Lecture 17 – Anthropology 152 – 11/21/22-

Lecture 17 – Anthropology 152 – 11/21/22-Charles Brown My hypothesis is that several parables at the beginning of the Jewish-Christian Bible and Muslim Koran in the Book of Genesis are ancient discoveries of several truths concerning the origin of human beings ; truths which have been discovered by anthropological science in both ethnology (cultural anthropology among living Stone Age Peoples) and paleo-anthropology (study of human evolution from ancient hominin fossils and artifacts from the Stone Age and the pre-Stone Age periods) Essentially , the hypothesis concerns the story that the Garden of Eden has two trees: The Tree of Life and The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. “ Knowledge of Good and Evil” is reasonably interpreted as a system of Morals, Ethics, “Do’s and Don’ts”, Custom of Behavior , Rules of Peoples” Conduct or CULTURE. I infer from this that the human origin described _is_ the origin of Culture , in the same way that anthropology has found that Genus Homo’s origin is specifically in the origin of Culture ( and Language). So, anthropological evolutionists and Biblical Creationists might be seen to agree in a way. The Tree of Life is the very same term that Charles Darwin used as a metaphor or parable for the portrayal of his theory that all life is related to all other life through common ancestor species out of which they evolved by way of Natural Selection . A Tree’s typical branching form is a way to portray the logic of Darwinian evolutionary phylogeny. _Furthermore_, I hypothesize, that the ancient authors of the Tree of Life parable , had discovered Darwin’s principles of evolutionary phylogeny ! They used the parable to express the same scientific truth that Darwin did ! Not only that: Tree logic is exactly category-classification logic of increasingly inclusive categories . This is a fundamental property of LANGUAGE. So , this part of the story or parables of human origin expresses that same idea as modern anthropological science’s discovery that Genus Homo ( the Stone Age) begins with LANGUAGE. Elsewhere in the Bible is expressed that idea that “In the Beginning was the Word,” which I would interpret as that same idea as human origin is in language. Thus , these parables can be interpreted to express the same ideas that I taught in earlier class sessions, that the human species are distinguished from all other animals and life by having Culture and Language. A larger hypothesis I have is that the_ Alphabetically Written_ Bible is a recording of what at the time were Memorized and Orally presented Stories-Myths from the Stone Age of 100’s of thousands of years ( we have studied the Stone Age extensively in this class). Alphabetic Writing originates with so-called Civilization , approximately 6, 000 year ago simultaneously with origin of Male Supremacism, Private Property -Slavery and the State-Hierarchy-Military capturers and controllers of slaves. And, hypothetically, this newly founded priesthood of alphabetic writers make some changes to the ancient stories. They found what I term Religion which is different than Stone Age Ancestor Veneration in order to have a culture -ideology that controls that slaves. Religion’s signal characteristic is GODS, defined as _immortal INDIVIDUALS_. Stone Age Ancestor Veneration recognized that Ancestor Generations were in fact DEAD, MORTAL. But , the Dead Generations attained a certain type of immortality by leaving the legacy of Culture and Language to future generations. This is Culture and Language as _Natural_ Soul or Spirit , Material Soul, _not_ super-natural or mystical soul. Language is a material thing or process in the form of spoken words and vibrations of air molecules or ink on paper. This material is what is” immortal” , able to be passed down through the generations because of DISPLACEMENT capacity of symbolic signs ; immortal in the sense that it survives that deaths of many people over the many generations. Getting back to God in Genesis, I am hypothesizing that the originators of Religion transform/distort the Ancestors of Many Generations , _many _ Individual People who pass on Wisdom in Stories and Myths into one imaginary Individual , GOD. And the priests are the only one’s of knowledge of God’s Word. The Ancestors in Dead Generations wanted their children and grandchildren to “eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” , learn their culture-moral system. The Religious Priests turned this into a disobedience of God as a basis for claiming that all “men” are born in sin ( and Eve, a woman, committed the first sin), and so must earn their living by the sweat of their brow. IN OTHER WORDS, WORK , LABOR, TOIL IN THEIR MASTERS’ FIELDS, in the newly originated large scale agriculture and animal husbandry of the newly arising so-called civilization. As opposed to the less toilsome foraging , hunting and gathering of wild food that was the way of making a living in the Stone Age ( in the Garden of Eden). “God” as Dead Ancestors, as a father wanting children Adam and Eve to gain knowledge of Good and Evil, and become “GodS “ (plural) like the Dead Ancestors had been when they were alive with all the accumulated knowledge, wisdom, they had from earlier Dead Ancestors. In a later , Chapter of Genesis, Cain kills his brother Abel. However, God tells people not to take revenge on Cain. This is the same advice Darwin would give a species. Don’t start a revenge cycle as this would lower your species Darwinian fitness.