I just reread the book “The Prehistory of the Mind, A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion and Science”(1996) by Steven Mithen, as I nowadays as a pensioner often read again my old books before maybe throwing them and making place for new books.
When I first read this book twenty years ago, I was not convinced, and the impression it gave today was the same, only I could more clearly state what I actually object in Mithen’s theory. Of course, the book is over twenty years old and one might think that this is the reason that it is not correct, but it was incorrect when it appeared and a scientific (even popular scientific) text should not get invalidated in twenty years. Small errors are acceptable, as science goes forward, but the whole theory cannot get invalidated. Yet, I consider Mithen’s ideas as totally invalid. But there is a reason for this blog: I will try to fix what I can and use this book as a nice starting point.
Mithen’s theory is the following. He takes an analogy of an archeologist studying ruins of a medieval cathedral: some walls and chambers were built in some early time. Later something was added or modified. An archeologist can, by studying the ruins, explain how the building was constructed in several stages. Following this analogy Mithen tries to explain how the human mind has evolved over times since the early primates, what was added at what time and what capabilities it gave.
The research idea may not be so bad, but as the result Mithen proposes the following scenario. First, some 65 million years ago, primates evolved from a small insect eater, which mostly relied on its instincts. Primates evolved a bigger brain and had more general intelligence. Mithen seems to think it is because these creatures lived in groups and had social intelligence. I suggest some other reasons: primates have four grapping limbs and they live in trees. This is a dangerous environment and controlling four grapping limbs requires more brain power.
The second stage Mithen mentions is Proconsul, the ancestor of apes (including gibbons). He thinks that Proconsul’s intelligence was still largely general intelligence with a module for social intelligence. He mainly skips this stage and moves to the common ancestor of (both) chimpanzees and humans and claims that chimp’s intelligence is general intelligence with a developed module for social intelligence and small modules for technical intelligence (as chimps can make and use very simple tools) and natural history intelligence (as chimps must understand something of the nature around them, like which plants ripen and when).
After this stage the ancestors of humans left the forest, started walking, eating more meat, and lived on savannah. According to Mithen they still had about the same mind as a chimp, but the brain increased and over the time they developed specialized capabilities for technical intelligence (as Homo habilis could make tools, Olduwan tools in this stage), for natural history intelligence (as they had to know of plants and animals), or physical intelligence (as humans understand intuitive physics, like that stones do not fly but birds do). Homo habilis evolved to Humo erectus and tools evolved to hand axes. The brain grew in the beginning before Homo erectus evolved and then stayed fairly constant in the time period 1.8 million to 0.5 million years ago. These hominids had some general intelligence and several specialized intelligencies.
After the time of Homo erectus, around 500,000 years ago, the brain again started growing. Mithen, quite naturally, assumes that this growth corresponded to the development of language. Thus, the Neanderthal human (and the Denisova human, not known in 1996) did have a developed language. Neanderthals made better tools than Homo erectus. Erectus never used a spear. Their weapon was the hand axe, while Neanderthal humans made spear points with Levallois techniques and tied it to a stick. But that was the technical limit for Neanderthals, despite of their brain capacity, which slightly exceeded ours. Mithen explains this puzzle by his theory: the brain of Neanderthal men was compartmentalized into specialized intelligencies. Though they had highly developed social intelligence, for which the language hade developed, they could not use this intelligence (or their linguistic abilities) in the area of tool making, it was another chapel in the cathedral and there was no door to this chapel from the social intelligence chapel.
In the final stage, that is us, Mithen imagines that there came door ways between the chapels of specialized intelligencies: humans started to use language for discussing of matters that did not only concern social relations but also technical, natural history and physical matters. Thus, language tied all this closed chapels together to a higher level general intelligence.
According to Mithen Homo sapiens sapiens developed this cognitive fluidity in a relatively long time (in our sense of time, not slowly in the evolution time scales): while already 100,000 years ago the first modern humans started making tools out of bone (other humanoids never used bone or antler, only stone or wood), it took 50,000-70,000 years before language managed to evolve to such a level that the cultural explosion around 40,000-30,000 years ago become possible. Humans had mover to Australia already 60,000-50,000 years ago, so before this level was reached, but Mithen assumes that in Australia (and elsewhere) humans developed in a parallel manner, as the once started evolution could not be stopped. Notice that this breaking doorways between the chambers of specialized intelligence is not only cultural in Mithen’s theory. It requires genetic changes.
So, why I think this theory is incorrect?
It is because this is totally absurd. Intelligence shifts from specialized intelligence (by instincts before primates evolved) to general intelligence (all the way to the common ancestor of humans and chimps) to specialized intelligence (from Homo habilis all the way to Homo neandethalensis), and finally to general intelligence (in us). Mithen considers how natural selection (the only force he accepts for evolution, him being a scientist) could have worked in this way and explains it as follows. A good programmer would have done it just that way: first you make the general outline in the main program (that is the general intelligence of a primate), then you add special subroutines (these are specialized intelligencies), and then you polish the general program (this would be the cognitive fluidity of building doorways between the chambers). If a programmer would try to put is all together at the same time, the program just would not work: he must build it in parts to debug all parts. So, natural selection worked as a good programmer because it had to work that way. Otherwise evolution had failed and we would not have modern humans.
To me this seems like the explanation that the Holocaust had to be physically (and in demographic figures) possible because it happened. But of course, maybe it did not happen that way. In the same way, maybe the evolution of the human mind did not happen the way Mithen suggests. Indeed, natural selection is a blind mechanims and it would try to change all parts in a program at the same time. It does not have the intelligence to first fix one part and then proceed to the next one, what is what an intelligent designer would do. Mithen managed to make a fairly good intelligent design argument, though in the beginning of his book he explicitly explains that his intention in writing the book is to show that creationists are wrong.
Nevertheless, I do not accept Mithen’s logic any more as a supporting argument for intelligent design. As far as I see the simplest solution is that Mitlen’s scenario is simply wrong. The evolution of the human intelligence did not fluctuate between general and specialized intelligencies. We have to look at the structure of the brain. Where can these generalized and specialized intelligencies reside? There are many structures in the brain, which can be ignored, such as the brain stem (responsible to basic life supporting functions) and the middle brain (where e.g. can be located aggression and some other feelings). There are actually only two structures that we need to consider: the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum. The cerebellum is not only used in muscle fine control (like in driving a bicycle), but in all mental tasks, including social communication. The problems autistic people have in social communication seem to be caused by abnormalities in the cerebellum. The thinking processes in the cerebellum are unconscious, while at least some of the thinking processes in the cerebral cortex are conscious. A very simple model for these two brain structures is that the cortex is the learning brain, used by young individuals to learn what they need to know, while when some task is repeated often enough it is learned by the cerebellum and becomes largely automatic. The task is still under conscious control on the high level: the cerebellum does not initiate any activity, it only improves it. You can decide whether to drive a bicycle or not and where to drive, but you do not control the muscle movements keeping the balance. In the same way, you can initiate a conversation and talk of what you decide, but you cannot control the small issues that other people will notice and based on them decide whether you are normal or a bit strange.
We can assume that Neanderthal people, who matured much faster than we and had a shorter childhood, learned tool making from adults, for which they used cortex. When the correct (and quite difficult) technique of making a Levallois point was learned, it after many trials become automated and the work was mostly controlled by the cerebellum. There was no incentive to invent another way to make weapons, or anything else, like decorations. Neanderthal people lived in very small groups in Eurasian tundra, where they probably met other people very seldom, shown by the fact that they were heavily interbred. There was no competition between groups of these humans and no news of newer techniques. So, nothing happened in their technology for a long time. With modern humans it must have been different. They had to rethink of tool making still as adults, and by conscious thinking they invented new tools. Maybe this was because there was competition by other groups of humans.
In a similar way, moving from the forest to the savannah implied that early hominids could find other usage for the parts of their brain controlling hind limbs, which were now used for walking, not for grapping. The new lifestyle and better quality food from meat required changes. These pressures caused the brain to increase up to Homo erectus, but once the tools had evolved to the hand hammer level, which was sufficient for Homo erectus to populate Eurasia, there was no further technical development. Children learned the techniques from their parents and after the childhood these techniques were just used to perfection. Even modern humans do not have any basic need for improving their technology when there is no need for it: Australian Aborigines forgot how to build boats, though they must have once had boats to get to the continent, and Tasmanians even forgot how to make fire. No special changes in the brain organization are needed to explain either why early humans did not develop their technology faster or why modern humans did so.
A final proof that Mithen’s theory is false is that Australian Aborigines did move to Australia before he thinks the brain had reached the present form, which in his theory demands genetic changes. Yet, Aborigines have quite similar minds as other people do (though they seem to have improved visual skills for finding routes). It is not possible to claim that their brains are formed of chapels without doorways any more than ours. (This is not to say that we all do not have specialized modules. We do, there is e.g. a module for face recognition. It is sometimes defective, the disorder is called prosopagnosia. But these special modules are not much different in different ethnic groups.) Mithen has to assume that Aborigines developed separately in their continent and reached the same result as elsewhere. He does realize that this is not very probable: separate development would not have the same speed and not lead to the same result. Therefore he adds a box denouncing the idea that different ethnic groups might differ in cognitive capabilities as racism. This is because if his idea is correct, then different ethnic groups should differ in cognitive capacities.
Surely Mithen is not a racist, but that is not the main point. In reality, different ethnic groups do differ to a small extent in mental capacities, as is shown e.g. by the small IQ difference between Europeans and East Asians. This is real and truth is not racism. Yet these differences are not nearly as large as they should if Mithen’s theories were correct: we should find people, who are incapable e.g. of inventing anything technical (or differing in some other way) if Mithen were correct. The only conclusion is that his theory is incorrect.
This was my general comment of Mithen’s book. Now, let us continue to religion. Mithen claims in the title to solve the problem of the origins of religion, but I do not think he does. His idea, following his theory, is that when the closed chambers of social intelligence and natural history intelligence were broken, humans started to imagine that animals are like humans (have emotions, intentions and so on), and when the doorway to physical intelligence was broken humans were able to imagine beings who violate natural laws, e.g., can fly. This, according to Mithen, happened only in Homo sapiens sapiens. Homo neanderthalensis, according to him, did not have religion, which (again according to Mithen) is shown by the lack of any evidence of religion in Neanderthal people.
So, what is wrong here?
Firstly, let us ask if Neanderthal people believed in the first religion of modern humans, that is, animism (ancestral spirits, evil spirits, nature spirits, no special gods, no special worship of gods). As Mithen correctly observes, there are no archeological evidence that they did, but can it be shown that anyway they did? I can show it easily: they must have.
The argument is like this. Dogs miss their owners when the owners go away. They also must miss their owner when the owner dies. Dogs used to be wolfs and their missing feeling did not develop for having feelings towards humans. Thus, wolfs (and therefore all mammals) miss a dead member of their group, if they had a loving relation with the member. (Loving, and any similar feelings, are not limited to humans. All mammals have similar basic feelings. We may only ask which species has complicated feelings, like shame, pride etc., but notice that not all humans have those advanced feelings.) Dogs dream. It is easily seen: they move their legs and their eyes move at times when they sleep. A Neanderthal man, being from a close-by species, must have had dreams and they must have been very similar to our dreams. If a Neanderthal man was missing a dead friend, he sometimes saw the friend in a dream.
Did he conclude that dreams are some important but unknown mechanisms how the brain stores memories, as a scientist might say, or did he conclude that there is the Dreamworld, like all human populations always concluded? They saw dead friends in dreams, but not only. Neanderthal people lived for a very long time in places where there were several narcotic plants (e.g. mandrake, belladonna, Syrian rue, hashish, fly mushroom, and so on). Modern humans ate these plants, almost certainly Neanderthal people also ate them. Then they saw very realistic hallucinations, e.g. from belladonna. They most probably took these hallucinations as something real, not knowing that some chemicals cause false signals being sent to the brain. The answer must be that Neanderthal people believed in ancestral spirits. As they had nightmares, they must have believed also in evil spirits. All animals and humans are afraid of strong storms. It cannot have been different for Neanderthal people: they were afraid. Thus, they very probably believed and feared natural spirits, like the spirit of thunder, lightning and volcanoes. It rather well follows that Neanderthal people had very similar animistic believes as humans, and other mammals would also have such believes if they had enough brain power to think about any believes.
I will not continue breaking Mithen’s arguments, but religion is not a result of the breaking of compartmentalized mind. The first religion was almost certainly the belief in spirits, ancestral, evil and natural, because most modern hunter-gatherers have this kind of a religion. I would very much like to see scientists, like Mithen, try to debunk this natural religion. They probably would start by stating that storms and volcano eruptions are not caused by spirits of nature because these are simply natural phenomena that science can explain and the explanation does not need any spirits. Did you notice the logical error? Yet, they are natural phenomena and the explanation of these phenomena does not require spirits, but we cannot say for sure if storms and such are caused by natural phenomena. They are natural phenomena, but what causes a storm or a volcano eruption does not necessarily need to be natural. These phenomena are chaotic, which means that the small change in initial conditions, which results to a huge storm or eruption, can be very small. We could for fun assume that there are spirits and these spirits can interfere with our material world only very little, just so little as to put some thoughts on somebody’s head, or so little that they can make the tiny change in the atmosphere, which grows to a major storm. Thus, these spirits could not lift a rock from the ground, but they could start a storm, which throws ten cars on their backs. The ancient people were not so stupid: what spirits might be able to do is exactly start chaotic events, or pseudorandom events, like to determine the outcome of throwing a dice. Such actions need hardly any power, all they need is superior knowledge when and what. So, the spirits of nature could not be debunked by science, what about the spirits in dreams and hallucinations? Of course, if we define that hallucinations and dreams are just imaginary, then we are through, but how would you prove it to somebody who wants a sound scientific proof? The problem is that we do not know the mechanism that causes dreams and hallucinations and cannot say much about them.
At this point scientific debunkers often refer to Occam’s razor claiming that there is no reason to include spirits as there is no evidence of it. I know only one valid application of Occam’s razor, which is that if you have to present a proof of a mathematical theorem to students and you know several correct proofs, select the simplest. All other applications I have heard of are faulty. So is also the claim that there is no evidence of spirits. We exactly are conscious and have feelings and as these concepts do not appear in physics formulae, they cannot be realized in this material world. If they could be made, they had already been made by engineers. Thus, there is more than this world, which is enough to offer the evidence.
Let us continue with the origins of religion. Several prehistoric Venus figurines have been found, most from the time about 20,000-26,000 years ago. These female figures have visible vulvas and they appear as fertility symbols. In figure 19 on Mithen’s book there are prehistoric carvings from France: nine figures, which look like vulvas, three rows on top of each other, three on each row. But could there have been a fertility cult during the hunter-gatherer stage? Modern hunter-gatherers have to limit the birth rate in many ways, including infanticide. They hardly need a fertility cult. Fertility cults and fertility goddesses were common in agricultural societies, as they did not need to limit the population and often saw population growth as a positive trend. A fertility cult in a hunter-gatherer society seems strange.
Of course, there are several possible reason why prehistoric hunter-gatherers might have had a fertility cult: maybe they were infertile, or maybe they were dying so often. One time when there would have been infertility was when humans interbred with Neanderthal people. Crossing two species seldom produces fertile offspring. In fact, by a common definition of a species the possible offspring should be infertile. However, sometimes it is possible to get fertile offspring, but their fertility is largely reduced. We know today that modern humans did interbreed with Neanderthal and Denisova people. These crosses must have had strongly reduced fertility. However, the time and place of Venus figurines does not especially well fit to this explanation. The earliest known Venus figurine dates from Germany 35,000 years ago. The interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthal people is believed to have happened 50,000-60,000 years ago and 40,000 years ago Neanderthal people disappeared from Germany. So, this is not the reason.
Infertility could be a result of inbreeding in the society. Later, during early agriculture in Europe there apparently was reduced Y-chromosome diversity, but this is much later. There is no special reason to assume that hunter-gatherers were infertile. Nor is there any particular reason to assume that they were dying so often that they had to have all children they could. It is in fact impossible: hunter-gatherer women cannot carry more than one child, so they cannot give birth too often as the group must keep on moving.
Because of these reasons I doubt that the Venus figurines and the vulva markings are connected with any fertility cult at all. There is a close connection between the moon cycle and the female menstruation cycle and I think these figurines and pictures may relate to moon cycles. For instance, the nine vulva pictures may be a calculation of nine months. There is missing three months. This can be a time spent on another place, like a summer camp, while in the winter camp the people counted months by full moons. They probably had a moon calendar and a bit later, by astrological observations, developed a sun calendar.
In the beginning of agriculture there are signs of both fertility cults and astrological cults. This is the second religion. It is can be detected as the first religion of the Bible. We can see this by first solving a simple question: how did Israel become the Chosen Nation? I will solve this.
The primary source that claims that Israel is the Chosen Nation is naturally the Bible. The First Book of Moses explains it: God gave Abraham the promise. This promise should have gone from Abraham to Isaac and from Isaac to Esau, but Jacob, the younger brother of Esau, tricked the promise to himself and thus Jacob was the patriarch of the Promised Nation. This Jacob fought an angel whole night and got the name Israel. Well, that explained it.
Unfortunately, as most of the Bible, the books of Moses were edited later and cannot be trusted. There are two prophetic books (Amos and Hosea), which seem to be older than 1. Moos. Hosea confirms that Jacob did betray his brother, but about the promise the book only refers to the fight between Jacob and the angel. Jacob won this fight and angel gave him the name Israel. Elsewhere Israel is said to be the Promised Nation. What is this fight with an angel, said to have taken the whole night?
1. Moos. tells about Jacob’s ladder. This part most probably follows the cult of Jacob and can be taken as old. The ladder can be identified as one form of the Word Pillar. The pillar connects the Earth and the Heavens. It is often fixed to the heavens with a nail, the Pole Star (with today is Polaris, but earlier the celestial North Pole was in another place). There are two pillars in a ladder, and in the time period 1500 BC to 500 AD Kochab could be used as the Pole Star, but as it never was very close to the celestial North Pole, another star of Ursa Minor, Pherkad, was needed to point the place of the actual pole. These two stars are like pillars of the heavenly temple, the square of Ursa Minor. Not unsurprisingly, Salomon built (according to the Bible) an earthly temple, which had two pillars.
Now we can explain Jacob’s nightly fight with an angel. Before 1700 BC the Pole Star was Thuban in the constellation of Draco. Ursa Major and Ursa Minor circulated Thuban every night. This is the fight: Ursa Minor is Jacob, Ursa Major is the angel. Around 1500 BC Jacob had won the angel: the North Pole was closer to Ursa Minor.
We get a further confirmation from Josephus Flavius. Though Kochab was the closest bright star up to about 500 AD, since about 60 AD there was a dimmer star of Ursa Minor that was still closer. This can be the reason why Josephus Flavius in the Jewish War tells that a sound was heard from the temple: we are leaving. The celestial North Pole was leaving the square of Ursa Minor, the celestial temple, just about the time when the First Jewish-Roman war started.
We also get a further confirmation from Amos 5:26: “You shall take up Sikkuth your king, and Kiyyun your star-god—your images that you made for yourselves,”. What can be Kiyyun, the star-god? We know from early Canaanite religion that the high god was El, the god of the time and sky, and he had a consort Asherah. For El Jacob lifted up a stone as an altar. For Asherah Israelites set asherah poles or asherah trees. An asherah pole is a world pillar and the upper point of this pillar is fixed to its place with a star. Thus, the star-god Kiyyun must be the Pole Star, Kochab, and if there are two asherah poles, they indicate Kochab and Pherkad. The king Sikkuth must therefore be El, but El was invisible. This must be so because in the night sky there was no star in the actual celestial North Pole. Consequently, on the Earth one could not make an image of El as El did not have an image in the sky.
The timing of Exodus is thus around 1500 BC, which fits very well to the expulsion of Hyksos around 1560 BC. There is no single event matching with the Biblical Exodus story, which suggests that it is a myth combining several historical events. One of these events was expulsion of Hyksos.
Another event was the arrival of people worshipping Yahwe. As Habbakuk 3:3 says: “God came from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran.”, these people came from the east, not from Egypt. Mount Sinai is described as a volcano and there are no vulcanos on the Sinai Peninsula but there are several on the Arabian Peninsula. Yahwe was a storm god. Timing of this event depends on if the Yahwe worshippers were Edomites or Israelited. If they were Israelites, the time should be around 1,200 BC as the Merneptah stele gives the first evidence of Israelites.
Between these migrations there were Thutmose III’s military campaigns to Levant around 1450 BC and events around the time of Akhenaten (1353-1336 BC). Though not mentioned in Egyptian history, priests of Amun may have had to escape when Akhnaten established monotheism of Aten. The priests of Amun held titles of prophet: the high priest was the first prophet of Amun, then there was the second prophet of Amun, the third and the fourth. Any of these could have been the prophet of whom Hosea 12:13 writes: “The Lord used a prophet to bring Israel up from Egypt, by a prophet he cared for him.” There is a clear similarity between Amun and God of prophets. Amun is invisible. Amun wants justice to the poor. Worshippers of Amun must confess their sins. Amun is not angry a whole day but shows mercy. The name Moses connects with Egyptian pharaoh’s of the 18th dynasty, who worshipped Amun, conquered Levant and most probably established there the law of the pharaoh, the law of Moses, as Mose was used as a synonyme of the pharaoh.
These all rather well match, thus we can conclude that El lived in the celestial North Pole and Jacob, Israel, become the Promised Nation around 1500 BC. Israel lost this position around 60 AD as at that time another star was closest to the North Pole. John of Patmos describes his vision in the night, which clearly is a vision of stars in the night sky. There is the dragon (Draco) and a pregrant woman (Ursa Minor), who will give birth to the Messiah. This vision suggests that the new era is the era when Polaris is the Pola Star. In the first century people did know how to calculate the speed of precession of equinoxes and John of Patmos would have known that Polaris is exactly at the celestial North Pole just around 2033 AD, 2000 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. As the Pole Star was changing, the Promised Nation was no longer Israel, it was Christians. Today we fortunately understand physics better and know that the celestial North Pole is simply the continuation of the rotation axis of the Earth to the sky and that there is no high god having his throne in the celestial North Pole.
We undestand it now, but the writers of the Bible did not understand it. Consequently we can go back to the history by tracking the Pole Star. We should find the creation, or at least the time when Adam and Eve were standing next to the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is another world for the World Pillar. There is such a time: around 16,000 BC Deneb was the Pole Star and the two sides of the Milky Way can be understood as Adam and Eve. There is the snake of the Eden, constallation Draco, and Hercules, whon Draco tries to bite on the heel. The Biblical creation story can be understood as describing the night sky.
The second religion after animism was a religion of the circumpolar stars. It may not have been so much of a religion than a calendar: the stars told what to do when. When animals migrate, when plants ripen, when humans should move to this or that camp. It may have been only later, during agriculture, or even after the zodiac was found around 2,500 BC, that gods become as gods later were. It is difficult to say, but there may have been more practical sense in religion than is today apparent.