Ideas: A history from fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

This is because, until 2.5 million years ago, early man’s diet was vegetarian. The invention of stone tools, however, enabled him to eat meat –

It is also an even more interesting question than it looks when you consider the fact that the hunter-gathering mode is actually quite an efficient way of leading one’s life. Ethnographic evidence among hunter-gatherer tribes still in existence shows that they typically need to ‘work’ only three or four or five hours a day in order to provide for themselves and their kin. Skeletal remains of Stone Age farmers reveal more signs of malnutrition, infectious diseases and dental decay than those of their hunter-gatherer predecessors. Why, therefore, would one change such a set of circumstances for something different where one has to work far harder? In addition, reliance on grain imposed a far more monotonous diet on early humans than they had been used to in the time of hunting and gathering. In any case, when people first domesticated crops, these remained a minor part of the diet for centuries, possibly more than a thousand years. Again, why the change?

This would fit with the fact that the very first pottery was made in Japan, as part of the Jomon culture, as early as 14500 BC, among people who were full-time hunter-gatherers.34 The Jomon Japanese were extremely creative, with very sophisticated hand-axes, and they also invented lacquer.

The German economic historian Georg Simmel observed in his book The Philosophy of Money, ‘the idea that life is essentially based on intellect, and that intellect is accepted in practical life as the most valuable of our mental energies, goes hand in hand with the growth of a money economy’.

Samuel Noah Kramer began to publish his translations of Sumerian clay tablets and in doing so he identified no fewer than twenty-seven ‘historical firsts’ discovered or achieved or recorded by the early Iraqis. Among them were the first schools, the first historian, the first pharmacopoeia, the first clocks, the first arch, the first legal code, the first library, the first farmer’s almanac, and the first bicameral congress. The Sumerians were the first to use gardens to provide shade, they recorded the first proverbs and fables, they had the first epic literature and the first love songs.

Religion is by nature moral only if the gods are deemed moral, and this was hardly the rule among the ancients. The difference was made in Israel by the moral nature of the God who had revealed himself.’

The Israelites remained in exile in Babylon from 586 BC to 539 BC. While they were there, they found that their captors practised Zoroastrianism, which was the major belief system in the Middle East before Islam. The origins of this faith are obscure.

One reason is that the language of Zoroastrian scriptures, the Gathas, the liturgical hymns which make up the Avesta, the Zoroastrian canon, is very similar to the oldest layer of Sanskrit, the language of the Vedas, the sacred texts of the Hindus (see here). The two languages are so close that they are ‘little more than dialects of one tongue’, and not many centuries can have separated them from their common origins.92 Since the Vedas date to between 1900 and 1200 BC, at least, the Gathas cannot be very much younger.

This is a crucial aspect of Zoroastrianism: man is invited to follow the path of the Lord, but he is free in that choice – he is not a slave or a servant.99 Ahura Mazda was also the father of a set of twins, Spenta Mainyu, the Good Spirit, and Angra Mainyu, the Destroying Spirit. These twins respectively choose Asha, justice, and Druj, deceit.100

At the same time, there is some evidence that early Zoroastrianism was itself an ecstatic religion, with even Zarathustra using bhang (hemp).

The Israelites had been taken into captivity in 586 BC, by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzer. In 539, however, Babylon was captured by Cyrus, a Persian king who had also defeated the Medes and the Lydians. He and his followers spread Zoroastrianism throughout the Middle East. Cyrus freed the Jews and allowed them back to their homeland.

(Hindu is in fact the Persian word for Indian – see Chapter 33)

The Buddha had no conception of heaven. He thought such questions were ‘inappropriate’. He thought that language was ill-equipped to deal with these ideas, that they could only be experienced.

God cannot be understood, only experienced. ‘The aim is to be like a drop of water in the ocean, complete and at one with the larger significant entity.’

Socrates played more than word games, though; he believed he had a mission from the gods to make people think and so he played mental games to provoke people into questioning all that they took for granted. His aim was to help people lead a good and fulfilling life but his mischievous methods led eventually to his trial on charges of mocking democracy and public morality, and of corrupting the youth, by teaching them to disobey their parents. When he was found guilty, he was allowed by law to suggest the penalty. Had he chosen exile this would surely have been granted. But, contentious as ever, he said that what he really deserved was maintenance for life as a public benefactor but that he would agree to a fine. The jury was insulted and ordered him – by a larger majority than had convicted him – to commit suicide. After a delay when, according to Plato, he spoke eloquently on the soul, he drank hemlock at sundown.46

One of Phrynichus’ plays, The Taking of Miletus, made the Athenians weep so much that it had to be banned.88

Zeno, a mathematician as well as a Stoic, told men to look into themselves, because there was nowhere else to look, and to obey the laws of physis, nature, but none other. Society was a fundamental hindrance to the all-important aim in life – which was self-sufficiency. He and his supporters advocated extreme social freedom: sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, incest, the eating of human flesh. Human law is irrational, ‘nothing to the wise man’.100

This group had the support of Cyrus’ son, Darius, but even so the rebuilding of Jerusalem did not recommence until 445 BC. This was when Nehemiah arrived. He was a wealthy Jew, highly placed in the Persian court, who had heard about the sorry state of affairs in Jerusalem. He rebuilt the walls and the Temple, and he introduced changes that helped the poor. But, as Robin Lane Fox says, ‘although he appears to have assumed a broad awareness of Moses’ law among the people, nowhere does he allude to written scripture’.9

In the fifth century there were further reforms, when January became the first month. This was because Janus was the god of gateways and it was felt appropriate for the beginning of a new year, when office-holders took up their positions in the Roman government.

The calendar we use today is actually a modified version of the one introduced in Rome by Julius Caesar on 1 January 45 BC. The previous year, 46 BC, was 445 days long, to bring it into line, and was known as ‘the last year of confusion’.16

To begin with, January, March, May, July, September and November all had thirty-one days, the rest thirty, save for February, which had twenty-nine. The changes to the system we have now were introduced in 7 BC by Augustus, who wanted a month (Sextilis) named after him.

The most famous instance of a link between Christianity and India concerns Thomas, one of Jesus’ original twelve disciples. According to a Syriac source, the Acts of Judas Thomas, probably composed at Edessa, in north-west Mesopotamia in the third century AD, Jesus’ disciples divided up the known world for evangelisation after the Crucifixion, and India fell to Judas Thomas.72 Today, on the Malabar coast of south-west India, there exists a community of some 2 million Indian Christians who believe their church was founded by Thomas. According to local tradition, he landed there around AD 50 and built seven churches.73 No one outside the Malabar community itself believes any longer that the Thomas who initiated the Indian church was the biblical disciple of that name, but the very presence of Christianity in the subcontinent does have some interesting ramifications.