Comments, see below)

Four: Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality”

(March 26-1, 2024, 22 blogs, 389-600 points)

Five: Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Book (2019) “Becoming Human”

(points 601-793 are in Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) Part 2, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues)

0008 Yes, to complete the course, one needs to purchase Part 2.

How sneaky is that?

So, that is the meaning of “blog-inclusive and e-book exclusive”.

0009 The second sequence is collated in the compilation, titled, Synaesthesia and The Bicameral Mind in Human Evolution.   This compilation packages two commentaries on human evolution and sets the scene for a study of the first singularity.

This list continues the previous numbering.

Six: Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle”

(September 29-4, 2025, 23 blogs, 0-235 points)

Seven: A First Look at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”.

(October 31-8, 2025, 21 blogs, 235-525 points)

0010 Overall, this hybrid online-onsale course on the evolution of talk, by Razie Mah, are available for sampling (on the blog) and may be purchased at any e-book venue.

Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), Parts 1 and 2 contains 753 points.

Synaesthesia and the Bicameral Mind in Human Evolution contains 525 points.

0011 Total: 1278 points, 21 hours at 1 minute per point.

Perhaps, this online course lasts around 4 to 5 weeks.

Enjoy this sample and consider purchasing other Razie Mah’s online courses, especially the one on the human niche.

09/30/25

Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (Part 1 of 23)

0001 The full title of the book before me is The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together The Six-Million-Year Story Of How Words Evolved (2024, Basic Books, New York).  Dr. Mithen is a Professor of Early Prehistory at the University of Reading.  He has published before.  More on that later.

The book works on the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle.  Fourteen chapters present the pieces.  The introduction and conclusion stage and arrange them.

0002 This current metaphor is very different than a glorious historical metaphor used in a book published almost three decades earlier.  The Prehistory of The Mind (1996) offers the historical development of the architecture of cathedrals in Europe as a lens for considering cognitive evolution.  The metaphor works well because the nave associates to general intelligence and side chapels associate to specialized mental modules.

0003 From the genetic divergence from chimpanzees to the start of bipedalism, the simple nave of general intelligenceadapts to cognitive challenges.

From the appearance of bipedalism to the domestication of fire, specialized modules are added to general intelligence, but the two do not integrate.  Indeed, both specialized modules and general intelligence are supported by their own, thick, walls.  The metaphor is the Romanesque cathedral.

From the domestication of fire until the first singularity (think, “the potentiation of civilization”), general intelligence integrates with specialized modules, presumably due to talk becoming fully linguistic.  Language becomes the walls, supported by flying buttresses of automatic decoding.   The metaphor is the Gothic cathedral.

0004 Here is a picture.

0005 The metaphor is so wonderful that Razie Mah publishes the e-book, Comments on Steven Mithen’s Book (1996) The Prehistory of The Mind as one of the readers that accompanies the masterwork, The Human Niche, in the series A Course On The Human Niche (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

0006 Mithen’s approach is also echoed in the work of another evolutionary anthropologist, Michael Tomasello, working at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, as discussed in Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) (by Razie Mah, also see blogs for January through March, 2024).

0007 Mithen’s approach is also reflected in another review that belongs to the series, A Course On The Human Niche.  The title is Comments on Clive Gamble, John Gowlett and Robin Dunbar’s Book (2014) Thinking Big.  In this review, social circles turn out to be very important in hominin evolution.  Mammalian brain size roughly correlates to group size.  So, the larger the hominin brain grows, the larger the group.

Not surprisingly, Mithen’s metaphor indicates the social circle under the most intense selection pressure, irrespective of group size.

0008 What does this imply?

Obviously, group size is not the crucial factor in hominin evolution.

Whatever is increasing hominin brain size is.

0006 To me, it is not surprising that Mithen has not encountered Razie Mah’s review of his 1996 work, even though it is one of the few more-than-surface reflections on The Prehistory of The Mind available.

Perhaps, the same will go for this blog, which will take Mithen’s metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle quite literally. 

09/4/25

Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (Part 23 of 23)

0229 So, what is The Language Puzzle about, in an implicit sort of way?

It is about how speech gets added to hand talk after the domestication of fire.

The irony of the work is found in Mithen’s explicit denial of the gestural origins of language, while…

… at the same time, the author provides a solution to a question that he cannot even pose.

0230 Examinations don’t get better than this.

This examination adds value to Mithen’s work in a surprising fashion.

0231 This examination suggests that a tremendous amount of theoretical reformulation needs to be done.  In particular, the following juxtaposition of events is suggestive.

0232 I ask, “Does Homo sapien’s encounter, love affair, then divorce from the Neanderthals create a condition where speech becomes more and more independent as a mode of talking?  Does speech become capable of operating linguistically, independent of hand talk, yet remain integrated into the natural-sign references of hand-talk?”

0233 Take a look at the artifact of the lion-man, pictured in figure 3 on page 28 of Mithen’s text.

Maybe, we can ask him.

Do you think that he has something to say to us?

Surely, he cannot perform hand-talk.

So, the lion-man must speak for itself.

0233 Yes, it’s like synaesthesia gone wild.

0234 But, “wild” is not even close to this last implication, which tells me that our current Lebenswelt is not the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

What about the item in red?

See Razie Mah’s e-books, The First Singularity and It’s Fairy Tale Trace (for a technical proposal) and An Archaeology of the Fall (for a dramatic rendering), available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0235 With that said, I thank Steven Mithen for publishing a book that can be fruitfully read both explicitly and implicitly.

Also, the story does not end here, because this examination plays a prominent role in the next commentary, Looking at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origin of Consciousness in The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”.

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 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.

12/31/24

Looking at Bill Arnold’s Article (2020) “Genesis and the Challenges of the 21st Century” (Part 1 of 5)

0001 This article records a presentation at a symposium on Adam, the Fall, and the goodness of God.  The text is published in the journal, Pro Ecclesia (2020), volume 29(4), pages 387-406.  I request that the journal to unlock this issue.  After all, this lecture is not the only gem, covering a topic that is seldom broached.

0002 The author steps to the podium and posits two axioms.  One addresses the evolutionary sciences, in a minimalistic sort of way.  The other addresses biblical hermeneutics in the modern age.  Ironically, another science hides in the shadow of the second axiom.  That science is archaeology.

0003 Here is a picture of the two axioms.

0004 The science axiom poses a double difficulty.

Currently, the biological sciences present all evolution as continuous developments in time, although there are moments of radical… um… “re-organization”, hence the theory of punctuated equilibrium.  When the evolutionary sciences cast their models of human evolution into the mirror of theology, the theologian sees a picture that does not quite sync with the wild change of… um… “genre” that occurs the moment after God wraps up the Creation Story, by telling humans that they should give food to the animals (Genesis 1:30).

Speaking of that, here is an application of the two axioms in action.

0005 Mirror of theology?

See Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek’s Arc of Inquiry (2019-2014), available at smashwords and other e-book venues, as well as Razie Mah’s blog for the months of April, May and June, 2024.

On the one hand, the mirror of theology embraces the noumenon.

On the other hand, the mirror of theology reflects models proposed by science.  Science is not interested in the noumenon, the thing itself.  Scientists are only interested in a noumenon’s phenomena.  Phenomena are the observable and measurable facets of a noumenon.  Scientists build models based on observations and measurements of phenomena.  If the model “works”, then scientismists want to say that the model is more real than the thing itself.  At this point, natural philosophers and theologians object and say, “No, the scientific model is not more real than the thing itself.”

0006 After an awkward pause, triumphalist scientists reply, “Well, then, how are you going to know anything about the noumenon without our models?”

“Well,” the natural philosophers say, “What about matter and form?  I can know these about the noumenon through experience of it.”

“So how are you going to do that when the noumenon is evolutionary history?  How can you grasp that though determining its matter and form?”

To which the theologian sighs and says, “Listen, whatever the noumenon is, it cannot be reduced scientific models of its phenomena.  So, I will set up a mirror that will reflect your scientific model, so you can be assured that your models are not ignored when I contemplate the metaphysical structures intrinsic to the thing itself, while keeping my mind open to revelation (including the the Bible). I will call it ‘the mirror of theology’.”

0007 To which the scientist counters, “And, we will correspondingly set up a mirror in our domain, a mirror of science.  We will look at the theological statements concerning the character of the noumenon, which really should just be replaced by our mathematical and mechanical models.  Then, we will laugh at and ridicule them.”

0008 Now, I once again present the odd coincidence pictured before as an application of the two axioms.

Do I have that correctly?

Does the scientist project his model into the mirror of theology?

Does the theologian project his metaphysical analysis into the mirror of science?

How confusing is that?

0008 It seems to me, a mere semiotician, that these two images actually reflect a single real being.  The theologian looks into the mirror of theology and sees what evolutionary scientists project, then looks at revelation and locates an appropriate correspondence.  Then, when the theologian’s correspondence is viewed by the scientist in their mirror of science, it says, “That is superstitious nonsense!”

“It”?

I thought male and female he created them.

“It” must be a first approximation.

0009 Of course, to the semiotician, the whole situation is sort of funny, because it implies that there is a body of wisdom that is independent of science, but not subject to science, because it concerns the noumenon, the thing itself.

12/26/24

Looking at Bill Arnold’s Article (2020) “Genesis and the Challenges of the 21st Century” (Part 5 of 5)

0034 Yes, Razie Mah covers what postmodern scientists should project into the mirror of theology.

Our current Lebenswelt (German for “living world”) is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

The discontinuity is called “the first singularity”.

0035 The discontinuity entails a change in the way humans talk.

The hypothesis is technically described in The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.

The scientific discovery is dramatically portrayed in An Archaeology of the Fall.

Both texts are available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0036 The hypothesis, along with the hypotheses proposed in The Human Niche and How To Define the Word “Religion”,pose significant challenges to the way that human evolution is currently conceptualized.  See Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), as well as Razie Mah’s blog for January through March 2024.

0037 Arnold drills down into the ideological substance of etiology.  With the hypothesis of the first singularity, the theologian’s focus on etiology bifurcates precisely along the fault-line between two genres.

Shall theology project this nested form into the mirror in the domain in science?

0038 The first step in Albright’s development scenario corresponds to the stories of Adam and Eve through the Table of Nations (following the stories of Noah’s flood).  Here, Albright’s intuition hits the mark.  This step corresponds to a phase of human reason, that may be correctly labeled, “proto-logical”.

Not surprisingly, the “proto-logical” label also applies to all the literature of the ancient Near East that is listed by Arnold.

Indeed, the label, “proto-empirical”, also applies.

Imagine passage from a world that thinks in hand-speech talk to a world that thinks in speech-alone talk.  The former allows a diversity of implicit abstractions.  The latter does not, because explicit abstraction gums up the works of implicit abstraction.  In the proto-empirical phase, explicit abstraction starts to establish a life of its own.

0039 Arnold adds that the next etiological phase corresponds to the stories of Abraham.  The founding of the people of Israel touches base with Albright’s “empirical” phase.  The Biblical text changes in clarity and focus when passing from the mythohistories of Noah to the tales of Abraham.  Terah does not move from his long-established home city lightly.  He moves for empirical reasons.  Yes, it is history, but it is rendered as myth.

0040 So, the Primeval History, along with other written origin stories of the ancient Near East, may be gathered under the catchment of “mytho-history”.  This term has the same semiotic structure as “proto-logical” and “proto-empirical”.  Yes, it is logical, but it is before formal logic.  Yes, it is empirical, but it is before the empirical takes on a life of its own.

0041 Arnold notes that Albright sees how the term, “adamah”, changes from “humanity” to “a personal name”, in the course Genesis 2.4 through 4.

He sees the change as significant and unsettling.

But, he does not have a vision where the stories of Adam and Eve are located in the tourbillion of increasing unconstrained social complexity manifesting in the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.

0042 Barth smiles at this unsettlement.  For this theologian, as soon as Adam is with us, so is Christ.

In the construction of the temple of the heavens and the earth, God creates humans in His image in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

In the manufacture of Adam’s body and the inspiration of Adam’s breath, God creates humans in our current Lebenswelt.

0043 Thus, the discontinuity of the first singularity that appears in the mirror of theology, located in the domain of theology, is reflected back in the mirror of science, located in the domain of science, as the discontinuity between Genesis 2:3 and Genesis 2:4.

I wonder.

Can I imagine that there is only one mirror?

0044 A twenty-first century reading of Genesis challenges evolutionary scientists.

Genesis joins all the written origin stories of the ancient Near East, in proclaiming what evolutionary scientists ignore,humans are created by the gods in recent prehistory.  Indeed, a causal observation of the archaeological data demands the proposal of a hypothesis like the first singularity, if only the separate two million years of evolution within constrained social complexity from the 7800 years of theodramatic madness within unconstrained social complexity.

But, there is more, see Razie Mah’s blog on October 1, 2022, for a research project for all of Eurasia.

0045 The stories of Adam and Eve precisely capture the theodramatic character and the absolutely crazy turns of events that typify our current Lebenswelt.  One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.  Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.

Meanwhile, the Creation Story intimates a deep prehistory, confounding the construction of the temple of the heavens and the earth with a counter-intuitive sequence of events that weirdly coincides with a phenomenological vision of the Earth’s evolutionary “progression”.  

0046 A twenty-first century reading of Genesis challenges theologians interested in the noumenon of humans, in our current Lebenswelt.

If the hypothesis of the first singularity becomes more and more plausible, so does a second doctrine of original sin,where the deficits of Augustine’s first attempt are amended, yielding a doctrine that applies to the post-truth condition. See Razie Mah’s blog for January 2, 2024 for a call to action.  Also see Razie Mah’s blog for July through October 2024.  These blogs will be assembled (for user convenience) as a three-part commentary, Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).